Songs in the Key of Fife E-Book

Vic Galloway

• Herausgeber: Polygon
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 760

Beschreibung

The East Neuk of Fife may seem like an unusual place for a musical revolution. However, in amongst the sleepy fishing villages and rolling fields, a small community of gifted musicians has quietly crept up on the world. From psychedelic troubadours the Beta Band to the mult-million-selling KT Tunstall, acclaimed singer-songwriter James Yorkston and the reigning monarch and lynchpin of the Fence Collective, King Creosote, Songs in the Key of Fife plots the unique, intertwining tales of these Fifers from their schooldays to the present day. This fascinating story, full of personal anecdotes and insights, provides an in-depth look at a unique collective of musicians who have experienced the extreme highs and the desperate lows of the music business over 20 years and why this craggy outpost on the east coast of Scotland is responsible for providing us with so many talented artists.

Leseprobe

Songs in the Key of Fife

First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

Birlinn Ltd West Newington House 10 Newington Road Edinburgh EH9 1QS

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

Copyright © Vic Galloway 2013

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

ISBN 978 1 84697 235 5 eBook ISBN 978 0 85790 231 3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission of the publisher.

All efforts have been made to trace copyright holders. If any omissions have been made, the publisher will be happy to rectify these in future editions.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library.

Typeset in Sabon by Hewer Text UK Ltd, Edinburgh

Contents

Introduction

1 Eggshell Miles

Kenny Anderson, The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra and Khartoum Heroes

2 Dance o’er the Border

Steve Mason, Gordon Anderson, John Maclean, Robin Jones and the Roots of The Beta Band

3 Champion Versions The Rise of the Beta Band

4 Moving Up Country

The Early Life of James Yorkston

5 Eye to the Telescope The Early Life of KT Tunstall

6 Rocket DIY

King Creosote and the Start of Fence Records

7 Heroes to Zeroes

The Life, Times, Decline and End of The Beta Band

8 KC Rules OK

Onwards and Upwards for King Creosote

9 Astronomy for Dogs

Gordon Anderson and The Aliens

10 Travelling Country Crops

Een Anderson and Pip Dylan

11 Drastic Fantastic The Rise and Rise of KT Tunstall

12 Secret Sounds Johnny Lynch – The Pictish Trail

13 Just beyond the River

The Continuing Life and Times of James Yorkston

14 Boys Outside

Steve Mason and Life after The Beta Band

15 Shouting at Wildlife The Fence Collective and Beyond

16 Home and Away The Fence Ethos

17 Diamond Mine The Future for our Fifers

Afterword

Acknowledgements

A Note on the Author

INTRODUCTION

Songs in the Key of Fife

Fife for Life . . . Fife, the Universe and Everything . . . Fife Is What You Make It . . . Fife in the Fast Lane . . . It’s a Wonderful Fife . . . Fife is Fife . . . la la, la la la . . .

These were working titles for this book, and even for chapters within it, which have mercifully been left as an opening salvo instead. ‘Songs in the Key of Fife’ is still a little silly, but infinitely better. I couldn’t resist it. From a throwaway header on The Aliens’ MySpace page, it hopefully delivers a humorous encapsulation of what I’m hoping to achieve as I attempt to sum up the aesthetic and musical ambition of these characters. This loosely connected collection of musicians and artists has conjured up a home-made, homespun, self-sustainable vision that yearns for more and reaches for the sky. The Beta Band and The Aliens went for it, the Fence Collective is quietly getting there, and KT Tunstall has been there, done most of it and come back to earth.

Far from being a definitive guide to all music from Fife, or even the East Neuk, this book talks about and traces the stories of my peer group, musicians I have befriended, crossed paths with and played music alongside. It isn’t about me as such, but elements of my own story run through it – a life that started in Fife. Though born abroad, I was raised in the small East Neuk village of Kingsbarns, where my parents moved when I was one year old. My dad was a lecturer in Arabic at St Andrews University, and my mother was a nurse in nearby Craigtoun hospital. I went to school in St Andrews and went through most of my formative experiences in this craggy outpost of eastern Scotland. I made my first friends there and discovered my deep love of music. In fact, as I get older I realise how much of a debt I owe the place, and how much I enjoy going back there. Is it pure nostalgia or Pavlovian conditioning? Do we all inevitably get drawn back to our childhood stamping grounds? Is there anything special about this place at all, or am I just a big sentimental daftie?

The East Neuk is a dreamy enclave where you have trouble getting mobile phone reception, where golfers flock from around the world, where farmers farm, fishermen fish, students learn in isolation and life seems to slow down a bit. The Fife I speak of isn’t that of coal-mining, generational poverty or hard-nosed new towns like Glenrothes or Dunfermline. It isn’t the story of working-class boys made good. It isn’t a history of Ian Stewart (an original member of The Rolling Stones), Nazareth, the Skids, Big Country or Jackie Leven. It doesn’t tell the story of linoleum, progressive economics or steelworks, but of an idyllic, pastoral, peaceful place where I grew up without a care in the world.

Although my parents weren’t well off, we had no real financial worries, and as a child I was allowed, even encouraged, to let my thoughts run free and wild around the fields, forests, beaches and bays. My parents’ marriage fell apart, and I remember harsh winters, school bullies and occasional tales of woe, but my overriding childhood memories are happy ones of bikes, beach barbecues, playing guitar and drawing comics. I remember laughter, climbing trees, dressing up, making crap cine films, shopping for my first 7-inch vinyl singles and a world with infinite possibilities. Without romanticising the past, those memories and instincts have stayed with me and have informed my life ever since.

As I watched many of my contemporaries move into music, art, film, graphic design and so on, I began to think there might be some connection between them, and that that connection might well be the East Neuk of Fife. Was this wishful thinking, some kind of generational fluke? It could happen, I suppose. Maybe the coastal landscape and sea had some influence. Maybe there is some kind of psychogeographical link between creative people and the place they grow up in. Or was there just fuck all to do as a teenager in a largely rural and academic community in a remote area of 1970s and 1980s Britain? More than likely! Use your imagination or die . . .

