Interview: Christy Moore, folk singer

THE first time I saw Christy Moore play Barrowland, 15-odd years ago, was also the first time I heard, within those hallowed Gallowgate walls, a massed admonitory "Sshh!" from a sellout crowd, exhorting its noisier elements to shut up while he sang a quiet one. It's a sound more associated with intimate folk clubs than with Scotland's greatest rock arena – but then Barrowland in turn is better known for hosting full-size electric bands than a lone, middle-aged Irishman armed only with voice, acoustic guitar and bodhrn. As with so much else about his now 45-year career, Moore's enduring relationship with the venue – enshrined in both an eponymous tribute track on Listen, his latest album, and a 2009 DVD filmed there, Come All You Dreamers – determinedly rewrites the rules for a folk balladeer.

Also not for the first time, he's even rewritten his own rules regarding the place. Moore himself dates his Barrowland debut to 1984, when he'd recently resumed working solo, having played a founding role in two seminal Irish bands, Planxty and Moving Hearts. That aforementioned mid-1990s gig, however, was his first time headlining both there and the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, on consecutive nights, as is now his habit when he visits the city. A couple of tours later, though, after getting a faceful of beer thrown from the crowd – especially unwelcome for a recovering alcoholic – he declared he'd never play Barrowland again.

In 1997, Moore experienced what he's summed up as a "total nervous breakdown", widely perceived as the cumulative cost of casting his famously intense, single-handed spell over crowds of thousands, for up to three hours at a time, throughout tours lasting up to six weeks. Though he'd been sober since 1989, following a heart attack two years earlier, his attempted comeback concerts in 1999 were curtailed by recurrent angina, upon which he announced his permanent retirement from live performance.

While he kept busy with TV work, studio recording and writing an acclaimed autobiography, One Voice, direct communion with an audience proved to be the one drug Moore couldn't renounce (having also done his fair share of actual narcotics in the 60s and 70s). By 2001, there were whispers of occasional impromptu, small-scale appearances in Ireland, and in 2004 Moore returned to the big stage for Planxty's celebrated series of reunion gigs. The year after that, he was back on the road himself – and back at Barrowland, as well as the Concert Hall, resuming the Glasgow routine he's continued ever since.

"Any health problems were never brought on by the music itself, nor the playing of it," he asserts now, a month ahead of his 66th birthday, "rather by what used to happen when the music ended – that's when the damage was done. I keep performing because there is just no better landscape for a song than to sing it in front of a group of passionate listeners who get into the zone with me. That's the ambience I rely on to lift me up, give me the courage to take chances – I am addicted, to the roar of the grease-paint and the smell of the crowd.

"I play both venues in Glasgow because there are two audiences there, and they each prefer their own space – though of course there are a handful of rapscallions who go both nights. At Barrowland, I just love the smell of the room, the history, the vibe, the staff, the bouncers, the memory of Mags McIver who built the original hall: the songs seem at home in this old venue."

Moore's return to regular touring, which currently extends to around 80 shows a year, has seen him teaming up anew with guitarist and former Moving Hearts bandmate Declan Sinnott. Their partnership and friendship has clearly been crucial in Moore's learning to go easier on himself, a somewhat mellower modus operandi signified by the two of them nowadays sitting side by side onstage, where Moore previously always stood to perform.

When asked while still wholly solo how he sustained the motivation to deliver such consistently compelling, charismatic shows, night after night, even after decades in the business, Moore replied by quoting an unnamed American comedian he'd once read about: "He said that before every gig, you have to remember there might be people in the audience who've saved up for weeks or months to buy tickets. Or there might be someone there who's very ill – this might be the last gig they ever see. Regardless of how you're feeling, it's your job to go out and do the very best you can."

Having a pal along on tour, sharing the workload imposed by this rigorous sense of responsibility, has evidently restored it from a debilitating burden to a self-renewing pleasure. Employing Sinnott as producer, too, on both Listen and its currently nascent successor, has also at least partly overcome Moore's oft-expressed dislike of the recording process, taking place as it does minus an audience. "I am enjoying this leg of the journey very much," Moore says. "Declan and I get on very well, both on the road and in the studio: he is a consummate musician, very focused, always happy to rehearse, and brings such a variety of colours to the songs from night to night. He is a generous man, and very good company – and he's also the only guitarist I know who could have uttered the words, 'This song does not need a guitar break.'"

Regarding that next album, which he began recording earlier this year, Moore's refusal to be drawn on how it's shaping up recalls his long-ago decision to dispense with predetermined concert set-lists, in favour of playing things by ear. "Any plans I have are best not discussed – by the time you publish they will all have changed." As to why he continues to make albums, given his emphatic preference for the live arena – and being at a stage of his career when he can surely do pretty much as he pleases – he says: "I'm in the studio now, just after a really good take of a song, and although it's an environment that cannot have the ambience I most need, I am exhilarated. That's partly why; beyond that I think I record mainly just to have a picture of the latest batch of songs."

Moore's recent choice of album tracks has tended away from the traditional fare for which he was originally renowned, with Listen comprising a mix of self-penned material and diverse covers – including a beautiful version of Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond, as well as songs by both acclaimed and lesser-known Irish writers such as John Spillane, Wally Page and Ian Prowse.

"I find songs everywhere," Moore says. "Gigs, albums, sessions, folk clubs, weddings, funerals, prisons, opium dens, bus shelters…" In former days he was often regarded first and foremost as a protest singer, with outspoken views on issues from Irish Republicanism to the fate of Rachel Corrie, but while Listen contains a few numbers in this vein, Moore today plays these cards rather closer to his chest. "My primary purpose is to sing songs that give me an emotional charge," he says. "I do have political beliefs which are sometimes reflected in songs that I sing – but I ain't gonna talk about them."

Perhaps the key emotions to which Moore refers are encapsulated by the best-loved line in his whole vast repertoire, from Jackson Browne's Before the Deluge, with which Moore used to open every show. "Let the music keep your spirits high," runs its chorus – and if you're lucky enough to catch him live, that's exactly what will happen.

• Christy Moore plays the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, 12 and 13 April, the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on 15 April and Barrowland on 16 April