THIS weekend, Skerryvore will perform on a purpose-built stage in the grounds of Floors Castle to an international audience of 7000 people.
All eight members will be there to celebrate the famed trad band’s monumental 20-year anniversary, seven studio albums, four continent tours, three Scotland’s Live Act of the Year awards and their unique fusion of folk, trad, pop and rock.
The band has doubled in size over two decades, with the four original members – Alec Dalglish, Fraser West and the Gillespie brothers, Daniel and Martin – meeting in Tiree before setting up a base in Glasgow while at university.
Playing pub sessions and small venues across the Highlands in 2003, they went on to leaving dos and weddings in Glasgow, picking up four more members over the decades –Craig Espie, Alan Scobie, Jodie Bremaneson and Scott Wood.
Espie joined in 2006 as fiddler. He shared with The National the early days of the band, the gradual realisation their passion could become a full-time job, pressures of the genres and the future of the band …
“It was alien to us; we played for a purpose, we were a ceilidh band, and that purpose was for people dancing," Espie shared.
“The realisation that actually we can get away with this – we can play music and people don’t want to just dance but listen to us.
“It was a big shift for us. It was quite the moment for the young men who had never actually set out to create a band."
The four original members teamed up to play a ceilidh in Livingston for a former head teacher's retirement, and before they knew it, they had packed their bags for a tour that summer and it kept snowballing.
Now, their songs have had millions of streams online. Spotify statistics show only two Scottish cities in their top five most streamed areas, with London taking the number one spot.
Saturday's gig will be a cathartic experience for the band, having already planned a castle concert five years ago which never came to fruition.
Amid their planned celebrations for their 15-year anniversary, the pandemic hit. Tickets had been sold for Inveraray Castle, and disappointment after a streak of constant, long tours meant it was one of the most challenging times for the band, Espie explained.
He said: “We were all quite tired. When Covid came around and we all had a break, that actually helped us a lot.
"Now, looking back, it seems like a lifesaver, genuinely."
Members were able to take stock, recalibrate and put in a plan for the future, to make the band sustainable, and bring it back to the core of the music.
‘We are literally just brothers’
Espie shared they had “been very lucky” in how the band blends together with all their individual passion and skills, creating such a well-oiled machine, adding that: “We are literally all just like brothers.
“We’re very lucky – we do our own graphics, social media, accounts. We're very in-house on the business side of things as well as the creative side, which is very important.
“We certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford to get to the stage we're at now if we had to employ people for every single thing outside of the music.
Floors Castle is set to welcome 7000 fans to their grounds on Saturday night, and one of the key reasons to choose the Borders location was “there would be a lot of people”.
Fans are expected from the US, Canada and throughout the UK and Scotland. They can look forward to the first live performance of the band’s new single, which is being released on Friday – as well as their greatest hits.
Espie went on: “We didn’t want to just do it in Glasgow or in the city – we wanted to do somewhere that showcased a bit of the history of Scotland, somewhere outdoors that you can see a bit of landscape.
“We looked at different castles, different outdoor gigs, and Floors is just a stunning location.
“When you’re able to offer castle gigs, you're not really at the castle, you’re in a field near the castle – but we can set up this location up so the backdrop of the show is the castle. That seemed like the perfect setting for the people who are going.”
Espie is referring to the band’s international audience. Just back from a tour of Australia, the fiddler said he was surprised by how many knew the band's material: “If we thought about it in hindsight, it makes sense because there are so many expats out there. But we were all surprised just how many knew our songs.”
Having a global audience, Espie shared that he and the band “feel as if we’re ambassadors” with pressure put on themselves to stay true to Scottish roots.
“We always want to evolve and grow and we want to create our own sound, but at the same time, we definitely want to keep our roots and still have the Scottish heritage.
“As we evolve, we’ve realised that, as so many other bands are doing now. Gone are the days where a band has to just be drums, bass, guitars, vocals. You can use the bagpipes or the fiddle or the accordion. You can use all these instruments in any kind of music.
“We’ve got 100 different tracks that probably all sound quite different, so it’s trying to find the sound that’s the way we think that we sound but also trying to hold that and look forward to what’s next.”
He added: “I think we put pressure on ourselves, but we definitely feel as if we're ambassadors. When we go to other countries, we definitely feel like we represent Scotland.”
What’s next for Skerryvore?
Espie said that although he has had some fantastic moments with the band, there are still so many bucket-list moments to tick off: “We’re doing Glastonbury this year, which is a huge one – finally getting there. We’d love to do a concert with an orchestra at some point.
“We’d love to tour countries we’ve never been to. We’ve been talking about going to Japan. There’s lots we’d love to do.”
When pressed on any collaborations, he wouldn’t share, but teased there were some conversations being had with some of the biggest names in Scottish trad in between studio time working on their new album.
When asked what song out of the dozens released was most meaningful for Espie, he shared without missing a beat: “We recorded a song for the last album called Good Things Never Die.
“The video we did for it was just clips of all our families and friends — some who are still with us, some who are not. So that’s always a very emotional piece to play and one of my favourites.”
