“Sorry I’ve been away for ages, but hopefully it’s been worth it. I’ve spent a lot of the last while at home in Northern Ireland, making music that I love with some of my best friends. It’s been a rollercoaster…”

So wrote JC Stewart on his Instagram earlier this year.  True to the emotional honesty in his songs – true to who he is as a performer – he wasn’t lying, exaggerating or being #instacool. The singer-songwriter from County Londonderry has indeed been MIA for a while, a considered move that was fundamental to a genuine, necessary artistic reset. He has been bunkered down, following his own musical path, forging his own musical future, creating and recording with a crew of deep, deep soulmates, not in forced writing camps with strangers. And boy oh boy has it been a rollercoaster – an up-and-down saga of dizzying highs and plunging lows.

But now any hints of fairground-ride nausea are long gone. John Callum Stewart is back: refreshed, rebooted, retooled. After a long period in London and then Los Angeles, pursuing (with gritted teeth) one kind of musical success, he went back to his roots – to the farm in Magherafelt he grew up on, and to the inspiration-giving Northern Irish coast. And on the strength of the new songs he’s written, the ones he’s poised to start releasing as part of a whole new professional set-up – and whole new JC Stewart – fans can be reassured: it has been worth it.