Bluegrass in Scotland

Last night we managed to have a nice night out at the Village Pub with the Leith Folk Club. We had seen an advertisement for this roots music festival while having a drink at the Tass (an interesting pub in itself: it's right on the Royal Mile, prime tourist real estate, but on most nights there is live music played by local musicians who just know each other and want to get together and sing old Folk/Scottish diddies. What they play depends on who shows up, sometimes a banjo, sometimes a fiddle, sometimes a pianist, who oddly doesn't bring his own piano... you get the idea. But it also attracts a bunch of locals on these nights, too, as opposed to merely passing tourists. It's quite nice). I noticed that the festival featured many American bluegrass stuff, and since it had been AGES since we heard stuff that reminded us of home in the mountains, we decided to just go. I emailed the dude who runs the non-profit, volunteer Managed LFC, and he reserved us a couple of tickets for the night.

The couple we were seeing was Dana and Susan Robinson, from Asheville, North Carolina. A couple of interesting, friendly, granola "New Age Hippies," as I like to call them. They would fit in great in a place like Gardiner, or in a group of my brother's friends. Not quite hippies, because they drink too much bottled water and go to yoga classes, but very environmentally and socially conscience, so not quite yuppy. He played an acoustic guitar and the harmonica (and sometimes both at once, a la Bob Dylan) and the fiddle, and she played various percussion instruments as well as the banjo in an amazingly effortless and way cool style. Their voices were rough, like an self-respecting folk singer's should be, and they played a decent mix of old timey stuff, from both Appalachia and early 20th century "Out West" kind of songs, as well as a lot of their own music. It was all very nostalgic and paid tribute to the Hobo in all of us, well at least us Yanks. I'm sure who else there would have been an American, but there were definitely some people singing songs that most non-Yanks would never hear.

One thing about the Scottish... no dancing. Whenever there is a folk session or a concert like this one, everybody just sits quietly, maybe tapping a shoe or two. If this concert had been in the States, or in a place like Gardiner, everybody would have been up dancing and singing and truly appreciating the music. The Scottish are really missing out on this one.

Afterwards, we made our rounds, chatting with the bar manager, the Folk Club manager, the band. They all seemed excited to have new converts, and its such a shame we didn't find them sooner. It would have been a good spot to meet new people and do some volunteering or something. But they all kind of reminded me of Gardiner people, maybe that's why. We talked baseball shop with Dana and Susan, who got a kick out of our stories of the baseball league here. We bought an album of theirs to pass to Jenny Golding, who runs the Yellowstone Music Festival back in Montana. We think it would be right up her alley, plus the Robinsons expressed an interest in playing at a concert like that, you know, small town, beer, artisans and people dancing. It was nice to get out and about and talk to some people about all kinds of stuff. Turns out the guy who run the Folk Club, Martin, takes his family out west to go skiing every year. They were looking for a new place to go, as Colorado gets old. We suggested Big Sky, and they seemed up for it. Maybe we will have some visitors!

Incidentally, we also ended up winning a bottle of wine and tickets to another concert through a raffle there, so it looks like we're going again next week!