Grief & fingerpicking solace
John Blek – right there when I needed him...
Grief & fingerpicking solace
John Blek – right there when I needed him...
For Dad…
1. Everything is context
John Blek is an Irish singer songwriter who, on Sunday 29th September 2024, was just in the right place at the right time. More on John and his music further on in this piece, but first to set the context. There is always a context. Usually more than one. And mostly overlapping wildly.
Here’s what was going on…
A couple of months back the impresario that is Steve Prior – the man behind the Boia Festival in St Davids – announced that as a pre-festival taster he was putting on a gig by festival regular, John Blek. Steve had told himself that he wasn’t going to put on any more one-off gigs. They are a lot of work for not much money but, as he admitted, Steve just can’t help himself, especially where John Blek is concerned, so the date was set…
That weekend, however, I was due to be attending - virtually - a gathering of artists and writers who had contributed to the latest Unpsychology Magazine, which I co-edit. Unpsychology is ten years old this year and it was a bit of a special celebration and launch of the recently published issue (you can find more about it at if you’re interested). The gathering was in Edinburgh and though I couldn’t work out the logistics of being there in person, I was going to be there virtually by the magic of Zoom! Hence, the John Blek gig was scratched from my diary, and the Edinburgh gig was in…
Then, a month or so ago, my 91 year-old dad had a fall. He was taken into a hospital emergency ward; seemed to get a bit better, then seemed to get a bit worse. He was moved to a rehabilitation ward, where he waited to go back home to his familiar, very caring Care Home, but then didn't really rehabilitate. He was too ill to return home, so was transferred to a new Nursing Home in the area – a lovely place, also with wonderful caring staff. I went up to help him move and settle him in, spending a few days sitting with him for spells, as he mainly slept, before travelling back down to work and then on home to Wales.
Then last Friday, he died, there in that lovely place. Peacefully, and with his daughter - my sister - beside him.
When I got the phone call, I knew it had been coming - yet these things are still weird when they happen. An old man dies, and the world turns off its axis - just a little. The feeling for me was a bit like swimming in soup. Not hot spicy soup, nor scalding-your-tongue soup; it was just thick, sludgy and lukewarm. It felt cloying, with odd moments that were almost cosy. It slowed me down; shut me down. Nothing sharp broke through. This was flat sludgy grief, with no power or energy in it at all.
I sat like this for the weekend. I knew it was OK to do this, but also realised I couldn’t be online with the people gathering in Edinburgh, however lovely they are (and they are!). I knew I couldn’t engage with all that creativity in that intimate setting – though it’s a world I usually cherish, and Unpsychology is something I feel at the heart of. Another oddness… a pulling back from something familiar and wanted.
Then, something popped up on my Instagram feed. A reminder of the John Blek gig, telling me (and the world) that there were still some tickets left. I decided to pick up a ticket and go. Music, I thought, was just what was needed, right now.
And, as it turns out, I was right.
2. Storytime
John Blek is a storyteller. He tells stories in his songs, and tells them when he is singing them. The Irish tradition he comes from is one of pub lock-ins and bands morphing into being for one-night-only in some dodgy backroom in Cork. His lyrics fold tales and poems into songs that seem as if they are already deeply familiar things. Like his fellow country-people (and Boia Festival players) Seamus Fogerty and Lisa O’Neill, his musical and narrative presence is captivating and unique.
There are stories that weave around how John came to be playing this, his ninth gig, in the smallest UK city of St Davids. How he met Steve Prior at one of those Cork pub lock-ins and blew Steve and his band away with his playing and singing. How they’ve been close friends since, and how John was the first person Steve thought of when dreaming up the festival. No wonder, he is a stunning guitarist with a voice to match, having spent many, many hours honing these talents in, around and beyond the Cork music scene for over twenty years and more.
One of his gig stories is about three jobs he’s had - other than being a musician (which is his favourite, current and hopefully final job). I forget all the details, but one of those jobs - his second favourite - was working in a guitar shop in Cork; the shop, he says, where Rory Gallagher bought his trademark red Fender Stratocaster in 1963. I love this detail, the storyteller’s claim to second-hand greatness, removed in time by several decades, but also that it shows that John (like Rory Gallagher himself in his day) knew exactly what he wanted to do and be.
I’ve now seen John play a few times in St Davids since the Boia Festival began (as the Cwych Festival in 2022).1 He plays alone, for the most part, and does turns in pubs around the city as well as the main festival venues. Basically, he just loves to play!
This time, he came early, a month before the festival, because his wife is due to have their first baby around the time of this year’s Boia at the end of October. He’s been on tour in the UK and Europe and was returning home to Cork on the ferry from Fishguard the next day. As part of his schedule, and true to form, he also played a small set on the Sunday afternoon at one of my favourite places in the world, the very wonderful Dead Sea Records, as part of their #miniaturesounds series, which you can get a glimpse of here…
3. A dark and stormy night
It was a dark and stormy night in St Davids. Nights like these are not as rare here as they could or should be. Rain in Pembrokeshire tends to ‘fall’ horizontally once the storms come in, so we take it for granted that wind is always a factor - in life, as much as in getting from here-to-there. And so it was last Sunday evening as I walked/scuttled from the car towards the Tabernacl Chapel basement, soaked in rainfall and grief, clad in my all-encompassing orange cycling waterproof.
