SOUL SURMISE

JIM PRIME (DEACON BLUE) - 1960 - 2025 - A TRIBUTE

My heart literally sank and broke when I caught Deacon Blue’s keyboard player Jim Prime’s photograph on social media this afternoon. Knowing he had been very ill I knew that this wasn’t good news. 

I was shocked and also shocked at how shocked I was. Oh there are a lot of musicians of which we say that they are like best friends though of course we have never met. Human beings who play musically the soundtrack of our lives, being companions for years, decades even, playing songs of joy or songs of lament when you need them. 

For joy I’d reach for Dignity, Believers, City Of Love, Real Gone Kid and a plethora… Lately, The Great Western Road has been just right for the time of adventure that I am on and People Come First my rallying cry in a dark depressing world. Take Me To The Place or Riches have always been my reach for in times of grief.

Yet, Jim was not a distant musical companion. I’d had the good pleasure after many of Deacon Blue’s Belfast gigs, through their generosity, to have a beverage back stage before or after gigs. Jim was so engaging. He always made me feel that he was keen for a chat and his gentle kindness was wonderful trait in a rock star. I’d even got to talk theology and music with him as a result of his work at the University of the West Of Scotland.

I first heard about James Prime as an early member of Altered Images with Gregory’s Girl star Clare Grogan but far more crucially as a player on John Martyn’s Well Kept Secret and Sapphire records. When I first brought Raintown home and checked out the band my first question was if that was the same Jim Prime. It was.

It was obviously as member of Deacon Blue that he becomes important to me. From the falling rain sounds on the opening title track of that first record Raintown, to the wind and waves of Dignity right up through the banging introduction to Believers to the up to date elegance of The Great Western Road, Jim was to Deacon Blue what Roy Bittan is to the E Street Band.  

Jim Prime cannot be highlighted in isolated moments. He is as integral to the sound and riven into the DNA of Deacon Blue as much as Ricky Ross’s voice and Lorraine McIntosh’s harmonies. 

It is those guys in the band who are closest to Jim that I think about tonight, and they are close. If this is how I feel, how must they feel. So love and prayers to the band and Jim’s family…

… and thank you "Rev Dr" James Miller Prime for all this music that touches my head and heart and soul… and for your kindness. I am so grateful. I will carry it all with me.

NIALL MCCABE - STRANGER

I looked at the cover of Niall McCabe’s second full length album and thought Oisin Leech. Leech’s Cold Sea was one of my discoveries of 2014, recorded up there in the wilds of Donegal. McCabe I heard was from further south on the Great Atlantic Way, Clare Island. 

I was in some senses right. You can feel the west coast of Ireland blowing through acoustic guitar riffs. It’s got a West of Ireland reverie. I am also hearing both Declan O’Rourke and Luke Bloom together on the fragile waltz of Crescendo.

Elsewhere New York recalls Brian Kennedy’s best record Get On With Your Short Life, written when he was living in New York. Foy Vance comes to mind too. There are other writers there too. Valentine’s Day 1981 even evokes Christopher Cross, who was massive that particular year, long before McCabe was born. 

Naming all these song writers tells you the kind of quality I am talking about. This is a mature work of songwriting. Soulful, while working the traditional music of an island un the Atlantic with a wider reference of folk music. Darker Love could be a hit anyway, The Ground Below more atmospheric with an Irish haunting, New York is a beaut. I’m wrong is yearningly wistful. 

Ireland has raised another artist of a deep quality, birthing something out of the earth and sea of home that can travel all across the world. This could be threading the top of my year’s best like Leech did last year. 

MARY CHAPIN CARPENTER - PERSONAL HISTORY

I have come to think, over the years, that the best art is the art that makes you want to create. For me personally, I am at a gig or at listening to a record and I hear in my head words shifting spaces, ideas forming those words into sentences and rhyme. 

So it is with Mary Chapin Carpenter’s new record Personal History. Eagle eyed Soul Surmise readers will realise that this is Mary’s second record of the year. Earlier in the year we got the ethereal Looking For The Thread a collaboration with Scottish songwriters Julie Fowlis and Karine Polwart. It was a beautiful thing.

Now we have eleven songs from Chapin-Carpenter herself, recorded in Peter Gabriel’s studio in Bath with Bonny Light Horseman’s Josh Kaufman in the production seat. I love Bonny Light Horsemen and Kaufman adds just enough to bring out the songs of any artist he works with. He did That Looking For Threads record too.

Kaufman does just enough to give Chapin Carpenter a new sonic-scape for those song of clever lyrics and memorable melodies. 

As the title suggests Mary has going introspective. We’re getting perhaps closer to her soul in these songs that I was getting as I listened to Come On, Come On across Ireland in the early 90s. 

