SOUL SURMISE

ZACH TROUTON FROM TRÚ ON SOUL SURMISE PODCAST

The final Podcast of our Autumn/Winter 2023 Series is with Zac Trouton from the Irish trad band Trú. 

The trú was a mythological trio of poet-musicians in ancient Ulster. They were revered throughout the Celtic world, some believing their songs and stories came to them from the future. Others maintained that the trú were possessed by spirits during performance. As such, they were considered gatekeepers to the Otherworld.

Zachary Trouton,  Michael Mormecha and Dónal Kearney call themselves Trú. They grew up with different musical palettes, but also came from distinct cultural identities as children of the Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland. The trio has mixed heritage (British-Ukrainian and Irish Nationalist). They give their own and traditional songs a Crosby Stills and Nash harmonic blend to their trad. 

I spoke to Zach from the band about their origins and what they are intending to do with their sound and music. 

This is particularly exciting as Trú are the guests at 2024's In Conversation event where I and, new this year Milie Winger Brennan will be asking the band their own personal story and then the stories in their songs

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Trú in Conversation at 4 Corners Festival 2024 - BOOK HERE

STOCKI'S 5 FAVOURITE NOVELS OF 2023

As I worked through this year's novels, cutting them down to my favourite five, I realised that actually all five could in any other year be a Book Of The Year.

I don't read loads and so the ones I choose or am encouraged or peer pressured into reading can be hit or miss, never guaranteed to be good. Well 2023 is a classic year. These are all brilliant and I couldn't differentiate so in alphabetical order Stockman's NOVELS of 2023 are:

 

LUCY CALDWELL - THESE DAYS

Set in the streets of Belfast during the Blitz Caldwell has given us a beautiful novel of love and loss, family and community in the midst of war. 

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

CLAIRE KEEGAN - SMALL THINGS LIKE THESE

Keegan writes short economical books full of emotion and wonder. Small Things Like These was for me like a prophet outside the church damning the church before reminding it what Jesus was really all about.

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

BARBARA KINGSOLVER - DEMON COPPERHEAD

The only non Irish writer here, Barbara Kingsolver is not economic with words so I spent a long time with her contemporary take on David Copperfield, Demon Copperhead and even in a tough read I loved that boy’s compassion, commitment, coming of age and ultimate redemption.

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

MICHAEL MAGEE - CLOSE TO HOME

Magee’s debut is the best book about the psycho-geography of Belfast, particularly in his case West Belfast, since Anna Burns’ Milkman. 

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

 

JOSEPH O’CONNOR - MY FATHER’S HOUSE

Sinead’s literary brother tells a gripping tale of a true story about Fr Hugh O’Flaherty the Schindler of the Vatican during World War 2 and an intrepid thrilling escape across Nazi lines in Rome. 

READ MY FULL REVIEW HERE

REFLECTIONS ON CHRISTMAS #63 (JOYOUS)

Happy Christmas 2023 to everyone from the Stockies... 

 

“A stable once had something inside it that was bigger than our whole world.” - CS Lewis

 

“Like a stone on the surface of a still river

Driving the ripples on forever

Redemption rips through the surface of time

In the cry of a tiny babe.” - Bruce Cockburn

 

 

A baby drops the blessing

To lift our self inflicted curse

A stable holding so much more

Than the entire universe

Love came down among us

From way up there, beyond us

Joyous.

 

A born again world is dawning

Dying howls of the one more obvious

Force’s strong arm surrenders

To the humility of meekness

We stand mouths open speechless

At the ordinary made glorious

Joyous.

 

To touch this moment

And stretch all across our broken history

To touch our hearts

And reach into every cosmic mystery

 

Delirious

Glorious

Beyond us

Among us

Joyous

Baby Jesus

WHAM!? IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN SLADE!

Wham! Last Christmas! Number 1! How on earth?! 

Fairytale In New York, maybe with all the emotion of Shane's passing, but Wham!

