SOUL SURMISE

DAVID C. CLEMENTS LIVE AT THE ULSTER HALL

The David C Clements Christmas show has become an annual treat in the Belfast live music scene. Regularly housed in Redeemer Central Church and even Fitzroy, where a live album of it was actually recorded, the 2024 show reached the Ulster Hall, so far a career peak.

Clements made comment on his delight at being here, close by another iconic venue Aunt Annie's where he started out in his first bands in the 90s. He recalled his first gig as a fan in the Ulster Hall as Stereophonics and Turin Brakes which made me feel a little old. It was along time after mine - Rory Gallagher in 1979!

There was a wee thrill running through me as I looked across the stage and saw a band full of young men who I'd watched on much smaller stages for 25 years. Here they were, sucking the marrow out of every single minute. David Dickinson, a church pastor by day was throwing shapes and getting some mesmeric sounds out of his guitar, Dan Brown and Jon Parks thudding the beat and Craig Skeene adding grace notes on keys. 

David C doesn't have a throaty rock rasp. His voice is smooth and easily slips into falsetto. It's beautiful if you are allowed to be beautiful in an alternative music world. Clements is probably more of a songwriter whose arrangements with edgy guitars is what makes it alternative.

Being the Christmas gig, we were expecting and were treated to seasonal songs. In the afternoon the TV quiz show Pointless was asking about non Christmasy Christmas number 1s and The Flying Pickets Only You came up. We got a brilliant cover tonight.

Carols? It has difficult to give life to the over familiar but Dave C did just that, the voice even more emotive in In The Bleak Mid Winter. O Holy Night was utterly magnificent and here tonight I heard, "Truly he taught us to love one another/ His law is love and his Gospel peace" very much afresh.

I have to be honest, I am still more drawn to David C's debut record The Longest Day In History. Tonight I am loving it when the band are full on and full out on Afraid Of The City, Forest Fire and the closing crescendo of Hurricane.

However tonight, in the live setting, the new record The Garden took hold. Bad Dreams has a rock urgency, guests The Arco Quartet came into their own on Contrast and a stand was his own acoustic version of The Garden. On the big stage, brave and very effective; a personal song for daughters but a universal call to sort out our gender inequalities.

My daughter and wife moved seats for a better view and not far into the gig discovered Gary Lightbody sitting behind them. Lightbody is a fan. His record label have released The Garden.

David C is a different beast than our Snow Patrol frontman. Both come across as the boy next door but one is a driven rock superstar, influencer and mover in the music world and the other is a family man whose son doesn't want him to close his eyes when he sings with the staff at the Primary School Carol Service. And tonight the latter filled the Ulster Hall stage with songs and a sound just as impressive as as the former or anyone else who has ever had the privilege. The former must have been impressed. I was. Be vocationally very satisfied David C Clements.

NI MUSIC AWARDS 2024 - A REVIEW/ SURMISE

The NI Music Prize is always a great night and the 2024 evening was the very best yet. Shout out to Phil Taggart and Gemma Bradley for top compering.

I have been involved in the Prize as a nominator for some years and it never ceases to amaze me the unbelievable breadth and depth of ability of the music in our wee place.

I mean on the stage tonight. Huartan with a fresh new musical genre - Tradtronica. Yet again they prove the utter poetic and musical beauty of the Irish language and with dancing as well as music use up the stage and sing haunting atmospheric songs with tin whistles and accordion to accompany the electronica. I thought it was Horslips 50 year later!

From that to jazz and sophisticated jazz with the soulful voice of Dana Masters. With her Gospel soul inflections she sings of love and sensuality. Smooth.

JC Stewart seemed the only one in the hall to have dressed up, looked smart in his long flowing coat and it was great to have him back. Having almost turned his back on music altogether Stewart who is buddies with Lewis Capaldi these songs seem stronger than ever, so strong that he hadn’t left the stage before being handed the Single Of The Year prize for Hey Babe, I’m A Mess, I’m Sorry.

Reevah popped it up all energy but less dance beats tonight than on her brilliant record Daylight Saving. 

Tramp then shook me and took all my attention with their prophetic punk raging against anything unjust that moves. I was so captivated that I forgot to take a photograph.

