The Kintyre Forum

So, I've just returned from the Arctic where I was celebrating a big birthday. My nephew is a photographer out there and he took me to visit friends of his, a couple who live in the wilderness in a very basic cabin with no electricity, running water or inside toilet. They have ten dogs and they love their life. I'm chatting away to the guy who says he's from Oban and I tell him I only know one person from there who's a fiddler and he says, "Would that be Maurice?"

What?????????

Yep, he went to school with Emdee's son and he chatted away about his other two sons as I stood there gob-smacked.
It's a small world indeed.

Always meet someone frae the Wee Toon wherever you go.

I know who that is. He is one of Andrew's friends. My fame extends to all parts of the globe.

It does indeed EMDEE

Having played for seven nights a week for a 20 week season for 19 years to a different audience of approximately 200 every night up until 2008, I find it difficult to comprehend how many people I have actually played for. Also, having met so many people of different nationalities and had post performance conversations with them, I could write a book about my experiences replete with many anecdotes, some of which I might not be able to put into print.

However, throughout my playing career, I have tried to be a promoter and preserver of 18th and 19th Century classic Scottish Fiddle Music, in which respect my efforts have been to some degree successful, I still have to live with the fact that wherever I play, the most requested tune is the "Hen's March o'er the Midden", which just goes to show that the general public are more impressed by trivia than serious music. I can live with that, and it is understandable. My opinion of this scenario altered somewhat a few years ago when someone asked me to play that particular tune and the day after the performance presented me with a bottle of Laphroaig, to which they happened to know I was particularly partial.

Here's another piece of trivia that been a signature tune of mine and has been regularly requested over the years. This is a Grampian TV recording that was made round about 1996. It is my version of a recording made by James Scott Skinner round about 1915 of his variations on the well-known "Blue Bells of Scotland".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fxzz-5i-Tc