country music. But he never told Steve Earle that the Irish invented it, as Bap Kennedy did after a few pints at London's Marquee Club in 1988.
He's not backing away from the theory, but he does trace the broad lineage by way of explanation.
"I think it's just folk music," he says. Williams, people like that, and that's what I'm into.
"And it does have its origins, I think, in a lot of Irish music, as I told Steve Earle," he continues.
"He took it very well, actually. He's very interested in the roots of music. He'd be a good guy to have on your team in a pub quiz.
"
He'd be handy in the brawl that followed, too, but it was fresh start in the mid '90s. Domestic Blues was the Belfast singer's first country album, after years riding on Nirvana's coat-tails in his rock band, Energy Orchard.
"We were very nearly Nirvana," Kennedy reflects.
"We signed to MCA Geffen at the same time. They hadn't had a hit then. I could've gone to see them about six times and I couldn't be alive.
"
album, The Big Picture.
"Sid was looking for true love/ Kurt joined that stupid club," he sings in the first track, Rock and Roll Heaven, in which he counts his blessings by comparison to Williams, Jim Reeves, Elvis, Frank Sinatra, John Lee Hooker and George Jones.
If there's a recurring theme in what follows, it's summed up by a quip in Milky Way - co-written with Van Morrison, as it happens.
"My reality cheque has bounced," goes the opening line. "If money could talk it would say goodbye," is another good one. Too Old for Fairytales is another salient song title.
"Yeah, well I've been through the big record deal thing," he says. "(Energy Orchard) were 1 million in debt at the end of it. We had a three-year holiday, lived the life.
Nirvana sold enough to cover 10 acts like us.
the way of music. Every now and then I get a song on a soundtrack and I'm able to relax for a year.
But hard times are good for songwriting. You get too comfortable and you end up like Paul McCartney."
soundtrack of Serendipity in 2001.
A few years later it returned on Bakelite Radio Volume III, an album by Melbourne roots maestro Joe Camilleri. This is news to Kennedy: "Fantastic! I'm a cult!
"
He's certainly a writer's writer, as suggested by Morrison's legend, but he seemed to cope with it," Kennedy says.
Hardest of all, though, was pinning down Shane MacGowan to sing After a year of promises, Kennedy finally nabbed him by setting pub. "Whatever it is, he's got it," he says.
"It was magic. But I've given up drinking since hanging out with him."
Steve Earle will be pleased to hear it.
Bap Kennedy plays The Harvest Festival on Sunday, January 21. The Big Picture is out through Inertia.
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