On The Fiddle
On the train back to Glasgow tonight I was standing in the buffet car, handing over a zillion pounds for a cup of brown liquid, when I heard a familiar voice call my name. It was Bruce McGregor, founding member of who told me he was heading to the South by Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. He described it as a great "selling opportunity". Well, it seems traditional music has come a long way since strolling players would earn a miserable crust roaming from village-to-village hoping simple folk would look kindly upon tuneful strangers. Or, at the very least, not use their arrival to organise a village stoning contest.
I last saw Bruce in December at the in Edinburgh. He was on stage at the Queen's Hall picking up two gongs and telling the audience a very funny story about his apperance at the same event the year before. Apparently he and the band had left the stage and made their way through a side door. Only then did they discover it was some kind of broom cupboard. Too embarrassed to admit their mistake, they stayed in the cupboard until the interval.
Ah, but I have a soft spot for Bruce and it all goes back to the day, more than ten years ago, when my daughter was born. That night a crowd of us were celebrating this happy event in the Phoenix Bar in Inverness. Bruce arrived, fiddle in hand, and played the most beautiful piece of music in honour of the occasion. I decided there and then I would pay tribute to Bruce and name my first-born child...Fidelma. Happily, come the next morning, I had no recollection of this absurd idea. In fact, it has only just come back to me.
Anyway, I had noticed that the cover of new Blazin' Fiddles CD (Magnificent Seven) has a photograph of the band, but there is not one fiddle in sight.
"Well yes," Bruce explained, "We try to keep quiet about that."
Clearly the world of marketing is alien to me. Now, where can I get a miserable crust at this time of night? Do they deliver?
