Lurgan is a place full of little idiosyncrasies and colloquialisms from “he has a face like a Lurgan spade” and “supping the Lurgan champagne” to the lesser known “shams”… who arguably enjoy a drop of that aforementioned champagne of a Saturday night!
They’re certainly quirky, but hardly poetic.
But one local man with a penchant for rap music has found a way to work them into lyrics… that satirically dance the line between serious hip-hop and tongue-in-cheek comedy.
Known simply by his stage name, Jack Bashful, the 29-year-old was raised in the former linen-making hub despite being born in England.
He admits, he was only ever interested in music an “average amount” until he watched a documentary entitled ‘The Art of Rap’ by American rapper, Ice-T. Something about the “creative side and discipline of writing lyrics just appealed to me”, said Jack.
He continued: “I was always into reading and words and things like that so I wanted to give it a go myself and since then I have just kept doing it.”
Jack first released music of his own making aged 21, recording instrumental and beats on software he received for Christmas.
“When I knew I started wanting to do it more seriously I got in contact with a guy called D Darryl Forsythe, who’s involved with a local radio station that’s more catered towards hip-hop,” said Jack. “I went to his studio and recorded a couple of songs there.”
Those early songs, he says, were more “amateur”, adding bashfully “not that what I’m doing now isn’t!”
But showing a clear development and maturity gained in those eight years, he continues: “It’s taken me all this time to find my voice as an artist.
“The majority of the last few years I have just been trying to mimic other artists… American and English rappers and producers, and you think you should make what people want you to make rather than what I want to make.
“I was kind of resisting making things that were too localised or colloquial because it’s too niche and you think ‘I’ll never be able to sell that’, but at the end of the day the most important thing for me is having that creative outlet and making it fun for me. I’m not too worried about winning Grammys!”
Trying to gauge his listeners’ responses has shaped his work… or at least the release of that work.
While he admits that his most recent work focusing on Lurgan town “doesn’t take itself too seriously”, Jack has hidden depths that few have seen.
“Around last year, I was making music that was very personal and it was a bit bleak in certain ways because I was talking about relationships that I had and mental health struggles.
“I am proud of the songs I made but I never released them because they were too personal and I was worried that my friends and family might hear it as a cry for help. But it never was… it was just a catharsis.”
After taking a hiatus from life in Northern Ireland, Jack returned to Lurgan in the Summer. It was then that he decided to make a U-turn on that former cathartic self-expression to a new, lighter note.
Of his Lurgan-centric songs, he explained: “It’s the complete opposite of what I had been doing before, which might have made people uncomfortable. I would take myself too seriously in the past but now I can zoom out a bit.
“I’m talking about very niche things in Lurgan but it’s not entirely unique. People from other towns and places in Northern Ireland might still be able to get something out of it. A lot of the music that I love is hyperlocal, whether it’s grime and they are talking about a small part of North London or America, in the Bronx. We don’t live similar lives to people from those places but at the end of the day you can still relate in some aspects.”
When asked to describe Lurgan as a place, Jack said: “I think I would be expected to say Lurgan is amazing and I do love it but I don’t think it’s particularly special or unique.
“I just wanted to focus on the wee idiosyncrasies about Lurgan and record them and try to do something creative with it.
“Lurgan does get in my experience a bad rep. It can be fair obviously because some things that have happened are negatives. But, I can’t think of a place in Ireland that is known particularly for a positive thing. That’s just part of the banter of being from Northern Ireland.”
Not one to miss the obvious, several of Jack’s songs focus on the mock “rivalry” between Lurgan and the neighbouring town of Portadown.
Drawing a comical comparison between warring fictional towns from the hit TV Series, The Simpsons, Jack adds: “You have Springfield and Shelbyville and Portadown to me, is Shelbyville! I don’t really feel that animosity to people from there, it’s the joke and it’s just a bit of banter.”
Speaking about the slang term “shams” used in one of his songs, Jack explains the word is interchangeable with the more widely known “smicks” – a moderately derogatory name often given to a younger person who exhibits loutish behaviour.
Like shams, Jack says he often writes down some of the colloquial terms he hears out and about for use in his lyrics. He has most recently added “tight”, meaning a bit controversial, “twisty”, likely to start a fight and “clampits”, people who are a little bit silly!
Putting yourself out there is never easy and the satirical nature of Jack’s song-writing can, at times, attract harsh criticism.
He adds: “You do get people coming on and not being positive especially with anonymous accounts… it’s quite jarring because you have poured your heart out and I know what I’m doing isn’t overly serious so if people don’t like it it’s not the worst.”
Shrugging off a negative comment that he now sees the humour in, he continued: “One person came on and commented something like, ‘I want this played at my funeral so that everyone is jealous of me being dead!’ At first you are sort of sent into a spiral but it’s almost like the more it happens the less of an effect it has on you and you develop a thick skin.”
He has now written somewhere between 30 and 40 songs about Lurgan. Naturally, he says, it’s all becoming “really niche” and aware that he runs the risk of becoming “cliché”, he’s actively thinking about what’s next.
“I think I will keep doing this for the next period and then maybe branch out a bit,” said Jack. “I would like to release the more personal songs that are a bit more serious.
“If I get some kind of following where people are connecting with me then that’s when I can release that more serious stuff. It’s almost like a bridge to what I really want to make, the Lurgan stuff is like that stepping stone.”