From the rage the night turns back down to the pastoral and Cara Dillon took us up to the north west, not only with her accent but with the geography caught in her album and book Coming Home. Reciting the poetry and breaking into song, it was beautiful and made us all proud of our someplace and took us there.

After everything, the Awards. Two took longer in the maturation. The late and sadly missed Gerry Anderson was posthumously given the Outstanding Contribution To Music Award for his own music making and then for his music playing, many local bands benefitting from the latter. His son gave a moving speech. It was so good to celebrate such a big life in our little place.  

Then this year’s legendary artist took to the stage and Eric Bell played his guitar as if he’d learned how to make it talk. That 70’s rock guitar solo that lit so many of our teenage years let rip. The great night ended with Tim Wheeler from Ash joining Eric for that Irish song that I first heard watching Top Of the Pops in 1973 - Whiskey In The Jar. Eric had so much more hair in the video of that!

That of course was only the music. There were the rewards. Huartan took Live Act Of The Year - of course they did; Esmerelda Road are Introducing Artist of The Year; Jordan Adetunji won Video of The Year for Kehlani which has been nominated for a Grammy, thank you very much! As I said JC Stewart was given Single of The Year.

Album of The Year is always a tough one to choose. Rock critics spend hours in a hotel room debating back and forth. This year there was Dana Masters, David Holmes, Cara Dillon, Conchur White, Kneecap, Reevah and Gareth Dunlop among others BUT Belfast punk band Problem Patterns with the noise, melody and opinions of their debut record Blouse Club, standing up against boys club patriarchy, was a very popular winner.

As a church man sitting in the midst I enjoyed the entertainment but there were sharp edges to the music, cutting into me. I wrote for many years that younger music was bland and lacked a message. Well, I say it no more. Tonight we heard strong urgent voices against what’s happening in the middle east, lots against patriarchy and last but by no means least the church.

As Tramp projected the catastrophic figures of the obscenities done in Magdalene Laundries I became aware of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s resignation the same week as the Prize for not being diligent in reporting Church of England scandals about the abuse of more than 100 boys at Iwerne Camps by John Smyth. As Tramp raged, I felt proud of the quality of music coming out of my wee country but also sensed that if there is every a time for the Church to throw off its self righteousness and cover itself in the mantle of Christlike humility, it is now. 

CAMPBELL/JENSEN LIVE IN FITZROY - 24.10.24

photo: William Auterson

 

I want to start by apologising to Ashley. It needs to be said that I could not get it out of my head for the entire gig that Glen Campbell’s daughter was on the stage.

Yet, below that over riding thought something else was happening. Ashley has shorn the long blonde hair that graced her solo albums. She stands casual, with a wee hat over her short blonde fringe, looking very like her dad, and beside a giant of a man in what is very much a duo.

Thor Jensen can play a guitar and he plays it in ways that are difficult to define. Sometimes a rock riff but mostly jazz fret dances, often so fast that your eyes are struggling to keep up. He adds so much dramatic affect to songs that are otherwise quite simply honed.

Of course Ms Campbell is no musical slouch. Her dad was a most under rated guitar player but thankfully if you see Ashley live her banjo playing exploits are all up front and appreciated. She and the mighty Thor even trade licks on a couple of instrumentals. 

The songs shimmy genre with country, gypsy jazz, blue grass and folk sounds all across them. They cover sounds from every era of the song in the Twentieth Century, uniting them and bringing their Twenty First Century take. 

On top of the virtuoso foundation of their playing Thor and Ashley’s voices blend in the most perfect of ways. When they sing Everything’s Perfectly Fine you sense they are singing about the music, their relationship and your very own world.

Jensen jokes that these are all sappy love songs, from their debut record Turtle Cottage recorded on Stangford Lough, and that they are just Saps. It is true. I am wearing a Blood On The Tracks t-shirt and the songs this evening are the absolute opposite of that break up record. 

These are Silly Love Songs as Paul McCartney might describe them and I found myself reaching for my wife’s hand time and time again as I felt that they had described our love. If Ashley’s dad could have written as well as this he wouldn’t have needed Jimmy Webb!

Speaking of McCartney there were a few covers too and Eleanor Rigby wouldn’t have been the Beatles choice that I would have guessed BUT my they did what every cover should do in opening it up yet again for another assessment. One of the best Beatles’ covers I have ever heard. And speaking of Webb they do a fascinating cover of one of his lesser songs, Careless Weed.

