Dick Gaughan’s appearance at Red Clydesides John Maclean concert

 

Billy Bragg & Dick Gaughan at concert Celtic Connections 2024

 One aspect of folk music is its inclusive, open culture – its for everyone. Its not about a few musicians on stage. All can sing the choruses, dance or clap along. 

 

This year traditional Scots musician Dick Gaughan made a surprise appearance at the concert for Red Clydesider John MacLean to a standing ovation. Gaughan had a stroke a few years back and has been unable to perform or play his guitar. Gaughan has become something of a legend on the Scottish and world folk circuits for more than 40 years. He is an interpreter of Scotland’s traditional folk ballads with his distinctive style of guitar playing, with open chords and timing that he learnt from guitarist Davey Graham. 

John Maclean socialist reformer 1879 - 1923

 

I remember Dick Gaughan standing near the Celtic Connections press office. He was happy to chat, maybe he remembered me from the intimate Milngavie folk club concerts, where some musicians there said he was a living Scots legend. My younger son came to hear him and was impressed with his dramatic guitar playing, and the strength of his guttural voice on his highly memorable and meaningful folk songs. 

 

Dick Gaughan is a song collector, songwriter and traditional ballad singer and musician. I remember Gaughan singing telling his stories and songs -  The Yew Tree, What you do with what you’ve got, The Flowers of the Forrest, Westlin Winds,

 

In 2018, Celtic Connections held a tribute concert for Dick Gaughan at the Old Fruitmarket. With the Wilson Family, guitarists Tony McManus and Martin Simpson, Karine Polwart ,The Bevvy Sisters, Mary Macmaster, Patsy Seddon and Dougie MacLean, They performed songs with a social conscience – of Grenfell tower monument to greed and selfishness, Aberfan disaster, miners strikes, Jute mill songs, Neil Gow’s fiddle. Where are the young voices of protest today to stand up for people’s rights?  DickGaughan Tribute concert 2018

 

The first time I heard Robert Burns Parcel of Rogues was Gaughan’s interpretation at the festivals Auld Lang Syne concert in 2009. I had no idea before this that Burns was such a radical reformer and like many, I had thought he mostly wrote his love songs and poems. 

Certainly an Outlaw and Dreamer like no other! An inspiration.

I have taken photos at Dick Gaughan’s concerts over the past years since 2006 and here are some of them. 

Many of this generation of folk singers are now getting older and I wonder who among the younger musicians can replace them? In 20 we lost Dundonian character songwriter Michael Marra (more later), in 2012 the iconic Scots songwriter Gerry Rafferty (I took photos at a concert to his memory at Celtic Connections) and just last year the wonderful Rab Noakes, who I knew well from his concerts and taking his photos there. What an interesting gentleman and creative songwriter he was. I remember in my twenties in my folk days, we would often sing in harmonies his early songs – Branch, Clear Day, Eden’s Flow -  Happy Days indeed! Another massive Bob Dylan fan. Noakes started out playing with Gerry Rafferty in the Humblebums.

 

Scotia's Bard Dick Gaughan - NEW album Harvard Tapes

I am proud to have taken photos at Gaughan’s concerts and met him a few times. He spoke of singing with Emmy Lou Harris and was totally unassuming. I was sad to hear he had a stroke in 2017, and I attended a wonderful tribute concert for him at the Old Fruitmarket, during Celtic Connections 2019. 

Since the 70s, Gaughan has been one of Scotia’s most powerful, authentic and honest Bards. He does this through an open chord tuning on his Stratocaster, and an unerring, defiant and hard-hitting voice. Like Burns before him, he believes we all deserve an equal chance in life. Like Burns he draws on the old traditions and adds his own verses and tunes.

He digs deep into our social heritage of the voices of ordinary folks, unrecognised folk and of those who labour for a better world. He also includes the voices from further afield – America, England, Ireland, France, more . He was a central figure in 1970s Celtic folk revival with Boys of the Lough and his early classic album, Handful of Earth. He also worked with Billy Bragg, Andy Irvine, Five Hand Reel and Clan Alba. Gaughan is half Irish and Half Scots. 

