Iain McLaughlin looks forward to The Outsiders' last gig in the Ironworks – a gig he'd love to just see!
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Iain McLaughlin is saying he would just have loved to be in the crowd for Friday's Ironworks' gig.
There 's a band to front, though.
How is he getting on with managing to cope with the idea that this gig is the last time he will play the Ironworks?
"It is what it is. The plan was to do something in the spring next year, sort of thing, but then they weren’t going to be there, so I thought ‘I’ll do it this year’, so that was it.
"It’s very sad, but it’s out of our hands. We’ve all made our point and said that we think it’s a mistake. But at the same time, it’s not up to us, is it? If somebody owns something and decides to sell it, there is nothing you can do about it. I’ve been asking a lot of people about what it was like before the Ironworks was there, and we’ll just have to find a way.
He's got ideas of how to help. Running IMOUT Records and with his background running gigs for Beyond promotions back in the past – as well as appearing in bands and producing other musicians and running a rehearsal room, he's probably well-placed for those ideas.
"Fom the rehearsal room perspective, if we lose places to play, at this very time when people are starting to play again, then we are going to lose them too. The whole thing is like a big wheel, but I’m going to do my best to do something. I can’t do nothing about it because I’m in too deep now.
"I’m needing people to be creating bands and making music. One, mainly because I enjoy it. But two because it is also my livelihood. So anything I can do to facilitate it as much as possible.
"I still believe as I always have done that there are people here making great music both contemporary and traditional. It’s interesting, all the bands coming through my rooms have been in bands for a long time. But I think that might be a hangover from the last few years of mindset and doing what we are supposed to do.
"If you were 15 or 16 when Covid kicked off, you probably haven’t started a band, you can’t get in a room to play with people. That is the age you start playing, in rooms with people with drums and guitars and basses.
"But when everyone was saying ‘Don’t go near anyone or you might kill your gran,’ you don’t do it! So I feel for them because it is a really formative few years. And not just musically, but in everything of course. But hopefully we will start to see the kids coming through.
"So yes, I don’t want to spend too much time dwelling on it, it is what it is and all I can do tonight is make it as special as I can."
Creating the line-up for this gig sounds strangely straightforward...
"I’ve booked other people tonight who have been important for me in my career and that I’ve known for a long time.
"The Shutter album was the first one I ever worked on professionally – and, again, I’ve been friends with them for a long time.”
Iain turns to The Joshua Tree – a second line-up for Lional’s Joshua Mackenzie – and The Joshua Tree will be playing the Ironworks for both the first and last time for the Friday gig.
Iain said: “Me and Josh are quite entangled. He was in the band for a bit – before he started writing and doing his own thing - we call it the incubator period, that sort of thing, so I’m really glad they’ll be here. His new band is great.
"And then Rory Baldwin of Origami Wolf, he was doing this before I was with Lymerick Smith and Woodentooth, then obviously we lost Peter [Nairne, longtime friend and musical bandmate of Rory’s from Lymerick Smith days]. And I wanted to hear those songs.
"I hope everyone else enjoys it, but to be honest, it’s just a gig I want to go to! I don’t really think about it in any other way, I was thinking ‘I really want to go to that and I hope people other people would feel the same!’.
He laughed: “To be honest, if I didn’t have to be in my band, I wouldn’t bother! I’d just go and see the gig.
I think we’d probably miss you, you tell the frontman of Iain McLaughlin And The Outsiders.
“But if I could get away with it …" he chuckles.
“That’s all you can do when you write songs is to write something you’d want to hear – and feel.
“And for this gig we’ve even got Mike Hogg coming back to do front of house. He was there at the Ironworks from the install. He specced the place out.
“And Dinner [fabled Inverness and now international touring soundman Alan MacKinnon] is coming back to mix Shutter. So we’re ALL appearing and we’re using the old analog gear,
“I have memories of the place the first times I was lucky enough to get in and be there on the way here [to the IMOUT studio]. I just want to look around and see those old faces. But also the new guys, and the crew. Even when I was running gigs for Beyoned [Beyond Events run by Robert Hicks], I liked the bands, but the crew as well. I didn’t come in at a management level – I moved boxes and plugged stuff in!
So I’m looking forward to coming in, looking round the venue and seeing all those faces! That’s just the crew, but also everyone who comes to see it – great!
“But it’s the same as always, I always just come in and rent the place and get on with it and see what can happen. But it’s nice.
"I always feel that the people who come to the shows we do are invested in it and you would rather one in who wants to be there than 100 who just want to see what’s going on …
"I’m really delighted everyone on the bill is able to do it. We’ve all had kids, I’ve had a little boy, James and Will as well. Being locked down was no fun for anyone but we lucked out on being locked down n such a beautiful part of the world. You go in a car 10 minutes in any direction and you are in somewhere beautiful. I really felt for my friends who were in the bigger cities over that time.
"And your heart is in the Highlands. I’m feeling a real sense of enthusiasm for this gig as well, I don’t know. Every time we do one of these shows, a showcase is the wrong word, but I want to highlight what people [musicians] are doing here and enjoy it because I think the Highland mentality sometimes has a tendency to ‘settle’ and there’s no need. But I think everyone on our bill is superb and I try and keep the ‘local’ word out of my mouth! Sometimes it feels like a dirty word. People say ‘Support local music!’ – well just support music. But it’s good if you grew up on the same street as them or have something that means you identify with them and their music. But there just seems to be a tendency that people say ‘I’m going cos they’re from just up the road!’. And I also can’t help but feel at the same time, that sometimes people go or say here ‘Och, they’re all right for up here!’. And of course you are allowed not to like stuff!”
"But I think it’s strong, it’s not just good because it’s from a place but it’s good AND it’s from a place.
“We just put together 10 tracks on a setlist. There will be stuff people expect – and hopefully they’ve missed it in the last three years. It’s good we’ve got a little longer – we did a set at Monsterfest in October and I think it went OK. But there are a couple of ‘deep cuts’ as well. And I still have only one record, but there hasn’t been time – I've been making humans and things like that!
"There is some stuff in there that I might perhaps have been frightened to play before in a place the size of the Ironworks. But I played an acoustic set recently in the Tooth & Claw with Robin Abbot and Willie MacAskill. I have slow build songs that require a bit of attention, so I will play a track called Don’t Speak and it’s just me till the second verse, then everybody goes a bit mad.
"I’ve never felt as good about the songs as I do now. I’m really enjoying them. With the time there has been away from them, I feel able to go into the place you require to go to tell those stories. Like I did when I first wrote them.
"I don’t need to feel that I have to prove myself any more, I’m just doing it. And if you like it you like it, and if you don’t, it’s not a problem.
"I’m doing it regardless – and thanks for coming."
Iain McLaughlin And The Outsiders, Shutter, The Joshua Tree and Origami Wolf play the Ironworks tonight (Friday, December 30. Doors open at 7pm. Tickets: https://fb.me/e/1OgyasEDy