We hear of the things that make life better, maybe possible in Saving Things:

 

A stranger's smilе, an old friend's laughter

Letting go of what does not matter

Radio's murmur in a midnight kitchen

The things that you notice when you stop to listen 

 

The importance of her dog made famous in her weekly Covid videos from her house on Girl And Her Dog:

 

I figure I'm finally old enough

To know who I wanna be when I grow up

A girl and her dog riding in the truck

Wave as we're going by

 

Where Mary finds faith on New Religion:

 

And I found a new religion

My church is under canopies of oak trees

And the songs I hear make me feel they know me

There's never been a place I've found that feels more holy

 

Love and hope are named on Home is A Song, on which she is joined by Bonny Light Horseman’s Anais Mitchell :

 

Love is a language, time is a thief

Hope is a lantern, breath is relief

Memory is water pooled in your palm

Home is a song

 

She is still surmising on the closing Coda:

 

We're all just cosmic dust from outer space

And we'll be gone one day without a trace

But in between we may divine

In the fullness of time

The fine line between a gift and a mistake

 

This is a very strong addition to a stellar career work.

TALKING U2 - STOCKMAN AND BAILIE WITH CRAWLEY ON TALK BACK

 

ALL THINGS BONO (& U2)

TALK BACK on BBC Radio Ulster

Monday May 26th 2025 

with WILLIAM CRAWLEY

and guests STUART BAILIE & STEVE STOCKMAN

LISTEN HERE

On the May Bank Holiday, William Crawley and his Talk Back Team used the seven minute standing ovation that Bono received for the screening of his soon to be released film Stories Of Surrender at the Cannes Film Festival to have a U2-fest of a show.

I was a little thrilled to be asked to share alongside Northern Ireland greatest rock journalist, Stuart Bailie, my subjective thoughts and sermonettes on the band alongside the objective journalistic critique and commentary of Stuart.

The recordings are in two parts. Press the link about for our part.

 

ALL THINGS BONO (& U2)

TALK BACK on BBC Radio Ulster

Monday May 26th 2025 

with WILLIAM CRAWLEY

and guests STUART BAILIE & STEVE STOCKMAN

LISTEN HERE

On the May Bank Holiday, William Crawley and his Talk Back Team used the seven minute standing ovation that Bono received for the screening of his soon to be released film Stories Of Surrender at the Cannes Film Festival to have a U2-fest of a show.

I was a little thrilled to be asked to share alongside Northern Ireland greatest rock journalist, Stuart Bailie, my subjective thoughts and sermonettes on the band alongside the objective journalistic critique and commentary of Stuart.

The recordings are in two parts. Press the link about for our part.

ADVICE IN KEN'S KITCHEN THAT MADE IT MY KITCHEN

(This is my script from my Pause For Thought on BBC Radio 2 on June 13, 2025. The theme was My Father Figure... the photo of Ken and I was taken by Janice at Fitzroy's 150th Anniversary Service in November 2024.)

 

I have been fortunate that as well as my dad, who taught me so much, my life has had one or two other father figures. Ken Newell is one of them. Ken was minister of Fitzroy Presbyterian in Belfast and a key peace builder here in Northern Ireland. 

When I became Chaplain at Queen University I thought I’d meet up with Ken and see what we could do together. We struggled to find a time and then one morning Ken phoned and said he had half an hour, so come on up to his house. 

He took me into the kitchen and put on the kettle. As he did he, “Steve, when you are 50 make sure you know who you are. Many of my colleagues have been looking over their shoulders trying to please their peers or conform to be like them and have no idea who they are themselves.” We hadn’t too much more time and I was out of that kitchen as quickly as I came. I can’t even remember if I had enough time to drink the coffee.

I took Ken’s words seriously. Knowing who I am I believe is important. Not allowing myself to be pushed and pulled into being like others by work or money or social media or the many ads I read or watch or hear every single day… or indeed by the Church that can conform me into its likeness too. 

There’s a story in the Gospel of John in the Christian Bible where after his resurrection Jesus is talking to his close friend Peter on a beach in Galilee. During the conversation Peter asks Jesus about what he’ll be saying to one of the other disciples, sitting nearby. Jesus tells him not to worry about the other guy but to concentrate on who he himself is and what he is personally called to do

Amazingly the next time I was in Ken’s kitchen it was no longer his kitchen. When Ken retired from Fitzroy church they asked me to be their next minister. I woke up on my 50th birthday and had my coffee in that very kitchen where I had met with Ken. I believe that following Ken’s fatherly advice was the reason that Fitzroy felt that I was the right person to follow his ministry.