The sectarian warfare of Northern Ireland has been well told in many stories and media. In what may be a new approach, Kevin Barry Artt and John McManus have written an 11 song CD telling Artt’s own personal up-front version with many unusual twists. Artt is one of only four escapees from the famous Long Kesh prison in Northern Ireland to make it to the US and remains free to this day.Artt’s story starts with a song titled Before the Troubles. It’s a song that tells of being raised as a Catholic in a relatively affluent part of Belfast until a family member associated with the IRA got the entire family into big trouble. Artt’s adoptive father owned and operated what today is commonplace: a combination gas station, auto repair business and convenience store. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s no one else in Belfast had a convenience store as part of a “motor shop”. The business was quite successful. Although this song sets the stage with a telling of Artt’s upbringing in a privileged part of Belfast, it also presages the end of the CD by asking existential questions about the Catholic/Protestant divide. We talk the same, look the same way too, why are we fighting? And the answer is in the song: The wedge largely created by Britain dividing working class Catholics from working Protestants. At least that’s the view from the Catholic side.But even then, with the Troubles brewing all around, life went on, as anyone who lived through those times will tell you. In Friday Night, Artt recalls looking forward to Friday nights when he’d go out with friends on the town. Their idea of fun was getting drunk, fighting and sometimes thinking about girls. Of course his parents didn’t like any of it but teenage males have things in common no matter where in the world you find them. The song recalls the fashions of the day as well as the hits on the radio “Van the man (Morrison) was cleaning windies…” as well as the giant in the sports world, George Best (who was on the ball).As a teenager Artt leaves home to spend more time with his girlfriend who lives in the Catholic enclave of New Lodge. One of his biggest problems is his daily crossing of hostile Protestant divide in a separate Catholic neighborhood, Andersonstown. Say A Prayer is one of the CD’s most powerful songs. It tells of the sheer terror Artt felt walking home alone from New Lodge to Castle street, Lower Falls, at night during these times. A Catholic caught alone at night on Protestant streets, especially a young male, could easily wind up dead, and many did. The song remembers saying a prayer before hitting the streets, the way one might have before trying to drive across Bagdad during the recent Iraq war. Artt tells of purposely seeking out the dark byways and shadows under shop awnings where he might walk undetected by roving sectarian thugs. Say a Prayer strips down to music basics, relying mostly on acoustic guitar and percussion. Artt needs a job and some money so being the clever entrepreneur that he is, he goes to work driving cab for the People’s Taxi. People’s Taxi is a song of the same name that tells the story of drivers working for a quasi-outlaw, unlicensed taxi company that ferried Catholics around Belfast. Cab drivers drove their own unmarked cars which were dispatched from a converted house in New Lodge. It’s here that Artt first drifts towards trouble as suspected IRA men using the taxi service are linked to Artt via routine police and British army stops. Authorities denied these taxi drivers legal status so that they could be stopped and pressed for information. Artt sings about the need to constantly sell his cab/car and buy new ones in an effort to deflect police attention. Driving IRA men around eventually gets our hero caught up in the Troubles, set up and charged with murdering the second in command at the infamous Long Kesh prison where IRA political prisoners staged the hunger strike that killed Bobby Sands and nine others.He’s accused by none other than the famous former IRA man Christopher Black. Of all the alleged IRA, and IRA sympathizers fingered by Black, Kevin Barry Artt is the only one Black never met, didn’t know, and couldn’t identify in a police lineup. For his cooperation with British authorities, Black was given safe passage to Australia after sending many IRA men to jail on the basis of his coerced testimony. The majority of those convicted, had their convictions overturned on appeal. Artt’s ode to Black, aptly titled Christopher Black, is perhaps the darkest song on the CD, expressing little sympathy for the fate of Black who, while still alive, will likely never spend a peaceful day the rest of his life. Musically this song is the only true ska piece on the record.Before he was arrested and charged, it was becoming increasingly clear Artt was in the police and the UVF’s spotlight. Three assassination attempts were made on his life. Reading the writing on the wall, he decided it prudent to get out town and tried to move to Dublin. This chapter of the story is related in the song Almost Dublin. He might have actually made it but for the pull of his young family back in Belfast who wouldn’t go to Dublin. This song musically was born of a melody written by drummer Jim Foley and then reinterpreted by McManus and Artt.Artt was convicted in a Diplock military tribunal court and sentenced to life plus fifteen in Long kesh. (I never could understand where they would get the other fifteen,” he often says.)While still getting accustomed to life at Long Kesh he’s approached one fine September day in 1983 by other prisoners planning the famous 1983 jailbreak. With only 15 minutes to think it over, he quickly decides to join what will become one of the greatest prison escapes of IRA members in history. As the song Ram down the Gate tells it the prisoners’ chant was “Ram down the gates, yelled 38….. 