October 2011
2 posts
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Tour begins
The piece that Shane Connolly and I have created for Archive Trails is now as ready as it will ever be, and the tour begins tomorrow in Perth. Last night we staged a trial run-through for a small group of friends and we’ve spent today putting the finishing touches to the piece. I am looking forward to the tour as an opportunity for us to visit some parts of Scotland which are not at...
September 2011
4 posts
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Helmsdale Herring
Another song available to download and this one is very much a direct outcome of the Archive Trails residency; a reworking of Ewan MacColl’s “Shoals Of Herring”.
Based on research mentioned in an earlier post I have adapted the lyrics of the song, transporting the narrator from Great Yarmouth to the East Neuk of Fife. Last week I was up in Helmsdale to sing some songs at...
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Black an white ane ti ither mairriet
I recently posted a virtual e.p Rhythm & Song for free download. The recordings have been kicking about for a while and are not a direct outcome of the Archive Trails residency but they illustrate an element of my practice i.e putting traditional folk tunes into new contexts. In this case Scottish folk meets Berlin dub techno via Jamaican DJ culture. I wonder what Hamish would have made of...
August 2011
1 post
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Berrypickers of Blair
A few weeks ago I wrote about my imminent visit to Blairgowrie, home of the fabled berryfields which were eulogised in song by the late, great Belle Stewart. I’d been invited to a berry pickers’ ceilidh in the town hall there, and was interested to find out more about the workforce of today. Well, it turns out that the days when Scotland’s travelling folk toiled there are gone...
July 2011
3 posts
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Simplify Simplify Simplify
“The musician is the document. He is the information itself. The impact of stored information is transmitted not through records or archives, but through the human response to life” Ben Sidran
A short while back we submitted our proposals illustrating what we intend to do in response to the residency at the School of Scottish Studies archive. Around the same time I was reading Ben...
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Berryfields
Esteemed reader - I would like to draw your attention to a recently released CD on Greentrax Records (CDTRAX9024) in the Scottish Tradition series: ‘Scottish Tradition 24: Songs and Ballads from Perthshire Field Recordings of the 1950s’.
This edition of the series, which consists of selections made from the extensive collection of the School of Scottish Studies’ sound archive,...
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Belle Stewart's 'The Berryfields o Blair' →
Belle Stewart sings The Berryfields o Blair, recorded by Maurice Fleming for the School of Scottish Studies in 1954.
June 2011
2 posts
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Diary Room, Day 78
Tomorrow I am going to buy some air drying clay from which Shane and I will model the heads of the glove puppets to feature in our interpretation of the Scottish folk play ‘Galoshins’, which will constitute a part of my Archive Trails work. This is a new art form for me but it’s one with which Shane is familiar, so I’m looking forward to working with him on it.
I also...
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Thyme (the revelator)
With my recent move to Glasgow I haven’t been to the archive in a while but research is ongoing in other ways, not least with the recent delivery of a batch of cassettes picked up cheaply from Springthyme Records.
I still love tapes and not for nostalgic reasons. I like albums with two sides, and with a tape as with a record I tend to play the whole thing through without thinking about...
May 2011
1 post
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Plans are crystallising
Today Shane Connolly and I met to discuss plans for our staging of ‘Galoshins’ for the Archive Trails tour. It was a helpful process to show him the script which I had collated as it currently stands and discuss it in some length. We discussed staging, characterisation, props, sound effects and musical accompaniment among other things; without wanting to reveal too much, plans are...
April 2011
4 posts
2 tags
Watch
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A tour and other plans
My proposal for Archive Trails has now been submitted. Next month work will recommence in earnest on the creative side of the project, which I anticipate with some glee.
Before then, however, I have some musical activity - an upcoming tour with Stevie Jones, Shane Connolly and Alastair Caplin, mostly in England (and one gig in Milngavie, near Glasgow). Please check www.alasdairroberts.com for...
