Black 47’s Larry Kirwan Enjoys Luck O’ the Irish

Bob Dylan’s “I Pity the Poor Immigrant” remains all too relevant, but it’s not a script that fits Larry Kirwan, the transplanted Irishman who leads the New York City rock band Black 47.

Kirwan, 36, seems to have gotten pretty much what he was looking for since arriving in New York in the mid-1970s.

“I came for music and adventure and theater,” he said in a recent interview.

In Black 47, which plays tonight at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, Sunday at Bogart’s in Long Beach and Wednesday at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, Kirwan has found ample opportunity to play music that pays close heed to his homeland’s heritage, and to the experiences of recent Irish immigrants like him.

From several roughly autobiographical songs on the band’s debut album, “Fire of Freedom,” it is apparent that Kirwan found adventure. There’s a picaresque zest to songs like “Maria’s Wedding,” based on the time Kirwan drunkenly intruded on the nuptials of a former flame, and “Banks of the Hudson,” in which interracial romance and underworld intrigue collide.

As for theater, five of Kirwan’s plays have been produced on small New York stages. One of them, “Liverpool Fantasy,” speculates about what would have happened to the Beatles (and the rest of us) had the group flopped instead of flourished.

Named for the year 1847, a particularly bad time during the Irish potato famine, Black 47 merges rock with Irish airs. Rap and reggae also enter the picture. And when the sax-and-trombone horn section begins to blow, Black 47 sounds as if it’s about to veer onto E Street and strike up “Rosalita.”

Growing up in the Irish coastal town of Wexford, Kirwan played in “show bands” akin to the Commitments, covering rock and soul hits. But he also absorbed traditional Irish ballads.

“I’d grown up listening to rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “But in Ireland you grow up listening to folk tunes too. You go to a party and everybody sings a song. Each area has its own indigenous folk songs. You just learn them from being in bars with your parents.

“It’s very much an oral culture, where the history of your particular area will be handed down in songs. I’m not sure it’s so much there anymore. Television ruins everything. In Ireland, it only came in 25 years ago.”

After coming to New York, Kirwan landed in the city’s downtown rock scene and had his hopes raised and dashed during the early ‘80s. “I chucked rock music totally in 1985, went into the theater, and didn’t come back into rock music until 1989,” Kirwan said.

During his years away from rock, he began writing music based in the Irish tradition--something he said he “resisted pretty much” in his earlier bands.

After being rejected at some Irish bars in New York where the customers were more interested in “Danny Boy” done straight than in musical eclecticism with a green hue, Black 47 found a regular gig at a small Manhattan pub and began to build a following. Ric Ocasek, the former Cars leader, became a fan and produced “Fire of Freedom,” which SBK Records released in March.

The band’s earliest fans were predominantly Irish, Kirwan said, but “even in New York, the audience is broadly based now.” He doubts that Black 47’s persistent (though not exclusive) focus on themes of Irish history and Irish-American immigrant life will limit the band’s appeal.

“Once you get on the radio and television in the United States, everything opens up,” he said. “It’s no more (limited to an Irish audience) than Bob Marley’s audience was Jamaican.

“You write from what you know. You can say ‘James Connolly’ is about a figure in Irish history, but at the same time the song is about the uplifting nature of someone like Connolly who is fighting for the poor and the working class. Hopefully, good music transcends race and ethnicity.”

* Black 47 plays at 8 p.m. at the Coach House, 33157 Camino Capistrano, San Juan Capistrano. $10. (714) 496-8930.