Colin H on The End of Lockdown, the Future of Music
In January 2020, I interviewed – as an anthropological exercise and as a bit of fun – for the Afterword three genre-diverse bandleading personalities from Northern Ireland: jazz piano man Scott Flanigan, punk allegend Dave McLarnon and Wookalilly woman Adele Ingram. The interview explored shared aspects of being a bandleader, the pros and cons (invariably cons) of doing so from the geographical drag of NI, and amusing anecdotes from their respective journeys. We also looked at plans for 2020. Well, you can imagine how those worked out.
Scott, having had a memorable 2019 touring GB with London duo Dave O’Higgins & Rob Luft in support of an album on which he had also played, was working on a PhD. He got it. He was looking forward to the June 2020 release of his own album. It didn’t happen. He was hopeful about opening his own jazz club in Belfast. Amazingly, that did happen.
Dave, recently escaped from a career in podiatry, had fronted a one-off Dave McLarnon’s Hat Band at a charity event I’d organised in September 2019. He was looking forward to that one-off having a second wind at another charity event I had planned for 13 March 2020. That event happened… and it was just about the last thing that did for many of us who there, lockdown following within hours. Dave had also talked about hoping to revive his circa 1980–81 collaboration (at least recording-wise) with publishing legend Barry McIlhenny, the pair having both been in Good Vibrations label act Shock Treatment. Dave also planned to reconfigure his current version of Shock Treatment, replacing a retiring keyboardist with a then yet-to-be-revealed guitarist. He was also looking forward to a booking for his ‘classic rock’ band Sunset at a prominent motorcycling event later in the year.
Adele was hopeful that the long-awaited second Wookalily album – recorded ages before our interview – would finally be released, with a record label in mainland Europe dangling the carrot of wide availability and the possibilities of performing somewhere, anywhere, outside of NI. Two years on, that album still remains in limbo and Wookalily as a band have yet to re-emerge from the wreckage of lockdown. Understandably, Adele didn’t feel she had much to say this time around – but here’s hoping 2022 will bring happier news in Wooka world.
So, in the interests of balance, I invited full-time troubadour Anthony Toner along for the January 2022 interview. Anthony comes from a background of being a local newspaper man and then a regional arts centre administrator. He is literary, sociable and very experienced in all of the backroom stuff – admin, social media, funding applications, gig booking, project managing – that professional music artists need these days alongside stagecraft, musical skills and actually having something to say in his writing. He has 12 solo albums to his name, has toured in GB and has tried his luck in Nashville a couple of times, before wisely realising the odds were insurmountably stacked. He also plays second guitar in the Ronnie Greer Blues Band (Ronnie being a local hero from the 70s onwards in the impervious-to-trends world of blues in NI), has managed projects for other artists and is involved in booking for a couple of annual festivals. He is a man with fingers in pies, or pastries – being known for his connoisseurship of the Danish variety (some of which were brought to our chinwag, immediately ‘winning over’ the room).
The ability to survive months of lockdown – mentally as well as materially – also got added to the list of ‘attributes the modern cottage industry musician needs’ in 2020–21. It was a landscape and situation that none of us, in any walk of life, had experienced before. For those in salaried positions and many occupations, there was top-down help available from the UK government in the form of furlough funding and other benefits for business owners. For the self-employed, it was a stickier wicket. The likes of tradesmen with fairly regular incomes could access furlough money based on a percentage of previous months’ income, but for the full-time self-employed musician, with a more fluctuating ‘business model’, many were neither able to work nor able to claim meaningful compensation. (The Republic of Ireland was more enlightened in this area, creating a lump-sum weekly benefit for all self-employed people from very early in the pandemic.)
By chance, the interview was scheduled for 7 January, the morning after an all-day recording session at RedBox Studios, Belfast, for a Colin H/Breige Devlin collaborative album, involving around 28 local musicians – coincidentally, including Dave, Scott and Anthony, who were all in the subset of those 28 present at that 6 January session. We were all still buzzing from it, so the first task was to get that out of the way and explore the past, present and future of professional music-making in general and in particular for these representatives of the folk, punk and jazz worlds. Distracted by pastries and bonhomie, I forgot to take a team pic at the time, so the image above has been kindly cobbled together by my crony Norman Boyd (a designer and member of at least one of Dave’s bands). Left to right: Dave ‘The Beard’ McLarnon, Scott ‘The Finger’ Flanigan and Anthony ‘The Pastries’ Toner.
I’ve cut the interview into roughly themed chunks, below.
A RECORDING SESSION THE DAY BEFORE…
COLIN: Let’s get yesterday’s session at RedBox Studio out of the way first – a positive step on the road to recovery or just another day at the office?
DAVE: Definitely not another day at the office!
SCOTT: I had a moment during the rehearsal [the night before] when between songs we were all sitting eating chips and telling stories, talking about random stuff, and that was the first time I’d done that in two years – getting together with musicians, sitting in a room with people you’ve played with, maybe not seen for a couple of years, or maybe you don’t know them all that well, but you’re just chatting, talking shop… And I remember thinking ‘I’ve missed this’.
ANTHONY: That’s the one thing about the whole [COVID] thing that I’ve found hardest to deal with. It’s got less and less to do with the money or that sort of thing – it’s about hanging out with other musicians and playing. It has felt like the well has been really, really dry and the last couple of days, actually, have filled that up a little bit. And also it was a chance to meet people that I hadn’t really met or played with before.
DAVE: For me, to be able to get to meet and play with guys like this – it’s fantastic. And the catering was first class! (laughs)
COLIN: It seems to me that the role of burgers and chat in musicians’ well-being shouldn’t be underestimated…
DAVE: The cocktail sausages were fantastic. Ans the best photo I’ve seen [from the rehearsal] is Ali MacKenzie closely observing his burger. (laughs)
SCOTT: You can do the music at home, you can make it all remotely with studios and stuff, but getting together over Zoom between tunes is not something that you do. It’s very much an ‘in the room’ thing.
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THE EARLY DAYS OF LOCKDOWN 2020
COLIN: Well, let’s zoom backwards, if you can pardon the pun, to the start of 2020. Tell me what happened to you all in the middle of March 2020.
DAVE: The last two years have merged into one, for me. Was that the last gig [in March 2020]…?
COLIN: Yes, Dave’s last gig was at an event that I put one at the Pavilion in Belfast on March – Friday the 13th. Not a great omen, perhaps…
DAVE: It was one of the last shows in town, I think. Maybe there was one somewhere the following night…
COLIN: Yes, things closed down very quickly after that night. One mundane story to illustrate that concerns the £100 deposit against the venue’s bar takings being okay. I’d paid that, the takings were good and normally one would retrieve the deposit from the barman a day or two later. I emailed the venue’s head office on Monday – but by then all their bars had shut, there was no way to hand over cash, human interaction was taboo. After a month or two, one of the partners in the company posted me a personal cheque.
ANTHONY: I was away on a tour with Barbara Dickson as special guest, a two-week run, and on the Friday night, the last gig we had was in a place called Bishop’s Cleave, near Cheltenham, on Gold Cup day. We were just outside this super-spreader event and the next morning I went down to Cheltenham Railway Station, got the train to Heathrow – and already in Heathrow people were wearing masks and gloves. Panic had set in. And by Monday it was all gone – my diary was empty, all the places were shut down, everyone was told to isolate… So I went from being in and out of hotels and really nice venues to just doing nothing. My reaction to that was, like a lot of people [in music], I thought, ‘Oh wow – I’ve got songs to finish, I’ve got things to get recorded…’ I had lots of work to get on with – but nothing happeneDAVE: I couldn’t get anything done. The creative side of it all just shut down. I found that really frustrating. So like everybody else, I started gardening and decorating and making sourdough…
COLIN: Well, one has to keep busy. The interesting thing with your situation, Scott is, let’s be frank, jazz gigs aren’t generally known as super-spreader events. How did you know that people were staying at home?
SCOTT: (laughs) Because I was at home too! It was really quick – it was like a surgeon’s knife…
COLIN: Joking aside, you do have a lot of gigs…
SCOTT: I do a lot of gigs, yeah. But it was all gone. Bert’s Jazz Bar, where I play [once a week], in the Merchant Hotel, stayed open for an extra week or maybe two but after that they decided to close. And that was it. There were no more gigs coming in. This might be a controversial opinion, but I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed having time off. Don’t get me wrong, I love the piano, I love music…
COLIN: …it’s just the *people* you can’t stand…
SCOTT: (laughs) I do jazz gigs – I don’t have to worry about that!
ANTHONY: I remember the weather was fantastic as well – we went and sat out in the garden every morning.
SCOTT: I was fortunate in that I do a lot of teaching and I switched it all to online fairly quickly, so a few quid was coming in, I wasn’t too worries about paying the bills, there was a bit of savings. But I wasn’t having to drive to the far end of the country; I wasn’t having to lug keyboards up and down tiny narrow staircases. But of course these are the sort of things that you miss after a while – ‘Jeez, I can’t wait to lug that keyboard upstairs again… I can’t wait to drive to Enniskillen for 40 quid – brilliant!’
COLIN: Do the guys in your band know you get a double fee? (laughs)
SCOTT: But I really enjoyed the fact that I could stay at home, I could relax, I could switch off for possibly the first time since becoming a professional musician – and quite possibly the last time that we’ll all get paid to stay at home.
COLIN: On that point, and I’ll come to the furlough matter in a moment, Dave – you’re in a different position in being early-retired from a non-music job. You’re very active in music now, as ever, but you don’t rely on it…
DAVE: Yes, though part of the whole retirement plan was that there’d be a certain amount of income from what I was doing in music. I mean, we were to do The Anchor during the North-West 500 [a popular motorcycling event] and that would have been £500.
COLIN: And that’s your revived 1970s school band you’re talking about, Sunset – playing classic rock in front of a motorcycling crowd. You were born to be wild.
