root salad f20 Fraser Anderson
CD impresses bank manager: house becomes concert venue. Career! Sarah Coxson hears unlikely DIY tale.
I
met a nice man at the Showcase Scotland reception at this year’s Folk Alliance. He was slightly dewy-eyed as Karine Polwart took to the stage. “Spot the ex-pat Scot,” he joked, and warmly pressed his CD, Little Glass Box, into my hands… as is the traditional greeting at such an event.
I listened to the CD on my return
home. Tender-hearted songwriting, beautifully warm, spacious production and super-tight playing. Then I got an email from him. Fraser Anderson, that’s his name.
“I know you’re busy, but I thought I would give you a little bit of background.”
This, of course, is a potential fork in
the road… but I chose to read on. He’d left Scotland six years ago, having a sec- ond album written but no funds to record it properly.
“My wife suggested we sell our home to raise the money, which we did. We took out a map of Europe, and Grace covered her eyes and dropped an index finger randomly on the map to decide where we would move to and have an adventure.”
Hold up! Just like that?
“Her finger landed on the south of France so we found a place online and, with our three young children, old cat and two guitars, we drove towards our unknown future.”
Whoa…Grace is some woman I think.
And so the story unfolds – how the album Coming Up For Air got recorded in Paris, how Bob Harris’ plaudits earned him some recognition and airtime, how they embarked on their reckless adventure…
“We found an old house that had been empty for over 40 years, covered in ivy with an eight foot tall wild garden. We enquired about the place and found it was for sale. By this stage however we had practically run out of money so, armed with only a tiny deposit and the album, we went to see our French bank manager. After a week of him listening to the record, he told us that he liked the album so much that he would give us a mortgage on the place! I’m trying to keep this as brief as possi- ble... hope you’re still with me.”
A mortgage? Of course, I am still with him. A mortgage! On the strength of an album!?
My curiosity well and truly piqued, I got back in touch.
D
A Perth Music College alumnus, Fraser Anderson kicked off his career as Dougie MacLean’s backing vocalist. Indeed, Dougie was the catalyst for Fraser’s deci- sion to do what he now does. Seeing him play a solo gig at Perth Theatre, “the power of one man and a guitar smacked me right between the eyes.”
uring this concert, Dougie had mentioned his new bar in Dunkeld, where they were running an open stage folk club. Fraser turned up to play a few songs, and found himself invited to Dougie’s studio and then signed up for backing vocals in his band for the next few years.
Fraser now has three of his own albums under his belt, and a fourth raring to go. In recent times, he has opened for artists as varied as Joan Armatrading, The Low Anthem and Chuck Berry!
But it hasn’t all been a duck walk, as the
email suggested. Moving into the CD-mort- gaged house and turning a tired old build- ing into a home needed further funding.
“So we began a house concert series with me playing every Saturday. For a while this was my job. I made up a poster, put it inside an old vintage frame and tied the frame to a rickety old push bike and leaned it against the wall by our house. 'Concert ce soir' it read. We promoted the shows and, week after week, we had a room of 30 people, all paying to hear me play and buying CDs. I have such great memories of those nights.“
As Fraser began to perform new mate- rial, regulars would ask him where they could buy the songs. “I haven't recorded them yet,” he would say. And so this “pas- sionately supportive local community” of house concert regulars raised the money to record Little Glass Box “and I found myself with a budget that allowed me to find some wonderful players.”
By wonderful players, Fras- er is not exaggerating. The ses- sion musician roll-call includes Max Middleton on piano (known for his work with Jeff Beck), Martin Ditcham on drums (Rolling Stones), Dick Pierce on trumpet (Ronnie Scott’s quin- tet), singer Paul Tiernan (Dono- van, Hot House Flowers, Mary Black, Beth Orton)… and a cer- tain Danny Thompson on bass,
“Danny is my dream bass
player. I was given more cash to play with than I expected. So, with a rush of blood to the head and the spirit of ‘you never know,’ I threw him a quick email with a mp3 of Rag And Bones. He replied the next day saying he'd love to work with me.”
The resulting version of this song is not only on Fraser’s CD, but also on Danny’s recent com- pilation. “It was to celebrate his amazing career. Rag And Bones ended up being placed along- side John Martyn, Richard Thompson and a few others. So for me to be on that album was pretty cool.”
“I must be the luckiest guy on the planet. We don't believe in aiming to make life more and more comfortable as is the way for most people. Billy Connolly once said, ‘Stay away from the beige!’ We try to live by that.”
www.fraseranderson.com F
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