Feature by Barry Gordon
Olivia Ross: Rewards In Being A Shee
BARRY GORDON catches up with the hyperactive Olivia Ross, singer and fiddler in The Shee
Olivia Ross
THE WORD “time” crops up a lot when speaking to Balintore singer and fiddler, Olivia Ross. A busy music teacher at Kingussie High School and one-sixth of globe-trotting all-girl folk band, The Shee, when Ross isn’t driving up and down the A9 or jetting off to some far-flung folk festival, she likes nothing better than to sit down in her Inverness living room and drink a cup of tea… if she can find the time, that is.
Due to her frantic schedule, getting a hold of Ross isn’t that easy. When I do eventually succeed it’s on her mobile phone at around 8pm on a Tuesday night. Apparently Ross has just spent the last twelve hours or so trying to organise a music trip for some of her pupils – and there’s still some travel re-arrangements to be settled yet.
An hour later though, and having found just enough time to get some food in her belly, Ross finally finds a few minutes more to chat to me about her musical background, how she ended up playing with The Shee, and a bit about her band’s heavily-anticipated second album.
So, let’s start from the beginning, shall we?
BARRY GORDON: How did you first get involved in music?
OLIVIA ROSS: I started playing the fiddle in primary school, but, unlike the rest of the girls in The Shee, I didn’t actually have too much of a traditional folk music upbringing. My mum was a singer, and my granddad a singer, too, so music was always a factor in our lives, but we basically sang amongst ourselves, and even then it was more country music than folk music we played.
Later on, I would play some traditional music with people and friends from the West, but mainly I sang with Caroline Hewat in a wee group in Inverness. Nothing too overstated, really. Saying that, during school I always knew I wanted to go and pursue music, but when I was in school you couldn’t just go off and study folk music because there were no such courses around at the time.
Eventually, though, I found my way to the RSAMD to do viola; the classical world is very competitive and I knew right away it just wasn’t for me. Then, one summer, while working in a hotel in Skye, I went on one of Alasdair Fraser’s fiddle courses and got talking to my old fiddle teacher, Christine Martin, who told me about a new traditional music degree course in Glasgow.
I figured I could do that then come back up north to teach, but when I heard Newcastle University also had a folk degree course, I thought to myself: ‘do it’, because if I don’t do it now – and I was around 28 or 29 when I decided – then I never would. I had no real ties, so I sold my house and decided to go for it.
BARRY GORDON: She did. And it was here in the ‘toon’ that Ross would hook up with her fellow students (Shona Mooney, Shona Kipling, Rachel Newton, Laura-Beth Salter and Lillias Kinsmann-Blake) to form Sirens, before changing their name to The Shee. A band, Ross admits, she never thought she would end up joining.
OLIVIA ROSS: Well, at the time I just thought ‘I’ll do this degree course then come back up the road to teach’. I never considered playing in a band – I just wanted to sing, if truth be told – and was happy to explore that a bit more than the fiddle, if possible. I had heard that Sirens had come together (in 2006) but I never knew that much about what they were doing until Shona (Mooney) phoned me while I was back up north one weekend, and asked did I want to be part of it? I was totally shocked. A little later I was playing my first gig with them at the Windy Bottom Festival in Selby, Yorkshire.
The Shee
BARRY GORDON: In the four years since Ross joined the band, The Shee have appeared on the main stage of the Cambridge Folk Festival, attended folk festivals in France and Canada, played to packed houses at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow and The Sage in Gateshead, and been nominated for a couple of awards along the way, too. Indeed, one of the band’s main staples – Graham Moore’s ‘Tom Paine’s Bones’ – is a firm fan favourite and regularly aired throughout radio stations across the world. The singer? Olivia Ross, of course. Question is: does she ever get sick of performing it?
OLIVIA ROSS: I love singing it. In fact, the band ended up playing the song with Graham Moore at a festival once. Which proves that there are many highlights to being a part of this band. Every time we go away it feels like a holiday, and while I can say that playing in Canada was a major highlight for me, I think being able to play the main stage at the Cambridge Folk Festival has been the main standout.