Best cover of all has to be Gentle On My Mind to bring her dad onto the stage with her. Again there was no emotional hoopla, just a wonderfully executed song, drawing out the poignancy and warmth of memories of past trauma that can hold you in the present.

Saps can get criticised in a cynical world but tonight was a celebration of love, a reminder to enjoy it, to cuddle up in it and find hope and goodness in a world that would seem to not want it. That… and a set list of fine songs beautifully executed.

Wonderful in every way. 

NEEDTOBREATHE LIVE IN ULSTER HALL, BELFAST - 23.9.24

photo: Anna McIlroy

 

My daughter Jasmine introduced me to NeedToBreathe about 8 years ago. It was their nuanced Americana as well as their Jesus following lyrics, with a nice poetic subtlety, that had me hooked.

When we heard that they were coming to Belfast all the Stockmans were buzzing. Jasmine though felt that the Limelight was far too small and got quickly vindicated when the gig sold out and was relocated to the Ulster Hall. 

We were still aware that seeing NeedToBreathe in such a small venue was a privilege for us Europeans as in America these guys are Arena filling. We didn’t realise just how close we would get.

The band hit the stage with a near deafening sound of rock music beauty. This was somewhere between Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and Lynyrd Skynyrd to name two other Southern States of America bands. It was a great sound, brilliantly played but I feared that Bear Rinehart’s voice and the NeedToBreathe nuance might be drowned in the onslaught. 

There was indeed a need to breathe and it came when Rinehart introduced a love song to his wife and sang one of my favourites Banks. 

We were now in and from there on there were shifts in sound between songs and often times in songs and the lyrics started to peek above the noise. There was a lovely wee run of songs Something Beautiful/Testify, Wasteland and Temporary Tears. 

Testify saw a communal singalong that might have hinted to Rinehart that there was a substantial amount of church goers in the house. A whisper to band members and they added, just for us, Wasteland with it’s “Oh if God is on my side/Who can be against me” sung out with gusto and huge cheers.

Temporary Tears brought back to the stage local hero Foy Vance who sings the song on the actual Caves record. Foy was the surprise support act and to sing One Day At A Time with him in the Ulster Hall will be a long standing quirk of a memory.

By now NeedToBreathe had Belfast the palm of their proverbial hand. These guys showed their chops. Josh Lovelace played keyboards and mandolin but set the crowd alight blowing hurricanic (my own word!) harmonica, bassist Seth Bolt kept the rhythms heavy to light with Randall Harris on drums and inventive percussion and latest addition Tyler Burkum strutted his guitar with riffs and solos, leaving Rinehart to be the mouthpiece.

My suggestion of them sounding like Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers when they were rocking it was proved close to the mark when they actually covered Petty's You Wreck Me.

By the end Rinehart was preaching before the closing The Outsiders talking to those of us who feel as such and then telling everyone that they are loved by the God of the universe. A truth I’ve been preaching for years sounded louder and more beautiful than ever.

Our highlight was still to come. Coming back for the encore I sensed that Rinehart had left the stage. I then caught on that he was in the crowd. Watching the phones in the balcony focused on him I realised that he was heading towards us. A chair out of nowhere and Bear Rinehart was singing Brother right there beside us, at the back of the hall.

It was quite the moment on quite the night with quite the band and quite the message. All was even better for the fact that the crowd who needed a drink settled for one and no one walked past with four beers balanced precariously above your head during your favourite song. Joyous.

SNOW PATROL AT THE ULSTER HALL 13.9.24 - A PERSONAL REVIEW

Gary Lightbody told a frighteningly over packed Ulster Hall that he was emotional, thinking about starting a band 30 years ago this very month. Oh he’s the only one in the band left and they were then called Shrug but he is a Bangor boy standing in front of a Belfast crowd feeling the love and pride we have that Snow Patrol are world beaters from our wee place. We sang every word, helping Lightbody out on the odd occasion. 

I was feeling emotional myself. Our mate Jonny joined Shrug as they became Polar Bear around 1997. They struggled for years, another mate Iain played with them too before their third record Final Straw gave us Run. Jo Wiley endorsed and played it and suddenly they sold out the Mandela Hall and then unbelievably The Ulster Hall. 

