Alistair's
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NEWS UPDATE FROM “THE
GALLOWS RANT” – July ‘06
Alistair Hulett's Sporadic
Newsletter #24
It is with great pleasure I'm
sending out this far less sporadic than usual Gallow's Rant to announce the
imminent launch of my Brand New Website at www.alistairhulett.com It should be active any
day now, if you want to check in from time to time.
Beautifully devised by Linda
Lieb of Dragonfire Design, I feel ever so pleased, and just a wee bit proud as
well, to have such a nice shiny new baby to play around with and fuss over. Do
please take a look around it, folks.
Even though we haven't got all the pages quite up and going yet I'm sure
you'll get the general idea okay.
The bit I really will enjoy is
loading up the Online Songbook with stripped bare, guitar arrangements of a
whole bunch of old Roaring Jack songs I regularly play live but probably won't
ever get around to doing proper studio versions of again. This is currently the
only empty page on the site, but hopefully it won't stay that way for
long. And yes, I do take requests
for what goes up on the songbook. Send me an email please.
They'll just be rough and
ready home recordings, but I also plan to include lyrics, chords and playing
tips for the guitar pickers among you all, so maybe that will help compensate
for the lo-fi production values.
The two existing websites,
Folk Icons and The Roaring Jack Archives will still continue doing their
marvellous thing as well I hope, but the new one is mainly intended for me to
get my sticky mittens onto whenever time and place permits. Anyway, that's
enough rabitting on about that. Have a look for yersels and see what you think
of it all so far.
The other reason for getting
another newsletter out so soon after the last one is that there's been an
unexpected flurry of late bookings through August just come in. The first of
these is actually on the last day of July, - the 31st no less, when Jimmy Ross
and I will be presenting our Pete Seeger Tribute, 'Carry It On!' at the Common
Ground Festival in Ayr. I'll be updating all the details on the new website as
they come to hand.
Jimmy and I performed Carry It
On! at Marxism 2006 earlier this month to a most generous and enthusiastic
audience of socialists and progressives, and the chance to do it all over again
is one we are both relishing. It's a total riot of music and song, spoken word
and magic lantern images, folks!
A few days later on August 3rd
I will be singing at the launch of a photo exhibition at Glasgow Caledonian
University called 'The Postcard Series'. This is an invite-only event, but
people wishing to attend can get their invite by emailing the GCU Research
Collection archivist, Carole McCallum at C.McCallum@gcal.ac.uk It promises to
be a fine evening indeed, with photos depicting Glasgow's role in several
significant events in world history, including the Anti Apartheid struggle in
South Africa and the Spanish Civil War. My contribution will be to perform a
song appropriate to each station on the journey. Again, you'll find details on
that website I might have mentioned earlier.
Edinburgh Fringe Festival is
nearly upon us again, and I'll be doing two festival gigs this year. The first
of these is at the tiny but perfectly formed Wee Folk Club at the Oak Hotel in
Infirmary Street on August 9th. This is officially the smallest folk club in
Scotland and my kitchen is huge by comparison. It's not often I'm almost
guaranteed a full house but this might well be one of those magical nights.
Kick off is 8pm.
My other fringe festival gig
is at 5pm at Theatre Workshop in Hamilton Place, Stockbridge on August 18th.
This is part of a series the company is running of political art events with a
particular relevance to the current illegal war on Iraq, called Babylon Days
and Nights. Needless to say I'm deeply honoured to be participating in a series
such as this, and urge you to make it along if you can, not only to my own
concert but also to the host of other great productions the Theatre Workshop
has assembled. You can view the full programme with booking details on their
website at www.twfringe.co.uk
In between all this festival
festering in Edinburgh, I'll be nipping down south to Preston for a gig on
August 15th at the Longridge Folk Club. I need to make sure my English pals
have got over the outrage of having their World Cup nicked by a winking
Portuguese rascal. Never mind, winking Italian rascals eventually nicked it off
the winking French, so the whole thing was really a triumph for winking
skulduggery more than football. Some of that was great though, in spite of the
theatrics. Just the same, I do need to get down to Engerland next month for
sure. We Scots are well advanced in grief management and transcending
ignominious defeat, so hopefully I'll be of some assistance there.