I’d only ever gone there before as a punter, so to be playing there in front of all those people and then doing all the interviews and signing CDs afterward – it’s something I’d never dreamed I’d ever do. Then I’d go back home and discover everybody’s heard us on the radio or read up on what we’ve been doing. It’s a great feeling.
BARRY GORDON: It’s not all fun and games, though. As one of only two band members in full-time employment (Shona Mooney being the other one), Ross’s time is at a premium. The band are spread out all over the country, ranging as far apart as Inverness and Newcastle, so while it might be tricky finding time to rehearse, surely finding the time to plot dates in the gig-diary must be even more troublesome?
OLIVIA ROSS: It’s a case of trying to juggle things the whole time. Teaching – which I absolutely love doing – takes over almost everything, so the gigs pretty much revolve around my holidays. Which is hard for the other girls as they’re more flexible with the time they have. I, however, just can’t take time off at such short notice, but the upside is my holiday time is quite long. Sometimes, though, like today, I find it hard just to find time to sit down and eat something. But then again, I do get to play some very nice places in very nice countries, so I’m not complaining.
BARRY GORDON: In 2008, The Shee released their debut album, A Different Season, to critical acclaim. One of the album’s standout songs is Ross’s ‘Summer’s Promise’, which, to my ears, sounds like a near-perfect aural representation of hearing the seasons change. The album sold bucket-loads and thankfully there’s a new Shee album on the horizon, the tentatively-titled Decadence, to look forward to in October. With Laura-Beth Salter singing bluegrass songs, and with Rachel Newton singing the Gaelic numbers, one wonders if Ross will be singing any of her country-tinged numbers on the album also?
OLIVIA ROSS: Yes, I will be – I’ve got two songs on there called ‘Eppie Moray’ and ‘Morning Star’. For the upcoming album we’ve worked a lot more on vocalising, in particular harmonising between the three singers in the group. To do this, we got together at my sister’s house in Balintore for a week. We only had seven days to pull the majority of the tunes and arrangements together so we locked ourselves away and came away with a big chunk of it by the end of the week.
With time being tight, we had no time to flaff around, so we decided to let the songs evolve at gigs before going into the recording studio – we recorded at Castle Sounds Studio in Pencaitland. It’s worked out brilliantly and I think our sound on the new album has definitely improved on the last one. We’ve really cornered what our sound is, and to listen to both back to back you definitely wouldn’t think they were recorded by two separate bands.
BARRY GORDON: October is a wee bit off yet, and for the moment The Shee are concentrating on their upcoming shows which will see them play in Italy, Belgium and Germany, as well as the many folk festivals spread out across the UK. The band’s last appearance in the Highlands & Islands, however, was four sell-out concerts at the Orkney Folk Festival. So how did the “flirtatiously funky all-female folk band”, as The Scotsman once referred to them, go down in the Far North?
OLIVIA ROSS: Oh, it was absolutely brilliant. It’s a community-based festival so to see everyone – and I mean everyone – come out and support it was truly amazing. I’d never been to the festival before so to see 250 people pack out the places we were playing in these tiny, remote villages was really something. We’d have liked to have played more Scottish shows this summer, but come October we’ll be on tour and playing in Inverness (Bogbain Farm) and Achiltibuie, so our Highland fans can get their Shee fix then.
The Shee
BARRY GORDON: All bodes well, then. However, there’s no getting away from the fact that keeping a band together – especially in the current financial climate – is a tough job. So, does she think the band will stick together to see them through to their third album?
OLIVIA ROSS: We just need to keep going, keep picking up the gigs as they come in. I’ve always said that as long as I can make the gigs, I will do it. And I’ll keep playing with The Shee for as long as the girls want me to keep doing it. It can be a bit tricky keeping up with everything but it’s a rewarding experience being with this band.
What I like about it is the feedback you get from those who come to watch us. Young girls seem to be inspired by seeing other girls playing folk music together, and as for the older lot, I think they really enjoy the different sound and arrangements that we make. The fact we have three different singers singing three different styles, instrumental tunes, and clog-dancing (courtesy of accordionist Amy Thatcher, who took over from Shona Kipling prior to the first album) – it’s that variety, I think, that people find so interesting about us, especially when you consider that we don’t have any accompaniment like drums or guitars. What can I say? I love being a Shee.
© Barry Gordon, 2010
