Mull It Over 050: The Life of a Freelance Writer
As I hit fifty issues of this newsletter, I give a peek behind the scenes at the life of a moderately unsuccessful freelance music writer - facing rejection on the regular.
“As far back as I can remember, I always wanted to be a gangster, music journalist” - Henry Hill, Goodfellas (adaptation mine).
Everybody wants to play guitar. Drummers want to play guitar, singers want to sing and play guitar and bass players really want to play guitar. Perhaps an over-simplification but the idea isn’t controversial. The instrument nobody wants to play however, is the bass. So, having come to the newest fad late in school - all of my closest friends had formed bands; I scrambled to find a spot for myself - low and behold a school band seeking (what else) a bass player. I was in. Until the decision was made that the song of choice for the school concert would be Snow Patrol’s Chasing Cars. I now understood why nobody wanted to play bass. I’d rather have chased cars.
But what was I doing that I ended up missing out on the day everyone decided to form bands and hand out all the best jobs? I was nose deep in books - specifically biographies and autobiographies on everyone from Gary Barlow to Led Zeppelin. I couldn’t get enough. So much so, that some time around 2005, as an earnest fourteen year old I emailed the author of the latest Guns N’ Roses biography I had been reading, Paul Stenning, no doubt asking for advice on how to become a really cool adult, writing about 80s American rock bands for a living. I don’t have that email (thankfully), but he does. Almost twenty years later when I finally started to write about music on the side, I decided to send a follow-up.
I was keen to let Paul know I’d finally started writing. As you can see above, he asked for some examples and I sent them back. He responded in kind with some very thoughtful tips on where to submit my work and how to get paid. It felt like a proper full circle moment, something that is rare enough in this life. It was a really dead on move to reply to a clueless 14 year old all those years ago. So, thanks again Paul.
To state the blindingly obvious however, it isn’t that simple. Life isn’t like the film Almost Famous or All The President’s Men - nobody is out here rushing to pay journalists. They aren’t even paying musicians never mind music writers. It is easy, therefore, to find oneself wondering what the point is in putting pen to paper in 2025. I suppose the only answer is, if you have the inclination to do so, then you better follow it.
As mentioned, I’m now on the fiftieth edition of this newsletter. It’s been tremendously fun and I can say with insane levels of modesty that the bands and artists I’ve written about have been massively supportive and appreciative as well. That is what keeps it going. But, as the remit of Mull It Over falls quite neatly and strictly into the world of grassroots music from Northern Ireland, there are times when I find that inclination that I have to write, sometimes needs to climb those self-imposed walls. I haven’t published an article on here for two months, as a very generous 3% of you have pointed out - the reason being, I’ve been writing about other things. The problem is, nobody wants to publish them. I’m now toying with the idea of going full victim mode here. Let’s see.
Seriously though, for a second - I wanted give you all a look at the life of a semi-professional, freelance music journalist. Well, my reality anyway - I’m sure there are (in fact I know there are) far more talented, deserving and successful music writers than me coming out of Belfast. A line of work that Paul Stenning (polite as he was not to re-hash it) clearly tried to steer me away from twenty-odd years ago.
So here’s a snippet of what I’ve been doing in the two months since I last updated the newsletter. In August this year I went to the Limelight in Belfast to see one of my all time favourite bands, The Lemonheads. Fronted by one-time ‘alternahunk’ Evan Dando and now much more of a roving collective of musicians who can stand being around him for the length of a tour.
Without spoiling what comes next, it was probably the worst concert I’ve ever been to, and I saw The Script twice. So, as someone who likes to write as a hobby (that inclination is back) I decided to formulate my confused feelings at seeing one of my favourite artists deliver such a horrible show into a snappy piece of journalism - “Pitchfork will love this”, I thought as I finished the last sentence. It all coalesced nicely with the long-awaited Dando memoir and the first new Lemonheads album in 19 years (or, since the last time I emailed Paul Stenning).
So here’s what comes next. Spelling and grammar check. Find the list of email contacts at my most respected publications. Write a wanky (maybe this is where I go wrong?) cover letter. Attach article. Send. Wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Until… you get a response. And it is usually something like this.
(Names of some have been redacted as they’re genuinely helpful responses)
or this
or this
And the above obviously doesn’t include those that never responded. So, at the risk of launching into my own version of Father Ted Crilly’s infamous ‘Golden Cleric speech’, let’s just say there were a lot of them. Pitchfork was one. I’ll not list the rest. Not yet, anyway.
