One hates to start an article with something approximating a cliche, but Jack Lukeman (aka Jack L) has the voice of a dark, avenging angel. We have been on the receiving end of his vocal chords for over five years, but it is only now that he has decided to release his first solo album of original material. Previous to his new record, the astonishingly mature Metropolis Blue, there was Wax and Acoustico (the latter two in association with The Black Romantics), paeans both to the decadent delights of one Jacques Brel. Live performances were the stuff of legend, our caped crusader swishing back and forth on stage with a whip in one hand and a microphone in the other, all the while stirring up a melting-pot of music which embraced a ferocious fusion of Screaming Jay Hawkins, Scott Walker and Charles Aznavour. Not exactly The Saw Doctors, then.
Jack Lukeman was born Jack Loughman in Bennetsbridge, near Athy, 26 years ago. At the start of the 1990s, he left his family job as an apprentice mechanic in his father's garage to busk in Europe. "You spend most of your adolescent years wondering why you're here, and somewhere along the way I decided I wanted to have a bit of an adventure and dictate my own thing. You get hooked on that."
Lukeman is sitting in a plush hotel bar, very much the mixture of twentysomething cool and nervous, tobacco-stained chic. We talk earnestly for a short while about the iniquities of smoking and what a truly disgusting habit it is. Then he asks one of the bar staff for a box of matches, lights up and blows the ensuing smoke out of the side of his mouth away from my general direction. Which is nice.
Lukeman began writing original material ("my songs fall into two categories - romantic and cartoon") when he moved to Dublin following his tenure abroad as one of many European busker-squatters. Busking, he says, gave him the courage to come back to Dublin and a sore back from sleeping on so many uncomfortable floors. His influences were wide and varied, but he knew from his experiences abroad that he could make a living singing.
"I mainly knew Jacques Brel through Scott Walker, while my father had a lot of Nat King Cole records lying around. You might well ask what a guy from near Athy is doing listening to Scott Walker." Curiously enough, this really was my next question. Bang goes my surprise line of interrogation. "I'm a real culchie," admits Jack, "but coming from the sticks you don't know what's trendy, which is a good thing. So, you end up listening to records that are just lying around. I've a natural obsession with music and singing. My father is a good singer and my grandfather before him, so I imagine that's where the passion comes from. Mostly I would have listened to Nat King Cole. My brother would have been listening to Pink Floyd. I always imagine that ever since then, I've been trying to make the two dance together."
Lukeman doesn't fit the identikit-style photo of the average Irish rock act. He is not dumb enough to believe that a major record deal will be his ultimate commercial saviour. This is why, like so many of the smarter Irish people currently involved in making records without the aid of a financial safety net, he has gone the independent route. Risk-taking equals money-making. For yourself. Jack cracks the whip, he is effectively his own boss, and he wouldn't have it any other way. "It's not an overtly intentional thing to do something different," he explains. "If anything, it's probably because I started out with no real sense of what was trendy. To this day, I still just do whatever is naturally moving, in a musical sense. I don't think too much about how big or small a stage is. I just sing from my heart. I try to keep it that way, too. If it moves you, it's truth, and it works for me. It's really just to maintain a certain level of power within myself, to dictate my own destiny in anything I've ever done. It sounds high falutin', I know, but that's important to me."
Part of the strategy for full independence and as little compromise as possible is another novel Lukeman idea - global residencies. Now playing on a regular basis several major cities in Europe, as well as New York and San Francisco, Jack's aspirations of connecting music with travel ("easier than busking and squatting") have been realised.
"The global residencies just happened," says Jack, whose personal philosophy amounts to following his instincts, nothing more and nothing less. "I'm lucky enough to have family in both New York and San Francisco. Accommodation is the killer from a financial aspect - that and flights. I know it's not very rock'n'roll to talk about prices, but when you're doing it on a practical basis, it is important. "The gigs took shape quite quickly. As far as I'm aware, I'm the only Irish act who does this. Some acts go away and don't come back. I keep coming back, but I'm able to do it through what has been achieved in Ireland. The venues are endless in New York, and I try to play as many as possible. It's so cool to be in New York. It's all you grew up with via television and music.
"The only thing that has happened is I keep ending up in cities, when I'd rather be in country areas. I like wide spaces - I' m just a little bit claustrophobic. Where I'm from is a very wide-open space. You can see Athy at a distance."
This is said without a smirk or a snigger. Like I said, a nice guy. All hail Jack Lukeman!
Jack Lukeman plays Dublin's Vicar Street on May 28th. He also plays at The 1999 Fleadhs in San Francisco (June 5th), Chicago (June 12th), Boston (June 19th) and New York (June 28th).
