Reunited with old friends at the Montra

It was a super weekend for gigs - on Friday night I was reunited with my old buddy Noel McKeary for a charity show at the Montra Club in Coleraine. The gig was a fundraiser for St Vincent de Paul at St. John's in Killowen, the part of town where my father's family come from.

It was great to see some faces I haven't seen in a while, including some of my cousins and my old Chronicle friend Des Worboys, who took this picture. Most of all, though, it was good to play a few songs with Noel - I joined the country rock band New Moon just before Noel left it, so we played together for almost a year. Along with Adrian and Clive Culbertson, Noel penned some great songs on the band's album Emerald Country Shack.

I played a few of my songs and then Noel came on stage and I accompanied him on some of his songs and then we played a few crowd-pleasers and left the stage to Henry Gaile, as he and Bernie came on and finished the night off with some music for dancing. Thanks to all those who came along and supported the night.

The folowing evening was something completely different - playing the blues with the Ronnie Greer Blues Band down at the Ardhowen Theatre in Enniskillen. The audience were wonderful and I think it's about the best I've ever heard the band - bouncy, polished and slick. Hugely enjoyable. Apart from the long drive back to Belfast. My eyes were definitely at half-mast when I pulled up outside the house and turned off the engine. Off to Paris tonight to be reunited with Andrea and spend a few days chilling out.

30 days, 30 albums... Ella & Louis

Louis often sounded like he was trying to heard to be Mr. Entertainment, and Ella often sounded like she was just… trying too hard. On this collaboration, they’re in mellow and very fine form, with the fabulous Norman Granz making everything sound warm and welcoming, and Oscar Peterson on piano. What could be better? The combination of her grace and his growl sits surprisingly well, and his trumpet playing is restrained and elegant here. This is a Sunday morning favourite at our house, and a must for every collection.

30 days, 30 albums... Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones

After all the years of singing like a drunk and ravaged Sinatra, Waits delivered this creaking, clanking bag of bones to Warners Brothers and as they sat in the room and listened to it he apparently ‘watched the blood drain from their faces’. Warners refused to put it out and Waits moved the album to Island Records, where he remained for many years. You can see why Warners were taken aback – it’s such a departure from his earlier work, laced with found sounds, clanking and groaning broken instruments and fractured images. It’s heavily influenced by the world of avant garde theatre and Bertolt Brecht in particular. I adore it – it sounds like something grand and stylish caught in the act of falling down the stairs. 'Shore Leave' is particularly atmospheric and there are some gorgeous old-style Tom songs on here, too, like 'Soldier’s Things'. Indispensible.

30 days, 30 albums... The Blue Nile - Hats

I had the joy and privilege of seeing The Blue Nile when they performed at the Ulster Hall on the Peace at Last tour, and they were magnificent. Soaring soulful vocals moving the soul against the backdrop of electronic drums and synthesisers and gentle electric guitar. Hats is the classic Blue Nile moment, though... The lyrics are deeply evocative – ‘In love we’re all the same / We’re walking down an empty street / And will nobody call your name?’ It never ceases to make the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. This is a gorgeous album – it sounds like music to listen to late at night, while walking through a deserted city in winter.

30 days, 30 albums... Jackson Browne - Running on Empty

Jackson Browne at his finest – with an AMAZING band, writing and recording these songs on the road, in rehearsal rooms, hotels, one of them even on the bus while it rolled through New Jersey. I always liked bits of his other albums, but this one I adore from start to finish, the light and shade of it, the performances and the drama of the arrangements and the lyrics. And it has perhaps the best song ever written about being in a band and being on the road – 'The Load Out', coupled with 'Stay'. Priceless and timeless.

30 days, 30 albums... Arvo Part - Te Deum

This is gorgeous. Estonian choir, chamber orchestra and piano, recorded in a church. I’d been told of its beauty, and had heard it mentioned so many times. It’s been around for years, but I got a copy last November and it became the soundtrack to our Christmas – ghostly, soaring, comforting and hair-raising. Magnificent and elegant and snowy.

