Perthshire Amber November 1, 2008

Just back from Perthshire, where I dropped in the on Perthshire Amber Festival, tonight featuring Dougie MacLean, Sorren Maclean (no relation) and the fabulous Benny Gallagher.

Couldn’t get to Pitlochry until after 8 o’clock (almost interval) so wandered over to the merchandise, where I discovered the lovely Eliza Lynn helping out. Eliza has the most amazing soulful voice, with massive power for such a toaty wee thing. She’s going to try to come in for an interview before she flies back to Nashville. Really looking forward to listening to her second album, The Weary Wakeup.

Also managed to add to this week’s listening  Ross Ainslie and Jarleth Henderson’s debut album, Partners in Crime (Ross is playing  pipes and mandolin with the Dougie MacLean Band tonight) and Sorren Maclean’s demo for Bus tax and bars.

So although we missed the first half with Benny, we just about made up for it!

By the way, Pitlochry Festival Theatre is a cosy wee venue. It’s comfy, the acoustics are brill and it’s just the right size for a right intimate feel between the audience and the performer.

And so to the second half of the concert. Dougie strides onto the stage with his usual grin – Hello! .. again!  - and we’re off. The new album should be upon us very shortly, and tonight he played a song co-written with son, Jamie, Some hearts, which he says is “about friends who didn’t cope with being a professional musician” and “tragically didn’t make it”. Sounds good, promises to be another great album.

Next up it’s sing-a-long-a-Greg time, with audience participation on the fiddle riff in Not lie down, then Dougie gets his own fiddle plugged in for Metis Theme and The Gael. The Metis (pronounced Mattie) are the offspring of original Scots and French settlers who “cosied up” to the Native Americans in Canada.

The piece was written for Highland Empire series and Dougie told the story of how the director wanted a scene in which a Metis sharpshooter would shoot a buffalo. So, the studio bought a buffalo for £2,000 from a local farmer. However, there was a party the night before and the Metis sharpshooter was the little worse for wear, so when the scene came up, the bullet went straight through the buffalo it was meant to hit and killed the farmer’s prize bull. The scene ended up costing the producers £10,000!

He also played Broken Wings from Marching Mystery. He described this song as being about humanity’s arrogance. Apparently he’d read in the press recently that if you’d invested £1000 in the bank or shares ten years ago, then your money would be worth £12 today. Now, if you’d bought £1000 of lager you’d have enjoyed the lager, and had £240 worth of aluminium tins to recycle. What’s the best investment for you?

Fabulous night, and I’d recommend the Atholl Villa guesthouse, by the way. Thanks to Douglas for the heads up on that one.