TIM HUGHES talks to Irish nu-folk singer-songwriter Fionn Regan about his new album and gig in an Oxford church.

THINK you know Irish folk? Well, it may be time to think again, because the Emerald Isle has a new musical hero – and he knows nothing of fiddle-dee-dee reels, jigs or ramrod-straight tap dancers.

But that’s not to say he’s not the real deal.

Since the release of his Mercury-nominated 2006 debut, The End of History, Fionn Regan has succeeded in making folk cool again on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Not that he would brag about it, of course; that's just not his style, because this Wicklow-born son of an artist mother and musician dad, is more modest than he has a right to be.

“My music is a lyrical thing,” he says.

“It lives in its own landscape, but there is a line that goes back to Woodie Guthrie and the Clancy Brothers.

“I’ve not delved into folk or studied it, but a lot of song structures are as old as the hills. They weave in and out of us and are in our marrow. People who are into Irish music will be able to hear it in what I do. There are certain twists and turns. But I am a lone gunner.”

As befits a man described by Lucinda Williams as the new Bob Dylan, Fionn has graced some of our biggest stages. So his show in Oxford tomorrow is a treat. Not for him some sticky-floored backroom or corporate space; Fionn is going all ecclesiastical on us, with a set in St Barnabas Church in Jericho.

“I recorded the album in a room not unlike a church, so it seems very suitable,” he says.

“It’s all about the acoustics. I’ve been to every place in England God knows how many times. Now I want to do something different.

“There is something really different about playing in a church,” he adds. “It’s a special feeling to do something very stripped-back in a room that big.

“This show is going to be a one-off. It won’t happen again. I’ll come back and play, but it won’t be bare-chested like this.”

The show – part of a short series of intimate shows in churches and ballrooms – follows the release of Fionn’s third album 100 Acres of Sycamore, his second album in as many years. It follows hot on the heels of last year’s The Shadow of an Empire – which saw him striking a pose as an electric troubador.

The latest album, shaped around a central love story, was largely written in Anna Friel’s house in Majorca after a chance encounter with the actress on the Spanish mainland, during which they discussed their shared love for the works of Robert Graves, which inspired the album.

Did he deliberately sit down and decide to write it, I ask...or did it flow more naturally?

“Some people do say ‘I’m going to write’, but I can’t get my head around that,” he says. “It comes to me when it comes to me.

“Anything involving too much of a pull up a hill takes you nowhere. But I chiselled away and the songs started flying out. It’s not something you can force. You have to wait for the lightning to hit the rod – and you have to be in the head-space to receive it.

“It’s like a flint starting a forest fire; you have to wait for it to catch first.”

So how does he like the ‘Dylan’ label? It’s surely a huge compliment for a 29-year-old singer-songwriter who remains off the radar as far as mainstream folksters are concerned?

“The Shadow of an Empire was given a ‘Dylan’ label,” he says doubtfully. “But I’m not sure it means anything.”

So does he see himself as an extension of the scene which propelled the careers of nu-folk artists Laura Marling, Mumford and Sons and Oxford’s own Stornoway on this side of the water?

“No, because at the time I was starting there weren’t any examples of that,” he says.

“But, like everybody, I’m a cocktail.”

And he admits to taking it all very seriously – meaning no late nights of excess after gigs.

“Playing on your own is like carrying a river on your shoulders,” he says. “It’s a beautiful pressure, but you have to watch it.”

But, he says, he wouldn’t have it any other way.

“This is the only thing I can do,” he says. “It’s something I’d do no matter what. I can’t not do it. As great as prizes are, you don’t leave them. The only document you leave is your work.

“It’s amazing to make something out of thin air that has its own life, its own lungs and lives in its own climate. That’s the magic of the whole thing.

“But you have to be honest. It’s really a case of ‘to thine own self be true’.”

* Fionn Regan plays St Barnabas Church, Cardigan Street, Jericho, Oxford, tomorrow. Doors open at 7pm.Tickets are £12.50 plus booking fee from www.alt-tickets.co.uk