Heading West film about 'acid croft' legends Shooglenifty tours the North
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What happens when the frontman of a band that has been together for more than 25 years, dies ... can the band carry on without him?
Film Heading West is the story of the Highland band and ‘Acid-croft music pioneers’ Shooglenifty. They had been together for more than quarter of a century and were loved all over the world when Shooglenifty’s fiddle-playing frontman Angus Grant got ill, and died in just a few months, leaving the rest of the band devastated.
Film director Don Coutts’ documentary film includes celebratory concerts in Glasgow and Galicia, with “the Shoogles”, as fans call them, also looking back on their long career – and reflecting on the music that Angus has left them.
With a little help from fiddle-playing friends, they got through a year of grief and coming to terms with life without Angus.
As part of the process, they recorded a moving tribute to their late frontman in the Mehrangarh Fort, Rajasthan. Returning home to Scotland, they find that the music does, indeed, live on ...
That is the story of Don Coutts’ film which comes to a series of North locations to screen after premiering at last year’s Edinburgh Film Festival.
Now the film is going on tour and will be seen at the Universal Hall, Findhorn, on Saturday, February 11; the Highland Cinema, Fort William, from Sunday to Wednesday, February 19-22; at Eden Court Cinema on Friday, February 24 at 6pm; the Ceilidh Place, Ullapool, on Friday, February 24; at Cromarty Cinema, on Saturday, February 25 at 7pm; at Eden Court on Sunday, February 26 at 1.30pm and on Tuesday, February 28 at 8pm.
Don will also be doing QnA sessions at Ullapool, Findhorn and Cromarty.
The director said: “The band’s former manager Jane-Ann Purdy had secured money from Creative Scotland to make an album at the Rif festival in Rajasthan with some Indian musicians and I was asked to come and make a documentary around that. And of course I would, I am a huge Shooglenifty fan. And they did so much for the Scottish traditional scene.
“But between being asked and us going, Angus was diagnosed with terminal cancer. They decided they couldn’t go. And sadly Angus died just a few months later.
“A night was organised as a celebration for Angus at Celtic Connections where they had 62 musicians and six fiddle players depping for Angus.
“I did about 30 interviews during rehearsal days for the event and we recorded the concert. That went really well.
“Then it became obvious that it would be nice to film the band as they were picking themselves up.
“It was good and it became a film about the balance between grief and celebration and the future.
“The band were very aware that they didn’t want to say ‘It’s the end of the band’. And it shows them choosing Eilidh Shaw to be the new fiddle-player.”
BAFTA-winning director Don – who says he has been a Shooglenifty groupie since the early Nineties – is a Scottish filmmaker, formerly based in Cromarty running film company Move On Up with Lindy Cameron. He is a founder of the Cromarty Film Festival. And he is best-known for bringing Mairi Hedderick's legendary island-living young heroine Katie Morag to life on TV, the project winning BAFTAs and the Peabody Prize.
In 2003, he directed feature film American Cousins which was written with Sergio Casci and is currently working on a number of projects including a new comedy horror with Casci and Ford Kiernan.
Early in his career he pioneered the way talk shows were filmed with Channel 4's After Dark. His numerous documentaries over the years include, more recently, series Slavery: Scotland's Hidden Shame and Scotch! The Story of Whisky. And last year the BBC showed his look back, The Rigs Of Nigg.
More about the band here: https://www.shooglenifty.com/