I have blogged before about how privileged I feel to have been 12 in 1973. At my Ballymena Academy first year Christmas Party benefitted from the prefects playing the tunes of the times. As the girls sat over one side and us boys, very intrigued but terrified, on the other they played a lot of The Beatles' Red and Blue albums released that year. I was mesmerised by Paperback Writer and Can't Buy Be Love. It changed my life.

Not only that but 1973 was the year of the Christmas pop song. Wizzard and Slade slogged it out for the coveted Christmas Number 1, Slade's Merry Xmas Everybody beating Wizzard's I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day. It was the era of glam rock and the tinsel and glitter was perfect for these catchiest and most joyous of pop songs. The prefects played Slade over and over.

50 years. It is 50 years since that amazing night and year. Thankfully we have had updated new mix and additional tracks versions of the red and blue albums, even a brand spanking new and very last Beatles' song but... somehow we get Wham for the Christmas number 1!?

There is something more to Slade's seemingly throw away, if utterly brilliantly written, Christmas hit. It has a spirit that we could all be tapping into this particular Christmas. 

When I was discovering girls at that first year party,  Britain was in the throws of a recession. Around that time there was a fuel crisis that led to the television closing down at 9pm every night, there were three days weeks in industry and more strikes than Slade number 1s. It was not a happy or hopeful time.

Into that depressive state, Slade sprinkle their four minutes of exuberant happiness. If this doesn’t lift your spirits, then nothing can! If you listen closely into the long list of Christmas things like reindeers, stockings, snow and momma kissing Santa Claus we have the line, “Look to the future now/It’s only just begun.” There is the hope. There is light up ahead. 

I am genuinely in disbelief that Slade, Noddy Holder or whoever owns the song have not been making hay out of the 50th Anniversary. With all that is going on in Gaza, Ukraine, killings this week in Prague and our own eccentric Northern Irish shadows Slade would be a great wee sing along. 

Wham? It's a good thing that Christmas is about forgiveness!

 

KATE RUSBY - LIGHT YEARS

Kate Rusby’s new record has herself on the cover with black fluffy angel wings in a snow season landscape that, knowing Rusby, is no doubt somewhere in Yorkshire.

It perfectly describes the music within. Rusby’s appearance is a retake on the nativity stories of Christ’s birth which Rusby’s songs do so well. Set in a contemporary pastoral setting is what Rusby does with all the traditions of the story. 

For the uninitiated this is not Kate Rusby’s first Christmas record. Nor her second. This is her sixth…. And still as fresh as new falling snow. 

Kate Rusby has so many things going for her. She has a poetic lyricism as seen here on the original song Glorious, as strong as any song in this collection; she is such a wonderful interpreter of songs; her husband, Damien O’Kane from Coleraine, is a great player, arranger and producer; and she has that voice, set in her English folk singing tradition but not confined.

It is actually a perfect voice for Christmas which might be why we have six records. She can sound angelic but always grounded in that Yorkshire accent and setting. Incarnational.

Then there is the seamless way that she moves from the manger of the nativity to the tree of the seasonal. Her own versions of carols like Nowell Nowell and Rusby’s Shepherds sit seamlessly alongside It’s The Most Beautiful Time Of The Year and Rockin’ Around The Christmas Tree/Sleigh Ride. The latter too are all filled up with brass to feel the pulses pump without raising the blood pressure. Perfect.

My favourites are the opening Spean, a traditional song that I was unaware of and the closing Joseph, giving air time to a man who deserves some, this time of year. The latter has the most exquisite accompaniment with her husband’s lone guitar. Sublime.

 

STOCKI IN CONVERSATION WITH DANA MASTERS Pt 4 - SOUL SURMISE PODCAST

The fourth and final part of my 4 Corners Festival 2023 In Conversation with Dana Masters is now available at Soul Surmise Podcasts. 

It was an amazing evening with Dana sharing about her life growing up in the Southern States of the USA and how she ended up in Dromara. 

Indeed part 4 is for sure the climax of the whole evening. It begins with Dana taking a northern Irish boy home for his first southern Christmas and what her aunt who didn't allow white boyfriends says. 

From romance we find faith and hope and dreams as Dana send the evening in a near sung epilogue of what she hopes over us in our wee place that she now calls home. 

