Hey my great friends Steve Jones and Foy Vance have come up with the concept of MONIO with a wily grin on their faces.  MONIO is otherwise known as Music of Northern Irish Origin, and this is the first ever gig of its kind.

Over recent years N Irish music has been better than ever.  belfast has so many great great bands, many new amazing talents as well as those more familiar.  So MONIO is a good way of drawing attention to all this activity and giving people a chance to celebrate it. 

I'll be headlining the second night of the festival.  But also on the bill across the weekend are the legendary David Holmes, The Four Of Us, Cashier No. 9 and a host of others.

Get your ticket and more details at www.monio.co.uk

it is gonna be spectacular!

i x

It’s taken a while to get round to telling this story, but its far too great to go untold.  On the 1st April I played a show at Bush Hall in London, with the band – Phil on drums, Jon on bass and Miriam on keys and vocals.

For those who don’t know it, Bush Hall is one of those deceptive buildings that looks very insignificant from outside, but once you’re in there it’s quite impressive.  A kind of gig-goer’s Tardis.  An old dance hall with a high ceiling, lots of cornicing and a number of large chandeliers, in a room that holds maybe 3-400 people.  So you can imagine the rough size of the place.

The dressing room has one door to the venue and another glass door that goes outside into an enclosed courtyard.  To get to the toilet you have to go outside into the courtyard and then up some stairs. 

The show started well, things sounded good on stage and the crowd were on our team.  Somewhere around the middle of the set I planned to do a couple of songs without the band, so Jon decided it was the perfect opportunity to grab a quick wee before coming back to play the rest of the set.

So he went out into the courtyard and up the stairs to do whatever he needed to do.  When he tried to get back into the dressing room from outside he was locked out.  After much banging on the doors he became convinced that no one else was back stage. 

Now Jon is a dedicated and resourceful kinda guy at the best of times but at this point - knowing I only had one more song before the band were due back on – he set about climbing over the building.  Jon scaled the roof of Bush Hall, lowered himself onto the road on the other side, walked in the front door, and straight up to the stage to pick up his bass and strike up the next tune.

Again, you couldn’t make this stuff up.

Last night saw a landmark evening in the history of Northern Irish rock n roll.  I felt strange and grateful to be a part of it all.

The night included Ash, Therapy, Snow Patrol, Divine Comedy, Duke Special, Foy Vance, and great new N Irish bands The Lowly Knights, Kowalski, Cashier No. 9 amongst others.  The BBC had pulled all this together and were broadcasting it live.

The Ulster Hall was that building where we all saw our first 'big' gig.  The ceiling is dizzyingly far above your head, behind the stage stands a frighteningly vast pipe organ, the balcony wraps itself around the walls, surrounding the open floor with lofty onlookers. You fit 4000 people in there sweaty, close and empassioned. Its ornate, but not gaudy.  There's an ambience about the place.  Especially when you have been stood in the crowd countless times, gaping in awe at all your favourite bands.

So that's how come we ended up coming together from all corners.  We all got two songs - one of our own and a cover of something we saw performed there in its hayday. 

Divine Comedy played a stunning 'Gigantic' by the Pixies.  Ash had the place grinning widely and singing 'Mrs Robinson'.  Duke Special stage dived in the middle of 'Fisherman's Blues'.  Therapy bust out the most livid and tremendous version of 'Alternative Ulster'.  I got up and played Songbird and then followed it with The Frames' 'Lay Me Down' during which Gary and Nathan from the Patrol appeared guitars in hand to a deafening response which cracked the ice cap.  I stayed on with them and sat in on Chocolate and Chasing Cars.  It felt like a moment.

The finale involved the entire cast invading the stage in a version of 'Teenage Kicks' with Therapy providing sonic abandon. 

All of this felt brazenly optimistic, defiant, forward looking, proud, untroubled, and belligerent, despite the fact that it followed the saddest and most potentially disheartening day Northern Ireland has had in years.  Music is the most exciting force I know.  We raise our head, our arms, our heels, our voices, our cameras, our hopes, our eyebrows, and dare I say our souls in one great swell of feeling - like we're all fused together somehow, for this moment.  And someone stands on a stage and dreams up their own colours. I'm proud to feel haplessly idealistic, at least for today.

You couldn't make this stuff up.

Lost my voice in Ireland on Saturday.  Been whispering ever since.  Contrary to what you might assume it was not due to tearing it up with the Guinness.  Some wierdio bug the shape of a barbwire hairball, but the size of a flea's imagination, got in here and wreaked it's senseless havoc.

