Climb up and break out with Martin McGuigans – striking new single ‘Snakes N Ladderz’

Martin McGuigan…..  AKA The Rockerfella… A dashing, debonair, mystical raconteur who seeks world domination and a decent haircut by Tuesday lunchtime, with his wondrous, lysergic lullabies and psychedelic sonic cyclones in (mostly)4/4 time.

That’s the quick-fire blurb, here’s a little “About Me” in microcosm: 

Martin is an Irish singer-songwriter, hailing from Co.Down who exists primarily in a 1960s themed House of Mirrors, in which Lennon, McCartney, Dylan, Hendrix and Bowie have been my landlords. 

McGuigan has travelled all over Europe with his music and has played hundreds of gigs and at festivals throughout this time. He has released three self-written songs on Spotify, Itunes, Amazon and all Good, Bad and Ugly streaming services near you! He has played live acoustic sets of original material on radio pretty often.

Martin McGuigan is now hoping to end 2025 on a high with the release of his new upcoming single which gives fans a taste of what’s to come in 2026 with his EP .

“Insofar as my upcoming EP is concerned, I would describe ‘Snakes N’ Ladderz’ as the captain of the football team, the one that makes all the other players tick – the hub! It’s dreamy, breakneck indie-rock, with fabled bar-room reminiscences and shadowy stream-of-consciousnesses from shifty narrators, lacquered in liquor and laughs. Classic indie-rock infused with punk, pop and a dash of old-time country swing.”

– Martin McGuigan on the track

Song’s origins:

I initially envisioned the song as a modern-day jailbreak/boxcar type song, a la Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Hank Williams – replete with my own twist. It’s a bluesy, pulsating rhythm and lyrically I wanted to create that feeling of the listener being taken aboard one of them old freight trains alongside the narrator.

As the story developed, that’s become a narrator who’s came back from some time away, and is essentially a fly-on-the wall to a parade of equally dubious different characters, all recounting doubtful tales of braggadocio and bluster.

The narrator eavesdrops with a sneering contempt towards these shifty characters, thinking of them as desperate and quite pitiful, oblivious to the irony of him drinking alone in the bar whilst they’re all (on face value) having a ball of a time.

It’s supposed to be him coming back to a hero’s welcome with all his mate’s(good and bad) and representative of an average pub scene in The North in the late 90s, around the time of The Good Friday Agreement.

The line “Blitzkrieg’s just back from Tibet. He’s done his bird with epaulletes” is a guy who’s done his prison time without spilling the beans or touting. It’s also a wry little double entendre!

The ensemble cast; The GP, the policeman and the clergyman in Verse One are essentially the establishment – the pillar of the community types. The second bunch; Old Franco, Clark Kent and Clark Gable are supposed to be the exact opposite; your typical thuggish, street-code pub group, with pack hierarchy mentalities I.e the group’s ‘ladies man’, the hardman and the out-and-out thug.

But really, both groups are as bad as each other, they’re each grandiose and boastful in their own way, all privy to, and turn a blind eye to, a bit of bad behaviour when it suits them.

As the narrator’s musings drive the song forward, it’s evident that he’s not in a good place and that boozing isn’t the solution for these bouts of melancholy.

“Is it ambition.

Or is it a mission to Mars?

To say I’m gonna be a star

When I’m propping up the bar?”

This is the narrator showing self-awareness that he’s blowing it. He knows his feckless living, procrastination and hedonism are killing his chance of progression in life. He knows that masking this with booze is perpetuating the problem.

‘La-La Land’ was obviously the big film at the time I finished this song, and I thought it was a neat metaphor to symbolise how we all lie to and delude ourselves when it suits us in life – even in small ways. So, “We’re living in La-La Land, we’re living in La-La Land….” fit nicely as an outro mantra, as all of these characters are, in some way, fantasists and conmen trading on House Of Cards egos and flimsy pack allegiances.

Photo credit – press photo