IAN STEPHEN mixes music and matters maritime at this year’s dual shindig THE 15TH Heb Celt co-incided this year with the 12th Sail Hebrides Festival. So as the tents are dismantled, the boats are leaving. The Gairlochites are back across the Minch and the cruisers are sending messages from Shetland or preparing to depart for the Uists. The diehards are still organising impromtu races and the sailing sessions seem this year to be very neatly spliced into the music ones.
The Friday was an open day for traditional boats, run by two Lewis maritime trusts, and a good number of Festival visitors turned up to sail in one of the four different vessels taking part. A pointer to an even stronger future partnership of the concurrent Festivals.
There was more space between events in the week long sailing programme so the sailors could catch the music events. I was tipped to attend the live recordings made for Radio nan Gàidheal and open to the public in the Bridge Centre. That’s where I saw a nervous line-up of local young players open the show.
They were not sure where to look or put their hands until the instruments took over and then the self consciousness vanished and the breaks became snappier. It struck me then that pretty well all the music, sung or played, over the whole festival depends, like poetry, on setting up expectations of pattern and then challenging them. So the songs or tunes or new compositions have at their heart this game between players and audience.
The next radio recording set my gameplan. It might sound like a one-trick act, the transposing of punk and new wave songs to mandolin, Uillean pipes and fiddle, but Adrian Edmondson and the Bad Shepherds use the dry wit of the idea to fuel an energy in the playing that reminds you of the days pop took a radical kink.
It’s not the number of chords but the power they produce. That’s what brought me off the water to be at the tent for the very start of the Thursday night. There was a big turn out for night one and it could well be that it was due as much to a curiosity to hear this band as to be present for the might of the Afro Celts.
It wasn’t just those of us who recognized the distant songs. The Bad Shepherds made the transition from a music hall to a big noisy space that’s done for many subtle acts in the past. They won the crowd. I was tempted to socialize during the middle act. You get the chat and tips of who has been on form at the Festival Club or out in the provinces. And the name of The Fox Hunt kept coming up. But I’m glad I listened to Blazin’ Fiddles all the way through.
OK there’s nothing very exotic in the accents or variety of instruments in the line up, but if you think you’ve heard it all before you haven’t. Tunes you might or might not know alternated with some new compositions but it simply didn’t matter that there was nothing wildly inventive. The commitment of the performers carried you through.
If you’re going to announce a schmaltzy waltz then that’s what you ladle out, but quality schmaltz. And once again it’s the pattern of expectations and slight surprises that keeps you held by the players. Andy Thorburn’s oomph on the electric piano drove this show.
Now the Afro Celt ensemble is my kind of Runrig. This was emphasised by the reminder that it was a shared 15th birthday – the band and the Festival. My own head was ringing with the memory of that percussion, heard across the water in 2002 when I arrived with family and crew after crossing the North Sea on the 33ft sloop El Vigo. She’s a Spartan ship and we’d been climbing high waves off Cape Wrath the night before but the drums revived us all. So I was ready to be in the airborne division along with the jiving faithful back then. And I was poised to jump with the rest last Thursday.
The performance was indeed solid and full on. Out of the quasi religious ritual, I can say that the power was indeed there, but question whether the mix of synthetic sound and world-tour-of-drumming may not have the freshness it had. It also seems clear that much of the drive came behind the excellent showmanship. That staid-seeming seated piper lass seemed to me to be producing the diesel torque as much as the Macbook Pro.
Friday’s highlight, for me, was another Irish woman. It looked for a minute or two that the boisterous audience was going to put Imelda May off her stride. The voice was huge but the range of changes huge. She was at one with her band and soon the moves in the tent were jazzy with it. After more than one year with a kind of sameness in the programme this was a welcome variation. I’m sure the Treacherous Orchestra were inventive too – and they had us bouncing along with them. Got just a feeling though, that the big-band combination of fine experienced players has not yet got the necessary quirkiness.
I hoped to hear more of Iain Morrison’s suite, based on pibroch and programmed in An Lanntair as a balancing choice to the anthems. Unfortunately though, El Vigo won the Coronation Cup and the skipper had to be with the team to pick up the trophy. My house guests, (more used to classical singing) reported back positively and I did catch the last few songs, lit as usual by the charm of that dude from Back.
I also caught Peter the piano player and Anna the singer and piper, who were uncharacteristically complementary. Peter thought the concept was daring but worked. Anna agreed and commented on how a voice that is not recognizably great in itself can be used to superb effect.
But of course I’m going to have to tell you a bit about the sailing. The Coronation Cup was run in 1902 as a battle between powerful sailing drifters and Lewis lugsail boats, fought in strong breeze. This revival of the contest on Tuesday was sailed in fickle breeze on a shortened course but still required about 6 hours of total tweaking concentration.
The Wayfarer dinghy challenge was a close duet and duel combined. Young David Skelly won by a whisker thanks to an inspired sense of just when to put the last tack in. John Macbeth’s 26ft wooden boat Dunderave, not long back from an epic cruise to Norway, proved that fair handicapping can reward good sailing in any vessel. Jim Smith, who is a Sail Hebrides regular, usually skippering sail-training boats, drove Catalina to prove that an out-and-out racing boat can also carry off a victory if sailed to its best form.
The dipping lugsail challenge saw a fleet of five of these elegant craft sail a tight circuit. It’s a very close fight between the fast and powerful large class boat an Sulaire and the smaller but more agile Jubilee. Nessman James Morrison kept his cool to outwit the big boat. And John Smith sailed the petite Manishader to excellent effect.
The rest of the week saw strong breeze and fast sailing with varied events to suit craft from dinghies to heavy cruising boats to highly tuned racing yachts. A great cameraderie built up and the musical contributions were a festival in their own right.
Ruaraidh Macleod from Plockton (a credit to Catalina) played subtle and played strong, and his pipes prompted a strip-the-willow that joined several households together and consolidated many parties along the pier. There were songs in kitchens and galleys too, but the voice that’s still haunting me is the one that rang out great examples of traditional English songs from Susan Stone, one of the organizers of Sail Hebrides.
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