I’m not ‘going on a journey’. I’m trying to tell the intertwining, interlocking stories of some truly talented people who all grew up in the same area and have achieved success as musicians, composers, lyricists and writers. Before I was a BBC broadcaster, a journalist, a DJ or an author, I was a musician, and I’ve played in bands alongside many who feature in this book. I count most of them as friends. It seemed like a good idea to take on the challenge. The stories could fill ten books, but if there’s any justice these people will all write books of their own, and probably contradict everything in here. James Yorkston has already written a book of tour diaries, and will have something else published soon. This is not a perfect historical document, neither is it the definitive telling of all these tales. It is what it is, and to my knowledge it’s the first time these stories have been told properly. I simply wanted to get it all down.

These are stories that deserve to be told about colourful, interesting and eccentric characters whom more people should know about. There are occasional accounts of big money, showbiz and glamour, but more often of hard work, independence and art. Not everyone lives in a farfetched world of communal back-slapping, either. With art and inspiration come ego and argument, resentment, rivalry and umbrage. Some I’ve spoken to feel no sense of unity or collective thinking, and distance themselves from others in this book. My only regret is that Jenny ‘HMS Ginafore’ Gordon refused to be involved. Her music and story are as important as anyone else’s, but she has the right to remain silent. Writing this book has been a mammoth task, like eight biographies in one. I’ve spent months accumulating interviews with friends and colleagues in order to be as honest, demystifying and straight-talking as possible. I think all the people herein would want that.

The East Neuk might seem an unusual place for a musical revolution, but in among the sleepy fishing villages and rolling fields, a small outsider community of gifted and increasingly well-loved musicians and artists has quietly crept up on the world. Songs in the Key of Fife tries to set the record straight and reveal the big picture and the interwoven nature of a flourishing troupe of like-minded souls. Please read on and enjoy . . . just don’t tell Stevie Wonder!

1

Eggshell Miles

Kenny Anderson, The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra and Khartoum Heroes

Without the motivation, drive, camaraderie and vast musical output of Kenny Anderson, it is unlikely that this book would have been written at all. It’s not that he persuaded me to do it, or even particularly wants this set of stories told, but that he has been such a catalyst and linchpin in many of our subjects’ lives. I’ve known him for over twenty years, yet he’s still something of an enigma to me, with a continual stream of surprises up his sleeve. By far the most prolific songwriter I have ever known, with well over fifty albums in his back catalogue, he has toured and performed relentlessly and has influenced and infiltrated many musical careers from his base in the East Neuk. Kenny is a short, bearded, elfin character usually attired in a baggy jumper and jeans, complete with unkempt hair, dancing eyes and flirtatious smile. He looks more like a fisherman than a celebrity. But over the years he has intrigued, enthused and infuriated many with his charm, talent, obstinacy and contrariness, breaking hearts and settling scores with his most trustworthy of friends and weapons – the song!

Being born into a musical household helps when it comes to making your own music. Kenny recalls: ‘The first music I ever heard was probably one of my dad’s bands, him playing accordion and rehearsing. I don’t remember the radio being a big factor in our house, or albums being played. I don’t know if that’s because my dad works in music. I’m not sure my dad actually likes other kinds of music. He likes a particular thing and he plays it. He likes Scottish country dance music. He says he likes The Rolling Stones, but I’ve yet to see him ever listening to or even holding a Rolling Stones record.’

Billy Anderson left school at an early age, playing accordion semi-professionally from the age of fifteen or sixteen. When not working for

Lloyds TSB and as an insurance clerk, he would play with his dance bands as often as possible until he went full-time, when Kenny was about five. He now teaches accordion, plays gigs whenever possible and presents weekly programmes for Radio Tay. In 1975 and 1978 his band embarked on massive US tours, playing every state except Alaska and Hawaii to venues of 2,000–3,000 seats as part of a Scottish revue show with around thirty performers. He was a shrewd operator and made a fair chunk of money from these ventures, investing the finances in independent record shops in St Andrews and Cupar. To fully understand the Anderson brothers and their music, you must not underestimate the importance and influence of their father.

Before going completely professional, Billy would rehearse his band in the evenings in the family’s St Nicholas Street flat in St Andrews as the young Kenny listened in. Sometimes, if there was a gig or rehearsal elsewhere, they’d all stumble into the house at 1 a.m., bawdy and raucous with blether, gossip, laughter and nonsense. It was almost inevitable that at least one of the four children would follow their father into music. The actual hit rate would be far higher.

Born on 2 February 1967 at Craigtoun Hospital on the outskirts of St Andrews, Kenny Anderson is a born, bred and raised East Neuker. He has lived all his life in this area and still adores the rolling hills, the coastline, the whitewashed fishing villages, the stone dykes, country roads and paths that link towns, houses and cottages together. His mother Elizabeth is from Crail and his father’s from Largoward. Kenny started to play the accordion at seven: being the oldest, and being a boy, he was pretty much expected to learn the instrument his father had mastered. Although he liked certain Scottish country-dance tunes, he wasn’t a huge fan of that music at first.

‘This was a bit of a bugbear for my dad. He would say: “You should play that and that”, but I used to gravitate to the slower, minor-key numbers.’ He loved learning the accordion, but says: ‘Initially, it felt like an extension of homework. I don’t think I’m a typical eldest child, and I was painfully shy. My dad saw this and had to push me into playing and performing. I had a love/hate relationship with the accordion, but like most children I wanted to make my parents happy.’

Billy persuaded Kenny, at a very young age, to play accordion at various functions, whether to pensioners on Christmas Day or taking a solo spot at a Billy Anderson Ceilidh Band hotel show. Unbelievably, knowing what a confident and relaxed performer he is today, Kenny would be sick with nerves and had to be cajoled into those white-knuckle experiences. ‘I was not a natural performer and used to shuffle onstage. Bizarrely, I’m kind of glad my dad did that to me, though, because I then started to get work two or three nights a week around St Andrews as a solo accordionist. Quite often I’d be getting paid three times £15 a week at the age of thirteen. Remembering that a paper round paid around £2 a week, I had serious pocket-money for a teenager.’

Never gregarious or outspoken, Kenny was the last pupil to put his hand up in school; he respected his elders and remained within the boundaries his parents set. He was trustworthy and obedient to the wishes of authority figures. He wasn’t consciously rebellious or badly behaved in any way. He was also a high-flyer at school. Hardly the stuff of rock ’n’ roll . . . but that was to come later.

