It was a bit of a coup for Blake’s to be a vessel to host the for-the-ages voice of Lisa O’Neill last night. The Cavan singer told us that this was her Fermanagh debut – a remarkable fact really given how far she has travelled and performed down the years. I myself saw her at the Festival Hall in London at the 1916 centenary concert attended by the then President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins.
The initial idea was to host the gig in the old Victorian Church Street side bar which is an absolute pearl of a space. But it is tiny. And the Franciscan styled Atrium is bigger. And demand necessitated the move.
Laytha – cousins Niamh Carney, left, andPhilana Nolan opened for Lisa O’Neill’s Fermanagh debutappearance
Laytha opened – the folk duo who are in residency in the old bar on Wednesday nights at the long running Folk Club. They sang Aslan’s ‘Crazy World’, The Corrs’ ‘Runaway’ and more in close harmony.
In the Atrium of Blake’s of the Hollow, Enniskillen later – l-r: Mic Geraghty, Lisa O’Neill, Joe Doyle
Lisa who played banjo and guitar in addition to her spectacularly wise and deep toned seer-like vocals was backed by Mic Geraghty from Dublin on harmonium and guitar, Joe Doyle from Co. Kildare on double bass and Brian Leach from Co. Cork banging a drum but even more interestingly on the unusual hammered dulcimer, a gift from a Chinese friend who left it behind.
The main music opened with ‘Well Below the Valley’ a song Lisa told us she learned from Christy Moore – his version is above – who had learned it from John Reilly. She described it as “biblical – some say the story is wrapped around Mary Magdalene.”
Socially conscious in her talks to the audience between songs she mentioned how society is dealing with a lot of domestic violence against women and her song ‘Silver Seed’ seemed to me like an amulet against such cruelty.
I was only able to dip into the set for the first half dozen songs and couldn’t stay to the end but was blown away by Lisa’s voice, tickled immensely by the dainty dance steps she took at times accompanied by daring thrusts and face contortions transforming herself as if she had somehow became a good fortune bringing (or maybe not) púca. I liked ‘Pothole in the Sky’ – and the moving ‘Violet Gibson’ about a woman who tried to kill Mussolini. A new song dedicated to Frederick Douglass a visionary African American abolitionist, orator, author and statesman who was fêted in Ireland when he visited in the Daniel O’Connell era also worked well. And the version of Randy Newman’s ‘I Think It’s Going To Rain Today’ was also very satisfying.
A sidenote to begin with. Isn’t it interesting when you encounter musicians you think you know the sound of. But really don’t. When they pop up in other contexts it’s confounding. Your so-called knowledge was only scraping the surface. Looking for the best caveat against boxing musicians into categories? Then it’s that.
But we all do it. I suppose it’s a byproduct of having overly tidy, boring minds or to be a bit less scathing, a desperate attempt via unsuitable methods to make even partial sense on a microscopic level of the mystery and transcendental majesty of art. And the unruly irony isn’t lost on me given that this is a jazz blog primarily.
TheWake of course isn’t a jazz record. That does not matter one iota. Any self respecting music fan needs to know it. If connecting it will then seep into your pores, touch you and move you given how it works on a human level. Go on, why not, insert the Foy Vance name into the spell of a classic of the 19th century like Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass that later inspired the Beats. “Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,/ Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best,/ Only the lull I like, the hum of your valvèd voice.”
It is not for spreadsheet Phils more an encouragement to fill your boots with emotion. And on a certain level such metaphysical commotion deep down somewhere even found in the rawest of the gospel blues is intact and pristine. Secularised for our times regardless I reach for that most revolutionary of poets of the 16th & early 17th centuries, John Donne.
The Rev’s words like: “Since I am coming to that holy room,/Where, with thy choir of saints for evermore,/I shall be made thy music; as I come/I tune the instrument here at the door,/ And what I must do then, think here before” strike a chord.
And in that – without being literal – holy music room here you find two thirds of the Neil Cowley Trio in a completely different context. It’s English pianist & keyboardist the charismatic Neil, who curls a Wurly along the way, and the trio’s gifted bassist Aussie Rex Horan who has been in the NCT since Richard Sadler departed many moons ago. Evan Jenkins isn’t the drummer. But another jazzer and rock drummer Jeremy Stacey is. He is known for his work with the great English jazz singer Claire Martin on Take My Heart and was in Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds for ages. He’s also significant here on this latest from extravagantly gifted nordie Irish singer-songwriter Vance.
The Neil Cowley trio reformed in recent times and are touring, see the gig guide. Their new EP Built on Bach is out at the moment. There is a further Cowley connection in that famed studio engineer Ethan Johns – one of the producers of Macca’s New (2013) – and with whom ‘Rolling in the Deep’ participant Cowley worked on for 2024’s Entity – produces and engineers. The sonics as you’d expect given his pedigree are pukka. There’s a tactile fully fledged sense of comfort to the all round capture. Mercifully it has a sort of “woody, quality“. It’s not at all tinny. Nibbling the hoops, what a great rhythm section.
