📷 Photo by Alan Donaldson

The Button Boxes and Moothies Festival 2025 lit up Aberdeen this November with exactly the kind of warmth, music, and community spirit that makes traditional festivals so special. As someone now in my fourth year studying Performance in Traditional Music, specialising in the concertina, I’m used to lively sessions and gatherings — but this festival stood out as something truly unique. From the moment I arrived, it felt like the entire building was humming with energy, curiosity, and the shared love of free-reed instruments.

This year, I also had the privilege of hosting two workshops: one on Scottish session tunes, and another on accompaniment techniques. Teaching is still a fairly new step for me, so being given the trust and space to lead at such a well-loved festival was both exciting and meaningful.

Workshops That Turned Into Conversations

My session-tunes workshop explored how to navigate fast, tune-heavy sessions with confidence — breaking down phrasing, stylistic details, and some classic Scottish repertoire. The accompaniment workshop focused on building texture, supportive harmony, and rhythmic ideas without overshadowing the melody.

But what really made both sessions special was the atmosphere in the room. People came with open minds, great questions, and a real eagerness to exchange ideas. Instead of feeling like I was standing at the front of a classroom, it felt like we were all part of the same musical conversation, contributing from different experiences and styles. That collaborative spirit ran through the entire weekend.

One little highlight for me was performing on the same programme as Allan MacDonald. His influence on the Traditional Music course at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (RCS) is well known, so seeing my name alongside his felt like a gentle full-circle moment in my time as a student. It’s always grounding to realise how connected the tradition is, and how special it is to share spaces with the people who’ve shaped it.

📷 Photo by Barb Briggs

A Festival Held Together by Great Organisation: Frances Wilkins

A huge amount of the festival’s success has to be credited to Frances Wilkins, the Director of the festival. Her organisation, vision, and attention to detail were at the heart of everything that made the weekend run so smoothly.

Frances managed to bring together an impressive line-up of artists, facilitate workshops, manage venues, coordinate schedules, and ensure that every performer felt fully supported — and she did all of this with calmness, clarity, and genuine warmth. It was obvious how much dedication went into creating an environment where musicians could thrive and audiences could feel at home.

Her passion for free-reed traditions and her commitment to encouraging players of all levels shaped the tone of the entire event. Every room was set up thoughtfully, every transition felt seamless, and every artist I spoke to mentioned how supported they felt. It’s no exaggeration to say that Frances’s work held the whole festival together and allowed the rest of us to simply enjoy making music.

Concertina Conversations and Female Representation

Another massive joy of the weekend was spending time with fellow concertina players Sandra Kerr, Eva Carroll, Méabh Mulligan, Alex Wade, and Frances Wilkins. They are all incredible musicians, and having the chance to talk technique, share tunes, and reflect on our different musical journeys was genuinely energising.

Seeing such strong female representation in the free-reed world was uplifting. Traditional music has been evolving steadily in that direction, but moments like this, make the change feel real and visible. It created a sense of belonging and excitement for the future of the instrument.

Aberdeen’s Musical Heartbeat

Throughout the festival, Aberdeen’s local traditional music community shone brightly. The city’s musicians — box players, moothie players, fiddlers, and multi-instrumentalists — brought a distinctive North-East character to the weekend. Whether it was polished on-stage sets or hallway sessions, you could hear the depth of the region’s musical identity everywhere.

The festival felt rooted in the city’s tradition while welcoming influences from all over.

📷 Photo by Barb Briggs

A Welcoming Festival From Start to Finish

The real magic of the Button Boxes and Moothies Festival was its openness. Whether someone walked in with decades of experience or a brand-new instrument, there was a place for them. The kindness and encouragement across workshops, performances, and sessions made the whole weekend feel like a gathering of friends — even among people who had just met.

For me personally, the festival represented everything I love about traditional music: teaching, learning, performing, connecting, and celebrating the instrument I’ve dedicated my studies to. I left Aberdeen feeling inspired, encouraged, and grateful.

A Weekend to Remember

As I head into the final part of my studies at RCS, this festival will stand out as a highlight of my year. It brought together community, creativity, and tradition in the best possible way. And it reminded me — once again — that music grows strongest when shared.

A huge congratulations to Frances Wilkins for bringing this unforgettable weekend to life, and to everyone who played, listened, learned, or simply joined the journey.

Here’s to the next gathering of button boxes, moothies, and the wonderful people who play them.

📷 Photo by Somhairle MacDonald

Hi, I’m Kim Richards, and I live and work in the beautiful West Coast village of Ullapool. When people ask what I do, it takes me a moment to decide what to say and what role to prioritise as this changes regularly.

In no particular order, I’m a secondary school art teacher, music tutor, singer, artist, musician, designer, mum, and student. Life is busy, but life is certainly never boring. Creativity is at the heart of most of the things I love to do, and I thrive on learning, reflecting and adapting. I’m utterly inspired by my surroundings, especially up here in the Highlands of Scotland. The environments around me have been the basis of most of my creative work to date, in my artwork and in my music.

Leaves that Fly – album by Kim Richards

A bit like everyone else, my life took a big turn in 2020. After 2 weeks of becoming a new mum, we were in lockdown. My environment became ever more important during this time, and it sparked a flurry of creativity. It also offered a rare chance to slow down a bit, and to build on ideas with time and with space in between.

I’ve always split my time between art and music and tried to find the right balance, all the way back to my time studying at The Glasgow School of Art. The thinking space during lockdown led me to the realisation that they don’t have to be separate for me, and I wanted to find a way to merge them together.

The Point and Fishing Boats (mixed media on canvas) – by Kim Richards

It was around this time that I realised if I wanted to pursue new creative projects and outlets, I needed to find a structure and set aside time for this, or life would fling me in different directions at full speed. I started thinking about the prospect of studying again as I liked the idea of having set timeframes and deadlines to work towards. Over the years, I had heard echoes of folk mentioning completing some or all of the modules on a course with a title that resonated with me – Music and the Environment. As I researched further, it was clear that the MA Music and the Environment course encapsulated so much of what I believe to be important for my own inspiration, and for my own creativity. Now, some might think it mad to begin a Masters Degree with pre-school children, but to me, it made perfect sense, and thankfully my patient husband supported me in this endeavour!

Being able to do the masters course part time has been a huge benefit for me, and having the adaptability of choosing how many modules per semester I can undertake. Due to having a busy workload outwith the course, I have not been able to attend all the scheduled tutorials, but these are recorded which has meant that it has been possible to keep up with important discussions and coursework.  I am now two years in and have just completed a module working on a collaborative project led by MA Music and the Environment Programme Leader Simon Bradley.

October feels like a long time ago now that I apprehensively clicked the button to join the Teams meeting to meet my fellow musical collaborators for the first time. The use of technology was a bonus for our group considering Gail lives across the water in Boston, Massachusetts, and Rob, resides near Newcastle. Thus, technology made otherwise impossible collaboration possible. Waldron (2013) argues that online collaboration promotes heightened metacognitive awareness because musicians must verbalise and justify their creative decisions more explicitly, and I believe the online setting strengthened my communication and collaboration skills as I had to articulate my musical ideas more clearly.  It was clear from early on that we were a diverse group in terms of our musical styles with Gail coming from a jazz background and Rob with his cross-over in jazz, folk and indie styles.

Our group was given a brief to produce a piece of music for The Scottish Wildlife Trust as part of their Sea the Connection initiative. Launched in 2024, Sea the Connection is a three year marine engagement project that aims to increase ocean literacy across Scotland. Some of its main aims are empowering communities to participate in marine decision making and policy conversations and raising awareness and connections to people’s relationship to the sea. As a group we discovered that composing a piece that highlighted both a maritime issue, a sense of connection and the beauty of the sea was at the forefront of our ideas.

A landmark moment in our collaboration came when we were asked to present our initial ideas to Elouise Dalziel, the Marine Policy Inclusion Officer of the Scottish Wildlife Trust. This gave us our first official deadline and spurred us on to start our creation of the music. The meeting with Elouise was very insightful and we gained more information to help us build on the theme of our composition. Some key takeaways from this meeting were that the initiative is keen to make marine policy accessible to all and to spark conversations. They particularly want to connect with Gaelic voices and get people connected with the sea in fun, engaging, joyful and meaningful ways. So we were keen to add elements of hope, and a sense of community and place to our piece.

I composed a Dm chord sequence in jig time as we thought this traditional Scottish edge might be more accessible to listeners in Scotland. Rob contacted David De La Haye to seek permission to use his underwater recordings of seals and other marine life as part of our project. This tied in well with the theme of the sea. Rob mixed the recordings together and this was the first time we heard the merging of our sounds. In order to reach Gaelic speakers and link the composition to Scottish culture, I thought adding a Gaelic refrain over the jig chords might work. I imagined giving a voice to all humans and creatures that use the sea. The lyrics that I kept coming back to were “Save our Sea” or “Save our Ocean”. In English, these lyrics could be portrayed as preachy and potentially cheesy, but in the Gaelic language the words “Saor an Cuan” (Save our Ocean) sound beautiful and add interest to the piece. I created a melody for the lyrics and added a harmony to create a sense of more than one voice.

