Music to help folk walk down memory lane as Kiltarlity-based musician Graham Bell set to donate proceeds from his latest CD Atlantic Blue to help the Lovat Shinty Club's memories café project
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A Highland shinty club is hoping to develop a memories café to provide a welcoming space for older members of the community.
And Kiltarlity-based musician Graham Bell will be donating all the proceeds from his latest CD to help the Lovat Shinty Club project.
He recorded Atlantic Blue as the follow up to his last release – The Lockdown Sessions from 2020 – and one of the tracks is dedicated to club stalwart Mary Ann Henton and features piper Craig MacRitchie, who is also her great nephew.
Mr Bell said she was the former club treasurer who passed away last year and added: “Mary Ann was well kent and well respected throughout the whole shinty community right across Scotland.”
He said he started working on the 12-track CD following the release of The Lockdown Sessions and he plays most of the instruments, apart from the drums and the bagpipes, himself.
“It was all recorded in my home studio but I got it professionally mastered,” he said. “The music is broadly in the Scottish idiom, with a range of instrumentation that includes accordion, guitars, banjo, mandolins and Appalachian mountain dulcimer as well as digital percussion, some real acoustic drumming and bagpipes.”
The 72-year-old former head teacher said he moved to the area from Clydebank in 1980 knowing nothing about shinty, but ended up coaching the school team. He said: “The core of Lovat’s Camanachd Cup winning team of 2015 were the Tomnacross school team which swept the boards at primary level in the early 2000s.”
The Memories Café was the brainchild of his wife, Linda, who is also the club secretary.
Mr Bell said: “This would provide a welcoming space for older members of the community who may be socially isolated and/ or living with memory issues, where they can chat with others and share memories over a cuppa.
“As part of the memories project we have an impressive timeline wall display with archive photographs and other material covering from the 1890s to 2015 when Lovat won the Camanachd Cup. A section of the display is all about Mary Ann.”
Mary Ann Henton’s nephew, John MacRitchie, who is the club president, said few had made such a significant contribution to shinty at so many levels as his aunt.
He said she was described by her home club as their heart and soul. The club had presented her with a carved seat at the home ground at Balgate on the occasion of her 80th birthday.
He said: “Mary Ann has represented the beating heart of the shinty club in Kiltarlity and was a key player for 60 years or more – a youngster when they won the cup in 1953 and never more happy when the next victory followed in 2015.”
Her involvement with Lovat began in 1967 when she started helping as a tea lady at the age of 16, and she held the position of club treasurer for more than 50 years.
He said: “She also held numerous positions in The Camanachd Association, of which she was a distinguished patron, and where she was a long-term disciplinary committee secretary and also sat on its behaviour in sport committee.”
The Memories Café will be in the club pavilion – a social space that will allow community use.
• To order the CD visit the shinty website.
