I edited my profile with a bucket of paint and a big stick.
Jake Burns is a guitar player/singer/songwriter from Belfast, N. Ireland. The mainstay in punk band Stiff Little Fingers for the best part of 30 years. Last year, he finally realised a long held ambition and released his first solo album: "Drinkin' Again" (EMI). Here are the liner notes and some review quotes:
LINER NOTES:
"I've been playing some of these songs with 3 Men & Black, which is an acoustic project involving myself, Pauline Black (of The Selecter) and various other musicians at differing times. Mainly because the story of an album that had been written over ten years ago and never been released due to one mishap or another was a pretty funny tale. (If you like laughing at other people's misfortune, which I guess is the basis of a lot of comedy !) So; this marks the end of the funny story as, thanks to Alan Parker's commitment (No, it's a different Alan Parker !), the record has finally come squinting and blinking into daylight.
It was originally conceived as an "Irish punk" album, but in the interim a million albums like that had come out, so that put the kibosh on that approach. So, I decided to take it a bit further down the acoustic path. All fine and dandy in itself. However, in the meantime I had re-located to Chicago and that meant recruiting local musicians. Some of these guys were veteran Irish (or Irish-style) musicians and some were not. And so, we ended up with this Irish /Hillbilly /Country/Punk hybrid. So much for: "File under: POP"!
I never thought I'd hear these tunes beyond the original demos I made all those years ago, so I'm really excited to finally get the damn thing made. I do know I had a great time working with all these great players and certainly ended up laughing much more than I should have done for someone who was supposedly "working" ! Hope you enjoy it as much as we did.
All the best, Jake. "
REVIEW QUOTES:
"Stiff Little Fingers leader's trad Irish solo debut. Burns wrote most of this a decade back, originally conceving it as a sort of Irish punk album in the vein of The Pogues, before finally settling on the country and punk inflected acoustic sound here. He's in excellent, warm voice"
UNCUT magazine June 2006
"Stiff Little Fingers' staying power has meant that it has taken 10 years for the idea of frontman Jake Burns's solo album to come to fruition.
Fiddles, fife, drum and banjo meet gunfire sound effects and cut-throat guitar on a remake of anti-war lambast 'Green Fields Of France'. Van Morrison's 'Domino' is done in a dungaree-era-Dexys-meets-The Levellers fashion, and the title track is your standard chucking-out-time singalong.Burns rasies his game on exile anthem 'Land Of Opportunity' and the heart-felt-home-boy lament 'Belfast 14'. File under a useful spring clean for the three-chord warrior (7 out of 10)."
CLASSIC ROCK magazine issue 92
"THE first thing that strikes you when you listen to this album is how far from punk it is.
Renowned for kicking up a storm in the late 1970s as the lead singer of Belfast band Stiff Little Fingers, Jake Burns has produced an album as far removed from that sound as is humanly possible.
Opening track Domino follows in the footsteps of the carousing Irish sound of The Pogues, whereas VE Day has the sound of the Cajun south in its smooth use of the slide guitar.
From the Irish fife and the bodhran to the hillbilly sounds of Arkansas, through to the use of the electric guitar from the punk days, it is an eclectic collection.
The album uses world instruments to create a uniquely Irish yet global sound.
The biggest surprise of the album is the depth and range that Burns's vocal can reach.
The pitch and deep timbre could leave your fillings tingling and the anger that fuelled his career with Stiff Little Fingers still resonates.
So, this is what happens to punks as they get older? They go back to their roots, taking the influences and the anger with them to produce music that has real soul and real bite.
Drinkin' Again just goes to prove that a person doesn't always mellow with with age.
Instructions with this album should read: "Best listened to in a proper Irish bar quaffing pints with the auld boys who could tell you a tale or two."
MORNING STAR (England) 22 April 2006
"There have been a few diversions along the way, but in the broadest sense, Stiff Little Fingers has kept Jake Burns gainfully employed for almost 30 years, and looks set to do so for some time to come. His long-held desire to release a truly solo album, however, has finally come to fruition.The theme is intentionally Irish, with folk and country flavours throughout, and the album takes the form of five Burns originals and six covers. Of the former, the title track, Belfast 14 - Burns' paean to his formative years in Ulster - and Lancashire Rose are the pick. Each is rich with acoustic guitar and traditional instrumentation; fiddle, bodhran, etc.Burns' has produced an album he can justifiably be proud of. For myriad reasons it's taken him the best part of 10 years to make this, and it won't appeal to any of his fans permanently stuck in 1978 - and there are a few. But for those who've moved on in the intervening period, this album will be well recieved because, as with his Three Men & Black ensemble, it aptly demonstrates that Burns' abilities extend well beyond SLF. (4 out of 5)"
Ian Templeton: RECORD COLLECTOR magazine.
More to follow !!