Kenny’s sister, Lynne, was two years younger and a Madonna fan. Although she had the first record player in the family, it was rare for one of her selections to prick up Kenny’s ears. ‘Aside from my dad’s music, the first song that truly connected with me was Charlie Rich’s “The Most Beautiful Girl In The World”. It still makes me ache when I hear it today. Then as a teenager I remember hearing music in other people’s houses, for example Blondie, The Jam and Adam and the Ants, and starting to love them. I enjoyed 2-Tone and became a massive fan of 1980s electronic music and the New Romantic thing. I watched Top of the Pops to avoid going to Boys’ Brigade on Thursday nights.’

When his younger twin brothers, Een (born Iain) and Gordon, started to listen to and buy music, a connection was made despite five years’ age difference. Gordon in particular was into The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Smiths, turning his older brother on to music that he’d then search out in local shops Tracks, the Music Shop and John Menzies. In 1982, though, Dexys Midnight Runners’ ‘Come On Eileen’, featuring that most ‘folk’ of instruments, the accordion, was an epiphany for Kenny. Suddenly the years of practising in his bedroom and performing in front of grannies made sense as he realised: ‘Wait a minute, I play that! I don’t just have to play jigs and reels.’ Over the years that song would continue to gather meaning, getting the cover-version and DJ-set treatment at Fence Collective events more than twenty-five years later.

In his late teens Kenny achieved consistently excellent grades at local schools Kilrymont and Madras College. He hated sports but ended up playing rugby for the ‘Madrascals’ at scrum-half for a while. He was academic, with no idea of starting a school band. Maths, physics and anything logical and scientific were his strong points. All his musical engagements were as a solo accordionist, mainly for tourists and the elderly. Eventually he played second accordion in his father’s dance band on occasion, staying up late and discovering he was a natural night-owl. There was very little under-age drinking, no outlandish behaviour; music was little more than a hobby and a part-time job. He’d contemplated becoming a drummer in the Boys’ Brigade pipe band, but still hadn’t formed a band or learned a single chord on the guitar. Although his best friends, Stevie Paul and David Wares, were also music-heads, it was solely as fans. Aside from the occasional jam on accordion and drums with Stevie, the thought of writing and performing music of his own hadn’t even crossed Kenny’s mind. All this was set to change as university loomed on the horizon.

Kenny was perfect material for higher education and had the necessary skills and commitment, choosing Edinburgh University in 1985 for a degree course in physics and electronics despite not having particularly enjoyed classes or having had an in-depth thirst for knowledge at school. Studying and scoring well came naturally and were a means to an end, but university was very different and in one term he realised he had chosen the wrong course. With no desire to spend time in libraries and no real interest in the subject matter, he stuck with it for his parents’ sake.

All was not lost, though. An ex-classmate from Madras College, Ralph Hasselgren, who had started at Edinburgh University at the same time, suggested one afternoon, while he and Kenny larked around avoiding class, that they form a band. ‘But I only play accordion,’ Kenny said. ‘You should play the bass, that’s easy enough,’ was Ralph’s response. With the help of their loyal drum machine and a basic reel-to-reel tape recorder, they began mucking about. It should be pointed out that, before this, Kenny had never written a song, a melody, a poem or a lyric. This was a true beginning, and he got the recording bug immediately. ‘I have this strong memory of having thoroughly enjoyed the experience, more than anything at university or school. Ralph was reluctant, though. He was into it sometimes and other times not. But I was hooked.’

Kenny then bought a four-track tape-deck, a Roland TR505 drum machine and a sequencer, using his student grant and money from accordion gigs. He started by programming sequenced keyboard and drum parts, overdubbing bass and then adding song ideas on top. ‘Some of the songs were absolutely terrible,’ he admits, but some weren’t. Certain tracks were revisited for future King Creosote releases, including ‘Bootprints’, ‘Marguerite Red’ and ‘Your Own Spell’, their chords, lyrics and melodies all constructed in the middle to late 1980s.

As the music was constructed, Ralph and Kenny searched for a singer. Kenny hadn’t discovered his own voice yet, and was petrified of being any kind of spokesperson or frontman. His shyness could be traced back to school, when any public performances would be instigated by his father’s boot up his backside. Ralph wasn’t keen to sing either, but needs must, and a university refectory gig was planned with the duo, the drum machine and a band name, Uncle Ralph. For musical reference points Kenny had started to listen to Scottish guitar-based bands including Aztec Camera and Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, also buying early U2, Triffids and Smiths albums.

Uncle Ralph briefly expanded with a singer and drummer, played a handful of gigs and considered taking it more seriously. Kenny was spending more and more time doing music and less and less time on coursework, but there was as yet no concept of the band going on after university. But he does say this: ‘I went to uni as a wee boy and left pretty much as I am now.’ He became politicised in Edinburgh and began to develop strong opinions on all manner of subjects. He still wasn’t sure that music was going to figure in his future, but despite a very respectable 2:1 in Electronics and Electrical Engineering he was absolutely sure his future didn’t lie there.

In 1989 Uncle Ralph imploded as Ralph acquired a job and Kenny returned to St Andrews. Moving in with his parents again, he started to work full-time at the St Andrews Woollen Mill, a job he’d done part-time during the holidays for years previously. Kenny says this job and this organisation were a key influence on what would become Fence many years later. The truth is that he loved working for the Phillips brothers. Raymond and Bob Phillips had unwittingly started the business in 1962 when funding a holiday to the US by taking a suitcase of tartan scarves with them and selling them within minutes of arriving. This was the beginning of a business that would become an empire of sorts, and an organisation that Kenny massively respected. They were decent people, had respect for their workforce and paid well. Kenny was an all-rounder for the company – driving, working on the shop floor and in the stock department, weeding, vacuuming – anything, really – and would return to work for them many times over the years until they closed their doors in 1999.

Although he was surrounded by friends and settled for a while, nothing much was happening in the East Neuk, and Kenny had only recently turned twenty-two. He yearned for some kind of adventure, musical or not. When a former flatmate, Bruce Bell, taught him three chords on the guitar, accompanied him on the mandolin, and suggested they buy InterRail tickets and take off to the continent for four weeks of fun, he didn’t need much persuasion. He dusted down the accordion, four years in its box, and brushed up on a few jigs and reels. Bruce learned a few bluegrass instrumentals, and they had a basic busking set of half an hour to knock out to anyone brave enough to listen.

The trip started with a whimper when they managed to leave days before their InterRail cards were activated, landing in Boulogne with no money, missing rucksacks and train tickets that didn’t work. Living out of a bivvy-bag and having to busk for meals and campsite access was a harsh reality, but something that would in many ways change Kenny. Busking would become an important part of his life and shape his psyche as a musician.

