early night tales

so i’ve been away too long. sleeping around with that slut twitter. i just like her cause she’s new. i’ll always come back to you my comely tumblr. 

in Phoenix today for a day off. went for a walk earlier and i swear i thought i was gonna combust. it was just over 100 degrees and i don’t function too well in that type of solar misery. how do you do it phoenixers (phoenixians? phoenitians?)? you live three doors down from the sun it seems. it’s punishing. a mile round trip today felt like training for some epic task i have to complete before i get let into heaven. or at least am allowed to go back to Earth. had some great gigs here don’t get me wrong and the people are real nice but i can’t get over how overwhelming it is to actually achieve anything. you must have developed an indoor life similar to ireland and the UK but for the opposite reason (i.e. there we hide from the rain, here you hide from the other guy). it’s a bore i guess to go on about it but i dare anybody from our green isle to come here and not be consumed by it for some time. i guess if i stayed for a week or too i’d find something else to fixate on but tour life being what it is we are transient. 

and another thing about the crazy sunshine… ha.

the tour is creaking towards the end and it has been a mighty thing. lots of great shows, amazing fans, perfect moments and funny little happenings. touring life is fun and all, but 9 weeks straight cracks the battle hardened shell of the best of them. so we’re weary yes but buoyed and joyed by the love we’ve been shown everywhere and so happy to still be packing em in after all these years (17, yes, 17 years old we are this year if you take from when we were formed, which i do and 14 years old if you only count from the first single, starfighter pilot in 1997 if you want to get technical. which i don’t). and there is talk now of another us tour in oct. shorter perhaps, so less cities. places, for the most part, we didn’t cover this time i think. it’s very exciting as it will be a tour with one of my rock and roll heroes so we’ll get it finalised soon, as i’m itching to tell you all who, what, where, when.

after Phoenix we bid Ed Sheeran a fond but sad farewell. he has had to head home and he and his two Marks will be deeply missed. he has lit up the tour and our lives and is a brother of ours forever. he already rules the uk charts. he will rule the world by the end of the year. i guarantee it. a phenom he may be but not without good reason. he gets pop star level adulation and hero worship but what stands him apart from other ‘pop stars’  is that there is no one pulling his strings in the shadows. no svengali writing his songs and telling him what to wear. everything he has done he has done on his own terms and all his songs are his own. he’s the complete pop star. he will make smart, touching, soulful, powerful music for years to come and grow with every step and his fans will grow with him. it’s a beautiful thing to behold. and to Ed’s fans that have come to the shows and watched us too, many i’m guessing for the first time, bless your hearts. it has been a joy to play to you guys and i hope you’ll come back and see us next time too. we’ll have a great show tomorrow and send Ed off in fitting fashion.

and not forgetting our fans. we love you loads too. always will.

special guest for the Texas shows and Biloxi will be Gary Go. an incredible song writer and performer who will be an extraordinary addition to the tour. we welcome him in Dallas.

this is reading like a dear john i guess, it’s not. am just reflective today. a Vegas hangover’ll do that to you. 

peace, love and understanding to all. and penguins. have some penguins too. on me.

gL.xx

Seamus Heaney - In Memoriam

As usual in the classroom I wasn’t paying attention. Daydreaming I expect perhaps about playing for Northern Ireland in the world cup or playing guitar at Wembley stadium. Aged 14 I hadn’t quite switched on at school. I didn’t know it yet but I was about to. Up to that point I was a C (ok D) student happy enough to get by with minimum effort. School was that place I got the bus to every day and got to play sports some days in the afternoons and not much more. Then Mark McKee started working as an english teacher and brought with him three secret weapons. The works of Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and one Mr Seamus Heaney. Yes, the day he arrived at the school would change my life but as I say I didn’t know it yet. 

As Mr McKee (as I knew him then, Mark he is to me now. Strange calling your teacher by their first name at any time in your life) began to read from the little volume of poetry in his hand I found myself, for the first time that day, maybe that week (sorry mum, this will all be news to you), actually listening…

“Between my finger and my thumb…

The course boot nestled on the lug…

Loving their cool hardness in our hands…

Nicking and slicing neatly…

The cold smell of potato mould, the squelch and slap 

Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge

Through living roots awaken in my head…”

Mr Mckee was reading Digging by Seamus Heaney and I was hooked. I devoured the volume Death of a Naturalist then North, then Station Island, the lot. Seamus Heaney made me want to be a writer. I wrote poetry every day and was published at 15, many times. All of it terrible and I have to read it now, if I ever do, from behind splayed fingers but it started me on the path that would take me to here, sitting in California writing Snow Patrol’s seventh album after a 20 year career that has taken me around the world many times and shown me things I never dreamed of. Seeing the whole stadium become a giant Polish flag while grown men wept tears of joy during a U2 show after we supported them. Seeing the great barrier reef. Jumping from the tallest building in the southern hemisphere (long story). And realizing my childhood daydream of playing in Wembley Stadium. All this and so much more simply from reading Seamus Heaney as a 14 year old boy.

