As their latest tour approaches, IAN McCALMAN looks back at two decades of bringing the trademark vocal harmonies of the popular Edinburgh-based folk band to the Highlands and Islands.

THE McCALMANS have been touring the Highlands and Islands of Scotland every summer for the last twenty years. It is undoubtedly the most enjoyable and the least profitable tour we take on, and this year’s Highland adventure looks to be as charismatic as all the others.  So what makes ‘nice boys like us’ put our ageing bodies through the rigours of 14 low-paid gigs connected by some of the dodgiest roads in Europe?

You may figure out some of the answers when you realise that amongst the venues are Arisaig, Plockton, Bute, Arran, Mull, Ullapool, and Gairloch. We can visit all these incredible places and what’s more, there is always something happening on the nights we are there. That “something” is The McCalmans. Ain’t we lucky!

It all started some twenty years back when a friend of the group, singer Stephen Quigg, suggested that we book about ten village halls. “We arrange the gigs ourselves, I do the warm-up and “The Macs” do the main act – we can’t fail,” said young Quigg, and we believed him.  We had to organise tickets, venues, advertising, posters, lighting and sound, but we stuck to the task and with an 80% input from Stephen and a 20% input from The Macs, the tour was arranged.

In the mid-eighties the group had a few TV series to their credit so some sort of an audience was guaranteed, but our surprising strength was the reputation we had in England, Germany, Denmark, Holland and Italy, which drew the tourists to the gigs. We managed to suck in the poor souls that wander aimlessly in the torrential rain looking for something to do of an evening and frankly, unless the sun shone, we had a fairly secure and captive audience.

Derek Moffat, Nick Keir and yours truly were The McCalmans in those days, and we had some truly amazing experiences, arriving in villages, trying to find “Fergus with the hall key”, setting up the gear and sometimes supplying toilet paper and towels, cleaning seats, fixing electricity supplies and generally ruining the stereotyped image of the destructive musician.

We always pretended to do rain dances on those perfect Highland evenings that make Scotland the greatest place in the universe. Audiences stayed away to admire the incredible sunset but, truth be known, we always preferred the ‘fine weather’ tours more than the rain-sodden extravaganzas. Midges came to our aid on many occasions and you could almost see our wee friends rounding up the audience and bringing them to the hall. Free insect-repellent has always been part of the Highland Tour and on some extreme ‘midge nights’ we raffled mosquito nets. True!

Sadly, Derek died of cancer two years ago, and Stephen came into The McCalmans. By that time, we knew Stephen very well, and because of the Highland tours he was the natural choice of Derek, Nick and myself as Derek’s replacement.

The tours go on as before and the journeys between venues are just as wonderful as they ever were. We always visit the local pub after the concerts to meet the audience, and many of them have become friends over the years, as they look on the tour as being the focal point of their annual visit to Scotland.

The McCalmans’s play at the following venues in their Highland Tour 2003:

Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, Tuesday 29 July 2003
Brodick Village Hall, Arran, Thursday 31 July 2003
Kingarth Hotel, Isle of Bute, Friday 1 August 2003
Royal Hotel, Keith, Sunday 3 August 2003
An Tobar, Tobermory, Mull, Tuesday 5 August 2003
Village Hall, Plockton, Wednesday 6 August 2003
Ceilidh Place, Ullapool, Thursday 7August 2003
Community Centre, Gairloch, Friday 8 August 2003
McLaren Hall, Killin, Saturday 9 August 2003
Great Western Hotel, Oban, Sunday 10 August 2003
Village Hall, Arisaig, Tuesday 12 August 2003
Town Hall, Aberfeldy, Wednesday 13 August 2003

© Ian McCalman, 2003