DAVE: Absolutely. And that never happened. The gig we [Dave McLarnon’s Hat Band – yes, he has several bands] did for you was the last one, and there was great energy that night, lots of enthusiasm…
COLIN: In the January 2020 Afterword interview, you were talking about refreshing the line-up of your revived 1980-82 punk band Shock Treatment. You said that Keith on keyboards had stepped down and you were hoping to cajole an unnamed local guitar-playing personality on board…
DAVE: That was Ben Trowell – [AKA] Billy Shovel, who played with Anthony at the session last night. What a great guitar player! It’s a different sound for Shock Treatment.
COLIN: Dave, did you find the early lockdown experience broadly tolerable, as these chaps did?
DAVE: Yeah, I didn’t think it was going to drag on, but I had started home recording so I had all that time to get to grips with that, sit in front of the computer – and sit outside in the sun, as Anthony said. Plus we got a lockdown cat, in that one came to visit and we kind of adopted her. We got a puppy too, because the cat disappeared for two months… and two weeks after we got the puppy, the cat reappeared on the windowsill. She’s buggered off again now!
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DAVE McLARNON’S HAT BAND at the last gig in town – 13 March 2020:
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LOCKDOWN – A PAIN IN THE ARSE
COLIN: So that was your early lockdown experience. At what point did it become a pain in the arse? At what point did it start to worry you personally, professionally, mentally?
ANTHONY: Because I’m self-employed, I had got some of the Rishi Sunak payments. I had come back from these two weeks with Barbara [Dickson], so I had a bit of money going into lockdown and then on top of that I had a commission to write a series of songs inspired by East Belfast for [community/arts organisation] EastSide Partnership, so I had money and time to get on with this project. When it started to really worry me… If it had been any other year, I’d have been in real trouble, but this particular year I was ‘lucky’ with the timing of it. But where it started to worry me was that creatively I couldn’t get anything done. The simplest little thing – I wanted to write a lullaby with three verses and ended up with 15 pages of gibberish.
COLIN: Was it a subconscious fear, do you think? Because you’re pretty prolific as a songwriter but also, for the benefit of readers, a real ‘professional’ – you know how to deliver stuff, your whole background is deadlines and delivery…
ANTHONY: Yeah, if I’ve got a song and it’s not working I tend to ditch it cos I think ‘I need to get this [album] out at some point, so get it finished’. And that was really frustrating for me, particularly given the fact that I had a ‘client’ – somebody had paid me money to write this stuff and all I had was these half-baked ideas. The situation was, I had one song about East Belfast and the people at the Partnership liked that and said ‘If we paid you, could get another eight or nine of those and we’ll help you put it out?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely’. I kind of thought ‘That’s a project that I’ll do while I’m doing other things’, and then lockdown happened and it became the focus. Some of it was pretty simple but I just couldn’t do it. Normally, if I sit in a room with a guitar for long enough something will happen, but everything I did, I looked at it the next day and thought, ‘That’s not gonna fly…’ I’ve never had that before – to that extent or for that long.
COLIN: Nevertheless, you obviously got over that eventually because that album, ‘Six Inches of Water’, is now available. How did you get over that hump?
ANTHONY: Second lockdown. I have no way of explaining why it happened but if you remember we [in Northern Ireland] had that little period [c. August/September 2020] where things reopened… and then locked down again. In that second lockdown, every time I picked the guitar up something got finished. I’ve no idea why. In the middle of the first lockdown my father died. That was expected – he’d had a long battle with Alzheimer’s. I don’t know if that played into it. I grieved, but no, I don’t think it did.
COLIN: Scott, did you find yourself being creative, in terms of writing music, in lockdown 1 or 2? To go back to our January 2020 interview, you were promising to release an album that year, which had already been recorded…
SCOTT: Well, the album got mixed and mastered and is now manufactured, but it isn’t released yet. The process just took forever because of COVID delays and Brexit delays. The album wasn’t my main focus during lockdown because I knew that, realistically, you can’t put an album out during lockdown – you can’t tour it. I have a friend who put out an album in March 2020 and couldn’t tour it – he had to park it for two years, but the momentum goes out of it. Then I was thinking, ‘Right, once lockdown is over there’ll be a massive glut of albums coming out and mine will get lost in that – so I’m just going to wait’. I’m in no hurry to put it out. My main focus was really teaching and finishing my PhD.
COLIN: How did you adapt to the Zoom teaching?
SCOTT: It was fine. I invested in some good quality microphones and webcams.
COLIN: I have at least one friend, a mindfulness tutor, who has found the cloud to have a silver lining in that she got new clients via Zoom and that it’s an effective delivery system for what she does. I think her work will, by choice, be a hybrid of Zoom and in-person sessions now.
SCOTT: The Zoom teaching got me new students in the States, in Germany, all over Ireland and England as well. I even have one student who lives in the same street as me and he says he prefers Zoom lessens instead of coming round in person – because he can record the lesson and rewatch it at his leisure and take what he needs from it.
ANTHONY: An aside on the Zoom thing – during the first lockdown, I have a friend who’s involved in the Sunflower Folk Club [in Belfast] and he really wanted to help musicians. He said to me, ‘Can I give you a small fee to be a guest on one of our Zoom things?’ I said, ‘Sure’. Those folk club things are always seven or eight [floor] singers and then you do your half-hour spot and then more singers after that. I sat from the start to the end – I didn’t want to be rude and leave after my spot – and it was really interesting. I’ve done gigs at the Sunflower before, with maybe 45–50 people there, some of whom would get up to sing, some just listen. But watching it on Zoom there were people from Connecticut, people from Canada, from Sligo, from France – all kinds of people were ‘there’ who couldn’t be a part of it [geographically] before. The challenge for the club is how to translate that interest going forward – maybe broadcasting the live gigs [from the premises with an audience in the room] via Zoom. But I didn’t use Zoom very much, myself.
COLIN: When you say ‘Zoom’, do you mean the brand Zoom – which of course was a fairly basic video-conferencing tool that suddenly found itself being used in a sort of outside broadcast TV facility during lockdown, in contexts for which it had not been designed – or more sophisticated technology? I have a friend who was running a regular open mic event and her regulars were keen to keep it going via Zoom – though I understand that, while it was a morale booster as a one-off, various quality and functionality issues meant it wasn’t particularly effective as a listening experience.
ANTHONY: [Local singer/songwriter] Matt McGinn approached [fellow troubadours] Ben Glover and I and asked if we wanted to do an in-the-round for Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday, which was in the middle of the first lockdown. Matt had spoken to the people at Accidental Theatre about ticketing and hosting and so on but he had this idea – and I had grave doubts about whether it would work, technically – which was that we did the concert on Zoom (and my heart sank)… But Matt said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do – we will do the concert on Zoom and at the same time we will record ourselves on Pro-Tools with decent mics and we will film ourselves on our camera-phones with half-decent video. You guys will send it to me and I’ll edit it together with the Zoom thing.’ So, God bless him – they were huge files, an hour and 20 minutes on Pro Tools without stopping and your camera-phone too… But it turned out great because when you watched it the video quality was good and the sound quality was good and Zoom was kind of the framework for it. We did another one for Paul Simon in the second lockdown.
COLIN: Yes, Zoom was a technology that was in the right place at the right time as an entry-level solution to connect listeners to musicians and musicians to musicians. As the two years went on, audio-visual solutions seemed to improve.
DAVE: The Band of Friends – Gerry McAvoy, Jake Burns and so on – did a thing online that appeared to be live. The quality was superb – I don’t know how they did it.
COLIN: And even Bob Dylan did something similar [Shadow Play]. My pal Sarah McQuaid, as something COVID-safe and creative that she could do during lockdown, filmed and recorded a live album/DVD at her local church at St Buryan, near Land’s End – which will result in an income stream for her, some income for the church itself and, not least, a project that provided an outlet for creative energy and the sense of just doing something during a difficult time. But the lockdown, I think, asked a lot from fans. In the early days, a lot of artists were throwing out camera-phone stuff online and, initially, fans and well-wishers were happy to throw fivers at acts via PayPal to keep them ticking over. But after a while (a) the novelty wears off and (b) people’s tolerance of mediocre quality in the medium wears thin. Dave, did you do any online stuff during lockdown?
DAVE: No, but I was certainly aware of friends who did. Joe Kenny, a blind guitarist who’s very good, did a ‘Friday Night with Joe’ thing for weeks and weeks. It was very popular. But like you say, I think it died a bit of a death after a while.
COLIN: Scott, I’m aware that you did a small handful of live-in-the-shed, give-if-you-want-to Facebook performances during 2020 – keeping it to 20 minutes or so each time. You didn’t overdo it…
SCOTT: Yeah, I did a couple of things. I didn’t schedule them – I didn’t tell people, ‘I’ll be doing something on Saturday night’. Whenever it struck me that I had a couple of hours free and wanted to play piano, I thought that I may as well put it on Facebook live. I suppose I was fairly fortunate being a pianist – I’m a self-contained musician. Jazz doesn’t really lend itself very well to remote collaboration, because you can’t play off anybody, there’s no interaction. With jazz, I really like being in the room with other musicians working towards something. I did one of those online collaborations where somebody sent me a part and said, ‘Can you play this…’ and then thought, ‘No, I don’t really like this [process] at all’. The ability to be in the room – if I couldn’t have that, then I wasn’t really interested.
COLIN: I remember one of your Facebook live things was very interesting – a kind of collaboration with the printed page, where you had a book of jazz standards and flicked through it with commentary and stopped to play ones that either you liked or had never heard/played before, bringing terrific improvisation to lead sheets of unfamiliar music from the jazz past – a voyage of discovery for both you and the viewer/listener with your own commentary…
SCOTT: I remember that – and I was okay about providing a ‘director’s commentary’ like, ‘Oops, messed that one up!’ or ‘I really like this!’ I mean, I love a really professional concert but I also love seeing how the sausage is made.
