Nick McCallan, it is safe to say, has earned his stripes.
Most aspiring musicians, keen to trumpet their devotion to the cause, will point to their battle scars, picked up in countless toilet-venue skirmishes. But McCallan can trump anyone with his experience of life in the trenches.
“I worked the night shift in a linen factory for seven years,” he tells us with a wince. “Ten at night to eight in the morning, four days a week. Apart from a few breaks I was on my feet for the whole time.”
What was worse, he says, is that he couldn’t even listen to any music. “Because of the machinery we weren’t allowed to wear a walkman. Your life becomes very strange when you work hours like that.”
At weekends he was “getting bladdered” and falling asleep while everyone else was getting ready to go out. “Having a girlfriend is tough, seeing your mates [when you’re working a graveyard shift]. And being in a band makes it worse. Trying to write songs, fitting in practices, organising gigs – it was mental.”
At this point, it’s only natural to wonder if there were times when, in the interests of a less cluttered life, belief wavered. The zealot’s glint in his eye as he responds puts any doubt to bed.
“Nah,” he says. “It’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. It’s what kept me going. And looking at the songs, I don’t think I’d have been able to write them, if I hadn’t lived that way. You only get a song at a certain point and everything that happens in your life comes out in your songs.”
We’re here to find out about his band, God Talking Soul, an outfit that has changed town and personnel in recent years.
We’re also here to ask him about the strikingly down-beat bent of his lyrics. His songs are rather beak, full of plane crashes, lost love and drowned sorrows. One track imagines “the money man” running off with McCallan’s savings.”
“That song (‘Look At Us’) was actually written just before I moved to Belfast from Strabane,” he reveals. “The factory had closed and I was made redundant and I had debt collectors after me. It was pretty hairy for a while, but I got my head down and cleared things up. The whole thing actually turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me. It made me get my arse in gear. I’d no safety net – I had to make it work myself. But there were people back home who were genuinely shafted. My dad had been working there for 30 years. It was depressing as fuck.”
Once in Belfast, McCallan wasted little time in getting to work.
“I needed a deposit for a flat,” he says. “So I got on the phone and arranged five or six gigs for myself and got it.”
After arranging a residency for himself in a local club, McCallan’s thoughts turned towards recruiting some co-conspirators.
Placing adverts for organists, cellists and horn players, he was initially frustrated by the lack of response. “I thought I was [Spiritualized frontman] Jason Pierce,” he laughs. “Then I caught myself on.”
Eventually settling for a standard four-piece (James Heaney on bass, Alan Lynn on drums and his brother Tim on guitar), his progress proved swift.
Over the summer the band recorded their debut EP, It’s Only Funny Because You Said It, and while it would be wrong to make grand claims for it, the record contained more than enough wit, energy and genuine feeling to suggest that there is much more to come from this lot.
McCallan’s persistence also ensured that it did better business than releases of that ilk are expected to do.
“The record sold shitloads,” he says. “We made £1,000 and we’ve only 30-odd left. We got a load of names from a mailing list and sent out ads to people giving them a link to the website, asking them to download one of the tunes and, if they liked what they heard, to get back to us and we’d arrange to give them a copy. We’d meet people in the pub. I’d sit there with a big box of cds and a few pints and the people would come in, buy a cd, have a drink and a chat. It was great.”
All of which has encouraged him to look confidently at the big picture.
“I’ve already got the first album planned out in my head. It’s going to be like a soundtrack to a film. Andrew McCarthy plays me, Harry H Corbett plays James, Emilio Estevez is my brother and Annette Bening is the love interest.”
Giving his Saturday Night/Sunday Morning background, you’d wonder if McCallan’s intention is kitchen sink realism.
“Nah,” he grins. “It’s gonna be a big fuck-off romance.”