Van Morrison to bring skiffle to London's Royal Albert Hall this June

Van Morrison will bring his fresh take on skiffle to the Royal Albert Hall credit:Bang Showbiz
Van Morrison will bring his fresh take on skiffle to the Royal Albert Hall credit:Bang Showbiz

Van Morrison is set to play a special one-off show at London's legendary Royal Albert Hall.

The Irish icon is set to perform tracks from his new album ‘Moving On Skiffle’ at the world-famous venue on June 28.

Van's 44th studio album is a record inspired by his childhood love of the folk music genre, which was popularised by Lonnie Donegan in the 60s.

Tickets for the show go on general sale 9am on Friday (03.03.23).

Meanwhile, Van recently revealed he has had to research "alternative outlets" to release his albums.

The 77-year-old music legend admits he's going to need to stop himself from writing more tunes because he has so much piled up it makes his "head spin", but he's hoping to find another way of releasing the material instead of the traditional route of a record label because they can only put so many records out each year.

Speaking to fellow musician and activist Billy Bragg for the April issue of MOJO magazine, Van said: "It's been a problem getting records out, so I've been looking at other alternative outlets."

He explained: "Well the big companies can only do one or two big records a year. This one has taken five months to get it out from its delivery. So there's no way they can cope with two a year even. But I've always been prolific. Even now I'm working on stuff I recorded in the '70s, '80s and '90s, compiling stuff I did that they just couldn't get out. People laugh when I tell them this but back in the day Warner Brothers only wanted 22 minutes a side for their albums. They were saying to me that it can't be over 22 minutes a side because the levels drop and all this. So I was recording maybe 40 songs but only 10 ended up on the album. So my plan is now to find an alternative outlet to get all that stuff out.

Asked if he's still penning more songs, he replied: "Oh yeah, in fact, I have to curb the writing, because once I write stuff, I want to go in and record it, so I have to curb it - I have so much stuff it makes my head spin. Original stuff, covers, it's a mountain of material."