as I read in our little balcony in Cobh… my view seemed too like the cover to not take a snap…

Jan Carson is a unique voice. No one can argue with that. She has taken the accents and dialects of Mid Antrim and used it in literature to convey great humour, warmth and deep human empathy. The text is so easy that there are times as I read when I can hear it roll off her tongue.

With this voice Carson becomes a voice. She takes on the issues of the day and speaks into the public milieu with stories of how it is impacted by or impacts the individual lives whirling around within.

Any follower of Carson’s magic realism might give her credit conjuring the most unlikely setting for a novel, a community living on islands out on Lough Neagh the biggest fresh water lake in the British Isles after it is drained to allow such a possibility.

Well, that idea is truer than fiction. Lord Terance O”Neill eventually Prime Minister of Northern Ireland in the 60s came up with the idea of draining Lough Neagh while he was . It would create jobs. It would create a seventh county in Northern Ireland. Even more interesting between 1847 and 1859 partial draining was done and the land that appeared above the new lower surface used.

What Kells’ most creative writer has done is to take that geographical possibility and set the history of the Troubles and thereafter onto an archipelago of islands all loosely tied together. The Ark.

The Ark hosts a myriad of hopeless humans, trying to escape the Troubles on “the mainland”. Sleepers, Almost-deads, occupy islands as do the black sheep who might not be safe on said “mainland” - mixed marriages, transvestites…

In the early glory days RJ Connolly, an academic in anthropology, is something of a leader with his German wife, Ursula and three children Robert-John, Marion and Rosemary. Jan sets the book in 2017 but nips back and forth to those better days. As it is two of RJ’s children are so weak and now Ark dependent that they are clinging hard to the islands against the threat of re-flooding to help with the environmental crisis in the Lough.

Alex, a student inspired by RJ comes to research a book she is writing about the Ark. It throws the equilibrium and digs deeper than anyone still on the Ark would like. The drama begins.

I wasn’t sure about it all, early on. Oh I love Jan’s voice and turn of phrase and social illustration, so familiar to my upbringing but was it better than just good. Eventually something broke through - a diary, a boat, an oar, a head, pairings, a truth or two.

By it’s end I am hearing Carson’s voice louder than ever. What she does with these characters, this space opens up so much of our Northern Irish life. She throws more ideas at this story than another character Sandra throws colours of paint at a canvas.

There is a lot of laugh out loud on these pages but on to this archipelago Jan speaks up for our major societal ills, suicide, misogyny, judgmentalism, alienation, loneliness, anxiety, stress, regret, shame, environment.

A society trying to deal with its past. Can we hide what we’ve done to each other? Do we know how doing what we did has impacted people today? How do we bring into a future those clinging to the seeming safety of their past?

All of this is done in the lives of people. A societal and cultural critique through the every day joys and hurts. Carson has a sympathy that makes us love the seemingly least loveable. She has an empathy that has us hope for their redemption. As we do we are flicking the pages of our own diaries uncovering our own hidden regrets. Seeking better.

I heard Jan on the radio talking about how she might not easily find hope for the overall situation in our wee place but she does have hope in people. Did the Fleadh not kind of make that tangible on our streets? The future is with the people not the institutions.

Days after finishing the book I am still carrying Robert-John, Marion, Sandra and Alex around with me. I am still smiling and laughing with them as much as at them. I still feel almost protective seeking to help. Through them I am asking big questions.

photo: Conor Mallon on the Gig Rig… and Mary Ann McCracken social reformer.

Can a city smile

Sure I saw it

On the faces lit to kiss the sun

To colour our streets with promise

Can a city laugh

Sure I felt it

Down every side street and alley

Hearts exhale with joy

Can a city dance

Sure I jigged it

Hands surrendered in unthreatened rhythms

Feet tapping pavements as one

Can a city sing

Sure we blended in harmonies

The old, in the new, with Trú

“O the summer time has come..”

And I’ll tell me ma

When I get home

I’ll tell me ma

About the Fleadh.

photo: Gordon Ashbridge at Killyleagh Castle in 2003

Once

You were for us

You were one of us

You were us

Always present

Seeing into our eyes

Giving full attention.

Our most meaningful moments were

When you threw back your head

Opened your mouth to the skies

Arms stretched wide in crucifix

To make room in your chest

For your big grá heart to burst through

Finding a language few can speak

In melodies and rhyme

Going hunting for us

Reaching, searching into the infinite beyond

To touch the hem of all possibility

Grasping to grab the dust of a healing begun

Then, as quick, returning to the room

To plunge like a a deep touch of salvation

Balm and beauty and maps and frames

Hope and mercy and faith and grace

Into our broken, lost and fragile souls.

You gave yourself to all of us

As a wave to raise up our ships

Then point us home.

Home,

Where you were headed

When home came to you

Under a Dublin moon

To embrace your soul.

Standing waiting for Jason Isbell to take the Ulster Hall stage in early June I realised that my friend Willie was unaware of Mike Campbell and the Dirty Knobs. As a pastor I was doing a bad job!

On the way home I thought I needed to put that right and blog about Tom Petty’s old side man and his band of elite players. Within ten days a new album landed that gave me even more reason to share the good news of Campbell post Heartbreakers.

Like Willie, I stumbled upon the band late. They had two albums out before I heard about the third arrived. I guess I need to confess that I saw them as a bit of a side project. As with Heartbreaker’s pianist Benmont Tench it was okay to do solo records. Side projects though can be taken less seriously. It’s not the real band but a nice wee bonus.

Well, I’ll let you judge the first three but for me Mission of Mercy is no second division side project. Campbell always had revealed songwriting chops. He was a main player in Tom Petty’s Refugee and You Got Lucky to name a couple and he also wrote The Boys of Summer for Don Henley.

On this fourth record run out, Campbell comes on all a late bloomer, the maturing of a man forced to stand out from behind his best mate’s slipstream.

No Regrets is all Byrdsian. Not surprises there. I Remember has me thinking mid 80s Dylan which fits as The Heartbreakers filled in as Bob’s band in the late 80s. There’s a Beach Boys vibe to the title track that I inspired by Brian Wilson. I particularly love the driving Let Me Back In My Dream.