COLIN: Dave, although you didn’t get involved in Zoom broadcasts to the masses, it seems to me that you’ve been on fire in the past couple of years with remote recording project collaborations, and you’ve also managed a couple of physical studio band sessions in between lockdowns and a couple of months back. Tell us about the Auld Gods project…
DAVE: It kind of took over. I think it might have happened anyway, regardless of lockdowns, but the lockdowns afforded us more time to sit in front of the computer. I got Logic X and literally from scratch I was learning how to use this thing. I discovered that a friend, Mike Williamson, who I’d played with back in the 70s, and who had moved to England, had just got some record equipment as well. So the two of us started sending tracks backwards and forwards and the next thing was his brother Marty, also in England, got involved as well. He’d played with the Psychedelic Furs, Sinead O’Connor and various others – a very good musician. From throwing one song about we ended up with an album coming out at the end of the month, called ‘Older, Wiser?’.
SCOTT: All recorded remotely?
DAVE: Yes, apart from one trip in late July/August when I went over to Southampton and we did two days of vocals in the studio and then they got on with mixing.
COLIN: Musically, that project was out of your comfort zone, wasn’t it?
DAVE: Well, again, it was down to learning how to use this home recording stuff. When you hear the album you’ll electronica, jazzy bits, a complete mish-mash of styles. For me, it was having a keyboard in front of me – and I don’t play keyboards – getting these great MIDI synth sounds. That’s where ‘Red Lines’ [the first single] comes from.
COLIN: Which was short-listed for an [NI music organisation] ‘Oh Yeah!’ Award…
DAVE: Yes, but it was always going to go to [funky girl band] Dea Matrona! (laughs)
COLIN: Before we leave 2020 behind, did you, Anthony, have any gigs in that short period between lockdowns, around August/September 2020?
ANTHONY: To be honest, I don’t remember. I might have had a couple of things but it was very low-key – sort of, ‘If we’re able to go ahead, we’ll do it’.
COLIN: Sometime in late 2020, I made the mistake of watching BBC NI News and, inevitably, had to write another punk protest song about Northern Ireland politicians, called ‘Northern Ireland Politicians’, which I recorded with Dave on vocals and various others at Brian Houston’s studio. We sorted out Northern Ireland politics…
DAVE: And we continue to do so…
COLIN: It felt like that session was a breath of fresh air for everyone who was there. It felt good to just do something. But Scott, on a more lasting level, in September 2020, yourself, [sound wizard] Cormac O’Kane, [events professional] Karen Smyth and myself somehow opened a jazz club in East Belfast, and managed two nights before all live music was effectively banned in Northern Ireland. Those were quite emotional events for many of those who were there – the first live music in six months in a time of misery…
SCOTT: It was a shot in the arm – like Anthony said, re-filling the well. But also opening a new well because all of a sudden not only was there actual jazz happening front of an actual audience but it was a new venue [a hitherto little-known cabaret lounge at the top floor of a working men’s club] and it was really well supported by people.
COLIN: Yes, and it wasn’t just the usual jazz cognoscenti – there were people there who were just delirious at being able to just go somewhere and hear live music. It was quite emotional.
SCOTT: It was. And it was also funny in a way in that it was the first proper concert… I do a lot of gigs, but not all of them are concerts [to a listening audience] and this was the first proper concert I had done in months. It was difficult, you know – it was hard to get my head back into that space. That wasn’t something you could practise during lockdown. In order to get better at doing concerts, you have to do concerts!
ANTHONY: I found it exhausting [getting back to concerts]. Did you find it exhausting?
SCOTT: Yes, I found it exhausting just doing stuff again. There was a mental cost to doing those gigs that was incredibly high. I’d come home delighted I’d done it but completely exhausted – physically as well.
ANTHONY: I was exactly the same. The first couple of things I did, I came home feeling I’d done a 10-mile run and had had to box somebody while doing it.
COLIN: I think we’re talking about 2021 now – because I think I was at one of the first comeback shows you did…
ANTHONY: The thing in Armagh? There were a couple before that.
COLIN: Scott, you and the Scott’s Jazz Club team were able to access some Arts Council money and keep the club brand ticking over in late 2020/early 2021 with a series of ‘Scott’s Jazz Club bites’ – brief social media videos of chat and one tune, usually themed to whatever the weather or month was, filmed at the grand piano at Cormac’s recording studio. And now, from September 2021 on, the club has reopened as a physical entity and, amazingly, in the few weeks before Christmas was so popular it was becoming a crowd-control situation – at a jazz club!
SCOTT: I think the cheap drink might have helped! (laughs)
COLIN: You must be very excited that we’ve now established Scott’s Jazz Club as a regular thing in East Belfast, with high-quality sound, lights and music every week.
ANTHONY: I think it’s a remarkable thing to have happened. It was completely against the trend of everything else that was going on – to have started something when everything else was shutting down.
SCOTT: …and it was jazz, and it wasn’t in the city centre…
ANTHONY: Does not compute!
SCOTT: For me, the reason it’s succeeded was Cormac O’Kane – not just his energy but the amount of work that he has put into the project. Not just making us sound good but it looks incredible – which is part of the reason people keep turning up, because they know it’s going to be a professional level show – but his enthusiasm, his commitment to it. I have dream job, just playing there.
COLIN: He approaches each Friday as if he’s putting on a TV show from a studio.
SCOTT: Yes, he’s really made that work – and the Jazz Club Bites that we did around Christmas 2020 and again in Spring 2021. His enthusiasm is great and it gives me the very easy job: just book musicians, turn up and play. I’m not an arts administrator and I’m probably not good at running a venue – I’ve never tried – but Cormac takes care of everything. I just turn up and play.
COLIN: But you’re the artistic director…
ANTHONY: And there’s a ‘name’ there – when you see your name there and the others associated, you know it’ll be a good gig.
SCOTT: I initially hated the idea of calling it ‘Scott’s Jazz Club’…
COLIN: Yes, for anyone who might it’s a huge ego trip, I should say that you didn’t choose the name – we did (myself, Cormac O’Kane and fourth conspirator Karen Smyth)…
SCOTT: Yes, the Arts Council application had to be in quickly and you guys decided on the name – but I’m really happy with it now. I have a story: my sister-in-law, who lives in County Kildare, was chatting to somebody from Belfast on one of these dating apps, and whenever he asked what music she liked and she mentioned jazz he said, ‘Oh, I like jazz – I was at this gig called Scott’s Jazz Club in Belfast…’ Now, she didn’t let on ‘That’s my brother-in-law’ – but the word is out there. I think the club will become part of the circuit for Irish jazz.
COLIN: And how did the date go?
ANTHONY: It’s none of your business! (laughs)
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SCOTT FLANIGAN TRIO + LINLEY HAMILTON – a video filmed for an online series of clips funded by the Oh Yeah! Centre in September 2021, filmed just prior to one of two Scott’s Jazz Club gigs managed in betwee lockdown in NI:
DAVE McLARNON: THE COMEBACK CONTINUES
COLIN: Moving on from that, Dave, you have various projects on the go, haven’t you? When lockdown eased in 2021 you started rehearsing the new version of Shock Treatment…
DAVE: Yes, I think even rehearsed a couple of times when we weren’t meant to be [vis a vis on/off NI guidelines on assembling], I’m not sure. But it sounds great.
COLIN: I’m sure it’ll be a revelation to those who booed you offstage in Portstewart in the 80s – it might even have been Anthony [who is from the town] …
DAVE: Ha! There’s a very good recording of Shock Treatment playing in Chester’s and you hear people saying ‘Get off! You’re crap!’ (laughs)
COLIN: So, you’re excited about the new line-up?
DAVE: Yes. And we’ve recorded two tracks. One is a cover of ‘Bewarewolf!’ by Rudi for a Rudi tribute thing that’s coming out and we did a New York Dolls song, ‘Babylon’, for a New York Dolls tribute – both on Time To Be Proud.
COLIN: Any plans for a standalone Shock Treatment release?
DAVE: Yes, we’ve got two tracks that we want to go in and record with Vic [local sound wizard Victor Bronzini-Fulton]. And the Sacred Heart of Bontempi…
COLIN: I was coming to that – the Sacred Heart being an occasional studio project fronted by Paul Burgess, from your punk-era contemporaries Ruefrex. The latest effort being ‘Vanished Into Air’ (single/video). It’s fair to say that your recording session for that, naming no names, was full of incident…
DAVE: Yes. Full of angst! I became the diplomat… The song is about ‘the Disappeared’ – it’s quite emotive, a very atmospheric song, very well-written and well-recorded. Alastair Graham – a cardiac consultant who shot lots of classic Ulster punk photos way back – has done a video for it, on YouTube, It’s all linked to the Wave Trauma people. So, it’s out there and it’s had well over 1,000 views.
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THE SACRED HEART OF BONTEMPI ‘Vanished into Air’, featuring Dave McLarnon on guitar (Paul Burgess, vocal/guitar, in the video):
ARTISTS & STUDIOS
COLIN: In the case of the Bontempi session, Scott and Anthony, there were misunderstandings in the studio that created a bit of tension – eventually resolved. But it brings up the general question of the role of studios for the self-funding musician – an important periodic transaction and a situation in which there has to be a degree of trust between artist and facilitator, be they there purely as an engineer or, with a creative input, as producer. Anthony – you pretty much always use ‘Cosmic’ Clive Culbertson on the north coast. Scott, do you have a regular studio?
SCOTT: I’ve used the same studio twice [for my two albums] and I’ll probably use a different one next time. Partly because, one of the awkward things about being a jazz piano, is that you’re limited by the piano. I’ve recorded with the same piano twice now and it’s ‘okay’ but I’d like to move on.
COLIN: With Clive, Anthony, is it that you like his sound and his technical or musical contributions or is part of it simply knowing that you’ll get on easily?
