It's something he has wanted to do since he was 17. Before music took over, Damien Leith was obsessed with drama, acting and writing plays. It is a passion the Australian Idol winner has turned into one of the most challenging and ambitious projects of his career. A self-penned, one-man cabaret play called The Parting Glass: An Irish Journey.
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"The first night I went out to do it I was very nervous," Leith says about performing the show. "It's a lot to remember. It's about two hours from start to end."
The play has been a resounding success, receiving standing ovations when he performed at the Joan in Sydney and at Melbourne's Chapel off Chapel.
"It wasn't what we expected, but I tell you what, I wouldn't say no to any of that," Leith says. "Seeing everybody on their feet and tears in their eyes, because it does get quite emotional in the end, it was pretty overwhelming."
Set in an Irish pub, Leith says The Parting Glass revolves around a father and a son who haven't seen each other for five years. "The son went off to Australia, and once he got there he completely dropped off the face of the earth," Leith says. "He didn't get in touch. He basically vanished. And now five years on he's back home in Ireland, and the father and the son have a lot to catch up on."
While this is being played out, there is an Irish band playing music at key intervals during the play, where Leith performs a series of songs. "I wanted to create an Irish session," he says. "An Irish session is when a whole group of lads arrive into a pub, take out whatever instruments they have and they just encourage everybody to get involved," says Leith. "The whole idea is it's as if it's a sunny afternoon in Ireland, it's freezing cold outside, you've arrived into a pub, you don't know what to expect. You've got two people you can nosey in on their conversation, but you've got all this music you can tap along and sing along to."
Going hand in hand with the play is an album Leith released back in March 2015, called Songs from Ireland. Reaching number 11 on the ARIA Albums Chart, Songs from Ireland was in part a reaction to the how well the songs in The Parting Glass were being received.
"The thing that really made the album happen was the show," says Leith. "People are really loving these songs."
The album opens with a haunting pairing, with Sharon Corr singing and playing violin on Black is the Colour. It closes with a rather unique duet, where Leith shares a beyond the grave collaboration with Bing Crosby on Galway Bay.
"It was one of those crazy suggestions that somebody makes, that you think, 'There is no way this is going to happen'. But it did," says Leith. "One of us, I can't remember if it was me or maybe my manager or someone at Sony, turned around and said, 'Hey, what do you think the chances are that we could do a duet with the original Bing recording'. We got in touch with the Bing Crosby estate, it had to go through them, and over the course of a couple of months and a lot of work in between, we did demos, we did different versions of the song to make sure they knew what we were doing…but they were great to work with, they came on board and really embraced they whole thing."
Who: Damien Leith's The Parting Glass: An Irish Journey
Where: The Street Theatre
When: 8pm, Saturday 18 July
Tickets: $49.00, 02 62471223 or thestreet.org.au