30 days, 30 albums... Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

I was a late convert, and this was the first Dylan album I really got my teeth into. I was AWARE of him, and at school someone had loaned me one of the Christian albums, but I'd just never been exposed to the best of him, for some reason. I borrowed this on cassette from a library and it shot me right back to the power of lyrics - to move, inspire and speak the truth. And to be funny. Some of this is very funny. In truth I never really recovered from the whipcrack of the snare drum opening of ‘Like A Rolling Stone’. And the rolling piano of ‘It Takes A Lot to Laugh…’ Words tumble out, hotly pursued by a loose and loud band holding on for all they’re worth. It’s still the soundtrack for many a journey. And it sounds as fresh today as I'm sure it did then - even listening on a stretched old cassette tape with a cracked cover.

30 days, 30 albums... Steely Dan - Aja

The first Steely Dan album I ever owned – my cousin Ross gave it to me. He’d bought it cold, expecting to hear lots of stuff like ‘Reelin’ In the Years’. He dropped the needle on this and got the disappointment of his life. By this stage, Steely Dan had left that boogie far behind, opting instead for sculpted perfection, moulded by the finest session musicians money could buy. This is ultra-hip but unsettling lounge music – jazz-influenced songs of disappointed lovers and jaded losers, studded with some of the most amazing bouts of musicianship. And great tunes. For all those who slag off Steely Dan for being boring musos, who can deny that 'Peg' and 'Josie' are great tunes?

30 days, 30 albums: Kris Kristofferson - Me and Bobby McGee

The soundtrack to my childhood, growing up on the Harpur’s Hill housing estate in Coleraine in the 70s.. Every home seemed to have this album, with its tales of madness and lost love and its sly smile. I don’t know if he ever bettered this collection – ‘Sunday Morning Comin’ Down’, ‘Me and Bobby McGee’, ‘For The Good Times’ and ‘Help Me Make It Through the Night’ are all on here. And ‘To Beat The Devil’, with that mumbled spoken intro that seemed so strange to me as a child. He was writing lines that will stay with us forever: ‘I’d trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday’.

30 days, 30 albums... Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce’s masterpiece? He’s had so many – this one stands up as well as any of them; An exploration of smalltown dreams and despair, busting loose and failing and longing for something better. And for big hearts and dreamers, an exploration of the toll that small town life can take. But man, does it sound big... It jumps right out of the car speakers and begs you to wind down the windows. What a band - the NOISE these guys make is just hair raising. I love the cover, too - the young Bruce glares insolently out at us, full of pent-up energy, cornered against the venetian blinds and the wallpaper. He looks like a burglar.

30 days, 30 albums: What's Going On

What more needs to be said about this beautiful, despair-soaked bag of grooves? It’s on countless best-ever lists, and it remains a very strange-sounding album, drenched in strings and reverb and mellotron, but it has a few dazzling moments when the sun shines through the clouds and his voice pierces the heart – ‘What’s Happening Brother’ – ‘how in the world have you been?’ I put it on sometimes just to hear 'Mercy Mercy Me'.

30 days, 30 albums - Van Morrison: Beautiful Vision

Still my favourite Van album – it just sounds so good, and it features one of Van's best recording and live bands. The horn solos are perfect and the arrangements are wonderful, from the opening groove of ‘Celtic Ray’ to the shady summer afternoon melancholy of ‘She Gives Me Religion’. I know there are a dozen other Van masterpieces out there – Saint Dominic and Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece and all that. But I keep coming back to this one.

30 days, 30 albums - New Boots and Panties!!

Ian Dury - New Boots and Panties!! I never grow tired of this… The wordplay, the funkiness of the playing, the characters that inhabit this world. ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’ remains one of the masterpieces of English rock’n’roll and this album one of its landmarks. The whole thing moves me and grooves me to this day – ‘Clevor Trever’ cracks me up and ‘My Old Man’ chokes me up. I read the Ian Dury biography recently and there was a sense that this remained Dury’s finest sustained hour, despite the odd twinkle before and after. What a geezer. Just make sure your mum's out of the room when 'Plaistow Patricia' starts...