When their InterRail passes became valid they made their way to Amsterdam. Any young man or woman with an inquisitive streak and an eye for adventure has to visit this city at least once in their teens or twenties. They made their way straight to the centre of town, grabbed a busking pitch and began to strike up a tune. At that very moment, two shady-looking individuals bounded up to them, armed with a double bass and a banjo. The bassist was some kind of Dutch psychobilly, complete with flat-top hairdo and menacing grimaces, while the banjo player, with his dungarees, striped shirt, ponytail and mischievous Gallic features, could only be a Frenchman.

After listening to a short set, Frenchie and Psycho approached our heroes and offered to back them on a number. ‘Bruce and I were really nervous that we’d taken their territorial busking spot and they were coming to get us,’ Kenny remembers. ‘Thankfully they watched for a while and asked to join in. The second they started to accompany us with the bass and banjo, it was immediate . . . this was the most exciting “folk” music I’d ever heard. We were all shocked at how easily it worked, how good it sounded and how much the crowd loved it.’ Within an hour or so they were joined by a classically trained female violinist from the US, dressed in full punk regalia. With even larger crowds amassing, the motley crew now comprised rockabilly Etienne Stekelenburg on bass, bohemian Eric Baeckeroot on banjo, Bruce Bell, in goth/hippie attire, picking a mandolin, Martha Weiss the punk with the fiddle, and Kenny in pork-pie hat and sideburns on accordion. They must have looked like a dishevelled, surrealist gang of gypsies – which, to all intents and purposes, they were.

It was 8 September 1989, and the bare bones of a group were formed. Initially calling themselves La Merde d’Oiseau Quintet (The Birdshit Five) in homage to their being street-musicians, they began to incorporate TV cartoon themes into their live set. Bruce christened them The Scooby Doo Orchestra after the Hanna-Barbera canine detective, and so the legendary, ass-kicking bluegrass combo that is still remembered, revered and respected today first came into existence. The InterRail cards were ditched and the band realised they truly had something, deciding to continue as a semi-serious unit. Within hours of forming they were playing to audiences of around two hundred on the streets of Amsterdam. But this was no flash in the pan. A planned month away turned into two years of busking, and Kenny’s future was indelibly marked by the world of street music.

After journeys to Belgium and Germany, the band followed Kenny and Bruce’s lead and returned to St Andrews, eventually taking up residence in a cottage near Blairgowrie in Perthshire and bravely busking throughout the winter in Dundee. Within days they were being interviewed and photographed by the local newspaper, the Dundee Courier, and were roped into playing the BBC’s Children in Need TV charity telethon. The Scooby Doo Orchestra were photographed and interviewed wherever they went in the UK or Europe. They had a magnetism and a fresh-faced charisma that drew people in. They were unpretentious and innocent; they looked like they were having fun.

All was not well at home, however. In his parents’ eyes, Kenny had always been the golden boy, but now he had long hair and ripped jeans, played in a busking band and had utterly rejected his school and university successes. Raging arguments ensued and Billy Anderson began to think of Kenny as a tramp, a disappointment and an embarrassment. His mother was also hugely unimpressed, but sneaked him in and out of the family home under his father’s nose whenever necessary. Although family relations were unpleasant, Kenny had no intention of changing.

By now the five of them were extremely tight as musicians and going from strength to strength as a group. They could play for hours, drawing on their repertoire of bluegrass, folk and traditional tunes (alongside sillier, improvised moments), all played with sweaty intensity at extreme speed. They were a party band and they knew it, as did their growing audience. Now trading as The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra, they would record a succession of cassettes with titles such as Mr Stanbrick Presents . . . , Mrs Stanbrick Presents . . . , Leaf and Stone. The fake-Gaelic appropriation of the cartoon dog’s name looked unusual and helped steer them away from any potential litigation. The cassettes were made up of bluegrass and Irish traditional songs such as ‘Wildwood Flower’, ‘Shady Grove, ‘Old Joe Clark’, ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’, ‘Russian Reel’, ‘Cripple Creek’ and ‘Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms’, and were largely instrumental. They were great for selling on the street and picking up more much-needed cash for the Orchestra to live off as a five-piece band.

Unfortunately, things couldn’t remain as they were. Martha had a brief relationship with Kenny before switching to Etienne and finally returning to the US. Virtuoso banjo player Eric was darting back and forward to France to keep his successful poster business afloat and keep away from the dreich Scottish east-coast winter.

It’s at this point that Een, one of Kenny’s younger brothers and twin of Gordon, enters the story. Unlike the academic Kenny and art-school-bound Gordon, Een was a nature lover and had an affinity with wildlife and plants. After school he had entered a land management and grounds keeping course on a neighbouring estate in the Perthshire countryside. Kenny made contact with his then-estranged brother, and Een moved into the cottage. Almost immediately he took a shine to the double bass and eyed it enviously. Although he was five years Kenny’s junior and had never played a musical instrument in his life, all who have accompanied him over the twenty-odd years since then acclaim Een (‘Pip Dylan’) as a total master on a vast array of instruments.

Was this the end of The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra? Yes and no. By the summer of 1990, despite sporadic gigs, the group had decided to go two separate ways, with Bruce, Etienne and Martha heading in one direction and Kenny travelling to France with Eric to attempt to master bluegrass on the accordion – no mean feat, as accordion is little used in bluegrass, more in Cajun music. Three months later, he’d pretty much done it.

By the end of 1990 the band was no more. Bruce had taken a job as a male nurse, Etienne and Martha had left Scotland, and Kenny and Eric were living in France. On a return visit they hooked up again with Een on Mull and became a trio, buying a half-size double bass from smooth, jazz-flecked Dundee popsters Danny Wilson before retracing their steps to the Dordogne for the winter. Een improved massively on the bass and began to sing harmonies with Kenny, who was now playing the guitar as often as the accordion. Suddenly a singing, harmonising duo had emerged for parties and impromptu gigs when Eric wasn’t around to add light-speed banjo licks.

The bohemian, devil-may-care spirit was in full swing, with never a second thought given to the constant flitting between France and Scotland. Possessions were kept to an absolute minimum, with little more than their instruments and a rucksack of tatty clothes to hand. Kenny and Een returned to Fife to look for a place to unleash their growing prowess. Remembering a previous engagement on their travels, they began to attend a weekly open-mic night at the West Port Bar in Dundee. Humble beginnings, but soon they attracted the washboard skills of a young American on a gap year, Joe Collier (one day to be better known in the Fence Collective as MC Quake), who added another rhythmic dimension. Was this the beginning of a new incarnation of the Dubhs?

