Hi there. Welcome to Joe the Human with Joe Armstrong. This day last week, Friday the 29th of November, I was delighted to be invited onto Dundalk FM to talk about our new song, “It's a Wonderful Life (A Christmas Tale)”. Thanks very much, Marissa Lucchesi, presenter of the Town Talk programme on Dundalk FM. Here it is.
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Hope you enjoy it.
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On 97.7 FM and online. This is Dundalk FM.
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Good morning. Buongiorno. Dia dhuit ar maidin. I'm Marissa Lucchesi and you're very welcome to Town Talk. Coming up on the programme today, we'll be chatting to Joe Armstrong about his latest release, It's a Wonderful Life. Anyway, Paddy was flat out playing the Christmas songs this morning yet again,
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but I tend to make it a rule not to start that carry-on until, you know, at least the first week in December. However, I am going to make an exception this morning because my next guest has just released a Christmas tune. It's called It's a Wonderful Life.
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His name is Joe Armstrong. He is a broadcaster, a humanist celebrant, a writer and now a musician. And I'm delighted to welcome him to Town Talk. Good morning to you, Joe.
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Hello, Marissa. How are you? I'm good. And yourself? Thank you for making an exception for me!
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Making an exception for you. Absolutely. And I really do mean it's a huge exception because, you know, look, it's not that I don't like Christmas music. I do. But it's a limited canon and everybody plays the same ones as well. So I'm very mindful of maybe somebody who's somewhere that the radio is on in the
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background all day and they're just hearing all the same tunes being played.
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Well, I'm delighted, Marissa, that we can
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expand that limited canon. There we go there we go yeah which is exactly what we're going to do uh Joe uh you know we'll we'll talk about the track in a minute and how it came about but let's talk about Joe, Joe armstrong because uh writer broadcaster
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humanist celebrant. I'm not quite sure in which order, but you might tell me. Oh
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goodness I've no idea I'm sure i do them all badly. Yeah, I don't do very many humanist ceremonies anymore. I did hundreds of them over the years and I loved doing them. But I'm now the tender age of 62 and I decided that I would spend my 60s doing what I love most, which is writing.
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And in recent years, probably the last... three, four years, I've begun writing songs, writing songs with collaborators. So the song that was launched this morning at a minute past midnight. And yeah, I did stay up and I did pour myself a little something that wasn't water. As you have to. As I have to.
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It's called “It's Wonderful Life (A Christmas Tale)”. And it's based on the classic movie with James Stewart and Donna Reed, It's a Wonderful Life, black and white movie. I know there's a colour version of it, but I prefer the black and white movie. God forbid that anyone would watch a colour version of It's a Wonderful Life. Exactly.
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It's exactly, yeah. But I don't know. I rarely watch any movie twice. But whatever it is about It's a Wonderful Life, I watch it every Christmas. And I've been doing that since my kids were tiny. And they're not tiny anymore. My son is going to be 30 on the 1st of December.
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So I was fascinated by the appeal, the draw that this movie had for me. Because I, a grown man, will sit down. I know the plot. I could tell you nearly every line in it. And yet, every year I sit down and at some point in the movie, I'm going to well up.
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And the kids will come in and they say, well, have you started crying yet or whatever? So how can a movie do that? But it does. And I kind of see it as like a parable for something deep and meaningful. I mean, and by the way, I'm not the only one. Oh, absolutely.
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I'm hearing you and I've been there.
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Yeah. Do you cry watching it?
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Of course I do. If somebody doesn't cry watching It's a Wonderful Life, there's something wrong.
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Yeah, it's just it's like James Stewart, George Bailey. He's Mr. Everyman or every woman. He's every person. And, you know, he'd love, he always wanted to explore, to leave Bedford Falls. But every time he tries to get away, he can't. His dad dies, so he's kind of forced to take over the business.
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And then the economic crash happens in 1929. And there he was, about to head off on his honeymoon. And he goes back and himself and his new Mrs. Mary, played by Donna Reed, give all their money to save their little credit union. And then, like, this really good guy... who's astonishingly, you know, he makes sacrifices for everybody.
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He helps people build houses and all that kind of stuff, all practical love. And then you have this scene where he's having a crisis because somebody else has lost money and he's threatened with going to jail and he gets into this horrible crisis. And, you know, he's shouting at his kids and he's being unreasonable.
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And I can identify with that too. And I'm thinking, that's your man. Like, he's the whole package kind of thing. And he goes to the bridge and he's thinking of throwing himself in, ending it all. And that's the premise of the movie. And, you know, I don't know what it is, but it's like...
