Marcus Connaughton is a bluesman. There are many routes by which one becomes a bluesman. You can wail it, play it or pray it. One thing is for sure, though , if you don't feel it, it isn't happening. It's an ad-hoc kind of music. There are no parameters, it's a feel-blue, feel-good type of thing. Confessional and inspirational, it covers all known feelings.
The great Cork bluesman Rory Gallagher used to say that when you got down to it, the link between traditional Irish music and the blues was tangible. The blues often amounted to a dirge - Irish music was no different. The sense of loss, the longing for better times, the always enduring hope.
And then when you went to Clare to hear the traditional players striking up with gusto, or if you had the pleasure as I did of hearing Gallagher play an acoustic guitar in his front room, the feeling was that you were part of something special. And of course you were. Marcus Connaughton's love affair with music - particularly the blues - goes back more than 25 years.
For the past 10 years, he has been producing programmes for RTE radio and has been based in Cork for the last four. He likes to say that he's working in the "Lee Delta".
He also knew Gallagher and delivered the inaugural memorial lecture in 1995 as part of the Cork Institute of Technology's Arts Festival.
Earlier this year, he presented a tribute to Gallagher which he called "From the Mississippi to the Lee Delta".
Now he is planning further activities to mark the anniversary of Gallagher's death next June and continues to be involved with Stagestruck, the official Gallagher fan magazine.
In the past and with some distinction, Connaughton produced Bluestime for RTE radio. Yesterday ) it returned to the airwaves - a good decision on RTE's part. The programme goes out just after 8 p.m.
You can expect to hear archive recordings, blues classics, and an array of work by artists like Eric Bibb, Alvin Youngblood Hart, Guy Davis and Eugene "Hideaway Bridges" in the coming weeks.