February News

Celtic Connections/Germany Gigs
It was another great year for the brilliant Celtic Connections festival. I had two lovely gigs this year. First off was The Elizabethan Session. It was great to be reunited with this fine bunch of musicians/singers to play one last show. I've loved being part of this project. I then had the gig with my trio opening for Mike Vass' In the Wake of Neil Gunn. Both concerts took place in the Mitchell Theatre, where I performed my New Voices piece last year. Great memories! The day after my gig, I had to catch a 6am flight to join The Furrow Collective for our Germany mini-tour. After seeking advice from fellow Celtic Connections attendees, I decided the best thing was to just stay up all night and head to the brilliant Folkytown where Mystery Juice played a storming set. I managed a kip on the plane and set off to Sigmaringen for the first of a string of really great gigs with The Furrow Collective. We had such a good time and I got to drive us around (after a full night's sleep of course!), my first experience of driving on the other side of the road...it was much less weird than I'd anticipated. We managed to fit in a bit of sight-seeing and snowball fighting...I think I lost.. 

BBC Radio 2 Folk Award Nominations 
Delighted that The Furrow Collective have been nominated for two Folk Awards this year. Best Group and Best Traditional Track (for Handsome Molly). We are looking forward to heading down to Cardiff for the awards in April. You can find out more about all the nominations here. I'm heading down to the Lake District at the end of February with The Furrow Collective to arrange some new songs for our second album, which we are planning on recording in May and releasing later in the year. Look out for updates on our progress. 


Feis Dhun Eideann 
I'm looking forward to tutoring at Feis Dhun Eideann next week. Music and song workshops for young people held at the Gaelic School in Edinburgh. There is a group work all day workshop on Saturday 14th Feb for Secondary School ages, a ceilidh on Saturday evening and then more workshops on Mon 16th/Tues 17th for primary aged children. For more info, contact  feisdhuneideann@feisean.org

Winter Words Festival
I'll be at the Winter Words Festival in Pitlochry this Sunday (15th) evening with Andrew Greig. Andrew will be reading from his book Fair Helen and also his poems Found at Sea and I'll be providing the music. Join us!

Boreas Recording 
Last week was spent in Glasgow finishing off the Boreas album with Lori, Britt and Irene. Duncan Lyall was engineering and producing. Excited to be heading out to Norway for some gigs in May with Boreas and plotting for our album release later in the year.

The Furrow Collective Tour
Check out out spring tour dates and join us if you can. More info at www.thefurrowcollective.co.uk