**I first heard Gaughan back at a folk club in Edinburgh in the 80s, when he stood out as so different to the often romanticized view of soft, Scottish folk pop. I’d never heard folk music that challenged in this way. Since then I have heard Gaughan perform at the Celtic Connections concert hall his powerful version of Burns Parcel of Rogues to the Nation. I heard him take it intimate and emotional with Burns Westlin Windsat my local folk club, when he said, it was the best song ever written and says all there is to say really. He challenged with Outlaws and Dreamersand life on the edge. He told stories of old soldiers and miners, such as the powerful Why Old Mew Cry. Gaughan often starts his set with the honesty of the song, What You do With What You’ve Got.

He speaks of the English Diggers - "I tend to side with people like the Diggers, those English revolutionaries who fought without weapons for a fair share of the land that rightfully was the property of everyone to begin with," says Gaughan, summing up his philosophy, and smiling.

Between songs and while tuning his guitar, he tells his stories, often with dark humour and pathos. He talks of the real Scotland, the one he knows in Leith. “We used to elect our king in Scotland, you know. The last one we elected was Macbeth.”

**I heard an interview with Dick on radio Scotland when he spoke of his guitar playing being influenced by Davy Graham,

“When I heard of the murder of Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, by the fascist Pinochet. I knew, I couldn’t just play the old tunes, you had to speak out, and really that is what the tradition is all about. “

"I knew then I couldn't just play old tunes. You had to speak out. And, really, that is what the tradition is about. Traditional music--which to me has always meant just the songs that people sing and listen to, be that rock 'n' roll or old ballads--it has always had to do with politics. People's music, folk music if you will, is very dangerous stuff! It is subversive to acknowledge that ordinary people actually have a culture with artistic merit. This gives the lie to those who would like us to think that the poor are poor because they are stupid! There is a lot of wisdom in some of those old songs, and no reason I can see why songs about the politics of today are not part of The Tradition! I sing 'em, anyway, and that's the tradition I know."

Traditional music - It has always had to do with politics.”

Dick Gaughan at Milngavie folk club

Check out Dick Gaughan’s website -  NEW LIVE ALBUM The Harvard Tapes - https://www.greentrax.com/music/product/dick-gaughan-the-harvard-tapesI

http://www.dickgaughan.co.uk/

Concerts at Celtic Connections and Milngavie folk club - all Photos copyright Pauline Keightley.

**Dick Gaughan Interview with Phil Cunningham Radio Scotland March 2012

Dick chose five songs that have influenced him –

(1) Big Bill Broonzy – Glory of Love

(2) The Shadows – Apache

(3) The Beatles – Love Me Do

(4)  Bob Dylan – Subterranean Homesick Blues

(5)  Davy Graham – 67

We Need New Stories

Through understanding our past stories: and as singer songwriter Rab Noakes says, "a future with no past has no future". New stories can emerge through the exchange of ideas, new stories may emerge.

Professor Tom Devine writes, in his latest book, The Scottish Clearance: A History of the Dispossessed, that until the 1960s, there were few academic studies on Scotland’s history after the Union of 1707.((there were more on Yorkshire)

Is democracy failing today, with the rise of populism, and as people seem to have lost all trust and faith in the system? Military expert now say its all about counterintelligence – Russia and China are experts in this field. Its no longer about huge warships and its about who controls information flows. With the rise of cyber warfare and online propaganda, how can we protect our freedoms and democracies. How can we regain trust?

We in Europe we must remember we do have the rule of law, some accountability measures of free press, vibrant arts and quality universities. Knowledge is central – reading stories, creativity, collaborations and understanding our past.  

Most Scots have pride in their Scottish culture: from our highland glens, ballads and poetry, Edinburgh enlightenment, border hills, western isles, imposing historic castles and ever changing skies. We’ve had turbulent histories: William Wallace, John Knox, Mary Queen of Scots, Bannockburn, Reformation, Jacobites. We are known for our whisky, Clyde ships, fish, oil, tweed, tartan, golf, poetry and song.

We’ve given the world the great songs of Robert Burns and other great writers. And innovations such as Penicillin, steam engines and more. The traditions are continued by powerful troubadours of folk music with popular live acoustic music and world scale festivals such as Celtic connections and Edinburgh festivals – the world’s biggest arts festival. 

I am encouraged that Scotland’s first minster is a keen reader. But equally dismayed to read that neither Trump or Corbyn are readers. In fact Trump has fake book covers lining his walls. Says it all really. 