The Lemonheads article is one of many I’ve written over the past few years, that have been rejected (albeit politely in many instances) by media publications and languished on a hard drive gathering dust. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong, though I suspect I know deep down. When Irish institution Hot Press has album reviews that contain the word ‘soundscape’ three times over the span of two paragraphs, and the Belfast Telegraph generally just continues to exist, you know you can’t win.
So, that’s where I’ve been - and a look behind the computer of a fairly unsuccessful but enthusiastic freelance writer. Roundly rejected more times than the Box nightclub in Belfast, circa 2009.
And finally, if you care. My August 2025 review of The Lemonheads. See below, if you dare.
A Tuesday night in Belfast, I’m texting my wife to update her on the bizarre developments I’m currently witnessing at The Lemonheads’ show, half in support of the new album Love Chant and half a half-hearted celebration of their imperial era album (it happened) Come On Feel, when I look up to find Evan Dando walking past me at the back of the audience, guitar slung across his back, offering his hand of thanks and then out the well-known clubbers’ path through the backdoors and, presumably up to the beer garden for a smoke. Show’s over, us punters surmised. I’m sure the staff were wondering the same. About a minute later the house lights were up, casting over a (to be fair) packed room of bemused and eventually accepting faces. For a fan of Dando’s or The Lemonheads, which are interchangeable at this point – this was all par for the course, part of the charm.
I walk home nonplussed, flummoxed. I’ve seen my share of car-crash gigs. I’ve been the car-crash at my fair share of gigs. Having recently read Bob Mehr’s encyclopaedic take on the history of The Replacements, I found myself again succumbing to the eternal punk rock glamour of a gig gone awry, owing almost always to the band itself. This one left me feeling empty, not excited. I felt short-changed. That is probably my fault. Like Pete Doherty after him and Shane MacGowan before, many will say - you know what you’re letting yourself in for when you buy a ticket to see The Lemonheads. It’s just been that way for decades.
Yet, I can’t help but feel it’s not cute anymore. It was rather sad watching an era-defining talent like Dando up on stage butchering his classic songs, short of showing outright disdain for them, let alone himself. And classic songs they are. He is 58 now; has spent the better part of the last two decades putting out covers albums, getting kicked off tours and going viral for singing and playing guitar to shop staff during COVID. If he wasn’t Evan Dando, he would be ignored and side-stepped on the street. Yet, there I was – paying money to see him again, perhaps feeding a troubled life and having already pre-ordered the long-awaited memoir ‘Rumours of my Demise’ and on top of all this, unironically and impatiently waiting for ‘Love Chant’ – The Lemonheads’ first album of original material in 19 years. It came out last week, one day after the book. You would have to believe the adults in the room, orchestrating this latest and potentially last wring of the Evan Dando towel have had their work cut out. But it is here: the return of The Lemonheads, and it is good.
Clocking in at a nippy 35 minutes, Love Chant rollicks on with effectual confidence and the trademark Gram Parson’s indebted cadence Evan Dando became known for as the ascendent 90s indie pin-up that was both a safer option for the music press than Kurt Cobain (see: ‘bubblegrunge’) and a less cynical version of his de facto predecessor Johnny Rzeznik. Not that those who know The Lemonheads for their sunny, jangly hit singles off their terrific three album run from 1992 to 1996 – (‘It’s a Shame About Ray’, ‘Come on Feel’, ‘Car Button Cloth’) will have much to chew on here. This is an album that is quite obviously chopped together with riffs and ideas that have likely been languishing in dark corners of Evan Dando’s Martha’s Vineyard residence for almost 20 years, and the result is all the better for it. The trademark wit and realism remain, (“So you’re showing all the symptoms, Coughing up a ghost, Going into treatment, Better double down the dose”) he offers on Deep End. A man who once wrote on cards explaining to journalists how it was a crack binge that rendered his voice all but gone (later to inspire the all-time greatest Lemonheads song If I Could Talk I’d Tell You) Dando retains his naïve honesty and unfiltered approach. This has always been his greatest gift and his greatest downfall.
The best turns on the album come in the aforementioned Deep End, a rock song in 2025 by someone not called MJ Lenderman that I genuinely enjoy listening to and a track called Togetherness Is All I’m After – fervent and melodic, it is the closest song on ‘Love Chant’ that recalls those 1990s salad days.
When I got home from the gig that night in Belfast, I opened my phone to see if I could find any reviews of the tour – to see if this was a one off or a sad reality of the Evan Dando experience in 2025. After reading a couple of rude comments I decided to put the phone down and offer my own benefit of the doubt. After all, its only rock n’ roll - something The Lemonheads (whoever they may be at any given point) are still pretty fucking good at.
“And now, we move on, to liars…”