| Home Page. |
It really is unbelievable that we are now at the end of yet another year. It has been a very difficult year for many people close to me and as we approach the 22nd I am especially mindful that it is approaching the anniversary of the death of my dear friend and former Manager Marlene Ross who died so tragically on the 22nd of Dec last year. Marlene was a major loss to so many people and I know that many of the fans over the years got to know her well and came to realise what a warm and generous individual she was. My thoughts are very much with her two sons David and Gordon as they make the adjustment in their lives that nothing really can prepare us for. Marlene’s family were hit by the double tragedy of the death of her brother Iain only months later. Iain had also been a great friend and mentor over the years and like Marlene is deeply missed by us all.
Whilst it is a time of celebration and of coming together, as families and friends it is also, for those who have lost those dearest to them a difficult and emotional time, so I my thoughts are with them all at this time.
The year has also brought many challenges, opportunities and some really memorable moments of live performance and the tremendous continuing gift of being able to share music with audiences around the country and also across in Denmark.
It was good at long last to have been able to get back across the border to perform at the Wickham Festival and at the Platform in Morecombe, both great shows and to get such a warm welcome back after an absence of almost 7 years was really special.
In many ways the year was to some extent defined by the tremendous success of Heart of America, both from the point of view of being very well received by the music world getting very favourably reviewed by many normally hostile or at least luke-warm music critics and being awarded ‘Album of the Year’ at the TradMusic Awards at this point last year was really a fantastic honour and a great way to end the year. Touring the album was given an added dimension as a result, just knowing that you the audience, the community of supporters had been so largely responsible for giving me such a wonderful compliment for my solo writing. It is a very special thing to feel that level of interest and support in what you do and is very heartening and encouraging and I thank you all for it. We found ourselves in some ‘unusual ‘venues but as with all things each situation you find yourself in brings its own rewards and special memories. It was particularly pleasurable to have been a part of Scotland’s newest festival, The John Lennon, Northern Lights Festival, which of course picked up the ‘Best New Festival Award’ for what really was a very interesting and quite different festival. I congratulate Mike Merritt and his team for their success. Sitting up late night after a really enjoyable gig, in conversation with John Lennon’s sister Julia was an absolutely intriguing experience and a major insight into the life of Lennon himself. It was also particularly intriguing to learn from her that she had been a big fan of the music over the years, both through my period with Runrig and also my more recent work. It is always great to be confronted by the unexpected in that way.
Skagen Festival in Denmark saw me sharing a festival billing with Runrig for the first time since my departure .Skagen was a great gig and I look forward to returning there this summer.
On the cultural development side of my life I am extremely excited about a number of key projects in which I have heavily involved now coming to fruition. The first of these is the new £7 million Fàs Centre for the creative and cultural industries now nearing completion on the Sabhal Mòr Ostaig Campus in south Skye. This exciting project will bring together a range of innovative projects in the area of language, heritage ,the arts, film broadcasting and new media and from a personal point of view the satisfaction of seeing the visual arts represented within the building with a new visual arts studio and research centre. I have been working to build up partnerships across the various art forms and I am delighted that in partnership with the Scottish Arts Council and the RSA in Edinburgh we now have a Visual Artist in residence, working alongside a Musician and Writer in residence, all of them to be based in the endless possibilities of a high tech new media environment. The centre also house one of the most advanced broadcast studios in the country next to the BBC’s new facility in Glasgow and stands to play a major role in the delivery of the new Gaelic Digital Channel. So it is very exciting to see something in which you have had such close involvement in putting together finally take form with the knowledge that it will have a major role to play in the future development of the language and the culture. The advent of the new Feis Academy, of which we are a partner, along with the Fèisean Nan Gaidheal and the RSAMD in Glasgow is also a very exciting prospect.
The heritage project Tobar an Dualchais/Kist O Riches of which I am Chairman is also going from strength to strength, aiming to conserve ,digitise and make accessible on-line 18,000 hours of rare and important archive recordings in Scots and Gaelic creating one of the most amazing cultural heritage resources in the whole of the UK.
