Nov. 22, 2020

Donald Black interview

Donald Black interview
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Season 1 Traditional Harmonica Tremolo Harmonica

Donald Black is predominantly a tremolo player, using the instrument to great effect across the range of traditional Scottish music. He learnt many of the tunes he loves from accordion music, emulating the sound on the tremolo harmonica. 

Donald’s musical career started quite late in life, and since then he has performed around the world, appearing at the SPAH convention and even in Moscow. With five albums to his name, Donald has also recorded two tracks with the great Charlie McCoy. 
His music summons the beautiful scenery of the misty glens of bonny Scotland.


Select the Chapter Markers tab above to select different sections of the podcast (website version only).

Links:
Donald's website:
https://donald-black.com/

Album reviews:
https://donald-black.com/albums-reviews/

Tony Eyers site on Tremolo harmonica:
http://tremoloharmonica.com/
Profile of Donald: http://tremoloharmonica.com/donald-black.shtml

Winslow Yerxa's, author of 'Harmonica For Dummies':
https://winslowyerxa.com/

The Encyclopedia of Harmonica book by Peter Krampert:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Encyclopedia-Harmonica-Peter-Krampert-ebook/dp/B07TW9MRW5

Di Mundharmonica by Cristoph Wagner:
https://www.amazon.de/Die-Mundharmonika-Ein-musikalischer-Globetrotter/dp/3887471105



YouTube:

NHL Bristol in 2007:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7R3vZclR2M

Harmonica UK Lockdown session from 2020:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89fnOFmU9po

Piping Live in 2018:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wtXnQpyYcmc

Donald Black Band in Klingenthal in 2018:
https://www.facebook.com/100004723477107/videos/1118269991673773/


Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

01:38 - Donald hails from the West coast of Scotland

01:50 - First harmonica sent to Donald as a present at age 4

02:05 - Played harmonica with mother as a boy

02:16 - Tremolo was the harmonica Donald learnt to play

02:28 - Influence of the scenery of Western Scotland on the music of the region

02:51 - Slow airs are a favourite of Donalds

03:29 - Influence of Gaelic on the music

04:49 - Donald’s grew up among traditional music scene of West coast of Scotland

05:54 - The accordion was the instrument Donald was first influenced by

06:06 - Donald was discovered playing harmonica in a bar in Glasgow by Phil Cunningham

07:10 - Tremolo harmonica sounds similar to accordion (at least the way Donald plays it)

07:34 - Donald plays the Echo harp tremolo, but also Suzuki and Tombo tremolos

08:06 - Donald’s development as a harmonica player

09:15 - Made his first album: Westwinds, and met Malcolm Jones of Runrig fame

09:59 - Played with Malcolm Jones in a duo for many years

11:46 - Donald one of few exponents of Sottish traditional music on the harmonica

12:36 - Met Rick Epping, who had some tremolos in different keys made for Donald

13:26 - Harmonica types used on Westwinds album

14:06 - Went on tour with Malcolm Jones

14:44 - Shetland music

15:18 - Donald’s second album: Close To Home

16:33 - Pipe tunes and the flattened seventh

17:48 - Don’t bend on the tremolo as the reeds are so delicate

18:25 - Tremolos used for Irish music have thicker reeds

19:28 - Donald a little chromatic (but not much!)

20:24 - 6/8 Time

20:46 - Donald learns by ear and plays tunes repeatedly

22:20 - Sometimes mix up the tunes by mistake

23:14 - Cajun song: The Ballachulish Stomp on octave tuned Hohner Comet

24:22 - Hohner Little Lady harmonica trick where brushes teeth

25:11 - Third album: Keil Road

26:46 - Donald has played a Pibroch for first time on harmonica

27:52 - Classic Gaelic song, The Cuckoo

28:43 - Donald sings a song in Gaelic on the album, and the Gaelic language

30:49 - Dreams and Dances album

31:38 - The Clappers pipe tune is a fast one

32:35 - Donald unusually for him, plays 2nd position on The Inevitable Journey song

34:52 - Appeared on Charlie McCoy’s Celtic Dreams album in 2015 after meeting him at SPAH

36:18 - They recorded a song Donald had recorded on Dreams and Dances: Lonesome Eyes

37:49 - Charlie McCoy then appeared on a song on Donald’s next album, From My Heart

39:59 - More songs off the From My Heart album

41:21 - Polka on the album

43:00 - Donald has appeared at the NHL Festival twice on two occasions

43:38 - Donald performed with his mother on Scottish TV when she was 86

44:20 - Donald is the first Scot to be invited to appear at SPAH

45:12 - Has performed in various countries, including Lithuania and Russia

46:58 - Has appeared in four books about harmonica

48:03 - Appeared on TV numerous times on Scottish Gaelic music programmes

48:29 - Mouth vibrato that Donald uses and emulating mandolin tremolo sound

51:10 - Developed Highlander mixolydian tuned tremolo with Hohner

52:12 - 10 minute question

54:06 - Availability of good tremolo harmonicas nowadays

56:03 - Importance of keeping the mouth salivated

56:59 - Embouchure

57:38 - Microphone of choice

58:00 - Doesn’t use any effects pedals

58:05 - Future plans

WEBVTT

00:00:00.194 --> 00:00:03.398
Donald Black joins me on episode 28 of the podcast.

00:00:03.838 --> 00:00:10.186
Donald is predominantly a tremolo player, using the instrument to great effect across the range of traditional Scottish music.

00:00:10.746 --> 00:00:16.353
He learnt many of the tunes he loves from accordion music, emulating the sound on the tremolo harmonica.

00:00:17.155 --> 00:00:25.365
Donald's musical career started quite late in life, and since then he has performed around the world, appearing at the Spa Convention and even in Moscow.

00:00:26.018 --> 00:00:31.405
With five albums to his name, Donald has also recorded two tracks with the great Charlie McCoy.

00:00:32.067 --> 00:00:37.014
His music summons the beautiful scenery of the misty glens of Bonnie, Scotland.

00:00:37.716 --> 00:00:44.405
A word to my sponsor again, thanks to the Lone Wolf Blues Company, makers of effects pedals, microphones and more, designed for harmonica.

00:00:44.845 --> 00:00:48.011
Remember, when you want control over your tone, you want Lone Wolf.

00:00:49.834 --> 00:01:24.254
Lone Wolf Hello, Donald Black, and welcome to the podcast.

00:01:24.617 --> 00:01:25.179
Hello, Neil.

00:01:25.641 --> 00:01:28.753
You're from the west of Scotland, and that's the music you play.

00:01:28.993 --> 00:01:32.257
Gaelic harmonica and other sorts of traditional Scottish music.

00:01:32.296 --> 00:01:37.340
So maybe talk a little bit about the west coast of Scotland and where you're from and the music tradition around there.

00:01:37.701 --> 00:01:44.387
I come from a very small part of Argyll, the Firth of Lorne, which is a small village, Bendeloch.

00:01:44.688 --> 00:01:46.289
It's north of Oban in the West Highlands.

00:01:46.588 --> 00:01:54.275
The son of a labourer, we were just ordinary working people and an aunt sent me a harmonica for my Christmas once when I was the age of four.

00:01:54.635 --> 00:01:57.358
We weren't in the tradition of exchanging presents.

00:01:57.418 --> 00:02:00.721
We couldn't afford it at the time and I've always had a harmonica since.

00:02:01.001 --> 00:02:04.825
I never took it seriously, however, until much later in life.

00:02:05.025 --> 00:02:08.709
Sometimes I would sit at the fireside with my mother, who played the harmonica.

00:02:08.908 --> 00:02:11.170
We played pipe and Gaelic music together.

00:02:11.211 --> 00:02:15.253
And sometimes a bit of ragtime, a bit of country, or a bit of pop.

00:02:15.634 --> 00:02:16.475
And that was that.

00:02:16.996 --> 00:02:20.778
It was a tremolo that I was sent at the time, because I didn't know that's what they called it.

00:02:21.319 --> 00:02:28.105
It was a tremolo harmonica I always found enjoyment with when playing and throughout my life.

00:02:28.705 --> 00:02:38.776
So about the West Coast of Scotland and the Gaelic influences, some of the people listening who aren't from the UK, I mean, that's a very beautiful part of the UK and a very beautiful part of the world.

00:02:38.858 --> 00:02:43.923
And, you know, the scenery there and the landscape, I think, plays quite a significant part, doesn't it?

00:02:43.983 --> 00:02:46.545
Is that something, you know, maybe gets into the music?

00:02:47.127 --> 00:02:50.169
Yes, there are particularly slow pieces.

00:02:50.350 --> 00:02:53.054
I love my favourite tempo is the slow ear.

00:03:05.538 --> 00:03:09.683
And a lot of our slow airs, they are a broken heart all over the world.

00:03:10.205 --> 00:03:13.991
There's emigration and reflecting on the country they came from.

00:03:14.010 --> 00:03:16.474
And there is the beauty of the surrounding area.

00:03:17.056 --> 00:03:28.734
And so many of our lovely slow airs, and we have quite a lot of them, they are pertaining to the love of one's domain, where there's mountains and sea and what have you.

00:03:29.057 --> 00:03:36.604
And then perhaps explain a little about the term Gaelic, because Gaelic is the language and it influences the music.

00:03:37.025 --> 00:03:39.266
Well, the language itself is ancient.

00:03:39.627 --> 00:03:41.048
It's very, very old.

00:03:41.389 --> 00:03:46.772
We got it originally from the Irish and it's way back in history that it came from.

00:03:46.812 --> 00:03:49.656
And it's a very innocent language.

00:03:50.256 --> 00:03:55.360
I don't think there's any foul language like we have in different languages, the swearing.

00:03:55.401 --> 00:03:58.423
If somebody swears in Gaelic, it's very mild.

