I followed a little trail recently when looking for the dots for Horsburgh and ended up with a double CD of Jock Tamson's Bairns and The Lasses Fashion. I've listened to it a lot. It's good to hear new tunes - only Jenny Dang the Weaver and Peter MacKinnon of Skeabost I already knew, and I've not heard Jenny as a song before. The songs are all interesting and nicely arranged.
As well as Ian Hardie himself the band includes Tony Cuffe of Ossian fame, Rod Paterson of the Easy Club, and others. There is a good selection of instruments (concertina, fiddle, mandolin, whistle) and those instruments that in a group like this ought to be at the back providing backing (guitars, bodhran and so on) are exactly there. And there are also lots of good Scottish tunes.
I like it. I like it a lot. It's damn near perfect. It could just do with...some pipes, especially on the last set: The Hills of Perth and Mrs MacDougall: two fine pipe tunes if ever I heard one.
(A bit of playing with the fan this evening, but I wasn't very comfortable with my pipes. Out of practice already. With the allotment season coming to an end I've no excuse and must play more. The September/October plan has gone by the board: as well as being away in October we don't have a free weekend between now and November. Maybe November, Morag's birthday month, would be a good one to choose.)
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