Although it is demanding of ones energy and input I feel deeply privileged to be able to play a part in the wonderful work that is being carried out through Sabhal Mòr Ostaig now the recognised National Centre for the Gaelic Language and Culture. There is also a wonderful synergy between the creative energy of writing and performing and the creative energy of being involved in innovation and the creation of new opportunity and possibilities and I recognise my good fortune in being able to play a role I supporting that process.
I am looking forward immensely to the challenge and excitement of performing these special shows in Jan and Feb and I really hope that you will share my enthusiasm and excitement for them. To have the opportunity to explore ideas and themes through songs and to be able to be able to bring together so many great players to present them with the band is fantastically exciting and I can’t wait to hear the power that comes off the stage when the songs, the band, the strings, the choir and the guest players all come together to deliver these big pieces of music in a way which I haven’t really done before with my solo work. I really hope that you will join me for as many of these special shows as possible and encourage as many of your friends as possible to join us for what I know will be a very special experience for us all. We will also record the GRCH so there is an added incentive to be there and be a part of that particular piece of musical history that we can share.
Finally I would like to pay a particular thanks to Richard for his fantastic dedication in providing the web-site and his presence and support at the shows,and for his organisation of all the various charitable events that are organised through the website and the fundraising for Don8, to David Ross for all his input over the last couple of years and also to Karin Ingram for her great efforts on my behalf, organising the Langholm shows and her continuing support through her radio programme which I know many of you are great followers.
To Chris and all the great guys in the band for their brilliant playing and sense of fun that makes every show such a pleasure to perform but of course most importantly to you all for your wonderful support and encouragement which can never be underestimated and certainly is deeply valued and appreciated by me. I hope to look at some new songs and writing shortly along with hoping to get a few paintings in along the way. I look forward to seeing you all at the shows and in the various shows to come throughout 2008 and in the meantime until we meet again have a wonderful and Happy Christmas and a healthy, happy and prosperous New Year
Best wishes
Donnie
2006 Message from Donnie
A chairdean,
It seems remarkable that another year has almost turned, giving way to all the opportunities, hopes and expectations which we all hold for each other at the threshold of another year.
It seems appropriate then to end this year with a huge thank you to Richard for all his work on the website and for building such a fantastic and supportive interactive community out there, a community which has allowed for the emergence of initiatives such as DON8 with their tremendous fundraising effort, which is deeply appreciated by all. In addition it is important for me to thank all of you personally for your wonderful support throughout the year and for continuing to contribute so actively to this site. I read your comments on the message board with great interest and I look forward to answering some of the questions which some you have submitted.
The year itself has been dominated by the writing, rehearsing and recording the Heart of America album. As you are all aware the agreement to move across to Greentrax Records was made at the end of 2005 and so the early part of the year was really given over to trying to finalise arrangements for the recording of the album. As is always the case with these things the planned schedules suffered a little slippage for various factors, not least the loss of our studio engineer, Alan Cuthbertson, for a short period due to illness and then latterly due to his own increasing commitments as the keyboard player with the Scottish cult band ,The Blue Nile. However, Alan managed to finish the early part of the recording schedule having also worked hard commissioning Chris Harley’s new studio. Following his departure, we were extremely fortunate to bring in musician and engineer Eric Cloughley who along with producer Chris Harley brought the recording to its conclusion. On the recording itself, I was yet again amazed by the fantastic musicianship brought to the project by the guys in the band, starting with the early working sessions with Chaz through to the full band sessions and some really great live sessions which allowed us to capture so much of the energy of live performance. This was a really important factor in the overall feel of the album and I am so grateful to all the guys in the band for bringing so much to the project. The writing for the album seemed to come together in a very natural way and I felt that perhaps for the first time with my solo work there was a sense of everything working in a very credible and coherent way.
The song which became a bit of a revelation for me was Love Will Never Die. This was a song which happened very quickly one evening and I came in to the studio the next day and decided that I wanted to record the track immediately really as a live performance with just my own vocal and acoustic guitar simply telling the story of the song, no frills, no lavish arrangements, just something very simple and direct. It was clear that Chris was uncertain about the song and I think felt that it wasn’t of the quality of the other tracks. However, sometimes you just have a sense about certain songs and this was one of them. When Vivienne came in for the vocal sessions and added her beautiful voice I just knew it was going to work. Thereafter the whole piece was given a wonderful quality with Fos Paterson’s fantastic keyboard and piano and with a couple of guitar effects subtly placed in, it just all fell into place.
