As singer Horse heads for Inverness to play Eden Court on Saturday she says memories of 30-year career are helping power her new album
Scottish singer and gay icon Horse McDonald has forged her reputation against the odds with a special voice and songs she writes and “empties herself” into live. Touring to celebrate her debut album The Same Sky, Horse is now deep into writing the next one, and tells Margaret Chrystall she believes her voice has saved her life
The world is on first name terms with the singer and LGBTQ+ idol Horse Macdonald – and Horse is looking back over a 30-year career to her album The Same Sky while she is completing writing the latest one.
It’s making for a lot to think about as she and her band try and mop up outstanding postponed tour dates – and cope with Covid and assorted illnesses brought on by touring again after the lockdown break.
“We are calling it the A&E tour,” Horse laughed, talking about the recent dates in England where her team of musicians and crew succumbed.
“One had gout, one had shingles, and we came back from the English leg and we all had Covid,” Horse said. “So it’s been a bit of a bumpy ride. Today, I feel as if I am coming out of a dive so I’m feeling quite positive. You’ve got me on a good day.”
But getting back to the full-on physical challenge of tour dates back to back is taking more adjustment, Horse confessed.
And the physical stamina needed to pull off a long show, singing for an evening, giving fans your all, Horse has been struggling, she admitted.
“Two in the band are not quite 30 and I am well over twice their age and I’m on stage for an hour and 45 minutes – and they were exhausted.
“We are not physically used to doing what we used to do.
“For me vocally it was difficult because I lost parts of my voice, so – luckily because I’ve been singing for a long time – I was able to throw my voice up into a different octave. But it was stressful. And the audience were getting me to carry on and were encouraging. But it’s miserable when you can’t do what you love to your own satisfaction.”
Horse is looking back to her early album The Same Sky, so many memories of being at the start of what has turned out to be a long and critically-acclaimed music career, are in Horse’s mind.
She remembers opening for Culture Club with Boy George back in 1982 at a venue called Rooftops in Glasgow and youngsters were reaching across the stage and sticking their fingers in holes in her shoes!
She remembers touring with Roddy Frame of Aztec Camera in Germany, Horse laughing as she remembers being the one girls came to the stage doors to see.
And there’s a picture Horse had taken with American singer Cyndi Lauper.
“I look like the cat that got the cream and I’ve got a programme with her sound coach’s number on it,” laughs Horse, sarcastically adding: “Because yes, I will fly to New York for that!”
But there are difficult memories mixed up in the good ones too.
Horse feels she has always struggled for the recognition she believes, looking back, she and her voice and songs might have deserved, even in the earliest days.
“Thirty years after my first album, I feel like there should have been a tipping point. It was a good album and it was destined to do well but it didn’t for many different reasons which I could go into.
“But my take on it now would be a lot of record company stuff, being gay, a lesbian, a woman, leading a band being a woman, being so different from anyone else and not fitting in and not fitting into a box.”
Her latest single comes with a striking new look for Horse – chainmail!
She explained: “The strongest image in my head was Joan Of Arc.
“I have a friend who is one of the main technical managers at the National Theatre Of Scotland and I have worked with him on a few projects. And I asked if we could go up and film the video there.
“They very kindly said Yes. And we asked if we could go and look in their props department. They had lots of bits and pieces, but the only thing that appealed to me was this chainmail that you put around your head and I put it on and it was very, very heavy.
“Michelle Watson, who is a stylist, she made the headdress out of metal because the whole remit was Joan Of Arc.
“I had looked at old movies and there is a wonderful Joan movie from 1925 with the most incredible poignant footage from it. Kris Keziak, the photographer and videographer, said ‘The only thing I want to change is Joan Of Arc didn’t wear glasses – I never thought I’d see the day when I wanted to stay with my glasses on!’
“So 30 years on I feel like I’m ready. I’ve been working on my new album. It feels like another tipping point has come and I’m ready this time!
“For me it is the album I have wanted to make since The Same Sky album. It’s another bookend.
“That’s how it feels but I also feel, given my age – I’m 63 now, I’m ticking more of those boxes, woman, gay – now old, another hurdle to get over.
“But I’m still here because people love the music.
“I can give you a lovely example. I won’t mention the man’s name but when we were at the Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline, there was a lull in the set and I was saying ‘I’m struggling, but I’ll get through it!’ and there was this man’s voice and he said ‘You have no idea how many times you have saved my life’ and the audience just went very quiet.
“It was a very unusual moment and I said ‘I’m sorry?’ And he said ‘Your music has saved my life many times. Thank you. You have no idea how important you are’.
“I just wanted to cry. But I said ‘When I was growing up, writing music allowed me to use my voice and everything inside, it saved my life – and all I’m doing is paying back’. And people are feeling it and me as a human being. I don’t think of myself as any specific gender, I think of myself as a conduit and I’m passing something forward that I’ve been given.”
Ask Horse about other passions she has outside her music.
“I don’t think I have ever had a separate life. Music is not a hobby or a career, it’s my life.”
But she does reveal as the conversation moves on that her favourite beach is St Cyrus, south of Aberdeen And that she has been exploring her family tree – with a connection she hadn’t expected so close to Inverness.
“We come on my father’s side from Ardclach near Cawdor, not far from Culloden, I literally am a Highlander!”
And she reveals she learned more when she visited the Highland Archive Centre in Inverness.
But talk turns back to the new album which is three-quarters there, Horse revealed.
“The new album, is very much like a chocolate box – as in the Tom Hanks movie,” Horse laughs as she does the voice.
“Every song has its own character. And it’s not only banging with the single Leaving, but also at the other end of that there is a song called The Moon And I which is probably the most simple thing I have ever written.
“I was recording it at Fasnacloich near Oban, run by a guy called Jamie Smith and he allowed me to explore and experiment.
“As I was walking backwards and forwards from the studio looking at the moon,I realised I’m in the last quarter of my life and the moon has been watching me since I was a child and the tides have come and gone under the sway of the moon and I realised I’ve got ‘no more miles before I sleep’ - I’m ready for this part of my life.
“There is something about the song that is very poignant.
“Everyone I’ve played it to has cried, it’s something about the fragility of being human and that is what the song is about. And acceptance.
“When I sang it reminds me of that Sir John Everett Millais painting of Ophelia just floating in water.
“I’m hoping to carry on in a few months’ time with the album, and finish it!
“During lockdown the last thing I saw was creative.
“For me it is the album I have wanted to make since The Same Sky album. It’s another bookend.”
Horse plays Eden Court in Inverness on Saturday (April 30). More: eden-court.co.uk and www.horsemcdonald.com
