"YOU'VE got people coming from all over the place," enthuses Stiff Little Fingers frontman Jake Burns of how the punk rockers' Putting The 'Fast' in Belfast festival has become an annual beacon for fans worldwide.
"People come from as far away as Australia and America who now sort of expect it to be there on their calendar every year," says the Belfast-born Chicago-based singer/guitarist.
"And they don't just come for the day – obviously, if you're going that far, you're going to hang about. We get tons and tons of emails from people saying things like, 'I flew from California, it was my first time ever in Northern Ireland and Belfast – what a great place and what friendly people'.
"That's a real joy from our point of view. I just think it's fantastic considering that, when I was growing up there, Belfast was like the last place anyone would have thought about going for a weekend break. It's very gratifying, really."
Indeed, when 'the Stiffs' formed back in 1977 at the height of the original punk rock explosion, the Troubles were also in full swing, providing ample lyrical fodder for early classics like Suspect Device, State of Emergency, Wasted Life and of course their anthem, Alternative Ulster – all of which featured on their Top 20 debut LP Inflammable Material in 1979.
Infamously, the willingness of a young Clash-worshipping group to pen catchy ripped-from-the-headlines songs of dissatisfaction rubbed some of the band's local peers the wrong way – though 'local' was a relative term back in late-70s Northern Ireland.
"In 1977, 80 miles up the road might as well have been 800 miles," offers Burns when the subject of his initial awareness of Derry pop punk legends The Undertones comes up. Supposedly, there is long-standing friction between the two camps centred on accusations about sensationalising the Troubles in song and then immediately moving to London to escape the conflict.
"To be honest, I never really bought into it," says Burns of the perceived friction/rivalry between the north's two most famous and influential punk exports who are now set to play together for the first time at the upcoming Putting The 'Fast' in Belfast show at Custom House Square on August 20.
"It seemed to be more sort of press driven than anything else. I mean, I totally understood where they were coming from: their attitude was that people had to put up with that on a day-to-day basis, so why would they want to stand and listen to somebody singing about it on a night out?
"I thought that was a perfectly valid position to take. But I thought our position was also valid, because the first rule of writing that I was ever taught was to 'write about what you know'.
"As far as I'm concerned [the feud] was all basically just hot air, so I'm delighted that they're doing the show with us in August. We've asked them a couple of times before and it just hasn't been feasible, so the fact that they said 'yes' this time – I wasn't quite 'punching the air', but I really wasn't far off it.
"It's great of them to do it and we're really looking forward to seeing them play. In fact, the last time I saw them play, Feargal [Sharkey] was still with them, so that's going back a bit."
Originally staged during the August Bank Holiday weekend in 2017 as a one-off event to mark the Stiffs' 40th anniversary in the company of friends and peers – the bill also featured The Stranglers, The Ruts and The Outcasts – Putting The 'Fast' in Belfast was an immediate sell-out hit, to the point that a second helping of the mini-festival was already booked before Burns and co set foot on the stage.
The 2018 and 2019 events were also huge successes, the former marking one of Pete Shelley's final ever shows with the Buzzcocks before his untimely death. With Covid having forced the annual SLF homecoming to be put on ice, their frontman is currently looking forward to getting it up and running once again.
"I'm particularly delighted with this year's bill," says Burns of the line-up for 2022 which, along with the aforementioned Undertones, will also feature turns from 2Tone favourites The Selecter, Newtownards-born rocker Ricky Warwick and his band The Fighting Hearts, and DJing from Good Vibrations founder Terri Hooley.
"The Selecter apart, it's very homegrown. I think that's brilliant, really, that there's enough talent of our generation to put together a bill like that."
While he's been doing it longer than most – "I'm turning 65 next year, but I don't think I'll be retiring any time soon," chuckles the SLF leader – losing two years of live work to the pandemic has helped renew Burns' passion for his craft, as he explains.
"There's definitely a renewed appreciation and renewed enthusiasm for it as well," he tells me of the band's recent return to the stage.
"Because, it's not just that you're able to start doing what puts food on the table again – you also suddenly realise how much you love it and how much you missed it.
"You remember, 'Jesus, I'm lucky – I get to do something that was basically my hobby as a kid for a living'. To think that I got a career out of something I do for fun anyway. I mean, I still do it because it's still a fun thing to do."
He adds: "There's never a day goes by that I don't pick up a guitar and play it – even if nine times out of 10 I just end up playing old Hank Williams songs. It still relaxes me. And, every so often, when you're just mucking about you'll come across a chord sequence and go 'hang on a minute, that's good – I don't think I've heard that before."
On the subject of new material, the last SLF record No Going Back was released to great acclaim way back in 2014, so fans have been impatiently waiting for a new collection from the band for quite some time now.
There are glimmers of hope, though: an impressive new tune called 16 Shots – inspired by the death of Chicago teen Laquan McDonald at the hands of the Chicago Police Department – was being road-tested back in 2019 before the world shut down. And, according to Burns, he has been writing over the past couple of years, though "not as much as maybe I would have liked," he admits.
"The main problem I have with writing new stuff is that I'm far more self-critical than I used to be," he explains.
It's not a bad attitude to have, especially as any new SLF tune has to rub shoulders with classics that fans have been hollering themselves hoarse to for the past four decades.
"Even on Inflammable Material, which is probably the most basic and raw of the records we ever made, if you can get past the gruff vocal style, there's a lot of melodies in there," says Burns of what makes his band's best stuff so enduring.
"That was something that was initially overlooked [about the band], but subconsciously these melodies were registering with people.
"I think one of the reasons we've hung around as long as we have is that people can actually come and sing along."
:: Stiff Little Fingers headline Putting The 'Fast' in Belfast 4 on August 20 at Custom House Square, Belfast. Tickets on sale now via Ticketmaster.co.uk.
