ALTHOUGH HE IS now unable to continue that exploration with an instrument in his hands, he has not been deflected from doing so via an alternative route. Glen Lyon (2002) and his new album, Grit, both draw on his expertise in the recording studio, and reflect a shift of interest from instrumental music to song.
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Glen Lyon featured the voices of his family, in the person of his great, great grandfather, Peter Stewart, and his mother, singer Margaret Bennett. In Grit he took a more wide-ranging approach, drawing on fragments of songs from the two traditions he feels are closest to his heart, Gaelic songs and the songs of the travellers.
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The disc, which is dedicated to the memory of the late Hamish Henderson, features a variety of sampled voices in both song and storytelling mode, including Sheila Stewart, Lizzie Higgins, Mairi Morrison, Flora MacNeil, Jeannie Robertson, and Jimmie McBeath, among others. It has some parallels in both concept and execution with Glen Lyon.
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“A few people have said that,” he conceded, “although to be honest I didn’t realise it myself. The basic thing is that it is now songs I’m working with. I was tied up for many years in instrumental music, which I think is really important and love very much, but it’s not really what turns me on anymore. Songs are the way forward for me.
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“When I was working on Grit I didn’t have any means of getting together with anyone over a period of two years or so, and I couldn’t really go out into public places, because of the chemotherapy and the radiotherapy and a bone marrow transplant I was having. So it was really a matter of being surrounded by old records, and it was actually Kirsten [Martyn’s wife, also a musician] who picked out a record one night and said ‘who are the Stewarts of Blair?’.
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“I started explaining to her who they were and how I knew them. I’ve known them since I was a wee boy, really, especially Sheila. I knew Belle as well, but was probably closest to Sheila. I wrote tunes for them and so on when I was growing up, and they were very inspiring to me. They seemed to be [he lowers his voice in mock-portentous fashion] the real McCoy, you know?
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“Did you see that programme on Margaret Fay Shaw on television last night?” he digressed, referring to the BBC documentary celebrating the 100th birthday of that famous Hebridean song collector. “I went to see her about five years ago, and I had my dreadlocks at the time. She said [imitates her transatlantic accent and intonation] ‘why have you got your hair like that?’, and I didn’t know what to say, so I just said ‘vanity’, and she came back with ‘Oh, you flatter yourself!’
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“She isn’t a woman to pull her punches,” he laughs, “but what struck me was that I think she got that music just at the right time when she arrived in Lewis – I’m not sure that anyone after that has really been able to see and hear what traditional music is all about, without academic or commercial considerations coming into play.
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“Anyway, I was drawing on these records I had, which represented my experience of what I would consider to be the real tradition. I think there are very few people of my age who had a real glimpse of that, and a lot of the people I heard singing in festivals like Auchtermuchty and Kirriemuir and so forth are now gone. I feel privileged to have had that experience, and even as a kid I was genuinely taken with that music.
I’d like to do another project in this style, actually, because there are still a lot of singers I would love to include, and I’d simply like to see it done, and hopefully done well.”
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