19 went free, in 83.The escape saw 38 IRA men jump into a prison food delivery truck and head for the outside world. One small problem…. The gates of the prison had to be navigated. No problem to the passengers inside the lunch lorry. A history shows the escape went wrong and it was everyman for himself. Artt ended up in a prison guard’s car with Paul Kane, Jimmy Donnely, Brendan Meade and Harry Murray. As they approached a closed prison gate, there was only one solution. “Ram down the gate” they all yelled in unison. Artt and others made it to the outside world but their journey was only beginning.As Ram Down the Gate recounts Artt had to bluff his way through several roadblocks manned by Northern Ireland’s security forces which locked down all surrounding roads, looking for escapees. Artt was caught up in the dragnet but bluffed his way out.Like many Irish, Artt is extremely outgoing, friendly and can gab with the best of them. These traits served him well in talking his way not only out of a police station, but also past additional roadblocks. Ram Down the Gate recounts a harrowing tale few in the developed world ever experience. At one point Artt talks about “cops drove by, I looked to the sky, I said my prayers, expecting a bullet…”Foggy Clue picks up the story of our man on the run as he heads for the border with a very hostile police force on his trail. He knows he can’t contact friends and family in Belfast, ‘…they’ll be watching them so close”, says the song. He also knows he’s on a lonely trail traveled by many an Irish nationalist before him – into the underground. This song recounts the very first part of the chapter just opening after successfully escaping. Artt is a man on the run, alone, frightened, with very little idea of what’s coming next. One thing he does know is he can’t go back to his old life and going forward, nothing will be the same.Good Farmer tells the story of Artt’s successful crossing of the border into the Republic of Ireland and to safe harbor with sympathizers in county Donegal. There Artt stays with a farmer and his wife for a period of time and it is here that Artt, the city lad from Belfast, has his first experience eating wild game hunted by the farmer. The song recounts the gratitude Artt feels for the keeper of the safe house, and his appreciation of good farm cooking, and… his distaste for wild game.We lose the trail for a while as Artt is shuffled to other parts of Europe before he finally makes his way to the US. The CD picks up with Hey Jimmy. Some background notes are in order here. Thirty-eight men escaped Long Kesh. Within weeks only 19 remained free. Of these, four made it to the US, Kevin Barry Artt, Pol Brennan, Terry Kirby and Jimmy Smith. Once in the US these men were more or less in touch through “friends and relations of the Irish cause…”In Hey Jimmy, Artt tells the story of flying from San Diego to San Francisco where word had it an Irish nationalist could find work, a place to live and friends and relations of the Irish cause. He disguised himself for the flight and made arrangements for another of the escapees, Jimmy Smith, to pick him up at the airport in San Francisco upon arrival. The song tells a now-funny tale of Artt dying his hair black, but his blond roots were sticking out…. He put on dark, oversized glasses and tried his best to be inconspicuous. He gets to San Francisco airport and waits for Smith for an hour before giving up and hailing a cab into town. He heads directly for an Irish bar known to be sympathetic to the nationalist cause. When he arrives he finds Smith holding forth in a corner of the bar, seemingly oblivious to the arrangement he was supposed to pick Artt up that night.The final song on the CD, Woman Scorned, picks up the story years later in a contemporary setting. Now a successful self-made businessman in the US, Artt’s biggest worries are getting home in time after a night out with the boys. Some things never change. Instead of worrying about the RUC or UVF assassins tracking him, he’s worried about paying the mortgage and caring for his family. But he sees in all the young Irish, fresh off the plane, sitting in circles talking story at the local Irish bars, young people much like himself a few years prior. People who still feel homesickness for Ireland but who are on a brave new journey to create, or at least explore, a new life….starting where they left off back home…in the local Irish bar drinking a pint.Kevin Barry Artt, Jim Foley and John McManus also play in a San Francisco band performing classic Irish rebel songs called the Bog Savages. Artt owns and operates Artt and Alchemy painting company and painted many of the buildings in the San Francisco bay area and beyond.Artt’s story is one of many of those caught up in the Troubles but there are many unique twists and turns you won’t find elsewhere.