Not long now until the Orkney Folk Festival! I’ll be performing the music from Out of My Own Light next Thursday in the Orphir Hall; tickets available from the festival website: www.orkneyfolkfestival.com
My photography will be on display at the Pier Arts Centre and I will have the first copies of the photographic book ready to add to the exhibition in time for the festival also.
Sadly the album wont be ready in time for the festival, but shouldn’t be far behind! I’m delighted with how it is sounding so far and there are still a few bits to record before mixing happens. I can’t wait to share it! If you are interested, you can pre-order the album here and help me greatly by doing so. Thank you.
Extremely sad leaving this behind this afternoon.. What a lovely week at Watercolour Music, really a special place to record an album, with such a fantastic group of people, who I can’t thank enough; Su-a, Mike, Mike, Duncan, Angus, Jennifer and Signy. It is extremely rewarding and really exciting to hear the music I have been working on for so long, finally come to life and I couldn’t have asked for a better team, what a fun week! Thank you so much to Nick and Mary Ann of Watercolour, it is such a beautiful, inspiring place to create music and a fantastic backdrop for photos and video; really brilliant having Mike Guest Photography around to take loads of beautiful footage and create masterpieces in the kitchen too, what a guy! Thank you all so much.
I’m really excited about this album, I can’t wait to finish it off and to be able to share it, but first up, the concert at Orkney Folk Festival next week… Tickets on sale online for ‘Out of My Own Light’ at the Orphir Hall on Thursday 21st: www.orkneyfolkfestival.com Can’t wait!
This week I am recording the music for ‘Out of My Own Light’ at Watercolour Studio, near Fort William. I am really delighted with how it all sounds so far and it has been such a lovely time recording with these fantastic people. A really rewarding experience.
I’m just back from a fantastic weekend at the Shetland Folk Festival playing with Fara and now straight on with rehearsals and recording for my project ‘Out of My Own Light,’ in time for the Orkney Folk Festival on the 21st May!
Here is a wee rough clip of some of the music I will be recording. I’m really excited to have Mike Vass on fiddle/guitar, Su-a Lee on cello, Jen Austin on piano, Duncan Lyall on double bass and Signy Jakobsdottir on percussion for this, with Angus Lyon in the engineer/producers seat, at Watercolour Studio in Ardgour.
You can pre-order a signed copy or a digital download of the music and help me out greatly at the same time, by donating to my Crowdfunding project. I am raising money to take up my place at Berklee College of Music in Boston, please have a look here:
Shamefully, I haven’t updated this blog in quite some time! I tend to concentrate on my tumblr blog and Facebook page and forget to update this; I will rectify this!
I have been mainly working on my Canadian project, now named ‘Out of My Own Light’ and have an exhibition at the Pier Arts Centre in Orkney opening on the 25th April, which is very exciting. The photographic book is being printed as I type and I have been working hard at writing and arranging music for the album. We head into the studio in a few weeks to record, so I’m very excited about that. I have Mike Vass joining me on fiddle and guitar, Jen Austin on piano, Su-a Lee on cello, Duncan Lyall on double bass and Signy Jacobsdottir on percussion. Angus Lyon will be engineering and producing the album, which we will record at Watercolour studio near Fort William. I will be performing with the full band at the Orkney Folk Festival on the 21st May, tickets will be on sale here very soon: www.orkneyfolkfestival.com
Besides the project, I have had a busy year with many musical trips, concerts and so on, including a return trip to Valley of the Moon fiddle camp in August 2014, after playing at Milwaukee Irish Festival with Gria, and Fara recorded our EP, available here: faramusic.bandcamp.com We have an exciting summer ahead with Shetland, Orkney and Cambridge Folk Festivals and one more yet to announce!
I’m currently in Victoria, BC, having spent some time with my cousins finding out more about my family history and my Grandmother’s trip to Canada in 1950. It has been wonderful getting to know my Canadian cousins and I’m looking forward to meeting more on my way across the country to Cape Breton.