I was a University Chaplain and my students were now big fans. I told them that I had been told I’d be on the Guest List for The Ulster Hall but I didn’t fancy going out. My daughter was tiny… and I am a shy introverted in real life. My students were aghast.

It would be the last time that I would have seen Snow Patrol in such a small venue until now. In recent years its been they have been filling the SSE on multiple nights. In Snow Patrol terms this was a pub gig.

My feelings got all tangled up with this Snow Patrol history when the support band took to the stage. I’ve been following The Florentines since Gary Lightbody name checked them in an interview that I did with him at the 4 Corners Festival in 2020. 

They are all rock strut with very accessible melodies and just coming out of their teens they took me back to 1992 when I was an amateur manager for the aforementioned Iain Archer, whose band included one Jonny Quinn. I was moved into moments of nostalgia. 

The emotional pile up doesn’t end there. This was the first time I had seen Snow Patrol without Jonny Quinn. Jonny and bassist Paul ‘Pablo’ Wilson left the band officially earlier this year and, whatever the public statements of mutual agreement, there is a ragged rip in Snow Patrol dynamics. I am sure I would have made it to Snow Patrol fandom eventually but the subjective interest via Jonny was my initial hook.

Of course through friends like Iain and Jonny and another mate Davy I have gotten to be one degree away from Gary Lightbody, culminating in that memorable evening when I had his attention and his mine in a public conversation. So like a friend of a divorced couple I was still rooting for him, smiling inside at his 30 year career and where it has brought him to tonight.

We are in this more intimate space because we are celebrating the release day of Snow Patrol’s eighth album. It is all about the upping the hype around a new record but is also a treat for fans, like the Stockmans here as a family singing the songs we have been singing on car journey playlists all of my daughters’ lives. 

And Snow Patrol delivered. Jasmine feared too many songs off The Forest Is The Path that she wouldn’t know but actually it would seem that she’ll have to go to the SSE in February for those songs. This was a set list rehearsed for the summer festivals and perhaps more limited by having to bring in a brand new rhythm section. 

The smaller venue made everything louder and more visceral. Take Back The City, about Belfast itself was explosive (maybe not the best choice of words). Crack The Shutters and Run in as early as song number 4 had the joint bouncing and almost hoarse early on. 

All we got from the record we were launching were All and The Beginning and the fans were already singing even those. I keep forgetting just how many bangers this band have. Chocolate, Don’t Give Up, Shut Your Eyes, Heal Me. I could go on. Of course there is Chasing Cars too to take the roof off, a balcony bouncing. 

In the guest seats in that balcony, Jimmy Nesbitt was throwing shapes and singing his head off while band member Jonny McDaid’s partner Courtney Cox sat as though unmoved. I imagine that below her too cool for Central Perk demeanour was a deep thrill at how popular her man’s band is as she soaked up a Belfast crowd.

Just Say Yes is a staple Snow Patrol closer these days and I hope it is not lost on the crowd that we are all screaming it out in a city that is renowned for saying No! What really grabbed my soul was the piano only reverent quiet of What If This Is All The Love You Ever Get. I’ve used it in communion and it is perhaps a hidden reason whey we love Gary Lightbody. He’s been there, knows the hurt and sings into our catharsis and healing:

 

What if it hurts like hell

Then it'll hurt like hell

Come on over, come on over here

I'm in the ruins too

I know the wreckage so well

Come on over, come on over here.

 

Tonight, 30 years in ,he took back his home city and left us wanting more. See you at the SSE in February!

TRUTH, LOVE OR PROMISE - MY SURMISE

Truth, Love Or Promise - mesmeric in tale, clever in script, convincing in acting, poignant in subject matter and laugh out loud throughout. I want all my friends to see it. 

Nuala McKeever is so much more a funny woman. This one woman show (With the help of Director Dan Gordon) is as if she has taken a stand up comedy routine and given it the format of a play because this is a drama more than a comedy. All McKeever's talents in one place.

Reviews have seen critics drop names like Dickens, Shakespeare and O’Casey. Of these the latter rings truest for me. A northern Irish Sean O’Casey, making the personal and societal issues of his place and time onto a theatre stage.

