After a very busy summer with various projects, we’re really excited to be heading the U.S. this week for the first time. We’ll have special guest, Hannah Read on vocals and fiddle for the first leg of the tour. Check out the poster below and come say hello if we’re in your area!
NEW ALBUM!
We’re pretty excited about our brand new album (read about it below). The Hebridean Sessions will be available at our American gigs and it will be available to pre-order exclusively from our website with an official Scottish release to be in the new year.
With this recording we wanted to gather together tunes that we have been playing since the early days of the band. The material here never made it onto previous albums because we couldn’t find a place for it, didn’t believe we were doing it justice or simply felt that the tunes were too commonly-played and overlooked them in favour of less well-known material.
With recent line-up changes we thought it would be a good time to go back to the beginning and document some of these classic session and dance tunes from our part of the world. The songs that Ellen brought to the band fit into this concept, and include a few ceilidh favourites, some old yet new to us. We’ve included many of the Gaelic names of the tunes here as they form an important connection between the past and the future of our music.
Our approach to the recording of this project was slightly different for us as well as being familiar territory. Instead of going to the studio we decided that these tunes should be played in the live setting that we were most familiar with them. We played and recorded three intimate acoustic gigs on three different Hebridean Islands over six days and then had the album designed and mastered on islands also. Why? Because we’re into stuff like that!
Here’s a wee video that we filmed on location in Cheesebay, North Uist during the recording of the new album introducing our new Gaelic vocalist, Ellen MacDonald.
The film was made by Ben Cormack of Picarus Films based on the Isle of Eigg.
Our Fiddle player Gabe has just published his first book of tunes; The Gabe McVarish Collection of Traditional and Contemporary Melodies from Scotland, Ireland and Maritime Canada. The transcriptions in this book are intended to reflect a snapshot of the Celtic instrumental (particularly fiddle) music presently being played at traditional music sessions and dances all along the coasts of these three North Atlantic nations.
*the book will be available from both our website and also Gabe’s own website very soon. www.gabemcvarish.com