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What's your personal meaning in life? And it just taps into, that movie taps into that. So I wanted to explore what is it about that movie that has this astonishing emotional effect on me and so many other people. So I got together.
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The Rayne, his name is Brian Matthews, an amazing singer who lives in Leeds in the UK. I got Andrea Petron, who's a trumpeter, plays the piano. He's an amazing musician. He runs his own music school. He's an Italian living in Estonia. Zac Ware. Zac Ware is the guitarist with the Proclaimers, with the Proclaimers. They're my co-writers.
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And then... We've been working on this song like for nearly three years. And then we brought in two more people. Paul Statham, Corrine. I can never pronounce her name because I don't speak German, but it goes something like Schmidiger. No, I've ruined it. It's S-C-H-M-I-D-I-G-E-R. Sorry, Corrine. My apologies. But she's in Switzerland, you know.
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And anyway, together, we got together and we got this song. And they say when you're collaborating with a song, it's finished when everybody loves it. And each and every one of us involved in writing this song love it. So we said, yeah, it's done. It's ready. It's finished.
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And so I'm a happy man. How long did this take? Because...
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This song has taken nearly three years. So this is our third Christmas. You know, the first year we thought, will we get it out this Christmas? No. The second Christmas, will we get it out this Christmas? No, still wasn't ready. This Christmas, it is ready.
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It was launched at a minute past midnight last night on Spotify and Apple Music and all those music platforms. And I'm a happy bunny.
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And obviously you have quite an international cast there with you. Will they be doing the same promotional work? Is this something you hope will have appeal, certainly outside of Ireland and throughout Europe?
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Yeah, we hope so, because, I mean, two of the songwriters and performers, Zac Ware and The Rayne, that's R-A-Y-N-E. By the way, if you're looking for the song on Spotify or Apple Music, wherever it is, if you check out The Rayne, R-A-Y-N-E, and that's Bryan Matthews,
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but he goes under The Rayne for his music. And so check that and you'll find them. So, yeah, they're both based in England. And Andrea, the Italian, is based. And by the way, he loves an Irish pub. We shouldn't be talking about drink, but he does. He loves an Irish pub in the middle of Tallinn.
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And he's a great, he's a great, he's an honorary Irishman, really.
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Trust me, most Italians I know love a good Irish pubs.
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There you go. There you go. And Paul Statham is an amazing CV in the music business. So getting him involved was astonishing. And he came up with... a lovely kind of nugget which is that the pre-chorus which we have: “Life in black
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and white brings colour to my life.” Now, he didn't quite come up with all of that wording but he came up with that idea of having a little pre-chorus life in black and white being the black and white movie brings colour because it somehow enriches
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our lives today when we watch the movie so i love that bit and funnily enough it was Andrea, the Italian, you know, who speaks Italian, Estonian and English. But it was actually he who came up with the final wording for the pre-chorus. So, fair to use to Andrea, a non-native English speaker.
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So can I ask you, Joe, you mentioned earlier something about Zoom. This was written over Zoom because you've got all these people, you know, in far-flung places. And just doing the math here as well, you said three years. You would have started this when we were in the height of COVID and you wouldn't
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have been able to travel to meet each other even if you wanted to.
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Yeah, it's true. And in fact... It's one of the benefits of COVID that it showed songwriters that they can actually create music and collaborate by using Zoom. It's astonishing. It's an astonishing platform because there we are, you know, in literally five different countries. And... Zac could be there with his guitar,
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Andrea playing the piano or getting out his trumpet, Brian singing. It's astonishing. And then Brian recorded his vocals in a local recording studio run by Dom Richmond in Leeds. And Zac Ware did the production work in his studio in Bath in England. So, you know, it's an international collaboration. And yeah, so we all created it together.
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We're all delighted. Funnily enough, Estonia, because it's released at midnight, wherever midnight is. So Estonia, the song would have gone live in Estonia probably two hours before it went live here in Ireland and the UK.
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Ah, OK. And then, you know, by the way, you're right about COVID. I have a COVID playlist in the background somewhere because I think it's still a bit rough to be bringing it out and say to people, oh, you know, COVID was actually good in many ways and this is why.
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But it involves music like that that was created using, you know, new and unusual processes. And my favourite is, I don't know if you've come across it, but if you haven't, definitely check it out. It's Robbie Robertson and, you know, a cast of hundreds doing a version of The Weight. It is wonderful.
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And like that, all recorded on Zoom. And it's a global recording. It's fantastic.
