Brian's thoughts on 'How Can I Keep From Singing':

Albums can be strange beasts. My Producer Billy Farrell reminded me about the Song 'Carolina Rua' and I immediately wondered what the story was…..

I decided for me it was about an unlikely friendship between a late night musician and an urban fox. Then of course I sometimes think of what the accompanying songs might be, a sort of sonic set list. I asked my collaborator Calum MacColl if we had anything in the vault that might suit and lo and behold he sent back 11 songs so suddenly we had an album at least.

Billy and I reworked classics like 'The Old Triangle' that I’d been singing with my friend Peter M Smith, as he played Phillip Lynott and I was playing Oscar Wilde in the rock musical 'Moonlight -The Phillip Lynott Enigma' and so we had to do a version. 

Then came 'The leaving of Liverpool', what I’d always loved as a song and my old friend and scouser Thomas Lang brought the full Merseyside muse to the duet. 

'Grace' was a song I hadn’t ever sung before and over the years fans would ask why not? So I decided to see if there was a way for me to do it and the “Open Tuning” on my guitar, it turned out to be the key that unlocked it. I had toured with Clannad a good few times over the years and always loved Moya’s haunting version of it so we had to include it. 

Between the jigs and the reels we had a 17 track album of my vault voice and my almost 60 year old voice. I’m not saying which is which? That's up to you. I couldn't be prouder of this, my 20th album. I called it after the song 'How can I keep from singing' because it seemed to deeply articulate my feelings after a very unkind decade of ill health and cultural Covid and then ultimately what it truly means to be a survivor.

Love Brian Kennedy