Ryland and The Bird

Those of you who read this blog regularly ( when I get round to writing stuff on here...) know that before I dedicated my life to writing stories I poured all of my energies into writing and performing songs, have done most my life. I was a lead guitarist and songwriter in many bands , but most successfully, (hmm, one could argue other wise) with my band Adventure Club. We put out an album, a labour of love really,  called "Wilderness Music" back in 2007. One of the  many problems we had back then was that we could never keep a line up together,  it always ended up just the two of us, just me and the singer playing and performing the songs to our small but dedicated  following. Eventually it all got a bit too much and we ended up amicably, calling it a day.  As traumatic as some of those days were I met some life long friends and it has to be said, many  genuine crazies. I learnt a lot from that time, not just about music but about people and well, life.  So much so that I wrote my first novel "27", about  that world.

The process of writing "27" helped me not only understand the inner workings of "The Novel", but  it also  somehow acted as a  psychic cleaning service washing away any of those souring thoughts about the world I had rejected.
This also meant that I could start new writing projects (click this to see what I'm talking about) and not only pick up the guitar again, but sing lead for the first time in my life.
My new band is called Ryland and The Bird and this time it's a very conscious decision to be a two piece.
It' raw pop with a hint of scuzzy blues and I love it. I thrash away at my guitar and whoop into the mike and my good friend Mr T- Bird Jones pounds the skins. We have both been in bands since we could grow facial hair and  the whole process of making music now of is one of ease and joy.  We're even thinking of getting an album together. But before you get your ears around  that, here's a funky little film, directed by Gary Wood of Radar Industries, for a song called "Coming Around Again." Enjoy.

Stone Cold, Cold Classic.

A few years ago a book  popped up on the Guardian Best Reads  list called "Fifty Grand". Written by a Northern  Irish writer called Adrian McKinty,  it's about a Cuban police woman determined to get to the US and find the man that killed her father. It sounded great in the review.  I devoured it in a day and immediately sort out his earlier work. I'd found one of those special  writers that you tell people about in the pub, and when you see that person again they  have brought up everything they've written too. His prose is tough, his ear for dialogue is pitch perfect and the books have more twists and turns than a Blackpool big dipper.

Mckinty's new novel "The Cold, Cold Ground", doesn't disappoint,  in fact it's probably his best to date. Set in 1981 in Carrickfergus at the height of "the troubles" we follow D.S. Sean Duffy as he tries to hunt down a serial killer whose  motives seem to be sexual rather than political - the victims are all gay men with segments of  music scores inserted into their person. A Catholic in a predominantly Protestants  area, Duffy is an outsider who will stop at nothing to bring peace and find the killer. It's a shocking story that moves at breakneck speed about a time and place that most writers have ignored.

Mckinty  is a rare presence in the crime genre, he writes with a wit,  lyricism and intelligence that the majority of British and Irish crime writers lack - he reminds me more of   Daniel Woodrell than Ian Rankin. His heroes are  canny scrappers on the edge of their worlds, trying to right the wrongs they have been confronted with. And like Ellroy and Peace he has a purpose other than to entertain ( although he does that fantastically)  he uses history to tell his truth about  political corruption, the abuse of women and children or just the plain wrongness of society.
So get on amazon , order the "The Cold, Cold Ground" and then get down the pub and tell everyone about your secret, cause I suspect he won't be a secret for very much longer.