ANTHONY: Well, Clive is a friend and I’ve played in various country bands with him…
DAVE: He’s hard not to like.
ANTHONY: Yeah, he’s very likeable guy. He’s always been totally honest with me about the material, the performance and the arrangements… and that has been occasionally uncomfortable, but never unkind. And actually, seldom wrong.…
DAVE: He recorded the very last [original-era] Shock Treatment session and it’s the best, it’s brilliant.
ANTHONY: He has a real ability to capture the energy of that sort of thing.
DAVE: There’s one track we can’t find, from 1981 – it was called ‘Father, the Troubles are Over’. (laughs)
ANTHONY: The first time I recorded there I was living up there [in Portstewart] and he was the professional studio in the neighbourhood. He held my hand through the entire process – ‘I’ll get you a good drummer… I’ll get you a guitar player…’ The second time, I thought, ‘I’ll go there again’ – I’d had a good experience. So it becomes one of those things – and it’s 12 albums now – where you have a telepathy. You’ll just look at each other [after a take] and go, ‘Nah… we can get a better one…’ He’s very good at spotting things like speeding up in a performance.
SCOTT: There’s a lot to be said, as well, about being in a room that you’re really comfortable with, where you’ve played a lot. Some of my best playing has been…
COLIN: …when nobody’s listening?
SCOTT: Well, yes! At Bert’s Jazz Bar [a background jazz gig in an up-market Belfast hotel] whenever nobody’s listening – and it’s because I’ve played there two or three times a week for 10 years. I’m so comfortable with the room and with the piano. And if you’re in a studio where it feels new, you’re not completely comfortable with it all, it’s going to throw you a little off-guard. Whereas, if you record in your front room, it’s going to be great. If you can remove anything that causes you stress or difficulty in a recording situation, everything gets better.
ANTHONY: Playing and recording with the same person all these years, the one challenge that I have is that Clive is a commercial/pop producer – so the early stuff that I put out was very glossy, it was really well-produced, very tidy, very clean. As time has gone on I have said, ‘No, I want it a bit looser, a bit earthier’ and he has completely gone along with that.
SCOTT: How much of that is you finding your artistic voice?
ANTHONY: I think there’s a lot of that too. You kind of mature and you want different things, and less of what you had before, maybe. But we have this long-term relationship now where I can say things like that where I maybe wouldn’t before.
COLIN: Sarah McQuaid used Gerry O’Beirne as her producer for three albums, with the sound and arrangements becoming ever more exquisite. After three, they felt they’d taken it as far as they could and she felt it was time to shake things up in a different environment. I think she was right. Personally, I feel the pendulum swung too far with her next album, which had frequencies I dislike. But I applaud her for recognising it was time to refresh things. You obviously don’t feel that’s necessary with Clive…
ANTHONY: Yes, both of us have changed our relationship with the music. Halfway through [the 12-album journey] we stopped thinking of this as commercial stuff to be played on the radio and more as pieces of art the we put out, that we can stand over and be proud of.
COLIN: Which brings to mind that fellow from Lisburn that you tell audiences about, telling you how much he enjoyed your songs and then saying, ‘So, what happened – did you not want to be successful?’ (laughs)
ANTHONY: Yes – ‘How come you never made it big – was it just not your thing?’ (laughs) The last thing I’ll say on studios is that, in me, there’s an element of control freakery that doesn’t want to go into another studio and start a new relationship. ’
SCOTT: That’s that comfort thing again…
ANTHONY: I know – it’s probably our enemy, but we need to get things finished and we need to be happy with them. Can you imagine if you went to a new studio with a bunch of great songs and you weren’t happy with them – what would you do? I’m not Pink Floyd – I can’t re-do the album in Miami. So I’ve got to get what I need.
DAVE: I remember when Clive signed to Double Deal Records who tried to turn him into a pop star – dressed him in a white suit and winklepickers and sent him to health farm… and he put on weight! (laughs)
ANTHONY: They signed him up to a gym and he said, ‘I went to the gym every morning and then came home and ate pies!’ He completely got it wrong!
COLIN: You were telling me yesterday that your current project is to work towards a self-curated ‘best of’ album of stripped-down new recordings…
ANTHONY: Yes, just guitar and vocal.
COLIN: And will you be marketing that as a kind of ‘greatest hits’?
ANTHONY: Well, I am using this as a kind of tool to try and get more folk club and folk festival work. If I send out a produced album with drums, horns, guitars on it to a folk club they’ll think, ‘That’s not our thing’. Quite a lot of people who come to my shows ask why I never do anything [on record] completely acoustic and I’m thinking, ‘Yes, I should do…’ The Arts Council money that came through [£2,000 Individual Artist awards made available in NI in late 2021] could almost cover a project like that – it’s quite a cheap one to do. So the idea is that I’m going to revisit well-known songs of mine – ‘Sailortown’, ‘Fivemiletown’ and stuff like that – but also stuff from my back catalogue where I’ve thought, ‘I recorded that all wrong, my instinct was wrong then; I’d like to re-do it…’
COLIN: Are you sure you’ll be able to resist the urge to put a bit of piano here and there and suchlike?
ANTHONY: Well, that’s the thing. My confidence levels are surprisingly low despite the number of times I’ve done this and I’ve found myself going, ‘Oh, maybe a bit of percussion on this… maybe some stand-up bass… and while we’re at it, some piano…’
COLIN: I’ve had conversations with John McSherry in the past – one of the world’s greatest uilleann pipers – and urged him to make a completely solo piping album. But again, with him, I think it’s a confidence issue – not believing that people would listen to 40 minutes of solo piping.
ANTHONY: I’ve always been the same. It’s taken me 13 or 14 years to decide, ‘Yes, maybe this would work’. The idea is not to release it commercially [at first], because the songs from the second lockdown are all sitting there ready to come out as well – later this year. And that is a more produced album – some rocky stuff, some bluesy stuff. I’m thinking maybe this unplugged thing could come out after that, maybe on vinyl.
COLIN: Sometimes things like this – where the artist sees them as a minor thing or a side thing – can take on a life of their own. A few years back, [Americana troubadour] Brooks Williams put out an album called ‘Brooks’ Blues’, not intended as a big deal, but Bob Harris latched on to it and I think it opened some new doors for Brooks that he wasn’t expecting.
ANTHONY: To be honest, I haven’t entirely settled on that as a course of action. I’ve got three or four projects that I’ve lined up, some in various stages of completion, and, like you Scott, I’m asking myself ‘What should I park?’
COLIN: He’s asking himself ‘*Where* should I park?’ (laughs)
ANTHONY: You don’t want to flood the market with stuff. You want to go out and tour it, talk about it, get some coverage for it. So I’m trying to get them lined up.
THE FUTURE OF PHYSICAL MUSIC MEDIA
COLIN: Artists have reacted to lockdown variously in terms of putting stuff out. Scott didn’t need to put his album out, so he’s held it back. [Belfast troubadour] Brian Houston, I know, has five or six completed albums, in various styles – blues, gospel, singer-songwriter, children’s…
ANTHONY: Brian never stops…
COLIN: Indeed, and of course he has his own studio. But ironically, while he *could* have put all those out digitally during lockdown and made some income that way, he held back – and is only releasing one now, on vinyl, in January 2022. It’s his first release since 2019 – the longest gap between releases in a 30-year career. I don’t know if Brian’s approach – to not cash in those assets during lockdown – was right or wrong…
ANTHONY: Very hard to tell. It’s a really changing picture, in terms of digital media versus physical media. So, putting an album out – do you press CDs? That’s a big question at the minute.
COLIN: For Brian, I’d say physical media is still valid. Scott, something I find interesting with you is that you don’t have a CD player and yet you make CDs…
SCOTT: Yes, the only way that I can listen to a CD is in my car, which is 11 years old.
ANTHONY: And the next one won’t have a CD player.
COLIN: But you’re nevertheless a voracious listener to music, via digital platforms…
SCOTT: Yes. What I find is that I sell CDs at gigs – not even to people who want to go home and play the CDAVE: they’re giving you money to support the fact that you’re doing this. By buying a CD they’re saying, ‘I want you to make more of this music that I can consume – either on vinyl, on CD or digitally’.
COLIN: Dave, the Sacred Heart of Bontempi single is digital-only. Is that the same for the Auld Gods album?
DAVE: The Auld Gods album is CD and streaming. We were going to do vinyl but there’s such a long wait for pressings now [six to eight months].
COLIN: What’s the thinking behind physical product? Because you’re not a touring band that can sell at gigs…
DAVE: It’s very much the guys in England. It’s their call. Mike has put a lot of energy into it.
COLIN: To an extent, a physical entity helps the artist themselves – it’s a thing that physically exists to tangibly mark the completion of a project.
DAVE: Yes, though he does want to put a show together – which will be tricky. He reckons that he, Marty, a bass player and a drummer can put something together in England and bring it over, and I’ll just step up and sing.
COLIN: To throw my few pence worth in, I’m involved in a lot of vintage music box set projects, and it seems to me that while the single CD has diminished in importance, especially for ‘new’ music, there’s a significant interest in elaborate multi-disc sets – for vintage music and, for bigger acts, ‘super deluxe’ editions of new albums. It might be a last hurrah for a certain generation, but there’s definitely interest in owning physical ‘artefacts’. Personally, I think the vinyl revival will burn out through supply issues, rising cost…
ANTHONY: …and the complete lack of portability.
COLIN: Yes. That will fade out. But I can’t see anything replacing the CD as a convenient, affordable physical carrier of music. There may be even a CD revival of sorts.
