THE GATHERING: One of the most exciting moments at the Inverness festival on Saturday will be watching Capercaillie make their debut there
Despite the fact Capercaillie have been together since 1984, influencing the part Scottish traditional and Gaelic music now plays on a global stage, there is still a first for them on Saturday when they debut at The Gathering.
It’s hard not to hear Karen Matheson’s clear, haunting vocal on a song such as Coisich a Ruin – the first Gaelic song to appear in the Top 40 – without decades sliding away.
Capercaillie which began with Karen and her husband Donald Shaw at its core quickly took a new sound that played with Gaelic traditional music and a contemporary approach and made it seem original, fresh and ingenious.
At the heart of a generation of musicians in Scotland who brought a whole new life of possibility to sometimes rule-bound traditional music treasures, Capercaillie were among the bravest and most innovative.
It will be part of The Gathering’s genius to have invited some of 2022’s newest names in traditional music onto the festival line-up, then balanced the picture by bagging Capercaillie and the signature Celtic music that has been wooing the world for over 30 years.
Speaking in the run up to the festival, Karen puts it a little differently, and the voice that Sean Connery once said was surely touched by God, is laughing.
“I like the idea the festival is straddling age groups and there are all these influences going on between the younger bands – as well as the old codgers!”
Right back at the start of Capercaillie’s career, there were few pioneers on the musical path they wanted to follow – and it sounds as if they had to be brave and forge ahead themselves with what they wanted to create as a crossover with traditional music. These days young traditional musicians have clearer pathways to a musical career with the expanding of what is now the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow, and generations of musicians to emulate.
Karen said: “When we started there wasn’t much of that ilk, there were people like Silly Wizard and more instrumental bands.
“We were very fortunate really because of that and we got a lot of attention because of the line-up – and the significance of the music we were drawing on, I guess.
“But it was very much the start of this springboard for what’s happening now which is the feisean movement and that has just exploded in the last 10 years or so which is really so exciting and so brilliant to see.”
There was a balance between wanting to experiment and being respectful with traditional music.
Karen said: “The danger always is that you put that kind of music in a glass box and never do anything with it. But to push these boundaries is what really keeps it alive, I feel.
“Also, the whole traditional music scene just opened up in terms of world music.
“Traditional Scottish music became part of that world stage. Everybody globally got excited about what was coming out of Scottish traditional music. It suddenly just crossed all boundaries.
“We were very lucky as well to get involved in that whole world music scene – we were invited to do WOMAD festivals in Europe and Australia and in America and that way, we were being influenced by music we were hearing at the time and bringing it back to our own music, so it was that whole crossing over of cultures which was all evolving at that time.
“We were very lucky and with all that attention came bravery, we got more bold with what we were doing with it. So yes, they were exciting times.”
But this year also brings some guaranteed exciting moments for Capercaillie – after a bit of an enforced wait.
Celtic Connections in January was meant to have an irresistible collaboration between Capercaillie and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra.
Covid meant that event didn’t happen – but now it will in just a few weeks when it heads to the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow on June 23.
But the postponement has brought a bonus …
“We have always had a real affinity with Northern Spain,” Karen said.
“it goes back to the earliest days of Celtic Connections – our first tours were out there with massive audiences we wouldn’t even have dreamt of back here at that time and it was just such a testimony to the power of this music.
“We would play in the square of Santiago de Compostela to a few thousand people, just magical memories of that time, so we are hoping to replicate that this year.”
As well as the BBC SSO concert in Glasgow, the band have been invited to play with a local orchestra in France at the Lorient Festival. And they will also return to the square in Santiago de Compostela to play with a Spanish orchestra out there.
“We will be playing in the square with the audience which will be amazing. Then we just have festivals throughout the summer dotted here and there.
“No touring as yet, but hopefully we will get that in line for next year,” Karen said.
“When lockdown happened two years ago, we were about to go out to Australia with Capercaillie for an acoustic six-week tour which would have been amazing and we were so excited about.
“We were going to strip it right back, but of course that tour was cancelled.
“Hopefully the chance will come back to do that – everything is just slowly waking up again.”
The last time Karen and her husband Donald Shaw played Inverness was for Donald to reunite with fellow Capercaillie member Charlie McKerron and a host of musicians to recreate the soundtrack that the two had originally created for the much-loved Gaelic TV series Gruth is Uachdar.
Karen opened the night in Inverness Cathedral presented for the Blas Festival last year.
It was a great night, with wonderful music and a sense of fun from the musicians assembled.
Would it ever be reproduced at Celtic Connections so a bigger audience could share it too, I asked Karen.
She laughed: “I think the problem is that Donald programmes Celtic Connections and Gruth Is Uachdar is kind of his thing – and he is very self-conscious about programming himself.
“So people have asked, but it was such a joyous thing to do. Though I was very much on the outside of it, the concert itself was very much about the music from the series and he and Charlie just developed such a gorgeous score. So maybe you should put a wee note into this with a wee request!”
Over the lockdowns, Karen had two solo albums working with different musicians and writers, including James Grant.
She released the album Still Life in February 2021 but before that had abandoned the songs in English of Still Life to return with Urram to look at the Gaelic songs she had sung as a child.
“I lost my parents both in quite close proximity to each other, so I just felt an overwhelming need to do something, – I don’t know if it was something that I felt that they would have approved of – it was a million things going on out of deep loss and I felt it was the only way to honour them, to do a traditional album, just purely Gaelic song and it didn’t even require thought.
“It was just like one day I thought ‘I’m abandoning all that English stuff' and I’m going to do a totally Gaelic album because I think it was maybe some little voice saying to me ‘Do something your parents would always have wanted you to do’. It was a strange thing.”
As we talk about Capercaillie’s long career, Karen mentions in passing something about her voice changing.
“It is something you grow with,” she said. “My voice has certainly dropped in pitch quite considerably,
“But I also wonder – I think a lot of the time the earlier recordings I’m singing very high and I don’t think I ever was a soprano, to be honest.
“I was kind of pushed into that at the time.
“But I like that mid-range register where it just sits naturally and you don’t have to try too hard.
“But then I think it is kind of important to push it at times too and take it to other places.
“That is where you do want to keep up exercising your voice.
“So it is a fine line between what you are comfortable with and stretching yourself, I suppose like anything.
“Being comfortable with yourself, as you get older means you do settle into a way of being that is more natural, maybe.”
Capercaillie play The Gathering at the Northern Meeting Park on Saturday for the first time. More on Capercaillie: capercaillie.co.uk The Gathering: thegatheringscotland.com
You can read the review of Gruth is Uachdar here: https://www.whatson-north.co.uk/whats-on/news/review-gruth-is-uachdar-blas-festival-inverness-cathedral-259933/
