Wow, quite the honour. Songlines magazine’s June 2024 issue has a list of 10 essential bagpipe albums… and Orchestra Macaroon’s ‘Breakfast in Balquhidder’ is in there. I was one of the three pipers in the band, playing both border pipes and gaita.
🎉🎉🎉 The Cats & Coffee Cups album is now available for preorder!! 🥳🐈⬛☕️
With this preorder you get the songs that were previously released as singles plus two more!
The album is released on 21st of June this year!! Why not grab a book and a coffee while you wait? 📖☕️ Or find some peace & quiet? Or think about dreams that might not come true but still make you smile? And if all else fails go to the Café Of The Lost Dreams and find new horizons? And in case you didn’t know - it’s all okay. And maybe you have a friend who can make you a coffee or sing you a song! 🎶
In any case I hope you find comfort with these songs! 🫶
Given that on top of everything else his party has done over the last 14 years Sunak has called the election for a day when I won’t be able to poll clerk and thereby done me out of a day’s extra earning, I’ve resumed my previous attempt at learning this tune of @squeezyjohn ’s - I think I’ve more or less got it: #FuckTheTories
My last public recording is literally 3 views away from 100 plays on YouTube. I'd be honored if you could give it a listen and bump it up over the century mark. It doesn't mean anything to anybody but me. Maybe say something nice if you liked it, even.
Time for another auld tune. Jack Lattin was once popular all across these islands. Composed in Ireland sometime in the early 1700s it quickly spread across the Irish Sea and appears in many music collections of the 18th century.
Here’s a cracking Jean Blanchard tune I can’t believe I don’t remember before hearing it on Mel’s #MelodeonMonday yesterday so I have to share for #TuneswapTuesday - Boite a Frissons
This recording is going along swimmingly! Just back from a break to walk the dog. I'm getting the hang of the basics of Reaper on Linux.
Once I get going, the workflow is soooo much nicer than audacity or ,dare I say, my trusty old 4-track. Certainly wouldn't have the flexibility to double mic everything and balance condenser with dynamic everywhere!
Time to start paying attention to all those free VST posts in my timeline I guess!
Always like stopping at Hamish Henderson's childhood home in Glenshee, which backs right onto the kirkyard.
Henderson was a major organiser of the Scottish Folk Revival in the 1950s-70s. Some of his interest in folk culture came from his upbringing here and around
Blairgowrie, where he heard his mother
and their neighbours singing traditional songs.
Most of my newest songs have been written on the banjo and my next release will have this extraordinary instrument at its core. While I haven’t thrown my fingerpicks away, playing skin on string has opened my ears and mind to what the banjo can bring to my music. Playing an open backed banjo has connected me like never before as my own body becomes part of the sound.
There are many popular Gillian Welch songs to choose from, but I love this one from the "Lost Songs"---so quiet and winsome, closer to classic American country music than mainstream folk. #countrymusic#folkmusic#musicwomenwednesday
I had a choice of two originals. One is an instrumental literally called "Lullaby in E". The other (included below) is a protest song, which I was surprised to find works very well as a lullaby:
"I'll Be Right Here, Too"
(performance and work CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 Jennifer Vena Wood)
For all the queer kids out there, may you be safe and loved.
I heard this and thought “Gallopede” but apparently this called “Knife’s Edge” except that if you search for that you find another tune instead… so I don’t know what I’m sharing this #TuneswapTuesday except that it is early #Blowzabella.
Sad news for Scottish folk music, to hear Ian Green has died.
So much of Scottish folk from the past four decades (and before) is on Greentrax, from Shooglenifty to Dick Gaughan to archives from the School of Scottish Studies - Ian's label surely is the 'undisputed leader in its field'.
And now the last of my 40 settings from the manuscript. I enjoyed creating pipe friendly settings, I can't say I enjoyed recording them. I don't think recording tunes that I am unfamiliar with does the tunes or my piping justice.
A quick play through of my setting of Unfortunate Jock from The Drummond Castle Manuscript, Book 1, dated 1737.