The first 25 trail-Blazin' years of folk and fiddle legends as Inverness man Bruce remembers ...
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How do you measure Blazin’ Fiddles’ 25 years on tour? They must know the best cities, the warmest audiences, the finest pubs, the best places for a music session …
But first, a story that is still unfolding, with exciting plans to follow their 25th anniversary tour which ends in Inverness on Saturday at Eden Court.
It’s a chance for the band to share XXV – the new, 10th album that Bruce is calling “the best record we’ve ever made”.
It’s a lifetime on from Strathy Village Hall – a first gig for a brand-new line-up that Bruce had willed into existence 25 years ago, frustrated at the way the world was ignoring the vibrant young traditional instrumental – and particularly fiddle – talent coming from Scotland and the Highlands.
He said: "It's just about half my life I have been playing in this band – I'm 53. It's absolutely mad!"
Bruce refers back to something his inspirational traditional fiddle teacher Donald Riddell taught him as a youngster.
“We felt instrumental music could survive on stage if it was set in an original way, with stories and things.
“Donald Riddell taught that the music wasn’t anything without the story behind it and painted a picture that made the music stay alive in your head. That always stuck with me.
“With a tune like Lady Mary Ramsay, he used to say, ‘These people thought the musician was privileged to be writing a tune with their name, but actually no-one would ever have heard of them if it hadn’t been for that piece of music!’.”
The line-up that became Blazin’ Fiddles played exceptional music and crowned it with craic and banter like no other. It made for an irresistible mix.
“There were so many of us in the beginning – six fiddles with Duncan Chisholm, Iain MacFarlane, Allan Henderson, Aidan O’Rourke, Catriona Macdonald and myself. Andy Thorburn was on piano and we had Marc Clement on guitar.
“On the first tour, we did two solos each – no wonder the concerts were four and a half hours long!” he laughed.
But the buzz took them on tour, something Bruce still loves to do, with its chance to experience many other places.
“I have always loved Bill Bryson’s travel books and travelling through the country on tour, you get a better picture of what Britain is like I think than anyone else because you are in those places. You have usually got a few hours to kill, and you are wandering around observing. A lot of musicians don’t do it, but quite a few of us love to walk around if you have been stuck in a van for six hours, so we walk and walk and walk.
“I think everyone has quite an enquiring mind, so I do think you see a very different Britain from being in it, rather than staying in one place on holiday for two weeks.
“And the contrasts – you can be in the richest town in England and 20 minutes later you are driving through somewhere and it’s, oh my God, completely different.”
There are so many memories.
Some make Bruce wince.
We did a tour I hated off the Western Isles on a rib boat – I hated it from start to finish," he laughs. "I was so sick. We got caught in a huge gale, and I was asking myself 'What are we doing this for?"
There's a picture of the band in their boat gear!
On their last tour of England in February, the line-up also put itself through the task of pulling together the material for a new album as they went. Rehearsing during the day, before their gigs at night.
But the intense work paid off, Bruce feels, when they got to Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios to record it … in just a couple of days, as live.
“The first roughs came through and we thought ‘That is definitely what we want to sound like!'
“I think it’s the best record we’ve ever made, because it was recorded live together and because we had just come fresh off a tour.”
Bruce talks you through some of the tunes and sets on XXV – and why they have chosen the music to include that they have.
"There is a tendency, and I know a lot of bands write their own stuff these days. That is good. But for a balance, particularly for us, we want to keep some of the tradition to the fore as well. Whilst it is lovely to have a lot of your own tunes on it, you really have to ask yourself, 'Are they strong enough? Do they stand up against the really good existing stuff we've got?' So we have got a good mix.
"The first set has a tune from America, one from Cape Breton and one from Mairearad Green from Achiltibuie! The middle tune, the music is used as the intro and comes back as the outro and comes in all the way through it – we've never done that kind of thing before. The second set is called Strone Point which is a strathspey, its named after the bit of land Urquhart Castle stands on and I wrote it years ago for the Jacobite Experience's trip up and down Loch Ness, it was a strathspey that was dark and meant to suggest the dark foreboding waters the Loch Ness monster is supposed to live under! It's a C minor strathspey which is quite an unusual thing. And it goes into a tune by Liz Carroll from America – everybody is playing her tunes, she is an amazing composer.
"There is a tune written by a young guy from Edderton called Ruairidh Gollan Call Her Mum.
"The next track – we were really lucky to get to Scandinavia last year – Sweden and Finland and when we were at a festival in Finland, we heard a tune there on the hurdy gurdy called The Devil's Polska and Ruairidh taught it at Blazin In Beauly last year. Then that goes into a tune by Angus called Washington State Park.
"It's a really great tune that has been recorded by so many different bands. Then there's a set of waltzes that Jenna found in a book because she as a teacher she is always looking for new tunes and it is a French Canadian tune."
Bruce plays it from his phone, and it's lush and romantic.
"And there are so many string parts going on in those.Then Maguire and Paterson was the first waltz that was played at Angus's wedding!
"The next set is a set of jigs, the first one written by Jenna, then two by Simon Bradley involved in the traditional music course in Benbecula and they are brilliant tunes. Then there are a set of tunes written by everyone in the band – we write and auction off the naming rights to raise funds for Blazin' In Beauly.
"Then there is The Road To Skye, which is another tune I wrote years ago, quite a country vibe, totally different.
"A medley with a slow march.
"And the last tune on the album, every one of us loves this tune, Compliments To Larry Reynolds, but we couldn't find a set where it fitted, eventually we got this set and we have it as the last track.
It's a great track to end the album with as it's a very open-stringed tune and you can hear Anna's picking on guitar which is incredible.Then Angus comes in with the bass and piano and just fills it up and it's just – 'That's what you expect from Blazin' Fiddles!'."
You get the feeling the latest line-up – Anna Massie, Angus Lyon, Jenna Reid, Ruaridh Macmillan, Kristan Harvey and Bruce – push themselves outside the music of Blazin’ Fiddles.
Bruce outlines the managerial roles they all divvy up: “Accounts, booking transport and hotels, admin for online sales, recording and the websites and organising Blazin In Beauly … and I don’t know what I do? Delegate? Have ideas?”
What an idea Blazin’ Fiddles has been. So far.
n Blazin’ Fiddles play Eden Court on Saturday, August 19. The new album XXV is out now.
