When Shane Filan stands up to sing at Symphony Hall on Friday, he is hoping the response will live up to his past visits to the city.
“Birmingham was always an amazing night,” he says.
“We have been about 30 times. It is such a big arena. The fans would always be a bit more up for it, a bit more excited.”
This time things will be a little more intimate, the venue cosier than the capacious LG Arena, the focus solely on Shane as he attempts to prove there is indeed life after Westlife.
“There are a lot of fellas that come out of a boy band and most of them fail.
“Being in a famous band and trying to break out on your own, trying to convince people ‘Oh, I like him as well’, you have to work really hard to cross over to that.”
However, after a 14 years as one of five and then four (after Brian McFadden left) 34-year-old Shane admits he might feel a little lonely in the spotlight and backstage.
“I miss the craic with the lads. This is my first time on my own and the venues are going to feel like stadiums.
“I’ll definitely have a stool just in case I get tired because I am singing all the songs myself. I might want to sit down,” he adds in a jokey reference to Westlife’s love of perching on stools and rising in unison for the key change.
There is a lot more resting on this tour than Shane proving that he can make it as a solo artist.
After losing the fortune he earned as a performer when the property development company he set up with his brother, Finbarr, crashed, Shane admits he needs the money.
“I’m literally starting again,” he says. “Financially I am nowhere near secure. I’m taking it a few months at a time.
“It’s not great, I am not going to pretend... but I am able to look after my family and that’s the most important thing.
“Singing is my talent. It is the only thing I thought I would ever do.
“I have to earn a living and be successful enough to look after my family and that is all I want. It doesn’t have to be Robbie Williams’ or Justin Timberlake’s career. That would be dreamland stuff.” Shane once had all the trappings of success; flash cars, fancy homes, even a helicopter at one point.
Now it has all been stripped away, ironically because of the failure of the safety net he thought he was putting in place.
“I was kind of careful with money.
“I didn’t like spending it too much.
“Of course I liked to have a flash car, when you are in your 20s everyone does.
“But I thought I was doing the right thing.
“The band could have been over the next year.
“I was afraid to go near stocks and shares. It was just common sense to put it into property.
“I invested an awful lot in my home town and it just went pear shaped, purely because of the economy.
“Nobody saw the whole world falling apart, it was impossible.
“Countries went bankrupt. It wasn’t just people.”
One of the hardest moments was when he had to hand over the keys to the palatial home he’d had built for his family in Sligo.
“The last few years were pretty horrific. The worst thing happened and I ended up losing all my money.
“But then you start realising what you do have. I’ve got a great marriage, three healthy kids and I’ve got my voice, so let’s just start again here.”
After relying largely on covers and songs written for them by other musicians as a Westlifer, Shane has had a writing hand in everything on his debut album, You and Me, which he will be performing at Symphony Hall, alongside some of the band’s hits.
“The fans will be very unhappy if I don’t sing those, I think,” he says.
Despite saying that he didn’t want to dwell on the negative situation of his precarious finances – “People don’t want to hear about that. Everyone has got problems” – inevitably the experiences of the last few years have bled into his music.
“I don’t think I’d have this album if it hadn’t happened.
“Two days after I handed the keys over to our house in Ireland I wrote Everything to Me. It was all about the things I don’t need; houses, money and stuff.
“I’ve got my family and that means everything to me.
“Would I rather have the house or the song? I’d rather have the song.
“Would I rather have billions or would I rather have this album?
“Genuinely, I’d rather have the songs. Money didn’t make me happy.”
The album is also a love letter to his wife of 11 years, Gillian, whom he says he fell for after starting out as friends.
“There is a song called When I Met You which is about the night I realised ‘okay, I feel a bit different than I did yesterday’.
“It’s like a Nashville song.
“Really up tempo. With banjos.
“To be honest, every song is about her. Gillian is an incredible woman. I’ve been with her for 16 years.
She was the person that got me through.
“My favourite is All You Need to Know.
“The message is more or less ‘Thank you. You looked after me when it was my job to look after you’.
“When she heard it she started crying.
“She was like ‘this is really good’. She was quite surprised I could do it – like I was.”
* Shane Filan performs at Symphony Hall on Friday, February 21. For details look up www.thsh.co.uk or call 0121 345 0600.