ANTHONY: I think CD will go the way of vinyl – it will vanish as a medium and then come back. I did a little straw poll on Facebook and on my mailing list and asked, ‘How do you consume music? Give me a clue because it costs money – am I getting it right?’ I was amazed at the number of people – 20 or 25 – who said, ‘When I go to your gigs and I buy your CDS, I never listen to them – because I already listen to you on Spotify. But I know that if I buy a CD the tenner goes in your pocket.’ They bring it home and throw it in a drawer or give it to Oxfam or whatever. And I kind of think, ‘You could have just given me the tenner!’
SCOTT: They’re getting something you’ve physically created…
COLIN: …something for you to sign…
ANTHONY: Yes, and in fairness, I’ve always included a lyric booklet and so on. I have free badges at the merchandise stall – take a badge, sign up to the mailing list!
COLIN: The merchandise stall at gigs – it’s literally a transactional thing but it’s also, maybe as importantly, a more organic transactional thing between artist and punter: they’ll have a chat, tell you how much they enjoyed the show and buy a souvenir – and I think that’s ‘part of the show’ for some people.
ANTHONY: Stewart Lee’s very interesting about this when he talks about selling his DVDs after the show. ‘Most of you will probably already have illegally downloaded this content but I can’t keep carrying it round in boxes like some kind of farmer’s market guy…’
SCOTT: I’ve bought CDs at gigs to support the artist and never listened to them – I’ve done that. I’ve been on both sides of it.
ANTHONY: You should manufacture completely blank CDs… (laughs) I’m at pains not to sound like an old fart saying, ‘It was better in my day’. It’s changing, and it’s wonderful, and I’m trying to find a way to embrace that.
MONETISING MUSIC AND ‘THE ALBUM’ IN THE MODERN ERA
COLIN: I’m convinced that there’s no diminishing of interest in consuming music, but somehow in the last 20 years people’s understanding of professional music-making needing to be transactional for it to continue has diminished. There’s perception problem on the value of music.
ANTHONY: It’s under siege…
SCOTT: Yes, and part of that is the streaming companies trying to dictate how music is produced.
COLIN: I know one troubadour seriously considering trying to counter this diminished perception of value by daring means – by producing say 50 copies of his next album and charging £50 each, by telling his core fans how much he has put into creating the music and the value it represents to him, and inviting them to agree. It’s daring way to think – and it requires you to know there is a hard core of fans who will support that idea. What do you think of the thrust of that idea – is it a go-er?
ANTHONY: Risky. It depends on your fan base and how much money you think they have.
DAVE: I think it might work for people who are fairly well-known – maybe yourself Anthony, or Brian Houston. It wouldn’t work for me! (laughs)
SCOTT: Nor me!
COLIN: The battle needs to be contested on the basis that recorded music has a value – a literal value in terms of the money involved in its creation, but also an emotional value.
ANTHONY: Have you read Chris Anderson’s book ‘The Long Tail’? People like me are in the long tail, out there selling this many CDs compared to Bruce Springsteen or whoever. But when you add up all of the artists selling, it makes a fortune for Amazon or Google…
COLIN: I’m part of that to an extent in that my Bert Jansch biography, published 22 years ago, has never been out of print. It took maybe 15 years for the advance to be recouped but it reliably sells around 100 copies a year. It ticks along.
ANTHONY: Which is one of the reasons why it’s good for somebody like me to just keep putting stuff out. It keeps ticking along.
COLIN: To interject, I wouldn’t want people reading this to think that we’re all focused on money – because I know that we all create stuff primarily from an artistic perspective: we ultimately want people to hear it, or read it. Aside from revenues, it’s important to know that people simply appreciate what you do… even if they’re not paying for it!
SCOTT: Even if they’re not paying for it. I think we all, as artists, really have to embrace the concept of the album – which is against everything the streaming companies want. They want you to put out a single and then another single and then another single…
COLIN: And Dave, you’ve kind of been going along with that – dealing with the medium of the streaming single for a couple of years. Yet still thinking in terms of a physical product/album with Shock Treatment.
DAVE: Yeah. That’s probably just the old git in me coming out.
COLIN: It’s a body of work, and the existence of ‘an album’ allows people to understand that this is music created at a particular time and representing a particular artistic vision.
ANTHONY: One of the things that the streaming services and Amazon want to tell you is that if you put out an album, it’s there for a moment and then you’re gone until the next one a year or 18 months later, whereas if you do singles, you’re here all the time.
COLIN: I think we all think in terms of ‘the album’ as a body of work, a year’s worth of work or whatever the time period is [mutterings of agreement all round]. So if we think like that, the challenge is to get that across to listenerSCOTT: this isn’t what Anthony, Dave or Scott have to say this month – this is what they have to say *for this year*.
SCOTT: The thing is, if you go into a studio and record a single in a day, it will cost you the same as if you recorded six songs in a day.
COLIN: Which we actually all did yesterday!
ANTHONY: This more commercial thing that I have planned for later this year – if I can get it done, mixed and mastered early enough in the year and put out singles every couple of months…
COLIN: Some artists will make a publicity pitch about putting out a single a month, though I suspect that’s not such an unusual thing these days. The Wedding Present, I think, managed to do that with physical singles in the 80s. But I’ve noticed that some name artists, or their labels, are now opting to put out a series of digital EPs and then later collecting them all on an album – effectively having two bites of the cherry, extending the life of the musical offering.
ANTHONY: The idea is that you’re building anticipation…
COLIN: So is that what you’re planning, Anthony?
ANTHONY: Yeah. I’ve never done it before, but that’s what I’m thinking of doing this time.
COLIN: Would that work in the jazz world, Scott?
SCOTT: No, I don’t think it would. In terms of jazz, not every track makes an incredible single, and I really like ‘an album’ – not just the song itself. The album is like a macrocosm of the song in that it has shape and flow, as the song does.
COLIN: So do you choose to listen to an album of music in the order that the artist intended?
SCOTT: Yes. I mean, I would listen to some electronica, almost as background music, and that can be in any order, on shuffle. I’m fine with that. But when it comers to really creative music by musicians in a studio I will listen to it as an album from start to finish – because I really enjoy going on that journey. I feel like an EP is *okay* but I want a bit more.
COLIN: I think a large part of an artist’s audience – in certain genres at least – think in the same way. One often finds online comments along the lines of ‘Great EP… but I can’t wait for the album’.
SCOTT: In some ways the album is the consumable and repeatable version of the concert. And a concert isn’t just one song from one artist then next artist and next song – I wouldn’t find that a very enjoyable concert.
COLIN: So… not a fan of Keith Jarrett concerts when he plays one song for two hours? (laughs)
SCOTT: No, I am – because it’s Keith Jarrett! But if it was Keith Jarrett for five minutes and then Chick Corea for five minutes, I’m not really interested in that. I want to hear them relax into the gig, relax into making music and tell me the *entire* story. I want to see all of the ways you think about music right now, as an artist in this current time.
COLIN: You talk as a jazz man there. Dave, you’re from the punk era in the 70s and 80s, which was very much all about the singles rather than the album, and Shock Treatment released two or three…
DAVE: Two singles…
COLIN: And those sides have been on various compilations since. Do you, then, still think in terms of individual ‘tracks’? I know there has been one Shock Treatment album (in 2014) thus far…
DAVE: Yes, 35 years after we first thought about it! (laughs) We always talked about doing an album at the time but it never happened. So when I reformed the band, without [latter-day publishing legend] Barry McIlheney, the main guy, I asked him if he wanted to contribute and he said, ‘No, you tear away’ – so we did. But for people of our era, it’s the traditional route – two or three singles then an album.
COLIN: You followed that route with Peacefrog in the 90s – a single then an album.
DAVE: It came too late. We spent a lot of money going off to London and doing showcase gigs. We had a big fanbase here, we should have done an album here with the money we spent going to London. But yeah, with the Auld Gods [currently], I still think in terms of putting out [digital] singles and then the album.
COLIN: There aren’t that many classic punk albums, are there, compared to what people would think of as classic punk singles?
DAVE: Mmmm, yes. When I think about how my sons listen to music… One’s 22, one’s 23. The 22-year-old is a big music buff – he’s taught himself guitar, bouzouki, piano… I’m already in his shadow! He would be listening to the Fureys one minute, the Pistols the next – this big mish-mash…
COLIN: Yes, younger listeners today seem liberated from genres and tribalism. All of music is there to be heard. But there’s no historical grasp of it.
ANTHONY: Yeah, it’s all a playlist.
DAVE: I think you lose something…
ANTHONY: Yeah, I think there’s something lost. Something’s lost when somebody wakes up on Sunday mornings and asks for a ‘Sunday morning chill’ playlist, and it’s all there – Ella, Louis – and they’ve no idea where it comes from.
COLIN: I’m a history buff, so it does bother me that people have no idea that Louis Armstrong doesn’t occupy the same place in time as Ed Sheeran or whoever. In a way, it’s interesting that people don’t have time-based snobbery – ‘We can’t listen to that, it’s old hat’ – but it seems to me weird that there’s no grasp of things occurring over a hundred-year timeline.
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ANTHONY TONER – one of his classics, ‘The Road to Fivemiletown’, 2012:
FIRST GIGS AFTER LOCKDOWN
COLIN: Moving on from that, tell me about your first gigs after lockdown and you got back into the swing of things.
ANTHONY: I was quite late getting back. The one you saw in Armagh was one of the first. I did a week and a half in October [2021], with Barbara Dickson, in Scotland, England and Wales. I did some gigs in my own name that summer. When I launched [my latest album] ‘Six Inches of Water’, it was at EastSide Arts Festival, with a band at Willowfield Church. People were socially distanced with masks, because church rules were slightly different – having to keep your mask on during a gig. That was quite weird, looking out on seemingly expressionless people – who all told me later they were enjoying themselves, but I couldn’t tell at the time!
