THERE'S a fine line between interpretation and imitation, and Jack Lukeman walks it like a seasoned acrobat showing off on the tightrope. He knows that, at the tender age of 23 he doesn't have the maturity, experience or world weariness to be a Serge Gainsbourg but he also knows that his voice, though not yet aged to perfection, is still commanding and resonant enough to ring clear and true every time. When Jack L does Jacques Brel, he brings all his youthful, full blooded vitality to the part, but also the wisdom and wit of a learned old thespian. When he emerges on stage at Dublin's Da Club, for instance, decked out in frock coat and brandishing his cane, it's like watching Johnny Depp doing a film version of Jaceques Brel Is Alive & Well And Living In Paris.
Funnily enough, the real Jack Lukeman doesn't swish flamboyantly into the French restaurant where we've arranged to meet for this interview, and the lunchtime diners hardly even look up from their boeuf bourgignon at the leather clad figure who shuffles quietly in, accompanied by his publicist and musical colleague David Constantine the real Jack Lukeman doesn't eye up your humble interviewer with a fiery gaze, ready to cut through his every inane question with a sarcastic turn of phrase, but looks frankly and guilelessly in his direction. And the real Jack Lukeman doesn't declaim loudly in mock epic tones, but speaks politely and hesitantly in a soft, earthy Kildare accent.
The story of Jack L & The Black Romantics began, appropriately enough, in the Port of Amsterdam, where Lukeman went after a stint in his father's business in Athy.
"I took off to Holland, and I was there for half a year, just doing the bohemian thing," he recalls. I was 18. The plan was to see the world from there, but when I was over there I started doing a lot of busking, and people found me pretty appealing as far as a singer goes, so I reckoned that before I actually travelled I would come home and give it a shot for a year and see how the singing would go, because it's something that would always be bugging me if I'd never tried it."
Not that Lukeman was deliberately trying to imitate the young Brel, who left his family firm in 1953 in search of fame and fortune as a chansonnier. In fact, during Lukeman's time in Holland, he wasn't even aware of Jacques Brel, being too busy writing his own songs.
I've always been writing songs. I've been writing songs since I was in school. I began by just writing things and I never actually meant them to be songs, but a lot of them have turned out to be songs now. It used to be a thing before I went to bed I'd write something, to clear the old head or whatever. I couldn't play guitar at the time, and I have a lot of songs recorded where I couldn't play anything. But in a lot of ways I've always reckoned that the voice itself is the greatest instrument.
When Lukeman returned to Dublin, he fell in with a true bohemian set, the self styled "38 S.C.R." collective, which orbits loosely around a flat in South Circular Road, the Fringe Theatre Festival, and the Da Club in Clarendon Row. David Constantine, the soi-disant sage of this little group, was recording his Serious Women project in Flat Number 1, and the new tenant in the basement kindly agreed to add some backing vocals to the magnum opus. Now, though Jack Lukeman still lives in the basement, he has moved up into the spotlight, and his album of Brel covers, entitled Wax, became the second recording project under the 38 S.C.R. label The combination of Lukeman's timeless voice and the talent of The Black Romantics, led by double bassist and Brel enthusiast Ginger O'Keeffe, has ensured that Belgium's greatest ever songwriter is indeed alive and well and performing in Dublin.
How I heard the songs first were Scott Walker's versions I wasn't all that aware that there were even Jacques Brel versions at the time. But there was a feeling that I got from the Walker stuff he was very laid back about the way he did them, he never stretched his voice, he did clean versions, beautiful versions, and then Brel did the kind of real dirty, venomous style so what I do is marry the two together, the beauty of Walker to the dirt of Brel."
The result is a mixture of the grandiose and the gutter bound, the soiled and the spiritual, and anyone who has heard the album will certainly feel the dark influence of Walker and the unbowed spirit of Brel working in tandem.
"I think the album made itself, to tell you the truth. I was a bit dubious about making it, because I didn't want it to be seen as just a tribute. The general idea was to be my own man. But I think the ghost of Brel must have been lurking around somewhere or something like that, and he kind of made us do it. But I like to think we brought it up to date a bit."
