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FOLK THEATRE KARINE POLWART: WIND RESISTANCE Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, Fri 3–Sat 11 Nov; A Pocket of Wind Resistance is released Fri 17 Nov by Hudson Records INDIE FOLK PICTISH TRAIL Glad Café, Glasgow, Fri 17 Nov; Alterative Peers Ball, Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh, Sat 25 Nov
Until last summer, it would have been reasonable to refer to Karine Polwart as a folk singer and leave it at that. Then she wrote a piece with a more storytelling aspect based on the flight of geese over her local moor near Fala in Midlothian, a piece ‘with shoogly links to ecology, midwifery, and local history,’ she says. ‘Two days later I performed it at the Traverse Bar in Edinburgh, where the Royal Lyceum Theatre’s artistic director David Greig saw it. He said if I could get him a brochure description within 48 hours, he’d like the Lyceum to pitch it for the Edinburgh International Festival that summer. It was that sudden.’ Wind Resistance went on to become a substantial and very deserved hit with
critics and audiences. ‘Truthfully, I didn’t expect to be performing it still, more than a year on,’ she says. ‘It’s a fairly expensive piece of work to stage compared to your average acoustic gig, but it’s brilliant that there’s life in it still. I’m not quite done with it yet.’ Next year it visits Cardiff, Perth and hopefully London. For the moment, however, Wind Resistance returns to the Lyceum as Polwart
and composer Pippa Murphy release an adaptation of the piece on record. Beyond this, she now sees new opportunities for theatrical and compositional work. ‘Wind Resistance has been a proper gear shift in terms of what others think I can do,’ she says, ‘as well as a massive personal confidence boost in terms of my own ideas and ambitions.’ (David Pollock)
Your new tour poster, in which you appear to be sicking up strawberry milk, frightens us, we tell Lost Map label boss Johnny Lynch, aka Pictish Trail. ‘It frightens me, as well,’ he replies. ‘Too many tour posters these days are of plaintive, bearded singer-songwriters, looking earnest. I’ve been guilty of it, myself. It’s vomit inducing. Similarly, I’m using this tour as an opportunity to regurgitate some of the Pictish back catalogue. Earlier in the year I did some stripped-back reworkings of songs from my last album Future Echoes – I’ll be trying to recreate them in intimate venues with Suse Bear, who produced the new versions, and John B McKenna, aka Monoganon, who will also be opening.’ Despite the lack of a new album this year, it’s been a busy one for Lynch. Over
the summer the BBC’s The One Show came to film his Howlin’ Fling festival on Eigg. ‘I tried my best to put them off, as it’s exactly the sort of show I despise,’ he says, ‘but I’m also not very good at saying “no” to people.’ He’s also toured with his own band and with his old friend from Fife, KT Tunstall, and signed a Future Echoes reissue and his next album with Fire Records.
‘Lost Map has a lot of new releases planned over the next six months, from Monoganon, Alabaster dePlume, Bas Jan, Firestations, Savage Mansion and others, and the thing I’m most excited about is our new music residency on Eigg . . . Things are going good, I think. Just insanely busy.’ (David Pollock)
TRIBUTE CONCERT FOR STEWART St Luke’s, Glasgow, Fri 24 Nov
The late Stewart Cruickshank represented all that was enthusiastic, unpretentious and conscientious about bespoke radio production by fans for fans. Over his 35-year career at Radio Scotland and as a freelance
radio producer, Cruickshank championed so many Scottish musicians at all stages of their careers, via the curated playlists of Rock on Scotland and Beat Patrol, the jazz programme Be- Bop to Hip-Hop and folk shows Celtic Connections – from which the festival took its name – and Travelling Folk. So it’s hardly surprising that the great and good of the Scottish
music scene, including Emma Pollock (pictured), Justin Currie and Karine Polwart, are coming together at the Concert for Stewart, to celebrate his life and raise funds for Drake Music Scotland, which supports disabled musicians. Cruickshank’s own band Mowgli & the Donuts are also on
the bill, alongside the Crunchies, a Glasgow indie supergroup comprising members of Teenage Fanclub, Belle & Sebastian, the 1990s and V Twin, and his former BBC colleague Rab Noakes, who affectionately describes his old friend as ‘somewhat creatively dishevelled in his methods. But I was impressed with Stewart’s ability to release the most surprising, yet erudite information on pop’s rich story at the drop of a hat.’ As was Lou Reed, when Cruickshank interviewed the notoriously media-unfriendly rocker, winning him over so completely with his forensic knowledge of the Velvet Underground that he returned with seven hours of Lou musings.
‘He did like attention to detail,’ says Noakes, ‘and that made him a good producer. But it also made him a really interesting companion. Everybody who came into contact with him loved him because he was such a lovely person. I miss him.’ (Fiona Shepherd)
1 Nov 2017–31 Jan 2018 THE LIST 103
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