COLIN: Scott, you’ve done gigs in front of expressionless people – though no masks were involved! (laughs)
SCOTT: Actually, I did one with a masked audience – and I think you were on it, Anthony – with [local blues legend] Ronnie Greer’s band. I think this was in 2020, between lockdowns, in the Titanic Quarter. It was a drive-in gig and there were maybe 50 cars. I have a video of it on my phone. You finish the tune, play the chord… and you don’t hear applause, you hear people beeping their horns and flashing their lights! It was a surreal experience.
COLIN: Fantastic. Anthony, you’ve told me previously that your first couple of gigs back last year felt a bit weird, that it took you a while to acclimatise to it again.
ANTHONY: Yes. The Willowfield one was probably not a good one to start back with, because I had a band, and I don’t normally have a band, so I was nervous. ‘Will everyone remember to stop at the same time?’
COLIN: Sounds like one of my recording sessions! (laughs)
ANTHONY: I was worried about the punters feeling nervous as well. So I had all kinds of things going on in my head. But a couple of days later I did a shared gig, ‘Under the Influence’, with Gráinne Duffy and Gareth Dunlop and a well-rehearsed house band, and we did these covers that we loved – Springsteen, Little Feat and so on – in the open air, at CS Lewis Square. And that felt amazing – the feeling of hitting an instrument and getting a reaction from people – when I’d been hitting that instrument in a room for six or eight months with nobody there to hear it but me. So that was interesting, and very, very gratifying. None of us slept – we all went home and were buzzing for hours afterwards.
COLIN: You’ve done a handful of solo arts centre gigs since then, though I know that just before Christmas fear seemed to descend on the land [in NI, re: Omicron] and people started consciously staying away from events. The gigs were on but no one was going.
ANTHONY: That was hard. The one in Armagh was quite well attended, though socially distanced, but there was a good connection [with the audience]. But there were others in that little run of gigs [late last year] that were stiff and unconnected, or just poorly attended.
COLIN: Scott, you’ve got a regular midweek background gig at Bert’s jazz bar in Belfast and then your own jazz club in East Belfast every Friday [since September 2020], and I think you’ve had some other gigs during the second half of last year – so you’ve had quite an array of public-facing things happening. In fact, you even escaped early from our studio session yesterday with talk about a cabaret engagement in Larne of all places…
SCOTT: It was very funny – I was playing for a posh birthday dinner, and they were in one room and I was in another! They just asked me to play quite loud, so the music would filter in… But I always do play a range of gigs. Not all of them are concert gigs. In fact, most of them aren’t. The first gig back felt a little bit strange. I felt technically, at the piano, there was no problem, because I’d still been playing with students [in online teaching] and doing the odd bit of practice at home. But in terms of my creativity, like taking a piano solo as a long-form thing within a band – that’s not something I’d done for two years. So I was thinking, ‘How do I construct this thing? Even though I’d been talking about it with students for ages the act of doing it took a while to get back. But after a week or so, it was like coming back to school after summer holidays – after a week, it felt like you’d never been away.
COLIN: Dave, I think I’m right in saying, that you’ve had some gigs cancelled due to the current Omicron panic…
DAVE: Yes…
SCOTT: I’ve had some gigs cancelled – I had COVID [in December].
ANTHONY: I haven’t yet, but I have in February that I don’t think will happen…
COLIN: Dave, I know you’ve been back in action in the form of a duo with Billy Shovel [former Ghost of An American Airmen personality Ben Trowell]. How have those gigs been?
DAVE: Well, the first one was a disaster. The sound system was dreadful, from the first song to the last. That was maybe August, and the first gig back. It was in [a pub in] Bangor on the evening of a ‘Punk in the Park’ show [the Outcasts at Ward Park]. We did it again a few weeks ago and it went okay, and we did the Lissan House thing [a charity show in Tyrone].
COLIN: Lissan House was great fun. But you’d rather not keep doing duo things?
DAVE: I hate doing it! I’d rather be in a band.
COLIN: Is it a cheap option for promoters?
DAVE: Definitely: ‘Let’s pay one guy or two guys…’
COLIN: But realistically, you are the bandleader with Shock Treatment, so it’s up to you to say no to people asking for a cut-down version of that…
DAVE: I think I was just keen to get back playing. We were to do a band show, Shock Treatment, again in Bangor – Donegan’s or Wolsey’s – but one of the guys got COVID. And then the Hat Band were to do the Empire [in Belfast] with the Adventures this weekend, but that’s cancelled, by the venue, because of the Omicron fear. But I’m told that’ll be rescheduled.
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DAVE McLARNON & BILLY SHOVEL opted to perform without mics at a charity show at country mansion Lissan House in October 2021. Here they are playing the 1980 Shock Treatment classic ‘Big Check Shirts’:
THE YEAR AHEAD, CROWDFUNDING, LIVESTREMING, SURVIVING
COLIN: Summarise your plans for the year and give us your view on whether we’ve seen the last of lockdowns.
ANTHONY: The smart thinking at the moment is that these waves are going to be with us in some form forever, but as for the scene coming back, I’ve decided I want to make this collection of mainstream songs that I mentioned sometime in late summer. For the first half of the year, I’ve decided I’ll just work at home – I’m not hustling for gigs until later in the year. It’s partly the control freak in me – I want to book gigs far enough ahead so I know that they’ll actually happen. There’s a lot of venues at the moment saying, ‘We don’t really know… write back in a month…’ and you waste a lot of time and energy: leave it till the end of the year. Plus it gives me time to think about getting it created, to think about singles, about how I’m going to promote it.
COLIN: Many of the places you play are arts centres, and they operate on six-month lead times anyway…
ANTHONY: Yes, and they’re variable. Some of them haven’t been open since the start of the whole thing, others are open and running gigs again. So it’s variable across that scene.
COLIN: So you’re hoping by the second half of this year everything is back in action?
ANTHONY: Touch wood, yes.
COLIN: And without wanting to intrude too much, you’re financially able to ride it out?
ANTHONY: No. That’s the fear. That’s what’s keeping me awake at night – can I get from here to there?
COLIN: Your partner is also in the arts world, isn’t she?
ANTHONY: Yes. She has a theatre company and works part-time – she’s paid two days a week.
COLIN: Did she access any furlough money?
ANTHONY: She did, and I got some of the Rishi Sunak money.
COLIN: That furlough money, I believe, is no longer there yet the live music scene is no longer back to where it was…
ANTHONY: If I can keep the lights on and keep food on the table from here to there, that’s the plan. What frightens me about it is if I’m going to commercially produce music, that’s going to cost money. I have savings that I don’t want to bite too deeply into. We’ll see how it goes.
COLIN: Would you consider, given the lockdown/post-lockdown recovery circumstances that everyone understands, tapping your fanbase in some way, saying ‘Help me out’ in return for souvenirs or special editions of some kind?
ANTHONY: Well, I’ve started a Patreon account and I’ve got 16 or 17 subscribers. I would do various exclusive online things – like a reading of a Patrick Kavanagh poem for Christmas, or if I have a new song I’ll share a demo version of it. And as I’ve been moving my previous albums on to Bandcamp I’ll give my Patreon subscribers MP3s of each album for free. So I’m doing that kind of thing and I need to probably increase that and see if I can get more patrons. The acoustic album [I talked about earlier] will probably go to them straight away.
COLIN: I think, in current times, fans are happy to give something as long as there is some engagement from the artist.
DAVE: When you did the crowdfunding thing, it went well for you, didn’t it?
COLIN: Yes, I did a small crowdfunding campaign recently for the album I’m making with Breige Devlin. The only other one I’ve done, for myself, was for a self-published book in 2017.
DAVE: My fear is that nobody would want to give me anything!
COLIN: I’m quite relaxed about that. With the book campaign, for my second John McLaughlin book [a limited-edition companion volume to a commercially published book], I had nothing to lose, and the exercise was partly for publicity – which worked tremendously well. With the Breige album, it was partly also to get the word out – because Breige has done lots of gigs but no recording, and a lot of people would be familiar with her singing. It genuinely wouldn’t have bothered me if only half a dozen people had been interested – because I know there are so many other artists out there in need, and so many other things for people to spend money on.
DAVE: You’re not doing it for the money…
COLIN: I’m not doing it for the money, but it certainly helps. That fundraiser has generated just over £1,000, which is fantastic, and I applied for and received the Arts Council’s £2,000 Individual Artist award in December. That gives me £3,000 to disperse to professional musicians and studios in Northern Ireland – and I’ll add further resources myself to pay for a pressing of 100–200 units in a nice digipak, and also make the music available on digital platforms.
DAVE: I admire you for doing it but if it was me, I’d worry that no one would support me.
COLIN: Well, when we did the crowdfunder for [NI punk legend] Petesy Burns in 2020 [because Petesy claimed no public resources while his teaching and performing incomes were cut off], we raised around £2,500, from memory. So my point is that there’s a real spirit of camaraderie in the community of old punks in NI. As long as you’re not doing it every other month, I think people would happily throw a few pounds into a Dave McLarnon crowdfunding campaign…
ANTHONY: There was a school of thought that you could only do that once. I remember Duke Special was one of the first who did it [locally] – I think it was Kickstarter. I remember asking him at a music industry Q&A thing at the Strand cinema some years ago, ‘Was it a success and do you think it will become a regular thing for artists to do?’ He replied, ‘It was a success but I’d be very wary of doing it again. I think it asks a lot of people. And it took a lot out of me to ask.’ But I think it has changed now. I think you can do it again, though it depends on what you’re asking for.
COLIN: Yes, I think attitudes have changed and maybe it’s the last option for some. I certainly know some artists who went down the crowdfunding path during lockdown who previously swore they never would – because by that point there was no other way. They accepted that, whatever their own struggles with it, their fanbase would completely understand that they had no other means by which to keep on creating music in that period. It’s definitely a matter of degree. If you’re seen to go cap in hand to your audience regularly, I think it will wear thin. But I think any stigma about it per se has now gone, given the protracted lockdowns.