Our national poet Robert Burns was a ferocious reader and read at the dinner table. He enjoyed his aunts stories, his mothers songs and his fathers reading and conversations. Famous fashion designer, Karl Lagerfield, valued his vast library of books above all else. Francoise Frenkel, fled the Nazis ( author of No Place to Rest my Head) - and it was her books and poems that kept her hope alive. When the Communist regime in Russia wanted to control arts and thought, they exiled any free thinkers, writers and artists on the Philosophy steamer. 

Robert Burns Ellisland

This summer I was so pleased to visit the last farm our great poet Robert Burns lived in. Ellisland is just north of Dumfries and incredibly is pretty intact as when Burns lived here and contains books and other material he had there.  

 **In 1788, Rob and Jean settled at Ellisland farm, a few miles north of the town of Dumfries. It was romantic and he was so pleased to have the river Nith running beside the new farm. A new farm house had to be built: the land was neglected with old ‘run-rigs’ strips, little drainage, no hedges to keep animals off the crops and no farm house. They had a servant and farm workers at Ellisland farm, so he was then able to write many songs and poems while he lived here - Auld Lang Syne (1988), Banks O Doon (1791) and his masterpiece the narrative poem Tam O'Shanter(1791). 

Robert Burns had enjoyed a second winter in Edina in 1788, when stayed in St Andrews square. 

He left Edina that March, little knowing I would never return there. He wanted to return to find his muse to the land and to raise his young family. 

Burns married his Jean in March 1788 and they lived for a time in a small room in Mauchline. 

He was offered the choice of three farms and decided on Ellisland. The farm houses and Byre had taken some time to build and Jean stayed with his mother to learn about cheese making for those months.

Burns found time to write near the woods of Craigie burn near Moffa and at the Hermitage.  He visited the Birks O Aberfeldy on his highland tour. He wrote and sang in the open air to study nature and human nature both. He studied the life of nature around him, from the wild flower, the river banks, the woodlands, the bird song, the small animals underneath, and the fields of corn.

His most famous song, Auld Lang Syne was written after he heard an old man singing this songs and Burns added new verses. Burns collected all these old songs on his Scotia travels, which inspired him to write his own songs too

He wrote Tam O Shanter – his most famous narrative poem on a free day as he walked along the shady path by the banks of the river Nith. He lived at Ellisland for four years. 

He also began training to be an Exciseman, which meant long rides away from home. 

Burns was only thirty and he had been the toast of Edina - he was the new father, the struggling farmer and the ambitious bard. 

Perhaps he had been doing too much - a young father, Exciseman, farmer and collecting songs and writing poetry.  

It became all too much. He sold off the stock to leave the farm life for town life in Dumfries.  

And in 1981 he and his young family left Ellisland for a town house in Dumfries town

Can a Thousand Scotlands Bloom?

This blossoming of artists, musicians, writers since the Scottish parliament opened 1997 (20 years ago) gave us belief back. I used to hear – ‘oh Scots are a nation of scroungers!’ After the 1979 Devolution Vote farce for a hoped for Scottish Parliament, many left Scotland and we felt demoralized, it was a sad time. For centuries Scottish culture has been suppressed and ignored by those Anglicised Scots – those Scots who view themselves as English first, Scottish second.  

In response to Gillian Bowditch and her Sunday Times article, ‘Narrow cultural focus will tie us all to a tartan straight jacket’ where she writes on the author Muriel Spark - Spark wrote of a decidedly small niche of cloistered girls at Gillespie’s secondary school Edinburgh – how is this so deep or rich, compared to say Burns or Irvine Welsh?

How can a thousand Scotland’s bloom when we were taught nothing of our heritage, and culture in Scottish schools until recently….!

I grew up in Edinburgh and walked her historic streets and I wondered about her stories. Meanwhile I learnt of the Tudors, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Wilfred Owen,  and American writer Hemmingway at school.

Plockton cottages

In their time Burns, Scott and James MacPherson were internationally famous.

Burns was greatly influenced by both Scots ballads and English poets and he knew four languages, he was not simply a ploughman poet!

The only place I encountered Burns was at Primary school choirs. Burns wrote of nature, love, radical politics, hypocrisy, those conflicts between morality and our wilder passions.

