Albannach (band)

Albannach

Albannach live at the Edinburgh Festival 2006
Background information
Origin Glasgow, Scotland
Genres Celtic battle music
Years active 2005–present
Labels Albannach Music
(independent)
Associated acts Clann An Drumma
Website www.albannachmusic.com
Members Donnie MacNeil[1]
Colin Walker
Jacquie Holland
Jamesie Johnston[1]
DidgeriDrew Reid

Albannach, Gaelic for "Scottish" or "Scotsman", is a Scottish band. Their traditional music is heavily percussive, driven by bass drums, bodhráns and a single bagpipe. From the first, eponymous album in 2006, Albannach has promoted a sentiment of Scottish patriotism in songs such as "Uprising," a tribute to famed patriot William Wallace; they have covered songs like "1320" by Scottish folk artist Gordon Menzies of the band Gaberlunzie. Several songs on early albums referred to the Island of Barra, the Outer Hebrides home of Albannach's bagpiper, Donnie MacNeil. Vocal songs that survive in the touring repertoire are sung either a cappella or with minimal accompaniment, emphasizing their lyrics. Examples of these include "Scotland is Her Name" and "Peaceful is the Glen"; the latter commemorates the Massacre of Glencoe, while the former is more directly topical and even political in its implied support for an independent Scotland. With these exceptions, the bulk of the touring repertoire, and of the band's discography, remains instrumental.

Members

"I can't put my finger on it — it just seems to strike a chord with a hell of a lot of people, whether it's letting out that pent-up aggression they feel for their jobs through the week or what, but they just let go when they come hear us."

Jamesie Johnston, September, 2008.[2]

The band frequently performs at Highland games and Scottish cultural events throughout the UK and North America.[3] Albannach are based in Glasgow, Scotland .[4]

Jamesie Johnston, born in Glasgow in 1973, is the bass drummer[5] and also a vocalist. He played the bass drum with Clann An Drumma. After working with them for five years, he left and became part of Albannach. A signature musical addition of Johnston's involves strapping his bass drum, normally worn at the player's waist, around his upper body in order to play it with the double-ended striker normally used with the bodhrán frame drum. This technique allows for an extremely fast style of bass play and a deeply subdivided beat. Johnston has become something of a band figurehead; he is notably vocal about Scottish history and topics he considers intimately related, such as environmental conservation.

Jacquie Holland, born in Paisley, is the bass rhythm drummer[5] and vocalist. She is a founding member of Clann An Drumma, but left with other members and formed Albannach. Holland's vocals provide reflective moments about halfway through tour sets, as on "Ancestors," a deceptively simple plea that could readily apply to any descendants of a diaspora.

Donnie MacNeil is a bagpipe player[5] who also plays drums, piano, and guitar. His background in traditional regimental piping, combined with a fondness for highly technical, heavily ornamented passages, ultimately led to Albannach's winning the Bagpipe section of the 2007 Celtic Radio Awards for the song "Auld Nick's a Piper," on the album Eye of the Storm.

Born and brought up in the Pitlochry area of Scotland, Kyle Gray was a member of the Vale of Atholl Pipe Band, where he spent one year as the juvenile Drum major. He was the lead drummer in Albannach,[5] leaving in November 2009.

Colin Walker is the current lead drummer, having previously played with the Neilston & District Pipe Band and various other traditional Scottish folk bands. He also plays electric and acoustic guitars.

Aya Thorne from Pitlochry plays the bodhrán.[5] Although the band as a whole is visually animated in performance, Aya has thus far been the only one to pick up a tambourine and add freestyle dance segments to the show.

Davey Morrison is a bodhrán player with Albannach at various times in the band's history, adding baritone vocals as well.[5] He formerly played with Clann An Drumma. He is also a visual artist, designing tattoos, wearable art, and often mythologically-themed sculpture.

Works

Discography

October 11, 2008 at the Maryland Renaissance Festival

Studio albums

Live albums

Video

BRONACH: Collaboration with BROTHER

Following numerous impromptu jams at music festivals, Albannach began a long and fruitful collaboration with independent Australian Celtic-rock band BROTHER, with current members Angus Richardson, Dave "Dalbo" Allen, and Drew Reid enriching the overall "tribal" sound of both bands via didgeridoo and other instruments. Since 2011, the conjoined band, calling itself BRONACH, has led bus tours of historical sites around Scotland. 2012 saw the release of BRONACH's EP, titled ONE and alternating between songs associated with each of the separate bands.

Social media campaign: Albannach and Outlander?

In 2013, fans of both Albannach and Diana Gabaldon's Outlander novel series, featuring a heroine who travels in time and place to 1700s Scotland, learned that Starz television channel would be producing a TV series based on the books. Fans have spread the #albannachforoutlander hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and social media generally that support this tagging system. Since Gabaldon does not have direct creative control over the show's soundtrack, it remains to be seen whether the band's self-described "tribal" style of music and performance (as distinct from regimental pipe bands) will come to the attention of Starz and be considered by studio executives. As of the end of 2013, Albannach fans were still making daily use of the hashtag; the band has some 22,000 "likes" on Facebook, with a smaller subset of active fans posting to the page.

Notes

  1. 1 2 Matt Morrison (January 21, 2009), "Highland Games unite Scots at heart", Seminole Chronicle, archived from the original on 2014-10-06
  2. ↑ Wildsmith, 2008.
  3. ↑ Buescher, James (June 22, 2008). "Traditional Scots Group Albannach Bangs The Drum Loudly". Sunday News  – via HighBeam Research (subscription required) . Lancaster PA. Retrieved 11 November 2012.
  4. ↑ "Clans gather at the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games" (2008-06-26). Salisbury Post.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Charles Runnells (Jan 23, 2009), "6th Celtic festival to cut wide swath", The News Press, The band features award-winning bagpipe player Donnie MacNeil (nicknamed Bullfrog for the way his neck muscles expand when playing), and not one but five drummers: bass drummer Johnston, bass rhythm drummer Jacquie Holland, lead drummer Kyle Gray and bodhrán players Aya Thorne and Davey "Ramone" Morrison (the only American in the group)
  6. ↑ "Folk Scene: Albannach, Dick Gaughan, and Ossian", Newsnet Scotland, 31 October 2011

References

External links

Interviews

Other links

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