49 f Much Treachery
There are a lot of them, they have bagpipes and banjos, and they come from Glasgow. Be very afraid, it’s the Treacherous Orchestra. Christopher Conder takes his life into his hands…
T
his story begins on a warm weekend in July in 2013. I’ve been invited to the charming Priddy Folk Festival in an undulating, bucolic corner of Somerset to absorb the gentle atmo- sphere and meet Glasgow’s Treacherous Orchestra. There are twelve in the group, all dressed in various punky, mono chrome costumes. The festival has had to have the marquee stage especially elongated to fit them all on.
The Orchestra are the latest in a long line of bands emerging from the vibrant Scottish scene that have been mixing trad music with electronica, rock and worldly sounds since the pioneering work of Capercaillie, Mouth Music, Shooglenifty and Martyn Bennett in the ’90s. The gre- garious Ali Hutton, plastered in black eye- liner, plays pipes and whistles alongside his old friend, the tall, floppy-haired pin- up Ross Ainslie, who, only the day before, gave a jaw-dropping performance with
Jarlath Henderson and Mattheu Watson. Impish Irishman Éamonn Coyne acts as the father-figure of the group and plays the banjo, and was seen earlier during the festival in a duo with Lau’s Kris Drev- er. Top-hatted accordeon player John Somerville joins Éamonn centre-stage, and to their left stand fiddlers Innes Wat- son and Adam Sutherland, contrarily dressed in traditional sequined pipers’ costumes. Kevin O’Neil and Martin O’Neil, brothers only in music, take the flute and bodhran duties respectively, and things get rockier on the backline with Barry ‘Spad’ Reid on electric guitar and Fraser Stone on drums. The outfit is completed by Duncan Lyall on the double bass, dressed as a skeleton, and the lanky fig- ure of touring member Steve Byrnes Haberlin on acoustic guitar.
The festival draws to a close early on
its final day, so the Orchestra’s headlining slot takes place on a hot Sunday after- noon in a sweaty marquee. I’m feeling a
little weary and bleary, and I’m at the younger end of the age spectrum here, so I worry that the Orchestra’s bombastic style, mixing relentless riffs, grungey gui- tar and a touch of electronics, may have been mis-scheduled. I’m happily proved wrong as the band exhorts an initially reluctant crowd to get onto their feet, and eventually has the whole tent bop- ping along.
I spoke with Éamonn, Adam, Ross and John in the hospitality tent before their show and asked about the band’s origins. Adam began: “Some of the members of the band started a session in a pub [the Ben Nevis] in a sleepy part of town in about 2001. It’s fair to mention there are now pub sessions every single night of the week in Glasgow. Glasgow itself has become a complete melting pot. It’s prob- ably the most exciting place in Scotland to live if you want to go and have tunes or lis- ten. Treacherous was a bit of a formalising of a collective.”
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