The next part of the puzzle appeared in the form of Andy Robinson (now renamed Captain Geeko, the Dead Aviator), a Rush and Iron Maiden fan, an excellent drummer and a school acquaintance of Kenny’s who had recently left another band, Bedlam. Kenny invited him in, albeit without his prog-rock drum kit and armed with little more than a snare drum and brushes. Finally Eric, the bluegrass maestro, decided to make the journey once again and complete another line-up of the band. After recording a cassette of their live set for sale on the streets of any town that would have them, it was time to hit the road again. To great success and consistently large crowds, they busked throughout France, Spain, Holland, Germany and Belgium until the autumn of 1991.

Although it seems romantic and exotic, the life of a busker can be extremely tiring. In 1991 I too was busking around Europe with school friend Drew Pattison, knocking out dodgy reels, jigs, hornpipes and 1950s rock ’n’ roll tunes on guitar and bagpipes – an untutored racket, in all honesty. I wonder what would have happened if we’d crossed paths with the Dubhs? It’s certainly true that your musicianship improves, your repertoire increases and your confidence becomes unshakeable when you’re busking. However, you do work extremely hard, shivering under the elements and always at the mercy of unforgiving and non-paying crowds. It can feel – God forbid! – like a real job at times.

It was also around this time that the infamous South American panpipe bands were emerging, hogging the streets and squares with amplified back-lines and organised merchandise. Anti-busking byelaws were being brought in to ward off the homogeneous teams of cash-hungry Bolivians and Colombians, so it seemed time was up for pure, direct, acoustic street music. With this in mind it was suggested the Dubhs return to Scotland to see out the winter playing proper indoor gigs. After some debate, the decision was made and they were Scotland-bound again.

Despite Joe returning stateside, Kenny worked to secure any gigs he could and establish the band as a real entity. Aberdeen’s Blue Lamp bar and venue obliged, and after their first performance there, John Reid of the Granite City Rock agency invited them to play in the Aberdeen area more often. They gladly acquiesced, and a love affair between the Granite City and the band was set in motion. With a new fiddler, Donna Vincent, they gigged hard and often throughout the north-east and the Highlands, building a sizeable fan base, especially in their beloved Aberdeen, where they opened the legendary arts venue The Lemon Tree in 1992, becoming the first band to sell it out.

Their profile was building and there was a tangible buzz around the band. They supported countless Celtic-rock bands such as Wolfstone and the Humph Family, and folkies such as the Old Blind Dogs, around the country, playing their frenetic brand of breakneck banjo-fuelled mountain music, bluegrass, skiffle and early rock ’n’ roll. A band logo was scrawled out by Kenny’s brother Gordon and emblazoned on T-shirts that sold by the bucketload. Thanks to a tip-off from friends and supporters Old Blind Dogs, Lochshore/Klub Records took an interest in the group after seeing the Dubhs’ freewheeling, energetic live shows and hearing the Van Album of traditional songs and covers including ‘John Hardy’, ‘Roll In My Sweet Baby’s Arms’ and ‘Mystery Train’.

A cassette, released with their Mystery Machine VW van on the cover, was recorded in ten hours in November 1991 in Land Studios, Kennoway with engineer and producer Dougie MacMillan. It has legendary status among Dubh-lovers to this day. Ask Kenny for a copy or track down an old fan; in many ways it’s the definitive Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra album. I remember hearing it for the first time and being blown away by how fast and how expertly executed it was. But that was nothing compared to the live act: they would play three verses and three choruses in under a minute. This was folk music with all the youthful abandon and velocity of punk.

Record company interest in place, the band were asked whether they wanted to be a ‘traditional’ band doing old songs and covers, or a ‘traditional-sounding’ band playing originals. Unhesitatingly they went for the second option. Kenny, encouraged by Andy, wanted to write his own material, though with a bluegrass backbeat to fit in with the band’s catalogue of covers. Having quietly filled diaries with songs and lyrics since the Uncle Ralph days and during his years of busking, Kenny could now draw on this wealth of material for The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra’s debut album proper, The 39 Stephs. He admits he had to go through his songs ‘to see which ones could be bluegrassified’, but in the spring of 1992 they revisited Land Studios and laid down the bulk of The 39 Stephs before the record contract had even been signed, with producer Dougie pushing Kenny onwards with his songwriting and lyrics. With rough mixes ready by the early summer, they then played the Glastonbury Festival, thanks to the Granite City Rock guys. They were on a roll.

Kenny elaborates: ‘The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra taught us how to play and be intuitive as musicians. Een, Andy and I almost developed telepathy as players, but I always felt we were secondary to bands who wrote their own songs. We knew we were a good band and it was a necessity to start doing our own material. I never wanted to be the singer, but someone had to do it! It’s fine busking instrumentals and tunes on the street, but when you play forty-five-minute sets in a venue, you need vocals to break things up. By default, I became the singer.’

Een by now had moved from double bass to banjo, filling the gap left by Eric, who was now spending more and more time away from the band in France. By listening to the greatest banjo players of all time – Bella Fleck, Flatt & Scruggs etc – he set himself on becoming the best finger-picking virtuoso in the land. He had never handled an instrument as a child, and he had no official music training, so to prove his worth he had to be faster and more dextrous than anyone else. If Kenny’s need was to write unique songs, Een’s compulsion was be the greatest technician on bass, then banjo, and eventually every stringed instrument, in the western world!

It was around this point that I, with my childhood pal James Wright (later Yorkston), first saw the Dubhs, playing a sparsely attended gig in Edinburgh toilet venue the Subway. We were utterly blown away. Not only did they play faster than anyone we’d ever seen, but the musicianship was dazzling and the onstage energy electric. Seeing Een Anderson let rip on a five-string banjo was a sight and sound to behold. I soon realised they were from St Andrews too . . . ya wee beauty!

