HEBCELT: CAPERCAILLIE STILL FLYING HIGH AFTER 30 YEARS
Interview Release
Hebridean Celtic Festival
Year of Natural Scotland
- Capercaillie mark 30thbirthday at HebCelt
- Group headline 18thisland festival
- New album features some star guests
When internationally-acclaimed band Capercaillie came to celebrate their 30th anniversary they decided to have some old friends round.
The band, which formed in 1983 when the original members were still at Oban High School, brought together an array of special guests to play on their new album At the Heart of it All to mark the special milestone.
Capercaillie will continue their celebrations this week as headliners at the award-winning Hebridean Celtic Festival which starts today (Wednesday) and is itself marking its 18th anniversary.
They will join Van Morrison, Dougie MacLean, The Battlefield Band and the Red Hot Chilli Pipers as the leading acts at the event which will run from 17-20 July in Stornoway in the island of Lewis.
Among those joining the band on the new album are fiddler Aidan O’Rourke, also from Oban, and Orcadian singer-songwriter and guitarist Kris Drever, who make up two thirds of the award-winning folk trio Lau - voted best band at the Radio 2 Folk Awards this year and who are also performing at HebCelt.
Other instrumental guests include Irish banjo legend Gerry O’Connor, uilleann piper Jarlath Henderson and top jazz saxophonist Tommy Smith.
Julie Fowlis, originally from South Uist, who featured on the Brave soundtrack last year, and, like Capercaillie singer Karen Matheson, is in the HebCelt Hall of Fame, also adds her distinctive voice to At the Heart of it All. Adding to the island connections are Robin Hood soundtrack star Kathleen MacInnes and former Mod gold medallist Sineag MacIntyre, who are also from South Uist, and another Mod winner Darren MacLean, from Skye.
The Hebridean links continue with accordionist and keyboard player Donald Shaw, one of Capercaillie’s founders, having recently won widespread acclaim for his soundtrack to BBC1’s hit documentary series Hebrides – Islands on the Edge.
“All the guests are singers and musicians we really love and feel close to, people we’d worked with before in some capacity or another,” says Shaw. “We certainly didn’t want to go down any gimmicky ‘star’ guest route - it’s not like we called up Bon Jovi to sing on a track. Obviously we’re lucky enough that it’s a pretty stellar cast, but it all feels pretty organic to us.
“We’d never really done much in the way of collaboration on previous albums, but this time it seemed like a nice way to go, in terms of Capercaillie’s 30th anniversary not being all about us and our record, but about celebrating how Scottish and Gaelic music as a whole has expanded and progressed in that time, with so many younger musicians coming through.”
Capercaillie can take a lot of the credit for many of those musicians coming through as they are regarded as one of the bands that spearheaded today’s Gaelic music revival.
“The scene as it is today was just completely inconceivable when we started out”, said Shaw. “It’s amazing to have witnessed, and amazing still to be part of it. And when people like Kathleen and Kris and Aidan tell us it’s a privilege to be asked – well, that makes it feel special.”
The band have made their name fusing traditional folk songs with modern arrangements in a global context and At The Heart Of It All again delves into the deep well of centuries-old Hebridean folksongs which have been given a contemporary feel.
Shaw adds: “There was a time when we wrote more of our own songs, but if you’re working in the field of folk music, you quickly become aware how hard it is to compete with the quality of traditional material.”
The title track, the only English language song on the album, is one that Shaw feels is right for present day Scotland, although it is a cultural rather than a political observation: “I’ve also always felt that if you’re going to write a song, you need to have something to say.
“So more recently we’ve been focusing back on the Gaelic side, but this song was one I’d been kicking around part-finished for a while, and it felt like a wee link back to that earlier period to include it.
“Essentially it’s to do with where I feel Scotland’s at just now, what it’s about – which also seemed kind of apt, given the timing.”
So what keeps Capercaillie going after 30 years? “The primary thing that keeps us going is that we’re all really good mates, and when we get together we have a great time,” Shaw says. “There’s still an audience there, and I think it still matters to do what we do as well as we can.”
Celebrating at HebCelt will also be special he said: “We have a very strong Gaelic and Celtic heritage and so playing HebCelt in what is a landmark year for us will be very special.
“The festival is renowned for making a huge contribution to the culture and creative landscape of the Hebrides and for its promotion of the Gaelic language in Scotland and beyond.”
HebCelt was recently selected as one of the Top 10 UK summer festivals by influential music publication Songlines for the third successive year.
The line-up for the 18th festival also includes Karine Polwart, Darrell Scott & Danny Thomson, Pete Roe, and local artists Iain Morrison, The Boy who Trapped the Sun and Face the West, as well as Dundee’s Anderson, McGinty, Webster, Ward & Fisher; Lau, voted ‘Best Group’ at this year’s Radio Two Folk Awards; Orcadian eight-piece The Chair; The Hot Seats, from Virginia; Manchester outfit The Travelling Band; Welsh band Rusty Shackle; Fatherson and The Dirty Beggars and Donald MacDonald & The Islands, from Glasgow, Rose Parade, a four-piece from Ayr and Gria, winners of this year’s One Step Further competition.
For further information contact
John Ross
Lucid PR
01463 724593;077300 99617
johnross@lucidmessages.com
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