Larry on Facebook responded to yesterday's post about my Scottish music album.  He liked the idea and thought I should play more Scottish music.  After all, I am from the Scottish Clan Gunn.  Why not more Scottish music?

When I was a kid, my dad took me to some Scottish Highland Games.  I fell in love with the bagpipes at the games.  They became a symbol of my Scottish heritage (that, and the color orange on St. Patrick's Day, which I never knew why until Andrew and I started playing “The Orange and the Green“).  I knew very few Scottish songs and tunes.  I knew “Amazing Grace”, “Loch Lomond”, “Scotland the Brave”, “The Scotsman” and that's about it.  Oh and “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean”.  So when I was first invited to perform at a Renaissance festival, I didn't know any Irish or Scottish songs, at least until I found a cassette of Irish Drinking Songs at Half Price Books.

I started learning ALL those songs.  Andrew and I played them on the South Mall of the University of Texas at Austin.  A UT employee would drop by and listen.  One day, he loaned me a couple cassettes.  One was by The Irish Balladeers and the other The Wolfe Tones.  That was the beginning of my Celtic music education.

At faire, Andrew took on the role of an Irishman.  I took on the role of a Scotsman (with a bad Scottish accent).  Brobdingnagian Bards was born.

It wasn't until several years later when Andrew started wearing a kilt to and Royce Perry convinced me that we should record some Scottish songs that we grabbed the title Real Men Wear Kilts for a bumper sticker and later a CD that we even took Scottish songs seriously. 

There's definitely a difference between Scottish songs and Irish songs.  To me, Irish songs are a bit darker with deeper stories.  Scottish songs are more rousing.  It's like the Irish songs were seeped in hundreds of years of oppression and Scotland broke free from that feeling.  Oh wait!  They did! (Well, not exactly…)

The Corries made a big difference to me.  Not only because Roy Williamson wrote the power ballad “Flower of Scotland“, but they seemed a lot like Brobdingnagian Bards.  They were fun!  The Corries also had a huge repertoire of fun Scottish songs that I hadn't heard before.

Edinburgh Scotsman, Ed Miller, had a huge impact on my Scottish musical education as well.  Ed is a wonderful singer.  He's also Scottish musical folklorist.  He got me into listening to the music recorded by Alan Lomax and all the other folk revivalists from the 60s.  I started listening to some old Scottish songs now on the Folkways record label (now owned by the Smithsonian).  Ed Miller bills his music as “Songs of Scotland, Old and New”.  He knows many great Scottish songwriters and records their songs.  He's fantastic!

The whole point of this is that when I started playing Celtic music, the songs I knew were Irish songs.  It wasn't until much later that I picked up some Scottish songs.  By then, I was pretty much ingrained in Irish music, not Scottish music.  I still think many of my Irish song performances are better than most of my Scottish song performances.  It takes time to really get to know and play a song.  I love my current performance of “Flower of Scotland” and my new version of “Ye Jacobites By Name“.  “Barnyards of Delgaty” is still a fun one to sing and play when I don't confuse it with my cat parody “Jasper Tabby Kitty Cat-y“.

No, I won't stop playing Irish songs.  They capture a different side of my musical persona.  But I can't wait to share some of my favorite Scottish Songs of Drinking & Rebellion.  If you'd like an early glance at the songs, then make sure you become a Patron of the Arts.  I'll share with you some of my early recordings as I finish them.

Incidentally, I decided to merge my Patronage site with Song Henge.  Now you can support my music and also support the podcast and get some a free album of Celtic music every month.

Slainte!