Stiff Little Fingers, from left: Ian McCallum, Steve Grantley, Jake Burns and Ali McMordie
Jake Burns is jovial and enthusiastic in conversation, in a way that you might not expect from a 61-year-old who has spent more than four decades writing songs about sectarian violence, grim economic environments and police brutality. Burns is the lead singer and chief songwriter of Stiff Little Fingers. Founded in Belfast in 1977, the band came up during the Northern Ireland conflict, commonly known as the Troubles. While their contemporaries from elsewhere in the U.K. approached the political situation with art-school activism or abstruse ideas about anarchism, Stiff Little Fingers had in-your-face experience with an irregular civil war that tallied roughly 50,000 casualties over three decades. And Belfast was right in the epicenter.
“Growing up in Northern Ireland, politics was such a part of your everyday life,” says Burns on a phone call with the Scene. “You were going to write about things that you knew. That was what everybody knew! Because of the unrest, people were getting killed! There were bombs going off! There were riots! It was very much an on-the-streets type of politics rather than the esoteric.”
The culmination of their songs about life in Northern Ireland was 1979’s Inflammable Material, 12 original songs about growing up in Belfast as a bored teenager living in a war zone. There’s also one cover: Bob Marley’s “Johnny Was,” a song about mourning the loss of a good man to senseless violence on the streets. It fits right in with the sentiments and observations Burns and his bandmates were aiming at — telling the stories of the people who live through oppression.
“We didn’t really want to make a difference,” Burns recalls. “What we wanted to do was point out what was happening. I think we realized that trying to make any sort of difference was probably beyond our view. All we could do is point stuff out and say: ‘This is what’s happening. But it doesn’t have to be like this!’ ”
This autumn, the band is celebrating the album’s 40th anniversary with an American tour. They’re bringing along The Avengers, contemporaries from San Francisco. Both first-wave punk units are playing Nashville for the first time on Sunday at The Basement East. While many rock records of that vintage feel dated topically, Inflammable Material is unfortunately still relevant. Teenage disenchantment, sectarianism and the abuse of law enforcement are just as present as they were in the world of the late ’70s. Though the Troubles ended officially with an agreement in 1998, Brexit puts things in a less certain light.
Burns now lives in Chicago with his wife, where he’s been for the past 15 years. He lives near Wrigley Field and has adopted the Cubbies as his own team. Just before our interview, ESPN broke the news that Chicago manager Joe Madden was being replaced by beloved former Cub David Ross. While that was exciting news for Burns, the Cubs are a bittersweet subject.
“I’m kind of distancing myself from the Cubs, due to their deep love for our current president,” Burns says. “That’s kind of soured them,” he said. Cubs owner Todd Ricketts participated in a June retreat for top donors to Donald Trump’s re-election campaign, upsetting many fans who do not support the current presidential administration; Ricketts will also co-host a fundraising event Monday.
Though he’s at a stage of his life when many people are slowing down and preparing to retire, Jake Burns is still actively concerned with the injustice in the world around him. On this tour, Stiff Little Fingers has been playing a new song about the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in Chicago, shot and killed by a police officer in 2014. Last year, the officer was found guilty of second-degree murder, as well as 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm.
“It made me angry enough to want to write about it,” says Burns. “That’s the basis of a lot of my songs. If my sense of justice gets upset — some people take to the streets, I sit down with a pen and start writing.”
