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more as a result of lucky coincidence – which tends to be the truest catalyst for great music making.


Thus, while they may superficially appear as simply a rousing Celtic band guaranteed to get the joint jumping – and there’s nowt wrong with that, brothers and sisters – the colourful flavours they seamlessly and organically inject into it – inflections of jazz, Latin, reggae, hip hop and African music – identify them as some- thing uniquely wonderful besides.


The results have certainly tested the wit of those responsible for such things to explain their music in a catchy media- friendly tag line. ‘Celtic fusion’, ‘folktroni- ca’, ‘sonic ceilidh’ and, best of all, ‘croft rock’, are some of the fatuous descriptions bandied around in their name. Journalists, eh? Few bands, though, fit quite so neatly our own magazine’s little sub-heading… “local music from out there”.


It has all brought them rewards a-


plenty. Mantelpiece decorations (twice Live Act Of The Year at the Scots Tradition- al Music Awards, nomination for Best Live Act at the 2012 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards); headline appearances at almost any festi- val you care to name; an ambassadorial role in Sri Lanka assisting Scotland’s suc- cessful bid to host this year’s Common- wealth Games; thrilled audiences every- where from Botswana to Borneo; seven acclaimed albums; the biggest CD sellers of the entire 2012 Womad festival in the UK; numerous trips with be-suited dignitaries promoting Scotland in different parts of the world… and all the while maintaining the sort of humility and wide-eyed down- to-earth attitude that too often flies out of the window at the first whiff of success.


There was no thought or suggestion of any of this when they played their first gig for a 21st birthday party in Skye on May 31, 1991.


“No, I don’t remember too much about it,” says Peter Morrison wistfully, “though I remember the girl whose birth- day it was. It was a totally different line-up then. I was playing drums, Innes was play- ing bass guitar, a lad from Skye was play- ing fiddle and we had a guitarist and singer and we were doing stuff like Tell Me Ma. We were a pub band really. Then we started playing original tunes in a funky way and it all began to change. It soon became obvious that what people really liked was the dancey stuff.”


Morrison is Skye born and bred where, in the custom of the island, he was playing bagpipes almost from a toddler.


“Piping teachers go round the primary schools so every child gets the chance to learn to play at the age of eight. I started basically because the teacher’s husband at my primary school used to pipe in Santa so that’s why I got involved. And when I was at secondary school a mate of mine across the road played the accordeon so by the time I was thirteen we were playing in dance bands in pubs. And by the time I was fifteen I was playing three or four nights a week in ceilidh bands.”


At the time the prospect of anyone making a living out of playing bagpipes was several light years beyond the hori- zon, so Peter took employment as a joiner, getting his musical fix playing ceilidh music… and indeed any other music he chanced on at the time, twee country music included. And when his parents took over the Dunvegan Hotel on the Duirinish Peninsula, the place was bursting at the


seams with dance music blaring out of the place, Peter Morrison invariably, inevitably in the middle of it.


S


“Oh it was a real hub in those days, the guys still reminisce there about the ceilidh dance days,” he laughs. “Hundreds of people would come. The good old days… before the drink driving laws came in! But nobody ever thought they could make a living playing. Musicians were just part of the community. Great characters. You just wanted to emulate them and be good in the local community.”


kye is very different now, of course. A steady influx of out- siders buying up holiday and retirement homes and keeping themselves to themselves have changed the nature of the place, while the young folk head in the opposite direc- tion, with homogenisation being traded for local culture.


“When I was young, every croft had haystacks and kids would be climbing cliffs and building rafts and going out to sea and there were sheep everywhere. Now they’ve all got their own little castles – people retiring to Skye with fences around their beautiful gardens.”


Peter still lives on Skye though, still plays weekly pub sessions on the island, still remains fervently true to the core val- ues that fuelled him in the first place. He also still fervently believes that whatever else occurs in the music the tune is king. And he still can’t quite believe the events of the last two decades that have pro- pelled Peatbog Faeries to the heights they’ve achieved, taking him all over the world and allowing him to live the dream.


