Clunie Music Newsletter

Clunie Music Newsletter. November 2006.

As I haven't sent out a newsletter since last year I'm going to begin these monthly epistles by trying to cover 2006 up till now. After this I'll add significant events each month which will be easier for me and better for you.

Heather Innes

The solo event of the year for me ended up as another duo ! I was booked along with local author and poet Margaret Gillies Brown to sing at the A.K.Bell Library Theatre in Perth as part of the Perth Festival in May. Well - Margaret didn't sing, but she told stories in prose and poetry of her emmigration adventures to Canada as a young wife and mother. I backed these up with songs accompanied only by the enthusiastic audience and later with stories, songs and a poem of my own about my own emmigration adventures to Australia as a child and teenager. Margaret had requested Caim's song "Deep Peace" as a grand finale to the afternoon and Jacynth kindly travelled all the way from Belfast to sing it with me.

Our show titled "Heather and Red Rowan Berries", far from being the one off we thought it was going to be was presented again in shorter version a few weeks later at a meeting of PEN - Poets, Essayists and Novelists - at Margaret's home. The complete performance is to be repeated in June 2007 at Birnam Institute and Margaret and I have been invited to return to the A.K.Bell Library Theatre May 24, 2007 with a new show in poetry, prose and song, "The Wind in Their Hands" about remarkable Scottish women of the past. A bonus for me in all of this has been Margaret's friendship and encouragement about my own writing, especially poetry. I've had a poem accepted for D.C.Thomson's "Fireside Book" 2008 which was a surprise and an article published in The Scots Magazine in July this year.

Ciaran Dorris and Heather Innes

Again for most of the year Ciaran has been in the studio putting the finishing touches to his solo CD. He has a great website of his own well worth checking out www.ciarandorris.com.

We see each other on a monthly basis to sing in hospitals and nursing homes for the Council for Music in Hospitals and we had a mini tour in June to Warwick Folk Club and Four Fools Festival in the north of England. I thoroughly enjoyed singing in the same concerts as Niamh Parsons who I had met 20 years ago in Belfast. I've always admired her singing and variety of song material. She meanwhile was impressed that Ciaran was so amenable to changing keys to suit my voice in each song. He had to be! I'd lost my voice completely the week before and could only sing certain songs in a low key all weekend.

September found Ciaran and myself touring the north east of Scotland with a Canadian singer/songwriter Phyllis Wheaton who we'd never met in our lives before! Actually I'd met Phyllis one week earlier and toured with her to the Isle of Mull so I had the advantage! The whole enterprise happened through the internet. We were recommended to Phyllis by Red Barn Studios where we both record, she listened to our music on our website and emailed us. She was on a mission to bring her songs and researched archive material about a Canadian World War 1 soldier David Argo, back to the North East of Scotland and in particular to his family and namesake alive today, his nephew David Argo and daughter and son in law Helen and Rob. Read the whole story and see the pics in Phyillis' Scotland Journal on her website www.phylliswheaton.com We had fun!

2007 Ciaran and I will join with fiddle player Kate Kramer for a fortnight in Guernsey arranged by the Council for Music in Hospitals. Later in the year we will be at the Tump Folk Club (October 4th) and Seaford Folk Club (October 5th).

Caim

Two exciting possibilities have opened for Caim this year. The first is the chance to be on a CD with Dunkeld poet Kenneth Steven and we've had a couple of meetings with Kenneth so far to work out the logistics of this. Kenneth's poetry and our music could work very well together. If you like our music and you like poetry you will like Kenneth's style - have a look for his books "Columba" and "Iona". He is also a fine novelist and Jacynth and I have carried his Highland Trilogy around the world with us. (We often share books on tour as we seem to have the same taste.)

The second is an email connection with Right Real Records, a Christian company interested in our music and preparing an MP3 of their ideas as I write. Watch this space!

August and September Caim travelled to Canada and Wisconsin USA. We had some unexpected adventures in Canada including a trip on the Canadian Pacific Railway to Montreal. The gig at the other end was cancelled but we had a wonderful evening with a friend living on the Richelieu river and a great trip back to Toronto with a new young friend (younger than us!) Sam who kept us entertained with stories of his life for the whole 5 hour journey. We even ended up in the same taxi afterwards by complete coincidence and decided we would keep in touch by email. I'm on the lookout for a Scottish castle to fulfill his dream.

We were very well looked after in Toronto by our friends David and Zsuzsa Wilson. I hadn't seen David since he was my first guitarist in the Sunflower Folk Club in Belfast in the 1980's so we had a lot of catching up to do. Turns out that Zsuzzsa is a great Roy Bailey fan!

Our agent Ian Davies, his wife Kay and 20 month old daughter Julianna invited us to their holiday cottage at the Muskoka Lakes for the next week and while there we sang at Muskoka Place Gallery and also Bannockburn Presbyterian Church. A week of sunshine, song and getting to know Julianna - what more could we ask?!

In Wisconsin we were met and taken care of for the first couple of days by singer and hammer dulcimer player Gloria Hays. Gloria and I toured together in Wisconsin and Scotland in the early nineties and it was wonderful to be able to sing in the hospice where she works. Sr Annice McClure came to mine and Gloria's house concerts in Wisconsin and has stayed in touch all these years through my mailing list. She arranged our final weekend of concerts in Green Bay, Wisconsin and travelled the length of the State to collect us and make sure we arrived safely!

We sang at a house concert in Sr Annice's housing complex in Green Bay followed by an amazing night at the Cup O Joy Christian Coffee House the following evening. For wandering Christian minstrels the Cup O Joy is not to be missed. We were offered the best in sound and lighting and backstage comfort plus a packed house. The audience were one of the most friendly we've experienced yet and we have had a lot of friendly audiences in our travels. I was most impressed by the folk selling our CDs after the concert - they knew better than me which of our concert songs was on which CD!

2007 Caim hope to return to Canada, both to Muskoka and possibly also to Western Canada again where Phyllis has offered to help us with venues. We enjoyed a great tour there in 2003.

Australia is on the back burner - we're just waiting and hoping...

The last week of November 2007 we'll be providing the music for retreats in Scotland and Norwich led by Fr Gregory OJN, a Wisconsin monk of the Order of Julian of Norwich.

And in the near future a concert to launch our new CD "God of the Elements" is being planned for the Well at Willen, Milton Keynes.

Freedom Place.

Al Ponting's new band Freedom Place seems to grow every time I go to a rehearsal. Starting with the three core members Al himself (vocals and rhythm guitar), Rob (keyboards), and Ewan (bass and guitar) they have now added Ian, an amazing lead guitarist, and will be meeting drummer Pete at their next rehearsal.

With music ranging from Al's own songs to a variety of cover songs the band describe themselves as rock, ballads and blues. They recently recorded a demo CD at Red Barn Studios and are ready for gig invites and particularly fund raising concerts for Habitat for Humanity.

We'll keep you updated.

That's it till next month - thanks for checking out our site and our music.

Heather