I’d left school in 1990, and in 1991 had formed my first band, Miraclehead, with James. After starting out as a power-trio, with myself on vocals and guitar and James on bass and vocals, we ended specialising in a weird, melodic hybrid of punk, funk, rock and ska and would entertain or annoy audiences with our irreverent stage antics and high-octane pop nuggets, assisted by Cliff Simms on vocals and Stuart Bastiman on drums. We were an eccentric bunch of pierced, dyed, ripped and bleached drop-outs who wanted to play music as fast and as dynamically as possible, and we found solidarity in Kenny and his scruffy gang of acoustic speed-freak gypsies. Although we were a year away from meeting properly again, a mutual appreciation was set in place. Who could have known then that all our futures would be entwined for a very long time to come?

With a growing sense of confidence, the Dubhs started to think more widescreen. Andy expanded his drum kit and Kenny began to introduce songs with more subtlety. ‘We were a good band, we had a following, and we could earn money from gigs and from busking. But I was getting sick of shouting throughout the songs. There was no tone control and the lyrics didn’t import any real meaning to us. I wanted to be more musical and try to say something that was ours. We were basically singing bastardised versions of songs that were old enough to have been sung on plantations.’ They had nailed that sound on The Van Album and it was time to move on. Kenny brought in a batch of songs – some bluegrass, some in waltz time, with different tempos. Eric and Andy were keen, but Een, hitting his stride as a bluegrass master, wasn’t as impressed. However, that was the way it was: democracy rules. The truth is that Kenny was assuming the role of bandleader, driving force and sole songwriter. ‘It wasn’t a massive diversion musically,’ he says. ‘Most of my songs use the old A, D, G, C, E minor and A minor progressions as in folk music.’

They went into Land Studios and recorded ten originals and – at the behest of Klub Records – a few traditional songs. They lifted ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown’ from The Van Album and recorded new versions of ‘Nelly Kane’, sung by Een, and an instrumental, ‘Wildwood Flower’ for which Kenny then wrote lyrics. Bizarrely, Klub then accused Kenny of writing about drugs. They insisted that ‘Our Last Needle’ and ‘Snow Queen’ were about substance abuse and Kenny was trying to pull the wool over the eyes of a naive wee folk label. The truth was Kenny couldn’t even smoke a joint without flipping out, and wasn’t even a big drinker. Drugs would eventually rear their psychedelic heads later in Kenny’s life, but then he was totally clean and utterly indifferent.

With artwork from brother Gordon, the first properly released and distributed album by The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra, The 39 Stephs, was born. Not only a play on the John Buchan novel, it was named in tribute to Stephanie, a girl who worked at Land Studios, and to all the other Stephanies who were cropping up in the lives of the Dubhs. The album was warmly welcomed by their growing fan base, who loved the existing bluegrass flavours evident in their frantic live shows but instantly took to the new songs and gentler directions, such as the epic but intimate ‘Eggshell Miles’. Here was a song, written about Kenny’s new girlfriend, Kirsty Winskill, that captured hearts. ‘Dance music is for dancing to, but listening to that fast stuff at home is like listening to a ceilidh band. You need something with more variation and depth,’ says Kenny. In the live set the band went from playing almost nothing but covers to almost nothing but originals.

‘Eggshell Miles’ became the band’s most requested song. Lyrically, Kenny covered relationship troubles, falling-outs with brothers and personal woes. ‘I’m a two-faced little shit and a coward, so I’ll get back at people in the lyrics of my songs. They were mainly from a personal point of view, nothing overtly social or political.’ The song ‘Precious Days’ was a nostalgic look at their busking times, ‘Little Wonder’ was about turning thirty (although Kenny was only twenty-five), and ‘Our Last Needle’ was indeed a junkie tale, but not from personal experience. With a real calling card in The 39 Stephs, the Dubhs realised it was an experiment that had gone really well. They sold it at gigs and via the label’s contacts, but garnered no reviews except for a seven out of ten from Vox magazine, with Stuart Bailie remarking: ‘While some Caledonian folk acts sound overly dour, the Skuobhies sound like they’ve got verve in their boots and their radios tuned to busy, noisy channels. Break open a fresh batch of Scooby Snacks and welcome in some shaggy new friends!’ Yet they now wanted to be taken seriously, and it was time to attempt something more ambitious.

‘For our second album, Spike’s 23 Collection, at the end of 1992,’ Kenny remembers, ‘the gloves were off. We really wanted to make something of it. Tempo-wise it was slower, and there were less bluegrass elements on there. It was a little too long, perhaps, with us trying to fit as much as possible on to a CD, but I wanted it to be a real album.’ The band were now obsessed with numbers and all the coincidences and conspiratorial connections around the number twenty-three itself. Andy, Een and Kenny noticed them everywhere and anywhere. When they met a couple, Spike and Debbie, on the Teasses country estate in Fife, on which the band had rented a cottage, they found Spike had a collection of them. Spooky but true! Michael ‘Spike’ Sanderson and Debbie Wheelhouse were to become good friends with Kenny. They became fans of the band’s music and influenced the band ‘in a magic-mushroom kind of way,’ Kenny recalls mischievously.

In their own minds, The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra and producer Dougie MacMillan had delivered a hefty piece of work that stood up alongside other albums of the time, albeit with an off-kilter Celtic twist. REM, Morrissey, James, Primal Scream, Suede and Counting Crows were all on Kenny’s turntable, US grunge was beginning to peter out, and Britpop was about to sink its teeth into the UK music industry. With stand-out tracks such as opener ‘The Seminar’, ‘Swinging On A Gate’, ‘Fisticuffs’ and the breakneck bluegrass of ‘Graeme Hallelujah Graeme’ as well as more of Kenny’s heartfelt laments and 1980s pop-inspired instrumentation, they had tried to make something that stood out from the usual suspects, with longer songs, soundscapes and experimentation. They enlisted John Maclean (soon of The Beta Band) to create the artwork while he attended Edinburgh College of Art. As Kenny’s brother Gordon’s best friend and a phenomenal artist in collage, this choice made perfect sense. It looked and sounded grander than anything else they’d dreamed of achieving. They had gone to town on making something they thought would, could and should be successful and important.

‘We got a two line review in the Dundee Courier – that’s all we got, press-wise. We were gutted,’ Kenny spits. The review goes like this: ‘A quick listen shows the Skuobhies in fine form again on this their second album, with good songs and slick production making it well worth checking out.’ The album disappeared without a trace. The problem seemed to be that the band’s audience weren’t old, beardy folk fans, but students and young people who bought their music in indie, dance and rock record shops. The label didn’t know what to do with them and continued to sell their CDs in tartan-tat west-coast gift shops to tourists who wanted traditional music as a holiday souvenir. You were more likely to find an SDO album in a Caledonian MacBrayne ferry port than a record shop. There was a huge dichotomy between the way the band were seen by tastemakers and what they were trying to achieve. They weren’t a trad band with a comedy name, but an exhilarating live band with an inspired songwriter, trying to push the envelope of what pop, rock, indie and folk could be.