McKeever has conjured a story around a Creative Writing Class where three women from different backgrounds are thrown together, sometimes against their very will. As the class goes on through winter into spring Maureen, Brenda and Joanna become friends and we are totally gripped as their stories open up.

Our favourite comedian shows her acting chops as she herself plays all three of the women. Her side step back and forward between chairs to shift accents is almost a circus piece in itself as with humour and pathos and at times great speed she interweaves their conversations. 

Very quickly McKeever’s voice had me distinguish each character. It was as if there were actually three actors up there but I think the play would have lost something if there had been. Quite the skill Ms McKeever.

So around, below and on top of this plot, humour and very quick voice changes (how did she do that!) McKeever opens up the issues. Prejudice, sexuality, The Troubles and grief. There’s a lot of grief. The death of a husband, miscarriage and a death bed. That grief takes in the personal loss of all three women but also the united trauma of our post Troubles society. 

We are watching, laughing and struck to poignant silence by a grief that McKeever describes like she knows it; heavy and deep. Yet, there is a message of a hope that bursts through like the flowers that finally grow out of a lump of mud that Maureen watches change over the seasons as she sits in a park before the class. 

Under everything, something is going on. After searing loss the great big universe keeps moving. In the midst of those dying around us, life defies. 

Truth, Love Or Promise ultimately tells us that stories can help us find that. The truth about how we feel. Our empty page of denial covered with catharsis. The play also tells us that we have a choice about the story that we tell about our circumstances and where we take our stories from now.

It is not lost on me that we are watching this a few days before we commemorate 30 years since the IRA Ceasefire. Oh have we stories to tell and continue to write. 

Tonight one woman with the gifts of the gab, hilarity, literary invention and acting stopped me in my tracks more than once. At the end I just sat trying to take it all in and as we left for home I thought that it does always rain here BUT we can change the story by putting our hoods up. 

THE SAWDOCTORS LIVE IN CUSTOM HOUSE SQUARE, BELFAST - 24.8.24

There is nothing like an aul singalong in Custom House Square to end the summer. Tow years ago it was Ryan McMullan and when I saw The Sawdoctors were playing I was on it. We used to play all those songs on car journeys across Ireland.

Janice and I hadn’t to a Sawdoctors’ gig since New Year’s Eve 1992 when they filled The Point with The Frames and Sharon Shannon. Our boys from Tuam were at their commercial peak teased us with a “We’ve got the 1 the 9 and the 9 where are you 2”. We were convinced Bono would appear any moment but settled for a big polystyrene 2 in the end.

I had first hears them supporting The Waterboys around 1988 and then I Useta Lover became Ireland’s biggest selling single of all time and they were very clearly out of Mike Scott’s slipstream.

Back to 2024 and Custom House Square and singalong was what we got, Tommy K and I Useta Love Her hating us early on. And off the boys went on a night that lit up the Belfast night with their unique version of Showband/Ceili/Rock N Roll. 

On the surface The Sawdoctors are just a fun band. Led by Leo Moran’s comedic front they are irreverent, rude and a whole lot humorous but don’t fooled.

There is so much more happening in these west of Ireland song of pop poetry. What Van Morrison and Christy Moore for do other parts of the island The Sawdoctors do for the west. In these humorous singalongs they catalogue the social (Joyce Country Ceili Band, N17, Hay Wrap), geographical (Clare Island, Red & Green of Mayo) and indeed religious landscape (Howya Julia) of Connaught and the islands.

Standing there in Custom House Square I began to see these boys as the Irish Proclaimers. See Clare Island as Sunshine on Leith, N17 as Letter From America or 500 Miles, where there’s references to soccer and Hibernian there’s GAA, Galway and Mayo. 

Both The Proclaimers and The Sawdoctors need more respect for their musical ability. I mean the virtuoso Anto Thistlethwaite, on saxophone and mandolin tonight, doesn’t play with amateurs.

Back again to Custom House Square and those singalongs. On Clare Island where they sing - 

 

Where the ocean kisses Ireland

And the waves carress its shore

Oh the feelin' it came over me

To stay forever more

Forever more

 

My grá for the island was nearly at religious levels.

As for N17, What a song. Like a humorous caricature of rural life - stone walls and the grass is green it turns into a song of immigrant longing for home. I was guldering! 