00:03:58.783 --> 00:04:44.232
It does offend anybody so it's a very innocent language and it's a very natural one people feel what they're saying at the time very much there's a lot of emotion goes into it and humour incredible humour as well but light humour not heavy stuff that is difficult to understand it reflects a way of life which is extremely rural small crafts where people would help each other the ethos of profit making didn't come into the culture until probably the 20th century with television and radio etc etc so commercialism it came in a wee bit you know but basically at the root of the language is a lovely lovely genuine innocence

00:04:44.612 --> 00:04:56.925
beautiful yeah and that maybe reflected it in the music so again you're from the west coast of Scotland so what about the music scene and the sort of the Scottish traditional music scene around there and the instruments played and how you got interested in all

00:04:57.286 --> 00:05:02.492
that at a very early age my mother He loved music and all we heard was the name Bobby McLeod.

00:05:02.733 --> 00:05:06.918
Now you may have heard of Jimmy Shand and quite rightly he was on the east coast of Scotland.

00:05:07.059 --> 00:05:08.341
He was a fantastic player.

00:05:08.440 --> 00:05:14.348
He had his own band and he travelled the world and he was well known down in England and Australia, New Zealand, you name it.

00:05:14.528 --> 00:05:17.192
However, we had Bobby McLeod on the west coast.

00:05:20.858 --> 00:05:20.958
MUSIC

00:05:32.129 --> 00:05:44.449
He's regarded as being the person who took bagpipe music and Gaelic music and particularly focusing on that music on the accordion, on the piano accordion particularly.

00:05:44.488 --> 00:05:49.656
And there were others who then started to copy Bobby and the whole country.

00:05:50.076 --> 00:05:54.704
Now, the young ones, there's many, many, many young ones playing the accordion.

00:05:54.923 --> 00:05:58.589
So the first influence on me musically was Bobby.

00:05:59.074 --> 00:06:01.658
The music of people like Bobby McLeod who played accordion.

00:06:02.038 --> 00:06:16.699
So when I got seriously interested in the harmonica was many years later, to be 27 years ago to be precise, an accordion player called Phil Cunningham, who is hugely regarded both here and abroad.

00:06:16.959 --> 00:06:20.725
He's probably the most successful accordion player we've ever had.

00:06:21.185 --> 00:06:26.934
He was a musical director of a program, a Gaelic program that was going out on BBC.

00:06:27.233 --> 00:06:30.038
He asked me, that was in 1993.

00:06:30.918 --> 00:06:33.682
He came into a pub I was playing in for fun here in Glasgow.

00:06:33.783 --> 00:06:37.848
I learned a few tunes just for fun with a couple of guys from the Hebrides.

00:06:38.048 --> 00:06:41.372
And he heard me playing and he thought it was the right hand of an accordion he was hearing.

00:06:41.812 --> 00:06:44.997
Which didn't surprise me because that's what I was trying to emulate.

00:06:45.197 --> 00:06:51.586
So that was the influence on me for the harmonica was the accordion players.

00:06:51.786 --> 00:06:54.250
And there was an orthodoxy from the 50s.

00:06:54.562 --> 00:07:10.663
Do you think particularly the tremolo matches the sound of the

00:07:11.264 --> 00:07:15.709
accordion over the other sorts of harmonicas?

00:07:15.970 --> 00:07:16.951
Yes, for me.

00:07:17.550 --> 00:07:18.771
I mentioned the Irish players.

00:07:18.812 --> 00:07:24.718
The Irish players play mainly what we call the two-roll button box, box being an affectionate name for accordion.

00:07:25.077 --> 00:07:27.220
And they play incredible stuff.

00:07:27.560 --> 00:07:34.065
But the sound of the reed, the way they're tuned, is quite different, very often, to the piano accordion.

00:07:34.305 --> 00:07:44.875
So I play the echo harp series, the old echo harp series that had been on double sides, that had been on the go for quite a few decades in Scotland, for Highland music.

00:07:45.175 --> 00:08:05.577
But when it comes to the Irish stuff I play I have a preference for the Japanese Suzuki and Tombow the sound of the reed is just that bit less soft a slightly harder sound but the sound it creates it's a lovely sound and it emulates the button accordion of the Irish for Irish music

00:08:06.370 --> 00:08:12.521
So again, going back to when you started out playing, you got your first tremolo harmonica when you were four years old.

00:08:12.800 --> 00:08:16.247
And then from that age, you say your mother played, so that's fantastic.

00:08:16.266 --> 00:08:17.689
You used to play with your mother.

00:08:19.353 --> 00:08:21.877
So how did you evolve your harmonica playing then?

00:08:21.896 --> 00:08:27.185
Because obviously, as you mentioned, you didn't really seriously get into playing until the early 90s.

00:08:27.367 --> 00:08:31.514
So how did you develop your playing during that time?

00:08:31.810 --> 00:08:40.022
Well, I was coming from a very low base of playing anything in terms of ability or in terms of repertoire.

00:08:40.363 --> 00:08:42.886
I hadn't got many tunes, so I got the bug.

00:08:43.086 --> 00:08:44.168
It was like a drug.

00:08:44.688 --> 00:08:46.171
And it's so much so yet.

00:08:46.491 --> 00:08:48.355
I found that I got so much into it.

00:08:48.375 --> 00:08:53.381
I thought, if somebody of Phil Cunningham's calibre likes what I'm doing, I'm going to do something about it.

00:08:58.490 --> 00:08:58.590
MUSIC

00:09:16.001 --> 00:09:18.888
So I got really, threw myself into it.

00:09:19.048 --> 00:09:26.523
I contacted probably the most prominent record label in Scotland for traditional music, Green Tracks.

00:09:26.923 --> 00:09:32.514
And I contacted Ian Green, the sole director, and asked him if he'd be interested and I sent a demo.

00:09:32.956 --> 00:09:33.957
And he said yes.

00:09:34.177 --> 00:09:56.894
I then met one of the guests, we've got a couple of guests on it, one of them was an incredible musician and human being, Malcolm Jones, who was with, when I say was, they've now finished, they've retired, the Celtic rock band Drunrig, and Malcolm plays accordions, plays pipes, he plays drums, but particularly guitar.

00:09:57.250 --> 00:09:58.851
He's a world-class guitarist.

00:09:59.293 --> 00:10:11.168
He was on the album, and I ran into him again, and we formed a duo, and we played for about 13, 14 years together here in Germany, Denmark, and all over Scotland, particularly the Highlands.

00:10:11.687 --> 00:10:19.298
But he fell ill some years back, and he had to slacken off a bit with the workload, so I had to look for other people.

00:10:20.033 --> 00:10:22.519
So this album was your first album?

00:10:22.538 --> 00:10:22.899
It was my first

00:10:22.919 --> 00:10:23.160
one, yeah.

00:10:23.802 --> 00:10:25.706
In 1995, the West Winds album.

00:10:25.846 --> 00:10:26.147
Yeah,

00:10:26.187 --> 00:10:27.028
West Winds,

00:10:27.990 --> 00:10:28.451
yeah.

00:10:28.471 --> 00:10:32.038
So your first album, like many, you're dipping your toe in the waters.

00:10:32.360 --> 00:10:35.186
You met with Malcolm Jones, as you say, from Run Rig.

00:10:35.927 --> 00:10:37.190
How did that come together?

00:10:37.210 --> 00:10:40.957
You've got a very high-caliber musician to play with you on your first album.

00:10:41.153 --> 00:10:45.489
How it happened was that there is no ego with Malcolm.

00:10:45.509 --> 00:10:52.573
You know, sometimes people who are held in very high esteem, sometimes in the education, they pick and choose people.

00:10:52.769 --> 00:11:00.115
and Malcolm does too to a degree, but he's very easy to get on with, easily approached, and someone who is very humble.

00:11:00.677 --> 00:11:08.864
It just clicked, we clicked, and I strove to create playing that was of a standard that was hopefully doing his some justice.

00:11:09.264 --> 00:11:12.846
And so was that connection made through the record label initially?

00:11:13.368 --> 00:11:13.528
No,

00:11:13.847 --> 00:11:16.070
it was through my having met him.

00:11:16.090 --> 00:11:22.735
He was contacted by the producer for a couple of tracks, and he said, we'll try and get Malcolm on, and I did, and I couldn't.

00:11:22.735 --> 00:11:41.735
believe malcolm jones and brandon were sitting in the bowels of the earth over in edinburgh in a tiny studio and he's sitting next to me and i think my god i was shaking like a leaf you know with nerves but it didn't take long to get to know malcolm and and we had and we still do i'm still in touch with him very much he is quite incredible

00:11:41.996 --> 00:11:54.563
so to maybe that's a you know an indication you know the popularity of the harmonica because i don't think there's been a lot of scottish traditional music played on the harmonica are you one of the first maybe or are certainly best known at the moment.

00:11:54.913 --> 00:12:07.784
Well, yes, and I don't want to elaborate too much on this, but the tremolo players have been up against it with Richter tuning, you know, the German Richter tuning, which has a particular place.

00:12:08.024 --> 00:12:17.933
But we needed the Asian tuning, and very often the lower notes were not available on the Echo series particularly, which is the one mostly that the Scottish guys played.

00:12:18.193 --> 00:12:57.073
And they got fed up at times with just one note missing at the bottom end that meant that they couldn't always get the tune and it was no fault of their own so I think that therefore by definition there's been others that if they had non-rester tuning on the tremolos they might have done much more I was lucky I ran into an absolute gem of a guy again Rick Epping he lives in Ireland he's American he worked for Honour in Virginia he was the production manager in one of the factories there and I met him at a festival here in Glasgow and he said would you like to join the workshop I'm doing with Brendan Power and Nick Kinsella.

00:12:57.394 --> 00:12:58.176
And I did.

00:12:58.576 --> 00:13:01.058
And he knew that I had problems with the tremolo.

00:13:01.458 --> 00:13:09.267
I said, it would be nice to get the big one, the double-sided, done in the keys of A and D as well, because it was only available in C and G.

00:13:09.788 --> 00:13:12.730
Oh, he got me three or four dozen of them made, special order.

00:13:12.750 --> 00:13:14.352
So I'm the only one in the world with them.

