Sarah Pray / Thomas Kivi (Minnesota Nice)

Sarah Pray & Thomas Kivi are two songwriters from Minnesota, USA. They contacted me a few months back to tell me that they’d be doing a self-funded tour around Europe and passing through Belfast under the tour name Minnesota Nice – and would I like to meet up? Well, how could I resist?

As it turns out, a show didn’t transpire for this stop of the tour – so this, as far as I know, is the known sole recorded performance of the duo in Belfast. And quite an honour too, because they are absolutely magnificent – and its crying shame that Belfast missed out on them (until now that is).

So it was a foggy cold winter day when I went to meet Sarah and Thomas at the apartment they’d found on a couch surfing website. In the kitchen we chatted about country music, movies and Minnesota’s surprising contribution to popular culture (Bob Dylan, Prince, Low, Bon Iver and, in the film realm, The Cohen Brothers). Maybe it was something about the arctic weather made them feel at home – because they seemed to channel all these musical greats over the course of that day – starting with this brace of tracks, one from Thomas and one from Sarah:

[Download Video]

Then it was from leafy Belfast suburbia to the even leafier Lady Dixon park, a few miles out of town, for a bit of ramblin’, tree spotting and some wonderfully appropriate music:

[Download Video]

Deep within the grounds of Lady Dixon there’s a Belfast version of a Japanese Zen garden. I’ve visited this garden in sunnier climes, and believe me its impressive – with water pools, lilly pads and cherry blossoms. On this muted wintery day, it was a dark dead place – and all the more dramatic for it really, not least when a gust of wind caught all the dead leaves and they all seemed to fall at once into the water during Sarah Pray’s once-in-a-lifetime ‘End Of The World’, which evoked Low in my mind again. It really did feel like the end of the world, and if I were more in touch with my fem side I would freely admit that it brought big man tears to my eyes. But yeah aye it was just a speck of dust, honest.

[Download Video]

Camera/Edit: Will McConnell
Filmed in Belfast, November 2010

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Crazy Heartache

Artwork by Will McConnell

So literally the day after the Pocket Billiards gig I awoke with a heavy head and weary legs and a mind to do nothing but have a cup of coffee and a sausage sandwich and retire back to my bed. Then I remembered I’m a bum and there was fuck all to stop me doing just that, so I did. I woke late in the afternoon and only remembered then that I had another gig to go to. And no date. The whole date idea must be getting a bit old now, but it provides 85% of the content for these things and I’m just not talented enough to give it up, so I poured my first Jack of the day and got to thinking about girls who might like country music.

They had to dig country, you see, because I was going to see Ryan Bingham. He’s a sort of modern day Steve Earle character, blending country and rock into a truly potent cocktail of musical brilliance. This is not even my usual hyperbole – this guy already has an Academy award for the song ‘The Weary Kind’, which was featured in the awesome movie Crazy Heart. I know what you’re thinking: the guy already has an Oscar and worldwide critical acclaim – surely a This Is Not A Review is kind of redundant at this point? And you would be right, but it’s all I’ve got right now okay? It was either this, or a review of new Northern Ireland based sketch show ‘LOL’, but much like the show, I just didn’t have enough material to fill the space. Don’t tell The Blender I said that.

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IN STORES NOW: Silhouette

As the nights start getting darker, and November rolls in – we’re going to light the dark evenings with some excellent session performances for you from Shauna Tohill’s band, Silhouette.

We promised to update this post every fortnight to bring you 3 amazing sessions tracks recorded earlier this year at the Safehouse Gallery in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter.

So here it is in 3 marvellous parts:

First up, the appropriately titled Touch Of Cold:

[Download]

Here is the magnificent Watching The Stars.

[Download]

And finally, the rather epic Gloria:

[Download]

Camera: Will McConnell
Filmed at the Safehouse Gallery, Belfast, 2010

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IN STORES NOW#46: Feet For Wings

When Feet For Wings first contacted me a few months ago through the website to ask about filming an In Stores Now session, my attention was caught immediately. The band’s myspace page has a few sample demos that I ended up listening through again and again and again – each time cranking up the volume and leaning in closer and closer, straining to hear more of this tiny sound emanating from the computer.

The band aren’t necessarily just quiet – even though they’re as shy and retiring as 4 early-era-Michael Stipes – but the sound they create is, in one word delicate.

It must be obvious by now that I’m totally intrigued by this band, and shall be watching their progress closely. I, as ever, urge you to give them a listen and a look.

I had the feeling listening to those demos of a still moment in the middle of a hurricane – of a whole world of shit swirling round these intelligent wee guys, and their reaction being very… quiet. That, and the fairground was in town.

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

[Download Video]

Camera/Edit: Will McConnell
Filmed in Belfast, November 2010

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Booze And Billiards

I walked into the Bandwidth office excited at the prospect of the ‘surprise’ Will had promised me. I was sure he must have finally found the shoe I had misplaced a few days before. I was getting pretty tired of hopping around all the time.
‘Tell me you found my shoe!’ I said, breezing into Will’s office without knocking. But I wasn’t talking to Will. Will was nowhere to be seen, and there was someone new behind his desk. A little bowling pin of a man – bald as a rock and with too much fat sitting atop his little legs. He was smoking a cigar.
‘I don’t know anything about a shoe,’ he said, ‘but you’re just the man I wanted to see.’
‘Oh yeah, who are you?’
‘I’m Harold. Will’s on holiday.’
‘I’m not sure I like this,’ I said.
‘Take a seat. You’ll like it.’
I sat down and put my shoe-less foot up on his desk.

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King Khan

It was a rare sunny day in Belfast today and, why, with Christmas round the corner, my mind started to wonder to summer of course..

So I thought it would be appropriate to resurrect an old Bandwidth Session once thought lost, one that always reminds me of those surprising, late, Belfast summers. It was in late 2009 and the legendary King Khan (really Arish Ahmad Khan to biography fans) was in Belfast, at the Black Box, fronting King Khan & The Shrines.

We originally recorded 2 tracks with him, one a lullaby he recorded as a tribute for his kids, and the second a cover from Mississippi John Hurt. And the perils of live recording meant that I didn’t realise until I got to the edit suite that a mic lead must have been lose or something, because no useable sound had been coming through. So that one went in the ‘IN’ pile and inevitably got buried in more pressing issues.

But a good track is still a good track – and there was one good track in there – a rare and sweet session with Khan, playing a beautiful track, again a lullaby, by a country blues legend, called Aint No Tellin.

So here it is in all its glory:

[Download Video]

Camera/Edit: Will McConnell
Filmed in Belfast, October 2009

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