When it came to the overall instrumentation and ‘sound’ of the piece, there were questions about how far we should move away from the traditional Scottish sound we should allow ourselves to go, especially from Gail and her husband, Lorenzo, who offered to add bass and vocals to the piece, with their operatic and jazz backgrounds. As our musical piece was about connections, journeys and a sense of togetherness, we were very keen for each style to come through. It also could contribute to the accessibility of the overall piece, thus reaching more people. We agreed that we would create a set of tunes starting with a jig into a reel. Gail created a chord sequence for the first part of the reel and these chords inspired my writing of the notes for the reel and a second part with chords. It wasn’t long before Gail recorded the tunes on the saxophone and Lorenzo added bass lines. It was the first time I had heard any tunes of mine played on a brass instrument. I found this part of the project really exciting as it started to feel like our group was starting to ‘play music together’. I gathered words and phrases that I thought linked with our theme and selected the most relevant to create a call and response element. I thought this would further emphasise the feel of connection to the sea as it likened that of a sea shanty. It also worked well within the themes of our group as it brought in more voices, almost creating the idea of people giving a voice on marine policy.

Rob nominated himself to do the mixing of our piece as he had the most experience of this being a mixing engineer and musician. He added wonderful rhythmic touches with his guitar, and mixed these with his own percussion playing and some provided by Gail.

Flexibility was a key element of our collaboration when juggling different time zones, work commitments and ideas. I learned that musical ideas improve by drafting, revisiting, and reshaping themes. This aligns with Schön’s (1983) concept of reflection-in-action that emphasises learning through ongoing experimentation and thoughtful adjustment. The process taught me that embracing uncertainty can lead to richer musical outcomes.

The lessons learned from this online musical collaboration, ranging from improved communication and technical preparation to adaptability, time management, and emotional awareness, will directly inform my future practice. These insights have deepened my understanding of what it means to collaborate musically in a digital space, equipping me with the skills and mindset needed for more effective and rewarding creative work.

The composition is called A Continuum Between Shores which I think encompasses the project and what we were trying to achieve to fulfil the brief. When I think back to October and my initial worries about working in a group entirely online, I feel much more positive about this way of working, as it seems that it does in fact work well. Working alongside musicians from different backgrounds and styles of music has enlightened me to new ways of thinking and made me feel more comfortable about working outside my comfort zone. I think our final piece has lots of interest and works as almost a triptych in structure. We have a variety of instruments running through it with flute, whistles, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, piano, and saxophone, to name a few! I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience of working alongside Simon and Elouise, and in musical collaboration with Rob and Gail. I am excited to work further with Rob and Gail on the piece in order to bring it on further to reach its full potential. Our collaboration and blending of creative perspectives have brought different influences, leading to new sounds that I could not have created alone.

I am fortunate to have the ability to undertake this course, and I am excited to begin the final stage – a personal project where I will develop my own musical and artistic composition in the form of an album and corresponding artwork, hopefully! I know that weighing up the decision to take the leap into further education can be challenging, but my experience has been extremely rewarding and satisfying, and I feel so much more equipped and inspired to pursue my creative endeavours.

www.kimrichards.co.uk

https://kimrichardsmusic.bandcamp.com/album/leaves-that-fly

MA Music and the Environment course

Enroll for January or September start, full time or part time.

References

Schön, D.A. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action
[Online]. Available from:
https://raggeduniversity.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/1_x_Donald-A.-Schon-The-Reflective-Practitioner_-How-Professionals-Think-In-Action-Basic-Books-1984_redactedaa_compressed3.pdf

Scottish Wildlife Trust (n.d.). Sea the Connection [Website]. Available at:
https://scottishwildlifetrust.org.uk/our-work/our-projects/living-seas/sea-the-connection/

Waldron, J. (2013). ‘User-Generated Content, YouTube and Participatory Culture on the
Web: Music Learning and Teaching in Two Contrasting Online Communities’ [Online].
Available from:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14613808.2013.772131?needAccess=true#d1e323

📷 Sheila Sapkota by Louis DeCarlo

A rambling reflection on a success story which continues to move forward.

I am a community musician and now, in my sixth decade of life, look back on the various musical meanderings I have encountered along the way. I have been so lucky to meet some amazing musicians and facilitators on my pathway through a life spent in Edinburgh, Selkirk, Orkney and Nepal. I started Riddell Fiddles (a music group based in the Scottish Borders) just over 22 years ago with the aim that ‘everyone who wants to be’ is involved in learning, playing and performing traditional music whatever the barriers along the way. Previous to that I taught at the traditional music school at Selkirk High. At that time, in 2003, it was really just as “a wee fun group” at a time when there were no other comparable facilities in the area for learning to play traditional music. Twenty two years on Riddell Fiddles (named after an area near Selkirk) has introduced hundreds of people from all backgrounds, generations and ability levels to traditional fiddling and the sheer delight of making music together. The group has toured at home and internationally (even made it to Cape Breton twice and Barbados as well as to our twin town’s festival in Bavaria a few times). Our website www.riddellfiddles.scot is a known traditional music resource the world over.

📷 Riddell Fiddles in Barbados, 2017

I attribute Riddell Fiddles’ success to “the power of the community group”. The right people just seemed to be there at the right time. Assisted by music notator, arranger, composer and guitarist Donald Knox, the late and much missed double bassist Tony Manning, Borders fiddle tutor Louise Douglas, percussionist David Scott and group administrator Karen Hendry we spread our own particular brand of musical mayhem all over the world. It has taken up a lot of time and become a large part of my working life, my social life and my mission to teach young people who might otherwise not access fiddle lessons. The rewards, however, have been great. Some of Donald’s tunes are played all over the world with Mothers of St Ann’s a particular favourite – written when we asked him for an easy tune which we could all play whilst attending a course at St Ann’s Gaelic College in Cape Breton, Canada in 2006.

There has been lots of support over the years from various locally based musicians, such as Amy Geddes, Shona Mooney, Catriona Macdonald, Ian Lowthian and Iain Fraser, whilst visiting fiddlers including Jenna Reid, Gordon Gunn, Bruce MacGregor and Bruce Molsky, the late Jerry Holland etc. have all ‘popped in’.

I myself didn’t discover Scottish fiddle music until I was in my teens, having been classically trained on the viola, and as much as I  appreciated that instrument’s tone, I wish I had been involved with traditional music earlier. I think that’s where my drive to teach fiddle comes from. If there had been all the fiddle groups and things like the Scots Music Group and their Youth Engagement Project or the Fèis Rois events when I was a child, it would have been quite amazing. I am so thankful at the opportunity I had to have free viola lessons at school from the age of eight (in those days you were ‘selected’ and had a wee music test). Thank goodness I had a good day that day. Thank you to Mr Samuel my viola teacher who wangled it, all those years ago, so that we got a lesson every single day. I wish I could have told him how much I appreciated his tuition and what uses I have put my musical tuition to. I regard myself as a mediocre player with a good ear and a penchant for slow airs. I often feel that many of the performances I get are due to my ‘banter’ at the microphone and my slow and simple dance instructions (the words assimilated into my brain after years of playing with the late Peebles accordionist and dance caller James Paterson).

Music needs to be for all and although the Scottish Borders has slightly better music provision for young people than some areas, I do worry at the patchy, haphazard provision throughout Scotland. So many councils are cutting music lessons as an easy option. I feel my mission is to work with the community centres and schools and run free groups and provide instruments. The Scots dialect is widely spoken in our area and it’s continuation and use in our rhythms and songs is so important.

📷 A young musician from Riddell Fiddles

To increase my competence at running the group I, rather ambitiously, embarked on a music degree with the University of Highlands and Islands in 2014 at the elderly age of 54!) and with the support of the UHI staff and especially Anna Wendy Stevenson, achieved a BA Honours in Music as well as learning so many skills and making so many musical friends and contacts of all ages. I also learned about sound recording – an invaluable skill when working with community groups. I got so enthusiastic about my studies that I also did the MA in Music and Environment with UHI and rediscovered a musical ancestor (Honoria Galwey) and her Donegal pathway along the way. This led to many trips to the Inishowen Peninsula with the group.

Thanks to Margaret Robertson (another UHI contact) of Hjaltibonhoga there was an invitation to play in the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo which was taken up by four members of Riddell Fiddles with subsequent tours by myself with the Hjaltibonhoga Community Group. What an honour! Yes – I can now march and play the fiddle and have this skill ingrained into all my young learners.

Young players from Riddell Fiddles were amongst those involved in the Cranston Fiddle project – a Lottery-Funded multimedia show built around my fiddle, which once belonged to William Cranston, who was badly injured during the First World War – the same conflict which killed four of his brothers. Other multimedia ventures include our ‘Battle of Philiphaugh’ presentations with shadow puppets, poetry and music in 2018.

📷 Riddell Fiddles heading to a gig

This year (December 2025) seems a suitable time to reflect – I have stepped back from the main group whilst maintaining focus on the younger groups and starter groups of learners including musicians who are learning disabled and whose access to music often faces barriers. The adult group of Riddell Fiddles is now fully fledged and have launched themselves as ‘Tweed Fiddles’ (much easier to spell). My final concerts with them at Fèis Rois, Ullapool in May and at Melrose were a success – thank you to Fiona Dalgetty and Christian Gamauf for being so supportive.

