Belfast blues

Regular Afterworders will have heard me talking about Ballyclare bluesman Lonesome Chris Todd and his band the Hardchargers before. I’ve said it before but interest declared again: I’ve been helping Chris over the past year or so – and currently – towards a debut album (released last month) and furthering his performing opportunities outside of Ireland. I won’t benefit financially from any of this stuff – just an enthusiast for an artist wielding some contacts and loaning a bit of no-interest cash if needed. So, less a PR thread than an AW regular sharing one of his adventures…

Here’s the latest plank in creating that platform, the first of three live clips professionally filmed, by director Paul and his sidekick Jeff, at a show at Belfast’s Empire Bar on December 29th. Like most good things in rock’n’roll it was stitched together at an hour close to 11… or maybe 12…

We’d been introduced to Paul by NI film-making legend Michael Beattie. Paul was up for it – a plan to film three good quality live clips at the Empire show, to help get the message to overseas agents and promoters – in good time but reckoned, from costly past experience, that we’d be best getting the audio pro recorded on multi-track, which he could sync up to in the edit. Getting a decent studio engineer available between Christmas and New Year was fun. I was at pains not to ask my usual studio go-to pal Cormac but ultimately ran out of other options. I hoped his intern, Kaspar [name anglicised], might do it for mates’ rates – and that Cormac himself needn’t have to return early from his family time off down the country. Cormac said he’d get back to me…

With a couple of days to go, he let me know that Kaspar was up for it but that he (Cormac) would like to be there too, largely as a punter but also in case there was any technical angst that his experience could sort out. Prescient fellow!

On the night, at a prolonged soundcheck, it was clear that there were some gremlins from the venue’s ‘desk’ (acutally, a mass of DIY inputs and wires within a kind of safe on the wall beside the side) and from Ali MacKenzie’s bass amp. There was also the need for several extra ambient/amp mics and leads… Luckily, Cormac’s studio was 5 minutes drive away…

So, half an hour late, we were all ready to rock. Well, WE were, but were the Hardchargers?

For Lonesome Chris, this was his band’s third gig in as many days – each with a different line-up. Following the dissolution of the previous line-up in November he had been feverishly rehearsing up three sets of bass/drums, to free up logistics and options for future gigs. It so happened that availabilities on Dec 27-29 had resulted in three versions of the same band. The Empire show would be only the third time Ali MacKenzie (bass) and Davy Kennedy (drums) had Charged Hard – after a house concert and one pub gig, each only an hour in duration, three or four weeks previous. And to add an extra frisson, Irish jazz maestro Scott Flanigan (a guest on three tracks on the album) would be sitting in for the whole two-hour set on Hammond organ. It literally would be sitting in – because Scott had had flu for a couple of weeks and a planned run through at his place with Chris had consequently not happened.

Several friends had come along to well-wish on the night – Mark Case, who had designed the album booklet, Late-Night Tony Furnell, who had recorded it, Cormac had mastered it… and Smiling Phil Richardson, in case the punters got heavy… Mrs H and her gym pal Esme were there too, and Kyle ‘the Kylemeister’ Leitch, claimant on the title ‘Godfather of Punk’ in Belfast, when Terri Hooley’s not in the room. And on this occasion he wasn’t.

It all took me back (way back…) to 21 years earlier, when I’d organised a multi-artist live CD recorded at the same venue, on the same stage, over four nights with I forget how many acts. Here I was again, involved in the same kind of well-meaning crackpot scheme. And with some of the same people. Cormac had been there first time around, as a performing artist. Brilliant, but completely drunk. Scary. Especially as, on that occasion, I was sharing a stage (and a phalanx of recording mics) with him on one number. Somehow it was even good enough to appear on the resulting album. Good times. Still, if you love music and like an underdog what else are you going to do with your life? You can’t take it with you.

Here’s the first installment of three, then, of Lonesome Chris Todd and the Hardchargers, live at the Belfast Empire. Of the two ghosts of Christmas past yet to come, one is a happy upbeat country-blues stomp of four minutes, the other is a 17-minute brooding epic. For this one, as Scott would memorably note a few weeks later, ‘It’s interesting for a jazz musician to play a song on one chord…’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GTS9Hfw0kE&feature=youtu.be

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