Larry Kirwan is Back and Rockin’ The Bronx

Irish Stew Podcast

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

• Wikipedia
• Black 47
• Celtic Crush with Larry Kirwan
• Celtic Crush Facebook
• Prior Irish Stew Episode

Episode Details: Season 7, Episode 9; Total Episode Count: 112

فصول

1. Introduction (00:00:00)

2. Bainbridge Now (00:02:31)

3. Reissuing Rockin' The Bronx (00:06:41)

4. How Much Autobiography in the Book? (00:12:11)

5. Racial Tension (00:13:45)

6. Irish Migrant Struggles in the 80s (00:15:46)

7. Odd Family Formations (00:19:49)

8. The Reagan Era in NYC (00:22:45)

9. Writing Music vs. Prose (00:26:53)

10. Writing About Music (00:29:47)

11. Reading RTB: The Band Sparks (00:33:15)

12. Writing Style and the Future (00:38:22)

13. Book Details and Readings (00:44:38)

14. John and Martin Recap and a Reading (00:47:56)

15. Credits (00:49:58)