MARY Coughlan is feeling good and raring to get her Ireland /UK tour underway this December.
2016 is a year she will be happy to leave behind as health issues forced the 60-year old blues singer to cancel a tour because she needed to have an operation to place a stent in her heart.
Mary told Limerick Post this week that her issues were compounded on her journey home from a weekend break in Berlin recently where she walked for miles around the city and on the former East German border.
She had a fall at the passport control at Dublin Airport, broke two ribs and punctured a lung. So, it’s fair to say that this year, if it wasn’t for bad luck, Coughlan would have had no luck at all.
But the show must go on for one of our greatest female singers. Joined by Johnny Taylor on piano and Comac O’Brien on double bass, Mary Coughlan promises a set that mixed the recent album ‘Scars on the Calendar’ and many of the fan favourites as well as a couple of choice Leonard Cohen covers.
She is in the process of writing her new album with long time collaborator Erik Visser.
“The record is about a town in the Wh’est of Ireland full of characters,” as she puts it.
“I wanted to move away from all the sad personal stuff and make a big band album.”
The singer has also written a play which will debut in September in Galway.
Mary is looking forward to her first gig back in the Treaty City and she has fond and wonderfully crazy memories of her first Escape to Limerick.
“Two weeks after my Leaving Cert, I ran away from home and ended up in Limerick!. I got a job in the Galleon Grill and I was the first nude life model employed in the Limerick art college.”
The irrepressible and hugely talented Mary Coughlan is in concert at Belltable this Friday December 2. Tickets from 061-953400 www.limetreetheatre.ie. Don’t miss this show but don’t make her laugh, her ribs are still hurting…
