It is easy to sympathise with Donald Shaw, an artist trapped behind a desk, a performer enslaved by the tyranny of nine to five, as he prepares for this year’s Celtic Connections. “I’m really not a man in a suit,” he groans, as he contemplates the roster of events and acts in front of him. “I’m a working musician, I have been for 20 years.” The office life shouldn’t be inflicted on a free-wheelin’ accordionist.
As one of the foremost folk musicians in Scotland, and one of the founders of the self-proclaimed “Celtic supergroup” Capercaillie, Shaw should be busy enough at this time of year, contemplating the band’s next album and one or two ambitious musical projects of his own. But, last June, he was persuaded to accept the position of artistic consultant at Celtic Connections, expecting to have nothing more arduous than a few phone calls to make, for a couple of days a week over the autumn. Instead, he found very soon that he had to cancel all other engagements and get down to the serious business of programming acts and initiating ticket sales that have to hit £600,000.
In his new role, Shaw certainly has a hard act to follow — and not for all the best reasons. On the positive side, Colin Hynd, his predecessor, had performed the impossible by establishing a music festival in the depths of the west-coast winter, building up an event that comprised just 12 concerts in its first year into an international attraction. This year, more than 1,000 performers from around the globe will arrive in the city to perform over 19 days, absorbing more than £200,000 from Glasgow city council and the Scottish Arts Council.
But there was another less palat-able aspect to Hynd’s legacy. By any measure, last year’s Celtic Connections was a public relations disaster, mired by embarrassing cancellations. The gala opening was abandoned at the last minute, though Hynd himself had been aware the show was a non-starter two weeks earlier. A concert by Deacon Blue didn’t go ahead because the band’s appearance hadn’t been confirmed and another billed performance featuring Barbara Dickson and Isla St Clair was cancelled weeks before the festival opened.
Shaw is sympathetic to last year’s organisers and blames the condition of the city halls, whose refurbishment overran, and says some of the cancellations were difficult to avoid.
“All that had a lot to do with the fact that the festival had grown to an incredible size very quickly.
Eventually, there would be things that slipped through the net,” he says. “There will be no repeat this year.”
As the creative brains, Shaw’s task has been to build on the positives. He has maintained a roster of better-known artists — John Martyn, Karine Polwart, Roseanne Cash — who will pull in the bigger audiences, while developing avenues of the offbeat, which will hopefully draw viable audiences. Among the star attractions is the singer Odetta whose contributions to African-American music and civil rights have won accolades from Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou and Bill Clinton.
Underlying all his efforts is Shaw’s overwhelming belief that the folk- music medium has a resounding message, and that Scotland’s contribution has never been stronger. For all the cynics might characterise his ilk as old-fashioned throwbacks to the 1960s and 1970s, he is constantly astonished by the music’s relevance to the contemporary world.
Take Matt McGinn, the Glasgow singer-songwriter whose work is celebrated during the first week of the festival, 30 years after his death. For Shaw, there’s a direct connection from McGinn and the bars of Glasgow’s east end to the rock stars of today, through the US folk legend Pete Seeger.
“Seeger came across Matt McGinn’s songs and came to hang out with him for a week,” says Shaw. “There is an incredible trail from this guy singing about John McLean in a bar in Glasgow right through to a stadium in America in 2006, packed with Bruce Springsteen fans, listening to his songs from (Springsteen’s 2006 album) The Seeger Sessions. Did the folk revolution begin in the Broomielaw? Probably.”
Shaw tried to book Springsteen but failed, at least for this year. However, there are some great anecdotes from those early days of folk.
In the early 1960s, Seeger had bought himself a cassette-editing machine, says Shaw. “He used to send the odd tape to Bob Dylan, editing them cleanly, so it was just the songs. (One time) Seeger got a letter back from Dylan a week later saying, ‘Hi Pete, thanks for the tape, great songs as usual, but next time you’re sending me a tape of McGinn’s, don’t miss out the patter — I love all the talk between the songs.’ Neither Seeger nor Dylan could understand a word of it, but Dylan just loved the chat.”
As Shaw’s enthusiasm bubbles up, it soon becomes apparent that the word “connection” means more to him than “Celtic”. Some of these links are in the bloodlines of British folk, and it is important to him that Ewan MacColl’s sons, Calum and Neill, are on the bill.
But there are other interesting strands, he says. “This year, we’re bringing in a lot of American acts, but the roots of their music will be songs and melodies which travelled from Scotland and Ireland 150 years ago, tunes that were chucked into a big melting pot and became their own style of music. That’s what bluegrass is really.”
He concedes there will always be people who question whether an act such as Lloyd Cole (the former pop frontman, born Derbyshire, lives Massachusetts, sings about New York) has any link with Celtic music. But “if you dig deep”, he reckons 99% of the acts on the bill are connected to Scotland’s music.
“The core of the festival, in terms of traditional roots music, is from Ireland, Scotland, Galicia, Brittany and Asturias. These are Celtic regions. On the more progressive side, say Idlewild and Justin Currie, we have acts which people might perceive as rock, but they grew up and were inspired by the folk music of Scotland at some point.”
It is a big year for Shaw. Caper-caillie are due back in the studio, and a work of his own is scheduled for a premiere at Highland 2007. An Argyll Rhapsody is a work for 100 musicians drawn from the schools of the region and will be played in Oban and Dunoon in November. Based on lost songs and poems, it attempts to work in all types of music. Shaw admits his excitement is mounting for the project.
It is the kind of musical challenge on which he thrives. His appointment at Celtic Connections could be extended to three years, but you sense a reluctance on Shaw’s part to commit to the life of the bureaucrat. “I’ll see how the festival goes,” he says. “I’m 90% certain to do it again.” But you feel it might take the likes of a Springsteen to keep Shaw on as boss.
Celtic Connections runs from January 17 to February 4. Book tickets on 0141 358 8000 or online at www.celticconnections.com