Alice and I had a great time playing a house concert in Victoria with Bruce and Nolan, the Whisky Minstrels
and since Alice left for home last week, I’ve also played another wee set at the Deep Cove Folk Music Society near Sidney, BC. Many thanks to Tark Hamilton for the invitation to play there. Tark also wrote some incredibly kind and encouraging words to me:
“Your sense of composition and willingness to learn and share the best of the new traditional tunes sets you in the top ranks of living fiddlers. When you play sweetly and slowly, emotions carry to the crowd and they can feel it in that deep innate place. Your straight time reels and jigs are perky and toe tappers. Your wicked crooked timing tunes are teasingly complex and expertly presented. Keep up all the great things you are doing!”
While I’m in North America I am writing a fortnightly blog piece for the Orcadian newspaper. The first of these is below, or read more here.
For more information, photos and blog posts about my trip, keep up to date on Facebook and Tumblr.
For the past week or so, I’ve been in Northern California at Alister Fraser’s Valley of the Moon Scottish Fiddle Camp in Boulder Creek, along with my cousin Alice Tait. It was an incredible week; I met so many wonderful people, learned so much, played and sang lots and took a lot of photos. The week finished with a concert in Santa Cruz, with around 150-200 musicians on stage, all playing together, and at the end of the concert we all played through the crowd and out onto the street; the best ending to a gig yet! On saturday we went along to the Scottish Highland Games in Pleasanton and played with some of the musicians from Valley of the Moon and the San Francisco Scottish Fiddlers and even bumped into another Orcadian! We’ve been spending a few days seeing the sights in the San Francisco Bay area before heading to Canada, to play a house concert in Victoria, BC, with Bruce Coughland and Nolan Murray of Tiller’s Folley. We then head to stay with family in the Comox Valley and I shall begin work on my project, hopefully finding out lots about Granny’s trip to Canada in 1950!
Below is a video I filmed and edited for the Orkney Folk Festival, take a peek:
I’ve had an incredibly busy summer of music and photography; I played with Gria at Heb Celt Festival in Stornoway, Insider Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe and Lorient Interceltique Festival, I photographed three lovely weddings, took photos and videos of Glasgow based band Fat Suit, and played lots of great ceilidhs with Whisky Kiss and Dalamist. I also had a short holiday in Orkney with the wonderful Elly Lucas, a fellow photographer and musician who I seem to have a massive amount in common with. We met for the first time at Celtic Connections in January and instantly ‘clicked,’ Elly is a wonderfully talented and super lovely lady. We had a mini ‘photo-day’ together in Orkney, see some of the photos below.
Fat Suit teaser video, edited by Gus Stirrat, shot by myself:
I’m now preparing to head to Canada and America for two months, leaving this week. Firstly Valley of the Moon fiddle camp in California (with many thanks to them for a scholarship towards the course fees!) before heading to BC to visit family, then working my across Canada and America to eventually end up in Cape Breton in October during Celtic Colours International Festival. I’m going to be working on a photography, film and music based project looking at the links between Scotland and Canada, concentrating firstly on my family links and then the historical, cultural and musical links with Cape Breton. In 1950 my grandmother Margaret Sarah Tait travelled to Canada to stay with relatives and to mull over two marriage proposals (thankfully she eventually came home and married my grandfather!) I want to find out more and tell her story through my elderly Canadian cousins. I’m also very interested in the way Scottish music has developed in Scotland compared to in Canada and in the people who brought that music over and passed it on. I’m very excited to meet new people, learn new music, possibly to collaborate and maybe do some gigs while I’m over. Any suggestions/advice/contacts would be very much appreciated! My cousin Alice Tait will be joining me for the first couple of weeks at the camp and visiting relatives too… double trouble! This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and I’m very excited that I’ve finally managed to make it happen. I see this as a long term project which I very much hope will lead to future projects and travels. I shall be blogging and updating my Facebook page and my tumblr as I go for anyone who is interested.