SCOTT: Yeah, I mean, I’ve supported other musicians and I don’t think anything [negative] of it. For me, it’s like, ‘Okay, you’ve got something coming out? Here’s my money.’
ANTHONY: But would you do that with those musicians on the third or fourth time? Because I find myself thinking [of some artists] ‘Again? Really?!’
SCOTT: it probably depends on the musician. If it’s a local musician, maybe not; if it’s a big-name musician…
COLIN: That’s quite funny: ‘If it’s one of my friends, no! If it’s a big name…’ (laughs)
SCOTT: If it’s a big name, they probably don’t need to do it.
COLIN: On that score, Paul McCartney has been getting a lot of negativity from fans in recent years for endless variant versions of his new albums and ridiculously priced deluxe editions – £300+ for a box with one extra track, a jigsaw, a T-shirt and a load of tat. He knows there are a couple of thousand diehard fans will buy this stuff in every variant, and they do – but they seem to hate him for it. And he doesn’t their money. But for the cottage industry artist, I think the text book is still being written on how best to interact with your fan base to get through the post-lockdown landscape until the scene, in some probably diminished form, comes back…
ANTHONY: It’s going to come back very different, with all kinds of bells and whistles added. So, if you do a gig, should you really have a camera up at the side and livestream it to people who can’t be there in person?
COLIN: That brings us back to a dilemma that was faced by artists in the 1940s/50s Variety era – you have a certain amount of material that can sustain a live career, but once you’ve ‘given it away’ with a broadcast, yes, you’ve reached more people, but then you have to come up with a whole new act. The parallel isn’t exact but there is some element of that – ‘Why should I bother paying to go and see Anthony, Dave or Scott when there’s a great-quality film of their show online?’ I think, Scott, that Cormac was very wise when the pair of you were filming ‘Scott’s Jazz Club Bites’ around Christmas 2020 and Spring 2021, to keep the club brand going – a bit of breezy chat with you and then one tune. It kept people engaged without boring them, and left them wanting more…
SCOTT: I’ve done jazz residencies where it’s the same band every week. It’s great for the musicians but for the audience they’re going to think, ‘Didn’t we hear that one last week?’
COLIN: Monetising livestreams is still a challenge, a bit like monetising podcasts. I just don’t think there is a perception of value for filmed performances among the potential audience compared to even ‘the album’. There is at least a history of people having equated ‘the album’ as an artefact with monetary value; there isn’t that history with livestreams and online content – it’s just ‘there’.
ANTHONY: Another interesting thing that Chris Anderson says in ‘The Long Tail’ is that in any digital marketplace – ANY digital marketplace – the price will drop to zero. That’s his belief. Music will be free; video content will be free. To try and market things, we’re relying not on the market but on personal connection [with one’s audience].
COLIN: With digital content, I think he’s right – you can’t fight that. But with a physical thing, I think the battle is still worth having…
SCOTT: ‘Here is a thing that I created…’ That’s why your Patreon idea is a good one. If I film a gig, what do I do with it? Do I charge people [directly]… or do I give it away to Patreon subscribers, who have already paid? I think you give it to Patreon people.
ANTHONY: Which is why I’ve determined that anything I put out, Patreon subscribers will get it first and for free.
COLIN: I’ve been involved in a couple of online videos myself, as you know – ‘Smash the System’ and, with Dave, ‘Northern Ireland Politicians’ – and I see things like that as a promotional / sharing tool. ‘Here’s a message I have, have a look…’ But if I was in your positions, as professional artists, and somebody offered to film your show, I’d be asking, ‘Will this help or damage what I’m wanting to do?’ Because as good as a digitally filmed live show might be, it’s not the same as being in the room. Yet is there a danger that people might become lazy and think, after seeing a load of 2022 Shock Treatment clips online, ‘Good old Dave… but I don’t need to go to his gig now’? Is there a danger that the promotional tool actually becomes an Achilles heel?
SCOTT: Well, if I could just go back to the money thing. The way that musicians make money has changed…
COLIN: Musicians make money…? (laughs)
SCOTT: I’ll be sending you my invoice!
COLIN: Joking aside, Anthony and Dave actually *do* have to send me an invoice! (laughs)
SCOTT: Yes, you’ve already paid me for yesterday! But the days of the big-money concerts, as we’ve found in the last two years, isn’t workable. The most successful musicians I know now are ones who get a little bit of money from a lot of people [mutters of agreement all round] – for me that’s teaching, for Anthony that’s Patreon…
COLIN: And I believe, Anthony, that you have a few other things like programming festivals and project-managing odd albums for others?
ANTHONY: Yes, throwing ideas over the wall at Ards Guitar Festival and a wee bit for EastSide Arts Festival as well. Every now and again I would get a few quid for those sort of things.
COLIN: You don’t do any guitar teaching, do you?
ANTHONY: No.
COLIN: Is that something you would consider as an extra income stream?
ANTHONY: it’s not really what I want to do. But I don’t rule anything out. I used to play in pubs all the time – bar gigs every Friday/Saturday night, playing ‘Brown-Eyed Girl’ to drunk people. People say, ‘You’d never go back to that, would you?’ I say, ‘You never say never’.
COLIN: Interestingly, Brian Houston *has* gone back to that. Now, Brian is very definitely a talented, prolific original music artist and he can never turn that tap off, but in recent months he has pragmatically accepted that if someone wants to offer him a sum of money to play to drunks in Lisburn on the odd weekend, he’s a working musician – so be it…
SCOTT: …and I went to Larne last night to play for somebody’s dinner! (laughs) Being a musician really is a portfolio career. For me, I make my money through teaching, through playing background gigs – I’m doing somebody’s wedding at the weekend – and through playing occasional concerts, which account for not very many of my performances…
COLIN: Yet those will be the highlights of your year, when you play a headline show at Cork Jazz Festival or Sligo Jazz or Brilliant Corners [a Belfast festival]…
SCOTT: Yes, but while I think of myself as a jazz musician who teaches, my bank balance tells me I’m a teacher who occasionally gigs. (laughs) But I’ve no problem with that. I put myself out there, I’m a musician first and foremost. Making money through teaching is great – and actually I’ve a student in half an hour, so I must be going – because it’s a recurring subscription from students. I deliver them a good quality experience, they ask me whatever they need to, I give them stuff to work, they come back next week.
COLIN: And Dave, your circumstances are different in that you’re retired from the very forefront of podiatry in Northern Ireland…
DAVE: Yes, me and Henry…
COLIN: …your thing is that you *want* to make music. You don’t have to make money through music, though it helps. You’re effectively subsidising your artistry at present. Is that viable?
DAVE: Well, yes it is viable. I have to do music – I’ve always done it. I’ve a health service pension but, that said, my missus has to continue to work or we’d struggle. The things we’ve released so far with the Auld Gods, all of a sudden I got a couple of PRS payments, and I’m thinking, ‘Hold on a second – that was worthwhile!’ It was a bit of a shock!
ANTHONY: It all helps. As Scott says, it’s all part of the menu.
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ROCK IS DEAD, LONG LIVE ROCK
COLIN: Do we feel the scene – or the various scenes that we’re talking about – is going to come back to something like it was pre-COVID or will it be diminished. And if it is diminished, in terms of the number of opportunities, venues, etc., is that offset by the number of people who will have left the industry, who will have given up or retired? Certainly, a few people at the top end, age-wise, internationally announced their retirements during COVID – Arlo Guthrie, Kris Kristofferson, Horslips… Has that happened on the local level with jazzers, old punks and singer-songwriters? Or is it still the same crowd hustling for a diminished number of gigs?
DAVE: I can’t think of any… but I think like Anthony said, things will get better and we’ll live with this thing – it will keep coming round. It will be the winter months that’ll be difficult for the next two or three years but come spring, I think the gigs will be back.
ANTHONY: I think it’ll come back but I don’t think I’m as confident that it’ll come back as it once was. I’m worried now that audiences are used to not going out. Or maybe they are hungry for it. I don’t know. I’m not aware of any singer-songwriters dropping out, as it were, though a friend of mine, Ben Glover [a Belfast troubadour who lives in Nashville], who used to come back regularly and do four or five gigs here, has decided that he won’t be doing that for a while. He won’t be putting any new music out or doing any gigs – he’s got other things that he’s doing with his life. But Ben could come back [at some point] – I don’t think it’s really a COVID decision, it’s a personal one.
COLIN: I wonder is that idea of just ticking over for a year or so going to be prevalent? Are people still hustling to get gigs in the Irish jazz world?
SCOTT: Yes, I think they are. The jazz scene hasn’t really changed very much. And the jazz audience hasn’t gone away…
COLIN: They’re both still active? (laughs)
SCOTT: If the case numbers are fairly low, the jazz audience will come out. We had some discussions when we were bringing back the jazz club, in September, about ticket prices – about how much people would pay. You had suggested – and I was of that view – that we should go to the lower end of acceptable money: £10, £11, £12. Cormac said ‘£15’ – and people came out. Nobody has an issue with paying. I don’t know if that is just because they’ve been starved of music, but they probably think, ‘The drink is cheap, the sound is great, I’ll have a good night…’
COLIN: It’s not a million miles away from that idea I posited earlier of putting a realistic value on what you’re offering. Actually, with the Breige & Colin album, I put a value of £15 on the CD on the crowdfunding platform – because I know it will be a limited artefact, with a booklet, produced. We’re all used to a tenner being the price of a CD, especially at gigs, a nice round number. But outside of the crowdfunder, I wouldn’t transact that CD for less than £15 – it wouldn’t be fair to crowdfunding subscribers, but also I’ll have no problem telling people, ‘This is a very limited artefact and it’s cost a lot to record what’s on it and to produce this physical entity’.
SCOTT: I don’t think that will put many people off. When you go to Tesco, what do you get for 15 quid these days?
