Category: CQAF2023/2024

Kathy Clugston in conversation with Jon Ronson on his books, writing career and podcasts.

Jon Ronson is a British-American journalist, author, and filmmaker whose works include So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed, The Psychopath Test, Them: Adventures with Extremists, Lost at Sea and The Men Who Stare At Goats.

The Psychopath Test spent more than a year on the UK bestseller list. So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed is frequently cited as having kickstarted the conversation about the perils of social media shaming.

Jon is currently working on the second season of his acclaimed, award winning BBC podcast Things Fell Apart – named by the Observer as the number one audio show of 2021.

Before that came two Audible Original audio series, The Butterfly Effect (2017) and The Last Days of August (2019). Both went straight to number one in the US and UK audiobook charts, and were named by multiple critics as two of the best podcasts of recent years.

Jon’s original screenplays include Okja, which he co-wrote with Bong-Joon Ho, and Frank, which he co-wrote with Peter Straughan. His many UK documentaries include Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes and The Secret Rulers of the World.

He lives in New York.

This event is supported with Dormant Accounts NI Funding.

John Francis Flynn will release a new album Look Over the Wall, See the Sky on Nov. 10th, following on from his critically acclaimed debut album and accompanying live performances.

Look Over the Wall, See the Sky picks up where I Would Not Live Always left off. John masterfully unpicks traditional songs and rearranges them with an emotional force. They float in a surreal space between the past and the present, the analog and the digital, between love and tragedy.

The unconventional use of instruments and jagged arrangements gives the work a magnetism by drawing you into its curious orbit of experimental folk. Look Over The Wall, See The Sky is a re-imagining of traditional Irish music: powerful, hopeful and free.

John Francis Flynn is a singer and multi-instrumentalist who creates contemporary music using traditional and folk material. His debut album I Would Not Live Always was released on Rough Trade imprint River Lea Records in 2020, earning rave reviews and winning 2 awards at the RTE Folk Awards.

‘I Would Not Live Always offers a singular and striking clarity of vision.’ **** UNCUT

‘John Francis Flynn’s ‘My Son Tim’ Is An Extraordinary Piece Of Music’ CLASH

‘like a threatening thunderhead perforated with golden shafts of sunlight: lysergic synth lines, intermittent bursts of overdriven guitar, a clarinet saturated in tape delay and a treated tin whistle disrupt the atmosphere of these old songs without ever diminishing their power.’ **** THE GUARDIAN

The award-winning, viral sensation returns with a brand-new hour following her sell-out 2022 run.

As the year 2000 approached, Sooz was about to turn 15 and the PlayStation 2 was about to launch… it was a new beginning for the world. But with the Millennium Bug, was the world also about to end!?

Now, almost a quarter of a century later, things feel eerily similar… New millennium, video games, Alanis Morissette… a show for anyone who remembers the year 2000 or had big dreams as a kid.

‘Kempner has funny bones’ **** (Scotsman). 

‘Brilliant’ (LA Times).

Sam Baker is a lyric writer, artist, and survivor. His songs are stories of everyday people facing everyday challenges: a young Mennonite welder who finds love, a ditch digger supporting his family, a veteran grappling with post-war life, a single mother driving around with a car full of baby junk, a widower writing ‘her’ name in the sand, and a straight-haired orphan in a house full of curls. They are survivors. Like Sam.

In 1986 Sam was on a train for Machu Picchu when a bomb exploded in the carriage he was riding in. Seven died. Through a series of miracles, and the help of everyday people doing their best–his angels–he survived.

Physical recovery was hard.  Emotional recovery harder. Melody came to him–compelled him to turn an old guitar upside down so his gnarled hands could play.

Slowly, the words came–one true line–“Sitting on the train to Machu Picchu, the passenger car explodes.”  He made a record. Then another. There were glowing reviews, more records, awards in Rolling Stone; sold-out shows in Europe, Canada, and the US and songs in TV shows; and an hour with Terry Gross on Fresh Air.

Sam uses his art to tell his story–whether from a symphony in Oregon, an art gallery in Santa Fe, a large theatre in Kansas City, a small room in The Netherlands, or a song-writer retreat with soldiers. He travels the world sharing his songs, grateful for each day, helping us see the beauty in little things and hope for things to come.

‘Simultaneously beautiful and broken…Sam Baker is an artist worth waiting for.’ – NPR

‘The Bard of the Workaday World’ – WALL STREET JOURNAL

‘Maybe the most captivating songwriter in America.’ – LONE STAR MUSIC

​‘Sam Baker is an island of warmth and hope in dangerous times.’ – NEON FILLER

Portland, OR-based singer, songwriter, and producer John Craigie adapts moments of solitude into stories perfectly suited for old Americana fiction anthologies.

Instead of leaving them on dog-eared pages, he projects them widescreen in flashes of simmering soul and folk eloquence. On his 2022 full-length album, Mermaid Salt, we witness revenge unfurled in flames, watch a landlocked mermaid’s escape, and fall asleep under a meteor shower.

After selling out shows consistently coast-to-coast and earning acclaim from Rolling Stone, Glide Magazine, No Depression, and many more, his unflinching honesty ties these ten tracks together.

The album comes from the solitude and loneliness of lockdown in the Northwest. Someone whose life was touring, traveling, and having lots of human interaction is faced with an undefinable amount of time without those things.

So, he began writing new songs and envisioning an album that was different from his past records. The sound of everyone playing live in a room together was traded for the sound of song construction with an unknown amount of instruments and musicians—a quiet symphony.

During this period, he explored the environment around him “from the Oregon coasts to the waterfalls” and read books about Levon Helm, Billie Holiday, and Ani DiFranco. “I got time to silence all the noise and chaos of touring and look inward,” he observes.

Craigie had reached a series of watershed moments in tandem with Mermaid Salt. Beyond headlining venues such as The Fillmore and gracing the stage of Red Rocks Amphitheater, his 2020 offering Asterisk The Universe earned unanimous tastemaker applause.

Rolling Stone noted, “tracks like ‘Don’t Deny’ and ‘Climb Up’ bridge a Sixties and Seventies songwriter vibe with the laid-back cool of Jack Johnson, an early supporter of Craigie,” while Glide Magazine hailed it as “one of his best records.”

Perhaps, No Depression put it best, “For many weary and heavy- listeners hearted, the album might be exactly what they need.” Along the way, he generated over 40 million total streams and counting, speaking to his unassuming impact. In the end, Craigie offers a sense of peace on Mermaid Salt.