Taking on another fiddler, Jason Brass, a new bassist in Pete Macleod (known today by his Fence pseudonym ‘Uncle Beesly’) and finally saying goodbye to Eric, they found themselves in a netherworld where folk clubs didn’t think they were a true trad band, yet the press and the indie circuit couldn’t look beyond their largely acoustic instrumentation and Kenny’s Scottish singing voice. They attracted dance fans due to the speed and thumping rhythms of the music, hippies and festival-goers looking for something earthy and real, and those who loved the exquisite musicianship and unusual, contemporary songs. But they didn’t attract the hip, cool and trendy tastemakers du jour.

Kenny had started out singing on the street and found it natural to pronounce the words in his own accent. He didn’t change Scottish words or slang to more conventional rock ’n’ roll-speak. Now every indie band in Scotland does exactly this, but in 1992/93 this probably worked against the band. Only The Proclaimers pronounced their lyrics in their own dialect, and outside their fan base and those in the know they were seen as a novelty act. Kenny still thought of himself as a ‘singer by default’, and The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra was most definitely a band. If Een wrote a song he sang it, and so on. It just happened that Kenny was the driving force and the most prolific writer in the group – and possibly a control-freak of sorts. He didn’t want it to be his backing band, but a unit that worked together. The band members were beginning to think otherwise.

It’s here that a young Kate Tunstall enters the fray. ‘At the Woollen Mill that summer,’ Kenny remembers from 1993, ‘I worked with a girl called Siobhan who suggested I go along to the Vic Café to see her pal playing. There was a little oval back-room, and this chirpy little dark-haired lass was surrounded by a load of friends, singing what appeared to be her own songs. Her crowd were very enthusiastic but a lot younger than me, so after chatting to her about maybe having her support the Dubhs, I sloped off to my own crew. I see from my diary that I’d written down that she was “excellent”.’

Here was a bubbly, attractive girl with talent in spades and an unflappable instinct for performance. Confident, for sure, but with a dusty, down-to-earth manner that blew away any air of pretentiousness. ‘A few days later,’ Kenny continues, ‘I met up with Kate at the Vic. She gave me a tape of her songs and I dropped her off at her mum’s at closing time. On 2 September Kate joined in with a Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra rehearsal. I tried putting accordion parts on a few of her songs, and she played her first gig with us in that same oval room on Friday, 3 September.’ If that turnaround seems quick, it’s a testament to Kenny, Kate and the band’s abilities as spontaneous musicians.

As the Dubhs were still a fairly sizeable draw, playing as often as possible, Kate became a staple of their live gigs, befriending the boys and making a bond. She regularly joined them onstage for spontaneous backing vocals, bursts of harmonica and added percussion, and occasional versions of her own songs. She was obviously a natural singer and pushed Kenny to perform better too. In the ramshackle world of the Dubhs she was a worthy addition and a little injection of glamour for their audience and her male admirers. One such admirer was Een. With his innocent, country-boy looks and charm, combined with his deadpan Fife humour, here was a ladykiller. But would she feel the same? And could the band handle a romantic entanglement within its ranks?

The wheels, however, were about to fall off the Mystery Machine, spelling disaster for the band’s tight core of Kenny, Een and Andy. In early 1994 the Dubhs’ new live agents, Active Events, had made their first attempt to get the band gigs in the US, and the overwhelming response from venues, press and radio was that the name of the band was going to be a major problem. Young children and their parents might show up to cuddle and shake hands with the loveable cartoon dog and be confronted by five scruffy Scottish musicians. They were strongly advised to change the band’s name by a big US agent who imagined legal threats from Hanna-Barbera. There was a lot of humming and hawing, but at their annual knees-up at the Lemon Tree in Aberdeen that February they announced their decision to do precisely that.

After another series of bad gigs, long drives and speeding tickets, and the realisation that they weren’t rising above the UK toilet circuit they’d been playing for years, Andy quit the group. The band weren’t progressing career-wise, although their music was. They were gigging around in circles with no sign of the money improving or the audiences growing with them. Andy had seen a chance to return to university, earn money and immerse himself in a serious relationship with his girlfriend, soon to become his wife. Without a decent replacement drummer, the band floundered. Een wanted to pursue more authentic, technical, traditional styles on his own and form a more folk-pop band with Kate, to be called Elia Drew. Kenny was left to call time on a band that could and should have gone the distance. ‘It was absolutely gut-wrenching. It was worse than losing a girlfriend, the day Andy left. I remember it clearly, the day he left that note,’ Kenny recalls.

Unlike today, alt-folk and nu-folk didn’t exist, and the trends of the time, such as Madchester, grunge and Britpop were all electric in sound, aesthetics and rock ’n’ roll influence. Creation Records had signed half of Glasgow’s indie scene, yet bands from elsewhere of different character, influences and instrumentation didn’t stand a chance. Edinburgh got a look-in occasionally but was terminally unfashionable, and places like Dundee, Aberdeen and Fife were almost entirely ignored. Perhaps the band were too late or too early for their time, and would be well-respected elder statesmen in the UK’s Americana and folk scenes today had they just carried on regardless. Perhaps their sound harked back to the outmoded 1980s Celtic soul of The Bluebells and Dexys. Possibly the name was a hindrance. We’ll never know, but one thing was for certain: they weren’t getting to the right ears in the early 1990s and were extremely skilled at avoiding the zeitgeist at all times. It was April 1994, and The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra was no more.

With the bass-playing Pete ‘Uncle Beesly’ Macleod as his only accomplice, Kenny needed to do something different to rally the troops again. With a change of name imminent, it was time to make a clean break and begin a new group. Initially playing another Lemon Tree gig with reluctant ex-members of the Dubhs as the Barber Hannahs in homage to their potential litigators, Kenny wondered what other cartoon heroes there were out there. In a moment of clarity he stumbled precariously over some daft wordplay and there it was in front of him . . . Khartoum Heroes. It sounded good and, thanks to Gordon, in scrawled logo form it looked good too. In true Kenny Anderson tradition, he had another substantial set of songs that were itching to get recorded too. It wouldn’t be a new Dubhs record, but the first under a new name. The despondent group went once more to Land Studios to record the album Gordonov, featuring the last recordings of the classic Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra line-up. The songs were as good as ever, if not better, and the band rose to the occasion and created the first Khartoum Heroes LP, with a self-portrait of brother Gordon as the artwork. Now Kenny had a band name and an album – but no band . . .

