I'd never heard of her but my friend Andrea has been a fan of Susan McKeown for a long time. She and I were emailing, talking about having dinner when she suggested we go hear McKeown, who was playing at Barbes.

I was intrigued and game as I am rarely disappointed by the music presented at Barbes, Park Slope's ecelctic club, which specializes in Slavic soul, klezmer, jazz, Mexican bandas,
Venezuelan joropos and Romanian
brass bands.

Indeed, the very intimate Barbes was a perfect venue to hear the literate and soulful Irish singer/songwriter Susan McKeown, who's stunning lyricism and eclectic sense of melody took my breath away. The performance felt like a conversation  between singer and audience as McKeown explained what the songs were about and what lines she had "stolen" from poets like Seamus Heaney, Ezra Pound and Samuel Beckett.

In most cases it was a fragment of a line. Clearly the Dublin-born McKeown is a perfectionist when it comes to the lyrics in her haunting image-filled songs that take the listener down the rivers of Ireland, the death of Ann Lovett, a young girl who died after the birth of a lillegitmate child, green fields, her mother's birth experience and the search for God.

McKeown who sings volcals on "Wonder Wheel" by the Klezmatics, 2007's Grammy winner for Best Contemporary World Album, has an elegant, almost sculptural face with defined cheekbones. Sometimes she sounds like Natalie Merchant, who actually sings on McKeown's 2002 album Prophecy (which McKeown was selling at Barbes). Merchant recorded Mckeown's song "Because I Could Not Stop" on her latest album Retrospective.

Reading her biography I see that McKeown has performed with many musical luminaries in addition to the Klezmatics and Natalie Merchant, including Linda Thompson, Pete Seeger, Mary, Margaret O'Hara, Billy Bragg, Arlo Guthrie, Andy, Irvine, Flook, Lúnasa, and the Scots fiddle master, Johnny Cunningham.

I just added Prophecy to my iPod library and will be spending a lot of time with the songs of Susan McKeown. And I'll be sure to let you know when she's playing at Barbes next.