00:13:14.793 --> 00:13:23.783
And that opened up a whole new world, because I could get the big one, the 57-120, it's the big tremolo, I could get that in C and G and A and D.

00:13:24.143 --> 00:13:25.825
So that's helped very much.

00:13:26.405 --> 00:13:31.552
Did you play only tremolo on the Westwinds album or was there diatonics on there?

00:13:32.214 --> 00:13:35.778
No, I didn't play much diatonic on it at all.

00:13:35.818 --> 00:13:37.381
If I played any, I don't think.

00:13:37.701 --> 00:13:43.389
I played the octave tuned on a couple of sets, but it was mostly tremolo.

00:13:55.745 --> 00:13:58.389
So this album, it got you some exposure, yeah?

00:13:58.889 --> 00:14:03.375
Got you back to play at some festivals, you know, some gigs, got you some gigs, etc.

00:14:03.416 --> 00:14:05.719
So this is a bit of a springboard, this album.

00:14:05.759 --> 00:14:09.945
And you went on tour with Malcolm Jones as a result of recording that album.

00:14:09.985 --> 00:14:10.384
Yes,

00:14:10.706 --> 00:14:10.985
yes.

00:14:11.125 --> 00:14:13.789
We toured the Highlands and Islands many, many times.

00:14:14.169 --> 00:14:20.698
And I also played in Germany with him a few times over to Germany and in Denmark in the Tuna Festival.

00:14:20.719 --> 00:14:23.261
It's a big traditional music festival there.

00:14:23.457 --> 00:14:25.225
There's a few different styles on there.

00:14:25.245 --> 00:14:27.635
A nice song called Touch of Irish, which is good.

00:14:27.655 --> 00:14:33.662
Another one is Shetland Reels, which does some nice unison.

00:14:44.129 --> 00:14:45.871
Shetland Reels, I love them.

00:14:46.091 --> 00:14:48.333
They're famous for the reels that Shetland does.

00:14:48.514 --> 00:14:50.274
There's a Nordic influence there.

00:14:50.716 --> 00:14:52.256
They play a lot of fiddle in Shetland.

00:14:52.576 --> 00:14:55.600
And there's some great players, one of them being Ali Bain.

00:14:56.561 --> 00:15:01.284
An album after that, a flow here they did, Hill Road album, Ali's in a couple of tracks with me.

00:15:01.625 --> 00:15:04.567
And he is regarded very, very highly again.

00:15:04.668 --> 00:15:08.331
And he duets with, coincidentally, with Phil Cunningham, who had me playing in the first place.

00:15:08.650 --> 00:15:10.873
Yes, I love Shetland music.

00:15:11.153 --> 00:15:14.096
I wanted to do some, you know, add a bit of diversity to the album.

00:15:14.096 --> 00:15:17.462
and just do different textures, different sounds, different tempos.

00:15:17.943 --> 00:15:24.836
And then this led on to you doing your second album called Closer Home five years later, also with Malcolm Jones playing with you again, yeah?

00:15:25.118 --> 00:15:33.092
Well, I felt within myself as I was progressing a bit and playing with Malcolm, I thought I would love to do better than the first album I did.

00:15:33.505 --> 00:15:38.364
And then I was hugely fortunate to be in the company of Malcolm Jones, and I took advantage of that fact.

00:15:38.504 --> 00:15:41.676
And we did it as a joint venture, Donald Black and Malcolm Jones.

00:15:41.956 --> 00:15:45.489
And it should have been Malcolm Jones and Donald Black, but that's the way he wanted it.

00:15:45.793 --> 00:15:53.269
So we did it as a joint venture, and we were conscious of the fact that it would be nice to mix it with different tempos and different textures.

00:15:53.551 --> 00:15:59.985
He uses slide guitar on a couple of tracks, one in particular, a slow air we did, called Eilean Scalpe in Aherag.

00:16:00.245 --> 00:16:02.971
It means Island of Scalpe near Harris.

00:16:03.251 --> 00:16:03.972
It's in the Hippodese.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:16:20.066 --> 00:16:23.171
And again, like you say, lots of different tempos, textures.

00:16:23.451 --> 00:16:27.639
But I think what's interesting is to talk around some of the different forms of music.

00:16:27.938 --> 00:16:30.923
A lot of people are interested in playing traditional music now on the harmonica.

00:16:31.485 --> 00:16:35.753
So, you know, for example, you've got the two gyms, which is the Pipe March.

00:16:43.446 --> 00:16:43.645
Pipe March

00:16:48.706 --> 00:16:53.009
You've got Kitchen Maid, The Thief and the Tailor, which is a pipe jig.

00:17:02.458 --> 00:17:03.701
So what about those pipe tunes?

00:17:03.980 --> 00:17:10.988
Fundamentally, many pipe tunes have the flattened seventh, and it's referred to, I think, technically as mixolydian.

00:17:11.248 --> 00:17:17.153
Some of those tunes, not all of them, but some of them require a change in the tuning in one reed.

00:17:17.506 --> 00:17:30.063
I did it on one of the models, the tremolo models 5580, which was rifter tuned, but I changed the, in the key of A, at the top end, there was G sharp and the bottom end, G sharp.

00:17:30.143 --> 00:17:45.864
So I flattened those to G and that facilitated being able to play so many, many more pipe tunes that Heather 2 could not be played on the harmonica because that special note that was required for many of those tunes was simply not available.

00:17:46.064 --> 00:17:47.385
So this is on a tremolo.

00:17:47.617 --> 00:17:47.998
Yes.

00:17:48.679 --> 00:17:51.300
So of course it's not possible to bend the tremolo, is it?

00:17:51.641 --> 00:17:51.821
No.

00:17:52.102 --> 00:17:55.184
For one simple reason, the reeds would just buckle.

00:17:55.545 --> 00:17:59.307
You know, you put a lot of pressure on the reed when you're bending.

00:17:59.729 --> 00:18:04.231
If you're bending in the ten hole, you're putting a lot of pressure on the notes generally anyway.

00:18:04.432 --> 00:18:09.396
So when you go to bend it, you're emphasising it more and it would have damaged the reeds.

00:18:09.656 --> 00:18:10.698
It's not feasible.

00:18:11.618 --> 00:18:13.580
Yeah, the reeds are very delicate, aren't they, on the tremolo?

00:18:13.780 --> 00:18:14.821
Very, very delicate, yeah.

00:18:15.102 --> 00:18:19.445
Do you know why they are so much thinner than, say, diatonic reeds?

00:18:19.486 --> 00:18:20.747
Yes, for the sound.

00:18:21.268 --> 00:18:24.250
There's a lovely soft sound that comes from the tremolo.

00:18:24.672 --> 00:18:29.717
And the ones I mentioned for Irish music, the reeds are that bit thicker.

00:18:30.037 --> 00:18:34.461
So you're getting a more singular sound from the reeds.

00:18:34.741 --> 00:18:39.507
It's akin to the button accordion, which has got that different sound.

00:18:39.968 --> 00:18:47.415
It's a lovely soft sound, but the drawback is that they damage very, very easily, the tremolos, particularly.

00:18:47.536 --> 00:18:55.069
The Echo Series, not because they were badly built, the reeds, but just in order to get that sound, they had to be that bit thinner.

00:18:55.233 --> 00:18:59.817
So you play quite a few different sorts of harmonica on the Close to Home album.

00:18:59.837 --> 00:19:04.721
So you play, obviously, tremolo, you play some diatonic on those, but you also play chromatic as well, don't you?

00:19:04.741 --> 00:19:09.846
So I think on, I'm probably mispronouncing this, but Aileen Accio, is it?

00:19:10.067 --> 00:19:10.948
Aileen Accio.

00:19:11.268 --> 00:19:11.827
It's not as it

00:19:11.867 --> 00:19:13.849
looks, the pronunciation in Gaelic.

00:19:14.069 --> 00:19:15.131
I'm no expert in Gaelic.

00:19:15.391 --> 00:19:16.432
I can't speak the language.

00:19:16.972 --> 00:19:18.634
I never got the chance when I was very young.

00:19:18.934 --> 00:19:21.676
But my friends, many of them, speak the language.

00:19:21.896 --> 00:19:25.200
And they tell me that it's Aileen Accio, and it means island of mist.

00:19:25.200 --> 00:19:27.423
It's the Island of Sky, or Misty Isle.

00:19:27.903 --> 00:19:29.425
You're playing chromatic on that one, aren't you?

00:19:29.665 --> 00:19:30.186
I know.

00:19:30.207 --> 00:19:40.740
I was playing tin hole, but there was an introductory part where there was a question and answer thing done by myself and Malcolm before we launched into the melody proper.

00:19:40.760 --> 00:20:04.897
MUSIC PLAYS And it was to try and emulate the echo that you might get in the cooling mountains and sky to make it more atmospheric.

00:20:05.159 --> 00:20:09.066
So the chromatic was used for that, but I'm not a chromatic player, no.

00:20:09.707 --> 00:20:12.132
I respect chromatic players very much.

00:20:12.432 --> 00:20:15.038
The sound of the chromatic, generally speaking, doesn't suit me.

00:20:15.650 --> 00:20:24.076
Okay, so you do that one and there's a 6-8 march and a horn pipe on there as a time for another tune also played on the tremolo.

00:20:24.678 --> 00:20:25.919
So what about 6-8 time?

00:20:25.979 --> 00:20:31.123
That's another time that maybe people who are interested in traditional music might find tricky to get to grips with.

00:20:31.284 --> 00:20:32.585
How do you deal with 6-8 time?

00:20:33.265 --> 00:20:34.006
I'm at home with them.

00:20:34.046 --> 00:20:35.307
I love playing them.

00:20:35.366 --> 00:20:39.711
I find it easy because I whistle them to myself all day anyway.

00:20:40.010 --> 00:20:44.434
Very often I learn tunes or relearn them and keep them in my mind by whistling them.

