Published on May 20th, 2026
I had in mind to write about something that I think it will be a kind of easter egg for you or something. Guys, sometimes I think there’s something mysterious & beautiful about time.
‘Cause when you’re a young rookie, you truly believe that all this thing about music is only about noise, lights, songs, applauses, wild nights and…girls! You think a band name is just a cool thing to print on a poster. You find a cool name, give it to the band, and go around thinking you’re the coolest musician in the neighborhood.
But years pass.
And suddenly you realize that a real name it’s not about be cool. A real name tells a real story
For the last six or seven years, many different musicians crossed my road. Some came to play with me for one show. Some for a small tour. Some disappeared as fast as they arrived. And every time, the story was almost the same.
Ian Lints & whatever-name-fits-tonight
It became a strange but funny tradition. Sometimes improvised. Sometimes serious. Sometimes just the necessity of giving identity to the people standing beside me on stage.
You know; I think a solo artist should be more than himself in a stage if he wants to build something really vaulable. Something with a real identity. Doing as myself in albums it’s ok. I mean, it’s me. I’m a solo artist.
But when I’m on a stage, I’m not a solo one with people wandering there with instruments. Just as the audience themself, musicians and me we are one there.
And honestly, I loved every version of it.
Because music is exactly this. A road. A station. A conversation between souls during a couple of songs before life pushes everybody in different directions again.
But for the first time in many years, something feels different now. Stable. Real. Alive.
And maybe that’s why I finally decided to stop this game playing to changing names.
From now on, when the lights go down and the amplifiers start roaring before a live show, the name beside mine will be always the same.
Ian Lints & The Market Band
Funny, isn’t it? But damn it… How I love in the way that it sounds.
‘Cause this name is not random guys. It comes from a place that became part of my life.
For ten years now, every single year without exception, I’ve travelled to the south of Catalonia to play at this very special market in Tortosa. A place where Irish culture, music and the english language mix together during an annual festival full of soul, smiles and beautiful madness.
Maybe my Irish roots made me feel at home there since the first moment. Or maybe some places simply choose you before you even understand why.
What I know is this. Year after year, that market became family. And somehow, without noticing it too much, we grew there as musicians. We learned there. We suffered there. We laughed there. We played & danced with cold, under heat, exhausted, inspired, drunk on music and sometimes drunk on life too.
After all those years, I’m proud to say that I’m the artist closing the festival every single edition. No exception.
Not bad for a guy carrying old songs and dusty dreams inside a guitar case.
But the story becomes even more weird & beautiful when destiny starts connecting dots.
Because thinking about this funny story, just I remembered today that long before all this happened… when I was only fourteen years old, my father pushed me into perform as a kind of broadcaster-showman in front of hundreds of people. Guess where? Yep! Right in a market like that where he had a tiny shop.
Somehow he believed that throwing his shy-terrified teenage son into a stage full of strangers was a fantastic idea.
Maybe he was crazy. Maybe he was right. Probably both knowing him…
And now when I look backwards, it feels impossible not to smile.
For some strange reason, I was born as an artist in a market. And many years later, life brought me back to another one where music finally started to bloom exactly the way I always dreamed.
So yes. It felt fair. It felt poetic. Mysterious… And honestly, it felt beautiful.
That’s why these musicians are no longer just “the guys playing with me tonight”.
They are The Market Band. A permanent name. A permanent identity. My family on the road.
And hopefully, the definitive brothers who will continue walking beside me for years to come—through songs, highways, post-concert beers, and nights that end too late. Bottling the market experience, anywhere.
Because after all this time, I finally understood something.
Some stories are not built inside huge stadiums, marketing offices or perfectly designed strategies. Real dreams don’t begin in glamorous cities under the need of be cool and well-known.
Real and valuable things begin in a simple marketplace filled with ordinary, wonderful, and everyday people. Where the people dancing, jumping and singing belt out right beside you never lies.
No guys, the real people never lies. Just as the market, which it never lied. Never will do
Be rock! Be resistance! Be a believer! 
Ian
