April showers not only bring May flowers, they also bring Damien Dempsey back to our shores.

Damo will be hitting the road this month, playing dates through the East Coast and Midwest. He's back for the second U.S. tour supporting his 2007 release To Hell or Barbados on indie label United for Opportunity and will be bringing along New York-based, Boston-discovered singer-songwriter Jess Klein when he pulls into the Knitting Factory in Manhattan on Friday, April 25.

Klein has been touring in support of her seventh album, Live at Mo Pitkin's House of Satisfaction, which was recorded over two shows at the famous, now former NYC venue. Her bluesy-folk ditties went over very well when she supported Luka Bloom on this last tour, so this promises to be a great double bill!

This has been a fruitful 12 months for Dempsey. He was the winner of the prestigious Meteor Award for best folk/traditional in 2008 for To Hell or Barbados, which debuted in summer 2007 at number two in Ireland's traditional retail (only 164 units behind Bruce Springsteen's Live in Dublin), and hit number one on iTunes Ireland.

After years of touring and in support of people like Bob Dylan, Shane MacGowan, Sinead O'Connor and Morrissey, it would appear that Dempsey has finally hit the big time. In addition to the solo show, he will be sticking around to open for Oscar award winning Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (performing as the Swell Season) who took Best Original Song for "Falling Slowly" in their film Once, during their current U.S. tour of the Midwest.

Damo will continue that winning streak with The Rocky Road is the Dublin, the singer's sixth studio album, which lands on our shores this summer. A collection of mostly old traditional ballads, it contains versions of "The Foggy Dew," "The Hot Asphalt," Ewan MacColl's "Schooldays Over" and MacGowan's "A Rainy Night in SoHo."

I hadn't spoken to Damo since the album was released last year, so there was lots to catch up on! Here's how it went:

It looks like I'm calling you at a Dublin number. Are you still living in England?

No, I moved back to Dublin since the last time we spoke. I guess I got homesick being over there. I got some space and some new songs, and a nice cockney accent.

You better get rid of that accent. You might ruin that Dublin vibe that we know and love each time we play one of your CDs. Was there any songs that people grabbed onto on Barbados that surprised you?

"Your Pretty Smile" got loads of airplay, especially here in Ireland. It's more of a love song, so it reached some different people who might not have been into me before, which is great. When we got to the last tour of America there were definitely more people.

"I really enjoy playing the songs from To Hell or Barbados in my set. They are hard to sing and take a lot out of you, but it brings you to new heights when it goes right. When I am onstage I feel like I take flight and imagine you're going off the edge of a cliff. It's pretty cool.

"The City" went down really well in New York. It sort of has a bass dance-y tune and people seemed to like moving to the song. "Serious" was another one that was popular.

That was my favorite song on the album. I loved the way you played the role of drug dealer and customer on the track. There was this seduction to the dark side that was an interesting dynamic of the song.

That's one way of looking at it; it could be a conversation from the dark side. It can also be the sensitive side vs. the rough side, old guy versus a new guy. It also had some peer pressure elements to it, so I left it open. The young crowd really went for that song, though I don't know what their parents made of that.

Are there any new tracks that you plan on throwing into your upcoming sets?

Well, I am working on a traditional album of old Irish ballads. That should hopefully be out in June or sometime this summer. I am going to try some new songs off of that. Two guys out of the Dubliners are playing on the disc as well as Sharon Shannon.

Interesting choice of career moves! Why a trad album now?

The young kids over here would be liking Westlife and the gangsta rap. I wanted to give them a taste of their own culture. Get them into the old music. A lot of the lyrics would be 200-year-old gangsta rap.

The new CD is called The Rocky Road. "Rocky Road to Dublin" is obviously on it, based on the title. The lyrics to that song are amazing and the slip jig timing on the rhythm is great as well.

"Kelly from Killane" is a song from the 1798 rebellion about a guy John Kelly, who was 25 and fought and died. I've always loved "The Foggy Dew," which is a song that came from the 1916 Rising.

"The Twang Man" is about 200 years old, and it's about a pimp who supplied women for the British army. "The Night's Visiting Song" about the last flight of Irish nobility. It's about a guy leaving his girl.

Is there anything in the contemporary years that is included on the CD?

"A Rainy Night in SoHo" from my pal Shane MacGowan is the only thing I would call contemporary. I loved the way that turned out. John Shea from the Dubliners joins me, and he is leading it in with the fiddle. I thought I would give it a lash.

What did you learn about your own songwriting process from recording these old songs? If so, would you apply that to any new stuff?

Absolutely. Melody has to be really strong, almost like chorus after chorus kind of hooks. The reason these songs lasted is that you could sing this unaccompanied, which speaks to how strong the tunes are. Lyrics have to be strong

and they are structured differently. It's verse after verse, as opposed to verse/chorus/ verse. I'm thinking about writing in that vein. I think the imagery of the lyrics has to be there.

In addition to Damo's date in New York City on Friday, he'll also appear at World Café Live in Philadelphia on Saturday, April 26, then back to New York on May 2 at the Towne Crier in Pawling, and Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 4 where he'll play TT The Bear's.