There are people, as my friend Gabrielle is fond of saying that are part of an ‘invisible tribe’. Artists and writers that touch people on a level that beds deeper into our souls and hearts. People of profound light, love and kindness that simply and maybe even without their knowledge make us and the world around them better. Stephen Fry is one. Guy Garvey another. To see them on the stage, screen or on the page makes us feel safer, happier, stronger, more centred and less confused by life and what the hell we’re doing here. I would make Heaney chieftain of that ‘invisible tribe’. A leader we could (and through his words we still of course can; and we must) get behind. A man to whom I expect the thought of being a leader would be ridiculous but these men and women, these are the ones we must get behind. People that lead with their words and deeds and not with the empty promises of election campaigns or the grandstanding of the pulpit. If we are as good as our words then Seamus Heaney is as good as any soul who walked this earth. The earth, the dirt, the sky, the sun, the birds, the wind, the men, the women, these are Heaney’s great inspiration and love. He luxuriated in the language of the ground behind his feet and the sky above him. Words that will live forever. And thank god for that. And as he now, sadly, returns to the earth that inspired him we must return to his words for inspiration of our own. A call to arms for the invisible tribe, for the writers, artists, singers, players, thinkers…

“Between my finger and my thumb the squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it”. 

Digging. Seamus Heaney 1939 - 2013.

Some thoughts on the Northern Irish Music Prize 2013

This was originally posted the thin air website http://thethinair.net/2013/11/gary-lightbody-releases-feature-length-statement-on-ni-music-prize/ but I thought i’d stick it up on here as well to give my tumblr a wee run out. It’s been warming the bench too long.

Also it was just this minute announced that Foy Vance’s Joy of Nothing won the award. I am delighted for him. Well deserved. These were my earlier thoughts on the prize itself and all the bands nominated.

Firstly I’m delighted that Tired Pony have been nominated for the Northern Irish Music Prize. I am gutted that I’m not going to be there tonight to see who wins. Now let me make the case for everyone else but us on this fantastic and diverse list….

And So I Watch You From Afar – All Hail Bright Futures

Songs like Big Thinks Do Remarkable and The Stay Golden sees them harvesting the calypso-ish genius of Animal Collective, marrying it to their always visceral sound explosions and making something quite distinctive from anything else out there, they’re surely one of the most inventive rock bands in the world. It’s always surprising and you’re constantly wondering whether they don’t have the faintest smile on their faces as they confound you at every turn. A puppet master’s grin perhaps. Certainly the most self-assured rock band in the UK or Ireland right now.

Anthony Toner – Sing Under The Bridges

A change of pace from ASIWYFA that immediately shows the strength in depth of the Northern Irish music scene. Tell Me Something I Don’t Know begins with bluesy swing so irresistible you’d be forgiven for thinking it was emanating from a Bourbon Street bar rather than the streets of Belfast. A poise and elegance that is quite rare, and songs full of compassion and kindness to boot.

Axis Of - Finding St Kilda

As punk as it gets. Songs that are seconds away from offering you outside for a fight for spilling their pints. My favorite song, We Dine on Seeds, rolls at you like an angry sea, violent and vital, muscular and brutal. It’s also loads of fun. Makes me feel young again and that’s a feat in itself as my knees have gone and my hangovers last a week these days.

The Bonnevilles – Folk Art & The Death Of Electric Jesus

Like a stiff shot of blues. Another bunch of songs like a bunch of fives. It’s harder to create danger with only two members, it’s amazing then that they seem more dangerous than anyone on the list. 10,000 is one of those songs you can’t turn away from.

Fighting With Wire – Colonel Blood

Christ, we make good rock music in Norn Iron. Didn’t Wanna Come Back Home is one of the best rock singles of the last few years. And why wasn’t I Won’t Let You Down a single?! It’s genius! An album with more hooks than a mackerel fisherman’s tackle box. Then there’s Graduate, another slice of shimmering pop rock glory. They’d probably not thank me for saying ‘pop’ but when it’s this hooky, infectious and glorious there is pop in there and no mistake. Something to be proud of I’d say.

