Edinburgh Folk Club, The Pleasance, Edinburgh, 28 September 2011 ON A warm and unseasonably balmy late-September evening in the Scottish capital, the autumnal sounds of the Rachel Hair Trio provided a stark contrast to the weather conditions outside The Pleasance. Indeed, Hair’s music is more likely to conjure up images of falling leaves than p…[Read more]

Edinburgh Folk Club, The Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Edinburgh, 20 April 2011 IT’S Ladies Night at The Edinburgh Folk Club. All-girl folk sextet, The Shee, have just about finished their set and what better way to sign off than with a new arrangement of Annie Lennox and Aretha Franklin’s ‘Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves’? Far from being […]

BARRY GORDON catches up with the hyperactive Olivia Ross, singer and fiddler in The Shee 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 […]

Heart of Hawick, Hawick, 2 April 2010, and touring EVEN THOUGH they’re an instrumental band at heart, the members of Fiddlers’ Bid aren’t exactly shy when it comes to speaking in front of a microphone. Take Bid’s chief yarn-spinner, Maurice Henderson, here for example, man who could easily carve out a second career for himself as […]

BARRY GORDON catches up with Darren Manson to look at the chequered history and present prospects for cinema in Thurso. A RICH, elegant art-deco building that takes pride of place in Thurso’s town centre, Thurso Picture House was an integral part of local entertainment from the time it was built in 1922 until Saturday 24 September […]

BARRY GORDON recalls the glory days of the early 1980s for Donald Mackenzie and his fellow Caithness breakdancers, and catches up on where the scene is going now. WHEN IT comes to locating breakdance champions, one of the last places you might think to look is Caithness. Back in the 80s, the American dance craze swept […]

Strathclyde Suite, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 29 January 2010 IF THERE’S one trio to keep your eye on this year it’s Mhairi Hall’s. The Aveimore-born pianist has, for what seems like eons, been content carving out a career as an accompanist for others, tinkling the ivories for the likes of Lauren McColl and Shona Mooney amongst […]

Strathclyde Suite, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 24 January 2010 THERE’S much to like about Celtic Connections. For most music-lovers, it means staving off the January Blues until at least February. The popular Glasgow winter festival has its critics, too – ever-increasing ticket prices, a poor excuse for a festival club, and some bands whose…[Read more]

Strathclyde Suite, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 23 January 2010 WHILE the adage “If you’re good enough, you’re old enough” is more commonly associated with football, the same could be said about folk music – such is the amount of young, talented folk musicians on the scene today. For every Innes Watson (Treacherous Orchestra) and Rachel Newton […]

Northern Rock BARRY GORDON catches up with two promoters bringing touring rock and pop bands to Caithness. IF THERE is one place in the highlands that’s been deprived of high-profile rock bands over the years, it’s Caithness. The county’s two main towns – Thurso and Wick – are the biggest Highland towns outside of Inverness in terms of […]

The Mill Theatre, Thurso, 5 September, 2009 WHEN Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting was first adapted to the stage, it was said the author’s dialogue, used to describe junkies from the schemes of Edinburgh, would never translate as far as Glasgow, let alone anywhere else outside Scotland. Something similar might be said about George Gunn’s latest work,…[Read more]

Edinburgh Folk Club, Pleasance Cabaret Bar, Edinburgh, 11 February 2009 IF THERE is a fountain of youth to be found in Scotland, chances are it’s buried somewhere deep beneath the Pleasance Cabaret Bar. Mike and Ali Vass may be three years older than the twenty-two years Edinburgh Folk Club compere Paddy Bort believed they were; nevertheless, […]

Strathclyde Suite, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 1 February 2009 PASSING PLACES, eh? A familiar feature on the single-track roads of the highlands, if there’s one thing Passing Places signs are unlikely to inspire, it’s music. Especially Achiltibuie-born Mairearad Green’s music. The talented accordionist has seen more than her fair share of…[Read more]

Strathclyde Suite, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 24 January 2009 TAKING PLACE when most people are still in bed or reading the Sunday papers, the second of this year’s Celtic Connections New Voices commissions drew a healthy – if far from full – attendance to the 1pm performance of Griogair Labhruidh’s Fear-ealaidh. A fiercely proud Gael brought up […]

Strathclyde Suite, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow, 18 January 2009 YOU CAN always rely on Margaret Stewart for good singing, light entertainment, and… a few double entendres. The Lewis native was in fine fettle at the Strathclyde Suite, and she wasted little time singing songs about wayward minstrels, impotence (oh, yes, indeed), and, quite r…[Read more]

City Halls, Glasgow, 17 January 2009 CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH, eh? Who would have thought the Glasgow icon of architecture and design would become the focal point in the latest attempt to bind the classical and folk music world together. Unusual as it seems however, the unique structure of Conflict And Resolution (aptly described by composer…[Read more]

Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow, 17 January 2009 IT STARTED off as a one-off linking up folk music’s leading female musicians. Now it looks as if Seaquins – the latest supergroup – might take on a whole life of its own following their resounding Scottish debut at the Old Fruitmarket last Saturday evening. Never heard of them? OK, […]

Empire Theatre, Eden Court, Inverness, 6 September 2008 TIME. There’s never enough of the stuff. And no more so than at this Taste of Blas concert, taking place for the first time at the recently redeveloped Eden Court in Inverness. Translated from Gaelic, “Blas” means “taste” or “flavour” and that’s exactly what we got; a brief, […]