Perthshire Amber 6

Bit of a tough day today. Dougie is holed up at the theatre with an old incarnation of his band rehearsing for the Indigenous Concert this evening. It’s an interesting idea, following on from last year’s complete recital of The Search. Basically, it’s the Indigenous album in its entirety. What’s hard is that I gather Dougie hasn’t seen some of the musos for years, let alone play with them (his bands are always changing, based on the needs of the albums).


Rehearsals for Indigenous

But… before the album concert we have Eliza Lynn (who is also a volunteer like us) and Ross Ainslie & Jarleth Henderson. Eliza is a very cool cat, and she’s accompanied by Sorren and Gordon MacLean on guitar and double bass, so it’s a very laid-back show.

Ross and Jarleth lift off the roof. Twin sets of pipes, flutes and a guitarist backing them. Some of the stuff is just mind blowing. These two guys are, to quote the Glasgow Herald, ‘ridiculously talented’.

I wasn’t feeling too great during the second, Indigenous half, and I spent a lot of time outside getting some air, but what I did hear was really good, especially the very dramatic entrance with the smoke and drums. I’m not sure if the concept of playing a whole album will be back next year, as I gather it was quite stressful and hard to put together, but personally, I think it's a grand idea.

It’s here that I should probably digress a bit and talk about Mannie. He seems to have appropriated the two Canadians, Mike and Larry and formed a special crack volunteer squad called Team DeManic. Never in my life have I seen programs sold with such gusto. Occasionally they’ll rope in Finn (who is an old friend of Dougie’s from the isle of Lewis, in the Hebrides. When we were introduced at Butterstone, something clicked and I said, “So you're *that* Finn?”. Turns out he’s the Finn from Dougie’s song, ‘Feel So Near’ and we’ve been singing about him for years. He’s just the loveliest man, with a very funny sense of humour and possibly one of the gentlest souls we’ve met). So anyway, Mannie is well on the way to corrupting the Two Canadians. It’ll be interesting to see how they are after a week or so...


Team DeManic, from L to R: Mike, Mannie, Finn and Larry