Tom Dunne: Iain Archer is the ideal man to bring the Ivors Academy to Ireland  

The former Snow Patrol member has written some brilliant songs through the years 

Iain Archer in his Snow Patrol days at the Ivor Novello Awards 2005 in London. Picture: Gareth Davies/Getty Images.

Oxegen Festival: 2004. Over two days, for live radio, there are numerous interviews and intimate acoustic sessions from Franz Ferdinand, Elbow, BellX1, and many more. But it’s Iain Archer I remember. He did Summer Jets from his album Flood the Tanks.

Acoustic sessions, the simpler the better, are wonderful things. The intimacy, the sense of getting a peek behind the curtain, the song stripped back to its core. I remember Christy Moore doing John O’ Dreams once. It was like the world just went still.

Archer’s session felt the same. The craziness of Oxegen just ceased. It was just one man and a guitar and that gorgeous song, its perfect little chorus a paeon to a world gone mad. Haunting, evocative, plaintiff, beautiful. I remember quietly hoping it would get the success it deserved.

I knew Archer was playing guitar with Snow Patrol at the time. As Run pushed Final Straw into the stratosphere soon after, I presumed his solo career would take a back seat. My own life took me down a different path after that but occasionally Summer Jets would stumble from a radio and stop me in my tracks.

So, when the Ivors Academy, the organisation behind the awards generally regarded as the Oscars of songwriting, announced it was opening an Irish chapter and that Archer was now on their board I sat up. “So, what has Iain been up to up to?” I wondered. Well, what indeed?

Firstly, there were the Supergroups. The Reindeer Section, circa 2001, which featured members of Snow Patrol, Belle and Sebastian, Arab Strap, Idlewild, Mogwai and half of Scotland. And then there was Tired Pony, 2009-2013, that featured Gary Lightbody, Peter Buck, Jackknife Lee, Tom Smith and the rest of Scotland.

How on earth does all that work I wondered? Songwriting, I find, is a deeply personal thing, the idea of showing someone your early “ideas” terrifies me. “Yes,” Iain tells me, “I would write with my hand covering my copybook. Lifting your hand away to say, ‘look at this’ doesn’t come easy.”

 But does it even pay off? Well, well, well. Does it what? In 2012 it was suggested that Archer work with a 16-year-old writer called Jake Bugg: “He was wondering what to write about and then he started telling me all these stories about where he was growing up. They were scary stories. Just write them, I told him.” 

 The result was Jake’s breakthrough debut album,  one song from which, 2 Fingers, was nominated for an Ivor Novello Award. 

“Was that your first involvement with the Ivors?” I ask innocently. “No” says Archer, “the first time I won an Ivor it was with Snow Patrol.” 

That line, “the first time I won an Ivor” will live with me a long time. The second time was in 2015 with James Bay and Hold Back the River. But he has also written with Liam Gallagher, Niall Horan – Paper Houses helped push the album Flicker to the US Number One – Lisa Hannigan, Noah Kahan, and many more.

Which is why the arrival of the Ivors Academy in Ireland is so significant. It brings increased pedigree, experience, support and advocacy to an industry that at times thrives – Gilbert O’Sullivan has won three Ivors – but generally needs all the help it can get.

Catherine Martin, former Minister for Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sports and Media, herself a former musician, will be head of policy. As someone who helped introduce the Basic Income for the Arts, this is a key appointment. Her experience, spanning government and creativity will be priceless.

For the world outside the rehearsal room can be a tough one: Generative AI, digital rights, copyright law, an equitable share of streaming income, the closure of small venues. Making sure the Summer Jets of this world get to fly, is no easy task.

But I am equally interested by what the Ivors Academy can bring to the table in terms of helping connect writers with each other. Archer is excited about this too. “Yes, nights when you can come along and just talk to others who do what you do. See how they work, what works for them.” 

It may help some finally lift their hands away from their copybook and see what others think. “What if my new idea is rubbish?” I once asked a seasoned pro. “Yes” he said, “but what if it isn’t?”