The main focus is of course the extraordinary Vance. Sui generis, that voice speaks to the soul without corny mannerism and delivers the album that to riff on the join the circus sentiment of ‘Caravan’: “Turn up your radio/And let me hear the song/Switch on your electric light.” The Wake presses that idiomatic switch winningly on a number of comparable levels. The search for spiritual enlightenment is ongoing.
Around for ages there are 6 albums before this one. Vance is pretty high profile, out there touring and there are lots of dates right now. It’s going to be a huge summer of music in Belfast with the huge fleadh cheoil na hÉireann in town for the first time from 2-9 August and Vance plays the city around assumption time a week later on 15 August down in the Custom House Square.
The Wake serves as what is glossed as the final chapter of this “grief-shaped” odyssey grieving for his father who was a travelling preacher.
It says it on the tin on the very beautiful “put your hands up” song ‘Hi, I’m the Son of a Preacher Man.’ Producer Johns adds guitar and Hammond organ in the sound. Lyrics on this are jointly written with Bonnie Bishop who does backing vocals too. The pair have performed together down in Magy’s Farm.
Work in progress – lots of insights are found in this making-of Sketches of The Wake documentary.
The song was written on Vance’s 50th birthday. The Bangor man seasider Vance is now a year older.
One St. Patrick’s Day in the afternoon How my heart nearly burst when I saw you You didn’t say it but you knew the truth And I could see it on your little mind Foy Vance – from ‘Call Me Anytime’
The whole album sends me caught one more time however impulsively after a few listens to a poetic passage from Eugene O’Neill’s great play of 1956, Long Day’s Journey Into Night. Even when making such a leap shears away thematic context and seems a bit of a liberty a lit up stream of consciousness selection however you choose dear reader your random juxtaposition is perhaps inevitable. It’s this bit I was thinking of:
“I was set free! I dissolved in the sea, became white sails and flying spray, became beauty and rhythm, became moonlight and the ship and the high dim-starred sky! I belonged, without past or future, within peace and unity and a wild joy, within something greater than my own life, or the life of Man, to Life itself!”
Amazing stuff, then – utterly magnetic – the song I like best is song of familial pride and love, ‘Call Me Anytime.’
With his fourth studio outing, It’s Not Going to Be Okay, Joshua Burnside departs from the experimental electronica of his recent catalogue to deliver what is some of his most vulnerable and cohesive work to date. The album as intimate as any poem you’d choose to read quietly by yourself. The Northern Irishman has delivered a stark, monochromatic study of grief, written in the immediate aftermath of the death of his close friend and fellow musician, Dean Jendoubi.
“I keep the hours of a printer I keep the cross in the park The jig is up when your eyelid’s shut Don’t want to lie in the dark Don’t want to sing with the angels Don’t want to dance with the damned Just want to run under the midnight sun With the blood in my hands”
From ‘Nighttime Person’ by Joshua Burnside
But it’s not all dark as night. Recorded largely within the confines of his Belfast home, the production is intentionally skeletal. Where previous records leant on dense layering, this collection prioritises space. Burnside’s fingerpicked acoustic guitar and unvarnished vocal delivery, replete with the natural textures of his Belfast accent, sit at the very front of the mix. This technical approach creates an atmosphere that feels less like a performance and more like an overheard confidence, capturing the “natural” and “unpolished” feel where his voice is left intentionally rough around the edges.
The strength of the record lies in its rejection of grand, sweeping metaphors in favour of the mundane. Burnside treats grief as a series of everyday rituals and domestic observations across the full tracklist. ‘The Last Armchair’ stands out for its specific focus on an IKEA purchase, transforming a mass-produced object into a heavy symbol of an adulthood interrupted. ‘With You’ offers a masterclass in songwriting economy, tracing a path from shared childhood memories to the desperate, physical longing for a presence that is no longer there. ‘Something Else’ reflects on the search for meaning through coping mechanisms like binge-watching ‘The X-Files,’ while the closing track, ‘Remake,’ provides a particularly brave conclusion – a discursive, almost rambling account of the hours following a funeral that captures the exhaustion of mourning with startling accuracy.
While the subject matter is inherently heavy, the album avoids becoming voyeuristic or overly sentimental. Instead, it maintains a reserved honesty that critics have already noted as a career high. For the specialist listener even if this isn’t your area, It’s Not Going to Be Okay is a testament to the power of the stripped-back approach. Burnside has managed to document a private tragedy in a way that feels universally resonant, cementing his status as one of the most vital voices in contemporary folk.
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