00:20:44.815 --> 00:20:45.615
So it's no problem

00:20:45.615 --> 00:20:49.220
So that, like you say, getting the tunes into your head, is that a really important part?

00:20:49.720 --> 00:20:54.464
I've heard from you that you don't read music, so you're playing all the tunes by ear, or you learn the tunes by ear, do you?

00:20:54.746 --> 00:20:59.191
What I do is, I hear the tune, if I like a tune, or if I love a tune, I'll play it.

00:20:59.290 --> 00:21:01.432
If I don't really love the tune, I don't play it.

00:21:01.613 --> 00:21:09.582
So there are many, many, many tunes that are beautiful, and I thought it would be very better, so I thought, starting this, I wonder what I'll do for tunes.

00:21:09.882 --> 00:21:14.366
And there's so many, you don't know which ones to discard, because you want to record them all.

00:21:14.666 --> 00:21:25.038
So I try So the learning process was one of hearing the tune and then playing it over and over and over and double-checking it.

00:21:25.157 --> 00:21:27.921
I can't read music, but I can read it slowly.

00:21:27.941 --> 00:21:34.607
I've never taken on board to learn reading music, but I can check certain bits that I've got it right.

00:21:34.748 --> 00:21:39.933
If I suspect it, and I haven't got that quite right yet, I don't think, I'll check it against the dots, against the music.

00:21:40.173 --> 00:21:43.238
But once I've done that, I continue to play by ear.

00:21:43.278 --> 00:22:08.712
And when I do a concert, a full concert, concert particularly in village halls and in festivals it's usually three quarters of an hour or an hour maximum playing but when we maybe go to village halls we play two 45 minute slots and I play upwards of 55 separate tunes in a full concert and flow ears and fast stuff and the average average amount of parts in a tune is about three.

00:22:09.053 --> 00:22:17.628
So I've generally got between 55 and 60 tunes where the average contents of the tune in terms of what to learn is about three parts.

00:22:17.910 --> 00:22:19.772
So it's a lot of preparation.

00:22:20.226 --> 00:22:22.667
I like to play some traditional music myself.

00:22:23.489 --> 00:22:26.411
I find sometimes that you can mix them up together.

00:22:26.490 --> 00:22:28.874
Do you ever have that problem where you're sort of mixing up the tunes?

00:22:29.193 --> 00:22:31.316
Yes, and I'll tell you a good story there.

00:22:31.675 --> 00:22:37.421
I played this Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow several times, and it's a big festival, as you probably know.

00:22:37.881 --> 00:22:47.990
And when we came off one of the nights, we came off stage, Malcolm said to me, you know, you played that set of two fours in the second half, two four marches, you played it beautifully.

00:22:48.029 --> 00:22:51.394
It's a great pity that it was the wrong tune you started off with.

00:22:52.414 --> 00:22:59.023
Now, a lot of the pipe tunes, they start off similarly, and it's like hitting black ice and getting all over the place.

00:22:59.203 --> 00:23:05.593
When you lose it, when you go off track, you're off track, and you've got to commit to what you've taken on, the wrong tune.

00:23:05.893 --> 00:23:08.557
It doesn't happen very often, but it did happen that night.

00:23:09.218 --> 00:23:14.744
So another great song on there, and I'll probably pronounce this wrong again, is it the Balachulish song?

00:23:14.904 --> 00:23:18.029
Balachulish.

00:23:18.049 --> 00:23:18.269
Balachulish.

00:23:28.130 --> 00:23:35.078
Wallaceville is a small village near, you've heard of Glencoe, you've probably been through Glencoe on the way up.

00:23:35.278 --> 00:23:44.069
It's a beautiful part of the world again, and it's a small village just at the side of the salt water as you go through the glen on the west coast that's north of Oban.

00:23:44.671 --> 00:23:47.114
I always had a love of Cajun music.

00:23:47.433 --> 00:23:53.642
Malcolm and I decided to try something like that, and I played the octet-tuned Hunter Comet.

00:23:53.953 --> 00:23:55.095
harmonica on that.

00:23:55.335 --> 00:23:57.557
And we're just thinking, what do we call it?

00:23:57.936 --> 00:24:00.098
I just came up with the idea, the Barleyhollow Stomp.

00:24:00.539 --> 00:24:05.304
We are Celts from the west coast of Scotland, but it was Louisiana type of music.

00:24:05.423 --> 00:24:13.351
So although some of the tunes emanated from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, which is full of gales, and Malcolm wrote a couple of the tunes himself.

00:24:14.692 --> 00:24:17.934
But it was to try and emulate the Cajun sound.

00:24:18.295 --> 00:24:21.498
I don't know if we did it right or not, but that's the story.

00:24:21.897 --> 00:24:42.238
And also, on the last track the home at last which is a kind of hidden track you played the little lady uh harmonica yeah uh which is a nice little four hole harmonica i saw you doing the trick where you uh you put the the little harmonica on the toothbrush and pretend to be brushing your teeth while you're playing the harmonica something like this

00:24:44.034 --> 00:24:46.357
I've got it on the table here.

00:24:47.579 --> 00:24:48.401
That's a great trick.

00:24:48.461 --> 00:24:49.742
I'm going to steal that trick, Donald.

00:24:49.803 --> 00:24:50.483
I like that a lot.

00:24:51.125 --> 00:24:57.875
Well, what I do is actually say to an audience that hasn't seen or heard it before, I'll just say, I'm really sorry, folks.

00:24:57.957 --> 00:25:01.301
At the interval, I had to have something to eat and I must clean my teeth.

00:25:01.521 --> 00:25:06.089
So I take this in a toilet bag and they just say, what on earth is this guy about?

00:25:06.625 --> 00:25:07.507
And then they just love it.

00:25:08.607 --> 00:25:09.327
It's a novel thing.

00:25:09.367 --> 00:25:10.710
It's to entertain, you know.

00:25:11.029 --> 00:25:14.752
So we'll move on to your third album, which is called, is it Keel Road?

00:25:14.992 --> 00:25:18.016
So Keel Road, I understand that's the road that you grew up in.

00:25:18.375 --> 00:25:19.636
It's where I first saw daylight.

00:25:19.797 --> 00:25:24.300
It's a road in the village of Benderloch in Argyle, north of Oban.

00:25:24.622 --> 00:25:29.546
And the tune came into my head when I was practising with Donny, my guitarist now.

00:25:29.645 --> 00:25:31.267
Donny's been with me for quite some time.

00:25:31.607 --> 00:25:35.351
And I was practising in his house and we had finished our practice.

00:25:35.490 --> 00:25:36.412
We were relaxing.

00:25:36.432 --> 00:25:37.513
The tune just come into my head.

00:25:42.142 --> 00:25:59.773
And I thought it brought back memories of my grandparents there at New Year's.

00:25:59.970 --> 00:26:06.055
It was whiskey for the men and port wine or sherry, one sherry for the ladies.

00:26:06.476 --> 00:26:10.239
And they sat around the peat trier and sang songs and played music for a week.

00:26:11.759 --> 00:26:12.861
It went on day and night.

00:26:13.101 --> 00:26:17.765
And I was a child at the time and I remember vivid memories of that.

00:26:18.046 --> 00:26:21.449
And of course, at that time in the Highlands, there was no electricity.

00:26:21.769 --> 00:26:27.554
I was 11 before, 7 rather, before I saw electricity when we shifted to the lowlands of Scotland.

00:26:27.733 --> 00:26:31.577
So it was a more mystic faraway world then.

00:26:32.057 --> 00:26:39.486
And the lovely feeling of togetherness at the fireside, peak fire, that came into my head, that tune, and that's what it is.

00:26:39.726 --> 00:26:45.031
So another song on this album is a first in the harmonica, I understand, a Pibroch.

00:26:45.152 --> 00:26:45.752
A Pibroch.

00:26:46.232 --> 00:26:49.557
A Pibroch is actually, I call it Highland Blues.

00:26:49.997 --> 00:26:51.838
It emanated from the fireside.

00:26:51.898 --> 00:26:57.444
Somebody composing a tune about a lost love or immigration or whatever.

00:26:57.865 --> 00:27:07.737
Then the pipes were brought in a formalised, a lot of the music was formalised in the military pipe bands and all the different regiments had their own pipers, etc.

00:27:07.997 --> 00:27:12.521
Pibroch then was referred to as classical music on the bagpipes.

00:27:22.673 --> 00:27:22.814
Pibroch

00:27:29.473 --> 00:27:32.979
I understand what people say when they say that, but I don't see it that way.

00:27:33.380 --> 00:27:34.540
It's been formalized a bit.

00:27:34.580 --> 00:27:35.903
There's a particular setting.

00:27:36.064 --> 00:27:37.885
There's what we call an urla.

00:27:38.026 --> 00:27:39.868
It's the grounds in the first part.

00:27:39.969 --> 00:27:45.656
Then it builds up and there's more embellishments and it becomes more complicated as it goes.

00:27:45.998 --> 00:27:49.303
I was just trying to prove to myself I could have a go at a pibroch.

00:27:49.803 --> 00:27:51.045
It had never been done in harmonica

00:27:51.085 --> 00:27:51.385
before.

00:27:51.842 --> 00:27:58.607
And another song on there, which will be the introduction on the podcast, it's a classic Gaelic song, which is the cuckoo.

00:27:59.107 --> 00:28:03.632
My mother sang that all her days, and I remember as a child her singing that in Gaelic.

00:28:03.932 --> 00:28:13.881
It comes from the Arnhemachan Peninsula, and it's about a woman speaking to the cuckoo, the bird, the cuckoo, probably in the month of May, when the cuckoo arrives with its beautiful song.

00:28:13.921 --> 00:28:16.522
And we're blessed up on the west coast there.

00:28:16.603 --> 00:28:21.788
We get a whole myriad of them suddenly arrive, and you can hear numerous ones at the same time.