I really enjoyed my musical collaborations with guitarist/writer, Richard Macintyre of the band Stereoglo and also working with my former musical partner from the early Runrig days, Blair Douglas. The contribution of the other musicians Fraser Fifield whose incredible Sax playing added so much to the album along with the irresistible stamp of Duncan Chisholm’s fiddle playing and Blair’s accordion. The project saw a further halt due to the various round of flu bugs and throat infections but in the end the album hit the shelves in June and, thankfully, to very positive critical acclaim.
Because of the concentration on the recording we were not able to commit to as much live performance as I would have hoped something we hope to remedy in 2007 with plans for a series of large theatre productions currently under discussion along with some other live shows and festivals. However, the shows we did do were highly enjoyable and I thank all of you who came along to support us and make these gigs highly memorable. The end of 2005 saw me share the Hogmanay moment with millions live on TV and 250,000 people in Princess St in Edinburgh with the BBC’s first simultaneous live transmission, which I believe was a technical nightmare but which went by without a hitch. It was a fantastic way to end off the year and a great honour. I look forward to making a personal appearance in Glasgow’s celebrations this year.
This has been an extremely busy year on a number of other fronts as I worked with Sabhal Mor Ostaig to secure support and funding for the major new £7.1million centre for the Creative and Cultural Industries now being built on the campus in Sleat. This will bring together a whole range of activity in the field of the Gaelic Arts, Multimedia, Television and new Media with for the first time a studio for the visual arts. This will add to SMO’s history of developing the arts as a crucial part of the building blocks for the regeneration of the language and the culture. November saw the launch a wonderful piece of bronze cast artwork,Crannghal, by artists Will Maclean and Arthur Watson. The development of the visual arts is particularly pleasing for me given my own professional background in the fine arts and has been greatly enhanced by our having been awarded the biggest ever grant (£500,000) for visual arts research from the Arts and Humanities Research Council for the project Window to the West which sets out to explore the links between visual culture and the language itself. So this is all very exciting. I have also been involved, as Chairman, with the biggest digitisation project in the country, Tobar an Dualchais/Kist O Riches which will conserve and digitise 18,000 hours of important sound recordings in both Gaelic and Scots,currently held in the archives of BBC,National trust and Edinburgh University. This the biggest project of its type in the country,providing 23 high quality jobs and when complete making this amazing heritage resource available on-line.At present I am also engaged in setting up a Development Trust for SMO with a fundraising target of £20million which would help to secure its work into the future.I have been very privileged to be able to be involved in such a positive agenda and thank all at Sabhal Mor for the wonderful work they are doing for the language,the arts and the community. I have also been involved, as a member of the Board of the Gaelic National Arts Agency, PNE, with a number of fascinating projects including Leabhar Mor na Gaidhlig (the big Book of Gaelic) which is a really visionary arts project now touring the world and next year an equally visionary project based on a Pan-European arts project involving film, music and extreme dance performed on the cliff faces of St Kilda. This will be simultaneous performed in a number of major centres throughout Europe and promises to be a really world class arts experience already being tipped for honours. Again I feel immensely privileged to be able to work with such a committed and visionary group of people.
The ultimate highlight of the year however has been Heart of America being awarded the Album of the Year Award at this years Scottish Trad Music Awards and I would like to thank Richard and all of you who voted to support the album’s nomination. It is an award that I was delighted to receive and will cherish greatly and one which reflects so positively on the work of so many people involved in the project, so thanks so much for your support.
As with all our lives however, there are always highs and lows and it is of the greatest personal sadness to me to know that as I write this, my former manager and great personal friend, Marlene Ross, is currently fighting the hardest battle of her life against serious illness. It is my profoundest hope that the year end will bring her to safety and give her more precious time to share with her beloved friends and family.
I thank you all deeply for your kindness and support and hope that you have a very happy Christmas and a wonderful New Year.
Leis gach durachd(best wishes)
Donnie