Feature by Northings
Eddi Reader Sings Robert
17 Sep 2004 in Music
EDDI READER talks about her engagement with the life and work of Robert Burns ahead of her Highlands and Islands tour.
EDDI READER found herself increasingly in the grip of an obsession with the life and songs of Scotland’s national bard, Robert Burns. Like all Scots, Eddi has always been aware of the Ayrshire poet on some level, but the path to her acclaimed The Songs of Robert Burns recording really began in earnest with an invitation from singer and songwriter Michael Marra to take part in a television special on Burns in 2001, with singer Rod Paterson and cellist Christine Hanson.
Eddi Reader - Sings the Songs of Robert Burns CD
“I only knew what I knew at that point,” Eddi recalled, “which was basically ‘John Anderson My Jo’! Michael played me through ‘My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose’, and I learned that for the show as well.
“What happened then was that I was asked to do a concert for the first Burns Festival in Ayrshire in May, 2002, and they gave me the chance to sing three songs with a full orchestra. I did ‘Auld Lang Syne’, which I had sung with the Tannahill Weavers years ago, ‘John Anderson’, and ‘Green Grow the Rashes O’.
“So that was me up to four songs,” she laughed, “and I also kind of knew ‘Ae Fond Kiss’, which I used to sing with Fairground Attraction.”
Things really began to escalate when Celtic Connections invited her to perform a full show of Burns’s songs in January 2003, with a stellar band of traditional musicians (including Phil Cunningham and John McCusker) and the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
“All of these things were feeding into the project, and I felt I was being pulled toward it somehow with all these things happening.”
“I had wanted to do a traditional album for years anyway,” she admitted. “I moved to Irvine from Glasgow when I was 14, and used to go to the Kilmarnock and the Irvine folk clubs every week. That really filled me with Scottish culture and folk music.
“As I got involved in the music for this project, I became very interested in Burns’s own experience of Irvine, and I think the town was actually quite a catalyst for his writing. It was a very busy port then, full of bizarre characters, and I think it inspired him.
“We then went to play in Australia, and a girl came up to me at a concert and told me that she was a descendant of Elison Begsbie. I didn’t know about her at the time, but she was apparently the first of Robert’s many broken-hearted women! Many of the biographers doubt her existence, so I’m feeling privileged to have met a descendant!”
Eddi Reader - Sings the Songs of Robert Burns CD
In the midst of all this, Eddi had moved from London to Glasgow after many years away from Scotland. Her brother plays in the Scottish band the Trashcan Sinatras (the only non-Burns song on the album was ‘Wild Mountainside’, written by John Douglas, also a Trashcan Sinatra).
“That was a song John wrote to tempt me back to Scotland,” Eddi laughed, “and I felt it fitted well on the record. The chance to do the concert at Celtic Connections was a wonderful opportunity, and I decided that I wanted to involve the traditional musicians as well as the orchestra.
“I still only had five songs, so I trawled through the charity shops and picked up a few books on Burns, and got some more from friends. I felt I was being guided toward certain songs, initially ones where I had a vague memory of the tune. Lots of these songs are subliminally floating about in your memory, like ‘Charlie Is My Darlin’’.
“I wanted it to be on a more personal level, both with the songs and with the audience.”
“All of these things were feeding into the project, and I felt I was being pulled toward it somehow with all these things happening. I’ve always been interested in history, and have a bit of a passion for that anyway. The concert in Glasgow went really well, and I decided to try to draw it all together and do an album.”
Eddi’s response to the songs is a very personal one. She worked out basic approaches herself, fleshed them out with the traditional musicians, then brought in Kevin MacRae to prepare the orchestrations.
“It’s not me putting on a traditionalist cloak or a classical cloak or a historian’s cloak,” she insisted. “I want people to listen to it for the songs. I was a wee bit worried about working with the orchestra, much though I wanted to do it. I didn’t want it to come across as an ‘Eddi at the Proms’ kind of thing. I wanted it to be on a more personal level, both with the songs and with the audience.
“We told Kevin it had to be sensual and also very much of now, and not stuffy or too precious or too sentimental, and he came up with that. When we all finally got together it was just brilliant, and all I had to do was sing the words.”
Eddi has performed the music in a variety of contexts since then, and will bring it to audience around the Highlands and Islands (minus orchestra) under the banner of a Scottish Arts Council Tune Up tour in September (see below for dates).
“I am really excited about bringing an earthy take on Robert Burns to people who may not choose to travel to the cities. I’ve brought together some wonderful musicians to perform some wonderful songs on this tour, and I want as many people as possible to hear them – the Tune Up funding has made it possible for me to go off the beaten track with this show, and I’m looking forward to it very much.”
The Tune Up programme will also bring SLAM to the Highlands. Stuart McMillan and Orde Meikle have been together as a DJ act and production team for well over a decade, and venture out from their home base in the Glasgow club night Pressure for this SLAM Live tour (dates below).
Eddi Reader Sings the Songs of Robert Burns:
Queens Hall, Edinburgh, Thursday 9 September 2004
Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline, Friday 10th September 2004
Town Hall, Blairgowrie, Saturday 11 September 2004
Universal Hall, Findhorn, Monday 13 September 2004
Carnegie Hall, Clashmore, Tuesday 14 September 2004
McPhail Centre, Ullapool, Wednesday 15 September 2004
Town Hall, Stornoway, 17 September 2004
Aros Centre, Skye, 18 September 2004
Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, 19 September 2004
SLAM Live Tour:
Raigmore, Inverness, Thursday 2 September 2004
Broadford Hall, Skye, Friday 3 September 2004
The Ceilidh Place, Ullapool, Saturday 4 September 2004
Fusion, Orkney, Thursday 16 September 2004
BA Club, Fort William, Friday 17 September 2004
East Grange Loft, Forres, 18 September 2004
© Kenny Mathieson, 2004