Foy Vance – Joy Of Nothing

For anyone paying attention to my twitter (and I wouldn’t blame you if you don’t), I have said much about this record already. Suffice to reiterate it is my favorite Northern Irish record of many years. Foy Vance is a goddarn legitimate genius and should be treasured as such. In him we have one of the greatest songwriters in the world.

Girls Names – The New Life

Firstly just a great name for a band. Musically it’s dark and seductive, it haunts you with spooky guitars and vocals that sound buried alive. There’s something deeply unsettling about it, and therefore great in my book. It’s gothic and ghostly and bass lines that hook you like a drug. Yes please.

Jetplane Landing – Don’t Try

Jetplane Landing name their album after advice they didn’t take themselves. Unholy riffs that seem carved from mountains and lyrics spat out like punishments for the meek. Not for the faint hearted “Hey maggots, get off my turf I wrote shit like this fucking years ago!”. As fighting talk goes it’s pretty declarative. Showing again that Northern Ireland produces rock music as good as anywhere in the world. We also, it seems, have a lot of musicians ready to beat the crap out you. Culturally I have no idea why that would be….

Le Carousel – Le Carousel

Just a brilliant record. Late night on the dancefloor, some remaining bones, a few teeth and the determination to dance until you fall apart. The French influence goes beyond the name as the music drips with the sex and cigarette smoke of fine French dance music. More Camille Dalmais than Daft Punk, but maybe with the swagger of the latter if not the sound. Good Times is as good a track as anything from the world of electronic music this year.

A Plastic Rose – Camera.Shutter.Life

I’d say a lot of people would know of my affection for, and friendship with, these lads so I don’t want this to smack of nepotism. Nor do I want to be unfair to the guys by consciously dimming my love for their record. It’s a great rock album that I listen to a hell of a lot. Also they’re one of the best live bands on the two islands. There, that was democratic enough, right?

Space Dimension Controller – Welcome To Mikrosector 50

This album is gloriously weird. I love it. At times it’s part Afrika Bambaataa, then Prince, then some ambient dub, then some other 80s oddness, it all sounds like early electro and hip-hop in a blender. A fascinating record that is strange and beguiling and full of exploration and intensity. Can’t quite get my head around it all but that’s part of the fun.

Tired Pony – The Ghost of the Mountain

Only two of them are Northern Irish. Seriously though, thanks for the nomination.

Trucker Diablo – Songs Of Iron

A mean and grimy good ol’ fashioned southern-fried rock record. Like someone driving a flaming motorcycle through your earholes. Big riffs, big noise and big bigness. In summation, it’s big. Like the Cloverfield monster started a band with the big fellas from Pacific Rim. Awesome.

Two Door Cinema Club – Beacon

I adore this band and I’m so happy to see them conquer the world. Bangor boys too, like me. We all know TDCC. No need for me to say much. One of the best bands in the world, and they’re from our place. Be proud.

So there you have it. Some thoughts on the great list of Northern Irish bands that we should be delighted about. There are tons of bands not on the list or those who will (Wonder Villains, SOAK, I’m looking at ye), I’m sure, be on the list next year. Whoever wins I wish them well, and any one of these albums is deserving for sure, but I hope (whatever you think of my comments) we take a moment to think about how far we’ve come as a young, relatively peaceful, free nation of music and art and we remember the dark days just enough to realise how good we have it now. Bands and artists thriving and creating in a small land ever-punching above its weight. Per capita we have more great bands than any country on the planet and we should be ever thankful for that.

As always and forever peace and love, Gary Lightbody, aged 37, Bangor, Co. Down.

To Live And Drive In LA

I wrote this a while ago for an online magazine that in the end didn’t materialise. I figured i should post it up here instead. They had asked me to write a weekly piece about living in LA as I find myself living here a lot more over the course of the year. What’s written below was to be the first of many. Does part of me worry that the poor writing style of what follows is one of the reasons the magazine never got off the ground? Yes.

To Live And Drive In LA

For a large part of the last two years I have lived in Los Angeles. Also I don’t know how to drive a car. To tell someone in LA that you don’t know how to drive is like telling them you don’t know how to boil an egg, or order a def-caf latte. When I tell people this it elicits some strong and even extreme reactions. From shock: “You don’t drive a car?! How do you get anywhere?”. To pity: “Aw, maybe one day though, maybe one day”. To outrage: Seriously someone at a party turned away from me in disgust and started talking to someone else. Last time I go to the Driver’s Ed christmas party. By the way I don’t lead with it: “I’m Gary, I don’t drive. How do you do?” I’ll only mention it if if comes up in conversation. And in LA it always does.