It is powerful stuff.

 

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STOCKI PICKS 5 THINGS HE'S EXCITED ABOUT AT 4 CORNERS FESTIVAL 2024

(old photo!!!!)

 

The theme for 4 Corners Festival 2024, amazingly our twelfth, is "Our Stories... Towards a Culture Of Hope."

At all the previous eleven festivals we have been aware of the stories that we carry, pour out, share. The stories that have made us who we are and the stories that can transform us going forward.

Our hope is that this year's stories propel us into a better future for all of our citizens, firing our imaginations and giving us hope.

As we begin to get excited here are a smattering of five that I am so looking forward to across our programme that is on our website now.

 

A CULTURE OF HOPE EXHIBITION

Last year the Westcourt Camera Club put on an exhibition in ArtCetera that invited the homeless to photograph life as a homeless person in Belfast. It has been shown across Ireland in the days since.

So, this year, Westcourt Camera Club are back. This time we will hear (or see) the stories of refugees and asylum seekers in Belfast in another exhibition that is guaranteed to provoke and change our stereotypes.

 

SUNDAY EVENINGS

Though the Festival makes no apologies that we are organised from a Christian perspective and purpose, we have been well described by others as a hybrid festival of the sacred and the secular. Indeed one of our aims would be to break down the dualism that has hindered the Church for centuries.

We do, however, unapologetically lay down a Biblical backbone to the Festival on Sunday nights.

This year I am delighted that we have Rev Clare Hayns and Rev Dr Doug Gay as our two keynotes. Clare is College Chaplain at Christ Church, Oxford and author of Unveiled a book which looks at 40 women in the Old Testament. We are delighted that her son, Micah, an artist in his own right who illustrated the book is coming too.

The final night of the Festival has always been a way out of the programme and into the real and rest of the year. There are no cul-de-sacs. We end the week by looking at the new beginnings that the festival has opened up.

Doug Gay is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at Glasgow University and as well as having published books, has released albums. He is theologically robust, spiritually wise and culturally discerning. He will be inviting us to reimagine towards hope. I cannot wait.

 

TRÚ IN CONVERSATION

Trú are one of the most innovative trad bands to appear on the scene in recent years. Their new record Eternity Near will be high up in my albums of the year. Having had nights that I have loved my In Conversations with people like Gary Lightbody, Ricky Ross or who can forget last year with Dana Masters and am no less excited about having Michael, Zac and Donal in the chair and be helped out by Millie Winger Brennan. We will hear the story of the band and the stories that they sing about. 

 

BLUE LIGHTS

We were so honoured to have had the short film Rough, written Adam Patterson and Declan Lawn, at our Locked Down 2020 Festival. Who would have known, but surely we should have, that within a couple of years they would have written the Award Winning BBC TV police drama Blue Lights.

They are just finishing Series 2 and though I am sure there will be no spoilers we will have a chance to get wee hints of what's next as well as "why did you kill Gerry?"

Declan spoke at our Launch event just a few weeks ago and I found him fascinating. I mean who spends a full year on creating the characters before they get around to beginning the story. Story telling secrets will abound!

 

THE STORIES THAT SHAPE US

Now... here's one. This one is still in the finishing and I cannot wait to let you all know who will finally fill our public figures slots.

As we wait for a confirmation or two I want to say that this could be one of our most memorable events as people you should know tell us about books that changed them in some way. 

Watch this space... 

... and in the meantime GET BOOKED - FULL PROGRAMME HERE

 

 

 

PAUL CHARLES - ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND

Here’s a wee hidden gem of a rock memoir to buy the discerning rock fan for Christmas. As everyone heads towards Bernie Taupin, George Harrison, Lucinda Williams, Leon Russell and Nick Drake here’s one at the bottom of the big pile but one that might be as intriguing and enlightening as any of the rest or so called best.

With respect to Mid-Ulster but few great rock music memoirs begin once upon a time in Magherafelt. Well, this fascinating read by Paul Charles’ does. 