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Wee Nuggets of Wisdom
Since my interest in folk songs progressed from listening to them to singing and performing them myself I have often wrestled with various issues in my mind about why I sing certain songs, should I sing certain songs, is this right or is that wrong, and so on. Sometimes I wonder whether I think a little bit too much about such things. So I am grateful for a wee bit of wisdom learned from another...
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Taking Stock
Just got back from a brief trip to Finland and Estonia playing music with Alastair Caplin and Stevie Jones. A bit of travelling time to formulate thoughts about the Archive Trails project… and a marketplace in Helsinki yielded a beautiful object, an item which might make it into the work I am producing.
It’s time to draft a proposal and start thinking more logistically and...
March 2011
5 posts
3 tags
Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre
On 9th March, the archive trail led me to Glasgow’s leafy West End, to the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre. Shane Connolly of Sokobauno, with whom I’ll be working on the project, had invited me along for a meeting with the Centre’s founder, Dr Malcolm Knight.
Malcolm has been involved in the art of puppet theatre for many years; his first centre was a garret over a garage in Kelvinbridge, Glasgow...
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Ali Roberts Investigates
My fellow archive stravaiger Ali Roberts really picked up the Anon Man baton and ran with it at our second group meeting back on 23rd February.
During our meeting I played the recording of Anon Man singing “The Deadly Wars” to the group. As we listened Ali literally sprang into action and began to analyse the performance very closely. He quickly identified that the singer was English and noted...
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WatchThe Wire shares a video of Kate Nicolson & friends singing while waulking tweed in South Uist, 1970. This clip was chosen by Aileen Campbell, who’s been circumventing the card catalogue to find domestic sounds and families singing together.
Visit the Wire’s website to hear Miss Mary Morrison singing a pibroch song followed by canntaireachd in Erisary in 1959.
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February 2011
6 posts
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Three Dee
A lot of my work for this project so far has been of a rather intangible nature – ruminating, pondering, cogitating. Listening, talking, thinking. These have all been very useful and important strategies. And most of my life’s artistic work so far has been similarly aetherial – the creation of sound, the crafting of melody and word. Pushing notes from my larynx and coaxing tones from steel...
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Circumventing the catalogue
I was listening to a recording today and the informant was talking about how the recording makes something seem complete because its fixed. And of course she’s right, once you have a recording it can become the negative, the definitive recording and I can see why she was concerned about it. No more variations of text because they might then be seen as the ‘wrong’ version, wrongly remembered or...
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Nicky Tams →
Hear Banff farm-hand Willie Matheson singing the song Nicky Tams in 1952. ”When the young man is only twelve years old he leaves the parish school to be fee’d [hired as a farmservant] at the Mains [home farm]. First he becomes the junior, then third man and then he gets the horseman’s grip and word, going through the caff-hoose [chaff-house] door ritual…”
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Society of Horsemen
As with Galoshins, my interest in the mysterious ‘Society of Horsemen’ was kindled by an encounter with a book.
I found a copy of ‘The Quest for the Original Horse Whisperers’ by Russell Lyon in a charity shop; a few years earlier I had been involved in a project in Perthshire which involved visiting people, mostly elderly people, in care homes and their own houses, one aim being to gather their...
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January 2011
10 posts
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false starts, false teeth
This week I revisited recordings I had listened to on my first ever visit to the archive. They were made in 1964 at Lamb’s House in Leith, just around the corner from where I live. SA1964.149 features an eager and charming Hamish Henderson coaxing songs and street cries from several Leith and Newhaven women who have gathered at Lamb’s House. Isabella Buchan steps up to sing Silver Herrin’ and...
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The Amazing Anon Man
As I said the third version of Dowie Dens I was drawn to was a version by Anon Man. What a revelation this mysterious chap proved to be! His version is contained in reel SA1975.234, a recording from August 1975 of a TMSA concert in Kinross. Jimmy MacBeath is here and Aly Bain but dominating proceedings is the hitherto unknown Anon Man, perhaps the most important discovery since that legendary...
