Moving To The Top Level

Battlefield Band’s Lewis-born fiddler ALASDAIR WHITE is emerging as a major force in Scottish traditional music. Here he tells ROB ADAMS how he got there and where he goes from here

ALASDAIR WHITE was all set to study linguistics and ethnology at Edinburgh University in 2001. Then long-running folk group Battlefield Band made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, fast-tracking the young fiddler from Lewis onto the international touring circuit.

Now, at just twenty-four, with three Battlefield Band albums under his belt and the recent release of his excellent first solo album, ‘An Clar Geal’ (The White Album), White is already a seasoned veteran who is well on his way to ‘collecting’ visits to all fifty-one of the American states. Rob caught up with him in Edinburgh on his return from the batties latest USA tour in March.

ROB ADAMS: What was it that attracted you to playing the fiddle?

ALASDAIR WHITE: Neither of my parents play an instrument but there was always music in the house. My dad especially is a folk music fan and he had loads of records, including one by Battlefield Band – ‘Home is Where the Van Is’. So I would hear these and then when the extended family, who are mostly based on the mainland, got together I was exposed to real, live instruments.

My uncle Charlie plays melodeon and has his own dance band. My aunt Rhona was a great mandolin player and her husband played guitar, and my uncle John played with the Clydesiders folk group and I’d seen them a few times. He played the fiddle and I just thought, I’d love to be able to do that.

With Battlefield Band you’re playing with the big boys, playing the same gigs as your heroes, in fact … You can’t think, well, that was ok, really. You have to produce at the top level all the time.

RA: You were quite young when you started, weren’t you?

AW: Well, my mum swears that I was six. I think was seven but anyway, being a PE teacher, my mum knew a music teacher, Iain Dick, who was willing to try me out with a few lessons to see how I got on.

Iain was a classical violinist and a very engaging kind of guy and he knew how to keep a seven-year-old entertained. He was a great teacher, he really gave me a great grounding by teaching me classical technique for three or four years. He went off to teach in Qatar so I was lucky to have him around because there’s always a point when you’re learning to play an instrument where something happens that either makes you give up or realise that it’s going to be with you for the rest of your life.
I had a problem with one of the classical pieces I was studying that had a lot of string crossing in it and I got so frustrated that I decided I was going to pack it in. My mum said, Fine, but you can tell Iain yourself and of course, not being one for confrontation then or now, I went along the next week and said nothing. Iain coached me through the problem and after that I decided that I would keep playing after all.

RA: Was Lewis a hotbed of fiddling talent at the time?

AW: Not really. But there was no shortage of people you could go to if you wanted to find out more about traditional music. After Iain Dick, I had a few teachers who played different instruments themselves – piano, flute – but who took me through the classical violin style. That was really useful because although I can’t claim any great love of the music, the techniques really help in terms of tuning and tone and basically allowing you to get where you want to go.

One of the people who was particularly helpful to me was Iain Crichton, who was a box player and a very prolific composer of pipe tunes, especially 2/4 marches. I’d go to see him every Saturday and he’d have a couple of new things he’d been working on. He’d put the music in front of me, phone one of his friends and say, Hey, listen to this, Alasdair’s going to play you my new tune.

This really helped to develop my sight reading too, of course, but Iain taught me so much. As did Jimmy Budge, who played with the Sawmill Band in Stornoway. They played road dance tunes – a sort of schottische style – and Jimmy was a great character. He had a great love and knowledge of traditional music.

RA: Is there a point you can remember when you thought, I want to be a professional musician?

AW: Probably the summer I went on my first fiddle course when I was, I think, thirteen, was when I started being able to put all the pieces together myself. It was the first year of the Ceolas course and I went on that, and then my parents were good enough to let me go straight onto the course at Sabhal Mor Ostaig on Skye with Alasdair Fraser and Buddy McMaster, the great Cape Breton fiddler.

I recorded stuff on my dictaphone and took it away to work on it. I think that was also the year that my parents bought me Battlefield Band’s ‘Threads’ album in a filling station in Broadford on the way to Iona, where my mum comes from, and where we’d go every summer. I listened to that album all the way to Iona and thought, yeah, this would be cool.

RA: ‘An Clàr Geal’ and a lot of your tune writing generally is very influenced by bagpipe music. How did that come about?

AW: When I went to secondary school, Pipe Major Iain Morrison, whose son Iain is the singer and guitarist in Crash My Model Car, was the piping instructor, and I thought I’d try out the pipes. I liked it and I think I went through the different stages quite fast. Iain became another big influence, although I don’t think I ever practised quite enough for his liking.

He understood that fiddle was my first instrument, though, and he’d give me books of tunes to play and show me how to play them properly on the fiddle, which was very useful. One of the books he gave me was Allan MacDonald’s Moidart Collection – and Allan’s another big influence.