30 days of favourite albums - Mud Slide Slim

My first exposure to James Taylor – drinking wine with my Upstage Downstage youth drama buddies in a bedroom in Portrush. I was completely smitten with the images of departure and homecoming, sunshine and long dusty roads. ‘I’m the one-eyed seed of a tumbleweed, in the belly of a rolling stone’. I also loved the sound the record made – warm and woody, unshowy and real. It's still a Sunday morning favourite. James has put out some amazing songs since then, but this one still feels like the most consistent body of work. And I find myself back in that bedroom with the candles glimmering every now and then. Metaphorically speaking, of course...

My mother and Bob Dylan

There's a good reason why my mother never had her own radio programme.

She and my father had come over to Derry last weekend to see me play with the Ronnie Greer Band at the Bentley Bar, as part of the City of Derry Jazz and Blues Festival.

As part of the set I had played the old Bob Dylan bootleg, 'Blind Willie McTell'. We have an arrangement that starts off moody and quiet and builds the drama up, coming down again to a spooky and sparse finish. It usually goes down quite well among the Jimmy Reed 12 bar blues selections.

On the way home, my parents were commenting on how much they'd enjoyed the show. 'I never heard you sing that song before,' she said. 'That Bob Dylan thing - it's great.'

'Which one is that?' I said, confused for a moment.

'You know,' she said. 'That "Deaf Willie McTell" one.'

I'm sure Bob would have seen the funny side.

Audience participation - The Miser reels in the laughs

Andy Gray, Paul Boyd and Julie Maxwell in The MiserWe went to see The Lyric Theatre production of Moliere’s 'The Miser' at the Elmwood Hall in Belfast the other night, with the priceless Andy Gray (Scottish stand-up comic) in the title role. The production, directed by Dan Gordon, plays it completely for the belly laughs, and it reels them in like fishermen when they hit a big shoal – hand over fist, all hands on deck...

It was deliberately low on jeopardy, high on pace and entertainment. Lots of nice Northern Ireland references.

We had seats right in the front row, all the better to see Andy as he mugged it up and winked at the audience throughout. I can’t remember the last time I saw better comic timing. He commanded attention with every slightly raised eyebrow, every little smirk. There was a row of Belfast ladies behind us who giggled and howled the whole way through it.

As the play closes and everyone is safely married off and the money is safely stowed back in the safe, the Miser sinks down onto his bench and muses about the dilemma he faces (I’m paraphrasing here): ‘How do you spend your cash… But still hold on to your money?’

And in the split second of silence, like a FLASH, a lady behind me in the second row shouted up: ‘Ye get it all on TICK!!’

As the laughs and applause rose all around him, Mr. Gray, upstaged, looked out into the faces of the crowd and smiled generously. ‘Thank you… Mrs. Moliere,’ he said under his breath, and then delivered his last lines as best he could.

(I heard on the way out that the lady was the director’s mother-in-law)

It’s a very funny production – Gray is priceless and also tremendous from start to finish is Michael Condron in three roles.

The show continues at the Elmwood Hall until May 29 – find out more on the Lyric’s website at www.lyrictheatre.co.uk

Turning 45

I’ve had enough of these milestones in my life to make this one seem ordinary, but it doesn’t. Forty five seems somehow RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE for some reason, a marker on the road between birth and… the Other Thing.

I got some lovely presents from friends and family, and Andrea prepared a fabulous dinner table and a lovely meal for the occasion. There were messages galore on Facebook and e-mail. I felt wonderfully beloved and celebrated. And a little pensive.

As 45 comes and goes, I grow more and more afraid of wasting time.

I just know that I’m filled with a strange sense of elation and ‘Old’-ness at 45. Old-ness because my recovery time from everything is longer than it used to be, and I realize I’ve reached an age that seemed like aeons ahead when I was a kid. It struck me this morning that the teachers we regarded as ancient old dinosaurs at school were probably this age when they taught us.

But also elated because I’ve never felt more creative and alive. I find myself sketching and writing and blogging more than I ever have. And that has become my way of staring in the face of The Other Thing, as it glares at me across the years between us – across the distance that is now, surely, shorter than the one I have traveled to get here.

Instead of London

Well, thanks to the ash cloud, we've been grounded - Andrea and I had big plans for a long weekend in London and we had to abandon them because our flights were cancelled (twice). My two biggest regrets were not getting to see the Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy, which I had been really looking forward to, and not seeing our various friends, who had planned a Soho afternoon drink and a Saturday night meal and a knees-up respectively.

