Ten years ago the thought that I would make my living as a professional musician hadn’t yet crossed my mind. My career aspirations had swung from being a secretary to farmer to vet and towards the end of school I had planned to follow in my mother’s footsteps and go to art college. So how did I end up as a singer?
I took piano lessons from the age of seven but after a few years swapped to piano accordion. This opened the door to the world of Scottish country dance bands, ceilidh bands and accordion festivals - not the trendiest of scenes for a girl of fourteen. Saturday mornings were often spent nervously playing a march, strathspey and reel medley on a vast stage at box and fiddle competitions. I had varying success at these events and I’m not sure that it did my nerves any good though my greatest achievement was becoming National Mod Champion aged eighteen.
I decided to end on a high point and retired from accordion competitions after that. My accordion teacher was Keith Dickson. Every Sunday afternoon I would travel to Lanarkshire to rehearse with ‘KODA’ a band made up of Keith’s pupils. It’s with KODA that I cut my teeth as a singer, for some reason I can’t recall I was chosen to be the singer (Keith having already added a piper, drummer and fiddler to the fifteen strong accordion line up).
I spent several years as the band’s front woman introducing the material and singing songs ranging from Gaelic mouth music to Shania Twain covers…. As much as I cringed through my shyness I now look back on that time as when I gained confidence in talking to an audience and I find when I go to gigs today the way the performer presents and talks about their material bears a lot on how much I enjoy the gig.
In 1999 I heard about a Scottish Music degree course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. I had been performing regularly in KODA and the school ceilidh band and attended the few local sessions there were in my area but hadn’t considered that I could take my interest in traditional music further. The deadline for applications
had already passed but fortunately I was granted a late audition, was accepted and off I went.
Moving to Glasgow was a bit of a culture shock. To suddenly meet other young people who shared this love for traditional music was a revelation. My first year at RSAMD opened my eyes to the wealth of material and different strands to Scottish folk music. Having always had an interest in history and generally all things old, I loved spending time looking through the song collections in the academy library and listening to field recordings of traditional singers. Learning about our big ballads, the stories and imagery of them blew me away. I spent my first year with accordion as my principal study but soon found that singing was my passion so from second year onwards I swapped to principal study Scots song with accordion as second study. The Scottish music degree course was still relatively new during my years there and was constantly changing and developing so it had its flaws, but all in all I don’t think I would have ended up doing what I do had I not taken that path.
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