Shane Richie tells Kirstie McMurray ‘The only place I’d wanna tour is Ireland’
Former Eastenders star Shane Richie has revealed he wants to tour exclusively in Ireland.
Last updated 30th Nov 2017
The actor, singer and all-round entertainer released his first country music album ‘A Country Soul’ earlier this month.
Speaking to Downtown Country’s Kirstie McMurray, he said any potential tour would be in Ireland:
“The only place I’d want to tour is Ireland,” Richie said.
“I spent a lot of time going to watch bands…I went over to Cork, when I was out in Waterford I’d go and see bands in Waterford…I went to see Aslan down in Brae and some of the newer artists as well in Dublin.”
And he revealed it could happen as soon as 2018.
“I really want to, I’ve got to do something in January, there’s a new drama happening but after that I wanna do about 12 dates across North and Southern Ireland that’s the plan,” he added.
The record has been described as a collection of interpretations of his favourite country, and ‘country-ish,’ tunes, with a few originals thrown in.
He told us how the album came about:
“I was funding this myself about three years ago,” he said.
“I’d been in Ireland filming…and I was flying back and of course during all this time I always had my own band, I was always doing gigs even when I was in Eastenders.
“We performed John Denver ‘Some days are diamonds’ as a four part harmony and I went into the studio and I thought right I wanna try and change it up, give it a more modern feel, even though it’s an old song but I wanted to give it a new country feel.
“And I was doing that with a lot of the stuff I was playing with my band.
“Then I appeared on BBC Children in Need last year with Tony Hadley and we did a song ‘Do it for Love’ and the record company got in touch and they said ‘Shane we’d like you to come in and we’ve got some ideas.’
“So I went in and they said ‘we’d like you to do a swing album’ and I said ‘no I don’t do swing,’ alright what about songs from musicals? ‘Oh eh no I don’t do songs from musicals I said but I do do this…’
“And I played him some of my stuff and he went ‘oh, new country’ and they said ‘well we’ve got some ideas for country songs’ so they sent me a load of Kenny Rodgers and Tammy Wynette.
“I went ‘no I love all that but that’s not the sort of stuff I play in my band’ so once again I said ‘this is stuff I’ve done with my band.’
“And then… we kind of compromised, they sent me a couple of songs they’d want me to do and I wrote some originals and we…met in the middle ground and that’s how ‘Country Soul’ happened.
The track features some classics from the 21st century country music scene but perhaps most interestingly, is Shane’s collaboration with his son.
Jake currently tours with band Rixton and Shane said working with Jake was a dream come true:
“I collaborated with my boy Jake …he’d been on tour with Ed Sheeran and him and Ed were living together for a while and Ariana Grande he toured with,” he said.
“He played Madison Square Garden, Holywood Bowl and I always used to say to Jake: ‘Jake when I get to do my album you better write with me kid.