Nick Kelly, one-time singer of The Fat Lady Sings, has found outlets for his creativity in everything from film to advertising since that band split, and he's happier than ever with his musical output

'WORKING AS A full-time musician is like warfare: it's 90 per cent boredom and 10 per cent terror."

Nick Kelly, singer-songwriter, award-winning short-story writer and film-maker and, intermittently, advertising copywriter, knows a thing or two about the swings and roundabouts of the music business. "So much of your life is about travelling to the gig, waiting to get into the studio. It's very discombobulating in all sorts of ways. Yet making records and performing live are amazing: an incredible mix of feeling your way to realising a song or a piece of music, alongside the exuberance of the live performance. I don't think any other art form can give you both of these experiences with such force."

Kelly's eight-year tenure (1986-1994) as lead singer and songwriter with The Fat Lady Sings was enough to temporarily quench his thirst for musical expression. After a year-long hiatus in London, where he sampled a host of disparate creative activities, from acting to short-story writing, Kelly found himself, through a combination of happenstance and impeccable timing, in the middle of the world of advertising, where he's since forged a formidable reputation as a copywriter. It was Kelly who dreamt up the iconic Tom Crean ad and The Frames-soundtracked "Atlantic swimmer" ad, both for Guinness. Hardly the work of some rock'n'roll has-been, crying into his beer.

"Advertising's great if you've got a very short attention span and loads of useless information in your head," Kelly offers, with a wide, cinemascope smile. "It was a career that I was never really meant to have, but it went really well, much to my own surprise, to be honest."

Kelly released his first solo album, Between Trapezesin 1997 on the back of his own cheekily inventive entrepreneurial initiative, whereby his fans pre-paid for the CD to finance the recording process. He named his newly minted label Self Possessed Records. In 2005, he released his second solo collection, Running Dog, again on a shoestring.

This lateral-thinking approach has led him down all kinds of intriguing pathways, from poetry to short-story writing to, most recently, film-making. Kelly's short film Why the Irish Dance that Way was screened at New York's Museum of Modern Art in June, in the venerable institution's Shortfest, which featured outstanding films from international festivals.

KELLY RELISHES THESE varied modes of creative expression, although he insists that each of his albums, in particular, offers a musical snapshot in time - nothing more and nothing less.

"Who you are when you make a record is what that record is," Nick says with the certitude of one who's pondered this question of the link between artistic output and personal identity for longer than your average You're a Starwannabe. "I've changed, of course, and that vestigial pop-star yearning in me is affronted that I wouldn't be taken seriously as an artist in my 40s, but I do feel that I'm doing better work now, in terms of writing, than I ever did with The Fat Lady Sings."

Ultimately, as Kelly sees it, art is all about the constant pursuit of the unknown, that original observation or quirky insight that illuminates unexpectedly.

"Fundamentally, I don't believe in perfection," he says. "I think that craftspeople make perfect things, which when they're polished and perfect, they're dead, in the sense that their potential has been realised. It's like putting a full stop on something. Art is about accepting that when you're perfect, you're the same as everyone else, but the way you screw up is the most interesting thing about you. I think the confidence you need as an artist is the knowledge to leave something in, even though you're not sure why. As a songwriter, I've had people come up to me and say 'Oh, that song is about X', and, even though I would never had thought that it was, when I think about it I realise that they could be right. When you write songs, you're talking in a language that you don't necessarily understand. I think that all creativity is much more gut feeling and much less intellectual than people give it credit for."

Kelly's pondered the vicissitudes of the music business over the past two decades, and has developed an intriguing theory on what constitutes the markers for (creative) success. The trick, he suggests, lies in a coalition of talents that stretch far beyond the confines of musicianship.

"I've figured out that you need eight talents and I think I probably have three and two halves," Kelly laughs, only half in jest. "If you look at the people who are very successful over a long period of time, you need to be able to sing - not necessarily beautifully, but distinctively; you need to be able to play and produce something, although of course some of these things can be outsourced; you need to be able to write or find good writers; you need to be quite iconic-looking and very visually aware; I think you need to be, if not young, then 'on zeitgeist', which is something Madonna and U2 do so well; you need to be very good at business; and you need to desperately, desperately want to be a pop star, and have that appetite to keep doing it, dragging yourself out around the world at two years at a time, which you can see even in someone like Elton John."

BASKING IN THE renewed acquaintance he's made with live performance, through his five-week Tuesday-night residency in Whelan's, Kelly gets to play everything from The Fat Lady Sings' back catalogue (both singles and rarities) to a knapsack full of new songs. The latter is a scintillating mix of cool observation ( Kingfisher Blue, Untidy) and sweaty physicality ( Unreasonable Sex). In fact, Unreasonable Sexpurveys one of the earthiest opening couplets to be found lurking anywhere outside of a Nick Cave album: "I wanna work my way through an acre of latex." When he performed this live at his first gig in Whelan's recently, he was almost apologetic about the sheer viscerality of the song's topic, yet Kelly says that for him, the essence of a good song is one that puts its finger on precisely those collective squirm-inducing moments.

"I did a screenwriting course recently, and someone there said that what you've got to find is the truth that makes everybody uncomfortable," Kelly says. "If you hit upon a theme in your society, then that's fertile ground. I think that's what I feel about that song Unreasonable Sex, because it tries to talk openly about what it's like to be a man, and some of these things are uncomfortable. Obviously there are many facets to all men, but this is one of them that you can't deny."

Finding himself in the midst of a recession, Kelly has some interesting insights into what he suggests might be the stuntedness of the Irish psyche. "I wrote a song called Cast Adrift(under his alter ego, Alien Envoy), which is a snapshot of an idea about the country being a bit 'home alone'. I feel we've been acting like this adolescent country whereby mummy and daddy have left us alone and we've just gorged ourselves and raided the drinks cabinet. I think we're just looking for somebody to give us an idea about ourselves - and we'd accept anybody's, I think. Unfortunately, for Fianna Fáil, what they've been brilliant at all along is giving the people what they want, and what they're terrible at is leadership - 'I know what you could be' - and I think as a people and as a country, what we want is for somebody to have a big idea about us. I think we'd jump all over that."

Kelly's never been easy to pigeon-hole, yet music continues to occupy a central place in his life. Having immersed himself for so long in the world of rock'n'roll, a world he insists "was the most over-subsidised art form in the world", he's content to inhabit this vibrant place where music of the highest quality, sonically, lyrically and musically, can come into existence in a bedroom studio. Suddenly the garret can be the fulcrum of artistic activity, and no longer the black hole where artists starve rather than thrive.

"I think you should continue doing whatever it is that you do, whether that's singing or film-making or whatever, as long as it doesn't make you either mad or bankrupt. I firmly believe that nobody knows when they've done their best work. What I love about songwriting is that as soon as the songs are standing up and walking across a room, you've got to let them go and see what happens. Of course, there's something mysterious about that but that's probably the most exciting thing about it too."

• Nick Kelly continues his Tuesday night residency, with a different theme each night, in Whelan's (upstairs) until Sep 30th