The Tabernacl Chapel is an imposing building on Goat Street. Inside, the main building is an impressive place of worship which, like many such churches and chapels in Wales, seemed to have been acoustically designed specifically for music and song. It’s a brilliant place for a gig, but a tad too large for a medium-sized Sunday nighter.
John Blek’s gig, therefore, like a couple of others I’ve seen in recent years (notably, the mighty William the Conqueror in 2023), was held in the Tabernacl’s basement: an eccentric ramshackle space with pews, and room for a couple of hundred or so people, tops. Once the heating has clunked into life, it’s moderately warm (though most people wore hats of some description and it’s not Autumn yet…), while the pictures and old religious posters scattered around the walls are as random as the toilet arrangements. However, the heating is not a given, and the pews are as comfortable as chapel pews can ever be. Which is why, on this occasion, Orla, Steve’s wife, and boss of the Tŷ Boia guest house in the city, circulated cheerfully with cushions to ease our discomfort and posterior distress. Really, though, John Blek’s music turned out to be comforting and captivating enough.
So, a non-alcoholic beer in hand (courtesy of The Bottle Shop located at the back of the aforementioned Deadsea Records shop), I sat near the back, in a warmish bowl of anti-social emotional soup of whatever grief was being cooked up by my unconscious, and settled in for the evening.
4. Fingerpicking solace
John’s set began with the gothic folk of Forest Strong, from his beautiful 2021 release, Ether and Air, which includes these two apt and chilling lines that caught me immediately…
We bury deep the terror of the fear of losing those we love
…and ended with his hymn to those who, like my dad in his day, travel the seas on giant cargo ships: Salt in the Water (from Catharisis Vol. 1).
In between was a set that held me tight in the arms of songs and stories from forests, oceans, the green landscapes of Ireland, small cities like Cork, and meditations on love, life, journeys and arrivals.
The whole things felt like solace as I sat with my beer, and let the music wash through me. The grief didn’t leave, but John’s fingerpicking, his gorgeous voice and easy storyteller’s curses made the evening a little lighter and easier.
He’d been on tour to promote a record, so he also played a bunch of songs from his new album, Cheer Up which, following its own advice, starts a bit dark and gets lighter as it goes on. It’s a more personal record than some of his previous ones, but the songwriting is as accomplished as always, the playing always effortless.2
Listening on a work journey the following day, the new record took a little time to sink in for me. It wasn’t until I reached the final four tracks that the album really took hold, and then, thrilled at what I was hearing, I looped it back to the beginning and started all over again! I could choose any of those final four to post here, but I’ve chosen the grand and eloquent Giving Up The Ghost which reminds me strangely of Blur or The Verve in their soaring orchestral days.
This isn’t intended to be a gig or album review, so I won’t go there; suffice to say that the songs and the singer that evening all came together to carry me through. In the days after I have been doing my habitual digging around, finding songs of John’s that were half known but had been temporarily lost to me, together with the usual new-old and new-new discoveries. It’s something familiar for me to do and the music is, as music always is, a beautiful distraction and sometimes a sharp diamond shard that goes to the heart of the matter.
Epilogue: Good grief
Going to John’s gig only a few miles away from my home last Sunday hasn’t healed anything, of course. It hasn't taken grief away. There was no redemption, only a kind of temporary release from the heavy feelings that were closing in on me. However, it also turns out that music was exactly what I needed that evening. It’s always what I need, if truth be told, and each time I put the needle on the record, or click the little play triangle on a YouTube video, or stand at the back of a chapel basement, or sit in a concert hall and hear something amazing, it makes me happy, and brings peace and solace and sometimes dancing too.
It literally cheers me up, in the sentiments of John Blek’s song – or it makes me cry – and whatever happens in my life this fact doesn’t change. For me, grief is the right thing to be feeling at the moment, and there’s always a song that will speak to that; always a singer who can tell that story; always a reminder that grief is good, because it reminds us – even in the face of loss and dying – that this life is worth singing for…
The 2024 Boia Festival is coming up again in St Davids in a few weeks (25th/26th/27th October 2024) and has a great lineup. The festival runs over three days in a couple of main venues in the city (City Hall and the Tabernacl) with a free gig and arts trail at other pubs and venues. There are local players - like the ever impressive Rona Mac - and headliners The Zutons, Bodega and Lanterns On The Lake, together with an impressive roster of other great artist and bands. I’m particularly looking forward to seeing Rozi Plain (who also plays with This Is The Kit), and having a wander to discover new and familiar acts alike. There are still tickets left: https://www.boiafestival.co.uk
John Blek is amazing live. His records are great and there’s a lot of them, but playing live is where, I think, his heart lies. In amongst the songs on YouTube I found this live performance from three years ago (I imagine in COVID days) recorded at Cleeres Theatre, Kilkenny, which captures his magic:
That’s a fine piece Steve.
And Giving up the Ghost is very Verve like but also brilliant.
Dry eyed heart break & beautiful