So much fun. So much of our Irishness. So much provocative thought. Best of all, so many singalongs. The Sawdoctors are a live band. They put on a show. We’ll remember this one for many a long year. 

 

 

NOAH KAHAN LIVE IN BOUCHER PARK, BELFAST - 17.8.24

Noah Kahan a mile from our front door. His biggest gig ever. An absolute slay, as my daughter might say. 

And my daughter is who I need to thank. Yes, my mate Iain Archer co-wrote Still (credited or not and if you catch his small gig in Zurich soon then he’ll be singing this one with his daughter) so I had an early nudge but it wasn’t until my daughter took Kahan to her head and heart like I once did with The Beatles that I took notice. Dublin gig sold out. Another announced and again sold out. Who is this dude?

Amazingly, Jazzi is not with us in Boucher, preferring to see him in London! It might be the gig in 45 years of gig going that I knew so few of the artist’s songs before hand. The boy was under the spotlight. My daughter’s taste on the line.

First thing we noticed, as we thoroughly enjoyed support act Maisie Peters all short skirt, blonde hair, Noah sweatshirt with bags of charisma and tight songs, was that we were old! We noticed peers leaving off their children and in church the next morning “oh that must have been the gig our Eva was at last night.”

The crowd was huge and full of late teens and early twenties and predominately female which usually means boy or girl band. This could go very wrong. 

The opposite. Forgive me young people for my judgement on your 21st century music tastes. This boy is an incredible writer and he and his excellent band can fill a few football fields.

Indeed, the young girls were a distinct advantage and added to the experience. Yes, a drink or two down and there was the usual high shrieks of drunken gibberish but when they sang it was like being enveloped in a huge heavenly choir.

Now, let me say, that these are not easy songs to sing. Kahan wraps his clever rhyming couplets in his own interpretation of verse and chorus. Yet, this crowd sang… and kept singing… every single word.

What I suddenly started to realise, helped by the clarity of the sound and Kahan’s voice was that we were in a night of catharsis. Kahan is all about mental health. Struggling with it himself he writes right into a young audience sadly struggling too. 

 

Don't let this darkness fool you

All lights turned off can be turned on

I'll drive, I'll drive all night

I'll call your mom

 

Indeed when he left the stage I said to the girls in front, “well there is still one about Sticks for him to do,” and one of them said, “And I want The View Between Villages”. If I’d known the depth of loss in that song my pastoral vocation might have asked her if she want to talk about it!

Kahan is not just about the music. There is something profoundly helpful about these songs. I find his battles about where home is fascinating too. There are a lot of roads and driving on these songs, the grass greener somewhere else but then even greener back home in Vermont and there might be an interesting conclusion:

 

Drive slowly, I know every route in this county

And maybe that ain't such a bad thing

 

So, an absolute triumph for my daughter who predicted and for Kahan himself. He has Ed Sheeran’s boy next door demeanour in audience connection, funny and engaging. He works each end of that stage and his band fill the spaces. Shout out to his new fiddle player. 

The songs? Well this morning I am marvelling at their authenticity, honesty, vulnerability as well as just how good they are. If that choir that enveloped me listen and listen good then there is cathartic help here in abundance to navigate the roads that my generation have built for them. On tonight’s acoustic outing, Growing Sideways, no mean feat in a crowd of 40,000:

 

I'm still angry at my parents 

For what their parents did to them

 

Noah Kahan might go a long way to help them to forgive and get over us! As they say Stateside "colour me a fan!"

AN EVENING WITH OVER THE RHINE - Fitzroy, BELFAST - 21.6.24

photo: George Sproule

 

There was a moment right in the middle of Over The Rhine’s concert in Fitzroy. It might be exactly when George clicked the photograph above. I closed my eyes and they took me somewhere. I whispered inwardly, “Don’t ever stop”. 

There was something in these songs, in Karin Berquist’s voice, in Linford Detweiler’s piano playing, in their blend of voices and guitars playing off one another. It is like a soul salve. Heavenly.

After Linford told us that they had graduated college some 35 years ago both majoring in classical music, I started to listen for the classical in the duo’s classic songwriting style. It sneaks in.

And don’t think that their lyrics are cosy sentimental words about the sweet by and by. The songs that Over The Rhine write and sing are songs that confess vulnerability and brokenness that is first of all personal but then has its impact on the broken world that results.

