Daily Tune On - Irish Alternative Luka Bloom
For those of you who didn’t read today’s crack, I had my first facial and my esthetician was an Irish woman named Vivian and it is on her recommendation that I write about Luka Bloom today. It so happens he’s playing at BB King’s in NYC this coming Saturday night and she swears by him!
She described him to me as an alternative Irish singer and until this past week I need to be honest, I had never heard of Luka Bloom. He is the younger brother of famed Irish singer Christy Moore and changed his name from Kevin Barry Moore to Luka Bloom in order to distinguish himself from his older brother. He is supposedly very forthcoming about being Christy’s younger brother but decided to go by a different name to avoid the pressure of comparisons. Coming from a family of singers and players Luka was only 14 when he went on his first tour with his older brother.
Arriving in the U.S. in 1987 Luka says on his website that he arrived as Barry Moore and left as Luka Bloom, a developed new artist. During his stay in the states he played clubs, festivals, dives, and arenas. He gigged with The Pogues, the Violent Femmes, The Dixie Chicks, and The Cowboy Junkies and recorded with Warner Music his albums “Riverside,” “The Acoustic Motorbike,” and “Turf’.” But being excited by the independent ingenuity of the likes of Ani Di Franco, Luka decided to follow her lead and set up his own way of working independently as well and in 2001 he created Big Sky Records and released “The Barry Moore Years” a retrospective of some of his older work. In more recent years he has released, “Then Came Innocence,” “TRIBE,” a record he did with Irish musician/composer Simon O’Reilly and in February of 2008 he released a DVD of concerts that were filmed in Dublin and at his home in Kildare entitled, “The Man is Alive.”
Having scoured both the Luka Bloom website and YouTube looking for more pieces to the Luka Bloom puzzle I came across a lot of beautiful music and feel as if I began my acquaintance with this Irish singer/songwriter/musician. Thank you Vivian!
Below is one of my findings, a song called “Holy Ground.” To view this YouTube video, just cut and paste the URL into your browser. I also included below the link to Luka Bloom’s website.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsvYAwSpCNM&feature=related
http://www.lukabloom.com/