Apart from focussing Riddell Fiddles on the youth projects, a new production entitled The Meteoric Rise of the Little Egret is being put together. This project combines my lifelong interest in ornithology with my musical interests as yet another multimedia production (helped by photographs and film from the local branch of the Scottish Ornithology Club) is launched – celebrating the success of that iconic white heron-like bird with the yellow feet. . It’s colonisation of the UK and our River Tweed catchment area is wonderful to see – whilst illustrating the sobering fact that their presence here in such numbers is due to their traditional Mediterranean haunts just being far too hot (climate change). With new music and a select band of musicians we plan to perform in places as iconic as the 12th century chapter house at Dryburgh Abbey and Abbotsford house during Easter 2026. Thanks to Destination Tweed and the Lottery Heritage Fund for funding this.

I would also like to thank the Traditional Music Forum and Dave Francis for always being there for us, for including us, for all their advice over the years and for making us feel part of something big. It was so heartening to see the rapturous applause he received at the recent Trad Music Awards. He has been our voice in the traditional music scene.

The Trad Awards and Simon Thoumire have also so helped both myself and the group’s profile – with the Trad Awards Nominations and Awards over the years as well as my induction into the ‘Hall of Fame’ for Services to the Community in 2015 – such an honour. One of Riddell Fiddles’ proudest moments was winning the Community Project of the Year in 2021 for the work we were doing in Bannerfield and Burnfoot Housing Estates in Selkirk and Hawick respectively. I do wish I had prepared for winning though as my televised speech was rather unprepared. This weekend (Saturday 6th December) we play at the Xmas fair in Selkirk with the Hawick young folk coming through to support the Selkirk group. I just so enjoy these gigs and the support from the community. My worry for the future is that a lot of these musical opportunities are disappearing and young people in these rural areas are struggling to achieve access to long term teaching and traditional music. I take a lot of pleasure in watching my niece Sally Simpson’s career in music as well as that of Catriona Macdonald’s pupil Eryn Rae from the Scottish Borders. Both of these players thread their musical ways in a difficult and unpredictable industry.

Another mission in my ‘partial’ retirement is to sort out the website which urgently needs a facelift. This treasure trove, used all over the world, needs to be updated and proofed for the future – for all to continue using.

With a lot of community performances and some bigger gigs over the festive season I do reflect that the local Christmas fair with the young learners gives me every bit of satisfaction as the well paid ‘posh hotel’ gig. Long may it continue.

Thank you to my pupils, the musicians and teachers along the way and to my borders friends who have and continue to be part of our musical journey.

Sheila Sapkota, founder, organiser & teacher, Riddell Fiddles 

I really love the strathspey, The Miller of Drone, and have been playing it a lot this past 6 months, getting to appreciate its personality and foibles. It is such a lyrical tune, and responds delightfully to either being driven hard, or gently coaxed. I got to wondering where the tune hailed from. Where is Drone (or Dron, as it is sometimes spelled)? Who was the miller? And does the tune have any link with the bawdy C18th song? And so began an excursion down a rabbit hole of old maps, books, photographs and recordings …… and a fair bit of chin scratching ….………

The Tune

First, to the tune. Here is a beautiful contemporary version by the talented duo Kevin Lees and Sebastian Bloch of The Good Tune.

Here is an old recording of The Miller of Drone briskly played by Anndra Reid from Canna, recorded by Dr John Lorne Campbell at some point during the period 1940-1960.

John Lorne Campbell on Canna
Image: Tobar and Dualchais

The earliest published version of The Miller of Drone that I have been able to find is in John Pringle’s Collection of Reels, Strathspeys & Jigs (1801). Did he write the tune? In Anne Alburger’s 1983 book Scottish Fiddlers and their Music she points out that Pringle didn’t claim that he composed it – there are two other tunes on the same page which he identifies as his own, but not The Miller of Drone. Nathaniel Gow published the tune in his Gow’s Complete Repository (Part 2) in 1802, claiming that he composed it himself. It is even claimed sometimes that the tune was in fact written by Niel Gow – though I think this is unlikely as if it was the case, Nathaniel would have had to have claimed it as his own whilst his father was still alive – a snub I doubt he would have done.

John Pringle’s 1801 Collection
Image: Highland Music Trust

The traditional music publisher and collector John Glen (1833-1904) was well known for his strong opinions and his scepticism of the Gow’s compositional claims. He thought that it was unlikely that the strathspey had been written by either Niel or Nathaniel Gow. Time and ongoing research have softened the accepted views on the Gow’s claimed compositions, and have downplayed John Glen’s more extreme accusations of the Gow’s tune piracy. Although no-one can definitively identify the tune’s composer, personally I would tend to err on it being Nathaniel Gow.

Here is James Scott Skinner’s manuscript version of The Miller of Drone. He obviously held the tune in very high regard – so much so that when he published his own composition, The Miller o’ Hirn, he boasted that “‘The Miller o’ Drone’ will drone no more”. Whilst The Miller o’ Hirn is itself a fine strathspey, it would appear that The Miller of Drone more than held its own against its new rival — and still does.

Image: James Scott Skinner Collection, University of Aberdeen

Another interesting aside is to note that in the C19th the Strathspey migrated to Ireland (as so many Scottish tunes have done) to become the reel, The First Month of Summer and the related tune The First Month of Spring. The First Month of Summer was first published by Francis O’Neill in his 1903 book Music of Ireland: 1,850 Melodies.

Music of Ireland: 1,850 Melodies, Francis O’Neill 1903; No. 1214, p. 229.

But there is also a much older tune called The Miller of Dron – a jig in the key of F, written down ca. 1741 by the Edinburgh fiddler and ‘Writing Master’ David Young in what is usually referred to as the ‘MacFarlane Manuscript’.

From: A Collection of Scotch Airs with the latest Variations. David Young ca. 1741
National Museum of Scotland Manuscript, NLS ms 2085. p,275

Where is Drone?

Being from Perthshire myself, and with Nathaniel Gow being the likely composer, I of course naturally assumed that it must be the Dron located in the hills on the north side of the Firth of Tay between Perth and Dundee. Stobie’s 1783 map of Perthshire shows Dron, and the adjacent Dron Hill (middle top of the below map).

Stobie’s 1783 map of Perthshire
National Library of Scotland

However, Stobie’s 1783 map doesn’t indicate that there was a mill there. The first Ordnance Survey map of 1867 shows by that time there was a mill. There are also no records that I could find showing the Perthshire Dron being spelled “Drone.” I began to get a hunch that this might not be the correct location and that I might have to look elsewhere.

Ordnance Survey 6” to the mile map, 1867
National Library of Scotland

There is a Drone Hill in Coldingham, Berwickshire, and an Aberdeenshire version of the strathspey is titled “The Miller of Drum” potentially indicating that the mill might be in the north-east. However old maps show no mill in either location, so I discounted both these options.

Another avenue proved more promising. The current OS map shows that on the River Eden, close to Dairsie in north-east Fife, there was once a “Dron Mill.” The placename gets its first recorded mention in 1207 as “Drun” in a document setting out the villagers owing teinds of wheat to Leuchars kirk. A later judicial proceeding in 1484 shows a legal dispute involving the “Mill of Drone”. In the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland of 1654, James Gordon shows the place as “Drone Mill”. Subsequent maps show place names including Easter, Wester, North, South and Mickle Dron. Throughout the 15th to the 18th centuries the place name’s spelling alternated between Dron and Drone, settling eventually around 1800s to Dron. The last recorded use of the spelling “Drone” in maps / documents appears to be in an estate map drawn up sometime in the 1790s, showing “The Estate of Drone”.

Blaeu Atlas of Scotland, James Gordon, 1654
National Map Library of Scotland

Despite that there is no longer an extant mill building, there is documentary evidence of a mill being there from the 15th century onwards. I am therefore convinced that the location of the Dron/Drone mill of the tune is in Fife.

The Mill of Drone

According to Watermills on the River Eden by Anders Jespersen in the Journal of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland (1966) ……..

Dron Mill was the smallest mill on the River Eden. It took water from the tail race of Lydox Mill, and contained — despite its limited dimensions – two pairs of stones, and a kiln, the lower part of which is cut out in the sandstone rock. The breastshot wheel was situated at the gable, which was built in ashlar stone-work, terminating in a string course just over the wheel, and above this rubble stone-work. The mill was shown on the 1645 (Blaeu) map.

The 1862 OS map shows that Dron Mill was obviously working then as a corn mill. However, by the time of the survey for the second edition of the OS 6”to-the-mile map in 1893, Dron Mill is shown as being without a roof, and therefore no longer in operation.

OS 6” to the Mile map, 1862
National Map Library of Scotland

The Song

The next tunnel down the rabbit hole leads us to the bawdy C19th song, The Miller of Drone.

There lived a miller ance in Drone,
Was fed on beef and brose:
With sturdy limbs, and shoulders broad,
As you may well suppose.
The miller was a sturdy loon,
As ever hung a stone.
He took his mouter different ways,
The Miller lived in drone.

Mouter is a Scots word referring to the payment (often in kind, such as with meal or grain) that a tenant was legally obliged to give to a mill. The song goes on to detail the shenanigans of a daughter and her mother when they take their corn to the mill to be ground, and the obliging Miller who “in motion put his stones.” It would appear that their visits were frequent, and that no money was exchanged for the miller’s various services.

