Bring It All Home Festival

Martha Rafferty and Rab Noakes

A new festival being held in Paisley to celebrate the life and songs of world renowned Paisley born singer songwriter Gerry Rafferty.

15th - 19th April 2014

On what would have been Rafferty's 67th birthday the highlight concert is the sold out Bring it All Home, Gerry Rafferty concert -  a celebration of the music of one of Paisley’s most famous sons, Gerry Rafferty and featuring his popular  and lesser-known works and also never-before performed pieces, and also with songs especially arranged for the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.

This concert will differ from the hugely successful 2012 Bring It All Home concert at Celtic Connections. Instead of the full band there will be the RSNO and different songs are being performed. Rather than the full band version Rab Noakes will sing the song 'Baker Street' stripped back with only his guitar.

The show will be hosted by Martha Rafferty and produced by his friend and collaborator Rab Noakes.  Noakes has released over 20 albums and been described as ‘one of Scotland’s finest songsmiths’;

Martha Rafferty

Other artists performing are: Barbara Dickson, a platinum selling Scottish singer, she was awarded an OBE in 2002 for her services to music and drama. She has recently released her 25th studio album, To Each and Everyone; The Songs of Gerry Rafferty. Eddi Reader – another best selling Scottish singer, she began her career as the singer with Fairground Attraction and their chart-topping single Perfect. She has just released her 10th album, Vagabond. Roddy Hart – Glasgow songwriter, who has released a recent album with the band The Lonesome Fire. He curates the acclaimed Roaming Roots Revue at Celtic Connections and hosts a BBC Radio Scotland show. Siobhan Wilson – Scottish singer who spent several years studying music in Edinburgh and Paris and now based in Glasgow. Emma Pollock – a Scottish singer-songwriter known as part of the The Delgados, The Burns Unit and The Fruit Tree Foundation. 

I attended the Bring It All Home at Celtic 2012 and it was a wonderful night that included The Proclaimers and many other well known Scottish artists.

Here’s what I wrote then - Noakes gave the glue and character to the show with his stories about Gerry, the Humblebums, late night travels and more. He spoke of Rafferty’s intelligence and of his love of harmony; of his spiritual side and of his strong will and self belief. He spoke of the poignancy yet hard core centre of Rafferty’s songs. I'm still singing Rafferty songs two weeks later!

Rafferty’s songs cover the full spectrum of emotions - they express full-on-energy, questioning cynicism and mystical spiritualism. He was from Paisley and his music gave the folk song a new voice. He cared about the craft of the song and not celebrity or its trimmings. He was an artist in the true sense of the word and had a rare clarity of artistic vision. A wonderful celebration of one of Scotland’s greatest ever singer songwriters that did Gerry proud and a highlight of this years Celtic Connections.

The festival also hosts many other events showcasing the breadth and quality of Scottish artists, such as a songwriting night hosted by Hamish Stuart, John Grant and Midge Ure.

Details of events here - http://www.bringitallhome.co.uk/  

BLOGS 
http://www.musicfootnotes.com/2012/01/bring-it-all-home-gerry-rafferty.html
http://www.musicfootnotes.com/2011/10/gerry-rafferty.html

The Old Bookshop

Up in Callander Scotland there is a lovely old bookshop where they restore and rebind rare and second hand old hardback books.  We like to take a drive here as there are several bars and restaurants that welcome dogs. 

On our last visit I talked with Sally Evans, the owner of The Bookshop.  She is a poet herself and she used to hang about Sandy Bells Bar in Edinburgh when guys like the poet Hamish Henderson and his dog were there. She also hosts a poetry weekend here in September.  

I asked her if she thought books would disappear and she said she thought not and that we would want special hard back copies of the books we loved best - I think she may be right, I hope she is.  I thought of my own book collection for my favourite writers and poets, which are such an important part of my life and who I am. 
 

As book shops leave the high street and with books being cheaper to purchase online, I miss the time to collect and discover myself in them and vanish from those commercial clothes,  cosmetics and accessories high street merchandisers.

It’s of interest to me also that most of the writers, poets and musicians I meet support a yes vote for Scottish independence.  Perhaps it’s that artists are also dreamers of new visions and new horizons….

