Adrian Rice and Alyn Mearns – ‘The Belfast Boys’ – were born and raised in Belfast but didn't meet each other until 2005.

Rice and his wife, Molly, were browsing through the poetry section at Barnes & Noble. Occasionally, they exchanged comments. One aisle over, Alyn Mearns browsed through the books to find Rice's latest release.     “My dad gave me some dosh [Irish for money] to buy Adrian's book, The Mason’s Tongue,” Mearns said. “I knew he was from Northern Ireland and his poetry addressed Northern Irish issues I could relate to.”

Mearns heard Rice talking, walked up to him and said, “You're from Belfast.”

Rice responded, “So are you.”          

Both speak with intriguing, thick, Irish accents. Mearns then shocked Rice by identifying him as ‘the Belfast poet’. Immediately, a friendship was kindled, and the bond they shared of growing up in Belfast sealed the deal for a deep kinship. Add to the mix  – both are serious artists – Rice, a poet, and Mearns, a musician.

Rice and Mearns share more than most people could understand. Rice was raised in the infamous housing estate of Rathcoole, north of Belfast, and young folk there were often raised to dislike Catholics; just as Catholics were raised in similar working class ghettos to dislike Protestants. Rice later found out that his father – who had been fostered as a child – was actually of Catholic parents, from the border county of South Armagh.

Their early, formative years were full of dissonance and a war of rhetoric.

“If you were born in Northern Ireland into a protestant family, you were immediately in something of a dual mindset,” Rice said. “We lived in Northern Ireland, part of Great Britain, the United Kingdom, so we were considered British. However, we lived on the island of Ireland, so we knew that we were Irish, too.”  “Northern Irish, at least,” joked Mearns.

Poetry did not interest Rice much until he was a teenager. Even then he was wary to admit to his friends his fondness of books and poems.

“The last thing you get into is poetry,” Rice admitted, when he spoke of a childhood where boys fought because of one another's religious background.

Rice was worried he might be mistaken as a “sissy,” especially since his father had such a reputation of being a “tough man.” Despite the prejudice, he kept his passion for books and poetry, defying many of his friends' expectations.

Mearns came to the United States when he was 16.

Speaking of his native land, he said, “The Republic of Ireland was really alien to me. It was like a totally foreign country. I would have been more at home in Scotland, or even England, than in the ‘South’.”

Rice agreed.

“I quickly challenged where I came from,” Rice said. “Though our parents weren’t bigots, we knew that our ‘tribe’ distrusted the Northern Catholics … and Catholics from the South of Ireland were doubly suspicious. I eventually read the history books for myself, and then enjoyed using poetry to stir the self-righteous of both sides of the divide.  You can’t solve problems like those of Northern Ireland without someone being prepared to hold out the hand to the ‘other’.”  

Mearns nodded in agreement. Both men then laughed at a joke which sums up for them the ambiguous attitude that the Irish, from North and South, often have for their beloved land: they spoke of the ‘Irish Boomerang’ – it doesn’t come back, it just sings about coming back!

Rice was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1958, and was brought up in the most notorious pro-British Protestant housing complex. His next door neighbor was the head of a Protestant terrorist organization. As a youngster, Rice played soccer in the street. Gunfire was a frequent occurrence. Cars were torched, and the children played in the burned out shells. When the gunfire erupted they laid down behind the stone curbs.

“I was 10 years old and more worried about the ball getting shot than myself getting shot,” he laughed.  

He grew up in the relentless turmoil of religious hatred between Protestants and the Catholics. From that age on, when the troubles started in 1968, until the first hint of peace with the IRA cease-fire in 1994, Rice never sat in a store, restaurant or pub with his back to the door.

Mearns was born in Sandy Row, Belfast, downtown, right in the heart of Protestant Belfast.

“A few of my mates lived in very hard Protestant areas, conjoined with hard Catholics areas,” Mearns said. “Because of my dad's enormous conversion experience, we moved to a slightly safer area, but I still saw all kinds of different ‘Troubles’ stuff.”

Mearns said mock fights occurred daily in the lower middle class area he lived in.

“It was sort of like the Crips and Bloods – a territorial war,” Mearns said.