I won't mention the fact again
that details of that gig are posted you know where, but while I'm banging on
about new websites, Swarb's got one too. Now that he's out and about again,
there's a site especially dedicated to his new band Swarb's Lazarus at
www.swarbslazarus.com. Do pay it a visit folks and when you're out and about
yourselves, mind how you go. Evening all!
Ally 'Three Sites' Hulett
STOP PRESS!!!!! It's not till
September but mark it in your mental diary anyway please. On September 10th at
St Andy's in the Square Glasgow, I'll be part of the stunning line-up for an
afternoon feast of political music. The gig has only just been finalised, but
it's a benefit for Faslane 365, the organising group for the Big Blockade of
Faslane Nuclear Base near Glasgow in October. The confirmed line-up is Rory
McLeod, Seize The Day, Robb Johnson, Pat Humphries & Sandy O (from the USA)
and me. Kick off is 2pm sharp and it will be lovely! Full details on the gig
list and websites.
To order a copy of the new
album by Alistair Hulett, RICHES AND RAGS - Modern Music For Wireless And
Gramophone throughout the UK, send a cheque for £13.00 to Alistair Hulett, Flat
2/1, 66 Kenmure Street Glasgow G41 2NR Scotland. The album should be out by
November 15th and will be available at all of Alistair Hulett's Concerts after
that.
Copies will be available in Oz
& Enzed soon via The Roaring Jack Archives at www.roaringjack.com and in Germany from
Jump Up Records at www.jumpup.de
NEW ALBUM RELEASE
RICHES AND RAGS
Modern Music For Wireless & Gramophone
Performed By
ALISTAIR HULETT AND SEVERAL OF HIS FRIENDS
The new album, out now on RED RATTLER (RATCD006), is a mixture of traditional and contemporary songs and playing styles. Using only acoustic instruments and minimal electronic sound manipulation, the music is presented in its most natural state. Old Scots balladry and nineteenth century folksongs sit alongside some of the singer’s own compositions and works by other writers he admires.
Although the overall sound and
content of the music is mostly adapted from the labouring class folk traditions
of ‘The Islands presently called British’, the way the instruments are
combined owes a considerable deal to the ensemble approach taken by many of the
popular North American bands of the early and middle Twentieth Century. Discernable
echoes of outfits such as Will Shade’s Memphis Jug Band, The Mississipi Sheiks
and The Carter Family are fully intended and freely acknowledged by the
musicians presented here on Riches And Rags.
Joining Alistair Hulett for this recording session are three of his firmest friends, all of whom he has frequently collaborated with in the past. This is the first time, however, that the combination has been captured together on record. James Fagan plays bouzouki and mandolin, Nancy Kerr plays the fiddle and viola and Gavin Livingstone variously contributes guitar, Dobro resonator guitar, accordion, bass and Appalachian dulcimer. As usual, Alistair Hulett confines his musical responsibilities to accompanying his own singing with the dexterity on guitar for which he has been long and widely respected. The album was superbly recorded and mixed by Gavin Livingstone in his own recording studio during a weekend in August 2005.
The album is available in the UK by mail order
only for £13.00 incl. P&P.
Cheques to Alistair Hulett at Flat 2/1, 66
Kenmure Street Glasgow G41 2NR
For more details call 44 (0)141 429 5276
Some notes on the songs by
Alistair
THE FAIR FLOWER OF NORTHUMBERLAND (Traditional
arranged Alistair Hulett)
Here is a Scots version of an 18th
century outlaw ballad that was well known on both sides of the Tweed. I learned
it from a recording of the Glasgow singer Enoch Kent, who now lives over in
Canada, but my good friend Nancy Kerr from Northumbria has a fine English
version set to a tune in the Dorian mode that she got from her mother. The song
is basically a warning to young aristocratic Englishwomen to avoid forming
romantic attachments with Scots border reivers. Sound advice for all concerned
I reckon.