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MacCaig Sings!
The archive contains a vast collection of songs. I decided to have a look at The Dowie Dens Of Yarrow, a song I’ve added to my own repertoire after hearing Ewan MacColl’s rendition. It’s an understatement to say that this border ballad is well represented in the archive! There are pages and pages of recordings all through the years from an array of singers. I chose to listen to three that...
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Fisher Folk
Last week Cathlin very kindly let me take home a couple of cassettes to listen to some interviews in my on time. So I was able to potter in the kitchen making dinner and washing dishes in the company of Mary Murray from Cellardyke, recorded by Roger Leitch in 1983 (ref SA1983.123 and SA1983.124). And so to week two… Walking to George Square on a crisp January morning, winter sunshine...
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Hearin’ Aboot Herrin
A proposal to perform at the Glasgow Short Film Festival in February has kickstarted my research in the SSS sound archive this week…
I am developing a performance based on the Scottish herring industry and have decided to focus on the East Neuk fishing villages of Fife. I plan to do a version of Ewan MacColl’s song Shoals Of Herring that he wrote for the BBC Radio Ballads series in the...
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WatchWe’re working on creating a map of the tapes the artists listen to in the Archive. Here are some of the tapes Alasdair’s been listening to so far. For more detail, click on the pins.
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Stravaigers on the airwaves, in the news
Yesterday afternoon Drew and Emily took a trip to Pacific Quay for to speak on BBC Radio Scotland’s Music Cafe. We chatted about Archive Trails and listened to a couple of tunes. Also on the programme were Alan Lomax biographer John Szwed, and Julie Fowlis.
You can listen online, for a few more days at least (starts c.17’30).
Also this week: A great feature about the project appeared...
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Private Spaces
Things are becoming clearer and my archive search task is going to be to look at the private performance spaces and their ancillary sounds embedded in the recordings…
This might get re-notated for future performance. I want to look for relatives performing together or performing the same work on different occasions. When you play together often in private, the sound is unique. You hear it...
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Meeting Mary McColl
My aunt and I went to visit her aunt (my great-aunt) in the small Stirlingshire town where she now resides.
My aunt, the family genealogist, was keen to talk in general about aspects of family history and, at the same time, I was keen to find out any information at all about Andrew Rennie and Galoshins. As it turned out, my great-aunt knew nothing at all about Galoshins - she had no memories of...
December 2010
3 posts
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Meeting Geoff Kirk
A friend of mine, Howie Reeve, had informed me about another friend of his named Geoff Kirk who had been involved in a revival of the Galoshins play as it was performed in the town of Biggar.
Howie arranged for Geoff and me to meet, which we did, on December 17th, in a bar near the Piping Centre in Glasgow. Thankfully, although it would doubtless have been an enjoyable sonic experience, there...
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Being related to Andrew Rennie
I had an email exchange with an aunt on my father’s side in which I told her about the School of Scottish Studies project.
I described the Galoshins play to her and mentioned the video in the School of Scottish Studies archive featuring the Kippen blacksmith Andrew Rennie talking about the play as he had performed it as a boy. The aunt in question, who is a keen amateur genealogist and the...
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False faces, turnip lantern. Father’s slipper worn...
I visited the School of Scottish Studies today, arriving there at around 11am…
Cathlin MacAulay - the Archivist - gave me contact details for Stan Reeves, who recently presented a revival of ‘Galoshins’ at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. I will email Stan to discuss my own work with him.
The first two hours were spent in the Sound Archive listening to tapes pertaining to ‘Galoshins’ which...
November 2010
1 post
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Approaching the Archive
I like libraries; I used to go a lot when I was really young because my aunt worked there, so I learned from an early age the etiquette of the library environment. Approaching the sound archive for the first time felt the same, and it took me all the way back to those first visits to the library…
I think we all have a fear of the perceived silence of libraries, but a sound archive somehow...