Willie Nelson could do worse than cover the countryfied More Than Gold, a lovely suet with Morgane Stapleton. Another guest is Kate Pierson on Bongo Mania all East coast swirling dervish.

Campbell seemed to me lean a little harder in his rock attack than Petty. That Heartbreakers’ Mojo album might have had more of his influence than Tom’s. That sound comes later in the track listing here before the tougher edged blues works itself in. A song called Armageddon is always going to heap the riffs. Vicious Hangover too, all Keith Richard and Ron Wood!

The close is the real surprise with Campbell going all spoken word under a deep bass gentle bass groove, soundtrack effect and disconcerting laughter. It really works like Tom Waits’ Franks Wild Years and when Bruce Cockburn and T-Bone Burnett do the same thing. It tells us a lot about Campbell’s imagination. He’s no one guitar trick pony.

Apologies for not tipping you all off sooner.

I have a fascination with The Great Irish Famine. That it happened only 110 years before I was born so close to the heart of a wealthy Empire makes it hard to comprehend, the injustice, the cruelty.

During a performance of Riverdance last Christmas I found myself with an intense feeling of being both the victim of British brutality and a criminal, being also partly British in the Venn diagram of the unique place of my birth and upbringing. There’s a mental conundrum to deal with.

Anyway, Maggie O’Farrell, fresh from the raging success of her last novel turned movie, Hamnet, has set her new book in an imagined peninsula off the west of Ireland not long after that Great Famine.

The whole thing starts with Tomás a map maker. O’Farrell had a Great grandfather who did just that. Worked on the first maps of the island. As she would say, probably so that the rolling class could exact as much rent or tax as possible from the colonised Irish.

Tomas’s young son Liam helps him. His loyal wife is Phina who he met in a Workhouse and after he had escaped came back to find her. They also have daughters Enda and Rose and Eugene the last born is both limited in language but special in other ways. There’s a dog Brama.

The early days are spent on the Peninsula. Tomas has some magical experience in a copse with a holy healing well within it. They live close by and it comes in and out of the story, the whole thing finally ending there.

From this place, this time and this family O’Farrell seeks to something audacious. She drops the ice age, pre British invaders, colonialism, hunger, loss, music, the Jesuits, emigration and the importance of land. It verges on quite the epic.

These were challenging times. The famine. Losing whole families. Orphans left behind. Those sent to Workhouses. Dystopian poverty. The cruelty of the gentry landowners and Colonial rule.

For me, it gave me empathy for those caught up in the famine raising sympathy and anger. Whether the trauma of surviving and grieving the way parents, lovers and families died by the roadside or the trauma of those who left in coffin ships knowing they were unlikely to see relatives ever again and if they did it would be impossible to recognise them. With her genius at developing characters and contexts and her throwaway lyrical prose O’Farrell takes us to into the heart, soul and mental fragility.

I will say though that writing this review just a few weeks after the 2026 soccer World Cup Final and less since Mayo’s All Ireland Gaelic Football victory - that the first half of Land was as dull and drawn out as that World Cup Final - but the second half was like Croke Park, end to end page turning drama seeking the end. Though I am not sure who won in the end.

Like a Spaniard I am so glad I persevered. Like somebody from Mayo I was holding my breath. Land is an immense achievement. I find it hard to believe it wasn’t long listed for the Booker Prize.

How do you do that?

With the same time of night

Turn the day’s benediction

Into perfect pastel pixels of light

How do you do that?

In the very same cloth of skies

Tie dye all these colourscapes

With swathes and swirls of surprise

Orange, yellows, salmon pink hues

Angel’s share in a blend and blur

Silver, mauves, and mackerel blues

Every edition a bespoke of a master

Every night it’s another painting

Too beyond beauty to be captured

God’s grace and gentle genius

Grabbed in the grasp of holy rapture.

How do you do that?

photo by Gordon Ashbridge at Killyleagh Castle 2003.

This interview was done by email back in 2003. I was writing a few things for Paste magazine at the time and that gave me access. I asked Clare, Glen’s manager at the time and she allowed me to send my questions.

In 2003, Glen Hansard was about to go on a trajectory of success that he never imagined when he typed these answers. Weeks after this interview The Frames’s live album Set List would be their first number 1 album in Ireland and a few years later the budget movie Once about a Busker sent Hansard’s star into the stratosphere. In the light of Once I love that he mentions his mum’s Hoover. Four year’s before Hoover Fixer Repairman!

Looking back today, as I recover from the shock of Glen’s loss, I am amazed at how well it expresses the Hansard we are all grieving so much. Obviously there is me trying to probe at Glen’s beliefs, particularly about Jesus but I think we see here why he never changed from busker on the street to big stages and Oscars and Grammys. His vision for music always came before anything else, never left him.

I am sure Glen’s beliefs developed and matured and were well researched after this interview but the spirit at the core of him is there. Keen to chase the mystery and make it into songs.

STOCKI: How does it feel that after 13 years The Frames have finally got some of the recognition that you deserved all along?

GLEN: We feel that were doing what we set out to do. It was never a case for us of getting recognition from media… us, our audience and our peers have always been our concern. The media has never been a particular friend or foe, it’s just never been our goal to be its favourite band.

We’ve done what’s been asked of us in regard to press, and no more. I think its a dangerous place to put yourself…at the mercy of something so insecure…it seems to me that popular culture has always been led by those who care least for it, not those who follow it’s lead… if it truly matters nothing to you, then you may just end up its darling one day, although if you were truthful you won’t notice it either way.

STOCKI: It seems that since I first saw you in the Subterranean, London in 91 that you have been on the cusp but never dropped over the edge. How have you found the stamina to not say SOD IT and walk away?

GLEN: Because walking away has never been an option. I left school at 14, I’m not qualified to do much else. Which puts me in a strong position…do this well or give up…the latter is not a very promising prospect. I never gave myself that choice. Whether on a stage or on a street…music is what I do.

STOCKI: The Dublin scene is so strong at the moment with Damien Rice, Gemma Hayes, David Kitt etc. This is a new generation but you seem more part of it than you did of the old regime so to speak. Do you feel it is a good time for the Irish scene?

