Perhaps the only thing more joyful than great music is great music written and performed by people you know. I wholeheartedly don’t think this is simply about a form of narcissism – ‘I know them!’ – or, more positively, wanting to cheer on people you like and admire; but rather partly because, with a little bit of proximity, even shared experience in hand, that person’s art may also either describe something, or be present in terms, with which you yourself can identify.

Here’s another way to think about it. Last Christmas, my wife (with some no-so-subtle prompting) gifted me The Poems of Seamus Heaney, a doorstop of a book that not only catalogues everything the great Nobel laureate ever published, but also contains a comparative commentary on every poem included. ‘Reading’ Heaney in primary school as about as much fun as any other art, when foisted on children via curricula. Reading Heaney as an adult – reading this man describe, in meter, the places, people, and smells of my own parish – is deeply moving. Bellaghy and the surrounds of the 1960s and ’70s is, in many ways, like someone landing on the moon – and yet I recognise the types of characters described, intimately.1 (A similar feeling is elicited reading the incredible writing of his polymath sister-in-law, Polly Devlin.)2 These are people telling stories with characters that are somewhat familiar, because they are drawing from a shared well.

I was thinking about two musical acts for inclusion in this 40×40 slot, and it was a close run thing: as the project is linked to a Spotify playlist, the song Wasting (below) wins out on account of being more readily available… but also on account of being an absolute lyrical gut-punch with an incredible narrative for its music video.

Having had the immense privilege of knowing Ferna for a long time, initially via my dear wife, the gestation of her debut album was one awaited with great anticipation – and she did not disappoint: a crunching mix of searing lyrics and sharp-edged production. Immensely proud, but also immensely moved – because the album shows an artist, describing ( think), amongst other things, the implicit difficulty of being talented and creative in an era where these things can feel completely devalued.

“I just try my best not to make a mess – now they’re in love with someone else I guess.”

Wow.

Now, I mentioned above a double-bill. One other act was in mind – a band from a long, long time ago.

October 2008, I hosted a gig for about forty people in a hayshed on the farm I grew up on. ‘T in the Barn’ was a bit of an experiment,3 but on reflection may have also been an emotional attempt to recover something that was beginning to slip away. My three undergrad years had been saturated in music – ground covered before in the series. By late 2008, I had retrained as a teacher, was now grossly unemployed, and things were moving in a bit of a bleak direction. I had moved back in with friends in Belfast, but could barely make rent – and indeed, with immense generosity from others, was dug out on a number of occasions. But I was still making music with friends, and moreover several former housemates were doing the same.

One such connection were the guys from Maguire & I, who made probably my favourite song from this category (local folk) of all – the closing track on their EP Means of Illumination, which is called Holding Down My Hands.4

These artists, and others like them, transfix my imagination by singing and playing in ways that are familiar to me. Maybe it’s because I can remember the same people at an earlier stage – or maybe it’s because the connection to them conjures up some magic – or maybe it’s because, even as we age and grow and develop, such recordings and artworks fix for us, somewhere outside of time, a place and a moment and a feeling that we can go back to and treasure.

  1. Some context, here, for those unfamiliar with rural life in the north of Ireland at the end of the twentieth century. On the road I grew up on, which ran down to the shore of Lough Beg directly across from Church Ireland, there were still (in the 1990s) two sisters who lived without electricity; and, at the very end, Mr John Murphy, who would always (rain, hail, or shine) be either draped across the top of his stable door, hello-ing whoever went past, or out leaning against the water pump right at the road, tipping his cap to passers-by, and at the right time of year, pointing out the blackberries at the roadside which had not yet been swiped by less attentive kids. This is both only three decades ago, and simultaneously about a million miles. ↩︎
  2. The Far Side of the Lough was also foisted upon us in primary school – but when I was able to get my hands on a copy as an adult, has become a treasured possession. ↩︎
  3. There’s still a little Blogspot page here. Seeing David McConnell on the bill reminds me that he has just released his debut album, The Mountains Sure Don’t Give a Damn About the Sea, and it is beautifully produced. Also hanging out a T in the Barn was FRMR – whose band Sons of Caliber, in its earliest incarnation (featuring Jude Moses) feature prominently in the music videos mentioned next… ↩︎
  4. Andy, Emma, Elder, Orla and Brian were the ones who made it to me. Not because they ended up with any kind of careers in music – well, Brian is still going very strong, as maybe the most naturally talented musician I’ve ever played around with – but because Will, one of my classmates from uni, put them in his brilliant web series IN STORES NOW. The legacy of the Belfast music scene in the mid-2000s felt like it was annihilated when Myspace screwed up its server migration in 2013 – Will’s catalogue of music videos is like a time capsule. Bandwidth’s Youtube channel is highly recommended. ↩︎