A film location scout responsible for unearthing the dramatic landscapes that defined HBO's Game of Thrones is now channelling that rugged inspiration into a solo music career.
Robbie Boake, who dedicated over a decade to scouring coastlines and countryside across the island of Ireland to bring the kingdoms of Westeros to life, is embarking on a new creative journey. The 54-year-old South African, a Belfast resident for 23 years, is drawing on memories from those extensive exploratory journeys to pen an upcoming EP of original songs.
His first solo single – Waiting For The Rain – is more of a personal reflection on both his adopted city and the recent death of his father, who was a forester in South Africa.
Mr Boake was a full-time musician prior to his move into the film industry, and he first visited Belfast while touring with South African indie band Sunways in the early 2000s.
A quarter of a century on, the married father-of-three has returned to his musical roots and is recording songs in a homemade studio in his back garden in east Belfast.
“The creative process is unbelievable,” he said.
“During my time as the Westeros-finding location scout, I would keep voice memos, because I have songs on the go all the time. I’d be on Binevenagh (mountain in Co Londonderry) or I’d be somewhere in Kerry and these ideas, these beautiful landscapes, would be triggering these song ideas.
“Sometimes I’d have had a guitar with me and I would jot them and get them down. And so I have a huge, huge backlog of things to get through.”
He added: “It’s really nice to complete something. That’s something I’m trying to force myself to do here – you can be sitting on great ideas, but never release them.
“The motto I’ve been taught by some of my favourite artists, including my wife, is that it’s better complete than perfect. So I’m going to smash out volume, and I’m going to get it out, and I’m going to get these songs into the public realm.”
Mr Boake’s Co Fermanagh wife Ciara, who worked on Game Of Thrones as an assistant director, recently turned a book of poetry she wrote about Ireland’s natural landscapes into a short animated film.
He wrote the musical score for her film Wildkind, which premiered at the Galway Film Fleadh during the summer.
The singer-songwriter, who is also a yoga teacher, said Waiting For The Rain was initially meant to be about fatherhood and his three daughters, but the song took on a broader meaning when his own father died.
“I got close to finishing it and then my dad passed in January this year and on reflection, because he was a forester, and because the song is about trees and growing up and seasons and the cycles of life, I kind of finished it with that in mind,” Mr Boake said.
“It really fitted – his loss in South Africa to me, the devastation our family was going through, but also the renewal that was coming.
“In a strange, complex way it kind of really actually anchored me, and it made me think, you know, I do live in Belfast, this is me now, this is my family.
“The project is called Love From Belfast, and it really sort of settled me musically and just from an individual perspective as to understanding where you’re from.
“You know, immigration is not necessarily that easy. You have new cultures, new norms, but my family and my complete rock – my wife – and the passing of my dad, I think made me have to take stock with the fact that I’m now a Belfast boy, even though there’s big chunks of South Africa left in me, and I still support the Springboks, it helped me really come home to myself.
“So releasing this has been a huge catharsis to me, a really special moment.”
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