Kings Bookshop: Antiquarian and second hand books. Excellent bindings by bookbinder Ian W King; good Scottish, history, natural history and poetry sections, and our own garden behind the shop. Poetry Scotland broadsheet published here by Sally Evans, also diehard poetry and drama books. Annual Callander Poetry Weekend Party every first weekend in September.

Broken Records Queens Hall Edinburgh

Some gigs are simply so much fun! This was the Edinburgh based band Broken Records at the Queens hall Edinburgh, where I had unlimited shooting. The gig took place during the Edinburgh festival 2009.  I like to get to a good position at the side, if that’s possible. The converted church hall was packed so it wasn’t really possible to move about and I much prefer not to interrupt the gig when shooting.  The 3 song limitation is really so restrictive to getting good images.  It depends – you can get the shot but if you want to get something more than that it is not possible.  I remember feeling exhilarated and exhausted after the gig.

Over the years my eye has changed too. I’ve put a lot into my photography over the years and it means a lot to me following my passions for music and the combining two of my best loved arts is simply perfect for me.  Broken Records have a new EP Toska and play King tuts in April.  http://brokenrecordsband.com/

Broken Records are a six-piece indie folk band from Edinburgh. The band are signed to 4AD and released their debut album, Until the Erath Begins to Part 2009 and Let Me Come Home in 2010.

New Pono Player

In March Neil Young launched his high quality digital Pono music player at SXSW in Austin, Texas, where he said of his new player "once you hear this, you can't go back". The rock legend announced his plans for Pono - and during the event his Kickstarter campaign raised over $800,000 in just 4 hours! Young explained that 'Pono' is the Hawaiian word for 'righteousness'.

Pono promises lossless audio files, up to "ultra-high resolution" 9216 kbps. Pono consists of a digital music service (PonoMusic) and 128GB portable device (PonoPlayer) capable of storing 1-2,000 high resolution songs.
Some observers however have described the new player, which is yellow and shaped like a triangle, as looking like a Toblerone Chunky! Some also wonder whether we need higher quality sound for ‘music-on-the-go?

I read of Young’s music player,g which he called ‘Pure Tone’ at first, in his good read autobiography Waging Heavy Peace. Young was very concerned over the sound compression of mP3s and resolved to develop a high resolution sound. This reminded me of lo res web images compared to high quality prints. 

Young believes the quality of sound is being lost with MP3s as they compress the sound of music - whereas in the studio there are many layers of sound.  We might compare this to the quality of lo res web images compressed to 72 dpi to hi res prints 300dpi. 

The Pono Player is described as a "purpose-built, portable, high-resolution digital-music player designed and engineered in a "no-compromise" fashion to allow consumers to experience studio master-quality digital music at the highest audio fidelity possible, bringing the true emotion and detail of the music, the way the artist recorded it, to life."
Young is due to release a new autobiography. I enjoyed reading his Waging Heavy Peace last year his stories of both his passion for both vintage cars and music 


His next album will also be released this month and he said the record was "An unheard collection of rediscovered songs from the past recorded on ancient electro mechanical technology captures and unleashes the essence of something that could have been gone forever…".

Neil Young SECC Glasgow 2013

 

QUOTE Neil Young in Waging Heavy Peace: ‘I want to bring the soul of the music industry and the technology of Silicon valley together to create this new model using artists as the drivers’

I have an idea to build a portable player (I’ve called ‘Pure Tone’) and an online distribution model to present a quality alternative to MP3s.

‘To rescue music from the degradation in quality that is at the heart of the decline of music sales and ultimately music itself in popular culture with the advent of the new online music retailers (such as iTunes ) has some terrible quality. An mp3 has about five percent of the data that can be found in a ‘Pure Tone’ master file or a vinyl record.

I dislike what has happened to the quality of the sound of music, there is little depth or feeling left and people can’t get what they need from listening to music anymore, so it is dying.’

Recording is my first love in the creative field (along with song writing and music making)

Which all led me to think about how much I enjoy the quality of sound of live music. And also prompted me to restore our vinyl LPs and record player from their place in the attic. My son was highly impressed!

 https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1003614822/ponomusic-where-your-soul-rediscovers-music