The Miller of Drone, printed by Poet’s Box, 80 London St., Glasgow. (7th April 1877)
Image: Vaughan Williams Memorial Library

When was the song The Miller of Drone written?

The earliest published version of the song that I have come across is the chapbook broadsheet, The Jolly Miller of Drone, printed in Falkirk in 1813.

The Jolly Miller of Drone, Falkirk 1813
National Library of Scotland

Can we turn to fine art to give us a clue as to when the song was written? The East Lothian born, Edinburgh-based painter Alexander Carse (c. 1770 – 1843) painted an oil canvas, “The Miller of Drone” around 1820. It shows a scene in an alehouse with the miller regaling all around him and obviously thoroughly enjoying both the beer and the attentions of the barmaid.  Alexander Carse mostly spent his days in and around Edinburgh where he mainly painted scenes of village and rural life: a barber’s shop, a brawl outside an alehouse, (rowdy) village ball games, penny weddings etc. Were these paintings done in situ? Or were the buildings and backgrounds quickly sketched in a suitable location, with the characters and detail painted afterwards in his studio? I suspect the latter – and that his paintings were mostly created from his imagination: I doubt if he went to Drone in Fife to find the authentic local alehouse and its inebriated miller. It is also safe to assume that the song must have been known and presumably widely sung throughout lowland Scotland when he painted the scene around 1820. This is confirmed by an 1871 Banffshire journal entry which states that the song was very popular in the local area around 1820. It is impossible to give a definitive answer as to when the song was written, but my hunch is that it dates from the C18th.

The Miller of Drone, by Alexander Carse.
Usage: Creative Commons

Is there a link between the strathspey and the song?

Was the song sung to the strathspey tune? Or are the two entirely separate? Is there a link between the song and the similarly titled C18th jig?

The 1877 Greig-Duncan collection Folk Song of the North East (Volume 7) gives three versions of the song. The accompanying tune given is the popular Aberdeenshire song “The Battle of Harlaw” and not the Gow Strathspey. It is possible that the use of this tune is purely local to the Aberdeenshire area – people may have preferred to use a better-known local melody, rather than the more southerly strathspey.

There is a recording made by Alan Lomax in 1951 of William Mathieson of Turriff singing a snippet of The Miller of Drone. The singing is somewhat wavering and it’s difficult to make out the tune. However, I don’t think that the melody is either The Battle of Harlaw, the C18th jig, or Nathaniel Gow’s strathspey.

The clip can be found in the Lomax Digital Archive.

So far, I’ve not found the song melody noted in any other folk song collections. It is possible that the song melody used was the similarly titled strathspey. However, whilst the verse fits beautifully into the A part of the Strathspey, the shorter chorus is only half the of the Strathspey’s B past. Of course, you could simply repeat the same 4 lines of the chorus to make it fit. Or of course it is quite possible that the song has absolutely nothing to do with the strathspey, and that Nathaniel Gow simply wrote the tune to jump on the bandwagon of an already popular song. Can anyone throw some more light on the matter?

And finally……..

Looking back through time, each generation changes its interpretation and understanding of all matters historical. Given that we can never have all the facts (and anyway, one person’s “fact” is only their interpretation of “the truth”), it is a rash person who would state definitively that they alone have THE answer. So, here I have put forward a theory or two on the origins of The Miller of Drone. No doubt someone with access to more / other information will put forward a different / more convincing theory: such is the shifting sands of writing about anything historical! Whoever and whenever that happens, I look forward to hearing from them.

———-

Munro Gauld is a freelance traditional musician, ethno-musicologist and musical historian
Email: [email protected]

📷 Photo by Peter McNally

I first came across the incredible sound of Gaelic psalm singing back in 2002 when I was living in London and studying music at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). As part of my degree, I had the opportunity to do some work experience and spent a day a week over a couple of years in the sound archive of Cecil Sharp House in Camden, the home of the English Folk Dance and Song Society. My job was to digitise a collection of 78 recordings that had been gathered in the 1940s and ‘50s for a substantial BBC archiving project. Having just moved to London from Shetland, I was assigned the Scottish collection of material – so many beautiful Gaelic songs, Shetland fiddle tunes, piping and ballad singing among other styles and instruments. It was an exciting time and I discovered some amazing music while I was doing this, and a few tunes that I ended up learning and recording in the duo, Blyde Lasses.

📷 Angus Murray singing at a public talk, Comunn Eachdraidh Nis, Ness, Lewis. June 2025. (Photo by Mary Stratman)

On one of these days I was sitting in the archive, dusting off the first of a new batch of recordings for transfer to CD, when one of the librarians (and also a fine singer), Peta Webb, appeared in the door and we got chatting. She said, ‘you’re digitising all this Scottish music. Have you ever heard Gaelic psalm singing? It’s incredible – like nothing else you’ve heard in the British tradition. It sounds more like Islamic singing than singing from these islands’. I admitted that I’d never heard of it but would look it up. When I came across a recording, I was blown away by the sound – incredibly powerful, moving, and evocative. Peta was right – it had the hint of some Middle-Eastern traditions, and this has been noted by the likes of Scottish musicologist John Purser, who pointed out the remarkable similarities between Gaelic psalm singing and some forms of Ethiopian Christian singing.

📷 Marybelle MacKinnon, Crossbost, Lewis. March 2022. (Photo by Frances Wilkins)

Since my time in London I have gone on to become a professional ethnomusicologist – someone who seeks out, researches and promotes the wonderful musical traditions often hidden from view within communities. The practitioners I meet rarely sing or play music as a profession but take part in musical traditions as an innate expression of their identity – whether that be geographical, occupation, spiritual, or linguistic. I have researched singing in fishing communities and among fishermen at sea, music from the days of the whaling industry and the fur trade, fiddling and dancing in subarctic indigenous communities, and more recently the incredible spiritual song, psalm and hymn traditions spread out across the Hebrides. I am based at the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, where I completed my PhD in 2009. As a senior lecturer in ethnomusicology I teach on the MLitt programme in folklore and ethnology, training students to study the cultures of Northern Scotland (and beyond) in context.

📷 Murdo J Morrison, bard and Gaelic psalm precentor, Fivepenny, Ness, Lewis, March 2022. (Photo by Mairi M Martin)

In the last few years I have interviewed and recorded many singers from across the Hebrides and have travelled throughout the islands, meeting people and hearing their stories and songs. The result has been a substantial archive of songs, interviews, field recordings, photographs and videography.

📷 Gaelic psalter. (Photo by Mairi M Martin)

Gaelic psalm singing is one of our oldest living musical forms in Scotland, with its roots in the years following the 1560 Scottish Reformation, when singing in churches suddenly shifted from choral singing in Latin, to unaccompanied congregational psalm singing in the vernacular language. It was led by a precentor, someone (usually male) who sang out each line for the then mostly illiterate congregation to follow. In most places, this style of singing was replaced by more modern singing styles but in the Gaelic speaking churches of the Hebrides, the old style of singing remained and became an important part of Hebridean culture. Many people I spoke with, regardless of whether they were religious or not, expressed how elemental the tradition was to all aspects of life in the past, forming a musical soundtrack to their daily lives – in daily ‘family worship’, at weddings, funerals, wakes, and other gatherings where people congregated together.

📷 D R MacDonald, Gaelic psalm precentor, Stornoway. October 2022. (Photo by Mairi M Martin)

The project, ’Seinn Spioradail: Sacred Soundscapes of the Highlands and Islands’, was an amazing experience and I met so many inspiring people. Unfortunately these incredible singing traditions are struggling to thrive under the current climate of anglicisation and secularisation within the church and communities. There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about safeguarding music as intangible cultural heritage (ICH), since the Scottish ratification of the UNESCO Convention for the safeguarding of ICH. On talking to TMF director Brian Ò hEadhra among others, it appears that the pure act of unaccompanied singing has become an art-form under threat. It is in need of safeguarding and treasuring if we are to see this unique and deep-rooted practice survive and flourish. Gaelic psalm and hymn singing, along with a number of other traditions such as Sean-nòs in Ireland, has been losing prominence in traditional music over the years under a constant bombardment of alternative, more accessible musical styles. It is no different in the Hebrides, and part of this project was to gain a better understanding of the singing, explore how it is being adapted in order to stay relevant to its singers and the changing environment, and how it might be safeguarded in its present form for future generations.

There have been some amazing initiatives to teach and preserve Gaelic psalm singing. Calum Martin has produced an excellent series of online workshops to teach people to sing Gaelic psalms, and is teaching classes to people on Lewis. Gemma Malcolm from the Kinloch Historical Society in Balallan recently worked with school children to record the oral history of psalm singing in the local area. As part of the project they learnt to sing a psalm, competing at their local Mòd and winning first place. Since then the children have had invitations to sing the psalm at local venues and events.

📷 Children from Sgoil nan Loch who sang a Gaelic psalm at the Stornoway Mòd, winning first place. With Gemma Malcolm, Kinloch Historical Society. June 2025. (Photo by Mary Stratman)

The Seinn Spioradail project culminated in an exhibition that has been on tour for the last 2 years across the Hebrides. It is currently on display at Comunn Eachdraidh Nis (Ness Historical Society) in Lewis and includes panels, objects, film, listening stations and digital archive. There is an accompanying website which hosts the digital archive – over 300 songs recorded as part of the project, with lyrics and translations. It has been a useful learning tool for singers looking to explore the tradition and learn some of the psalms and beautiful songs and hymns of the Hebrides. Other resources are being produced in the coming months including a CD and podcast series.