Burns crossed many borders and was both national and international.

We are strongly linked to England and Ireland, but that doesn’t mean Scotland should be ruled by London. We never gave up our Kirk, which was far more important than the politicians in 1707. Burns also wrote the proud Scots songs Scots Wa Hae, and Parcel of Rogues. 

Scottish historian Tom Devine, in his lecture on the Scottish Enlightenment, spoke of how Scotland has for centuries been an outward-looking, trading nation – many Scots travelled to Poland, Netherlands, France, In fact more outward-looking than an often more insular England. “Scots suffer from “virtual universal historical illiteracy’, says Devine, “ perhaps that’s why they’ve struggled to engage with Referendum campaign."

It is only when we understand our roots, that we can also look outward. 

Yes the old tartan shortbread, White Heather club idea of ‘Scottishness’ of the 60s was so embarrassingly parochial. Surely we have moved on.  Two major Scottish festivals, Celtic Connections and Edinburgh Festival, both embrace their international element. Each August I attend the Edinburgh International Book festival where I see many inspired young Scottish writers of today. 

Edinburgh art galleries

This is also about whether you view empire building or stories of ancient Rome – where you have one group superior to the rest and an exploited underclass. Or you see a more progressive future for Scotland of a more socially integrated, fairer society that is fundamental to the success of our culture, economy and education. A successful small country in a larger European trading block.

pipers at Edinburgh castle

The Scottish nationalist movement is a broad church and not exclusively about the SNP. It was begun by poets such as Hugh MacDiarmid, back in 1939, and the Scottish renaissance of Montrose. MacDiarmid wrote - 

We are both national and international and to forget our rich heritage is a dark, ignorant thing…

skies across from Appelcross

near Loch Ardinning and the Campsie's

Folk Songs and Pop Tunes, ballads are ?

Folk songs may not grab you first time- but they get under your skin in a more subtle way and you never tire of them - unlike the simple pop tune. 

I'm always rather puzzled by the loosely defined definitions regarding songs or tunes between the genres. A song sung by a folk balladeer is a 'folk song' wheras a song sung by a pop star is a 'pop ballad.'

Folk singers and Dylan wrote and sang highly memorable 'folk ballads'. Some pop singers sing formulaic and forgettable 'ballads'. What is the difference though, after all I hear some dull folk songs as well as dull pop songs?  

The dictionary defines the Ballad as -  a narrative song with a recurrent refrain; a slow sentimental song, especially a pop song.

The folk song as - a song that has been handed down the generations; a modern song that reflects the folk idiom.

I was sitting at Prestwick airport and heard this truly awful whiny song. I asked my son who it was, he said that ridiculous Justin Beiber. I said that he reminded me of 'Donny Osmond' in the 70s and his soppy ballad 'They Call this Puppy Love'!   

Well that's the difference to me between the folk ballad and the 'soppy pop ballad'? That song by Beiber is a soppy shallow empty pop Ballad. By comparison Someone Like You by Adele is heart wrenching with it's honesty of emotion.    

Awful ballads? An example might be James Blunt's cheesy ballad song 'You Are Beautiful.'  It is so hackneyed and has those over-used tired old clichés and song formulas. My ears would feel ill on hearing this song and need to listen to some Dylan to feel better! 

Westlife ballads use those predictable key changes when the boys manage to rise up off their tall stools..... oh dear...

The soppy pop ballad is written to a formula and lacks emotional realness or any credibility. To me the difference is 'substance' and having something to say. Those unforgettable folk ballads offer new insights with imaginative and creative melodies and words. It is also in the music production.  

And sometimes 'cheesy' can be good too! 

The Best Songs

Occasionally a song comes along that transcend the personal as it has a universal emotion we can all recognise an share in. 

Good Examples - Let It Be, Imagine, Stand By Me, Here Comes The Sun, Case of You, Something, Islands in the Stream, Reason to Believe, Sound of Silence,

The Ballad of Hollis Brown 
 

Best Folk Songs

Westlin Winds

Outlaws and Dreamers

Both Sides the Tweed

Girl From the North Country

Vision of Joanna,

Who knows Where the Time Goes

The Blacksmith

Are you Going To Scarborough Fair