41 f “T
he first time Patsy and I talked about making music together we decided we wanted to do something uplifting and not be boxed in. It doesn’t have to be all Perthshire or Shetland or Scandinavian or whatever; as long as it’s a great tune, then we’ll go for it and we’ll bring our own cultural bits and pieces to it. If we want to play an African tune, why not? It’s more about what you can do with the material – as long as it’s strong, melody rules.”
Patsy: “With Breabach so often people would come up with tunes or songs and someone would say ‘No we can’t do that because it just doesn’t sound like Breabach.’ But nothing is defini- tively Vamm – we can play anything and make it Vamm and long may it be so.”
Another dictum is that, while all three members sing, they’ve decided to be totally instrumental.
“I’ve spent a lifetime with promoters who see a woman fiddle player and assume she’ll be singing a few songs,” says Catriona. “But if you have a technique that is lyrical it connects with people. If you hear an instrumental group playing the same thing for two hours then even I’d say ‘Please give us a song’ but if you use all the colours at your disposal – and I think this band does – then I don’t think anyone needs vocals.”
Patsy: “You see it so often, instrumental bands doing a token
song. And it’s always the weakest thing. Vice versa, a lot of singing bands feel they have to play a token tune set. I’d rather play everything the very best we can do it rather than just try to tick a box. World class singers don’t feel the need to suddenly pick up a fiddle and play a tune and rightly so. That’s their voice and the fiddle and mandola are our voices. We keep the singing for the pub afterwards.”
Have mandola can travel, they feel they can pitch up any- where and give an audience a great show. The other day they did- n’t blink an eyelid when the PA went down mid-set and just car- ried on without amplification, taking their audience with them. It’s the sort of intimacy that simply wouldn’t have been possible in Catriona and Patsy’s previous bands and they glory in the organic warmth of it all. Not that they reject technology totally – Patsy has taken to sparingly using a loop pedal but is adamant that it will only be used as a valid enhancement and not gimmick. Apart from one track, the album is refreshingly clear of studio trappings.
“Would having sixteen fiddle parts really make any difference to the record?” says Catriona. “We did talk about putting over- dubs on some of the bass things, but even we didn’t appreciate how big the sound spectrum is with just the three of us, so we decided to leave it as it is.”
They can certainly crank up the action when required as they proved in one evening at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections fes- tival earlier this year. After playing a lovely set full of light and shade, elegance and charm in front of an attentive audience at the Tron Theatre, they moved to the late night festival club where they tapped into the mood of celebratory frenzy and whipped up a veritable storm.
“Oh, we rocked out that night,” laughs Patsy Reid. “The three of us play a lot of harmony lines and Marit’s spectrum is from dou- ble bass range to fiddle range so that gives us a lot of scope. There’s a lot of space for us to use – it’s like a sweet shop – and it’s a lot of fun. For us it’s a perfect time and a perfect match.”
Vamm can be caught in late August at Towersey Folk Festival (Friday 23rd) and the Edinburgh Fringe (Saturday 24th).
vamm.co.uk F
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