You see for those of you that haven’t been to LA it is not really a city. More a sprawling network of kinda towns connected by long surface streets and freeways that during rush hours are so filled with traffic they more resemble parking structures than motorways. For the uninitiated rush hours in LA are from the hours of 6am to 2pm and then 230pm to 10pm. If you want to get anywhere it’s best to leave in the middle of the night and sleep at your desired destination in your car. Of course not owning a car to sleep in myself how would i know, eh? Why, I say why, would you even want to drive in this city? Most times I find myself in a taxi or a friend’s car it takes 2 hours to go 20 miles. Even still, LA is a driving city. In most of the towns that make up LA you very rarely see anyone walking on the pavement (sidewalk? potato/potAAto). In some LA communities there simply are no pavements. The local council no doubt deeming it not worth their while even putting one in as no one would use it. So this is the environment which makes my ‘not driving’ an anomaly. Or at the very least peculiar to people. 

If I haven’t made the person turn away from me after I tell them I don’t drive and if I can get the smelling salts to their nose in time I’m able to tell them I live in Santa Monica which is certainly one of the most walking friendly towns in LA. We have the beach. You can walk on that. A natty promenade. You can’t even drive up that. A rickety pier. You’ll make the whole thing collapse if you drive up that. Seriously people can we fix it? I’ll help. And you can even walk the whole way down to Venice Beach. Another walking friendly beach front town full of, ok let’s call them, colourful characters. Saying I live in Santa Monica usually makes people soften a little: “Oh good” they’ll say, “But…”. Yes there’s always a but, “How do you get into Hollywood? Or Silverlake? Or Downtown?”. If I venture inland it is only if absolutely necessary, for example to see a band as there aren’t many gigs on the west side, or to visit friends, or to get my Thetans flushed at the Scientology centre - I’m kidding about the last one -  I’ll get a taxi. But day to day I’ll mostly walk. 

I love to walk. I’ll put my headphones on and stick the latest albums I’ve bought on my iPod and walk for miles listening. That’s one of the great joys of life in my opinion and something people that drive everywhere are missing out on it. Although recently my friend and producer Jacknife Lee told me that driving alone and listening to music is one of his great joys of life and I should learn if only for that. I have to say it’s been the most compelling argument for me learning to drive I’ve heard yet. That and if I ever get married and have kids I’m gonna need to drive my pregnant wife to the hospital. However as I don’t have a girlfriend and haven’t even had a date this year chances are that’s a few years away yet. But of course it’s bad form for a pregnant woman to drive herself to the hospital but if the time comes I’ll have to learn.

Although driving never interested me I was, like most human teenagers in the western world, offered the chance aged 17. It just never took. My aunt Jean bought me vouchers for driving lessons for my 17th birthday and they sat on the kitchen cabinet so long my sister used them two years later on her 17th birthday. When I left home in Northern Ireland for university in Dundee, Scotland the campus was so small that very few of my classmates drove and I started Snow Patrol around that time too so that when I left Uni I went onto the tourbus. At every turn I was disinclined to drive until now I find myself here in Los Angeles, the most drivingest city in the world, a non-driver confusing people at parties with my wacky ways. Maybe I’ll give in and learn one day soon but then they are building that new train from Santa Monica to Downtown LA, so maybe not.

Songs For Seamus Heaney

Yesterday I was very privileged to play the On Home Ground festival in Magherafelt in honour of Noble Prize winning poet Seamus Heaney who some of you may already know was an inspiration to me and who sadly passed away last year. I may write some more on the festival soon but for now i’d like to post the lyrics i wrote for the 5 new songs i played at the event in honour of the great Northern Irish poet. The songs are not directly inspired by specific poems nor are they my attempts to meet his brilliance rather they are inspired by his main inspirations namely Ireland, nature and family. He once was asked how he started to write and he answered that inspiration usually came from a sliver of memory. So i did the same for these songs. Any tiny spark of memory of my childhood in Ireland I would let guide me. There are songs, like The Church, about my grandmother’s (who is still the most extraordinary person I have ever known) death, and a song about the time my dad and I were shot by an idiot shooting at a low-flying duck (It’s A Day Like That), i was six at the time, and there are songs about Ireland north south east and west (I Think Of Home  &  I Still Love You). They are of course not touched with the same divine genius of Seamus Heaney but I humbly over them to his memory, to his fans, to our fans and to his wonderful family and extended family many of whom i met last night. It was a pleasure. Last night meant the world to me to say thank you to Mr Heaney for everything he gave me in life for it wasn’t until I read him that i started writing in the first place. Everything from me over the last twenty years starts with him. 

