Former professional footballer and yacht captain finds his voice in music

Some artists spend years manufacturing a mythology. Barra John seems simply to have lived his way into one. Born in Crumlin, Dublin - a breeding ground of Irish professional footballers - Barra grew up playing street football in the same world that produced Robbie Keane, Andy Reid and Joey O’Brien. Barra floated between football, music, books and the dream of landing a professional contract.

At fifteen, he was offered a deal with Glasgow Celtic. He eventually signed for Hearts. Living in digs in Edinburgh, lonely and far from home, he picked up a guitar and began teaching himself from a chord book. Later, Andy Reid - of Nottingham Forest, Tottenham Hotspur and the Republic of Ireland - helped him sharpen the craft.

There were fine football days - scoring against Celtic, playing against Middlesbrough with Paul Gascoigne in the line-up. But injuries kept coming. After five operations, Barra retired from competitive football at just twenty-two. From there, the road widened.

During a difficult spell in London, when money was scarce and shelter was not always guaranteed, he was approached by a talent agent and found unlikely work as Orlando Bloom’s body double. He later studied acting at Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, starred in international advertisements for Toyota and Coca-Cola, and worked in theatres across Australia.

Between productions, he began jumping into his van, playing cover gigs throughout Australia and New Zealand. Guitar on his back, heading into town, playing a gig, heading out again for the next one. The old wanderlust took hold. Eventually, he gave up acting and took to the road.

He busked in streets and subway tunnels, played bars, halls, clubs and shebeens across Europe. In the bad and ugly seasons, he worked construction. One winter, snowbound in a cottage in the Pyrenees, he began writing songs seriously, listening to flamenco, classical music, Edith Piaf and Serge Gainsbourg.

He fell in love with France and bought a small farm in the Dordogne, growing fruit and vegetables, writing quietly, content for the songs to remain in the drawer.

During the pandemic, Barra was gigging across Brazil when he found himself shored up in Rio de Janeiro. There, he wrote ‘Stanley’, a song about losing a child before they are born, introducing Barra John as a songwriter unafraid of life’s deepest emotional weather.

His new single, ‘On My Way’, arrives from a different place - not grief exactly, but movement. Resilience. The decision to keep going when life has other plans.

After a period of ill health and personal setbacks, Barra John is returning to music with a song that feels less like a comeback statement than a quiet declaration of survival. A chance meeting with Mick Cronin of Transmission Rooms put him in touch with producer Karl Odlum, whose credits include Gemma Hayes, Nina Hynes and Mic Christopher. Odlum began producing an album’s worth of Barra John material including ‘On My Way’, which carries the lived-in quality of an artist who has known several lives and several countries, and has brought the weight of them all back into song.

Featuring Colm Mac Con Iomaire of The Frames, and Anna Houston, who has worked with Mike Scott, Steve Wickham and No Crows, ‘On My Way’ contains echoes of the great songwriter tradition - the storytelling of Dylan, the humanity of Springsteen, the bruised poetry of Cohen, the drama of Jacques Brel - but Barra John remains difficult to place neatly. He is part Dublin balladeer, part travelling troubadour, part exile, part witness.

Perhaps that is why the songs feel so lived in. They have travelled a long road before reaching the listener. With ‘On My Way’, Barra John steps back into view not as a newcomer, and not simply as a comeback story, but as a songwriter whose time has finally caught up with him. Listen here.