CRIMINAL JUSTICE (Words
and music by Alistair Hulett Pub. AMCOS)
This was originally recorded by a band I played in many
years ago called Roaring Jack, as the B side for a single called Framed,
highlighting the frame-up of an Australian political activist called Tim
Anderson. After the Campaign
Exposing The Frame Up Of Tim Anderson successfully secured his release in 1991,
CEFTA went on to fight frame-ups and miscarriages of justice all over
Australia. Here in the UK, an organisation called MOJO does similar work. All
too often the police officers who carry out these miscarriages are allowed to
walk free while their victims, such as Tim Anderson in Australia and Robert
Brown more recently over here, are left to pick up the pieces of their lives,
usually with only derisory compensation from the state that falsely imprisoned
them.
RICHES AND RAGS (Words and music by Alistair
Hulett Pub. AMCOS)
Not a lot to say about this one
really. It’s a song about remembering not to forget, I guess. Musically it owes
a great deal to the country sounds that form the backbone of what I’ve grown to
know and love as ‘Glesga chantin’ in the club style’. Somewhere musically
wedged between the Alexander Brothers and the Texas Playboys lies the sleepy
wee island hamlet of Millport, Nashville of the North.
THE RECRUITED COLLIER
(Traditional Arranged Hulett)
It was watching Michael Moore’s eloquent expose of Bush and
Blair’s Oil War, ‘Fahrenheit 9:11’, where a pair of well-heeled US Army
officers set about conning disadvantaged young black men in a downtown shopping
precinct into signing up for a tour of duty in Iraq, that reminded me what a
great song The Recruited Collier is. This old broadside ballad from the time of
the Napoleonic Wars reminds us how long overdue the payback is for centuries of
this kind of ruling class skulduggery.
THE
DARK EYED SAILOR (Traditional Arranged A. Hulett)
This sweet song was popular all over 19th Century Britain and Ireland
with landlubbers and seafarers alike, and was often sold in the streets on
printed song sheets known as broadsides. This particular version is from Colm
O’Lochlainn’s collection of Irish Street Ballads. It often appeared along with
a woodcut representation of the sailor-hero as a doe eyed, ringleted cherub in
spotless white bellbottoms and dancing pumps. Despite putting forward a
caricature that bore almost no resemblance whatsoever to reality, broadsides
like this, with their sanitized images of ‘jolly jack tar’, found a special
place in the hearts and repertoires of many a poor sailor lad. The Marxist
folklorist A.L. Lloyd, in his book Folk Song In England, says of the ballad
that ‘men leading brutal lives in the floating wooden slums of a century and a
half ago felt to some extent reassured by such songs.’
STEALIN’ BACK TO MY SAME OLD USED TO BE (Words
and music by Will Shade)
Will Shade wrote and recorded this song in 1926 with The
Memphis Jug Band. Jug music was a rural response to the jazz explosion
emanating from the cities of the Southern United States of America. With its
improvised instrumentation using household utensils and its DIY ethic, the jug
band tradition shares a fair bit in common with other folk hybrids like 50s
skiffle and 70s garage punk. I learned this from an old record of the black
street musician and one-man band Jesse Fuller from San Francisco, author of the
famous San Francisco Bay Blues.
SHOT DOWN IN FLAMES (Words and music by Alistair
Hulett Pub. AMCOS)
A love gone wrong song that kind of straddles that twilight musical
terrain where country and western meets highland bagpipe music. Me in a
nutshell really.
MILITANT RED (Words and music by Alistair Hulett
AMCOS)
I’ve said it often but I’ll say it again, when you’re
a communist every day is Valentine’s Day. For the eagle-eared among you, Nancy
isn’t playing a fiddle with a three-foot long neck. The verses are done on a
viola and the choruses are on violin. Tricky to do live though.