GLEN: Yes I think there is a very healthy atmosphere in Dublin, I think a large part of it is to do with the confidence of the Irish nation rising…people are no longer afraid to like bands that come from there own town. When The Frames started back in 1990 you had to get some nod from foreign press in order for people at home to pay any attention…we were ruled by the English music press…which is purely based on the cult of personality and not the tunes, fashion and rock ‘n roll stories are its agenda. I don’t regard it, and I’ve never bought it. Dublin is thriving because there is so much great music being made here. It seems that every decade, real quality emerges.

STOCKI: For The Birds is a little more laid back and ambient than most of what you do. What as the reason for that? Was it the Kittsers et al influencing the sound?

GLEN: No, it was just time to make a record of what was coming out…the natural stuff. For so long we’d been told by the industry that fast means big, loud means lots, slow means nothing and i was just so sick of that logic. The songs I was writing were slow…so that’s what we did. We were happy to make a record that might show our natural selves even though we might be ignored for it...it’s not like we were applauded for our other records anyway… it just didn’t matter as long as we could stand by it and be proud…

STOCKI: What happens next? Is there a temptation to do For The Birds Part 2 to keep the new fan base?

GLEN: Records are just what they turn out to be. There’s no radical game plan…that’s for the world domination bands… I’m just mapping a life with songs. We don’t stand around under lit tables and plan our fan base strategies…forget that…if those who like The Frames like the record then great. I won’t try to con anyone that we’re the horse to watch. How base would that be!?

STOCKI: There must be songs sitting ready. What stage is the follow up at?

GLEN: We’ve just finished the basic tracks in Chicago, we’re happy with the work we’ve done and we will do some more work on it in the coming weeks and mix it sometime soon after that. If the basic emotion of the songs translate well…then we’ve done our record justice.

STOCKI: What kind of sound can we expect?

GLEN: It’s a collection of songs and so it has no set thread other than we made them. There are elements of our last two records in there and some new elements too. The song in its basic form is often the most pure…then we throw the bells and whistles on and sometimes it looks ridiculous… other times a new beauty emerges.. it’s alchemy it’s fun and at best it’s art.

STOCKI: Are there any themes taking shape?

GLEN: I suppose a sense of well f*** it we’re lost in the middle of this life and each day brings a new possibility for adventure and safety. It’s more about enjoying the chaos now and not moaning about it anymore…what’s the point…the whole thing is so much bigger than us…so lets just enjoy the time we have here.. with its questions and doubts and abstractions and joy. The human condition is the basis. Connection with other humans is what we crave…and sharing the light keeps us alive…very Christian eh?

STOCKI: Thematically where do the ideas come from?

GLEN: From a life of map making and song. Everything’s an influence… everything.

STOCKI: The live show is simply astounding. Do you prefer the stage or the studio?

GLEN: The studio and the stage are such different environments. For the longest time I thought that to recreate the live energy on tape was the desired effect...but through tearful endeavour I’ve realised it’s a different process…one which we are still learning about…playing live is definitely where we are comfortable…the energy is clear and it flows in one direction…away from the band.. and the energy that returns is then converted and used instantly…it’s a very random animal the live show.

STOCKI: Covers of Tim Buckley and Van Morrison sit side by side with the Pixies in live shows. Would you call the things you listen to eclectic?

GLEN: Yeah growing up as a busker it’s all about songs and not styles.. a good song crosses the street and unlocks the passer by…to achieve a response no matter how small.. these people write great songs and I thank them for many a meal I’ve eaten through singing their tunes. Thanks from all the buskers!

STOCKI: You specifically mention Morrison as an influence to. For you is there an Irish kinship there?

GLEN: I think it’s the troubadour thing…the power of a man with a guitar and something to sing about. I don’t think it’s particular to Ireland…it’s the old way.. the poets take on the world around them.. a solitary voice that sings of a territory that’s unseen…that’s inner and abstract and emotional.. and somehow comments on us all.

There’s great medicine in ramblings of a lost soul…no patronising tone to the words. I love Van Morrison because he always seems to be searching.. never found…I don’t know about his personal life but in his music he gives the listener only a question…the answer lies elsewhere…to be attained someday.

STOCKI: There is also a depth of religious imagery to what you and Morrison do. East Belfast and Dublin city have not been great ads for the Jesus of the Protestant and Catholic faiths of those respective places. Yet the message both of you have is a positive spiritual vibe. Why do you think that is?

GLEN: I’m not really sure where that comes from. My earliest memories of singing was being bathed in the sink by my mother with the suitcase record player on the sideboard, playing Leonard Cohen and Simon and Garfunkel records. She taught me the words to Bird on the Wire and the Sound of Silence, and as a very young child I just learned the sounds of the words.

I was too young to know what they meant, never mind their deeper meanings. As I grew up those songs got deeper and revealed more to me. We weren’t a church going family, although my mother was and is very catholic.

Apart from a 5 year falling out with God in the 90’s she has always been a very strong believer. She always said, “we don’t have to go to church to talk to God”… and she viewed the church as a place of gossiping and comparisons. The whole wearing the Sunday best and showing up with the rest of the town for the weekly sermon just wasn’t high on her list of priorities. She stayed at home and cleaned on Sunday mornings with the record player so loud that she could hear it clearly over the Hoover…the rising dust caught in the sunlight were the angels ascended.

STOCKI: At a recent Belfast gig, you mentioned Jesus whipping the money changers out of the temple. Do you read a lot of stuff about him?

GLEN: I find the Bible fairly tough going as a book, but I love the imagery. It’s full of great tragedy and redemption, the fire and brimstone nature of it definitely appeals to me, although I suppose that the whole style of writing at the time was very poetic and decorative so when it says, “Jesus healed the blind, it may mean that he gave the unsee-ers back their faith…therefore restoring the vision…therefore healing the blind… and if you apply this method of thinking to every aspect of the Bible and it’s miracle stories then it becomes much easier to believe he really was as powerful as the book describes…because these surely were miracles, real miracles.

The power and vision of a man to change the minds of people, to change laws to overthrow powers that be…it took the will and strength of a true prophet…and the book of Luke was the place were this became most clear to me. The idea of an angry Christ struck a deep chord in me…because the floating yoda we see so often in imagery never convinced me. I think he must have been a very strong and powerful man to have had such a lasting impact on the Christian world…and the whole world in fact… a great revolutionary and a deeply spiritual leader.

