‘Covid presents so many challenges for the music industry’

It lay around the house for ages. He footered about with it. Then he taught himself a few chords, hesitant at first, mastering D, A and G. His Uncle Tommy taught him to play My Darling Clementine; soon he was playing Shadows tunes and singing while strumming along to Kris Kristofferson numbers, playing for his mother.

His musical passion blossomed in his teens as he fell in love with the music of James Taylor and Neil Young, graduating to steel-string acoustic (a K500 from his mother’s catalogue) and then his first electric guitar, a cherry red Verithin Hofner from Ivor Gordon’s music shop above the bakery in Coleraine’s Long Commons. “To this day, the smell of baking bread can suddenly bring back the memory of going up the stairs into a bright room full of guitars,” says Anthony.

He soon embarked on what has become an extensive musical odyssey that saw him gig through the 70s and 80s - a golden time for live music on the north coast - and his favourite gig was always playing Spuds in Portstewart. After a few abortive attempts to form bands, he moved away from the area and, by a circuitous route, found a job with a country dance outfit – Trevor Dixon and the Dixie Band.

Marriage and parenthood followed. Then came years of playing dance halls, clubs, weddings and bars. He toured and toured, clocking up thousands of miles on the road. After a couple of near-death ‘asleep at the wheel’ moments, he decided to quit, and began playing closer to home, switching to acoustic guitar duos with friends around the bars on the north coast, some that were short-lived, others that went on for years.

With a group of friends, he formed Big Ankles, a band that took up a Saturday night residency at Snappers restaurant on the outskirts of Portrush, and they raised the rafters every weekend for about four years. Looking back it was another kind of magic time – the band played everything from Teenage Kicks to Mack the Knife and the customers danced on tables.

But Toner was able to give up day jobs as a journalist and an arts administrator about 10 years ago when he penned the ballad Sailortown, which was picked up by the late music aficionado Gerry Anderson on his BBC radio show. He played it repeatedly, and suddenly people were asking who Anthony Toner was.

“Since then I’ve just kept building on that momentum,” says Anthony. “I really suddenly felt I was on my way. All I’ve been doing these past 10 years is trying to keep that momentum going, keep putting stuff out, keep touring and hustling for gigs. For the past six years I’ve been able to succeed as a full-time artist. I get by, but nobody is retiring in the Bahamas.”

His new release and 11th album is Ghost Notes, Vol 1. “I just keep going and producing music, because nobody has found a way of stopping me!” he quips.

The new offering is a compendium of covers of tracks that have meaning for Anthony, from Van Morrison’s She Gives Me Religion to Young Hearts Run Free by Candi Staton, Back on The Chain Gang by the Pretenders and Chrissie Hynde, Don’t by Elvis and additional songs by Rickie Lee Jones and the inimitable Steve Earle, among others.

“This album really came together very quickly and it was lovely because I had retuned by guitar and all these songs seemed to suit a particular register. For me most of these songs remind me of different times in my life, even if they do not thematically cohere.

“I remember when I heard She Gives Me Religion by Van Morrison, and it just seemed this perfect universe of a song, you could almost see the girls, hear the church bells ringing. Scarlet Ribbons is from childhood. Elvis Presley and Charley Pride songs I have also loved since my youth. Each song had its hooks in me; they meant something to me.”

Toner has released all his music independently, managing himself, doing the promo work, ensuring people can buy all his music on virtual platforms like Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music and Google Play. People can also order hard copies of his albums through his personal website.

“The tools are now there for anyone who wants to put music out there. You no longer need a record deal. I’m the label, I do it all. The beauty of releasing music online is that my album is just the same mouse click away as something by Bruce Springsteen. So you stand the same chance of connecting with an international audience. Someone in Brazil might click on one of your songs and suddenly you have a fan at the other end of the world. Out of his substantial oeuvre Toner says his favourite self-penned song to date is the simple ballad Well Well Well.“There is something about it that just made me feel it was right, like when the ball hits the middle of a tennis racket. It was right, like a well-done sum. It’s about accepting past mistakes and moving on from that with optimism. ‘Turn your face up to the light and hope the days outnumber the nights’. That is one of my favourite lyrics. As a sentiment that is something very close to my heart.”

Lockdown has put the kibosh on live gigs, at least for the moment, so Toner has been using his time to write lyrics, but has struggled due to the disruptions in his routine.

“Every day feels the same and it can be hard to be at peak creativity. You look at your song and you hear the statistics about how many people have died from Covid and you think, what is that worth.”

Gareth and his theatre director wife Andrea have been surviving by cooking, baking, gardening, DIY, and visiting their daughter Sian who lives up the hill with grandson Jude.

Is he worried about the future of the live gig in a post-lockdown world, where presumably performances will have to be delivered before a socially distanced audience?.

“I worry that we will lose venues. I worry that audiences will be too frightened to come out. It’s going to be very difficult for artists. I think the end of all this will be complicated and uncertain. I’m dying to get out again. Just to walk into a bar and have a pint without anxiety. And of course I miss live gigs and my fellow musicians. The legacy of Covid is going to be difficult for artists of all kinds.

“You know I think music and books have got lots of people through lockdown with sanity intact.”

Visit anthonytoner.net/.