There is no doubt whatsoever: Jack Lukeman aka Jack L has a great voice. It straddles four octaves and operates in a variety of keys, acrobatically. “One of the most distinctive and recognisable voices in Irish music over the past 20-odd years,” is how he is introduced at the start of a live stream recorded on January 17, 2021 and preserved for all eternity on YouTube. At the start, the camera travels through a desolately-empty Caroline Street to the music venue Cyprus Avenue. It’s a mere four-and-a-half years ago, but from a 2025 viewpoint it looks like a parallel timeline in a different universe.
It being Planet Covid, there isn’t a ‘real’ audience in sight. Only a tiny crew is allowed into the building, including a presenter who tells the online viewers that, by then, during Ireland’s third lockdown, Jack has reached a quarter of a million people (the number would eventually rise to 400,000-plus) in various countries across the world with his streamed performances, which went live most weekends. Streaming was something he’d never done before but he took to it with gusto.
A prolific singer-songwriter, Jack Lukeman (born Seán Loughman in Athy, Co Kildare in 1973) had already released 14 albums by then and went on to record ‘Streamed: Best of the Lockdown Sessions Vol. 1’. He had an insatiable desire to keep performing during that unusual time: “Everything was a bit weird, nobody knew what was going on, it was quite apocalyptic. And obviously, there was no immediate audience reaction.” Only by looking at the comments underneath his videos, afterwards, did he become aware that he was touching the hearts of people everywhere. “That was quite moving. What I love is that, even in this situation of forced isolation, people liked to gather and experience something in real time, altogether. As if we were sitting around a digital campfire, continuing on that tradition of storytelling and music.” He focused on his own songs for the first few sessions but then decided to cover some of the repertoire of the singer-songwriters he enjoyed and admired. “We did David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, a Bob Dylan night, the Beatles vs the Stones, an eighties night that compelled me to fit music from an entire decade into one session. It was great, I spent the whole week as if cramming for an exam but after about eight weeks the brain couldn’t take it anymore. So I decided to record a Best Of album. The audience got to vote on their favourite songs.”
So when does a good voice qualify as ‘great’? In popular music, it doesn’t necessarily have to be technically perfect. The voices of some famous singers (Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, Macy Gray) may be raw, rough, even screechy at times. Bob Dylan sounds decidedly nasal. Bruno Mars (today’s top Spotify artist who reaches a staggering 151 million monthly listeners) is a bit generic. But to their millions of fans, it doesn’t matter. They pack so many lyrical and emotional punches that greatness is assured.
Jack Lukeman doesn’t appear to be aiming for musical global domination. His voice is amazing, also in a technical sense, but not polished. It’s unashamedly honest, as it weaves through areas of emotional rawness and vulnerability. ‘Broken songs’ is an album he recorded in 2003: ‘I’ll fire up my voice / And sing you these broken songs’.
He has played all over the world and praised in the press: “A mixture of all the great voices of the 20th Century. Five stars.” (The Guardian) “A gorgeous, versatile Baritone.” (Washington Post)
Not surprisingly, he has a large number of devoted fans. Also in West Cork. He performs in Clonakilty (July 12), at DeBarra’s Folk Club. “I’ve been playing there every summer for quite some time and I always look forward to it. Such a great venue, with a good listening audience.” The gig is part of his ‘Unbroken Songs 2025’ tour, a celebration of a 30-year career he has almost continuously journeyed across the world, “singing up the spirits of audiences with some of the greatest songs of all time. […] The show features signature tracks and rare gems.”
Jack’s earliest albums were released in the mid-1990s. “They only exist in the world of CDs and I don’t think they’re online. I come from a time when you could actually make a living out of selling CDs but not now. It’s a joke really. A baker gets paid for his bread, a barista gets paid for her coffee but for some reason, musicians are expected to stream away their wares for free. I think the culture has changed since COVID. People don’t go out as much and you have a generation that has grown up glued to their phones. I was looking at a poster from 2017 last night, I think I did 200 gigs or more. A ridiculous amount. I’m lucky that I have audiences who are very loyal and come to the shows but you would worry about people who are just starting out.”
His wonderful vocals didn’t come out of nowhere. “My family had a garage business that has been around for two or three generations. There was always music in the house, sessions, and my dad would sing. He was into the old Irish tenors like John McCormick and he had a fine voice. Actually, I was obsessed with music. But whereas I could see that my voice had a nice effect on people, I was still uncertain about going out into the world and performing. So I went to Holland to work in factories. And then I met a guy with a guitar and we started busking. When I made more money playing music than by doing ordinary work, I realised for the first time that I could actually survive as a musician and I started to believe in myself.”
Jack has done considerably more than simply “survive”. He is constantly reinventing himself (the fine song Lazarus bears witness to that). He’s created a wonderful short ambient soundscape movie, Whispered Wisdom, incorporating autonomous sensory meridian response techniques and his grandfather Jack Keogh’s (1915-1994) memoir of drawings and writings (it can be viewed online). He regularly plays alongside large choirs. As an ambassador for the Blackrock Castle Observatory (Cork) he inspires kids to be interested in space and astronomy. He has sung to real-life astronauts.
“I like playing for people, I like lifting them up. I’ve been lucky that I have a voice and I will use it as long as I can. I guess I was born to make music.”
Jack Lukeman plays DeBarra’s Folk Club, Clonakilty on July 12.