STOCKI: Finally, how do you go about making your life make sense and make amends?

GLEN: I suppose I try to remain open to the signs and to the moment I’m in. I really believe in the idea that if we are open, the mystery and the wonder are revealed to us through everything we encounter…the magic is in the moment. Although that line was born out of a sense that I wasn’t in control of my own destiny anymore and I and we, The Frames, needed to get clear of the place we were, and to strike out on our own path and see where it brought us.

So the amends we made came partly through making For The Birds and setting up our own record label and being our own bosses. The personal amends never stop…that’s the work of the everyday.

READ MY TRIBUTE TO GLEN HERE

Photo by Gordon Ashbridge at Killyleagh Castle in 2003

I am sure that my screaming “NO! NO! NO! NO!” and bursting into tears as I shared the horrible news with Janice that Glen Hansard had died in a motorbike crash was because I felt it a little more personal than most rock star deaths. I had no need to but somehow Glen had a way of connecting. It made him the boy next door, rocking the world. He had an endearing way with him.

Oh I had been a fan since the 7” single release of The Frames very first single The Dancer in 1991 and bought every thing he released - his two recent live albums are utterly magnificent - but with Glen I had had the opportunity once or twice fleetingly to say hello.

In December 1991 I was returning to my car after a Van Morrison concert at the Point Theatre in Dublin when I discovered Glen getting on his little Vespa parked beside me.

Hi Glen, would you sign my notebook.

Sure

Youse were the best band of the year for me

The Frames or the Commitments?

The Frames of course. Saw you in London.

Thank **** for that. The Frames are my favourites too.

A few months later I was walking through Trinity College and sitting up there on the railings was Glen. Shy, I this time made no move towards him but he looked down at me and said:

Don’t I know you?

We met at Van Morrison’s gig at the Point.

Oh yeah I remember.

How did he remember?

Fifteen years later I was writing the occasional piece for Paste magazine and got an opportunity for an email interview. Not long afterwards I saw him as he supported Van Morrison at Killyleagh Castle. I approached him and he chatted to me about my interview and the fact that The Frames Live Set was number 1 in the Irish charts. He was without pretension.

In recent years when I went to Dublin to see Bob Dylan at the 3Arena and Bono at Olympia, Glen just always seemed to be there, one of the boys. Every Christmas he did a gig for the Homeless. He campaigned. He had a pragmatic love your neighbour compassion. In similar vein, he created the Christmas Busk on Grafton Street every Christmas Eve that eventually drew Bono and Sinead O’Connor to sing along to Carols and other Christmas songs. He brought people together.

Career wise, the film Once and his work with Markéta Irglová, Swell Season, had changed his life from years of being a great songwriter while struggling to break through to being an Oscar winning international name singing Coyote at Joni Mitchell’s 75th birthday and People Get Ready at the Celebration of Mavis Staples gig. There was also the Flag Day soundtrack with Eddie Vedder and Cat Power and of course sharing vocals with Bruce Springsteen at various stadiums across Ireland.

I could wax lyrical about Glen for pages and pages. Enough to leave his two live records released this year. Two records, Don’t Settle (Transmissions West and East), recorded before 600 very blessed punters in Berlin was like a retrospective of his career. Hansard was best on a stage. I always said that he was still the busker who started off on the streets of Grafton Street, given a stage and an amazing band. The emotional and spiritual energy he created was palpable. Transmissions are brilliant performances.

My head still screams NO! NO! NO! It amazes me how favourite artists can become so important to us. I will turn these new live records up to full volume today and grieve such a sad loss. I pray for his wife, the Finish poet Maire Saaritsa, and their young child Christy. It is a much bigger loss to them.

You wouldn’t need to know much about Gaelic Football to understand that something extra special was playing itself out at Croke Park in the 2026 All Ireland Final.

Kerry were out to retain the trophy. Mayo on the other hand had last won the Sam Maguire in 1951 and had lost eleven finals since then. ELEVEN. Their coach Andy Moran had lost six finals during his playing career.

After a slow start when they were 6 points down Mayo turned it around and with 10 minutes left had a 5 point lead that Kerry’s magnificent Clifford brothers whittled back to one before a few more points got them over the line.

In that last 10 minutes Mayo could have out the game to bed. They had a few wides, the Kerry keeper somehow nudged a certain second goal for over the bar and then they hit the bar. All of this just made the 31 counties in Ireland, other than Kerry, nervous of more late heartache. I’ll be honest I couldn’t have taken yet another broken hearted Mayo.

We didn’t have to. The emotion running down the faces of Mayo Great Grandparents, small children and every age in between was palpable across the island and beyond. Time to press play and turn up the volume on The Sawdoctors’ The Green and Red of Mayo, a personal favourite.

This was long awaited. This was the healing for all Moran’s pain. This was history. To be watching it was a privilege. Even I, an Antrim protestant, was bawling. Oh to have been born in Mayo and in Croke Park on July 16th 2026. It’ll be talked about in Mayo for as long as sport is talked about.

As it all reached its dramatic finish, Gaelic football at its end to end, fast and furious, skilful and accurate best my mind drifted back to last Sunday evening and the utterly paint drying experience of the World Cup Association Football final.

There was no comparison in the excitement of the game, the pace, all the possibilities. Kobe McDonald at just 18 years of age showing his gifted skills at speed, getting paid nothing.

I suddenly concluded what I have known for some years that the two most exciting sports in the world are both Irish. I mean this was beyond exhilarating and football is the ponderous brother to hurling. The All Ireland Final was maybe not as close in score this year but hurling rapidity can often be beyond belief. Yes, GAA have them sown up and the parochial nature they have created will keep it about family, parish and county. Sport’s best kept secret that we get to enjoy as we enjoyed today. Apart from Kerry that is!

By now I am a little depressed that I am a protestant who never got the privilege of playing these sports, though they were being played around me. I will confess that I would not have been brave or strong enough to play at any high level but boy I’d love to have practiced those running, side stepping, passing and scoring skills. Frank Kelly, my mate as a boy, did teach me a bit of running with the ball but then he moved away.

I will not argue with unionists that the GAA made it difficult for protestants to embrace. Another unfortunate consequence of the divisions across our wee island. I will then in the strange conundrums of our wee island’s history remind us all that the trophy Jack Coyne lifted yesterday and will carry all across the county of Mayon this next year is the Sam Maguire and Sam was a protestant!