Nothing connected to Peatbog Faeries was ever planned. They were just a bunch of guys who happened to be in the same place at the same time, discovered mutual musical interests and got together to see what happened. Endless queues of musicians have passed through the ranks in the intervening years, each bringing their own particular style, influences, background, experience, skill and nuances to subtly shift their style and move the band on. At one point Hutton and Morri- son stop to try and work out exactly how many musicians have been Peatbogs through the years, “Well,” says Innes pur- posefully, “we’ve had about four drum- mers, two guitarists, four or five keyboard players and countless fiddle players…” The project is swiftly abandoned.


But they’ve only ever one bagpiper and – apart from one gig when he had an ill-advised cup of coffee and ended up in hospital – one bass player.


“We regard ourselves as musical mav- ericks,” says that bass player, apparently suffering no ill effects from the sudden injection of caffeine. “We’ve ploughed our own furrow. We’re a real band. As real as you can get. We’re not a band put togeth- er with the best musicians around – we started because we were all in the same place at the same time. We’re not fabricat- ed, we evolved naturally. I laugh at these young lads who just use their second names as if they are 60 years old. What’s that all about?”


Morrison warms to the point. “It’s dif- ficult because there are so many amazing young musicians around now and they feel the pressure. They’ve gone through all the courses and then they have to find work. But you can’t do it instantly. People like us and Shooglenifty and Capercaillie,


it’s taken us years. Classic bands always had great characters but not necessarily the best musicians. They may not have the greatest guitarists or drummers but it works. Ringo wasn’t even the best drum- mer in the Beatles!”


When the Faeries got going in earnest there wasn’t much of a prece- dent. Shooglenifty were making inroads and there were people like Ceolbeg, Davey Spillane, Wolfestone and even Martyn Bennett pursuing big band adventures, but precious little else in Scotland at the time. And if there were other people pursuing a similar path, they took little notice of them.


Around 1995 they pressed 500 copies of a recording to sell locally at gigs and used the money to finance a four-track demo in a proper studio in Edinburgh. Ian Green signed them to his Greentrax label on the back of it and they were up and running, releasing their first official album Mellowosity in 1996. It apparently cost Green a lot more to make than he’d bar- gained for, but was still among the Green- trax all-time best-sellers many years later so he presumably recouped the investment.


With the tune-writing of Peter Morri- son the main catalyst of the band’s style, subsequent albums Faerie Stories (2000), Welcome To Dun Vegas (2003), Croftwork (2005), What Men Deserve To Lose (2007), Live (2009) and Dust (2011) serve as useful markers of their development, progress and ever-changing personnel. They also confirm a rampant talent for inventing entertaining titles for some of their best tunes…The Folk Police, Ironing Maiden, There’s A Girl Behind The Bar Thinks She’s Garbo, Scots On The Rocks, Drone Age and The Great Ceilidh Swindle included.


Apart from Morrison and Hutton, one of their key components now is guitarist Tom Salter, who supplies the glorious runs and licks that inject them with delicious African flavours. Salter, who also fronts the big band La Boum, became a Faerie in 2000, replacing their previous guitarist who had a fear of flying and bit right through his tongue while terrified on a particularly scary flight between Namibia and Botswana.


With little previous experience of tra- ditional music, Tom Salter wasn’t the most obvious replacement. The first time Ali Farka Touré played in Scotland, Salter went to see him in Ullapool and was com- pletely blown away. They hit it off and Salter spent much of 1989 playing guitar with Ali at his hut in Timbuktu. Now, with a doctorate in ethnomusicology and plen- ty of experience playing not only with Farka Touré but late greats like Zimbab- wean guitarist Jonah Sithole and Biggie Tembo of the Bhundu Boys, there’s not a lot he doesn’t know about African music… and even less he can’t play.


Morrison: “It’s funny. When we meet African bands and Tom starts talking to them, they just can’t believe it. He’s really encyclopædic – he starts talking about these jazz bands from the 1940s and they’re going ‘Whaaat? How do you know all this stuff?’”


“He didn’t play trad music at all and


we weren’t sure about it at first but once we tried him and saw what he could bring to the band there were no doubts. He introduces ideas that trad players wouldn’t think about in a million years. Other gui- tarists can make things sound African but he is an African guitarist basically.


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