Strolling along McCurtain Street on my way to Kent Station on a Tuesday afternoon last May, I saw a poster advertising one of his forthcoming attractions in the doorway of one of those small, discrete music shops that just ooze credibility. The thought of his progress kept me smiling for the duration of the trip back to Dublin.. I hadn't seen him play live for maybe three years, and with his back to the river upstairs in The Lobby, every song from the album sounded better in the raw. His voice had grown in tandem with his onstage persona and it was captivating.

The first time I met Ken Cotter, he was wearing Chelsea boots and a denim jacket, lounging outside a university lecture theatre like an extra from some long-forgotten album cover. At the time, we were all freshers searching out answers in cider bottles and Something Happens' songs, trying that bit too hard to be cool. Not quite ten years later, he would get an album cover of his own and would, of course, refrain from plastering himself on the front. I hear him sing the words "….walked on to the stage but the egos were bigger than me…." during 'Still Canal' and I know his modesty like his music comes naturally.

To rifle through the memories is to realise how far Ken has come. Once upon an evening in the distant past, he played a gig in the bar of the Grand Parade Hotel which was interrupted by the outbreak of the first war to be broadcast live on television. A decent-sized venue and blessed with a receptive audience in midweek, yet suddenly, Ken had to compete for attention with CNN's coverage of smart bombs turning corners in Baghdad. Like the troubadour he sought to become, the band, or at least Ken, his guitar and amp, played on.

The fledgling years of the Ken Cotter experience hallmark our time at University College, Cork. The attack of the great infidel at the Grand Parade hotel, the gigs in the college bar, the residency in Jim Cashman's.So many memorable nights by which we measured out our college lives together, so many sensitive interpretations of classic songs interrupted by the loud babbling of students who couldn't hold their drink. In the way of the apprentice footballer coming up through the leagues before making it to the show, he was serving his time where the crowd was as tough as the pay was bad.

In the early summer of 1992, there was a Saturday night gig in a small town outside of Cork where the locals didn't quite get Ken.

His brand of music was too sophisticated for an audience used to gorging itself on rabble-rousing in their bolthole in the boondocks. They wanted the Wolfe Tones and the past, he was offering a glimpse of the future. A couple of weeks later, we all finished college but it was probably that night when most of us realised Cork was going to lose its hold on us before long.

Ken eloped to Britain, fetching up in Liverpool and then Exeter. The letters in his unique calligraphic style spoke of nights spent trundling up and down darkened motorways, playing songs he didn't want to play to crowds who didn't appreciate him anyway. But there was a higher purpose to it all. Every night in purgatory was money in the bank, every pound saved would finance his own cd, the fulfilment of the dream.

I like to think of this time as the metaphorical equivalent of an artist in the garret suffering for his art. Bought and paid for by himself, Blue Letter Day emerged. The ultimate expression of self-belief, the most telling indictment of the country we live in. It says something surely that the Ireland where we grew up, though economically depressed, possessed certain values. Emigration may have been a way of life but at least we had a decent soundtrack to our misery, U2, Clannad, Stars of Heaven, Hot House Flowers, Something Happens, Blue in Heaven, Cactus World News, Those Nervous Animals. Bands of varying quality, some of whom have endured better than others, but bands nevertheless.

Authentic, genuine musicians, writing and performing their own material. In this appalling era of instant gratification, where ersatz achievement by mime acts like Boyzone and Westlife pass as excuses for national celebration, Ken Cotter is one of the few fighting the good fight. While it is surely the scariest thing to take possession of a compact disc that has been conceived and created by a friend, no sooner had I ripped the cellophane from my copy of "Blue Letter Day" eighteen months back than the fear was subsumed by the overwhelming excitement at what Ken had produced. Lying on the floor (there are certain cds which must be listened to in a prone position with eyes closed), I heard mature, moving lyrics and imaginative composition. It blew me away.

If there were echoes of all his heroes, there was too a fresh, distinctive and original voice coming through, as if to say: "I have listened to all you greats but here is my unique version of what matters to me in my time." His work deserves a larger audience. If real music has a future in this place, he will get one.