County Mayo - ENJOY!

I can remember a moment. I was on the M2 heading out of Belfast, probably driving home to Ballymena to visit my parents on a Monday morning. As the M2 veers left, at the end of its few miles along the Lough shore, to head north into the heart of County Antrim, I turned up the volume and sang at the top of my voice the brand new Snow Patrol record. My mate Jonny was the drummer and after a few false starts, now in the slipstream of the big hit Run, they had made it… and then some. My heart was soaring with ecstatic joy.

It’s now twenty years and a lot has changed in all our lives but Eyes Open is still crammed full of strong and mighty songs. Us Stockmans have lost our voices to Chasing Cars or Shut Your Eyes in stadiums and car journeys.

To celebrate 20 years, the band have released an Anniversary Deluxe Edition.

Be careful what you purchase. The vinyl is a double album and 7 b-sides from the same sessions. The CD has all of that on one CD and then an extra CD of live, stripped back and mixed versions. Sixteen extra songs to be precise.

I’ve gone for the CD. I probably have most of the songs BUT having them all together. Too important. I am not saying that Santa won’t bring me the vinyl later in the year.

That second CD is all good stuff, with no less than three Chasing Cars and four You’re All I Have. The Little Noise Sessions is indispensable. The Berlin and Toronto live tracks rock and the Freelance Hellraiser Remixes are worth the head melt.

Below is my original review from way back then. Edited very slightly. I think as I read Gary’s new sleeve notes in the Anniversary Edition that I got it. A reviewer always likes that!

SNOW PATROL - EYES OPEN (2005 -edit)

I am feeling smug. I had a hunch about its greatness and I got it right. You see I have been with Snow Patrol the whole hog. Indeed, when I started watching they were called Polar Bear and after they changed moniker I thought they should get a Grammy for “Band who comes up with the crapest names!”

Even before that, I had a very early tape when they were Shrug (know what I am saying about names!) and turfed it out when we had to clear the attic for an extension (try landfill site at Belfast Lough)! I have bought their last two albums on the day of release, even though When It’s All Over We Still Have to Clear Up was very hard to find in their native Belfast on the day of its release - how things change!

The reason for my obsession though was subjective. I knew the drummer and four song credits on Final Straw were given to Iain Archer who I lived with and helped out in what might loosely be called management capacity in his early days.

Yet, apart from one or two particular favourites, I never quite felt that they had fulfilled the potential that lead singer Gary Lighbody had more than hinted at in, the much more satisfying side project, The Reindeer Section. And so when the big breakthrough came at last I was delighted, if not a little bit surprised at just how big that break was.

What pleased me most about it all subjectively was that I felt that they hadn’t made anything like their best album and that the follow up, which was going to be vital and a little pressured after the sales of Final Straw, was going to be easy.

With a bigger budget and a surge of confidence I sensed that Lightbody could take the Snow Patrol template and with a little of the Reindeer Section DNA added make an album to not just consolidate Premiership status but make a genuine Champions League challenge (apologies to American readers for a soccer illustration)

And as I predicted, they have made an absolute corker. My friend Paul who calls them, rather harshly, Snore Patrol felt they lacked bite. Well the bite here would eat any stadium across the world and will. Yes, Paul might get irked by a few repetitive couplets in the middle songs but, apart from some decadent quibbles, this is a collection of exhilarating anthems underpinned with the familiar Snow Patrol guitar strut.

The first three tracks bombard you with great new intentions. Everything is bigger, more expansive, much vaster, threatening to attack the horizon or invade a far away planet. There is no let off. This is a joyous soar from beginning to end. All That I Have is the catchiest thing to hit radio in years and Chasing Cars might follow in a Run type vein.

Where they have reached for a Reindeer Section model is in the Glasgow Choir that adds so much to the sound. Another hint about the authenticity of this band is that needing that choir they don’t hire the London Community Gospel Choir but phone a few mates in Glasgow and give them some work. Included is one time cohort Iain Archer, with his own eagerly anticipated album out soon, and his brother Paul, the main man for The Gears, a live act not to be missed.

With the Archers there is a menagerie of females lending a powerful swell to Hands Open, Make This Go On Forever and Open Your Eyes. Perfect! When it comes to a guest vocal they look beyond their tight not community to draw in Martha Wainright who adds a sweet surprise on Set the Fire To the Third Bar.

Lyrically Lightbody is reaching farther too. Sometimes when he doesn’t feel he needs the couplets to rhyme, I do but we are seeing a lyrical lyricists develop before our eyes here.

There are lines where that will linger and be used and reused - “I need your grace/To remind me/To find my own.” or “Somehow everything I own smells of you/And for the tiniest moment it’s all not true.”

Snow Patrol are sensitive male souls in the vortex of the rock n roll. Love songs, mainly about that which is broken, lost or frustratingly never quite fulfilled has always been Lightbody’s disposition. Yet, Leonard Cohen he is not and the overriding theme of Eyes Open is as the music suggests, “carpe diem,” suck the marrow out of all life’s possibilities.

Hopefulness and joy and life abundant reigns over the melancholy. This might reflect the psychology of where the band is right now. A decade of failure and poverty, yet commitment to the dream has transformed into living the dream. Thoughts of Top 5 singles, Live 8 performance and supporting U2 would have been a laugh two and a half years ago.

Here are a band who are aware that it might disappear as quickly as it came and are trying to make the most of their moment, though the release of Eyes Open is about to lengthen that moment into hours and days at least.

Headlights On A Dark Road puts it well, “Headlights... before me/So beautiful, so clear/Reach out... and take it/Cos I’m so tired of all this fear.”

On You Could Be Happy they beseech her to do the same, “Do the things that you always wanted to/Without me there to hold you back, don’t think, just do…/More than anything I want to see you go/Take a glorious bite out of the whole world.”

Remember what I said about bite and eating up stadiums! The closing line before the obligatory and sometimes clumsy position of extra tracks is “Take a deep breath, take in all that you could want.” It is what Snow Patrol is doing. Take a deep breath and high dive into the avalanche.

Astounding! Look at me! I knew it!