00:28:21.807 --> 00:28:42.349
singing away and she was speaking to the broken heart her lover had left her in Gaelic she's really saying you are beautiful you come here with your lovely singing every year you come back and visit me but he's gone I'll never see him again and it's a sad song so normally that is sung quite faster but I like the slow the slow airs down a bit

00:28:42.710 --> 00:28:48.916
and I'm talking about Gaelic so there is a there's a song sung in Gaelic on the album is that you singing who's singing that

00:28:48.936 --> 00:28:54.184
one that's me having a go I'm not sure about how I succeeded with the language though.

00:28:54.224 --> 00:28:58.755
You know, I was advised by friends, fellow musicians and speakers of the language.

00:28:59.195 --> 00:29:01.078
I heard that since I was knee-high as well.

00:29:01.098 --> 00:29:03.144
My mother sang that all her days.

00:29:13.185 --> 00:29:20.661
How

00:29:20.721 --> 00:29:23.928
do you feel about the importance of preserving languages like Gaelic?

00:29:23.988 --> 00:29:30.320
I was reading about it early on that 58,000 people now speak Gaelic on the west side of Scotland.

00:29:30.340 --> 00:29:32.925
So keeping that tradition up, how do you feel about that?

00:29:33.057 --> 00:29:39.544
I can't speak the language just because my parents left the Highlands and I would have heard it and learned it, no doubt.

00:29:39.844 --> 00:29:46.229
I've got to be realistic and say we're living in a much smaller world than before with communications.

00:29:46.650 --> 00:29:50.133
We can Zoom somebody in Texas and have a chat with them.

00:29:50.413 --> 00:29:54.557
It's the exact opposite of what it was in the Highlands and Islands.

00:29:54.936 --> 00:30:00.241
It was a very close community language and it was local.

00:30:00.501 --> 00:30:05.666
It was spoken nearly the whole of Scotland spoke Gaelic some centuries back.

00:30:05.946 --> 00:30:06.968
We call it Gaelic here.

00:30:07.008 --> 00:30:08.108
The Irish call it Gaelic.

00:30:08.128 --> 00:30:09.029
It's the same language.

00:30:09.330 --> 00:30:14.836
And the ancient kings of Scotland, the original ones, they came from Ireland anyway.

00:30:15.017 --> 00:30:17.680
So there wasn't such a thing as Ireland and Scotland.

00:30:17.700 --> 00:30:20.301
They were just Celtic Gaelic islands together.

00:30:20.522 --> 00:30:23.766
So there is a tremendous uniqueness about it.

00:30:23.986 --> 00:30:26.229
I think it should be preserved and spoken.

00:30:26.269 --> 00:30:41.509
But most people who speak it understand that it couldn't really work as the main language medium for conversing because English is spoken worldwide and we live in a world, a big world as well as our locality.

00:30:41.829 --> 00:30:43.712
So I see a place for it, however.

00:30:43.732 --> 00:30:48.761
I wouldn't like to see it dying out and not being spoken, but we've got the realistic at the same time.

00:30:49.250 --> 00:30:54.604
What I find about your albums, moving on to the next one now, the Dreams and Dances album, they're very atmospheric.

00:30:54.644 --> 00:30:57.691
They do sort of summon, like you say, the misty outer sky.

00:30:57.730 --> 00:30:59.214
You can sort of picture that.

00:30:59.255 --> 00:31:02.964
They're very soothing and mostly instrumentals.

00:31:03.586 --> 00:31:05.948
Definitely it's got that nice mood to it, hasn't it?

00:31:06.087 --> 00:31:07.308
Well, I was pleased with that album.

00:31:07.328 --> 00:31:08.210
I thought we did well.

00:31:08.529 --> 00:31:16.857
My producer there was a young lad who works in a band called Tidelines, and they play all over the UK, and very soon they'll be all over the world.

00:31:16.978 --> 00:31:17.478
They're marvellous.

00:31:17.778 --> 00:31:20.279
It was broadly my own choice, you know, the material.

00:31:20.300 --> 00:31:21.882
I thought it worked pretty well.

00:31:22.122 --> 00:31:24.864
I've been lucky that I've always had good people with me.

00:31:25.285 --> 00:31:26.925
Yeah, and it really adds to the music.

00:31:26.945 --> 00:31:30.088
You say you've got some great musicians on there, complimenting the harmonica.

00:31:30.108 --> 00:31:30.789
It sounds great.

00:31:30.849 --> 00:31:49.381
And again, hopefully a testament to the appeal of the musicians liking the sound of the harmonica playing this traditional music so again you've got quite a few pipe tunes on there you've got um the clappers so

00:31:58.817 --> 00:32:00.920
Do you know why I called it the clappers?

00:32:01.220 --> 00:32:05.983
Because there's a phrase here, it's a colloquialism, you know, oh, he was going like the clappers.

00:32:06.284 --> 00:32:07.465
He was going so fast.

00:32:09.247 --> 00:32:10.248
I'm playing them, they're jigs.

00:32:10.627 --> 00:32:16.292
And I know, I'm implicitly saying to the listener is, you think there's a bit in the fast side, I'm aware of it.

00:32:17.273 --> 00:32:19.756
And you've got some barn dances on there.

00:32:19.796 --> 00:32:21.417
That's a dance tune.

00:32:21.438 --> 00:32:24.059
So have you performed these songs at dances?

00:32:24.359 --> 00:32:27.903
No, I don't play at dances, but all these tunes will be played at dances.

00:32:27.962 --> 00:32:28.324
Oh, yes.

00:32:28.683 --> 00:32:34.032
I've concerts, you know, I can't play for dances because I would just be dead at the end of the night,

00:32:34.292 --> 00:32:35.414
you know.

00:32:35.434 --> 00:32:54.205
A song on there is The Inevitable Journey and...

00:32:56.226 --> 00:32:58.448
You play a certain position on the harmonica.

00:32:58.468 --> 00:32:59.489
Do you want to tell us about that one?

00:33:00.048 --> 00:33:03.031
The tune itself, The Inevitable Journey, is quite simple.

00:33:03.271 --> 00:33:16.002
The young lad that wrote it, he saw a tune being necessary just to refer to the people that left the Highlands and Islands over the last few decades, particularly coming down to the Central Belt, Glasgow and Edinburgh, and looking for work.

00:33:16.163 --> 00:33:17.884
So it was an inevitable journey.

00:33:17.924 --> 00:33:19.967
They couldn't find work where they were.

00:33:20.686 --> 00:33:23.430
So the Highlands were depopulated a couple of hundred years ago.

00:33:23.490 --> 00:33:26.092
There was the Highland Credences and the landed gentry.

00:33:26.192 --> 00:33:30.076
got rid of people, sent them out to America and Canada, and they replaced them with sheep.

00:33:30.355 --> 00:33:32.719
It was more economic to have sheep than human beings.

00:33:33.019 --> 00:33:37.023
That side of the Highlands, the depopulation still exists to this day.

00:33:37.104 --> 00:33:38.505
There's not a lot of work around.

00:33:38.765 --> 00:33:42.288
There's not many industries, so people have got to head down south.

00:33:42.630 --> 00:33:43.651
And that's what the tune's about.

00:33:43.810 --> 00:33:49.237
As far as the recording of the tune, I thought it was a good candidate for an experiment.

00:33:49.596 --> 00:34:26.976
I muck about for fun on second position playing, and play a wee bit of blues or whatever, just for my own enjoyment but there's other guys can do it much much much better than I however I wanted to try an experiment out and the guy who produced that he said to me I don't think this will work it's not it's not it won't work and I said can we try it just do it and see and he pieced it together and he said he shook my hand he said congratulations you were right you know it seemed to come out okay and the tune was fine for it it was a good candidate to take for that experiment so I'm underpinning it.

00:34:27.117 --> 00:34:33.623
I'm doing the second position playing on the ten-hole diatonic along with the trill in first position.

00:34:34.244 --> 00:34:41.612
And on the record, it goes from F into G, and then I go from G to A.

00:34:41.873 --> 00:34:46.557
And when I go to A, in comes the second position on a D ten-hole.

00:34:46.958 --> 00:34:50.362
Yeah, so a nice mixture of, like you say, harmonicas and positions there, yes.

00:34:50.581 --> 00:35:01.378
So following that album, in 2015, you had the great honor of appearing on the Charlie McCoy's Celtic Dreams album playing the song Lonesome Eyes so how did that come about?

00:35:01.677 --> 00:35:15.554
How it came about was I was honoured twice actually to be invited I was over the last year in Oklahoma and I was invited to play at SPAR the Society for the Preservation and Advancement in the Harmonica, which, as you know, is a huge harmonica festival in the States.

00:35:15.894 --> 00:35:18.476
And Charlie was in the audience, actually, in our audience.

00:35:18.856 --> 00:35:20.097
I met him briefly.

00:35:20.378 --> 00:35:23.340
He was signing autographs and speaking to people afterwards.

00:35:23.501 --> 00:35:24.501
But I had a chat with him.

00:35:24.521 --> 00:35:26.163
And I'm a huge Elvis fan.

00:35:26.182 --> 00:35:28.324
I love highland music, of course.

00:35:28.525 --> 00:35:32.309
But as a young person growing up in the modern world, you're exposed to other things.

00:35:32.588 --> 00:35:34.371
And I just loved Elvis Presley.

00:35:34.690 --> 00:35:40.034
And I thought, this is somebody who's played with Elvis so much and so many other people.

00:35:40.456 --> 00:35:43.338
And I I didn't know how he would respond when I spoke to him.

00:35:43.579 --> 00:35:44.239
And he was lovely.

00:35:44.260 --> 00:35:45.702
A lovely, lovely man.

00:35:45.942 --> 00:35:51.588
So I kept in touch and one of the albums you mentioned there, I forget which one it is, I did a thing called Gaelic Country.

00:36:04.965 --> 00:36:05.246
Gaelic Country

00:36:10.530 --> 00:36:12.012
And I sent Charlie out the album.

00:36:12.134 --> 00:36:12.438
I said...

00:36:12.865 --> 00:36:15.708
It's from Scotland, but you might be interested in it.

