SOUL SURMISE

JOSHUA BURNSIDE LIVE IN THE ULSTER HALL, BELFAST - 5.4.25

Joshua Burnside is refreshing. 

He has a refreshing attitude to his new life as a star. Headlining The Ulster Hall at the end of a UK Tour says “star”. As I enter the iconic Hall he is trying to work out why, the opening act of the night, Áine Gordon’s guitar isn’t coming through the PA. It seems he is actually her band. Supporting himself, Áine jokes. 

Áine is one to be watched by the way. Next up is Niamh Regan. I have been watching her since late last year. Standing with just a guitar and a voice. Strong songs with a deftly unique touch. 

When our headliner arrives with his full band I am not sure what to expect. Our man writes with a Sufjan Stevens imagination and preciseness. I remember seeing Stevens twice in just a few months. In Calvin College, Grand Rapids he fluttered out angelic late night lullabies and I mean his band literally had wings. Next time in Belfast’s Limelight he’s turned angels into pumping it out cheerleaders. 

When the Beatles started experimenting with the songwriting genre they stopped playing live. Not being able to replicate the songs live they stop live gigging. Burnside probably hasn’t that luxury. The songwriter needs the concert to survive.

So Burnside takes his song collages and squeezes them into a more classic live band shape. Don’t think that that dumbs down the creativity. He just pushes it in another direction. No, it's refreshing. With a guitarist, cellist, bass player and drummer the songs take on a refreshing life. I was hearing Neil Young and Paul Simon from a Dubliners’ core. Oh the harmonies!

It all leaves the songs sounding so robust. The new record Time Of Teeth fills the set list with such brilliant songs - Up and Down, The Good Life, Marching Round The Ladies, Sycamore Queen, Nothing Completed alongside older songs like Whiskey Whiskey, Hollllligram (how many ls) and Nothing For Ye. A showcase for craft.

I am taken, as I have been since I heard it, by the convolutedly titled Late Afternoon In The Meadow (1887). The blunt thump of its opening lines, "I saw a man jump off the Clifton Street Bridge/ On to the Westlink" to the architectural conclusion of the West Link's existence, "So you never knew me and I never knew you", dividing us. 

The boy has a touch of humour too. The Good Life for the Saturday night hipsters who fill the Hall:

 

Gonna try and not drink tonight

but the good life makes me… thirsty

 

“Thirsty” hangs off the end with comedic timing.

Climb The Tower started, he tells us, with him wanting to have a laugh at our accent. He took the words that could be from a Norn Iron T-shirt - tower, flowers, shower but then admitted that it became about place. 

Place is vitally important to everything the young man does. Marching Round The Ladies might take us to Paris and Glasgow but it then brings us home for a hilarious but punched out protest to what the Tories have done to us all, whether we are up the Shankill or The Falls. 

A dancer with a flower head, a piece of Emily Burnside’s art, shimmers and sways like the tunes. There’s ever something happening. It’s all so gripping and mesmerising. It’s the end of a big tour. It’s the Ulster Hall and it has this feeling that Joshua Burnside owns the place. 

CARA DILLON LIVE IN THE ULSTER HALL - St. Patrick's Day 2025

photo: Janice Gordon-Stockman

 

Cara Dillon is sublime. I don’t mean just sublime, she is our sublime. 

It is St. Patrick’s Day. The streets of Belfast are bulging with young people who have been drinking all day, rolling out of and queueing up to get into whatever bar or club is handy. The footpaths are a sea, crashing like loud waves in lines uncertain.

Inside the Ulster Hall is like a whole other matrix where a singer and four truly mesmeric musicians and on occasion a dancer are creating something totally at odds with those waves. 

No one moves. You can hear a pin drop. The calm. The beauty. The deference to old scars. The healing sound of music.

On this particular St. Patrick’s Day, in this particular Ulster Hall, Cara Dillon and a few English players, somehow metamorphosing into Irishness, take us to particular places - Dungiven, The Sperrins and Inishowen. It is quietly joyous. It is a celebration of a time past. It has us holding onto a culture that we are so proud to call our own.

Cara, is leaning heavily on her album of a year ago, Coming Home, that came with a book too. Written at funny hours of the night and day during Covid lockdown most of the poem/songs lean on her memory of home. 

Everyone is prefaced with a story about Cara’s parents, children, grandparents or neighbours, particularly the women. 

I wasn’t sure how the record would work live. I wasn’t sure how much of it we would get tonight but to my pleasant surprise we got it all and indeed it worked so utterly splendidly, particularly in this particular room.