After 18 years of no new original songs, caricaturing them as the band that just turns out the old hits live, the Rolling Stones, Mick and Keef about to reach their mid 80s, release a second record in three years. And with producer Andrew Watt, who has just helped another 84 year old Paul McCartney make his best record in decades, so this is an album that sits a long way from a shelf in a old person’s Residential home.

Watt should get paid by the government for his work among the aging. He has worked his magic again. This really is a record for the sunny blue skies of 2026. Almost singalong and in some places actual singalongs. Jaeger is throwing that voice in every way that he always he has, sensual, rebellious, sarcastic, romantic, humorous, maybe preposterous and a little bit prophet. It seems stronger than some of his peers.

Richards and Wood do their dirty guitar playing strut and swagger underneath. Everything starts with harmonica driven blues Rough and Twisted that could be on any of their previous 24 albums.

Of those 24 studio albums my favourites might be Some Girls and Tattoo You. There are many echoes of that phase of the Stone’s work on Foreign Tongue. In The Stars could be Start Me Up for 2026 adding U2 soaring oooooohhs. Jealous Lover could sit alongside Miss You with Jaeger’s falsetto strong as ever. Back In Your Life is that more leisurely blues that they are so good at. Think Waiting On a Friend.

By this stage I am feeling sorry for the songs birthed by rock stars six decades into their careers. I mean I would love to hear all of the above quality songs in a Rolling Stones live set. You could probably add Some of Us and Covered In You but listen to all those classics on 40 Licks and see the competition. Not only are the young songs competing in quality but also in 50 years of being loved. It’s tough on a new Rolling Stones song.

There are statements to me made too. There’s “mad mogul Mr Musk” on Mr Charm and then the state of the Union gets well delved into on Ringing Hollow. This song is all country. Again far from their first time down that side alley. This one is a kind of love song to America, a place that the Stones have built their name and fortune. How many big lips t-shirts do you see coast to coast or gulf to lakes?! Lots. Yet, this place that they have loved, and has loved them, seems broken and ringing hollow:

Liberty’s not looking too well

She’s got another crack in her bell

Lady Liberty don’t look so good

When she’s wearing a scowl, yeah, yeah

Side Effects doesn’t hit me like most of the rest of the record but when the Stones sing about drugs I listen. They know:

There’s a price to pay for everything

Everything you put in your veins

I paid

Theologically, I am a little at odds with Divine Intervention in that they is suggesting that there is no hope one. I remind him of Sweet Sounds of Heaven from Hackney Diamonds’ more helpful -

I smell the sweet, sweet scents of Heaven

Comin’ down (comin’ down), comin’ down (comin’ down)

To the earth (from the earth)

As Declan Lawn suggests in the brilliant third series of the Tv drama Blue Lights, “it’s faith or S****”. Like Declan I’m with the sweet sounds of heaven.

Over all Foreign Tongues is a tasty piece of work. Accessible and contemporary, with all the various lines of Rolling Stones’ DNA down 60 years blended and blurred into Andrew Watt’s renovation. I could take one more.

Our childhoods are held in our memories with various posts that sit above all the time forgotten, like guides to travel back through. Sport is one for me. Football, golf, athletics, tennis, Commonwealth and Olympic Games. Teams, matches, tournaments, races, jumps.

I was 11 when Kevin Keegan appeared out of Scunthorpe and seemed to make Liverpool better than they had been. They won the league in 1973 but it was his performance against Newcastle United in the 1974 Cup Final that sticks. Then his partnership with John Toshack, intuitive and deadly. The European Cup win in 1977.

Keegan was a hero. The perm. The pop single. Not since George Best had a footballer been so cool! He wasn’t as gifted as Best but what he lacked in natural ability he made up for in hard work, great vision and a skill to read the game.

He was unlucky that FIFA wasn’t so corrupt and money mad in his playing days as they are now. Fewer teams qualified for the finals and in 1974 and 1978 England didn’t make it. It is interesting that he could still win the Balloon d’Or in 1978, and again a year later, without playing in those finals or his team Hamburg winning the European Cup. Different days!

As a manager two memories stand out. His days at Newcastle United. He put together a brilliant free flowing team that should have won the league but just couldn’t get there. My dad was a Newcastle fan and I never remember him so invested or excited about football as in those Keegan years. The 4-3 defeat to Liverpool will never be forgotten.

Then of course that interview before the final game of 1996 season when he pointed fingers at Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United and said that “I’d love it if we beat them…”. That passion… and those words echoed by everybody but United fans. Sadly, and maybe that sadness sits a little heavier today, he just couldn’t get it over the line.

The second managing memory is my personal favourite best recollection of all. I loved it when he came to manage my beloved Manchester City winning us promotion back to the Premiership in his first season in 2001 and giving some hope to a club in the doldrums for too long.

The memory on a big tall post is 2004’s FA Cup’s replay at Spurs we are 3 down at half time, Joey Barton then got sent off as the teams were leaving the field. The second half was one of my all time favourite City games as the ten men turned it around to win 4-3. When Jonathan Macken scored the fourth I was crying my eyes out in sheer joy. You can tell how long it had been since we had won anything. Yet, Keegan’s arrival was perhaps the start of City reaching the heights of six and seven years later.

It was that memory, just over a year later, that gave me the hunch to tell my Liverpool supporting mates Martin and Peter confidently that though Liverpool were 3 down at half time to AC Milan in the European Cup Final that it was far from over. If they got the first goal, momentum could shift and… I wish I always got it so right!

I imagine tonight football fans across the world will be remembering their own Kevin Keegan moments and being thankful for those memories. Quite the footballing life. Love and prayers to his family.

I cannot remember a time when I didn’t have a football at my feet and how much I loved this game, with soccer heroes and great memories, playing but mainly supporting. This recent World Cup though…

Here are FIVE of the issues that I had with the 2026 World Cup Finals.

TOO MANY TEAMS

I first watched the World Cup in 1970. Sixteen teams. An achievement to actually get there. Much as I loved the Pico Lopez story, a Tallaght man playing for Cape Verde in the World Cup Finals after a late invitation, should he really have that on his CV?

Oh some will say that teams like Cape Verde and Curacao competed and got results but I am not convinced.

In lost interest very early on and though I watched the two semi-finals and will watch the final but there were hours of my favourite game that I honestly could not be bothered with.

