The Scottish Arts Council’s Tune Up tours take bands to the furthest reaches of Scotland. Here, Skye band Injuns share their diary of a jaunt that includes live gigs in both the House of Trousers and Britain’s most remote pub…
SETTING OFFHector MacInnes (drums): This is really what we have always intended to do with the band. There’s a culture in the cities that emerging bands should be expected just to play their local pubs and clubs and hope that one day a scout or a manager will spot them and give them their big break. We’ve never really recognised that as a way of working – we’ve always had a strong DIY ethic, and so has Claes Cem (Injuns’ support act on the Tune Up tour), who has been a friend of our band for years. When we want to record, we just do what we can, and when we want to go on the road, we do what we can.
Even the biggest artists will tell you that touring the Highlands is not really sustainable for long, though, so that’s where Tune Up has really helped. It means we can play a full 12-date tour, rather than just piecemeal gigs as and when we can afford them. The project has an emphasis on international collaborations, so getting Claes over from Denmark to be part of our tour was really a no-brainer.
Leighton Jones (keyboards): This tour came at the perfect time. We’d just parked the van up after touring Scotland in August, put the kettle on and started flicking through the photos of our festival gigs at Dunstaffnage, Belladrum and Connect. The Claes Cem band walked through the door as the leaves were starting to fall outside, and we were off again.”
THE BACKGROUNDLeighton: “Injuns formed on the Isle of Skye in Winter 2003, the product of a long-standing musical relationship between me and Hector. We trawled around the Highlands for three years, cutting our teeth – a barrelhouse outfit of sorts – before landing in Glasgow about Spring 2006. That was a good year. We played T-Break and T in the Park, supported Mylo (Hector’s brother) at the Barrowlands and Tom Vek at Oran Mor. We played several radio sessions for Radio 1 and BBC Scotland but, before we knew it, summer had skipped autumn entirely and went straight to winter.
“So we got down to work. We launched our debut album, Lionel, It’s A Complicated World, in March 2007 in a barn on Skye. Over 200 fans, family and friends squeezed in under the roof. They had to leave an oil drum burning in the courtyard outside for the poor buggers who couldn’t get in. It was bitterly cold… we took it down to the shore in front of Hector’s house afterwards, lit a fire out of dried seaweed and carried on with the gig until the sun came up.”
Hector: “As always with these things, we were all left wondering what we were going to do next. We had some songs in the pipeline that all seemed to tie together around themes of death, confusion, vanity and fireplaces – and we were driven on by this frenzied conviction that music and theatre was too good a combination to sit back and let Ben Elton ruin.
Leighton: “And the result was Scary Love – The Musical, a fantastic shambles of songs, dancing, truly insane characters and as much fake blood as we could get our paws on – a murderous stew of festive damnation and bloodshed.”
Hector: “We took a lot of material from that show, and plenty of the songs are alive and well in our current set.”
2 OCTOBER: THE KINGFISHER, CUMBERNAULDLeighton: “The Claes Cem band stopped us halfway through this gig and presented us with a gift from Denmark: 12 squashed dried frogs in a wooden box – one for each gig of the tour. Frogs being the symbol for our band and the record label, we graciously accepted them and signed a 12-album deal contract with the Danes right there on the dance floor.”
Nicolai (the Claes Cem band): “The gig went really well and everybody got along. Only Claes (the band’s frontman) knew Injuns beforehand and we had to spend 18 more days on tour with these guys. Fortunately the atmosphere on the way home in the van gave us a picture of what was to come. Everybody sang along with the Highland folk tunes coming out of the radio while the lights of Glasgow by night filled the horizon. I could not think of a better welcome.”
3 OCTOBER: TIGH AN TRUISH, SEILLeighton: “We had to cross The Bridge over the Atlantic to play at Tigh An Truish – the House of Trousers. It sounded like something out of the start of a Woody Allen movie, but actually trouser history hangs heavy here. During the Jacobite rising when kilts were banned, this was where the islanders changed out of their kilts and into their trousers before crossing the ten-foot stretch of water to the mainland.”
