Blog
Star moments
There was a bit of a dream-come-true moment last night for a group of regular Celtic Connections visitors from Ireland, who come every year and take in not just one but both Transatlantic Sessions shows. They were relaxing in the Holiday Inn bar after last night’s gig, one of them with a guitar, singing a few songs – when in walked most of the Transatlantic performers, and thus our Irish friends finished up their night sharing a table and some more songs with Raul Malo and Declan O’Rourke, among others. Particular treats included O’Rourke singing an apparently stunning, as yet unrecorded new song about the Irish famine: one to look out for on his next album, perhaps.
Read More...Festival frenzy
After last night’s fearsome tunes frenzy at the supposedly final Folkytown, along at the Flying Duck - Damien Dempsey was there and everything - the word on da street (well, on Facebook…) is that Calum MacCrimmon’s ridiculously successful Celtic fringe shenanigans will enjoy one last hurrah (unless of course it becomes an ongoing thing…) this coming Sunday, probably from 4-8pm or thereabouts: the perfect way to set yourself up for the final night’s maelstrom at the Festival Club.
Read More...Bargains, bemoaning and beserking
A promising early gush of entries for our band name/new genre competition has since slowed to a rather disappointing trickle – but it’s not quite too late: get your thinking caps on, let your imagination run riot, and email your best efforts and your contact details to us by midnight tonight, and you too could win two tickets to this Sunday’s Hazy Recollections gig at the O2 ABC – featuring Dead Man’s Waltz, Captain and the Kings, The Seventeenth Century, Gabby Young and the Hidden Lane Choir – and other possible as-yet unspecified goodies. We reproduce the rules below.
Read More...Musical mayhem and magic
Given that Mr Calum MacCrimmon’s Folkytown shenanigans kick off again tonight, it seems not too late to recount the cautionary tale of a certain young Scottish fiddler who attended last Tuesday’s launch night, and – like many in attendance – enjoyed himself not wisely but too well. Like a good few who were in attendance, he was meant to be up bright and early the next morning, having signed up to take part in the Artists’ Day that was jointly laid on by Showcase Scotland and the Musicians Union, offering free expert advice on such useful themes as setting up your own record label, media interview techniques, fundraising and grants. Not only that, but our fiddling friend had been designated as one of the group leaders, for a session where participants were split into four groups – this session being scheduled at 11.30am. Shortly before 3pm, he was encountered hastening along to the event’s venue, and when accosted regarding his tardiness, he hotly defended himself with tales of dodgy chicken and food poisoning. “So it wasn’t Folkytown’s fault?” we replied, sceptically. “No, it was the fact that when I got back from Folkytown, I decided to cook some chicken, and didn’t leave it in the oven long enough.” We rest our case. Anyway, for those who dare, tonight’s line-up features Ross Couper and Tom Oakes, Man’s Ruin, then Angus Binnie on the decks; the fun at the Flying Duck runs 11pm-3am; £3 to get in; cheap drinks; general debauchery.
Read More...Rude awakenings
First off today, the news item that Savourna Stevenson’s 50th birthday concert tomorrow night, for various logistical reasons, has been moved from the City Halls to the Piping Centre, doubling up on the bill with Litha – who might seem an unfamiliar name but were formerly known as 2Duos, featuring the wonderful Aaron Jones and Claire Mann with German fellow singers/multi-instrumentalists Gudrun Walther and Jürgen Treyz. They’ll be launching their second album, Dancing of the Light, at the show.
Read More...Applause and announcements
Having successfully passed the half way mark (hip, hip, hooray!), we’d like to raise a glass to the devoted team of staff and volunteers who are keeping this entire monstrous show on the road; who are working their butts off around the clock for the full 18 days trying to keep more than 2000 musicians happy, across 300-plus events in 20 venues. Most important of all, they’re working to keep the festival’s 100,000-strong audience happy, without whom none of us would be here, so let’s just remember that!
Read More...Unexpected encounters of the Celtic kind
As its name attests, this festival is all about the connections – celebrating them, creating them, discovering them, reviving them – but sometimes they can be found in and lead back to the least expected places. Such was the experience of a certain esteemed radio producer yesterday, after he'd he bumped into singer Alyth McCormack for the first time this year. Once they’d greeted one another, she introduced him to playwright Hamish MacDonald, author of The Captain’s Collection, in which she’d been performing at the Tron. MacDonald and he got chatting, both being long time Glasgow West End denizens, and eventually realised that they’d once been neighbours in the same block of bedsits on Doune Gardens, about 27 years ago. As MacDonald remembered, said producer was then a blue-Mohican-ed punk, sharing the bedsit with his girlfriend, up to eight rabbits (they started out with one, got another without checking its sex; the two then did like rabbits do...), and a guinea pig. In fact, our broadcaster friend concluded, he probably owes his life to MacDonald’s quick thinking, on that infamous night when a bonfire of T-shirts was lit in the stairwell...purely in devotion to the true punk cause, of course.
Read More...Dangerously good form
A tale filters through of rumours circulating last week that Woody Guthrie (1912-1967) had been booked into the Holiday Inn, on the night of his Celtic Connections 100th birthday concert – a tale that turns out to contain more truth than might seem possible. Checking into the hotel ahead of the show was a senior executive from the main US record label involved in the Guthrie centenary – only the receptionist couldn’t find her reservation. When it was eventually traced through the system, it turned out that the room had been booked and its key-card printed in the name of Woody Guthrie – presumably by a non-music fan of relatively tender years.
Read More...The Celtic Triangle
It being Thursday - and thus a full week into Celtic Connections 2012 - Apollo 23 reopens its portals tonight as the Festival Club, beckoning you in to another dimension of experience altogether. The scarily small three-way radius between there, the Concert Hall and the Holiday Inn positively invites comparisons with the notorious Bermuda Triangle – both being hotspots for major glitches in the time/space continuum, where time, objects and people mysteriously vanish and reappear in unexpected places. In the club, these temporal irregularities and elasticities frequently result in exchanges like this: “Hiya! How’re you doing? Long time no see.” “No it’s not: I had a long conversation with you last night. And the night before.” It also gets to the point where you’ll be talking about last night, when in fact you actually mean yesterday morning. (Think about it.) The intermittent mobile signal in Apollo 23 doesn’t help matters either, what with texts often taking a couple of hours to transmit, and neither does the fact that all four faces of ‘sculptor’ George Wyllie’s running-legged clock outside the bus station are permanently stuck at midnight.
Read More...The Number of the Beast
A slightly spooky moment in the blog bunker yesterday, when we glanced at the last instalment’s wordcount just before posting it up – and saw that it was exactly 666 words long. And it was Day 6 of the festival.
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