LASTED TOO LONG

As a result of too many teams, the thing all lasted too long. After the long weeks of group stages we only lost one-third of the teams. Scotland then had to wait for days assuming they would make it out of the groups but then didn’t. Waste of money, time and emotional health!

Now the players have to get what will be the shortest space for holidays to ease the mental and physical fatigue, causing injuries and dips in form as another pressurised League season begins in a few weeks.

DIVIDING THE GAME INTO QUARTERS

Being in the United States of Consumerism we watched a game that is proud of its traditions being divided into Quarters. To allow America to have the advertising space to brain wash the population into purchase, purchase, purchase FIFA added a “hydration break” which meant that injury time was regularly 7 minutes long. Money, money, money.

DAVID BECKHAM’S GLASS OF WINE

Sir David seemed to have cameras in his face at nearly every match that I watched but one of him really jarred with me. He had a massive wine glass in his hand. It looked more like a scene from a Paris cocktail bar than the terraces at Old Trafford or Anfield in 1969. Not my image of football.

THE UNVEILED CORRUPTION OF THAT SUSPENDED RED CARD

The ‘suspension’ of American player Folarin Balogun’s suspension so that he could play in the knock out stages was the most obvious act of corruption by what we have believed to have been a corrupt FIFA for some years. The President of a country can phone the President of FIFA and force decisions that effect the tournament! All faith and grace was gone. The game is in bad bad hands.

After 36 holes of The Open I have pretty much given up on our Rory, am hopeful that Tommy, Bob and Shane might give us something to maintain interest but am down to one winner from three - Scheffler (always), Cam Young and Bryson DeChambeau. Ok maybe Sam Burns too.

It is of course the last of those, Mr Dechambeau, never far from a controversy, who is the talk of the English north east coast as the third round unfolds.

After his second round when he was within one shot of the lead, the referees accused the American big hitter of tramping down the grass around his stance while playing out of the rough on the 5th hole. A two shot penalty did not go down well with DeChambeau who threatened to pull out of the Championship but is still there loitering with intent.

How do I surmise the incident. Well. Here is the thing. It was obvious to me as soon as a saw it. You can’t do that Bryson!

As an eleven year old I was taken out to golf with my father. I started playing round after round on my own. My first rounds were with just a nine iron and putter and then I started playing with peers, got my first handicap, won a few prizes, captained the youth team.

Here’s the thing. Within a couple of years of beginning, my dad had taught me golfing etiquette. Etiquette was a huge word for a wee boy who literary skills were being honed by Slade and T. Rex!

But it was a way to live that my dad was conveying. Golf is built on values and rules that are only for a golf course, though lessons for life too. It has it’s own micro-culture. Those ways still live deep within me, even if I haven’t played in two decades.

If you accidentally move the ball as you address it, that costs a shot, don’t touch the sand in a bunker before you play, or lift anything out of a bunker. If the ball touches you after you strike the ball then that is a penalty. I remember once hitting so underneath the ball that it just went straight up vertically and down the front of my very loose rain jacket before coming to rest at the almost same spot. Did it hit my body? Me and my playing companions had to talk about it. I think I conceded a shot just in case.

These things are so inedibly marked that I have struggled now for a few years since they changed the rule that you could keep the pin in when you put on the green. In my day a putt going into the cup while the flag was in was such an obvious no no. Two two penalty shot. Now, that has changed. My soul though still jumps every time I see it and screams WRONG!

So, what I am saying is that golf etiquette embedded in Bryson DeChambeau’s core should have warned him against trampling anything down the grass around his ball or swing.

I remember a few dilemmas when I played about bending tree branches or bushes or long grass because they are living things. I know we had to discipline ourselves at times not to use practice swings to cut down high rough.

I know that Bryson is rather more brazen and physical and gung ho than most players but he cannot use it as an excuse. The etiquette should have come through. Bryson should have been tip toeing into that stance, as I so often did. Sorry Bryson BUT that was a deserved penalty. No VAR needed!

In conclusion I cannot get out of this Sporting Surmise without the obvious Spiritual Surmise that lurks. Following Jesus is like taking on another world etiquette. Meekness, compassion, hunger for justice, service, sacrificial love are all ways to live that need as indelibly marked in my soul as golf etiquette.

1. PAUL MCCARTNEY - THE BOYS OF DUNGEON LANE

At 84. Come on. Leave it to the young. No, yer man from The Beatles makes an astonishingly good record about his pre-fame days, that small percentage of a big life.

2. MUMFORD & SONS - PRIZEFIGHTER

Less than a year after Rushmere, Marcus and the boys come up with another endearing record of rustic looseness and spiritually stimulating songs.

3. FLEA - HONORA

Red Chilli Peppers bass man surprises me with a jazz rock thing in which he plays trumpet too. Fascinating and Nick Cave covering Wichita Lineman!

4. IRON & WINE - HEN’S TEETH

Sam Beam catches my attention again with this beautiful collection.

5. NEEDTOBREATHE - THE LONG SURRENDER

I liked the more organic stripped down Gospel camp fire feel of this latest collection.

6. STEVEN LINDSAY - CHORDS AND COLOURS

Welcome collection from Glasgow’s Steven Lindsay. That old Big Dish jangle matured by his work with Craig Armstrong and contemporary angst of soul.

7. THE MILK CARTON KIDS - LOST CAUSE LOVER FOOL

Another stash of those gentle blasts of harmony and exquisite musical settings.

8. MIKE CAMPBELL & THE DIRTY KNOBS - MISSION OF MERCY

Tom Petty’s old guitar tottin’ companion gets a super group around him and blasts out some great blues noises with the Petty accessibility still to the fore.

9. HSS GOLDEN MESSENGER - I’M PEOPLE

Another great songwriter hooks up with producer Josh Kaufman to conjure other worldly forms of the traditional song.

10. ÁSGEIR - JULIE

Our Icelandic writer of contemplative songs writes an entire collection in English. Haunting. Mysterious, Sublime.

My FAVE 10 IRISH RECORDS 2026, SO FAR

The Longest Day

A day when I remember

The day you can never forget

Because that day hate blew your heart away

And every other day, ever after, would never be the same

Every day full of empty chairs

Birthdays,

Holidays,

Graduation days,

Wedding days

On this Longest Day

I pray for days of healing

For days of peace beyond understanding

Considering how every day hurts

I hope for better days

On this Longest Day

I remember

That it is Father’s Day.

