BELLADRUM: John Langan Band bring Balkans to Bella
A FESTIVAL like Belladrum with its diverse selection of music should be a perfect setting for Glasgow’s John Langan Band, with their wide-ranging music.
Summing up exactly how to describe that music is trickier.
"That’s a very difficult question and none of us have nailed down an answer," Langan said.
"We are a folk band, I guess, but we’re not like most folk bands you would come across. We’re a bit dirtier, a bit more eclectic. We just like to play whatever comes along and sounds good. We don’t try to stick to a genre at all."
Alongside the more obvious Celtic influences, Balkan and Gypsy music forms an important part of the trio’s musical make-up.
That is thanks to Langan’s personal experience of the area, the musician being something of a modern day Gypsy himself for whom home is a converted horse transporter.
"A few years ago my wife and I went to Macedonia and Croatia and met some Gypsies out there and learned some songs from them," he explained.
"We love that and it’s definitely become part of our style, but obviously being Scottish, we love traditional Scottish and Irish music, so that’s a big part of it as well. But generally it’s more about messing about with a guitar and seeing how we can steer things."
Changed days. By his own admission, Langan’s first use for a guitar was less as a musical instrument and more an accessory.
"My parents got me a guitar when I was about eight, a cheap Stratocaster copy, and I spent the first two years plugging in the amplifier and posing in front of the mirror," Langan admitted.
"Then the house was broken into one Christmas Eve. They stole all the presents from under the tree and they stole my guitar and I was really gutted. My mum agreed to get me a new guitar — on condition that actually learned to play the thing."
Since then Langan has added a bit of accordion and piano while he uses his feet to provide percussion on the cajón, the sit-upon drum originally from Peru, and tambourine, but first and foremost, he thinks of himself as a singer.
"I’m not much of a musician really in comparison to a lot of others," he said.
"I feel my instrument is more my voice."
His musical influences have also changed over the years, and he revealed that past Belladrum headliners, Ocean Colour Scene, were the only band he has ever been fanatical about.
"That’s a world apart from the music I’m doing now, but that’s the band who really inspired me and made me want to be a musician," he stated.
"I was into Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin for a while — just whatever came my way really — then I got really into the Scottish and Irish folk scene. It’s more people I’ve played with in jam sessions that have inspired me rather than bands themselves."
The first John Langan Band came together when he was living in Spain and it was when he moved back to Glasgow that he met up with the other members of the trio, fiddler/mandolinist Alastair Caplin and double-bassist Dave Tunstall.
Both bring their own influences to bear on the music, helping the band earn a Danny Kyle Open Stage Award at Celtic Connections a few years ago.
Caplin also doubles as a film composer, and wrote the score for The Silent Storm, the Hebrides set drama starring Damian Lewis which opened last year’s Inverness Film Festival.
"If you have some chords and a bit of a melody, Ali’s very good at making very good fiddle tunes out of that and will also ring tunes that he’s written to the table," Langan said.
"Dave also brings some interesting ideas and he’s very good at steering us away from your average verse-verse-chorus kind of a song. Dave brings quite a lot of aggression into things — in a good way.
• The John Langan Band play Belladrum’s Black Isle Brewery Grassroots Stage on Saturday.