📷 Frances Wilkins with Hamish Taylor, Leverburgh, Harris. June 2025. (Photo by Mary Stratman)

A highlight of the project for me was giving some public talks in Lewis and Harris over the summer, where I was accompanied by some incredible singers including Torquil MacLeod, Hamish Taylor, Murdo MacMillan and Jeanna Cumming. I was also invited, with the wonderful Gaelic singer Kristine Kennedy, to give a talk/performance at the British Academy in London as part of the event, ‘Memory Through Melody: Celebrating Sung Histories’. The British Academy funded a large part of the project and it was exciting to have the opportunity to bring the music to them. The 20 minute presentation is available to watch on YouTube (from 44 mins).

📷 Jeanna Cumming singing at public talk, Leverburgh, Harris. June 2025. (Photo by Mary Stratman)

📷 Frances Wilkins and Kristine Kennedy at the British Academy, London. May 2025. (Photo by Oliver Wilkins)

For more information on the project, including to see the exhibition panels, film and digital archive, visit franceswilkins.com/seinn-spioradail

Picture this: it’s an hour before checkout in a Kyoto hotel. A kilted Scotsman approaches the reception desk, hoarse and probably still a little bit drunk. He croaks an almost silent “Sumimasen” to a bemused concierge. We’d been in Japan three days, and we’d already been on stage for ten of the last forty-eight hours. I could speak very little Japanese, and that morning, I could speak very little of anything.

I’m Davie, and I’m the singer for Bruach. We’re a Scottish folk rock band, some would say Celtic punk. I’ve been known as the wee bouncy dude with the Duracell batteries for years, but now I’ve found myself in a band of people who carry the same energy. We bring it to every show, with Kayo Ono’s fiddle tearing through reels, Sean Wilkie’s bass thumping like a heartbeat, Niall Crookston’s drums kicking like a mule, and Kris Pheely’s guitar tying it all together. We love The Corries and Gaberlunzie, but our sound is closer to Scotia or Peat and Diesel. We live for getting the crowd going; clapping, singing, dancing along, or sometimes just shouting whatever nonsense we throw at them.

So how did we end up staggering around a hotel in Kyoto? It all started with a daft moment at Hootananny in Inverness last August. We were mid-set, calling for a bit of crowd interaction. All For Me Sauce is our take on All For Me Grog. It’s a family-friendly version with a dafter edge. Instead of “tobacco,” the crowd shouts “tomato.” There’s a story behind it, but we won’t get into it here. This American guy refused to play along. We had some banter and called him “Tobacco guy.” Afterwards, he was chatting to Kayo – in Japanese! He told her that he lived in Kyoto now, and suggested the Osaka Expo.

We all laughed our kilts off. Japan? The furthest we’d been so far was Skye! But Kayo grabbed the idea like a lifeline. “My ties to Japan faded after twenty years in the UK,” she told us later. “This was my chance to show you my home.” She applied, fully expecting nothing, and we didn’t hear for months. Then, just before Christmas, bam! We’d been selected to host a stage at the Expo. Who knew a pub chat could send us round the world?

It sounds simple when you say it quickly. “We’re off to Japan!” Easy, right? But getting five musicians to Japan with instruments, kilts, and enough energy to host a full-day stage is no small feat. This wasn’t just a half-hour set. It was Scottish food tasting, ceilidh dancing, and a Celtic instrument experience, and all that on top of our music. That kind of show doesn’t fall together by accident.

The truth is, Kayo did most of the heavy lifting. Flights, accommodation, schedules, venues, translations, endless emails, sleepless nights, the lot. The rest of us pitched in the only way we knew how: gigging harder than ever. Coach and Horses in Dumfries, Waxy’s in Glasgow, McKays in Pitlochry, The Havelock in Nairn, among others. We booked everywhere and anywhere that would have us. Every pint poured, every t-shirt sold, every raffle ticket was another step closer to Osaka. We’re not normally about the money, but we needed it now.

And somewhere in the middle of that grind, Japanese influences started to creep in. Kayo, our honorary Scot (Sean would say “She’s no honorary, she’s just Scottish!”), started wearing a kimono at practice, and on stage, her traditional dress against our kilts. It showed our intent. Japan was going to be a part of our music.

We began with Highland Soldier, a tune Kayo had written back in Japan, paired with a 19th-century Scottish broadsheet ballad. Those old ballads were meant to be shared. Their words could be sung to all sorts of melodies. Putting it to Kayo’s tune felt like a bridge between her two homes.

Then came Sakura Air An Duine Sith, a mash-up of the Japanese folk song Sakura Sakura with The Atholl Highlanders. The title itself was a blend, half Japanese, half Gaelic, and the verses mixed Japanese, English, and, increasingly, modern Scots. We learned Train Train, the Japanese punk anthem of the 90s, and translated it into Scots (or maybe just Glaswegian). Later in Japan, we met Tetsuya Kajiwara, the drummer of The Blue Hearts, who wrote the original. If we get his blessing, our version might yet see daylight.

July came around so quickly, I swear we skipped a month. Did we have May? It was really happening! Landing in Tokyo was like stepping into a video game. All neon, noise, vending machines selling cold coffee. Those soon became my morning ritual. The hotel omelette was so fluffy I could’ve napped on it. Then the bullet train to Osaka, where I promptly got stuck behind the ticket gates like a numpty and missed the meeting point. Nobody slept that first night. The Expo stage was waiting the next day.

It was 35 degrees, and humid enough to melt. As Pheely put it, “the scale of the thing is incredible.” He was right, but we didn’t have time to look around. We had a stage to set up. I was cream crackered before we even opened the doors. I don’t know how Kayo did it, she was the only one of us who could communicate with most people, so she was everywhere, like a blur. Seconds later (or so it seemed), I was calling ceilidh dances while she translated and demonstrated at the same time. Just like home, we had volunteers tripping over Gay Gordons and laughing their heads off. The Dashing White Sergeant had them grinning ear to ear. They got it in the end, proving that Scottish country dancing can travel.

That’s when we met Shima. He turned up to Expo in a kilt with a Bonnie Scotland flag draped over his shoulders. He danced, he tried the toy bagpipes, he played with the accordion. Seeing a Japanese fan in a kilt reminded us that our cultures had already been in conversation long before we turned up.

Then came our main set. We had Scots and Japanese lyrics side by side on a massive 10-metre screen behind us. People sang along to Scottish songs in Scots, then told us afterwards that the translations gave them a new understanding of lyrics they’d known for years. We’d been worried about the crowd participation bits we had in the set, but we needn’t have worried, they sang along to Wild Mountain Thyme and shouted “tomato!” just like back home, and the songs we added for them, like Train Train, went down a storm! They even called for an encore! What else, but our first single, Big Strong Belle, to finish off the night? It was a special moment, one I won’t forget. Sean roared, “We love you, Osaka!” and we all meant it!

Hooking up with Japanese musicians was the heart of it. Souichirio and Yogakai, masters of Gagaku, Japan’s ancient court music, were absolute legends. They were running our Celtic musical instrument experience and our merch stand as well as playing the support slots. Joining them for Kimi Ga Yo, the Japanese national anthem, was magic. Kayo’s fiddle wove with their flutes, and I sang the vocal in my best Japanese. I don’t think I butchered it.

We recorded the Expo set live. When I listen back, I can hear the sheer relief and joy in it. That mix of “we made it” and “let’s give them everything we’ve got,” it’s plain to hear. That show pulled us closer together as a band. The road and the miles from Dundee and the work had been worth it.

Yogakai later took us for a Gagaku lesson, where they had us puffing on the Hichiriki, a bamboo double-reed flute which tickled my lips like a bee’s wing. The Ryuteki or Dragon flute, the hero’s instrument, was Sean’s favourite. He bought one, though his fiancée’s not thrilled about the noise. “Gagaku was brilliant! Love trying new gear!” he said. They let us wear traditional kimonos. I chose yellow because, aye, I’m a showoff. We banged Tsuri-daiko drums, their ceremonial beat feeling like the slow build in our reels but way more polished. Niall called it “the most Japanese thing we did.” It’s got us itching to mix those haunting melodies into our next tracks.

The gigs after Expo had their own flavour. At Stones in Kyoto, the crowd spilled into the street! Scots, Kiwis, Belgians, Americans mixing with locals, clapping and singing and shouting “I Love You!”. That’s Bruach, though. We get folk dancing, from Osaka to Oban. At one point, I was handed a “mega pint” of Guinness on stage. I tried to split the G, only to find it was in a Stella glass. Sacrilege! By the end of the night, there wasn’t a drop of Guinness left in the bar. We met a Scottish couple there, too, and it turned out I knew the guy’s uncle. Half a world away and still bumping into neighbours.

Tin’s Hall in Osaka was so cool. Goro from The Goro Band mirrored my every move like he’d been touring with us for years. Their ’50s rock ’n’ roll shapes were a show in themselves. We’re going to do a bit more of that. Meg had been our contact in The Goro Band, and when we realised that Sean wouldn’t be there for the duration, she sorted out bassists for the remaining dates. Then came the coup: Tetsuya Kajiwara from The Blue Hearts turned up. Not only that, he stayed for the whole show. Smashing out Train Train with him in the room was surreal. Kayo was starry-eyed for days.