Mearns' father used his money well and bought “the worst house in the best neighborhood.” They lived beside the headmaster of St. John's, a Catholic school. “Suddenly, we lived next door to a huge family named Sweeney, with all sorts of strange names like 'Virgil’ or ‘Seamus’.”

On the other side of the Mearns’, however, a Protestant family moved in.

“They were almost the clichéd Protestant family – stalwart, proud, white collar,” Mearns said. “Occasionally there was a lot of side-mouth talking and eggs chucked. But, we were still friendly with both neighbors.”  

Mearns, who played the violin from age five until 10, visited the Catholic neighbors because he could go over and play their electric guitar.

“Then, I heard my brother's friend play the guitar – he was cool, had long hair and played “Johnny B. Goode,” he said. “I flipped. Why waste time with my violin? I began to pluck it like a guitar.”

Mearns overheard his father tell his mother that they better get him a guitar.

He went through a variety of styles – super rock, jazz, classical – and earned a full ride to Appalachian State University to study classical guitar. Degree in hand, he left ASU and went into the world of Chuck Berry and pop music.

“I was consumed,” he said. “All I wanted to do was write pop music. My guitar became like a third arm. I wish I could do only that – write music – and still provide for my family. When I write a song, I itch always — I'm always pining for Eden.”

Now, he teaches classical guitar lessons out of Larry’s music shop in Hickory. But, he is no stranger to the pop music world.

In addition to teaching classical guitar, his past accolades include a solo CD release of Irish music (The Tree), and group CD’s and a single with his ex-band, Airspace.

At present, he is working with Nathan Pritchard of End of the World records, and a new album – Night Horses – is forthcoming.

So, how did Mearns and Rice become ‘The Belfast Boys’? It really started with football (soccer), not to be confused with rugby, the game both men played back home.

“We say that football is a gentleman's sport of skill, delicacy and deftness, played by hooligans,” Mearns said. “While rugby is a hooligan sport played by gentlemen.”

The legendary George Best was a pop icon, known as ‘the fifth Beatle’, who single-handedly made soccer sexy. But George Best was essentially humble and gifted.

“The night George Best died, I wrote a tune about him and approached Adrian for some lyrics,” Mearns said. “I thought it was an interesting poetic challenge.”  Working together, and with members of Airspace, Best was duly immortalized in song in a passionate tribute. 'The Conjuror' is a hauntingly beautiful tribute to the 'great' Belfast Boy from ‘The Belfast Boys’ who honor him as part of their country’s rich heritage.

Self-described as contemporary troubadours, folksy minimalists, ‘The Belfast Boys’ is an art project and part of their artistic lives. Rice plays mandolin, and Mearns sings and plays guitar. They met and formed a traditional Irish band, but it goes much deeper than that. The pain and fear from growing up in Belfast, Northern Ireland, brings out the very roots of their ancestry, an old Gaelic pulse.

“By happily playing what is perceived as purely ‘Irish’ music, we would be seen as traitors by many hard-line Protestants back home,” Rice said. “We simply say that we are two boys from Belfast, as Irish or British or European as the next man, and proud to be part of the rich tradition of Irish Traditional music.”  

Such music was revived on the popular stage by the band’s heroes, Planxty, a band that Mearns said were “artistically authentic”. And that is the key point for the boys – they try to be authentic in their choice of songs and tunes, not just posing as yet another ‘come all ye’ Irish pub band. They see themselves as being ambassadors for all sides of the island they have loved and left; of taking up a position of “radical neutrality” midst the age-old clash of the Orange and Green.  

As Rice quipped, “There has been too much ‘pat-riotism’, and not enough patriotism.”

‘The Belfast Boys’ are in demand. They were well received recently in The Olde Hickory Tap Room, and are booked on a regular basis at Tir Na Nog Irish Pub in Raleigh.

“There's real connectedness between Annie Nice, the general manager, and us,” Mearns said.

 “Yes,” said Rice, “She is a great woman, hailing, like my Catholic relatives, from South Armagh. We hooked up by Web site, and now she gets us all sorts of gigs.”

“Tir Na Nog means ‘Land of Eternal Youth’, and the pub is probably the biggest Irish bar in N.C.,” Mearns said. Raleigh has a large and enthusiastic population of Irish. “We like to think that we are genuinely Irish in all the best, cross-community ways,” Mearns said. “There is a shared Gaelic ancientness we try to adhere to.”