A couple of new-ish jigs. The first is ‘Tunnock Law‘ which was written for my wife and a long running birthday tradition. No matter how small the Hebridean island the (tiny) local store will always have Tunnock’s teacakes by way of a birthday cake and they have to be eaten on the beach. A ‘Law’ is is also a hill round these parts and a veritable mountain of Tunnock’s featured at one significant birthday!
‘The Man Who Laid an Egg‘ was written for fellow musician and very good friend Mark Bazeley.
Here’s a wee little schottische written for our 25th (silver) wedding anniversary. Composed on the concertina – it fits really nice on pipes and fiddle as well.
Recorded in the loft whilst in COVID isolation – the room service was excellent ..
Refubished: 2009 by that nice Mr Gibb @ theboxplace – incl pads, valves, thumbstraps & retuning
The concertina came to me (~2008) from a lady who was sorting out her grandfathers effects – the only history I have is “he’d had it all his life” – but I doubt that was from new. You can see in the photos that the fretwork has slots for bowing levers. There is no mechanism and indeed there are no airholes in the actionboard base or the reedpan (i.e. it was built like this). Leather case is OK for storage but I’d recommend a new case if you’re you going to be taking it out.
It’s an excellent player – classic Aeola versatility, ready to go and just looking for the right person to make beautiful music with.
It’s just over two years since Veteran Records release my CD: O’er Lang at the Fair. Traditional music is very much a niche musical audience; physical CDs are still very much the norm and I’ve probably met a fair number of the people who’ve bought the CD (thank you!).
Through the wonders of modern technology and by properly keeping up with music cataloguing standard, John has now made the whole of his catalogue available as digital downloads. All of this means you can now find me on loads of digital download services: play.com, emusic, amazon (and also once the catalogues update: hmv.com, itunes, napster)
John is also distributing the recordings from the sadly short lived Kyloe Records label – on which you can find the marvellous Andrew & Margaret Watchorn (Lecchemede) and the virtuso playing of Mr Chris Ormston on ‘Time Out of Mind’ . Sadly the Kyloe recordings aren’t available just yet – fingers crossed we’ll be able to keep these recordings available.