OLD KING COAL (Words and music by John
Kirkpatrick)
The ancient pre-Christian myth of the fertiliser god,
John Barleycorn, whose ritual killing feeds the growth cycle and brings potency
back to the fields, gets an urban make-over from the English squeezebox
virtuoso John Kirkpatrick. Old King Coal is dragged out of his subterranean bed
and subjected to a series of outrages, but eventually rises, Gandalf-like, to
invigorate power grids and pylons everywhere. A great song and one I love to
sing.
THE FIRST GIRL I LOVED (Words and music by Robin Williamson)
I’ve liked this song ever since I first heard The Incredible
String Band sing it way back in the 1960s. It’s taken me this long to figure
out a way of doing it without trying to copy the original. The guitar is tuned
DADEAB.
TROUBLE IN MIND (Words and music by Richard M.
Jones)
Written in the first decade of the twentieth century by an unknown and
unrecorded blues piano player, this moving testament to the noble resilience of
the poor never fails to move me. I’ve got great recordings of it by Tennessee
Ernie Ford, Big Bill Broonzy and Lightnin’ Hopkins, but I first heard it from
an English guitar picker and singer in New Zealand called John Heyday. I only
realised I knew it when I started playing it one day many years later.
David Kidman Folk Roundabout
Net Rhythms May 2006
Scots-born Alistair’s long
been one of my most favourite performers, a man of sublime gentility yet fierce
integrity. Ali’s latest album finds him celebrating the various genres that
have influenced him over a musical career spanning thirty years. It’s a
persuasive and stimulating mix, certainly, with plenty of good examples from
the fields of both traditional and composed song, and I’m pleased to find that
Alistair’s “friends” turn out to be none other than Nancy Kerr, James Fagan and
Gavin Livingstone – which should be recommendation enough to hear this album!
But to my delight, four of Alistair’s own compositions are included: the title
track is an infectious “Glesga’ club-chant country-style” piece about
remembering not to forget, while Militant Red is a tongue-in-cheek love song
that sort-of-associates Valentine’s Day with the red red rose of Communism! The
remaining two are re-recordings of songs from the Roaring Jack days, Alistair’s
immensely poignant new treatment of the love-gone-wrong song Shot Down In
Flames (with some lovely guitar work by Gavin Livingstone) being especially
striking I thought. The latter has wistful resonances of Robin Williamson’s
wonderful First Girl I Loved, which then turns up as one of the four covers on
the album and which Alistair phrases unusually and imaginatively. My other
personal highlight here has got to be Alistair’s feisty take on John
Kirkpatrick’s masterly Old King Coal, where Nancy Kerr’s driving fiddle and
Ali’s own guitar create a stirring counterpoint. Ali even brings something
fresh to the hoary Trouble In Mind (with the aid of Gavin’s dobro). Of the
small handful of traditional songs which are given the passionate and strongly
individual Hulett treatment, particularly impressive is a superbly paced and
eloquent Recruited Collier (which is further enhanced by Nancy Kerr’s brooding
viola), although any one of those three traditional selections proves a worthy
addition to the library (actually I wouldn’t want to be without his Fair Flower
Of Northumberland either). Alistair has produced some abnormally fine albums
over the years, all of which should be in your collection I say, but Riches And
Rags may well embrace the widest appeal by dint of its farthest-ranging nature.
Mick Tems Taplas Magazine April 2006
I FIRST came across stunning songwriter and singer
Alistair Hulett at Auckland Festival in New Zealand, when he brought a solo
concert to a roaring finish. Alistair was living in Australia at that time, but
he has now been back in Glasgow for several years. He went on the road with
Dave Swarbrick and recorded the critically acclaimed Red Clydeside, until
Dave's illness put a stop to that.
