Irish Stew Podcast
Irish Stew Podcast
Larry Kirwan is Back and Rockin’ The Bronx
Join us as Larry Kirwan spins us back to the vibrant, violent New York City of the 1980s and the lives of the mostly undocumented Irish who called a patch of turf there home, in his novel Rockin’ The Bronx.
Best known as the frontman for the legendary Irish-inflected rock & roll band Black 47, Larry delves into themes of immigration, Irish and Hispanic cultural intersections, the shifting fortunes of the navvies and the nannies, the unnamed scourge of AIDS, Reagan-era politics, and his creative process in writing plays, novels, and music.
“I could tell you how to write a novel, and how to write a play, basically in five minutes each,” he says. “With songwriting, I still don't understand it. It's that moment when the hammer hits the anvil, and sparks fly.”
Now the Wexford native is combining his songwriter and playwright skills in a new musical on labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.
And stick around for Martin’s reading of a Rockin’ The Bronx passage reminiscent of the closing section of James Joyce’s “The Dead.”
Links
Book Orders:
- Fordham University Press: Rockin’ The Bronx
Larry Kirwan
Episode Details: Season 7, Episode 9; Total Episode Count: 112