It was at just this time, summer 1994, that my band Miraclehead had lately split-up. James ‘Yorkston’ Wright and Cliff Simms had unceremoniously walked out, cutting drummer Stu Bastiman and me adrift. Distraught, we desperately wanted to get a new project off the ground. We needed inspiration, and fast. Two months earlier we’d appeared at the Cupar Festival in Fife, playing on the back of a lorry alongside who else but The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra. We’d all got on famously, getting drunk together and laughing at our bad luck as bands. There was chemistry between us, as people if not as players. When I unwittingly bumped into Kenny Anderson backstage at 1994’s T in the Park festival, we let loose our sob-stories and swapped numbers to meet up and cry into our pints if nothing else.

‘Honestly,’ Kenny recounts, ‘I woke up in the night and thought to myself, Vic’s a guitar player and he’s been left with a drummer. Here I am with a bass-player – that’s a potential band. I remember you liked the name Khartoum Heroes, so I phoned you up.’ A first, dreadful rehearsal was organised. Here were two bands trying to find a middle ground – Miraclehead was grounded in punk, indie and ska, and we’d never played any kind of folk music, never mind bluegrass. We were moving into classic British songwriting shapes, referencing The Kinks, Madness and XTC, whereas Kenny’s songs were more traditional and used at most three chords. Kenny had never really played music with real rock drums and an electric guitar either. However, among the chaos, something clicked. More rehearsals were booked and soon a coherent group emerged.

‘I’ve never experienced anything like it, before or since,’ Kenny remembers. ‘For a month solid, between collecting Giros [dole money] and having magic-mushroom adventures, we played continually and formed a huge bond as musicians and friends.’ It was true: four unlikely lads had summoned some kind of phoenix from the embers of two red-hot bands. For that month or so we lived in Kenny’s psychedelic cottage on the Teasses estate near Ceres in Fife, playing Mario Kart, eating gingerbread, tripping on mushrooms and, above all, making music. We had our gear set up twenty-four hours a day and jammed whenever we felt the urge, which was most of the time. With Kenny’s seemingly endless book of songs and my angular, melodic contributions we had created our own sound and hours’ worth of material. It was a joyful time when music, creativity and merry abandon were the order of the day, and nothing else mattered. Egos were left at the door and all ideas were considered. It was real freedom, and I will remember it as long as I live.

Kenny had confirmed he would honour any outstanding engagements for The Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra under the new name, and Active Events had booked the band on a nationwide UK tour, so our baptism of fire was soon upon us. Expecting acoustic banjo, fiddle and bluegrass, audiences got something altogether different. Here was an electrified quartet playing some recognisable songs of Kenny’s, including ‘Moonbarking’, ‘Colossal Angel’, ‘St Swithin’, and ‘Spacehopper’, from the first Khartoum Heroes album, alongside new, eccentric psych-pop numbers like ‘Bathtime Maybe’, ‘Purple Om’, ‘Lonely Little Man’ and ‘Bag Lady’. There were effects on guitars, banjo, fiddle and vocals, and the music was moving into far more contemporary waters. Some Dubh fans went with it and appreciated the seismic sonic shift, others walked away in dismay. We weren’t trying to pander to anyone: Khartoum Heroes was what it was, and we brass-necked our way through that tour and a Celtic Connections festival appearance in Glasgow, making friends and enemies along the way.

At an Edinburgh gig in a short-lived venue called Stones, Een Anderson and Jason Brass came to watch what they thought would be a total car-crash. Maybe it was, but they both wanted in. ‘Een said to me: “You guys sound like a band and I want to play.” I was amazed. I’d actually impressed Een with one of my bands!’ says Kenny. The sibling rivalry that had brought the Dubhs to an end was shelved, albeit temporarily. So they re-entered the fold, Een playing banjo (now electrified), mouth-organ, backing vocals and wobbleboard, and Jason back on fiddle. Here was a band that was anything but conventional, traditional or authentically rootsy. It was weird for them, but then it was for all of us. It might have been a strange mismatch of influences but it was also exhilarating.

Khartoum Heroes hit the road continually. We played across Scotland and then the UK. We laid down an odd collection of recordings that was issued on cassette at the time (reissued by Fence later as Egyptian Skipping) and sold at gigs. We played festivals, parties, rock gigs, folk clubs, pretty much anywhere people would have us. A friend of ours, Paul Mustarde, became manager, bought a van, and encouraged us to progress as a band. Stu and I learned about folk and bluegrass while opening Kenny’s ears to various genres of outlandish indie, rock and electronic music. It was a vibrant, creative and exploratory time.

In the single year we were together as Khartoum Heroes we accomplished some impressive and outlandish achievements. We played in Glasgow’s George Square at Hogmanay 1994/95, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and on Ned Sherrin’s Radio 4 Loose Ends show, and toured across parts of Europe, gigging in France, Belgium and Holland. A highlight for me was performing at and staying in a squatters’ club called Bar en Boos in Leiden, Holland. As an anarcho-commune, vegan café, alternative record shop and DIY venue they welcomed this gang of Scottish stragglers to their hearts and home. We briefly became firm friends with the local punks and got trashed on weissbier every night. This is what being in a band is all about – travelling wherever, playing to appreciative audiences and cementing real, lasting friendships on the road. Because of that intense and personal time I have an unbreakable bond with those guys, especially Kenny. ‘It was like a new girlfriend, that band,’ says Kenny. ‘We all needed it to be good and to be successful. It was an amazing year.’

After the honeymoon period, band relationships began to blossom and things started to change. If Kenny and I were the motivating force and the songwriting team, Een and Stuart were becoming thick as thieves as players and ladies’ men. On our European tour we played electric at night in venues while making extra money busking in acoustic guise during the day. Stu had stepped up as an exceptional drummer and had fully welcomed bluegrass, country, folk and Americana into his life. This pleased Een, and the old ways of the Dubhs began to creep back in. Kenny felt comfortable with this as it reminded him of the good old days of busking, with no real ambition or agenda. Pete was easy-going and enjoyed both the electric and acoustic sides of the band. I yearned for something more, though.