“This gig was like a home from home for us. We were shown such fine West Coast hospitality. We feasted on industrial quantities of sausage casserole, and received a very warm welcome. The T&T, as it’s called by the locals, is a great wee pub, with wooden benches at the bar and bags of spirit. It was the first time we’ve played with the Claes Cem band for a about a year and a half, so there was energy and smiles all round. We played for about four hours I think – a first chance to just relax into the bar stool again and tell it all.”
Nicolai: “It is a very small community where everybody knows one another and stepping into the room you felt like a stranger. Nonetheless, after the show was over, grown-up men in their seventies came up to me wanting a hug, showing their appreciation, and telling me what a great time they had. Giving a hug to a stranger is not normal at this latitude and the party carried on all night…”
4 OCTOBER: THE GATHERING, OBANHector: “There’s an old film I can’t remember the name of now. An island man has grown up, but can’t find a good woman. ‘Why don’t you go to the mainland?’ advises his old friend, ‘There’s droves of them in Oban.’ I guess readers will have to go and judge for themselves, but we had a great gig anyway, and it ended with a bang. Claes and the band got up on stage and played some songs of their own that we all knew. That was truly fantastic, with all seven of us jamming on stage.”
5 OCTOBER: HENRY’S CELLAR BAR, EDINBURGHHector: “Henry’s is a great wee venue – a proper dirty music cellar, the way we like ’em. This time we were joined by another two enormous bands – Fanattica, who had the whole place wailing sea shanties at the top of their voices, and The Black Diamond Express, who shook up everything like Ronnie Hawkins was back on the road. Difficult acts to follow, but I think we kept our hands on the rudder.”
Nicolai: “Even though it had only been four days on tour we were all feeling a bit tired from the last couple of days. We had very good response and gave some interviews for different radio stations and papers feeling happy that the next day we didn’t have to play. How do The Rolling Stones keep it going for one and a half years solidly on the road?”
Leighton: “The whole aim of the Tune Up Tour initiative is to bring new and international music to a wider audience across Scotland, which means going that little bit further to put the show on… For the next part of our tour, we’re not just driving to the end of the road. We’re driving off the end of the pier. We’re touring to the end of the fishing line.”
&149 Injuns play An Tobar, Mull, tomorrow; the Admiral Bar, Glasgow, 15 October; Hootenanny’s, Inverness, 16 October; The Anchorage, Leverburgh, Harris, 17 October; and The Woodlands Centre, Stornoway, 18 October.
THE TUNE UP TOURS THERE are four other Tune Up Tours this autumn. Most won’t travel as far and wide in Scotland as Injuns and Claes Cem – in fact half of the Under One Sky tour is in England, but it does include dates in Inverness and Perth. For a full list of tour dates, and information about all the acts, visit w
ww.tuneup.org.uk
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RUMBA CALIENTE AFRO LATIN SCOUL ORCHESTRA16-19 October; 4-15 March 09
DESCRIBED as “a unique and original Afro-Latin/Salsa-Soul sound”, Rumba Caliente is a band led by Toby Shippey of Salsa Celtica, and includes musicians from Venezuela, Cuba and New York. The tour will take them to Skye and Findhorn as well as across the Central Belt.
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OVER THE MOON6-16 November
FIDDLER Catriona Macdonald takes her band on the road, with David Milligan (piano), Conrad Ivitsky (double bass) and James Mackintosh (drums/percussion). The tour includes dates in Shetland, Inverness, Ullapool and Hawick.
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UNDER ONE SKY25 November to 8 December
JOHN McCusker’s folk band has featured contributions from Idlewild frontman Roddy Woomble, Iain MacDonald on pipes, flute and whistles, guitarist Ian Carr, accordionist Andy Cutting, bassist Ewen Vernal, percussionist James Mackintosh and Teenage Fanclub’s Norman Blake. Singer Julie Fowlis joins McCusker for this tour, which also has English dates.
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ARILD ANDERSEN, PAOLO VINACCIA AND TOMMY SMITH 22 November to 7 December
The three jazz musicians play music from their new album Life At Belleville, inspired by Norwegian and Scottish folk music as well as jazz tradition.
The full article contains 1669 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
