I got into a band so I could be one of The Rolling Stones, but then I got fuckin married. I never got a shag!
The band was The Daintees and the man they never did call the Keith Richards of folk-rock is Martin Stephenson, the gorgeous Geordie (Nick, for fuck s sake Ed.) who is now five years or so into a low-key but rewarding solo career, the latest chapter of which is an album recorded in a watering hole in West Cork with a disparate bunch of Irish musicians.
Most of Beyond The Leap, Beyond The Law was recorded in Connolly s of Leap in essentially one take straight onto DAT. Everyone from The Prayer Boat and The Devlins (who toured Britain with Stephenson on The Daintees last hurrah in 92) to Galwegian bouzouki maestro Brendan O Regan (who s played with everyone from The Waterboys to Townes Van Zandt) was roped in to lend a plectrum. But why Connolly s of Leap?
We were thinking about where we could do it, explains the softly-spoken Stephenson over a veggie burger and chips in an exclusive city centre chipper, and we just happened to be on tour in Ireland my flatmate and Gypsy Dave Smith, the Australian slide guitar player. We just turned up and met Paddy (McNichol, manager of Connolly s) and it was like househunting, you just make a spontaneous decision.
I think that rooms are just as important as recording studios. You can go and spend #1,000 in a studio but it s not a place I want to go to hatch some tunes anymore. The only reason I ever went into those places was because I thought that you had to go there to be a proper musician. Now it s completely different. To me the musicians are more important than the desk.
Having calculated the cost of block-booking every four-star hotel in Cork for his project, Stephenson eventually settled for a more humble dwelling.
We had a little farmhouse. You can get it for #80. We put about 11 or 12 bodies in there for 5 days which was great value! There was a little guy called Paddy who looked like Mickey Rooney. He was the drum tech for The Prayer Boat. He actually slept in a cot.
Had he particularly fond memories of the venue from past visits?
I found it dead friendly, he avers. When I played Connolly s initially it was empty. All the students were in the other room by the fire, having a drink. So we walked through and played to them. . . tortured them!
Be it those legendary Midnight At The Olympia concerts with the Daintees, where he and his merry band were wont to go marching through the theatre blowing tubas, or standing on the tables in Whelan s with nothing but his acoustic guitar for company, it s fair to say that Stephenson probably spends more time in Ireland than our national soccer team combined, playing gigs more often than Alex Ferguson (a disgraceful pun, I know). What is it that makes him come back so regularly?
It s a small island, he ponders. People are a bit different, I think. They have a lot of dreams. I like the dreams. It s like if you go to Majorca on holiday and you have a positive experience, you ll be inclined to go back. I ve been very lucky here with the people I ve met. Whereas I ve had negative experiences in Germany, so when I think of Germany, I go oh fuck!
He has made his home, though, in Scotland 30 miles north of Inverness, to be precise where he lives the simple life with his girlfriend.
Sometimes I just hover around Inverness like a sad old Beat poet that never made it! he says, with typical self-deprecation. When you re a townie and you move to the country, you have to deal with a lot of stuff. You can t just neurotically hop into the high street. You have to communicate with your partner. n
Beyond The Leap, Beyond The Law is out now on Demon Records.