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And in fact... the best of them all, Fairytale of New York: I was astonished when I learned that that Kirsty wasn't in the same room absolutely yeah yeah do you know like I was astonished by that and that's way back when that was recorded whereas here we're doing the same thing so
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we can create magnificent music even though we're not physically corporeally in the same room
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Joe, is that the next step? Is that something, you know, you'd like to do maybe that you'd all come together, I don't know, somewhere central?
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Well, funnily enough, I met, I mean, we all know each other on Zoom, but summer just gone, I met Brian Matthews, a.k.a. The Rayne, in Leeds this August because I was over there on holidays. And I know Zac Ware because when he's playing with The Proclaimers, he'll usually get us a few free tickets.
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So we've seen him twice in Ireland when The Proclaimers are over here. So that's a nice little benefit of working with a top-class musician like Zac. So we called into him in his place too. So the only person, in fact, I haven't yet met in the room, as it were, is Andrea, Corrine, because she's in Switzerland.
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And Paul too, I haven't met, although he's in England.
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Okay, and where would be the place you think you'd like to all gather and perform this?
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In Ireland, I'm sure. Why wouldn't we go to Dundalk? We'll find some spot in Dundalk.
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I'll tell you what, we've got plenty of good pubs there for your Italian. And you can assure them they've been tried and tested by my Italian family, so they come well-recommended.
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Yeah, Zac actually has a kind of a jukebox gig that he does and he's got a heap of songs and he'll go to a pub and entertain people for a night. So Zac Ware, look him up on Instagram or whatever. He's an amazing guy. Do you know what? It's such a privilege to work with these guys.
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because these, like, I know a little bit about melody, a little bit about music, but these are top notch musicians you know. Kind of the skill I bring as a lyricist, I'm a writer, I've been a writer most of my life, but these guys know their
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Music! Oh, at times it's like listening to guys with doctorates in maths physics talking about some really complicated stuff and I'm just in awe of them. They're amazing guys.
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Okay, Joe, so what's the plan here? Are we looking, you know, at 62 years of age to have your first Christmas number one?
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Yeah, that would be good. Make it happen, Marissa. Absolutely.
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You're like me. We would have, you know, years ago, we would have waited like, I think it was a Thursday night or something when the chart came out or Top of the Pops was on to see what was the Christmas number one. And it was such a big deal. I don't know if it's the same anymore.
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Well, this song began in Ireland. Like it began with me watching that movie and thinking, what is this appeal of this song? And now it has become this international collaboration, launched all over the world, so the only way to become a number one of course is if
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people go on to Spotify or Apple Music or whatever, or ring up their radio station and say will you play Joe's song “It's a Wonderful Life (A Christmas Tale)”
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Well, look, we're going to be playing our Christmas songs, you know, full on from next week. And here on Town Talk, we're always looking for something that is a little bit different that everybody else is not playing. So this could probably fit very nicely into our playlist.
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We're going to let our listeners make up their own mind because we're going to play It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Tale. I don't know. Is this the first time it's been played on Irish radio?
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I suspect it is. It was only launched at midnight. So, yes, another first, for Dundalk FM!
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There we go. Love it. Love it. Listen, Joe, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk to us this morning. Best of luck with this and have a wonderful Christmas. Buon Natale.
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Thank you, Marisa, and enjoy your wonderful life. And here now with our new song, “It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Tale”, The Rayne and Patron Andrea.
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I love to watch that movie, Even though it makes me cry. The story speaks right to me, Every Christmastime. Presents wrapped under the tree, a quiet time for me to be me. I press play and settle in, into that magical world again. A life in black and white, brings colour to my life.
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I love to watch that movie even though it makes me cry. The story speaks right to me every Christmas time. It reminds me that friendship and love are the greatest gifts we'll ever receive. It's a wonderful life here with you On Christmas Eve. Snow on the trees In Bedford Falls, when George's guardian
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angel calls, We sit and watch, We know the plot Until it's gone You don't know what you got. We see George at the bridge, Contemplate the end. But the angel shows him just before the dawn What the world would be like if he'd never been born. For every soul touches another. We know in our hearts we all need each other.
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And life in black and white, brings colour to my life. I love to watch that movie, even though it makes me cry. The story speaks right to me, every Christmas time. It reminds me that friendship and love are the greatest gifts we'll ever receive. It's a wonderful life.
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Here with you on Christmas Eve!
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It’s a wonderful life, Oh what a wonderful life,
It’s a wonderful life, Oh what a wonderful life,
It’s a wonderful life!
It’s a wonderful life!
It’s a wonderful life, what a wonderful life,
It’s a wonderful life, what a wonderful life!
Attaboy Clarence!
Listen to “It’s a Wonderful Life (A Christmas Tale)” [IAWL A Xmas Tale] on:
Amazon Music
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