The Enchant charity gig was another kind of special. Playing for neurodiverse kids hit home for me, as my son has ADHD/ASD. We ran ceilidh dances and the instrument experience with them. Some of them were right in there, but others needed a little encouragement. One kid saw a mosquito bite on my arm and made a buzzing sound, then said “Scratcha-scratcha!” No translation needed. Kayo thought I should join the dancing instead of calling it, but I’m a terrible dancer. Hopefully, my partner had fun, because he didn’t learn a step from me. Their smiles were everything. “Treasures I’ll carry,” Kayo said.

Japan is full of little bridges like that. Take Auld Lang Syne. They have a version of their own. Hotaru no Hikari is about time passing, which is in the same spirit as Burns. Some stations even play it for the last train of the night. When we played Auld Lang Syne at Expo, and the Japanese lyrics joined the Scots ones, it felt like a perfect circle. “During this trip,” said Kayo, “I made new friends, built new connections to Japan, and travelled with Bruach – my new family.”

Coming home, we didn’t want to lose that momentum. The Expo live recordings are being polished, with a bit more crowd sound mixed in. Highland Soldier will be the first release in early October. After that, we’re heading into the studio to record an EP including the Scots version of Train Train if we get permission. Maybe even some anime for fun, the Dan Da Dan theme is a banger.

We’re dreaming of a 2026 tour, but maybe we’ll just tour the West Coast of Scotland. If we do, the plan will be to reach some of the islands. We’re keeping the Japanese influence, Kayo has a Sho, and Sean’s Dragon flute. We want to incorporate them into some arrangements.

None of this would have happened without the people who backed us. So here’s the important bit: massive thanks to The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Japan Society of Scotland. Thanks to Tommy the Tomato Guy, Souichiro and the Yogakai crew, Goro and Meg and The Goro Band, and everyone who bought a pint or a t-shirt along the way.

Japan is in our blood now. Somewhere between the kilts and the kimonos, between The Atholl Highlanders and Sakura Sakura, we found a shared language. If you come to a Bruach gig, we’ll be happy to teach you a few words of it. And if you shout “Tomato!”, we’ll know exactly where you’ve been.

Bruach

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📷 Photo above by Nicky Murray

Let me tell you a little bit about Janey, the subject for the final track of this EP. Janey used to stick her head out of the car window in the backseat and sing at the top of her lungs into the wind, and the wind would wisp it away, carrying it right up into the ether the moment that the sound left her lips, as though it never happened. She and the wind had an understanding. The reality of this was that her parents were biting their tongue in the front seat wondering why their child was belting Tomorrow from Annie out of the window. You might have guessed already, but Janey is the term of endearment my mother used for me when I was younger based off of my middle name, Jane; this song is a letter to my past, present and future self all in one. It’s safe to say that Janey has come a long way from singing out of car windows, anyway.

Despite Janey’s shyness when it came to singing, I don’t remember her that way. In fact, I remember her to be quite boisterous at times, top of her class in character building, taught mostly by her two older brothers; she did everything with conviction and took to any task with not an inkling of self-doubt. At what point does all this change? Shouldn’t we simultaneously be gaining confidence and life experiences in equal measure? Self-confidence, of course, ebbs and flows. It happens to us like the seasons, and some seasons are harsher than others. This song is all about carrying that child-like lack of self-consciousness into adulthood, as well as being simply an ode to a memorable and carefree childhood, to which I will be ever grateful for.

“Oh Janey, the sun rises and sets with you,
Oh Janey, with what your mother and your father told you.
—
Oh Janey be but little she is fierce,
I carry less of her with every passing year,
She’s happy in her hand-me-downs, keeping up with her brothers,
Growing cleverer and kinder in the warm glow of the summer”

An extract from Janey, written by Heather Cartwright

My guitar style has shifted over the years. I come from a background in solo finger-style guitar, but since moving to Glasgow I have picked up more traditional styles of playing such as flat picking, which you can hear in the track, Haystacks. At the end, you can hear my first crack at using improvisation in a studio recording, as I’m usually more in the category of mapping out my parts in a lot of detail beforehand. I’d been implementing improvisation into my practice, often by just putting on a drone and improvising melodies over it and varying the keys each session, and I can really see how this has improved my fluency up the fretboard over time. The process with these things is really slow but really satisfying when it starts to pay off; I like that this track is now a snapshot into my development in this area of my playing. Haystacks is named after one of my favourite places in the Lake District, not too far from my home in Cumbria, and the march that comes before that is named Goodnight Glasgow, a tribute to my current home.

The Blackest Crow is a traditional Appalachian folk song, although its exact origins are unknown. It’s quite possible that it originated from older Scottish and English ballads and taken over to America by early settlers. Some of the lyrics were found in letters and diaries dating back to the American Civil War (1861-1865), indicating the song’s presence in America during this time. I think knowing that these lyrics of loss and separation resonated so deeply with people during the civil war, enough for them to write them in their war diaries, adds so much to the meaning of these words to me.

“As time draws near my dearest dear when you and I must part,
How little you know of the grief and woe, in my poor aching heart,
’Tis but I suffer for your sake, believe me dear it’s true,
I wish that you were staying here, or I was going with you”

An extract from The Blackest Crow, trad.

Video: Duo Version of The Blackest Crow

The themes of loss and separation drip down into the next track, Lost Lula, composed by Jason and Pharis Romero. According to an online forum, the tune was written for their dog that disappeared into the woods and never came back, hence the wandering nature of the tune. I am often drawn to old-time American melodies for their laid back, melancholy undertones, and very fortunately indeed, two of my good friends Josiah Duhlstine (cello) and Madeleine Stewart (fiddle) happen to be both brilliant and American and bring the perfect old-time feel to these tracks. The other musicians making my arrangements so special are Sam Mabbett (accordion), Dan Brown (piano), Beth Malcolm (vocals), Callum Convoy (Bodhran) and Chris Waite, who recorded and mixed this EP so beautifully.

Photo taken at Gran’s House Studio, September 2024 (left to right: Dan Brown, Sam Mabbett, Callum Convoy, Chris Waite)

EP cover: Lino print by Heather Cartwright 

The artwork is a three-layer Lino print which depicts the Blackest Crow and Lula meeting each other in the forest and finding companionship in each other. One of the things that isn’t necessarily obvious when you meet me but is obvious when looking at my creations is that I’m quite the romantic. I recently recorded a song of mine which is about the Mars Rover (Opportunity, 2004-2018), the details of which stopped me in my tracks. Opportunity was only predicted to live for three months but instead lived for fourteen years. The song talks of a lonely Mars Rover on an enormous planet all by himself who dreams about being best friends with Neil Armstrong – also pretty romantic, right? Keep your eyes peeled for that release later in the year.

In other news, I’m currently working on an album of guitar duets, each track featuring a different guitar player, with the intention of learning from and collaborating with some of my favourite players. Until then, my EP is available on Bandcamp.

www.heathercartwright.co.uk

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📷 Photos by Pip Graham-Bishop

Twenty years ago this January, I stepped into a journey whose full scope I couldn’t then imagine. The seeds were sown earlier, but the story began in earnest in 2006 when a grant from the Arts Trust of Scotland made it possible for the late Nigel Richard to prototype a keyless chromatic Scottish smallpipe chanter.

Nigel had already cracked the equivalent problem for border pipes. But smallpipes, being cylindrical, present different physical challenges. Still, he understood the principles — far better than I did at the time — and the prototype worked. I played it for six years, learning its possibilities.

It had a one-octave range, like most smallpipes. But I became curious: could that range be expanded, upward and downward, without adding keys?

I suspected that keywork had been largely rejected by Scottish pipers for good reasons — reasons rooted not just in aesthetics but in the tactile form of piping itself. Cylindrical reed instruments (like the clarinet or smallpipes) don’t naturally overblow into a second register the way conical ones (like the Uilleann pipes or saxophone) do. There’s a gap. To bridge it without disrupting the idiom — technically, ergonomically, musically — would take some doing.

So I began a quiet process of prototyping, always asking the same question: could this new design speak convincingly within the Scottish piping idiom? That meant judging every new note on its tone, its ergonomic placement, its role in the scale, and its implications for technique and repertoire.

By 2013, I’d discovered 3D printing. MakLab in Glasgow’s Lighthouse had just opened. One sunny afternoon, I watched the first Lindsay System prototype begin to emerge from the lab’s Ultimaker printer, using highlighter-green filament. Midway through, Glasgow saxophonist and tea-blender Martin Fell walked past, and leaned in to watch.

“What’s it making?” he asked.

“A chanter.”

He nodded, paused, and said in tones of awe:

“I’m looking at the future.”

He wasn’t wrong.

In 2014, a small Kickstarter campaign let me bring that future into our home. My wife Hannah, son Ryall (then 10yrs), and I watched the countdown from our kitchen in Pollok, South Glasgow. It was a moment of pure excitement, and possibility. By 2016, during Ryall’s October school break, the first fully playable Lindsay System chanter was born — stable, ergonomic, and tonally satisfying enough for professional use.

Blueprint: Draft drawing by Zexuan Qiao, based on models and data provided by Donald Lindsay. Originally typeset, colour graded, and published in Piping Today (issue 97).