With a 35 year career a review could be much more about the songs that they left out than the ones on tonight’s set list. What you can tell, if you’ve seen these guys twice on not much more than 6 months, is that they dig deep to keep us remembering songs we might have forgotten. 

Tonight we get the first song that Karin wrote for the band, Cast Me Away from ’Til We Have Faces a nod to Belfast’s own CS Lewis. It was also good to hear, from the same record, Like A Radio and indeed tonight we get two songs from 2001’s Films For Radio and no less than three from 2007’s Trumpet Child.

Alongside this we hear two hymns from a brand new record Hymn Time In The Land Of Abandon. Linford compared himself with Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley in being nurtured spiritually but also musically. The Love Of God being an old George Beverley Shea song would not be as well known here. The same with How Can I Keep From Singing more known as a protest song through covers by Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen in recent times.

There are new songs too, teasing us particularly with After All and Nothing that we will now sit back and wait on with the next album.

As we were in the middle of it and as I looked back over tonight’s gig or the kind of people packed into Fitzroy I realised that one song describes the work and fans of Over The Rhine. All My Favourite People is a profound spiritual statement:

 

“All my friends are part saint and part sinner

We lean on each other

Try to rise above

 

We’re not afraid to admit that we’re all still beginners

We’re all late bloomers

When it comes to love

All my favourite people are broken

Believe me

My heart should know

 

Orphaned believers, sceptical dreamers

Step forward

You can stay right here

You don’t have to go.”

 

The music underneath such words and Karin’s tonality as she delivers, enveloped in Linford’s piano playing helps you believe and sense some love and belonging even in your brokenness. 

It’s more than just a set list of songs!

STING LIVE AT BELSONIC, BELFAST 19.6.24

photo: George Sproule

 

After an explosive set by Blondie, Sting wanders onto stage with a guitarist and drummer riffing his old band’s Voices Inside My Head. The last time I had been to a Sting gig was in the King’s Hall 1986 and he had a stageful of jazz players. As I expected them to appear at any minute, the three piece kicked into Message In a Bottle. I suddenly realised to my surprise that this was is.

What confidence. To take on an open air crowd with just the help of a guitarist and drummer. Not only that but that second song up is maybe his biggest hit. Where will this one go. Well, with Dominic Miller on guitar and Chris Maas (Mumford & Sons, Maggie Rogers) on drums and a life time’s body of work like Gordon Sumner’s and it proves easy and most wonderful.

Tonight is about the songs which seems right as this is the My Songs Tour. If I was being critical I would say My Early Songs as we get nothing off Sting’s last two rock albums. The most recent song is Never Coming Home from 2003. Having said that there is nothing off his first solo album but then that bigger band might be needed for that. 

What we do get though is classic. Englishman In New York, Fields Of Gold, If I Ever Lose My Faith In You, Why Should I Cry For You and the stupendous Shape Of My Heart. With the best sound I have ever experienced at an out door gig these were all very tasty indeed.

There was a fascinating moment near the end when a much younger man that me, that we were standing with, was predicted the encore song. This man had already said that he was too young to remember the Blondie songs tonight but intriguingly I realised that that encore he predicted, Roxanne, was older than most of the Blondie hits! 

This is what Sting does so well. In and around his finest solo moments he has all these Police songs, both on record and live. Tonight we get Every Little Things She Does, Driven To Tears, Walking On The Moon, So Lonely, King of Pain as well as those already mentioned. The biggest sing song is on Every Breath You Take.

Us in Fitzroy are always trying to conjure another evening performing and unpacking the songs of the famous. Might we get a lead for The Gospel According To Sting (there is a book after all). Well, a few songs in he tells that he’s not religious BUT he loves reading the Bible and here is a song based on 2 Samuel 11. It’s David’s obsession with Bathsheba. It’s Mad About You. Noted!

Another that would feature in such a night is Sting’s closer. After daring to hold us in the outdoors with a three piece, he goes completely solo and sitting on a stool dedicates Fragile to Belfast. Fragile indeed but what a song about our shared humanity and our universal wonder yet vulnerability.

Wow. We walked home up the Lagan with songs still ringing in our ears, thoughts buzzin’ round our heads and hope in our hearts.