was like previous releases; a mix of traditional songs combined with my own compositions, the success of which culminated in me being voted ‘Scots Singer of the Year’ at the Scots Trad Music Awards in 2008.
On the songwriting front I was asked to take part in a few collaborative songwriting projects; one called ‘Burnsong’ (2007) which brought together writers from various musical genres and the other ‘The Darwin Song Project’ (2009) which was commission by Shrewsbury Folk Festival to mark the bi-centenary of Charles Darwin’s birth.
Also in 2009 we added two new releases to White Fall Record’s catalogue; Jamie’s solo album ‘In Transit’ and a duo album of Robert Burns songs titled ‘Adoon Winding Nith’ as Burns celebrated the 250th anniversary of his birth that year. Alongside my solo career I’ve gotten to work with many of my musical heroes, most recently I opened for Richard Thompson on his UK tour in 2009 and was asked to be part of the line up for Meltdown Festival in his year as curator in 2010. Over the years I have been fortunate to tour not only in the UK but also throughout Europe, Australasia, Russia, North America and Japan. It fascinates me that I can earn a living singing songs for people and I take pride in being an ambassador for Scotland. I am patriotic, though not fiercely so.
My new album ‘Traiveller’s Joy’ was recorded through the summer of 2010. 2010 was my busiest year yet for touring, particularly overseas and most of the songs I wrote for
it were inspired by people or places encountered on the road. From January to March Jamie and I toured as a duo for ten weeks in New Zealand and Australia. We originally planned to have the new album ready for the autumn of 2010 so I had taken various scribbles of ideas and song lyrics with me on the tour and on our time off we were quite disciplined about sitting down and arranging new material.
When we returned to the UK at the start of April we bought our first house and so while my Dad (a retired builder) project managed the restoration of our stone cottage we continued living in the house that we rented and recorded the new album away from the dust and noise. I’ll never forget that summer; days were taken up with rushing into town to choose tiles, paint colour and carpets and evenings spent recording as each project moved along at a similar pace. So, come the autumn we decided to take a breather and hold off releasing the album until the New Year. We also had to get back on the road for tours in North America , Russia and Denmark so delaying the album’s release was definitely the right decision. It wasn’t until I sat down to look at the songs I had recorded that the travelling theme threaded through it occurred to me. As well as the songs written on the road I noticed that quite a few of the traditional tracks I
had chosen could be traced back to the travelling people of Scotland. Having toured as a duo for the majority of 2009 I didn’t have a set line up for a band and so we asked the musicians we most wanted to play on it which included Nashville’s Stuart Duncan on fiddle (who I had been lucky enough to work with on Transatlantic Sessions 4), our good friend Alan Doherty from Dublin on flute and whistles, Australia’s James Fagan on bouzouki, Icelandic Scot Signy Jakobsdottir on percussion and aside from me, the only other Scot, Duncan Lyall on double bass. Jamie played guitar and fiddle as well as engineering and producing the album.Over the nine years we have worked together Jamie and I have learnt a great deal about the music business, from planning and booking tours to running a label to Jamie also branching out into recording engineering, producing, graphic design and building websites.
I guess for us learning to manage these things came partly from wanting to maintain an element of control over our music and
products but often it’s more a case of that there isn’t always the funds available to pay someone else! But I’m happy to say that in all that time we’ve never made a regrettable move. In an ideal world I would love to be able to dedicate all of my time to performing and creating music, however I don’t think I’ve ever met a musician, especially not
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