00:36:15.809 --> 00:36:17.969
You're an expert at country music.

00:36:18.231 --> 00:36:27.278
And he came back to me and he said, would you be up for doing that slow air together and put it on my next album, which was his then 37 solo album.

00:36:27.298 --> 00:36:29.721
I think he's done 42 or 43 thus far.

00:36:29.760 --> 00:36:31.202
And I couldn't believe it.

00:36:31.422 --> 00:36:37.547
Charlie McCoy, a marvellous world-class musician, who's probably, I think he is the most recorded in history.

00:36:37.987 --> 00:36:41.670
I was delighted and honoured when he asked me to send that out.

00:36:41.951 --> 00:36:42.831
So we sent it.

00:36:42.831 --> 00:37:04.226
out to Nashville and he did this thing in it.

00:37:04.246 --> 00:37:08.454
It's a lovely slow air by the late Jerry Holland from Nova Scotia.

00:37:08.737 --> 00:37:10.679
from Cape Breton, Ireland and Nova Scotia.

00:37:10.940 --> 00:37:15.423
He composed and played many, many fiddle tunes and it's a lovely thing.

00:37:15.483 --> 00:37:19.447
And I took it and slowed it down a little bit, slower than the Cape Breton people play it.

00:37:19.708 --> 00:37:21.489
I like to take the slow air slowly.

00:37:21.768 --> 00:37:23.231
And Charlie seemed to like it.

00:37:23.570 --> 00:37:26.333
He was really very complimentary and lovely about it.

00:37:26.512 --> 00:37:30.137
And he said, when you're doing your next one, I'll reciprocate.

00:37:30.217 --> 00:37:30.677
And I did that.

00:37:30.896 --> 00:37:36.101
So did you record it remotely or were you in the same location physically when you did so?

00:37:36.521 --> 00:37:38.143
We sent it out electronically.

00:37:38.384 --> 00:37:47.465
We took it from the guy young Ross I was talking about Ross Wilson he had all this stuff and he said I can send this out to Charlie and he could do his thing in it

00:37:47.724 --> 00:37:58.360
yeah super and so as you say Charlie reciprocated by appearing on your most recent album From My Heart in 2017 yes That's the song New Island Waltz, yeah.

00:37:58.400 --> 00:38:05.231
The New Island Waltz, it was written by another talented guy who plays the accordion, Lear Douglas, and he's from Skye, the Island of Skye.

00:38:05.733 --> 00:38:11.963
He said to me at the time, the first one, he said, when you're doing your next one, get back to me and I'll reciprocate.

00:38:12.063 --> 00:38:14.085
So I thought, there's a country flavour to it.

00:38:14.387 --> 00:38:16.469
And I thought Charlie would do a good job.

00:38:16.570 --> 00:38:18.614
And he did a lovely, lovely job.

00:38:18.934 --> 00:38:23.420
And he harmonises beautifully with different harmonicas at the end, towards the end.

00:38:23.905 --> 00:38:48.541
I never in my life ever thought that I would ever find myself recording with somebody like Charlie McCoy.

00:38:51.458 --> 00:38:54.233
Again, was this recorded remotely?

00:38:54.273 --> 00:38:55.418
It was the same way.

00:38:55.478 --> 00:38:56.644
We sent it out to Nashville.

00:38:56.929 --> 00:38:58.472
And he put his stuff on it.

00:38:58.731 --> 00:38:59.753
Oh, no, I beg your pardon.

00:39:00.614 --> 00:39:01.976
There wasn't the final thing.

00:39:02.277 --> 00:39:03.878
The gaps were left for Charlie.

00:39:04.260 --> 00:39:17.918
In it, I play, Charlie follows, he plays the same notes, and we do the same with the B part, and then there's a guitar bit in the middle, and then we both come in at the end together, and he does wonderful cording on it.

00:39:18.137 --> 00:39:26.750
So the spaces were left by the producer, by young Ross, and they were exactly the length, and Charlie understood that well and did a lovely job.

00:39:26.978 --> 00:39:29.380
And I had the honour of meeting up with him and his wife.

00:39:29.661 --> 00:39:37.112
My wife and I went through to Edinburgh last year and we had dinner with Charlie in just up Princess Street in Edinburgh, yeah.

00:39:37.353 --> 00:39:39.074
And it was great fun, wonderful fun.

00:39:39.394 --> 00:39:41.978
No ego, no boisterousness.

00:39:42.298 --> 00:39:45.744
He just said to me before we parted, he said, I've been lucky in life.

00:39:45.965 --> 00:39:47.666
I've had a great life in music.

00:39:47.847 --> 00:39:49.590
I've been very blessed, very humble.

00:39:50.018 --> 00:39:51.740
Yeah, he's a lovely guy, as you say.

00:39:51.760 --> 00:39:53.643
I had him on the podcast, so yeah.

00:39:53.663 --> 00:39:54.284
Yeah, I know.

00:39:54.605 --> 00:39:55.005
I had

00:39:55.085 --> 00:39:55.106
a

00:39:55.126 --> 00:39:55.226
great

00:39:55.286 --> 00:39:56.768
interview with him, yeah.

00:39:56.788 --> 00:39:57.989
Thank you.

00:39:58.170 --> 00:40:00.132
So, yeah, some more songs on there.

00:40:00.152 --> 00:40:05.181
You do a duetting with an accordion on the Highland Scottish, is it?

00:40:05.601 --> 00:40:19.402
Highland Scottish, yeah.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:40:20.610 --> 00:40:25.173
It's simply a two-fold march played faster for dancing to.

00:40:25.414 --> 00:40:27.436
It's just taking that bit up in tempo.

00:40:27.795 --> 00:40:30.938
And there's certain tunes lend themselves more than others.

00:40:31.079 --> 00:40:32.500
There's a spring in the tune.

00:40:32.900 --> 00:40:33.661
It's a lovely dance.

00:40:33.760 --> 00:40:36.384
It's quite a difficult dance to do, actually.

00:40:36.423 --> 00:40:37.364
It's quite heavy on the feet.

00:40:37.644 --> 00:40:44.570
Again, doing that duetting with the accordion, going back to your interest in the accordion when you first started playing.

00:40:44.831 --> 00:40:50.456
And that's a young lad who I heard playing in the pub and I knew that Ross, that I was referring to, was moving on.

00:40:50.496 --> 00:40:54.699
He although he produced my stuff after that, you know, but Martin Skeen.

00:40:55.181 --> 00:40:56.802
And Martin's a multi-instrumentalist.

00:40:56.882 --> 00:41:00.226
He plays cello on an Irish low air on that album.

00:41:00.467 --> 00:41:05.891
He plays whistles, not on the album, but I know he plays whistles and he plays piano accordion and button accordion.

00:41:06.032 --> 00:41:08.315
And both are two different worlds of playing.

00:41:08.655 --> 00:41:11.378
If you play one, it's not necessarily the case you can play the other.

00:41:11.719 --> 00:41:13.500
And he plays keyboard, piano.

00:41:13.740 --> 00:41:14.481
He's just wonderful.

00:41:14.762 --> 00:41:15.842
I just love him to bits.

00:41:16.043 --> 00:41:17.164
So that's the guys I've got.

00:41:17.184 --> 00:41:20.527
I've got Donnie McKenzie who plays guitar and Martin Skeen.

00:41:20.527 --> 00:41:21.110
Please let

00:41:21.710 --> 00:41:21.751
me.

00:41:21.811 --> 00:41:24.539
You've also got a polka on there as well, the Rockfield polka.

00:41:37.282 --> 00:41:46.079
The Oakfield Polka, that was a band from Oban, Colin Campbell, and Colin sadly died of cancer, and that was the last recording he ever did.

00:41:46.320 --> 00:41:53.072
And apparently he was so ill that the shoulder straps that he's recording were sliding down his arm, he was so weak.

00:41:53.634 --> 00:42:14.333
And I think he was trying to say, you know, a lot of accordion players play continental stuff they play Swedish or they play German stuff and a lot of stuff they do is polkas and I think he was trying to say yes I play pipe and garlic stuff but I can play polkas as well so he wrote that tune and I loved it you know so we did that one it was a different dimension again it was a polka so

00:42:14.775 --> 00:42:18.942
on one of the tunes Highland Express you start off with a bit of a bit of a blues riff

00:42:34.434 --> 00:42:35.710
Yes, yes.

00:42:36.737 --> 00:42:37.838
I didn't want to overdo it.

00:42:37.858 --> 00:42:39.641
I just did a touch of it, you know.

00:42:39.880 --> 00:42:44.925
I mean, a lot of people I speak to on here, is blues something that you have listened to much, blues harmonica?

00:42:44.945 --> 00:42:46.206
Is that something you've tried to learn?

00:42:46.465 --> 00:42:49.048
I haven't tried to learn it because there's a lot to it.

00:42:49.128 --> 00:42:50.750
There's a lot of great techniques.

00:42:51.251 --> 00:42:53.351
You know, I read about them and see them and hear them.

00:42:53.572 --> 00:42:55.034
I listen to them on Facebook.

00:42:55.233 --> 00:43:02.500
So many people corresponding, and particularly now the Harmonica UK, which was now the Harmonica League of Great Britain.

00:43:02.639 --> 00:43:06.543
I was down in Bristol twice, and I met so many of the brilliant players.

00:43:06.704 --> 00:43:16.974
And over in America, of course, you know, and it's lovely to run into people like Brendan Power, who plays first, second position, any position in harmonica, and brilliantly, you know.

00:43:17.215 --> 00:43:18.076
Yes, I admire

00:43:18.115 --> 00:43:18.976
these guys so much.

00:43:19.177 --> 00:43:22.201
Well, it's nice that you put a little bit of blues on there, too.

00:43:22.541 --> 00:43:30.429
So that's your five albums, and obviously people can get hold of your albums through the website, and there'll be a link to the website on the podcast page, so people can check that out.

00:43:30.590 --> 00:43:30.710
It's

00:43:30.949 --> 00:43:33.932
www.donald-black.com.

