DAMIEN DEMPSEY: THIS ROCKY ROAD (CLEAR/INDEPENDENT) ***

Friday June 27,2008

The ex-boxer and toast of Morrissey, Bono and Sinead O’Connor is a walking encyclopaedia of Irish ballads – around 200, he claims.

Here the Dubliner gets his chewy Northside brogue around some favourite rebel songs and drinking ditties from Kelly From Killan, written in 1798, to The Pogues’ A Rainy Night In Soho.