Dear Shipmates

Here are the lyrics to the demonstration version of a new song called 'Protection Racket'.…

1.
Be quiet katie there is someone at the hatch
You curse the darkness I'll strike a match
Undoing the latch I tripped on the scales and fell
Just as someone hit the reception bell
The ghost of that injury still remains my ankle starts to swell just before it rains
leaders of nations, wild alsations, crumbling foundations, I've lost my patience

These big companies are giving us the squeeze
Lets raise our glasses to mr. onassis

Protection racket (hand over the packet)
Rome needs cement (in this event)
Go over to the till katie (the national)
Pay this man his rent

It's a standard procedure

I forgot to mention that grandmas pension
Will ease the rent book tension

2.
A little birdie told me you've been syphoning the poor box
I heard the knitting circle disscusing chubb locks
Whats all the commotion? what do they expect?
With no sign of a promotion I've lost my self respect
You see I built this heap from scratch when I was poor
now they're asking me to hoover the floor
Splash some water over me slap round the face
Did I miss a meeting I don't recognise the place

The plug in the socket burns a hole in the pocket

These big companies are giving us the squeeze
Lets raise our glasses to mr. onassis

Protection racket (hand over the packet)
Rome needs cement (in this event)
Go over to the till katie (the national)
Pay this man his rent

it's a standard procedure!

If you hadn't already discovered Fionn Regan, you may recognise the singer-songwriter from his nomination for this year's British Mercury Music Prize, when he delivered a breathtaking performance of his song "Be Good or Be Gone". That he compared being an outsider in the awards to feeling like "a housekeeper at a wedding or like a shepherd at the country fête" is typical of the way Regan uses metaphor and simile in conversation, mirroring the poetic lyricism and imagery that characterise his debut album The End of History.

Since the album was released on Bella Union, and since Regan was taken on by Damien Rice's own Heffa label, the folk troubadour has signed to US label Lost Highway, whose back catalogue includes such heavyweight names as Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams, and Willie Nelson, and has now embarked on a sold-out tour. In August, Regan was photographed by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair. Leibovitz found it impossible to "break him down" and it wasn't until Regan picked up his guitar that the photographer could capture him. The 26-year-old Regan is a bit of an enigma.

At the village pub where we meet near Bray where he was born, Regan doesn't so much answer the questions thrown his way as use them as a springboard to poetic metaphor and to diverge onto tangents, giving an insight into his mind's workings. Ask him the simplest question about when he wrote his first song and he replies with a long description of his family home; the shaft of light that came through the front door creating a warm patch on the carpet where he would lie down before playing piano, singing whatever came into his head which developed into improvised stories and then onto fantastical poems about Will-o'-the-wisp and dragons.

His precocious talent stems from his parents - his mother is an artist and his father a musician - and the creative home in which he grew up. Home, Regan says, was "like a magnet. The things it was pulling in were poets, characters who stand outside the box and we just sat there and let it unfold.

"It was the place to be if you could tell a story or string up a violin and play and howl at the moon." The influence of the artistic family home Regan prefers to see as a "flashpoint" or "indicator" rather than the leading factor in his becoming a songwriter.

"I think that essentially whatever it is you are going to do comes out at some stage. The real thing about it is you don't have a choice. You make this pact with something invisible that you can't really see or touch. You don't know what's going to happen, you don't know if you're going to be able to keep a roof over your head or stop your shoes letting in water when it's raining. You can't ignore it. You have to accept it."

Having embraced the unpredictable life of a musician, Regan (whose musical hero is Woody Guthrie) has been compared to such sainted singer songwriters as Bob Dylan and Nick Drake. He is worthy of such accolades: his folkish intricately plucked and often haunting melodies are matched with poetic and canny lyrics and literary references. But you can't blame him for being sceptical.

"When it comes to people making comparisons they build a little house for you and they say 'we think it's time you live here.' So you sit in it and you wonder how you feel. But there's plenty of worse people to be compared to so I don't mind being invited along to that table."

Regan is very much in the next phase of his second album which he describes as having "a wild mercury violent sound, like the chest, the ribcage, is ripped open", different from the gentle introspective tone of The End of History. His latest song is inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's last words "Lord help my poor soul". The first poets Regan read were Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson and, as a traditional troubadour, he is as much poet as musician, capturing imagery in lyrics: "ideas are like sparrows they dart down the hall and, the chimney and out of the spout/down a wormhole

It makes us very proud that in the year that Bella Union celebrates its 10th Anniversary, we also have our first Mercury Music Prize nominee. As you've probably already heard by now, Fionn Regan has been nominated for the 2007 Nationwide Mercury Prize, for his stunning debut - "The End of History" - alongside the likes of Amy Winehouse, Arctic Monkeys, Klaxons, Bat For Lashes, Jamie T and The View...

It's been said for a long time that Fionn is one of the most talented artists to emerge in years, and unquestionably the most unique, and this is a great vindication of that belief...

We hope you will join us to say CONGRATULATIONS FIONN!!!… we knew you’d do it!