Everything is on the return, but slowly, and croakily, and aided by lots of steam, and menthol, and that sorta stuff.  So, this bloggin thing is a refreshingly successful means of communication - and it doesn't include the usual punctuations of conversation at the moment... whisper, croak, almost imperceptively high pitched squeak, stupidly low rasp, deep breath etc etc on repeat.  Lets hope it's all mended by the 17th, or it might be amusing for all the wrong reasons.

Anyway, thanks for lending an ear to a fish out of water - voice out of whack, singer songwriter. 

All will be well
i

So myself and a few friends are getting together to pay tribute to the great John Martyn.  We'll be attempting to do justice to a few of his classics and throwin in a few of our own.

It's an amazing line up.  One not to be missed.  It's a tiny venue and so if you want to come, I'm asking you to message me and tell me your coming.  First come first serve.  It's a tenner in - pay on the door (proceeds to a local charity) and will be in the cosy basement venue of The Kings Head pub in Crouch End on 17th Feb.

Hopefully we can do the big man some justice!
Love to see ya there.
i

To all my American compadres, if you're in a TV watchin frame of mind tomorrow night, my tune 'Everything I've Got' will be on Private Practise. 

To everyone else, it's on my last album 'Magnetic North' if you take the urge to listen to it anyway!?

There's a news article about all this here...

http://pwradio. net/news

Soon
i

It's difficult to imagine a world without John Martyn.  Word quickly came my way yesterday morning that John had died.  Maybe it hit me all the harder because there's such an overwhelming heart-swell of joy and pain in his music that has embraced me more than any other, time after time.  Or because of the lust for life he had and the way we saw him devour it.  Or the knowledge that one of the world's great great talents is suddenly no longer in our company.

There are songs of John's that I can rarely listen to, because I love them so much they somehow pull me apart.  They seemed to be wrapped around the most potent of memories.  This was his great gift.  On top of a voice of molten gold, the ability to pull the wildest and most lucid rhythm, tone, and emotion from a guitar, was this rare ability to find and uncover your heart.  Just reach in and show you where it is.

The first time I met John was in 1995 in a pub, appropriately.  He was playing a small warm up show for a 30 date UK tour he was about to embark on with me in tow as support act.  Met is probably way too strong a word, I think he just about acknowledged my presence.  I was in awe and trying not to show it.  His music had been the inspiration and emotional blueprint of my previous six years.  I had the next month to soak in night after night of John's free-flowing, mood shifting, alchemic performances.

And slowly we exchanged a few words, and I seemed to become a small part of things.  As did Miriam, who took on her roll of 'The Beer Fairy' night after night, taking to the stage with a tray of fresh beers, mid set, as John would invent a fresh tune to herald her arrival and call out her new title.  Last night of the tour, after a show where he'd invited me to the stage to sing 'Sweet Little Mystery' with him John and I sat together, single malts in hand, and he endured my questions, even sang 'Spencer the Rover' in my ear at my behest.

I returned to open for him on a few occasions since then, not least in '07 at Vicar Street in Dublin for the Solid Air tour.  Even bumped into him a couple of times in his home of Thomastown in Kilkenny, passing through on tour.  He'd pull out a pen and grab a scrap to jot down the name of a great pub in West Cork or a great promoter for solo shows or just sit and make use of that random and immediate wit.

It's a sad day.  He'll be missed immensely.  But he's left us these records, and they're more vibrant than ever, from the deep acoustic soul-morphing of Solid Air to the languid, shimmering, heart-wrending Grace and Danger. 

Farewell John.

First off let me seize the opportunity to wish the lot of ya Happy New Year - a little belated but nonetheless sincere. Happily January has come dancing around the corner with a few things on offer besides temperatures that up til now could only be found in space....So, the new album 'To The Pine Roots' is officially released at the end of March. And to begin the word-spreading I'll be playing two tunes on Radio 2 this afternoon when Simon Mayo takes over Johnny Walker's regular Sunday show - see http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/shows/walker/Starts at 4.30 pm if you're around to tune in!Have fun and remember, each day is gettin a little brighter - that's the beauty of this time of year!Hope to be playin to you sooni

I'm hosting (and playing!) an evening of very special artists including Foy Vance, Hayley Hutchinson, and jon bilborough. music and maybe even some margaritas - there's a bit of a Mexican Day of the Dead theme going down so bring yer sombrero! All this in the beautiful surrounds of St Luke's church - expect candles and atmosphere aplenty.

If you were listening to Simon Mayo filling in for Johnny Walker on Radio 2 this afternoon you will have heard track 7 from To The Pine Roots 'Streamer On A Kite' ringing out! Introduced by the words 'It doesn't get much better than this'.

It is 1 week since the album has been made available exclusively from www.iainarcher.co.uk and 3 days since I put tracks up here, so it's a mighty gratifying thing to see it getting some national radio love already!

If you wanna pick up a copy right now you can also go straight to this page