I’d listen to Allan and Gordon Duncan, Fred Morrison, Battlefield Band with Allan’s brother Iain and just soak it all up. Then I’d play all these tunes on the fiddle and on the low whistle too. I still love pipe music and I still play some bagpipes with Mike Katz in the Batties, and I have a set of Border pipes in the cupboard and I take them out and play them occasionally, but not often enough, I know.

RA: How did the Battlefield Band gig come up?

AW: We had a band on Lewis called Face the West and we recorded a CD, which we funded ourselves out of gig fees, and were looking for distribution. We sent a copy down to Robin Morton at Temple Records who also manages Battlefield Band. Robin wasn’t all that keen on the band but he wanted Keith Morrison, the piano player, and me to do something on our own.

We went down to Temple and did some recording and, coincidentally, Christine Primrose was recording her album ‘Without Seeking, Without Asking’ at the same time. Christine being from Lewis too, Robin thought it would be a good connection to have me play on some songs with Christine.

This was my introduction to session work and I was really put on the spot. But it went quite well and then Robin got me to record a few tunes, including one I’d written myself, saying it would be useful for my own purposes. Unbeknownst to me, this turned out to be an audition for Battlefield Band.

RA: You replaced John McCusker, who himself had also joined Battlefield Band straight from school and had quickly established himself. Was following him in any way daunting?

AW: The whole thing was quite daunting really, and a bit of a baptism of fire, looking back now. Pat Kilbride joined at the same time as me, so the first thing we did was record a demo to show promoters that the band was carrying on and was – hopefully – as good as ever. Then after a few more rehearsals we went on a tour of Germany.

The first gig was okay. I thought I played reasonably well. The second gig was fine. Then on the third night I got introduced to German beer and … hmm. As well as playing fiddle, John McCusker had played all sorts of other instruments, including cittern, and I had to learn his parts on some of those too.

I’d played tunes on mandola, which isn’t dissimilar to the cittern, and I’d had a bouzouki made specially. But playing chords to accompany songs was new to me and on that third gig I began to have difficulty remembering what these chords were. It was a wake-up call, I can tell you.

RA: How did the reality of playing with a topline touring band compare to how you’d imagined it might be?

AW: Well, after my little German experience, it was relatively easy. The guys in the band – and Karine [Polwart] of course, who was playing out her notice at the time I joined – were great to work with and really helped me fit in quickly.

I remember the first time I ever travelled anywhere to a gig was with the Gatherup Band when I was still at school. We drove down to Wales and I thought, I’m on the road. This is great. Then there I was, driving down the autobahn thinking pretty much the same thing, really. I mean, I’d never done any other kind of job. My pals at school did filling station jobs and things like that to get money and I’d be out playing at weddings, dances, the odd TV gig. I look back now and think, I was loaded!

RA: How has working with Battlefield Band changed you as a musician?

AW: A lot. I’m quite self-critical and always have been but now I use that self-criticism more positively. For instance, it’s interesting hearing yourself in a recording. I didn’t really know what I sounded like before and they’d play something back to me in the studio and I’d say, But this isn’t what it sounded like in my head. And they’d say, Well, this is what you sound like now.

So I had to work quite hard to raise my game to the point where I’m on the ball consistently. With Battlefield Band you’re playing with the big boys, playing the same gigs as your heroes, in fact. So you don’t want to be any less of musician than those coming onstage before or after you. You can’t think, well, that was ok, really. You have to produce at the top level all the time.

I listened to tapes of gigs early on and that can be both quite encouraging and quite sobering. You learn to play to your strengths and rather than simply transplant something, you learn to integrate it into your own style – otherwise it doesn’t sound like you.

On top of that, I think I’ve become more flexible. I’m more at ease in the studio and whereas before I might have been a bit precious with what I laid down, I’m much more willing to try different things now, to add different parts and harmonies, and much more confident that what I do will be good.

RA: With Battlefield Band, tunes you write and what you play can be heard by thousands of people across the world. Has that had any effect on you?

AW: I try not to think about it, to be honest. The biggest mistake I’ve ever made was when we recorded ‘The Prairie Home Companion’, Garrison Keillor’s radio programme that we do quite regularly in the States. Just before the programme started, I asked someone how many listeners we were likely to have and when the answer “five million” came, I almost had an interesting moment.

RA: So, what’s next?

AW: With the band, we’re going to Australia for the first time soon. Not many bands tour there these days, so we’re really looking forward to that. Personally, I’m looking forward to teaching on the annual fiddle course at Taransay again in the summer and at Blazin’ in Beauly later in the year. And I’m thinking ahead to the next solo album. An Clàr Geal has quite a strong group feel and I’d like to pursue that as a side project with the same musicians and see how that develops.

What I’d really like to do at some point is to work with a larger band, not a big band in the sense of having a brass section or fifteen or sixteen musicians, just something that expands the sound a bit further using traditional instruments. I think that would be interesting.

© Rob Adams, 2007

Links

• Alasdair White on myspace
• Battlefield Band