Paul Charles was best known to me as a promotor but he was also been a manager and producer. He has covered every genre and somewhere along his life path has interacted with any one who has been anyone in the music scene. 

For me I was most excited by his work and writing on Van Morrison, Jackson Browne, Rory Gallagher, The Roches, Gerry Rafftery and Tom Waits but there are loads more and Charles has given us lovely little snippets of them all.

The books not so much written as a linear memoir as a series of essays on the artists and the moments of an amazing life. In it all Charles comes across as the boy next door from mid Ulster. As you read it you feel that we all have our guy on the inside, telling us the story from the back stage, the hotels and the tour bus. Like when he tells us about Van leading the singing on the tour bus. 

As he puts it himself in a moment in 1994 in a car behind a restaurant in California with Tom Waits and Tom’s wife Kathleen playing him their new album Real Gone:  

“Listening to the album in that way, on what was a gorgeous California evening, enjoying the new music that’s recently created, was the kind of once in a lifetime special treat that it would have been utterly impossible for the boy from Magherafelt to even begin to imagine when he set off for London”

Adventures In Wonderland is well named. The boy from Magherafelt got himself engaged on the edges of the music industry and six decades later he is looking back at music history he has lived through, becoming a successful agent, manager of Van Morrison, Gerry Rafferty, launcher of Tanita Tikaram as well as trying to bring John & Yoko to Britain before Lennon’s horrible murder and helping Michael Eves create Glastonbury. 

It is magical. It is captivating. It is hard to believe and yet its secret is to make the unbelievable history of rock music ordinary and very believable. 

ALTAN (AND AOIFE SCOTT) LIVE IN FITZROY, BELFAST - 9.12.23

OK let me say it… just spit it out… I can only usually take 20 minutes of Irish trad at a time. My very favourite trad is when it links with rock music - Horslips, Moving Hearts and the Pogues.

So, that I didn’t only get past the twenty minute threshold but was still gripped at concert’s end asking for more suggests how much Altan impressed. 

Of course I have known of Altan for decades and knew that they were pretty much at the very top of their genre but to see them, to watch it as well as listen is something else. The speed of movement yet the precision of playing. 

Whether it’s Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh on fiddle, Martin Tourish on accordion, Ciarán Curran on bouzouki or Mark Kelly on guitar there is a flurry of hands and a flourish of tunes. Of course Mairéad is the Queen of trad, Donegal and further afield but this is a collaborative thing. Tight as a bodhran. Mesmerising.

As I have said before, trad is to the Irish what Gospel is to African Americans. It is our soul music. Of course, over the tunes, embedded inside the tunes and around the tunes is an oral Irish history of language and land and injustice and heroes. 

Speaking of the importance of location in song, support act Aoife Scott always seems to write and interpret all things Irish. My highlights tonight were All Along The Wild Atlantic Way about the Irish in Nova Scotia, December Letter about the Irish in Australia and best of all Dublin Saunter taught to her by her non musical Nana Scott, which had me thinking back on own glorious three years living in Dublin City. 

It should not be lost that these songs and tunes and all this Irishness often introduced in Irish, Mairéad’s first language, were being played and sung in a Presbyterian Church. 

There was something prophetic about it too. In the pews after the concert someone said that they see Altan all the time but that it was important that they came here to Fitzroy. That it was different because of location. 

For me, I had had a week of it. The women’s soccer game between the two jurisdictions had both national anthems meticulously respected. A raucous punk had the most spiritually life giving funeral service inside a Catholic Church. Perhaps old barriers are blurring… at least for some. 

An altogether beautiful, special and important night. 

PRAYERS FOR STORMONT ROUND TABLE TALKS

(as NI politicians gather for Round Table Talks to restore our government, I pray...)

 

Lord God,

As our politicians gather for round table talks

We ask that you plant inside of them

 

Grace

Compassion

Listening

Sensitivity

Courage

Self critique

Forgiveness

Discernment

Hope

And devoted commitment

To the best interests of ALL our people.

 

Lord we have had enough of the same old, same old

Do something new among us.

In the name of the baby Jesus, in the manger,

Amen