Anyway - we decided to make the very best of it, and become tourists in BELFAST for the weekend. So, on Friday, we cycled down to St. George's Market and bought some nice food for dinner (we also met Eilidh Patterson and chatted for a while). We cycled past the Law Courts at lunchtime, just as all the barristers came out to play... A shoal of them in their suits, carrying folders and grinning like grammar school kids going home on a Friday.

And then we went to Avoca for lunch... And fnished off the afternoon with a visit to Waterstone's and bought some books. The grounds of the City Hall were a-sparkle with loungers in the sun, and the streets were breezy and bright.

On Saturday we drove out of the city to Ballinderry Antiques, where we looked at some wonderful pieces. We're planning to buy a new house, so in our imaginations, we're looking at all kinds of things that would look good in its various lovely corners.

We came back and said hello to Terri Hooley at Good Vibrations record store, because it was International Record Store Day (and I bought a Townes Van Zant album), then we drank coffee in the Belfast Coffee Company and read the Saturday papers.

After that it was The Ulster Museum - Visions exhibition, some of the most magnificent art in its collection. We loved the Delargy and the Yeats and the Conor. But most of all we loved the Derek Hill - Tory Island. As I write, it's Saturday afternoon - we have a dinner reservation for the Barking Dog, and plans for The Sunday Sessions at Oh Yeah tomorrow, and then cocktails at The Merchant, until the money runs out.

The arms of Belfast feel open wide in the warm weather. If and when we get back to London, it will have a tough act to follow.

A brush with Michael

I'm smitten by the work of Irish painter Michael McGuinness - he's become one of my dearest friends over the last ten years, and recently he participated in a talk at Flowerfield Arts Centre, illustrated with a slide show of some of his work over the course of his life. Seeing the images all together was fabulous, and with his permission I put them together as short 'film' and put them up on YouTube for the rest of the world to enjoy. I hope you do, too...

Record fair goodies

What a wonderful day yesterday... Finished up at work at lunchtime, then off to the CD and Record Fair in Coleraine Town Hall, where I picked up a bundle of goodies for £30 (see below).

One of the stalls was offering a real collector's item - an original Clive Culbertson single 'Time to Kill/Busy Signal'. With the powerpop and punk explosion in the Far East, copies of this are changing hands for over £200 on eBay these days. I took a sneaky picture, but I didn't want to ask how much they wanted for it...

Then coffee and a muffin, and a drive over to Omagh for a gig with the Ronnie Greer Blues Band at the Strule Arts Centre - great vibes. Then a leisurely drive home listening to gems from the various new albums.

I love record fairs - I love the Hawkwind-next-to-Sinatra feel of them, the occasional gem buried among the Five Star and Herman's Hermits' Greatest Hits. Interesting to see a lot more vinyl on offer than last time. If we're lucky enough to move to a bigger house later this year, I really want to dust off my turntable and put it back to work. Which I know will drive Andrea up the walls. I sense a Pink Floyd marathon coming on...

Anyway, purely for fun, here are the items I picked up yesterday:

• Town Hall Concert - a live jazz album with Joe Henderson and Herbie Hancock. Not sure about this one yet...
• Neil Young - Neil Young. Because it's worth £3 just for 'Last Trip to Tulsa' and 'The Old Laughing Lady' alone.
• Loudon Wainwright - Strange Weirdos. Again, worth it just for 'Daughter'. Some great instrumentals, too.
• A Great Day in Harlem - compilation tie-in with the movie. Adorable rag-bag of different jazz styles.
• Eels - Beautiful Freak. I used to have this on tape, and loved it. Again, anything that has 'Susan's House' is worth three quid.
• Prince - Very Best. I used to have a Greatest Hits tape that I stretched - I played it so often in the car. Can't wait to be on an open road with 'Alphabet Street' turned up loud.
• Keith Jarrett - La Scala. Again, three quid... I'm on a Jarrett trip at the minute, listening to The Koln Concert and The Melody at Night With You, so this jumped out of the rack and into my hand when I saw it.
• Jesse Malin - The Fine Art of Self-Destruction. Produced by Ryan Adams, and I heard great things about this when it first came out, so I thought: I'll give it a spin.