COLIN: Indeed, but in our heads, we’ve all got used to the idea that ‘a CD is a tenner’. The point I’m making is that we have to put a value on what we do. You’re still wrestling with that, to an extent, Anthony. At the Armagh show I saw, you said from the stage that you’re aware not everyone buys music on physical formats any more, and offered two CDs for a tenner. I don’t know if that’s the way to go, but then again, with back catalogue…
ANTHONY: Well, with back catalogue I have an attic full of CDs so I’m happy to give two for a tenner – I’d rather the music was heard.
COLIN: Is there a danger of alienating previous buyers by offering discounts?
ANTHONY: That’s the thing – do you annoy somebody who bought your new album in July by having a Christmas sale in December? But there comes a time when an album you made six years ago has had it’s go. There is a constant tightrope to be walked between putting a value on your thing and overvaluing what you do, in a world where we are drowning in music – drowning in free music.
COLIN: But you’ve got to say to yourself, ‘That’s all very well, but I’m not in competition with Ed Sheeran or Adele or whoever – I am Anthony Toner, I am Scott Flanigan, I am Dave McLarnon: if you want what I’ve got to offer, here’s my price’.
ANTHONY: But it goes back to relationships. Joe Bloggs, who I bought the pastries from this morning in Tesco [Anthony did indeed arrive with a selection of Denmark’s finest], has no interest whatsoever in me. But the two or three thousand people who are on my mailing list have a relationship with me. I can express my value to them – ‘Here’s an album, it’s costs this, would you like a copy?’ The longer I do this the more I’m coming to think that our future as musicians will be more based on relationships than our ability to sell music in a marketplace. I have 300 people who will buy a CD as soon as I put one out. I get a box of jiffy bags and I post them out as soon as the orders come in. And the Patreon thing is the same – people I have an ongoing relationship with. But again I have this ongoing argument with AndreANTHONY: ‘You’ve got to tell people about Patreon,’ she’ll say, ‘you’ve got to push it…’ ‘Urrrrrrgh, help!’
SCOTT: But it’s a business. And the musicians who have come through COVID successfully are the ones who have multiple income streams because they’ve thought about it as a business.
ANTHONY: Artists are entrepreneurs – we have to be.
COLIN: Dave, you’re a bit old-school in that you don’t have a mailing list and are from a period in which there was a certain detachment between artists and audiences. But I went with you to somebody’s book launch at the Oh Yeah! Centre in 2019 and I was very struck that at that event and even walking down the street afterwards, there were lots of people glad-handing you and saying hello. I’d ask, ‘Who was that?’ and you’d say, ‘I’ve no idea!’ So you may not have a relationship with your fans, as such, but they certainly do with you. There’s a lot of love in that old punk community.
DAVE: Yes, there is.
COLIN: I think a crowdfunding campaign would provide you with a silver bullet to create a mailing list and a direct connection with people. I think you’d find that the equivalent of a commission – ‘X amount of people who actively want what I do next’…
DAVE: Well, interestingly, even with the Auld Gods thing, on Bandcamp and YouTube, people have subscribed – so there are subscribers…
[at this point, Scott has to go]
COLIN: To summarise, Scott, when is your album available?
SCOTT: 2022, I’ve no idea when. I’ll just wait until it feels like a good time.
COLIN: Any final thoughts, chaps? Your album, Anthony…?
ANTHONY: I’m daring to say it, I don’t know if I’ll have the balls to follow up with it, but it might be a double album – there’s that much stuff.
COLIN: I wouldn’t worry about it – the Breige & Colin thing started off as an EP and it’s now a double album in old money: 16 tracks, 76 minutes of music.
ANTHONY: I kind of looked at it and thought, ‘I’ve got to winnow this down to 10 or 12 songs…’ and then thought, ‘Why?’ I like to think that a 14-stone guy in his mid-50s, unsigned, no management, self-funded, putting out a double album is two fingers to the music industry.
COLIN: If you were still pitching at Nashville, they wouldn’t be interested in anything above a 10-track album…
ANTHONY: No, and they’d want it highly polished and the songs written to a Nashville formula. I’ve been there three times and the last occasion I was there I thought ‘The odds are so high, and the amount of effort and time it would take me to develop this and write songs in this particular way…’ I thought the smarty thing to do was to come home and focus on developing an audience here. So my ‘tribe’ here is quite small territorially but quite deep in its connection to me. The people who come to my gigs are very, very devoted to what I do, they buy everything I do and support me in various ways. The smart thing for me to do now as an artist is to say, ‘Can I make something like that happen in Scotland, in South Wales?’ Because I can travel light – me and a guitar on a ferry. So hopefully this acoustic thing will put a hook in that water.
COLIN: Dave, will your old school band Sunset band reform again?
DAVE: Well, hopefully. Two of the guys have been very cautious with the COVID thing. This is a band, Anthony, that I wasn’t in at school but who I loved at school – they were ‘the school band’. Eventually, I got to join them and now I’m the musical director! Anyway, the Auld Gods album is coming out, I’m going to do something [in the studio] with Shock Treatment and I *might* do the crowdfunding thing with that. I’ll probably put some unreleased Peacefrog stuff on Bandcamp. Another wee thing is something I sent you a year ago, a Lyra McKee song… While I was learning how to use Logic, Lyra had just died and it struck a chord with all of us. I looked at her essay, written when she was 16, and took quotes from it and put them into the song. I’m kind of uncomfortable with the idea of ‘Here’s Dave McLarnon singing about Lyra’ – I didn’t want to do that, really. I’m not wanting to ‘cash in’. But I have a friend, Stephen Lustig, who was her best friend and explained it to him. He let the family hear it, they loved it. Alastair [Graham] did a video for it, they loved that as well. I said, ‘Look, I’m not comfortable with releasing it under my own name’, but they said, ‘You must’. ‘Well, what if we pin it to a charity, then?’, I said. They came back with WAVE. So the plan is to try and take that forward.
COLIN: We haven’t talked about inspirations for music. Anthony, you’re quite literary, quite cerebral…
ANTHONY: Errrr, ye-e-ah…
COLIN: If Alvin Lee had had to write songs sitting at home, he’d have been in trouble. He wouldn’t be ‘Going Home’, he’d *be* at home…
ANTHONY: I was an only child, quite overly protected, I think, by my mother. So I had a childhood of sitting at home in my room reading poetry, playing guitar and listening to Pink Floyd or whatever it happened to be. So I’m a voracious reader. I also write quite a bit – I write a journal, I keep a notebook, always writing things down. I believe that songwriters at their best have a radar on, where they’re paying a heightened attention to the world. So, colours, tastes, images…
DAVE: Little phrases that hear, something on the radio…
ANTHONY: Yes, I get a lot of stuff from things like that.
COLIN: Your ‘Red Lines’ song came from that, didn’t it?
DAVE: Yes, that was a mixture of hearing phrases on the radio, the DUP invariably doing something stupid, talking about red lines…
COLIN: Anthony, you don’t seem to address politics in your songs. Is that a deliberate decision?
ANTHONY: I’ve a song called ‘An Alphabet’, inspired by my father’s dementia, and there’s a song in there… It was the time of the Brexit referendum and I put a line in saying ‘You ponder your choice and you place your votes / You get the same old knives at the same old throats – D is for democracy’. That’s about as far as I go – quite oblique. I’m not pointing the finger at anyone in particular because I worry that if I do that it’s going to date. A song about Donald Trump – who’s going to listen to that in six years?
COLIN: So, are we done?
ANTHONY: I think so. The trick is to keep motoring.
DAVE: Colin, thank you for all this – I’m getting to meet people I’ve looked up to.
ANTHONY: The same here – yourself and Ali [MacKenzie] and Ben [Trowell], from the session yesterday, are names I’ve been aware of for some time but never actually played with. Ben’s a lovely fellow – we were about to pack up and he said, ‘I’ll go up here with my new guitar buddy’ and I said, ‘Yay! That’s what we are!’ (laughs)
DAVE: You’ve done your Cilla Black as well – you’ve brought [unnamed female musical pal] and Ben together!
COLIN: I enjoy these musical gatherings in studios – I don’t enjoy high-jeopardy situations, but they aren’t: you get people together with a good spirit, you do a little bit of rehearsing and then the likelihood is that something great will happen. And some of the ideas – harmonies, especially – that have happened in the studio in the Breige project have been amazing. And also your guitar solo, Anthony, last night in ‘Baby Don’t You Do It’ – people will hear that and think, ‘Wow – I’d no idea Anthony could do that’.
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LONG LIVE ROCK!
Thanks @colin-h – enjoyed reading that.
You talk about Crowdfunding and how often you can get away with it.
“But would you do that with those musicians on the third or fourth time? Because I find myself thinking [of some artists] ‘Again? Really?!”
Yes, happy to go again and again
I’m a big fan of the idea, and have supported the first two albums of the same band through crowdfunding. My view is I’m going to buy the album anyway, so I’m just paying for it upfront, plus it helps get the band the cashflow to do the job, I feel part of it, and my relationship with the band/artist just feels closer – and I’ve had email conversations with Duncan Reid and Chris Pope expressing gratitude.
More power to you all, and best of luck with your upcoming album
To be fair, that was Anthony airing those doubts about multiple crowdfunding. It’s a ‘live’ issue and pro musicians are wrestling with it currently.
Featuring Dave McLarnon, here’s the Auld Gods’ single ‘Red Lines’ – the album was released yesterday. Think New Order with squealing guitar:
Anthony Toner at the mic with Ronnie Greer’s blues band, with a 1929 classic:
The purely solo / acoustic album that Anthony was pondering in the January interview above has now come to be. It sounds great to my ears! Here’s a link to his Bandcamp page for sampling everything, and a song clip from YouTube.
https://anthonytoner.bandcamp.com/album/emperor-2022?fbclid=IwAR08MdWYcLHE74Jm19OWV_Rfxkor3BGRHnOgXy67arXwE8uYJgcJEMmZ4rs