THOUGH Wax is an enjoyable enough album, containing some of Brel's best known tunes like Jacky, My Death, Un Ami Pleure and If We Only Have Love, along with one Lukeman original, the Brelesque Fear Is The Key, it's just a taster for the live show, which combines musician ship with theatricality, and brings you back to a time when the song mattered almost as much as the singer. In a city overrun with self glorifying egos in leather jackets, eager to be worshipped but lacking the raw talent to deserve it, Jack L is almost an anachronism, a vintage baritone in a sea of childish wails. Who else in the world of Irish rock besides a certain cheroot smoking crooner in fly shades and devil horns can earn comparisons with the likes of Frank Sinatra?
"It's kind of odd, because I have that kind of voice," agrees Lukeman with complete absence of pride, "but I come from the age where that kind of voice doesn't fit in anymore. If I had been born back in the 1940s I would have been flying, I would have been able to do that kind of stuff."
You won't find much in the way of Britpop or Grunge in Jack Lukeman's record collection and it's not surprising to hear that his two favourite albums of last year stood in that dark, shadowy realm far outside mainstream pop tastes. In fact, Scott Walker's Tilt is so far outside, it's teetering on the edge of madness.
"I'm one of the few people I know who has actually listened to it," laughs Lukeman with what I assume to be black humour "and I've been listening to it recently as well. It's like, you know when you g to a film that depresses you, well, why do you go? You go because it gives you a feeling after awards, so it's the same with Tilt. The thing about that album is, don't listen to it on your own, listen to it with somebody so you don't get so scared. The first song is one of the most beautiful songs I've heard in a long time I know his lyrics are like completely out there, but I've always liked things that are more ... outside the norm. Anything that creates that kind of feeling, there's got to be something in it. I love anything that tests the boundaries of music the old verse, chorus, verse, chorus is out the door. Like Bowie's last album, 1.Outside his favourite album of the year was the Walker album, and you can hear a lot of it in that 1.Outside album. It's very metallic, it's very cold, but there are songs there as well."
Not songs in the Sinatra sense, of course, but Lukeman seems capable of approaching both the classic and the avant garde with equal respect. Perhaps this is why he feels an affinity with the likes of Brel, who combined the two with theatrical grace, and whose final album, Brel, released a year before his death in 1978, was a bleak precursor to Tilt.
It will be a long time before Lukeman gets around to recording his own Tilt, and right now he's too busy looking at the brighter and more ironic side of life. His immediate plans involve recording an entirely self composed album, but you can be sure that many of the songs will be inbued with the spirits of Walker and Brel. He's playing Midnight At The Olympia tomorrow night with The Black Romantics, and the Dame Street venue should be the perfect place for Lukeman's dramatic demeanour to shine.
"I've always thought it would suit us to the ground. The Olympia definitely is one place I've always wanted to do a gig in, and that's why we're keeping the show with that little theatrical kind of thing, and we're actually wheeling out some of the old favourites for it."
This will be Jack L's biggest gig to date, a giant step up from the smaller shows at the Da Club where he made his name and developed his cane swinging, flower throwing persona. Will Lukeman ever return to play the Da Club in the near future?
"Definitely. I'll definitely be back there at some point. There's no gigs lined up at the moment, but it became home, because we were there for a solid year, every weekend, and some one week stints we've done more than 100 shows I would say So, yeah, definitely, I would always go back there. What was always fascinating was the difference in the crowd, cos I've got a lot of friends who are ravers, so it was ravers, old age pensioners, it was you name it, from one end to the other. I mean people I never thought would like the music, or would be at all interested in seeing us. They were all there.
"There was some mad nights down there, there really was. Summer was the best, when it was hot down there, I was pumping sweat, I was drowning in my own sweat a few times down there.
"To tell you the truth, the biggest buzz I honestly get, and it's a very rare one, is from singing. I have to say, there have been stages where cos when you're singing, you're breathing all your air out, and it's just so emotional there's been times when I've actually blacked out, I swear to God. It really is a weird thing, singing, it really is. I've been looking for books on it, actually. I mean, you get books on how to sing, but there's nothing actually on the spiritual side of singing. And there is a big spiritual high, better than any help from any drink, drug or anything I've ever been involved with. Much better than religion."