I have always been strangely fascinated by Glasgow
and its people. I love its Celtic intensity, ruggedness, militancy and fire.
Alistair concentrates these ideals to a startling degree and fuels the flames
by adding Nancy Kerr, James Fagan and Gavin Livingstone, all friends and
musicians who spice the album nicely. Riches and Rags has him mining his own
history from the 1960s to the present day, from Fair Flower of Northumberland
to the heartstoppingly beautiful First Girl I Loved, both learned from Scots
singers, Enoch Kent and Robin Williamson. He peppers the stew exquisitely with
four of his own compositions, the campaigning song Criminal Justice, Shot Down
in Flames, Militant Red and the title track. Whoever called him "a
genuinely imaginative lyricist" knew what he was talking about. This is a
quality CD and one of which the international folk scene should be truly proud.
Alistair solo
GIGS FOR 2006
|
JULY |
|
|
Mon. 31st |
Common Ground Festival Ayr 8pm Carry It On! The music,
life and politics of Pete Seeger. Presented by Alistair Hulett and Jimmy Ross |
|
AUGUST |
|
|
Thurs. 3rd |
Caledonian University,
Cowcaddens Road Glasgow Research Collections ‘Postcard
Series’ Launch 5.30 –6.30pm |
|
Sat.12th |
The Wee Folk Club, Oak Hotel,
Edinburgh |
|
Tues. 15th |
Longridge Folk Club, Preston, Lancashire |
|
Fri. 18th |
Theatre Workshop Hamilton Place,
Edinburgh Fringe Festival 5.00pm For bookings and enquiries visit www.twfringe.co.uk £8.00/£6.00 |
|
SEPTEMBER |
|
Sun. 10th |
Blockade Faslane Benefit Concert St Andrews In The
Square, Saltmarket, Glasgow(with Robb Johnson, Seize The Day and others TBA)
Contact via www.faslane365.org |
|
Sat. 16th–Sun 17th |
Black Sheep Festival, Otley, Yorkshire www.otleyfolkfestival.com |
|
OCTOBER |
See Alistair & Swarb below |
NOVEMBER
|
|
|
Fri. 10th–Sun. 12th |
The Carrying Stream Festival. The Pleasance, Edinburgh |
TOURS IN THE PIPE LINE:
Touring Australia with Dave Swarbrick
in 2007. Festivals confirmed are: Blue Mountains Blues And Roots Music Festival
(NSW), Brunswick Music Festival (VIC), National Folk Festival Canberra
(ACT),Fairbridge Festival (WA).
Regional concerts will be
announced soon. For bookings contact Alistair Hulett at a.hulett@btopenworld.com
Touring Germany (solo) in May
2007. Contact Ewald The Folksmith at folksmith@web.de
Touring Australia with David
Rovics in 2008. Contact Alistair Hulett at
Alistair & Swarb
|
OCTOBER |
|
|
Thurs. 5th |
The Star Club, St Andrew’s In
The Square, Saltmarket, Glasgow 8pm www.starfolkclub.com |
|
Sat. 7th |
The Selkirk Sessions Festival, Scottish Borders www.selkirksessions.com |
Alistair
& Others
|
|
MORE HERE SOON |
The following email addresses
are all reputable and personally endorsed world-wide outlets for my own
recorded work.
jumpup@t-online.de,
zentrale@people-to-people.de for Europe
ramsey@akpress.org
for USA and Canada
ian-stephanie@musikfolk.com
and a.hulett@btopenworld.com for UK
And any of the above for Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
RED CLYDESIDE REVIEW FROM “GREEN LEFT WEEKLY”
The Petrograd of the West
REVIEWED BY ALEX MILLER
Red Clydeside - Alistair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick - Red Rattler
The extraordinary industrial
and political militancy in the west of Scotland in the second decade of the
20th Century led Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin to dub Glasgow
“the Petrograd of the West”. In his Red Clydeside, Alistair Hulett
celebrates this period in a number of original, rousing, and sometimes deeply
moving songs (written by Hulett and arranged by him and Dave Swarbrick). The CD
comes with a detailed booklet, written by Hulett, outlining the main events in
the history of Red Clydeside, and doubles as a CD-ROM containing the lyrics and
a number of weblinks.