Cara’s voice is as clear and pure as the River Roe that appears in songs throughout the night. It caresses the ear from the first few lines of The Water Is Wide. It then breaks into that Derry brogue when she speaks, accent as heavy as the sound is light. That accent has not been lost from her years living in Somerset. 

The stories and songs are so personal, yet in their subjectivity to Cara they, and their lessons of living, touch my own heart too. They transport me. I am in Galgorm village, on the banks of the Maine, watching my Granny bake under the thatch or turn the wringer to dry her clothes out by the village pump that was located in her garden. I find tears seeping down my cheeks more regularly than at any other gig I have ever been at.

Cara’s openness and honesty, particularly in the poem Inishowen, about leaving the Troubles behind while on holiday, reveals the deep forgiveness that we all have no matter what side of There Were Roses, sung with the audience as choir, we are on. We continue to love so deeply the geography of our place even though its history has scarred and bruised our hearts, soul, minds and bodies. 

It would be wrong to not mention the band. Wow. Never under estimate the musical match made in heaven when Cara met Sam Lakeman. He stands alongside her directing the grace moments of fiddles and whistles and pianos. Less is more and it makes for a lot of wonderfully simple but intricate music. The traditional Winding River Roe, your chance to dance, says Cara, highlighted the St. Patrick’s day wonder.

Her dancer too. In a couple of songs to have the grace of interpretation added even more. 

Just after 8 o’clock I was finishing dishes. I thought as I threw down the drying cloth that I would maybe go in and listen to Cara Dillon’s Coming Home when I remembered, we have tickets to see her… a mad dash and we made it. Glad I don’t live in London! Oh the way home I said to Janice, “imagine if we’d missed that”. Janice stated that I need to up my attempts to have her for an interview at a 4 Corners Festival!

This was so much more than a singer doing a concert. It was songs and poetry, a little dance, some trad tunes, it was creating story and theatre. In all, it was a celebration of the day that was in it and of one of our very own. 

SNOW PATROL LIVE AT BELFAST SSE - February 28, 2025

photo: Bradley Quinn

 

I never take it for granted that I am always seeing Snow Patrol live in their home city. Take Back The City as an opener in the place that it was written about - immediate excitement.

Snow Patrol know how to create excitement. Gary Lightbody walks around with his hands in the air and the look of the long haired boy next door who still cannot believe that there is a full arena of people to watch him, never mind that they are going to sing every single word of Run and Chasing Cars. 

As my daughter said afterwards, “they do have a lot of bangers”. Boy they do. Take Back The City, Chocolate, Called Out In The Dark, Crack The Shutters, Set the Fire To The Third Bar, Life On Earth, Shut Your Eyes, You’re All I Have, Just Say Yes… plus of course those aforementioned sing songs. Bang! Bang! Bang!

Into this hard drive come new songs from The Forest Is The Path - All, In The Beginning and Talking About Hope as if they were always there. Wow!

On In The Beginning our Lightbody confesses “I just don't know how to love”. My wife Janice commented that though he isn’t good at love our Gary is very good at writing the love song. I almost held Janice tighter and tighter as the gig moved on. 

My highlights tonight surprised me. If I were able to go back and relive one song it would be The Lightning Strike (What If This Storm Ends). The light show and back drops, much more detailed throughout, came into their own in this one. As a net drops in front of the band they are enveloped in a chaotic whirl and swirl and the music takes us into the storm. The guitars rage and move us more than the melodies. I’ve put up with this song at previous gigs. Tonight I am mesmerised. 

The sonic atmospherics does the talking to me again in Make This Go On Forever. I wonder if my receptiveness to these songs would be seen as a conversion experience that the band would be delighted that I had. Snow Patrol might like to be doing more of this but we all want bangers.

In all the thrill a pushback. It was a wonderful evening. Snow Patrol in the SSE on a Friday night! How could it not be. Yet, as I bumped into friends on the way out I was saying that it wasn’t my favourite Snow Patrol gig.

In Gary bigging up Johnny McDaid for damaging two bands and still playing (Gary called him a legend. Not one hand but two for a piano player?! Idiot came to my mind) and how he was proud to stand with McDaid and Nathan Connolly through the years… there were two Belfast ghosts. 

The sad absence of Jonny Quinn and Pablo Wilson was felt. I felt that the band felt it. You can even convince me that stand ins Ash Soan and Ben Epstein are technically better but I am saying that it felt that they were not sown intimately into the soul of the Patrol and a few fraying threads were the result. 

