Mary Kathleen, good afternoon. The skin of my teeth, I see you've taken off the Yorgi see all I was doing yoga for 120 days. I fell flat on my face doing downward dog. On the 26th of July. I destroyed four of my lower vertebrae and I had also been walking for five kilometers.

So I'm back on the walk and I started to go to a spinal man in Kill Kaluga, a club who people come from all over the country.

These American guys here born Setagaya is one of those. OK, I callouses them hello Michael here Monday through the dangers of the downward dog there.

But I was doing 90 minutes a day. Six days a week. Yeah, of course. That's all addictive personality. But you went from zero.

You get to be exhusband, which is quite everybody was looking at every day. We were he was he would leave me at the seven kilometer mark and he would go on a bit like a metaphor for your whole life.

He kind of left you at the right and he still walking. But I mean, I got really fit. So 120 days of really going at it and then. Not a no, I'm not drawn pictures every day. Yeah, but you have a fantastic new album of life stories. Yeah, yeah. So it's it's a Holy Mary recorded a Hail Mary record.

So, I mean, every time I'm here say, yeah, I'm the record company and I have been doing a lot of the stuff and I have been sitting at home stuffing envelopes and I've been started to draw little pictures for people and put them in with the CDs and to do that for about two hours every day.

And it keeps me and you draw me a little picture and you do that for everyone.

Sure, why not?

And it's called Life Stories.

And you you do have a few life stories, don't you?

So is this if I want or is this kind of a retrospective Nohria? Have you hit that time? Yeah.

Well, you know, in your life is it. Yeah, but it won't be my life. I have to keep saying it's not going to be my last one. Yeah, of course not. Well I hope, I hope it won't. But how do we know? And I started working on us in 2013 with Pete Glenister. I wrote to him and I was going to be 64. I am 64 and you look great.

Are we allowed to do that anymore? But you look fantastic. You look fantastic yourself. All right. Go on. OK, we look great. Yeah, you are allowed to say it and thank you. And yeah, I wrote him in 2013. I said I really want to go all out here for my 60-40 and I want to do a big, big album with strings and brass and everything in full production. Jobi and he said that would be great.

We did an album before and so I started going to his house. I'm like if I had a gig in England I'd stay on at his place for a week afterwards and his wife Ingrid would cook these feasts every day for us. So we spent weeks at a time writing songs and singing bits and pieces.

He has the studio in his house, so we were able to work on something. And then he said, Oh, you go off and make tea or something and I'll see if I can figure out a few cards here. I've never done this before. Was that. Yeah, it was fantastic.

It was like the best year I have.

You haven't written a lot of your music down. No, I wrote Mary Mary on the House Will in 2007, which was a reference to all the abuse stuff. And I wrote an album with Eric Visser and Tensei in 2010 or 11 or 13, I can't remember. And that was revisiting stuff, just stuff about running away from home and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And and Mark never wrote two songs on that album and. Yeah.

But like Ansun with Pistone, I wanted it to be big. You know, the last song we wrote was to break it into one which is about the aforementioned second ex-husband. And I would want it. It does feel like a big album, like it also like it feels like an album that needed a big stage launch.

All of that is completely schopper.

You're sitting at home and I had concerts all over Scandinavia. I had festivals in Norway. I had stuff in Australia and New Zealand. I had Glastonbury, which in Galway Arts Festival and loads of festivals in Ireland and England. And so I spent three weeks licking my wounds and I really was on the floor. I mean, really like looking at it, looking at it for hours on end when Theresa Murphy said, Do you want to start doing yoga?

And that was when I said, OK, pick yourself up. This is really happening. And no matter what it is, these are the regulations. You're going to have to follow them.

So all the gigs were cancelled, cancelled, cancelled and. It was just I had I have an acceptance of it, and then we got very excited when we thought we could have small gigs in Ireland. So to replace all the big ones, people services offered me where you can come here and do two gigs. And we're also like theatres and stuff. The Mermaid and the town hall in Galway. I'm doing that in two weeks time. I hope I'm doing this.

I'm doing the mermaid next weekend, OK?

And it will be like 44 people, 44 and then the South people involved in the concert.

And I said, yeah, OK, so they can be affordable. I can't afford to do it. It'll be lovely for them hanging out for us. Yeah. The people there will get a comedy. Yeah they are.

But like it was cancelled and a few hours later and then everyone was just down in their boots and then then at nine o'clock in the evening I said, OK. And then the next morning it was clarified that all the outside gigs, which an awful lot of people had gone to an awful lot of trouble put in upstages. Outside there, you know, it's all gone anyway, so I'm doing about eight gigs in September, thank God in Galway and the mermaids and the draft and John and Claire Little art centres at theaters because theaters have licenses and.

That's it for me for the year. Yeah, I don't think a lot of people are as aware as they might be of how many people in Ireland are actually involved in different ways in the music industry and who for whom their work has just gone.

Thankfully, there was a girl taking my picture for something here the other day and I would sing whatever to her.

And she said, well, you know what's keeping me going? Because I said, Is your work gone completely? And she said, When I was a tour photographer, that's what I did. You know, another person that you wouldn't think, you'd never think.