“The bullets are still travelling.”

It might have been Northern Irish portrait artist Colin Davidson who said that, while speaking at a 4 Corners Festival event about his Silent Testimony exhibition.

Colin of course meant that the bullets and indeed bombs that killed people during our Troubles are still having their impact. For those who lost loved ones it is not back then, it is still now. I think that that is another line stolen from Colin.

Today is a Day Of Reflection in Northern Ireland. Every June 21st, the longest day, Healing Through Remembering invite the people of Northern Ireland to reflect on our loss. It will not be on your news bulletins. It is a more private thing. A remembering.

So, I am reflecting a lot on those who lose loved ones and how the bullets and shrapnel is still impacting hearts and souls and minds.

I began to consider those I knew who lost loved ones.

Today I am thinking of my friend whose mother could never come to terms with his father’s death that she had been far too close a witness. I thought of his brothers who never got over it and died of the consequences far too young, the bullets got them too. I had more admiration for my friend who had made it through.

Today I am thinking of a former colleague who also lost father. He was only two. I thought of his Godly attitude of forgiveness and reconciliation. My admiration grew and grew reflecting on his desire to look forward to a peaceful future than any kind of vengeance.

Today I am thinking of another friend, his sister and mother. His dad was blown up on the day that his mother was going to share the news that they were expecting him. This is a family that inspires me so much. A mother who somehow left with the most horrendous situation brought two amazing children up to live for reconciliation

On this day of reflection it is these are the quiet heroes that I am quietly remembering. How did they manage to divert the bullets and shrapnel still flying to find resilience and strength and grace in such circumstances.

These are the unsung heroes who don’t want sung about who in many ways paid for our peace (might be Colin again) and who now work for our future when the card they were dealt could have led them down so many cul-de-sacs of our past.

Today I reflection… remember… and pray…

#1 JOSHUA BURNSIDE - IT’S NOT GOING TO BE OKAY

Burnside continues to follow his own unique creative avenues by colouring outside the lines of the songwriting craft. About a friend that he lost.

2. DEAD GOAT

A Northern Irish super group take us back to the late 60s with guitar riffs and excellent writing. If Crosby, Stills and Nash had been born around Lough Neagh and the Mournes!

3. MICK FLANNERY - THE HOUSE ALWAYS WINS

With a bagful of stunning guests Flannery turns his debut record into a musical with every song able to stand alone. A little Waitsian.

4. PILGRIMS - WINTERING

Bell X1’s Steve Noonan collaborates with Brian Crosby former buddy in Juniper that also had Damien Rice. A quiet atmospheric set of songs with Noonan usual imaginative and humorous yet deep lyrics

5. BRIAN HOUSTON - HOT DIGGITY

Houstie takes a different angle at the songwriting job and puts electric guitars up front and centre. Late 60s Lennonesque in places.

6. DANI LARKIN - NEXT OF KIN

Dani is so daring and ambitious in the sonic shapes she throws at us but throughout there are reminders that she is rooted in a long tradition of music that is alive and vital now.

7. HOW I BECAME A WAVE

Lush but not much orchestration in songs so quiet that they almost don’t exist but are fragile and sublime for that.

8. DAVID KEENAN - JUST FOR TODAY

Keenan is at again with those eccentric poetic lyrics and tunes, filling them with the stories of our times…

9. DEA MATRONA - HATE THAT I CARE

These young woman still lure me with that spirit of Fleetwood Mac, little Zeppelin like guitar runs and choruses of pop perfection.

10. HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN FROM BELFAST Soundtrack

Just for the three fascinating songs by Gary Lightbody and Iain Archer

My heart literally sank and broke when I caught Deacon Blue’s keyboard player Jim Prime’s photograph on social media June 19, 2025. Knowing he had been very ill I knew that this wasn’t good news.

I was shocked and also shocked at how shocked I was. Oh there are a lot of musicians of which we say that they are like best friends though of course we have never met. Human beings who play musically the soundtrack of our live, being companions for years, decades even, playing songs of joy or songs of lament when you need them.

For joy I’d reach for Dignity, Believers, City Of Love, Real Gone Kid and a plethora… Lately, The Great Western Road has been just right for the time of adventure that I am on and People First my rallying cry in a dark depressing world. Take Me To The Place or Riches have always been my reach for in times of grief.

Yet, Jim was not a distant musical companion. I’d had the good pleasure after many of Deacon Blue’s Belfast gigs, through their generosity, to have a beverage back stage before or after gigs. Jim was so engaging. He always made me feel that he was keen for a chat and his gentle kindness was wonderful trait in a rock star. I’d even got to talk theology and music with him as a result of his work at the University of the West Of Scotland.

I first heard about James Prime as an early member of Altered Images with Gregory’s Girl star Clare Grogan but far more crucially as a player on John Martyn’s Well Kept Secret and Sapphire records. When I first brought Raintown home and checked out the band my first question was if that was the same Jim Prime. It was.

It was obviously as member of Deacon Blue that he becomes important to me. From the falling rain sounds on the opening title track of that first record Raintown, to the wind and waves of Dignity right up through the banging introduction to Believers to the up to date elegance of The Great Western Road, Jim was to Deacon Blue what Roy Bittan is to the E Street Band.

Jim Prime cannot be highlighted in isolated moments. He is as integral to the sound and riven into the DNA of Deacon Blue as much as Ricky Ross’s voice and Lorraine McIntosh’s harmonies.

It is those guys in the band who are closest to Jim that continue to think and they are close. Continued love and prayers to the band and Jim’s family…

… and thank you Rev Dr James Miller Prime for all this music that touches my head and heart and soul… and for your kindness. I am so grateful. I will carry it all with me.

If you are unaware the sermons I preach are available online.

Last Sunday I preached about what was in the newspapers about Belfast. Race riots. Those of other races being burned out.

I then asked what the Bible might say into such a situation. Why does Fitzroy do Community Kitchen, why were we out delivering food packages to those who were frightened in their homes.

I hope any anger did not distort the Scriptures.

You can watch the entire service HERE

You can listen to a podcast of just the sermon HERE