00:43:34.172 --> 00:43:38.119
There'll be some sets we've played and there they can hear as well, you

00:43:38.599 --> 00:43:38.739
know.

00:43:38.760 --> 00:43:44.030
You mentioned your mother earlier on and you used to be with her and I think she was called Christina, was it?

00:43:44.510 --> 00:43:45.293
Christina, yes.

00:43:45.653 --> 00:43:48.980
Yeah, I understand you actually appeared with her on television when

00:43:49.000 --> 00:43:50.141
she was 86 years old.

00:43:50.463 --> 00:43:57.878
Yes, she was 86 years old and, you know, her memory had gone and 10 minutes after that she couldn't remember having done it.

00:43:58.177 --> 00:43:58.798
It was lovely.

00:43:59.119 --> 00:44:03.222
I was looking at the footage there the other night, and it's quite emotional.

00:44:03.242 --> 00:44:09.807
And you know, we actually had a wee tune together on the two-roll button accordion as well, but that wasn't put on television.

00:44:09.887 --> 00:44:11.469
They chose to use the harmonicas.

00:44:11.610 --> 00:44:19.717
But we could have a wee tune, nothing fancy, just the two-roll button accordion, and then we'd have a tune on the harmonica together.

00:44:20.077 --> 00:44:21.358
You mentioned you'd been to Spa.

00:44:21.518 --> 00:44:24.960
You were the first Scot ever to be invited to Spa, is that right?

00:44:24.981 --> 00:44:25.041
Yes,

00:44:25.061 --> 00:44:25.161
yes.

00:44:25.240 --> 00:44:26.523
I'm very honoured about that.

00:44:26.702 --> 00:44:35.351
And we were asked back, and that's Some years back now, and there was problems with getting the necessary documentation to play in the States.

00:44:35.431 --> 00:44:41.257
So ultimately, I managed to go over to Belfast and got the right visa, short visa, just for playing at it.

00:44:41.398 --> 00:44:42.458
So we played twice.

00:44:42.559 --> 00:44:47.804
We played in Kansas City in 2005 and played in Tulsa last year.

00:44:47.824 --> 00:44:56.114
And we were given the banquet spot in Tulsa after the dinner, one of the spots in the banquet on the Friday night, the last night of playing.

00:44:56.313 --> 00:46:23.387
And we were very honoured, actually, we played in front of quite a crowd of people and a lot of top harmonica players in the audience so it was rather an honour and as it was down in Bristol to play down in Bristol in the Kelly House in Bristol twice for the National Harmonica League yeah and you played as you mentioned Earl Young you played in various countries obviously in Scotland in England Moscow outdoors in the back of a lorry in three feet of snow and 90 police to protect us the biggest audience I've played to thus far was 25,000 in football stadium in Lithuania and they went crazy after Gorbachev liberalized the Baltic states and they decided to go west so much so that they had a country festival and I contacted them online and I said I play Celtic music and a lot of the country music stemmed from Scotland and Ireland there was a great input from the people who emigrated to America there and they said would you come out so I went out with Donny and we played in front of 25,000 and they were doing the conga to one of the sets of rails we were doing in a dilapidated football stadium and they were lovely people and I went to Glasgow University to the Slavonic studies department to learn some of the language and write it down phonetically to speak to them in their own language and they went crazy they said we love your music but you spoke to us in Lithuanian and we probably enjoyed our time there yes and then there was a guy from Russia he invited us to Moscow we played in Moscow twice for St.

00:46:23.447 --> 00:46:28.512
Patrick's Day festival it wasn't Scott's festival it was in the month of March and it was a Incredible.

00:46:28.793 --> 00:46:31.119
I've actually got footage of inside the Kremlin.

00:46:31.179 --> 00:46:38.894
We went for a visit, as the public could then do, and now I've played Scotland Brave outside one of the cherished small churches in the Kremlin.

00:46:39.195 --> 00:46:43.945
And Ivan the Terrible and Frederick the Great and all these people are embalmed in the Kremlin.

00:46:44.257 --> 00:46:54.407
I didn't realise it was offending and I took the harmonica and I played Scotland the Brave and I've got footage of this guard with his big long grey coat blowing a whistle quickly and I had to stop.

00:46:55.728 --> 00:46:57.509
Yes, you've certainly got around with that harmonica.

00:46:57.650 --> 00:47:00.492
You also appear in four books on harmonica.

00:47:00.871 --> 00:47:03.114
A couple of them I've just referred to very quickly.

00:47:03.153 --> 00:47:10.240
Winslow, yeah, he just briefly referred to me in his book and Winslow, I know Winslow, I've met him a couple of times now over in the States.

00:47:10.300 --> 00:47:10.920
He's incredible.

00:47:11.001 --> 00:47:16.567
He's really, really does know his stuff and hugely enthusiastic and I was rather honoured.

00:47:16.947 --> 00:47:30.762
He sent me a copy of it and signed it and Charlie in his book Fifty Cents and the Box Top it's called and the guy that wrote it for him said if you tell me of the people that have been on all your albums I'll mention the names of them.

00:47:31.021 --> 00:48:03.177
So in the middle of the book there's a photo of Charlie with Elvis and some other musicians and at the back of the book yours truly and I'm thinking I'm in the same book as Elvis Presley but there was a guy who a German a long time ago he did and he wrote a lot on harmonica Christoph Wagner and it's called Die Wundharmonika the Mautharmonika and he did quite a thing there and then of course the encyclopedia of the harmonica by the chap from Chicago Peter Cranford Peter Cranford

00:48:03.197 --> 00:48:07.583
yeah and you've appeared on television quite a lot as well obviously in Scotland on the sort of Gaelic

00:48:08.003 --> 00:48:26.269
well I haven't done so much of late but I did for quite a while yeah and there's been a lot of repeats particularly with Covid a lot of repeats on television so it seems that they're playing all that old stuff again with a lot of artists you know I'm getting a share of exposure again although I had a full head of hair then but I don't know

00:48:26.561 --> 00:48:29.565
So we move on now to a bit more about the playing style.

00:48:29.744 --> 00:48:32.706
So I know you want to talk about the mouth vibrato that you use.

00:48:33.007 --> 00:48:37.532
On the ten-hole, I do one on the ten-hole, and I'll just get one right now.

00:48:37.851 --> 00:48:42.356
And it was picked up by two people only that I've ever met that picked up on this.

00:48:42.576 --> 00:48:51.724
One was a friend of mine from New York, and he plays harmonica, and he used to play with the boss, Springsteen, in New Jersey, early days.

00:48:52.103 --> 00:48:55.086
And he was playing over in Glasgow, and he contacted me.

00:48:55.286 --> 00:48:57.208
He had bought my first album in the States.

00:48:57.349 --> 00:48:58.349
He said he would like to meet up.

00:48:58.530 --> 00:49:00.771
And we met up at the hotel and I was playing a slow air.

00:49:01.092 --> 00:49:03.554
And he said, you're playing a mouth vibrato.

00:49:03.574 --> 00:49:04.755
I said, I've never heard of it.

00:49:04.775 --> 00:49:07.878
He said, neither have I, but I'm calling it mouth vibrato.

00:49:08.239 --> 00:49:11.282
The other person that picked up on that was Phil Louis.

00:49:11.661 --> 00:49:13.123
He's in the National Harmonica League.

00:49:13.324 --> 00:49:18.628
And when I came off stage in Bristol, he said to the audience, did you notice he doesn't do the movement with his hands?

00:49:18.688 --> 00:49:22.311
So I find that I've got more control just doing it

00:49:23.753 --> 00:49:23.934
like this.

00:49:30.530 --> 00:49:31.931
There's no hands used there at all.

00:49:32.211 --> 00:49:34.094
It's just right at the front of my mouth.

00:49:34.574 --> 00:49:36.516
It's just part of the expressive thing.

00:49:36.556 --> 00:49:42.264
I just like doing it there, and they seemed not to have ever seen that before, for better or for worse.

00:49:42.505 --> 00:49:45.068
The other one, another thing I do is with a tremolo.

00:49:45.407 --> 00:49:50.614
I try to emulate the mandolin or the bouzouki or banjo, whatever, doing this.

00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:00.000
.

00:50:09.793 --> 00:50:13.860
you would have noticed that the higher the note, the cleaner it

00:50:13.880 --> 00:50:13.920
is.

00:50:13.940 --> 00:50:14.940
How are you making that effect?

00:50:15.181 --> 00:50:16.643
Two aspects to that.

00:50:16.804 --> 00:50:26.255
One is that you pretend that it's a tremolo that's gone on, the big echo series, the biggest of the echo series, and you gently caress the harmonica, just lightly.

00:50:26.556 --> 00:50:33.646
And what you do after that is, you know how us Scots, we're very guttural with the consonant R.

00:50:33.887 --> 00:50:37.831
Maybe Germany and some of the Russians as well, they use the speaker R.

00:50:38.152 --> 00:50:44.619
If you do that correctly, and put your finger in front of your mouth and go...

00:50:44.719 --> 00:50:51.717
Successive small jets of air come out and it goes right into the slots and you're gently caressing a harmonica...

00:50:57.409 --> 00:50:59.192
I don't overdo it if I'm playing a set.

00:50:59.391 --> 00:51:04.235
I do a bit of it and go back to the ten hole probably if I'm playing a slower.

00:51:04.576 --> 00:51:07.057
But I switch to the tremolo for that effect.

00:51:07.318 --> 00:51:08.679
And it works to a degree.

00:51:09.019 --> 00:51:09.920
It's something different.

00:51:10.320 --> 00:51:15.164
I believe you've also helped develop a Mixolydian tuned tremolo with Holner, the Highlander.

00:51:15.365 --> 00:51:19.088
Yes, the Highlander we took out I can't remember how many years back now.

00:51:19.389 --> 00:51:23.512
What we refer to technically is the 5580 that's determined by the amount of notes in it.

00:51:23.572 --> 00:51:26.155
The double-sided tremolo in the key of A and D.

