All aboard the Aberdeen-bound ferry! Today your shipmates include a full complement of wild-eyed, sleep deprived, alcohol addled musical revelers. Please ply them with pints but also make sure they have something to eat. They will not bite, but they may stop speaking mid-sentence, staring onto the middle distance as though possessed by a sense of longing for times in the recent past or perhaps simply attempting to catch a fleeing train of thought, flitting away into a deepening tunnel of exhaustion and exhilaration.
Hello! It’s me, PF Hot Seats! Once again reporting from a North Sea ferry; this time headed south. Back to the mainland, back to the real world, back to a land that is, frankly, dull in comparison to the high latitude musician’s sleepaway camp of the Shetland Folk Festival!
Some 13 years ago, I wrote about our experience, comparing it to the nostalgic feeling of emerging from a beautiful dream. Working as hard as possible to grasp the wisps and shreds of a month of memories and moments that have been jammed into 4 glorious days (bookended by 12 hr ferry rides that act as entrance and exit journeys to and from Shangri-La (Shetra-La? Shangretland?)). Was it real? Are we real? Are we even awake? Would we want to be?
I’ll try not to repeat myself too much, although it WAS 13 years ago, so I imagine that no one is checking too closely.
As with our last trip to Shetland (2012!), the whole thing begins with a ferry ride from Aberdeen to Lerwick. All of the fresh faced musicians and punters (not an insult?) board, get settled, and then almost immediately descend upon the bar for drinks and tunes. Apparently, at some point over the last few years, Northlink (who runs the ferry) has decided that there should be an 11pm curfew on music and general carousing. While shocking in the moment, it is probably a wise move, given the absolute tidal wave of merriment, late nights, music playing, chatting, and drinking which is to follow.
We stuff ourselves into our 4 berther (pretty small for 4 grown stinky snoring (3/4 of us) and sweating dudes), and sleep the night away. Upon landing and debarking in Lerwick, buried memories begin to emerge from the cloudy back of my brain. We are shuffled over to the Festival Club, our second home for the next 5 days, for bacon sandwiches, coffee, and more of the moments of “didn’t we play a gig together way back when . . .?” that happens for so many musicians. Others are having straight up family reunions, which is also lovely to see. We Hot Seats might be more like the somewhat shunned members of that family – catching sidelong glances and looks of semi-recognition.
We meet our hosts – Maggie and Andy – who whisk us away to our FIRST home for the festival -their truly wonderful house. As I have written at length in the past, we live or die by the graciousness and generosity of those living saints who choose to take in bands, feed us, and allow us to lay about their house. Over our years, we have managed to ingratiate ourselves to many (something about this band inspires the Mother Duck impulse in so many. They take a look at us and say to themselves “these fellows need a shower, a meal, and a bed”), and Maggie and Andy very quickly rose towards the top of these ranks. The house itself is lovely and large, with rooms very every band member. In those rooms we each had our own window ledge array of chocolates, shortbread, and a small decanter of whiskey(!). Andy had even gone so far as to fold our towels into the shapes of elephants! 5 Star accommodation!
We would also quickly learn that this house was the party house, meaning that when the Festival Club closes at 3am, many musicians and others end up in their well-appointed basement (far from the sleeping quarters) for another 3-5 hours of music making and revelry. The fridges stay stocked, and Andy is rabid about houseguests doing NO cleaning. I could go on forever about these two lovely people, but we shall move on.
I won’t go into every gig, except to say that we played 9 over the course of 4 days – Brae Village Hall, Sandwick School (our wriggliest audience with the best questions and most autograph seekers), Festival Club, Legion Hall (11:30pm start to our second wriggliest audience, albeit a pretty drunk and rowdy one, allowing us to stretch our bar band muscles), Legion Hall (afternoon), Mareel (where we got to see our beloved soundman/friend/rock star pal Tim), Clickimin Centre, Legion, Mareel). Every show was a blast.
It is always a little intimidating (to me, anyway. Rudy is an unflappable guy) at first when we are thrown into a situation of being surrounded by REAL musicians – the kind that play epic music with melodies and endless space for musical breaths. We start to feel a little like a three wheeled jalopy, binking and bonking our way down the highway next to flashy sports cars and luxury sedans. However, we get over it pretty quickly and lean hard into what we like to believe sets us apart – silly quantities of energy, hyper fast tunes, and, as always, humour (note the “u”). It’s a silly fear, of course. We were invited to come, after all, but it should speak to the level of musicians at this thing. And speaking of . . .
Not only are the crowds receptive and appreciative, but we also get to hang with so many other great bands. In the interest of wrapping up some time before I hit 10,000 words, I’ll not graphically describe each of them, however we spent a lot of time with a great young group called Astro Bloc – Gillie, Paul, Eryn, and Eadaoin. It came out in our first gig together that Eryn had seen us and opened for us roughly 15 years ago at Lanton Village Hall when she must have been 6 or 7. Well, she recently won BBC Scotland’s Young Traditional Musician of the Year, so . . . you’re welcome, Scotland.
We also got to spend a lot of down time with fabulous fiddler and hilarious person, Ross Couper, of the Peat Bog Faeries and other projects. Ross is one of those magic people who are propelled forward by sleep deprivation and drink (unlike your intrepid narrator, who gets so sleepy!). He is often the party starter and the party finisher, and we are very happy to have gotten to know him.
If all of this seems a bit scattered, that’s because the whole experience is impossible to break the Shetland experience into constituent parts. I’m running out of steam, but I would be absolutely remiss if I failed to shout out the level of organization and coordination achieved from the entirely volunteer festival committee. Mhari, David, Louise, Christine, Christine, Lisa, Lewie, and all the rest. They are NON-STOP – running from gig to gig, solving musicians’ endless little problems, smiling, laughing, drinking, dancing, joking, and egging us on to keep the party moving, all while running the smoothest set of multi-variables that you can imagine.
After the final goodbyes, ferry ride, retrieving the van, and moving down the road, we were all taken by a sense of . . . not exactly sadness, but something akin to it. The 4 days of the Shetland Festival is a lifetime and an eyeblink. Every moment stretches to the horizon and is rich and exciting, but you turn your head and your back on the ferry, waving goodbye to beloved people that you have known for 96 hours and also for your entire life.
Let’s not make it another 13 years, eh Festival Committee?
Final tour blog in a couple of days . . .