I think part of the reason that we still enjoy Blazin’ Fiddles so much is that alt- hough we are all full-time musicians, we have never been a full-time band. We’ve always kept fairly busy, but there has been plenty time apart and room for other projects, so that getting together has al- ways been something to look forward to. I’ve often reflected that had we been on the road 24/7, the pace of our socialising alone would have killed us, or worse!
I should point out that the line up at the moment is myself (Allan Henderson), Bruce MacGregor, Jenna Reid, Iain Mac- Farlane (all fiddle), Anna Massie (guitar & fiddle) and Andy Thorburn (Keyboards). Jenna joined last year, replacing long- time member and fellow Shetlander Catriona MacDonald. Like any band, we’ve had occasional line up changes, but they always seem to have happened at a good time, and the new incumbent has always added a fresh impetus and helped us maintain our energy. For me, there has always been an element of “one never truly leaves the regiment,” and I still think of former members like Catriona, Aidan O’Rourke, Duncan Chis- holm and Marc Clement as part of Blazin’ Fiddles. You share some pretty unique experiences with people when you’re in a band, and you always have that shared experience between you.
Our aims were always to celebrate and preserve the fiddle music of the Scot- tish Highlands and Islands, and our new album, ‘Thursday Night in the Caley’, sees us remain true to that. We do tend to compose more of our own material now, but that is still part of a continuous line, and very much based in our fiddle traditions. Having said that, there are no boundaries to what we will play. I don’t think music should be pigeonholed, and we certainly don’t have any hang-ups about exploring new avenues. Nothing happens in isolation, and the fiddle music of the Highlands is only a very small part of a worldwide tradition, which continues
to develop and have an influence on more mainstream and popular cultures. It is right and noble to wish to protect traditional cultures, but they should not be vacuum packed.
I think our attitude was best summed up by our ‘Strings Attached’ project in 2005. This saw us working with singer / songwriters like Eddie Reader, Colin MacIntyre (Mull Historical Society) and Justin Currie (Del Amitri), under the musical guidance of Rick Taylor. The idea had come to Bruce MacGregor after waking up at a party one night to find some guy banging out a Del Amitri song on an old guitar, while everyone else gave it shaft with the vocals. It suddenly hit Bruce that this was folk music. It was the music of the people just like any other. We felt that if we could get together with some of the people that had created these songs, we could show that we were all part of an unbro- ken link. Songs like ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ are to people today what much of our music was to people one hundred or two hundred years ago, and continues to be to this day, just as ‘Nothing Ever Happens’ will be in two hundred years time, if you see what I mean.
We were incredibly lucky to have two such respected musicians as Iain MacDonald and John McCusker to produce our first two al- bums (‘Fire On’ & ‘The Old Style’) respectively, but since number three (‘Magnificent Seven’), we’ve done our own production, and that has
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