The main figure is the man
Lenin singled out as the leading light of Red Clydeside, John MacLean. MacLean,
born in 1879 into a large highland family forced from the land, was a Glasgow
schoolteacher famous for classes on Marxist economics that drew large numbers
of workers into the revolutionary socialist movement in the period around the
First World War. He was the Soviet Bolshevik government’s first consul in the
UK, and was elected an honorary president of the First All-Russian Congress of
Soviets, alongside Lenin, Trotsky, and Kamenev. MacLean’s industrial agitation
is celebrated in the songs “The Lassies of Neilston” and “Mrs Barbour’s Army”,
covering the 1910 strike by young women at the Neilston Thread Mill and the
1915 Rent Strike led by a Govan homeworker, Mary Barbour.
MacLean is chiefly remembered,
though, for his anti-war work, carried out in the face of a complete sell-out
by the Trades Union Congress and the reformist left, whose leaders adopted a
pro-war stance and had signed a “no strikes” deal with the government in London
for the duration of the war. The chorus of Hulett’s “Don’t Sign Up For War”
says it all. MacLean was jailed many times by the British authorities, the
longest sentences handed out in 1916 and 1918. MacLean conducted his own
defence at the May 1918 trial. MacLean was sentenced to five years
hard labour in the notorious Peterhead prison in Aberdeen. The most powerful
song on the CD is “The Granite Cage”, where Hulett movingly imagines MacLean’s
thoughts and fears in his freezing prison cell, where he was drugged,
force-fed, and brutally tortured by prison officers carrying out the orders of
the British government. Here, as elsewhere on the album, Hulett masterfully
combines music and verse to profound effect. Such was MacLean’s standing with
the workers that widespread agitation forced his early release, and “When
Johnny Came Hame Tae Glesga” provides a boisterous account of MacLean’s return
in December 1918, when a crowd of 200,000 amassed to welcome him off the train.
The agitation
recommenced, and culminated in the notorious “Bloody Friday” attack by the
British army on workers demonstrating in Glasgow’s George Square in January
1919. As Hulett says in his notes, this resulted in the largest mobilisation of
British troops on native soil, when Home Secretary Winston Churchill sent tanks
and army regiments from England to restore order in the aftermath (Churchill
confined local regiments to their barracks, fearing they would go over to the
workers). MacLean never recovered from the brutal treatment he received in
prison, and died in poverty in 1923 at 44. One of his last acts had been to
give his overcoat away to a comrade who needed it more than he did. Hulett’s
final song “The Ghosts of Red Clydeside” starts at MacLean’s funeral in the
winter of 1923, before taking us up to the present day:
At the end of a
century of carnage and fear
The vision continues and won’t be denied
From Beijing to Seattle, Dounray to Algiers
Rebuild and fight on cry the ghosts of Red Clyde.
This collection represents the art of political song at its very finest,
and, together with the accompanying booklet, an excellent introduction for
those new to Red Clydeside.
From Green Left Weekly, March 3, 2004
ROARING JACK – CD &
WEBSITE
A much loved and lamented part
of Alistair’s musical history is this high-energy outfit from Australia. The
German Label Jump Up Records has issued the complete works of Roaring Jack on a
double CD set. The albums feature all the band’s recorded material between 1987
and 1990. Entitled “Roaring Jack – The Complete Works”, it can be obtained
direct from Alistair at Red Rattler Records. Click here to hear extracts
Fans can also indulge in a bit
of eighties punk folk nostalgia at the Roaring Jack Archives site, ably
compiled by the fearless Andy Carr. You can access it by clicking here or just type Roaring Jack
into the search engine of your choice and see what comes up.
.