And all the roadies, all the lighting guys, all the stage people and everything. And in the gigs that we can do, they're limiting them to one staff member, you know, so the people who would be, you know, doing the desk and stuff and taking people's tickets, that's all gone. And everyone has to sign a letter, you know, to say that they will behave and wear their mask and sanitize their hands before they get in.

You know, it's it is what it is, but it's very, very deeply, deeply, deeply upsetting. I did a thing in Skerries. I just want to say hello to everyone, Skerries and the Special Needs Place and Skerries. They had been working with their children since they were five and six and then Michael's house. Yeah, yeah. And they had they were graduating. There were 16. And this woman wrote when she was the teacher there and she was the headmistress there and she's kind of in charge and she just said, would you come and just hand out the things, you know, they'll all be in their cars and working with these kids, you know, from when they were really young until her beautiful 16, all dressed up to the nines and their parents all bawling, crying.

And we just sit in the car park and skerries. Yeah, yeah. And myself and Johnny Taylor stood on the back of a lorry and belted out a few songs for the parents.

I could in terms of gigs and stuff. Do you think it's going to be back next year, 2022, you reckon?

Yeah. All my gigs have gone into 2022.

A lot of them. I'm going to put up a Facebook page post tomorrow and Glastonbury have rebooked me for next year. But, you know, that is with the usual ifs and buts.

Yeah, but they have tweeted this morning that they're working towards June. What do you got, Glastonbury every year you supposed do even once.

I never know. No way. Yeah, I did it 20 years ago. I brought my kids with me and you're finally going back and finally going back. I'm so excited.

But not only that, we were flying from Norway to into Bristol.

And as you remember, I remember when you went 20 years ago. I do. When I was sober that day. Oh, OK. That's not what I would suggest.

I might have been there before, but I've done so.

So listen, are you still on the covid payment then? I was I was deleted from the covid payment because I didn't earn 200 pounds, 200 euros a week in any 52 weeks in 2018. So they knocked me off.

So we set up a group and called Musicians and Entertainers Association of Ireland, Jackie Kombai McGranahan, oddly known and a lot of people.

And we set up a Facebook page for members and we have more than 5000. And we started just battered and at the doors of social welfare and the Minister for the Arts and Culture. And they're made up of drivers, lighting technicians, roadies, you know, whatever who may have and I have all the things that I do to make money. I get to to play. And I got a small grant from the Arts Council. I go to Australia every year to make some money because I couldn't live off the two.

I make less than 200 per week in Ireland from gigs, but I'm not the only one that that's the reality.

Like in in your state, my taxes for two thousand nine hundred thirty one thousand euros.

Oh, Mary, OK, we apologize for the other judges for that. I'm so happy with that amount of money. I didn't say the word all. Yeah.

And because people would have a perception that you are like there are loads of musicians out there not as well known and needs and people would think you're like I mean, before any covid people were to talk to, you're kind of reasonably up near the top of the parlour and you're earning thirty grand a year with twenty one.

I beg your pardon. One is very important. Yes, but that's it. And then I go to Australia and I might do thirteen or fourteen gigs in Australia, like really from Melbourne to Perth to work for an one. But it's very enjoyable. I go to Finland every year for six or eight gigs. I'm very, very lucky. I go to New Zealand. I've done wonderful festivals. I've seen the world. I'm not mourning.

You're lucky you've seen your God. Look, I'm I'm not in mourning and I'm still delighted. But there are people in our group who earn much, much less than us and had little other jobs, you know, and like, really, you know, I heard and you them you know, she she won the song contest for us, Neve. The governor cavener that went back to work and Texaco's. Yeah, you know, yeah, people have no realization of what it's like.

I never made it big really in Ireland as I'm big enough like. But I never made the big bucks, you know. Yeah, but that's OK. No, I'm happy.

The album is really, really good. I think it's quite in a way it's quite slick, isn't it. Like it's a kind of like.

Yeah it is like it's quite probably quite commercial like is the thing that was my plan and I was setting up a little pension fund for myself.

But, you know, listen, it's it's time could come.

Will you make any money now if people are streaming it or if you don't make any money from streaming like you make point zero zero one of a cent for Spotify play. But people who buy the album from me at my at my website and people who download from iTunes, like pay for the tune and downloads and people who download from Apple, they pay. I get some of that. So I guess much more decent revenue from that, but I don't.

I got twenty nine quid from Spotify last year for 99 pages of, of, of, of kind of a statement.

Yeah.

And countries from Algeria to Uzbekistan and back again and then the country cuts the taxes but it costs them more to print it out probably and send it to you than what you got.

OK, so look, I'm well look I'm sure people you know what, you never made the big bucks here, but people are very supportive of.

So I never would like to thank them all. I haven't bought an album in ages. Sure. They might guarantee to get the little break.

I'd like to thank them all and all the people have written to me over the past few days. I will get back to every single one of you. I always do. A lot of people have been in great difficulty and they write to me. I'm like a.. You know, OK, OK. And you get back to them more. I do. I will as well. Let's end on a phone note now.

There's a great song in the album called High Heel Boots. It's not dirty.

Lt was kind of naughty, like, well, it's not the next single. It's coming out on the 18th of September. So do I need to ask what's it about? Listen to it.

OK, Mary Cocklin, it's always a pleasure to talk to you. Thanks for having me. So here it is from your new album, Life Stories. This is High-Heeled Boots.