00:51:26.494 --> 00:51:47.038
And on the A side, I took two G sharps, high G sharp and low G sharp, and made them G, and just flattened them to G by filing the reeds, because there's an integral part, one note of a pipe tune, many pipe tunes, that you cannot really play the tune unless you can get that, what we call, flattened 7.

00:51:47.057 --> 00:51:48.338
Here's an example.

00:51:53.264 --> 00:51:54.686
And that note...

00:51:55.585 --> 00:51:57.547
That is on the tuned harmonica.

00:51:57.869 --> 00:52:01.773
This is what it was on the Richter-tuned one, which I retuned myself.

00:52:06.597 --> 00:52:07.599
You can hear the difference there.

00:52:08.079 --> 00:52:08.981
Good innovation, yeah.

00:52:09.440 --> 00:52:11.603
So obviously you play a lot of tremolo.

00:52:11.623 --> 00:52:16.588
A question I ask each time, Donald, is if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend that time doing?

00:52:16.628 --> 00:52:20.753
So maybe for people who are interested in playing the tremolo, what would you do in your 10 minutes?

00:52:21.025 --> 00:52:21.666
Accuracy.

00:52:22.047 --> 00:52:25.070
Now, there's different slots in the tremolo.

00:52:25.369 --> 00:52:31.094
The apertures where the reeds go into and people blow and suck, they differ from harmonica to harmonica.

00:52:31.295 --> 00:52:33.177
So you've got to get used to it.

00:52:33.197 --> 00:52:40.643
Some of them are quite small and the accuracy has got to be much greater for certain harmonicas than others because you can miss it.

00:52:40.943 --> 00:52:43.125
You know, you've got to watch your land exactly on it.

00:52:43.385 --> 00:52:52.454
So accuracy and really getting, once you, you know, people learn the scales, but they've got to get some music and I'm assuming that they're starting out.

00:52:52.653 --> 00:52:58.719
Play a tune you know, not something you don't know, and play something easier, like Jingle Bells.

00:52:58.940 --> 00:53:01.983
The first six notes are the same.

00:53:02.204 --> 00:53:07.730
There's a lot of the same note there, but you're beginning to play a tune.

00:53:08.110 --> 00:53:15.597
And once you've done that, go a bit more adventurous and do exactly the same again with a slightly more difficult tune.

00:53:15.958 --> 00:53:52.478
It might be best to play a slow piece that you know and know well you know it back to front and you know if you're playing it correctly if you don't so you try and find that note that you might not be getting correctly but take your time with it and don't worry about learning the whole tune maybe there may be three or four parts to that one tune even if you can get the first few bars to start with get the first part and go over it and over it and over it and then you work on the second part and then sometimes you forget the first part and then put the two together but don't worry about the third or the fourth they'll look after themselves once you're ready and just don't be afraid to expect and just see what you can do.

00:53:52.978 --> 00:53:56.561
So, yeah, if we just move on to the last section now, we're talking a little bit through gears.

00:53:57.023 --> 00:54:05.771
We talked about, obviously, how you playing different types of harmonicas and tremolos and diatonics and even a bit of chromatic is important.

00:54:06.012 --> 00:54:07.934
So what is your favorite tremolo?

00:54:08.275 --> 00:54:11.177
My favorite tremolo is the one that I've got a supply of.

00:54:11.538 --> 00:54:16.724
And I got those, I procured those because I knew that I might not always get them.

00:54:17.003 --> 00:54:18.224
I thought, well, just in case.

00:54:18.385 --> 00:54:20.847
And thank God I did because they were taken off the market.

00:54:20.847 --> 00:55:00.210
Horner took them and they're Horner they're tremolos and they have the faults the wood the wood swells up when you're playing too much with the saliva and can rip your face if you don't watch what you're doing but they have a lovely sound and it's always been the Horner tremolo I played so is that a model you can't buy anymore you cannot buy anymore they've taken well they've taken the Echo Heart series off completely and of course the Chinese have got a foothold now in Horner the crucial thing is nearly anyway that in the market the market that they supplied because Because of the pop cult and because of large volumes of sales, in 1987, Horner sold a billion harmonica, and most of these were ten holes.

00:55:00.389 --> 00:55:09.239
So they shipped stuff out to the States, and as you know, the African-Americans very intuitively discovered that if you play these in second position, my God, you can play blues.

00:55:09.539 --> 00:55:10.880
And then it took off.

00:55:11.061 --> 00:55:18.650
So harmonica companies, particularly Horner and one or two others, they were quite understandably focusing on ten hole, and chromatic as well.

00:55:18.889 --> 00:55:24.275
So the tremolo was regarded as as a toy rather than a musical instrument for quite some time.

00:55:24.315 --> 00:55:30.021
There always have been this sort of poorer relation in attention by the companies.

00:55:30.181 --> 00:55:35.327
So I feel that more attention might be, you know, because they play them all over Asia.

00:55:35.927 --> 00:55:39.351
It's Asian tuned is when you get rid of the tuning.

00:55:40.052 --> 00:55:43.996
I just was fortunate in the sense that I purchased enough that will see me out.

00:55:44.237 --> 00:55:45.418
You know, I've got quite a lot of them.

00:55:45.579 --> 00:55:48.902
But they don't last long because of the very thin reed.

00:55:49.121 --> 00:55:52.425
And the other one is a It's luck with saliva.

00:55:52.445 --> 00:55:55.068
Salivation is one's salvation.

00:55:55.268 --> 00:56:00.755
We're playing the harmonica because the wood that's used now swells up and it can rip your face open nearly.

00:56:00.795 --> 00:56:02.996
You know, it's really stiff on the lips.

00:56:03.117 --> 00:56:13.387
So in order to hit that note accurately every time, you've got to perpetually salivate just at the right time for each note, you know, and that's impossible.

00:56:13.648 --> 00:56:53.010
But what I do is I've got a sponge and a tray and water and I tell the listening audience to say, this is full of the finest malt whisky from Scotland and as the night goes on it gets much better for me and much worse for you and of course it's water I'm dipping it in but then if I make a mistake I'll say to them anybody spot the mistake that blooming whisky again but there is a serious side to it and it is when you tackle tunes that these have never been meant to be played in a harmonica a lot of these tunes were for fiddle or bagpipes you're not running out of saliva when you're playing the pipe and on the fiddle either And they're not easy instruments either.

00:56:53.090 --> 00:56:55.612
But I chose to do this, and I'm not complaining.

00:56:55.652 --> 00:56:59.077
It's been wonderful experiences with people that I never thought.

00:56:59.396 --> 00:57:01.599
Yeah, and what about what ombuds you're using?

00:57:01.619 --> 00:57:04.742
Are you puckering when you're playing the tremolo?

00:57:05.083 --> 00:57:07.326
No, I just do as I feel.

00:57:07.626 --> 00:57:10.809
I try and accommodate, to some extent, the shortcomings in the harmonica.

00:57:10.869 --> 00:57:12.311
I mentioned the wood swelling and whatnot.

00:57:12.411 --> 00:57:15.193
But I try to accommodate the type of instrument it is.

00:57:15.213 --> 00:57:17.376
It's inside your mouth and all the time.

00:57:17.617 --> 00:57:22.541
It's horizontal action rather than blowing or sucking out the It's a different type of instrument.

00:57:22.601 --> 00:57:26.206
It's very physically close to you, and it's very emotionally close to you.

00:57:26.465 --> 00:57:32.072
But I just do as I feel within the confines of what the instrument will allow me to do.

00:57:32.092 --> 00:57:36.036
I just sometimes get carried away, and I love getting carried away.

00:57:36.237 --> 00:57:37.358
You know, I love slow airs.

00:57:37.617 --> 00:57:40.061
And when you're playing, a microphone you use?

00:57:40.181 --> 00:57:40.400
It's

00:57:40.460 --> 00:57:42.603
an SD, a normal microphone.

00:57:42.983 --> 00:57:46.628
I don't use anything with any changes whatsoever.

00:57:46.708 --> 00:57:47.588
Straight into the mic.

00:57:47.829 --> 00:57:50.411
And I've got to be conscious of the fact that when I'm playing...

00:57:50.512 --> 00:57:54.476
that we can get carried away and come away from the mic too much or too near.

00:57:54.635 --> 00:58:00.302
So I've got to self-discipline, make sure I'm a constant distance from the mic and express at the same time.

00:58:00.322 --> 00:58:00.362
Do

00:58:00.722 --> 00:58:02.284
you use any effects?

00:58:02.405 --> 00:58:03.326
No, none.

00:58:03.726 --> 00:58:04.166
Great.

00:58:04.246 --> 00:58:06.628
And then, so final question, Donald, what are you planning to do?

00:58:06.688 --> 00:58:09.893
Hopefully we're getting good news now on the pandemic.

00:58:09.913 --> 00:58:11.655
Have you got some plans to get out there playing again?

00:58:11.894 --> 00:58:12.815
I very much hope so.

00:58:12.835 --> 00:58:13.936
There's two factors.

00:58:14.016 --> 00:58:34.251
One is the pandemic and the other one is, well, I was supposed to be touring Michigan area roundabout and Toronto Ontario area this year but that fell through so hopefully we can travel we'll open up we can play there again but it's like a drug you can't let go and I still want to play and enjoy the music and the people I meet and the audiences we play to

00:58:34.472 --> 00:58:43.313
yeah fantastic so hopefully you'll get out playing again next year so thanks very much Donald for joining me today it's been great thank you Neil I've certainly enjoyed it Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:58:43.353 --> 00:58:49.503
It wouldn't be the same without you, and thanks again for my sponsor, the Longwell Blues Company, helping me keeping this thing going.

00:58:49.983 --> 00:58:54.030
They build great purpose-built equipment for the harmonica, so be sure to check them out.

00:58:54.713 --> 00:58:57.538
Donald, take us to Bonnie, Scotland, with a slow air.

00:59:04.449 --> 00:59:45.853
MUSIC PLAYS Thank you.