That is maybe why we only got three songs from The Forest Is The Path. Surely, This Is The Sound Of Your Voice, with a Belfast reference, and Hold Me In the Fire are made for live performance. 

And the shorter set being muttered by some at the exits. On the last night of a tour on their home ground surely Snow Patrol had two hours in them! Johnny’s hand might have been the reason. 

Luxurious complaining. I am sitting the morning after, basking in our band giving our city another great night… “light up… light up… louder… louder…” See youse in Ormeau Park in June! 

IAIN ARCHER - LYRIC THEATRE, BELFAST; 30TH ANNIVERSARY HOMECOMING

Iain Archer. 30 years since his big Lyric Theatre concert. The 4 Corners Festival. A homecoming. 

In the thirty years in-between Archer has done well for himself. He has been in a band with members of REM, Snow Patrol and Belle & Sebastian. He has had Bruce Springsteen play one of his songs on Springsteen’s radio show. He’s played, written and produced music with Snow Patrol including Run which gave him his first Ivor Novello Award. Writing Hold Back The River with James Bay gave him the second.

His own career has gone on hold as he has shaped the careers of others in writing and production. With his last release of his own material being back in 2009 it was remarkable to think that he could sell out The McNaughton Stage in the Lyric Theatre in just one day and then a hastily put on Matinee in another day.

Who was this crowd? As well as fans from 1995, some were actually at that first Lyric gig, there were a lot of musicians in the house, many of whom were influenced by the young Archer back in the day. 

It made for a unique scenario. There was no expectation from the audience. No demands. They were here to listen to Iain Archer, whatever he played. Iain had a freedom of set list. It brought a real purity to it all. 

He shaped that setlist beautifully. A few songs from his debut album, from the ’95 set list set us off. His first single Wishing, once a Simon Mayo Record Of The Week, was still pop-catchy but matured in a whole different rhythm. 

Papa Burns reminded me of the first time that I ever heard it. I thought Iain was a talented writer from the first time I heard Wishing but when he sang Papa Burns to us one evening I sensed another step up in his crafting.

The big surprise of this entire set for me was Drink Your Fill. Written about a short time when he moved to Glasgow I found that this the least likely was the one that I sang over and over for days after the gig.

Canal Song that made it on to Australian soap opera Home and Away and Summer Jets that made Bruce Springsteen’s radio show. In the evening we had a couple off additions from that last album To The Pine Roots, Steamer On A Kite and Frozen Lake. There are two new songs Paper Chains and The Cup, two honed songs lying in some had drive feeling neglected. So good.

Of course there were the hits too. Snow Patrol’s Run and memories of a cold studio in Glasgow, jamming out songs without imagining that anything might happen and then this one song changing their lives. 

He waxed lyrical about James Bay’s pipes and how Bay’s life was getting out of control when they wrote Hold Back The River and how Lightning Bolt that featured in the Olympics and the Super Bowl sparked when Jake Bugg was too fed up to try.  

Best of all Noah Kahan’s Still and how uncool it was when his daughter discovered Kahan as a new artist to find out that dad was already on it. Today Still as a melancholic gem, tear jerkingly so.  

There’s a lot of loss and for me Archer’s guitar playing is deeply emotive. I am a lyric and melody kinda fan. Over the years, and actually probably spending a few years with Iain back in the day, I have been opened up the the bass line or the piano line but no one has ever hit my cardia the way this man’s guitar did in these Homecoming gigs. Our mates in Over the Rhine coined the phrase “a beautiful piece of heartache”. There were lost of that here.

I haven’t yet mentioned another highlight of these concerts. Miriam Kaufmann’s stunning vocals alongside. Her musicality and stunning voice knows exactly when, where and how to enhance; grace notes in vocal. As we left I asked a few folks what other husband and wife team had more perfectly blended voices. Buckingham and Nicks was mentioned but they never married. Deacon Blue's Ricky Ross and Lorraine McIntosh. Few others. Every Miriam touch was sublime. 

To the encore. After Lightning Bolt, Iain and Miriam went back to To The Pine Roots for the lengthy Everest. It’s along of hope in the dark, of holding on to someone. It has that Gospel refrain:

 

Some other day, when my morning comes

I’ll be the one that’s waited all night

 

It’s hymn like. Archer brings it home with a song that fits in the madness of a world full of wars and lies and frightening leaders. The songs have celebrated, lamented, healed and ended with hope. Please don’t wait thirty years young man… #proud!

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.