That final prototype marked a turning point. During development I’d used the same handful of test phrases all that week — short sequences to explore the stability and voice of the extended range. That morning, when I came downstairs to the kitchen with the finished print, they didn’t just function. They sang.

The first phrase climbed into the second register, tentatively but with a keening clarity — reminiscent in timbre of the Uilleann pipes, though still bearing the grain and warmth of smallpipes. The second tumbled downward across the new low end, stepping in and out of the traditional scale like round, mossy stones in water. A tune formed. I played it round and round, almost surprised that it kept asking to be played. That tune became Chanter 2, later recorded with a band at the College of Piping in Glasgow. It’s still on YouTube.

From there, development shifted outward. The following year, in 2017, Piping Today published the first of five articles on the project, written by Elizabeth Ford, documenting the system’s evolution and outlining its potential. Two early prototypes — The Rainbow Set of Pollok and A Phìob Ghrianach — were formally added to the Museum of Piping’s permanent collection in 2019. That same year I handed over my teaching work at the National Piping Centre and left Scotland with my family to live on Ascension Island – a remote volcanic island outpost, in the mid South Atlantic.

There, I focused on consolidation: design iteration, tone work, reed design, and the beginnings of a formal method. I also continued collaborating remotely with Zexuan Qiao, a young designer and academic who I’d met in Glasgow, then based in UCL in London, now at Queen’s University Belfast. Together we developed LSC_PRINT&PLAY — a downloadable, home 3D-printable version of the chanter that’s still available via Thingiverse. Zexuan contributed significant refinements to the internal bore design, including proposing the square-bore variant that ensures relative consistency of diameters across different printers and materials. That file set has now been downloaded over 2,500 times worldwide.

In 2018, I’d invited, and remotely mentored Malin Lewis — then a student at the music school in Plockton — to build the first wooden version of the Lindsay System chanter. Malin has gone on to do incredible things with the chanter, in performances and recordings, including the soundtrack of The Outrun in 2024, and their debut album Halocline, in the same year.

Since moving to Orkney in 2021, I’ve kept development in progress, quietly in the background. Our time here has been a lot busier than on Ascension – we’re renovating a house, somewhat slowly, and I’ve established an electrical contracting business locally, providing a vehicle to apprentice my son. Meantime, the system has grown in scope and reach, while remaining rooted in its original aims: musical clarity, ergonomic form, and cultural shareability.

The system remains open-source. All designs are released under Creative Commons. This isn’t just idealism — it’s a structural choice. I believe that traditional instruments, like traditional music, belong most fully when they’re made available to others. That belief and trust has largely been met with care, generosity, and rigour by those who’ve engaged with the work.

Next year, 2026, marks two milestones: twenty years since the first prototype conversation with Nigel Richard, in the festival club during Celtic Connections 2006, and ten years since the system graduated from prototyping – to the sound of Chanter 2. I’m planning a modest series of events and teaching days to mark that time — not to celebrate an endpoint, but to affirm a threshold. The work now has community around it – many of whom have invested deeply in the instrument and the design – and the next decade will reveal how, where, and why it is taken forward.

For now, the instrument is speaking, and singing, and growing, and next steps in terms of design development, music, and community building are being planned.

Download the home 3D printable version of the chanter:
www.thingiverse.com/thing:4271780

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📷 Photo above by Nicky Murray

Fiddle players from across Scotland each bring their own regional styles and musical accents, but growing up in the middle of Glasgow, I never really felt like I had a geographical heritage or cultural lineage to belong to. Now, after a decade of following my fiddle round the world and studying degrees in Jazz and Classical violin, I’ve eventually started to settle into a comfortable voice that feels like home.

This process of discovery and self-acceptance has culminated in my debut solo release ‘Close’, an album which celebrates the vibrance and diversity of my upbringing and is rooted in the music of my family. It features performances alongside my mum, gran and auntie as well as three compositions by my late grandfather which, together with a handful of my own tunes, encompass the myriad influences which have come to form my own peculiar, 21^st-century fiddle tradition.

The record is performed on my great, great grandfather’s fiddle, an instrument that’s been passed down through our family for over a hundred years. Below are a couple of posters, advertising concerts in Glasgow at the turn of the last century featuring ‘Jack Hugo’ (his stage name) and “violin recitals by the Geddes Family”.  His grandson was my grandfather, John Maxwell Geddes, a contemporary classical composer and an inspiring educator. Some of my earliest memories are sitting with him, feet dangling below the piano stool, as he showed me round the magic of music and sound.

My granddad’s piece ‘Bartók on Byres Road’ was inspired by hearing a Hungarian busker playing on the same streets in which Bela Bartók stayed during his visit to Glasgow in 1933. The score is headed with a dedication: “to Roo plus any of his cellists” (referring to my mum, gran, auntie and sister) and is performed brilliantly on the album by his daughter – my auntie – Nicola Geddes.

Another of his compositions is an elusive creature I’ve had to temporarily name ‘Ane Fragment O His Ayn’: For as long as I can remember, a tiny, handwritten fragment of his music has hung in the hall of our home and recently, I opened the dusty old frame, hoping for a title or clue, but only found another slip of paper with his initials and a couple of delicate sketches of starlings. I’ve rifled through the archives and called up old composers the length and breadth of the country, but the origins of this one remain a mystery for now… And lastly the final track ‘Lullaby for Ruairidh’ is a short tune he wrote the day I was born which gradually diminuendos “al niente” as the music falls asleep.

Also on the album are two original tunes from my multi-talented mother, Trish Strain, and an arrangement of an ancient Gàidhlig air arranged for fiddle and piano with my gran Lily Geddes. It’s hard to put into words the feelings of connection and affirmation that arose from the chance to make music with them in this way: the immense privilege of having a shared fluency in a language as emotional and transcendent as music with the people you love.

None of us exist in isolation, least of all artists and musicians, and as I moved beyond conceiving of my first “solo release” as being centred around me individually and towards a more collective understanding of my music as something embedded within and growing from family and community, it felt increasingly honest and relevant.

Growing up in the city, and as one of the first generation to grow up with the internet, I had access to an incredible variety of musical cultures within a 15-minute cycle from my home. As a teenager I learned gypsy jazz from playing with Polish-Roma musicians in Clydebank and (with the help of a band-funded fake ID) could go to a trad session or pop/rock open mic night any night of the week. Even the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland was only a couple miles from home. I studied for five years as a traditional fiddle player before completing my undergraduate in classical violin and going on to be the first violinist to graduate from the Jazz Department for my Masters.

The rest of the album is comprised of little vignettes which nod to, and are grateful for, these many traditions which continue to inform and nourish my practice. Track 9, for instance is a retreat march, written in the pipe scale and littered with the idiomatic ornaments and intonations that I’ve grown to love from my exposure to Gàidhlig music. There are a couple tunes inspired by my time in Ireland and northern England, while the opening track conceals secret flirtations with the Indian raag Kaushik Dhwani between two jigs, borrowed from my study of Hindustani music with Glaswegian friends.

There are also compositions of my own which engage more directly with the more Classical sides of my upbringing, such as the ‘Partick Partita’, a work for solo violin that grew out of the  scales and mixed meters of ‘Bartòk on Byres Road’. Dancing across the full register of the instrument with fiery double-stops and intricate left-hand pizzicati, the tune is a technical nightmare – but a fun playground for some of the wilder techniques that have emerged in my playing over recent years.

The process of making the album was greatly helped by funding from the RCS’s ‘Make it Happen Fund’ which provides select funding to recent graduates to help with early-career projects. This enabled us to work with my favourite engineer the world over: Gus Stirrat at his Solas Studios. In four jam packed days we had recorded, mixed and mastered the entire album and I’m immensely grateful for his assiduous effort and boundless encouragement throughout the process.

For the artwork, I spent a morning touring some of the southside’s bonnie tenement closes with photographer extraordinaire Nicky Murray and his amazing analogue gear, before commissioning Glaswegian artist, and old school friend, Laurie O’Dowd to create and design the cover. Their creativity was incredible, and I couldn’t be happier with how the physical manifestation of the music came to life in their hands. One detail that I’m particularly fond of is how Laurie incorporated the tassel which hangs from the scroll of my fiddle for the design of the CD itself. Mum gifted me that tassel when I was a teenager, having worn it on her own fiddle for many years beforehand.

Once we had the physical copies at the end of April, we were ready to launch. We opted for the Partick Burgh Halls, a beautiful community centre run by the council that was built in 1872 and is just down the road from our house! Tickets were free and came with an unlimited supply of tea and biscuits. The date was set for the 8^th of May and soon gathered one of the warmest audiences I’ve had the pleasure of playing for. We ran the album in full, from top to bottom before lingering in the lovely atmosphere of the space for hours telling stories and catching up with one another. It was the perfect way to welcome this music into the world.

I’m continually delighted by the reception of the album, both at home and abroad. In the past couple weeks we’ve had radio stations in California, Alaska, Ireland, Spain and Aotearoa/New Zealand broadcast the tunes on the airwaves. I’ve even had a radio station in Mexico ask to play the tunes! Celtic Music Radio have us scheduled as ‘Album of the Week’ later in June and the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann have invited us to launch the record in Ireland in August. This engagement is particularly heartening given that the album has been released entirely independently.