“RED CLYDESIDE”
A new audio / visual CD recording by Alistair
Hulett
& Dave Swarbrick
OUT
NOW ON RED RATTLER! (RATCD005)
Check
out sound files here
For their third studio collaboration, Alistair Hulett and Dave Swarbrick focus on a workers’ revolt in the city of Glasgow that rocked the government of the day. Red Clydeside broke out in response to the Declaration Of War in 1914. Its leader, John Maclean, was twice sentenced to penal servitude and twice released early due to enormous public protest. Eventually the rulers of Britain sent troops and tanks into Glasgow in January 1919 to prevent a full blown revolution they feared could engulf the entire country. After the crackdown, John Maclean could still say with justified confidence “We can turn Glasgow into a Petrograd, a revolutionary storm centre second to none!”
Written
by Alistair Hulett and produced by Dave Swarbrick, this album is collaboration
in every sense of the word. The story of the revolt on the Clyde is told in
nine original songs by Hulett, with extensive booklet notes that relate in
startling detail including eyewitness accounts, a chain of events the
authorities tried to airbrush out of history.
Hulett’s
voice and guitar are accompanied not only by the wonderful fiddle playing of
Swarbrick, but on some tracks by double fiddles and even a string ensemble that
features the maestro on dual fiddles, viola and baritone violin. The album has
been engineered and mixed by Swarb, with assistance from Kevin Dempsey, the
guitarist from his days with Whippersnapper. Kev also contributes a
breathtaking guitar part on one of the tracks.
The
disc carries a full lyric file to print out, complete with a Scots language
glossary, and a folder of archival images to accompany each song. These
photographs have been digitally enhanced for clarity and include Maclean’s
prison portrait from 1916 and a photograph from his second trial in 1918.
Right-wing
historians have tried to play down Red Clydeside, even suggesting it only
existed in fantasy of socialist hot-heads. The visual evidence on this disc
dispels any such notion, and the songs and text tell the gripping story with
some truly wonderful singing and playing.
Swarbrick’s
arrangements are sure to delight everyone who loves his work. The album
showcases the musician at the peak of his powers and his debut as a musical
director, recording engineer and producer heralds a new direction that holds
tantalising promise.
For his part, Hulett has painstakingly researched the
background to the story for two years and the end result is a collection of
songs that will doubtless find their way into the repertoire of many a singer of
note. Roy Bailey, June Tabor, Nancy Kerr & James Fagan and Andy Irvine are
already some of those who have recorded Hulett’s compositions, and the list
will certainly grow with the release of Red Clydeside.
The
album is available for now only by mail order for £13 until distribution is
finalised. Send cheques to Alistair Hulett, Flat 2/1, 66 Kenmure Street,
Glasgow, G41 2NR, Scotland.
To Book Alistair
Hulett & Dave Swarbrick Contact 0141 429 5276 or e-mail
To Book
Alistair in Australia contact Across The Borders at johnbmf@vicnet.net.au
And folksmith@web.de
for Germany
“In Sleepy Scotland” (Red Rattler RATCD004)
A new solo CD from
Alistair is now out. The album is called "IN SLEEPY SCOTLAND" and was
originally intended as a companion disc to the Red Clydeside collection, with
both being released at the same time. Circumstance dictates that instead it
arrives as a prelude to Ally and Swarb's opus on the massive political upheaval
that shook Glasgow from 1915 to 1920 that came to be known as Red Clydeside.
Throughout the 19th century, trade unionist used the term 'Sleepy Scotland' to
describe the state of the worker's movement north of the border. Widespread
drunkenness, sectarianism and religious superstition, they believed, meant that
the Scots working class would never be in a position to seriously challenge the
established order, until Red Clydeside blew that particular theory right off
the pitch. "IN SLEEPY SCOTLAND" is a collection of mainly traditional
songs, with three Hulett compositions. Complementing Alistair's voice and guitar
on a few tracks are Gavin Livingstone on cittern, guitar, mandolin and
keyboards, Aidan O'Rourke on fiddle and Keith Easdale on Lowland smallpipes.