And you’re right, songs don’t tend to make much sound without music. Until we decide which, if any, of these we are to record for the next Snow Patrol album they can just sit here quietly and behave. Or not behave. In honour of Heaney, a writer of such immense passion, i hope the latter.

———————————————–

I Think Of Home

-

I remember trips to belfast

On that train that hugs the coast

The fields turned quickly into golf course

The golf course just as fast to fields

It was a callow boast I’ll grant you

To know it all when we knew none

Those days we walked the streets of belfast 

Like our kingdom come had come

-

I think of home I often do

You gotta know I love you now

In this light how could I not

I think of us just silly kids

Bet we thought we’d never age

And if we did we’d never dare say

-

And I remember trips to derry

On the old car’s freezing seats

And I know fountain street in winter

My grandma’s laugh the greatest noise

It’s sure been harder since she left us

And none of us have been the same

But the light she left is endless

And I still see her every day 

-

I think of home….

-

I remember trips through ireland

One caravan, two dogs, the sky

My father yelling points of interest

Us snotty kids just rolled our eyes

The punched out teeth of irish history

Mistakes were made let’s leave it there

There one’s thing we can all agree on

There’s beauty north, south, east and west

-

I think of home….

—————————————-

The Church

-

If silence is golden 

Those days were a golden age

Just you and your bible

Open at your last page

And those words trembled from me

As I read in the church that day

With so many family

All lost for the words to say

-

Why right then

When I was so far from home

No goodbyes

Just an earthquake of words through a phone

To this day

I hear your voice all the time in mind

I know you’re here

Somehow still guiding me

-

If you’re not the tiger

You’re likely the tiger’s prey

When too many thought that

You thought a different way

In an Ireland so broken

Of heart and of blood and bone

You were a light ray

So rare yet you weren’t alone

-

Why right then

When I was so far from home

No goodbyes

Just an earthquake of words through a phone

To this day

I hear your voice all the time in mind

I know you’re here

Somehow still guiding me

————————————–

Like Golden Waves

-

It’s not the smell of the regal pine

It’s not the humming of the bees

It’s the depth of my father’s laugh

That takes me back

-

And through the eyes of some childhood daze

I see our garden as it was

There was more colour in those days I’m sure 

But I’m not sure why

-

And the swings are rusted out by now

But freshly painted they were then

And I remember trying to loop the loop

Of course I never did

-

Here I come like some guileless lamb

Chasing footballs in the grass

Likely dreaming playing windsor park

Although I still do

-

The sunsets fell then like golden waves

But maybe that was all a dream

Those weren’t the end of the days of god

Cause god is always in the trees

-

I’m just a boy maybe five or six

I wanted only what I knew

It was a simple little kingdom then

Or so I thought

-

Cause in the streets not so far from here

There are boys around my age

And they’re alive in a dangerous land

That I don’t know yet

-

The sunsets fell then like golden waves

But maybe that was all a dream

Those weren’t the end of the days of god

Cause god is always in the trees

———————————————

It’s A Day Like That

-

The pheasants hung in silence 

And I remember feeling sad

Because the last time that I saw them they were flying

-

My father took me with him 

It was ours and ours alone

Standing waist to water before sunrise

-

The smell of wax-proof jacket

Turned acrid in the rain

And every time I smell it now I think of then

-

The stunning smack of buckshot

Then thump, then blood, then shock

My father calming me with gentle mighty hands

-

It’s days like that you don’t know what hit you

It’s days like that you’re not sure who you are

But it’s days like that you know you’re not alone

And it’s days like that you know how much you’re loved

-

Some thirty odd years later

In the Ulster hospital 

You put those gentle hands of yours in mine again

-

But this time not so mighty

Maybe this time cause you need to

And we connect the dots from child to man to child

-

It’s days like these you don’t know what hit you

It’s days like these you’re not sure who you are

But it’s days like these you know you’re not alone

And it’s days like these you know how much you’re loved

——————————————–

I Still Love You

-

I stepped still shaking from the slowing train

Out onto streets that used to know my name

Felt you in every single breath that I took that day

-

Though it’s been years it feels no time at all

And etched and echoed in these city’s walls

Is each and every word of cruelty and joy we ever said

-

But I still love you

I still love you

-

Hard to believe in something you can’t hold

No matter how it hurts or what your told

The rose is beautiful but it can also draw your blood

-

Two crows perch close like they are man and wife

So tendered feathered it looked the sweetest life

So now I know for sure that there is love on this side of town

-

And I still love you

I still love you

————————————–

gL   x