With the release of ‘Close’, I’m now formally a published solo artist, after over a decade of releasing music with bands and ensembles, and I can’t wait to do more! Touring commitments in Scotland, Spain and India have me fully booked until next year, but I’m hoping to pull together my first run of solo shows upon my return. This year sees the release of albums with ‘Roo & Neil’, ‘Awkward Family Portraits’, ‘Darach’, ‘Niamh Corkey’, ‘The Black Denims’, ‘Donald Lynsey’ and others, though I’m already excited to make a start on writing some more music and to see where we end up next! Thank you all for listening.

‘Close’ is available on bandcamp: roogeddes.bandcamp.com/album/close
Or email Roo directly for a physical copy: [email protected]

📷 Photos by Elly Lucas

Sometimes I procrastinate. During the recording and writing of Outsider book, my skills grew from that of an amateur dilly-dallyer to that of an Olympic level dawdler. The shed was well organised, the garden weeded and the record collections alphabetised. Rooms were repainted, cars hoovered and dogs walked to exhaustion. Not easy with Labradors. Social media posts were queued and multiple excuses were formed and delivered with the creativity and flourish one would expect from someone whose primary function is to make stuff up and sell it.

How did the Outsider project start? I was due to release a new record and, unsurprisingly, I didn’t have a focused idea yet. After It Is What It Is was released in 2021, Jen Anderson (The Bothy Society, Apex Music) was keen to release another of my albums alongside an album-book. I knew that it would be an expensive project and I knew that the deadline for Creative Scotland’s Crowdmatch project was approaching. I am very grateful that two of my previous albums (VIP: Very Interesting Persons and Glasgow) were crowdfunded through the generosity of my fans. I had lost the capital I’d saved to make the next album during lockdown so I hoped that the crowdfunder, with the additional support of Creative Scotland, would raise enough to help me fund this expansive and expensive project.

For the first time ever I had a lot of material to choose from. Forty five unrecorded songs in total. Thirty or so were in very good shape, the rest were fragments or abandoned works in progress. During lockdown I met Francesca de Valence who runs “I Heart Songwriting Club” – an online community of songwriters. She encouraged me to sign up and, due to the club’s song a week philosophy, I was writing more than ever. I added these weekly creations to everything that had been written and remained unrecorded over ten or so years right back to The Bar Room Mountaineers days. It would be unfair to give the impression that I write a song a week. Despite many attempts I have never managed to write a song a week. I think six weeks in a row is my current record.

Selecting which songs would appear on the album was a problem. Jen suggested that I type the titles into a spreadsheet and in the second column write down the themes which featured in each song. This took ages. Mostly because I added some extra columns: beats-per-minute, time signature, key signature, form, if a phone demo existed, if the lyrics were typed up, did I know the chords and what extra work they would require to finish them. I chipped away at this task over a number of weeks and slowly themes began to emerge from the chaos. I had “Man Child”, some political songs, a few anti-war songs and about twenty that fell into the categories of “Outsider in Love” and “Outsider in Life”. This was when I settled on Outsider.

Boo Hewerdine agreed to produce and one weekend he came over to Arran. We whittled the twenty-ish songs down to eighteen, wrote two more thereby whittling the total back up to twenty-ish. That weekend we also listened to a lot of music trying to figure out how the album could sound. I love a late nineties album by Richard Thompson called Mock Tudor. I like the mix between the roar of the full band and intimate acoustic tracks. I also liked the way that the album was divided into three sections: “Metroland”, “Heroes in the Suburbs” and “Street Cries and Stagewhispers”. Inspired by this idea the extended version of Outsider (which is only available with the book), you’ll see that the album has four extra tracks and is divided into “Outsider in Life”, “Outsider in Love” and “Outsiders”. The coincidence here is that based on the demos I’d sent to Boo, his blueprint for the album was Thompson’s Mirror Blue. That album features the same production team as Mock Tudor. We were on the same page from the start, right from the choice of personnel and studios to the final mixes.

Apart from the inevitable logistical juggling to line up diaries, the recording process was reasonably painless (which will be the title of my next album). I did two days with Chris Pepper at his Saltwell Studio and recorded all of the intimate tracks with Chris adding keys, bass and some strange and uncomfortable noises.

A few weeks later we took a band into Chem 19 and recorded all the band songs with Kevin McGuire on bass and Liam Chapman on drums in three days. I returned to Chem19 with engineer Jamie Savage a few weeks later and recorded final acoustic guitars and lead vocals on those tracks. That was only two days although the second day was at least thirteen hours long.

The final two days were just before Christmas 2023 at Angus Lyon’s Gran’s House studio in Lanarkshire. Karina Smillie came and sang backing vocals, Angus added some keys and some of the crowdfunders came for a studio hang and ended up singing on a couple of tracks. I had to leave the session early to catch the last boat from Ardrossan to Brodick. A storm was coming in and if I didn’t leave I wouldn’t have made it back home for Christmas. Exciting times.

In January 2024 we sent the tracks to Mark Freegard to begin mixing. And with that all in hand there was only the album-book to go. That wouldn’t take too long.

What is an album book? An album-book is a great idea in a world where most people stream music. Concert goers buy a lot less merch at the merch table, very few cars come with a CD player and the days of “£50 man” (the man who spent £50 in Fopp every Saturday, the target audience of magazines like Mojo, Word and Uncut) are far behind us. The idea behind the album-book is that while listening to an album on your streaming service of choice you can pour yourself a glass, stretch out on your sofa and read about the album you’re listening to. You can look at pictures and even use the augmented reality function to see video clips. While streaming one often has no idea of the song title, the story behind the song (very important in the world of folk songwriting), the musicians playing on the recording, where it was recorded let alone the make and model of guitar, the brand of strings or the gauge of plectrum (I use a 1mm TF 100 by Wegen). The album-book is an opportunity for an artist to take the sleeve notes of an album and extend them. In my case I extended them to a 154 page full colour coffee table book with augmented reality content.

The phrase “biting off more than I can chew” springs to mind. I am an eternal optimist so the reality of writing a book was far from my mind when I decided to do it. Fellow musicians take note that had it not been for Jen Anderson’s typesetting skills and the proofreading skills of Audrey Hewerdine and Ian Howe, crowdfunders of this project would still be waiting for their books and I would still be trying to figure out which hyphen to use.

This was my third crowdfunder so I knew that I had to take lots of photos and videos of the sessions to share with the funders. Even with that knowledge I didn’t take anywhere near enough for a coffee table book. Thankfully we had access to loads of photographs from Elly Lucas when she visited us in Chem 19 studio. Musicians, should you choose to go down the album-book route, you either need to be incredibly organised or you need to employ a photographer to document every part of the process, a proof-reader/editor and a typesetter. This I learned the hard way.

I will write it while I am away on tour. How hard can it be? It turns out driving the length and breadth of the UK, sound-checking, feeding myself, finding the hotel and repeating is not where I do my best writing. In fact it is not where I do any writing. I do a lot of listening and I get a lot of ideas for songs and things but no actual sitting at an open laptop typing in words took place. There was always some reason I couldn’t write. Too tired, too busy and tomorrow were the primary reasons.

On one tour I listened to John Higgs’ brilliant book The KLF: Chaos, Magic and the Band Who Burned a Million Pounds, their have-a-go attitude inspired me to at least get started. On a subsequent tour I listened to Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being. I so wanted his book to be rubbish. I so wanted it to be filled with useless airy-fairy pseudo spiritual guff. It was neither of those things, in fact it was the turning point for all the writing I did despite featuring a gong between each chapter. Rubin’s book inspired me to take the short paragraph on songwriting Jen had asked for and to turn it into a proper deep dive into my techniques, finally setting down a lot of the things I talk about in workshops. I learned a lot about what I do simply by writing it down. I wrote a very silly thing about audio mastering which a few of my sound engineer pals have enjoyed. It is very niche but it was a pleasing thing to write. The book allowed me the space to write about things that I talk about with other songwriters and musicians. A load of interesting and amusing things that deserve to be shared with the general public but never make it out of the dressing room, the green room or the table in the corner of a bar after a show.

With the CD pressed, the book proofed and typeset it only remained to gather the augmented reality content. We have some great little films from the studio, a flick book of my original notebook where you can see the songs forming on the page, Elly Lucas’s entire cover photoshoot from the woods above Brodick and a whole lot of other interesting things. People who buy the book download an app and when they hold their phone or tablet over certain photographs they come to life. There’s even a little cartoon of my dog Floraidh and I running up the Fairy Glen. Over the course of the Outsider project I struggled with old technology like paper diaries and word processing packages so you can imagine that there were a few nail biting weeks waiting for the Fireside app to work. Poor Jen had the thankless task of testing each of the pieces of AR content on various old and new Android and Apple devices.

Thankfully Outsider is finally out, released at last on the 4th April on The Bothy Society label. I am now blundering in another landscape, the land of Whatnext. Despite being well trodden, Whatnext still remains completely unmapped. Many cartographers have tried but its ever changing features make it hard to translate into two dimensions. “Just make a list”, they say but that would involve sitting down for long enough to make a list.

Readers should note that this blog was delivered late because I believed (optimistically) that I would find time to write it while teaching at Adult Fèis Rois in Ullapool. Some people never learn.

Outside Album and Coffee Table Book available here.