The CD is available by mail order for £13. Send cheques to Alistair Hulett, Flat 2/1, 66
Kenmure Street, Glasgow, G41 2NR, Scotland.
Also available from
“Living Tradition”, P.O.Box 1026, Kilmarnock, Ayshire, KA2 0LG, Scotland.
Review from “Living Tradition”
“English Trade Unionists in the 19th
Century gave our country the epithet “sleepy Scotland” because of their belief
that we were unlikely to do anything very much to advance the cause of
socialism – then came John Maclean and the other Red Clydesiders to prove them
wrong. Alistair Hulett has a very clear set of ideals which he articulates
clearly and passionately in his own writings, always singing with total
conviction, and the title track of this latest CD is a fine example of the word
pictures that Alistair draws to get you thinking about issues.
Two other self-penned numbers, “By Ibrox Park”
and “The Dark Loch”, reflect further on historical events with contemporary
repercussions but the rest of the material demonstrates Alistair’s mastery of
traditional song and music. His driving yet melodic guitar style and powerful
voice are particularly suited to the ballads and other songs represented here.
Not everyone can make a ten minute version of “Tam Lin” an enjoyable
experience, but here we have a version that carries the listener along, telling
the story and enthralling at the same time. Not that all the traditional songs
are that heavy – take the likes of “Tinker in the Lum”, where the moral is made
with pawky humour.
It is usually pointless to try to pick out
personal favourite tracks on any CD, but I thought I’d try anyway but couldn’t
make my mind up between two other (if lesser known) ballads, “Geordie” and
“Brown Adam”.
The whole collection of ten songs and two
instrumental tracks blend together to give a good idea of what the man sounds
like in the flesh. If you have heard him live you’ll want to buy this, if you
buy this you’ll want to hear him. Top marks too for well crafted accompaniment
from Gavin Livingstone, Aidan O’Rourke and Keith Easdale who help to make sure
that T’ll be playing this a lot – not just to myself, but to anyone else who
hasn’t heard it.” - Gordon Potter
"The Living Tradition" - Article
Alistair was the subject of a major article in "The Living Tradition" magazine recently. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this magazine , it is a fine publication from Scotland edited by Pete Heywood. If you would like to get hold of a copy of Alistair's interview it appeared in the September / October 1999 edition. Contact "The Living Tradition" on 01563 571220 or use the e-mail and website links below.
A new left wing music site is under construction at the moment. It's at Left Direct (the best and biggest left wing site). Although only 10% complete at the moment it will most likely contain more folk artists like Whiskey Priests, Claire Mooney, Family Affair, Rajan Spolia, Roy Bailey, Leon Rosselson,etc etc. Check it out by clicking below.
Left Direct
Sound Files
Three sound file extracts have now been added to the site. You can access them by clicking on the link here. Alistair's sound files
The Song Factory
(Alistair Hulett, Mick West, Gavin Livingstone, Wendy Wetherby, Fraser Fifield plus the South Side Chorus and The Saint Francis Pipe Band)
The Song Factory is a collective of left-wing folk musicians and singers that first came together in 1998 to perform as part of the STUC Centenary celebration. The group's first show, "Songs of the People", was performed at The Tramway Theatre in Glasgow. Funding for the show was arranged by the late George Jackson of the band Ossian. His vision of a community based collaboration of professional and amateur performers, to bring quality entertainment with a left-wing bias to under-funded parts of Scotland, is now well on the way to becoming reality. On the 75th anniversary of the death of the Scottish Marxist, John Maclean, The Song Factory performed their second production. "A Ballad of John Maclean", at The Arches in Glasgow. The overwhelming response from a capacity crowd prompted Ailsa Promotions to book a tour for the group's latest show, "Ranters, Lovers and Chanters", based on the life of Robert Burns.