I see Del Amitri are in the States. Deacon Blue too. Funny how they’ve both managed to arrange a tour of America’s Eastern seaboard while the national football team is playing three (at least three – let’s be positive) games between Boston and Miami in exactly the same timeframe. Canny, those Scots.
Another canny Scottish group is Skerryvore. Runrig for ravers, Skerryvore have taken their enthusiastic whirlin’ and birlin’ bagpipe schtick to Canada and America and the multitudes of homesick ex-pats who’ve been missing a taste of tartan since first emigrating across the Atlantic. They were the star turn in the Boston fanzones ahead of Scotland’s game against Haiti at the weekend, soundtracking our peaceful kilted warriors as they set about systematically drinking Boston dry. Maybe beer makes them sound better, but with their blaw hard bagpipes and stadium-filling drums, sky-scraping electric guitars and impassioned vocals wrung dry, Skerryvore are – to these ears – every bit as excruciating as that description might suggest.
That said, I’ve appeared on stage with Skerryvore.
Three or so summers ago, my pal Danny was booked to do live sound for Horse at a small music festival. The organisation of the event seemed a bit scant. Danny had been promised a local crew to help do the heavy lifting while he got on with the job of mixing Horse’s live sound, but he wasn’t convinced he’d have any crew when he got there and was concerned about how exactly he’d do the job he’d been paid to do with only his own pair of hands for help. Before I knew what I’d signed up for, he’d coerced me into getting up early the next morning to accompany him plus Horse plus her band in his splitter van to the festival. After dropping the group at their near-site hotel, Danny and myself went on to the festival where we were met with no local crew, no-one checking our credentials and no idea of where to unload.
From a fog of exotic smoke, a pie-eyed stage manager emerged with a couple of laminate passes, instructing us to unload our gear – it was our gear now, not just Danny’s – into a small gazebo. Given music festivals and rain are close bed fellows in the Scottish summertime, this wasn’t such a bad idea. We spent a bit of time lifting all the heavy shit (flight cases and amps and stands and instruments and more flight cases and monitors and stuff of indeterminate use) from the van and into the safe harbour of our gazebo. I quickly learned I wasn’t cut out for life as a member of the road crew. D’you know how heavy a mixing desk is? Especially when it’s packed inside a sturdy flight case? Heavy as fuck is, I think, what they say in the industry.
Unloaded and with hours to spare before Horse was on stage, we took the chance to wheel Danny’s desk from back stage to inside the tent where Horse would later appear. There was a band on stage while we did this, don’t know who; skinny jeans, guitars, unruly hair and mild acne, and we had to navigate between jumping teenagers and unimpressed 30-somethings, wheeling the heavy flightcased mixing desk across the grass to its resting place next to the smaller sound desk currently being employed to make the band on stage sound not quite as bad as they really were. When that was done, we had free time. Danny immediately went to his van to crash out. I bought an overpriced burger and set off to scope the festival.
As it turned out, Horse was second top of the bill to Skerryvore. The tent we’d just placed Danny’s desk in was where the main stage was, so flashing my triple-A pass to no-one at all, I placed myself stage-side and watched the bands from there. They were all local-ish and unsigned and every bit as unappealing as that might suggest. Our stage manager friend sat nearby, puffing his way through an impressive amount of skunk, before grooving off, never to be seen again. Of course, the festival gods were waiting for exactly this moment and caused a power cut. Some loud no-mark band of guitar stranglers were silenced mid-song, to a mix of jeers and cheers, and forced to leave the stage, where they hung about uncertain of what to do. If only there was a stage manager present. Maybe ten minutes later, a PA blasting Tina Turner’s Simply The Best let everyone know that the power was back on – so the band went back on again and picked up where they’d left off. The band after them went on maybe 15 minutes later than billed; not a disaster, but that’s 15 minutes less for Skerryvore, who as it turned out, everyone was there to see.
During the next band’s set, there was another power cut. And later on, yet another. Before Horse was due to go on, there had been three power cuts. No-one in authority (there was no authority) had suggested to the no-mark acts that they cut their sets to accommodate, and with an 11pm curfew looming on the gloomy horizon, the genteel, introspective Horse was going to have to play her set at a Ramones pace if she wanted to fit it all in ahead of our crowd-pleasing headliners.
As Horse and her group began to appear stage-side, I was tasked with wiring her up to one of those radio mics that folk like Taylor Swift and Madonna employ for stadium-filling, dance-routine heavy spectacles. Naturally, I took ages to do so and naturally too, I made a right pig’s ear of it. I was tasked also with laying out setlists for the group. Cool, I thought. I’ve seen roadies do that. I can do that. There were three setlists printed for a six-piece band. One went directly where Horse’s feet would be. One went next to the snare drum. The last one went to Horse’s bass player Lorna, cos she’s dead cool and I bonded immediately with her. The others will find out from their bandmates what songs they’re playing in which order, I thought stupidly. Anyway, by this point, Skerryvore and their road crew had also turned up side-stage. Between band and crew there must’ve been 15 guys, many of them hairy and bikerish and tattooed and well-practised in the art of road-crewing. The largest, hairiest looked at me.
‘Is Horse gonnae cut ‘er set, wee man? We’re running awfy late and everyb’dy’s here tae see Skerryvore.’
Shit…he thinks I know what I’m doing…he thinks I’m Horse’s road crew. Jesus.
‘Well? Is she?‘
‘Eh…ah’ll ask her…’
And just then, Horse and her band start their first song. Or, some of them do. Her guitar player looks at me.
‘Where’s ma setlist, Craig?‘
Jeez.
Her keyboard player looks at me.
‘Where’s ma setlist, Craig?‘
Double Jeez.
Skerryvore’s road crew haven’t had an answer yet. Their head guy looks at me.
‘Is she cuttin’ her set or whit?‘
Triple Jeez.
The atmosphere side stage is positively hostile for a good half an hour until Horse, god bless her, signals me to go up…to go on the actual stage while she’s actually playing to a tent of 1000-odd people. She shouts in my ear above the din.
‘I’m cutting 4 songs. I’ll be off in five minutes.‘
I hot-foot it back off the stage.
‘She’s cutting four songs…she’ll be off in five minutes.‘
This is clearly the answer they were hoping for and begin unpacking amps and a massive Roger Taylor-sized gong. Their impressively scaffolded drumkit is wheeled on on a platform larger than the stage in your favourite local venue. The group starts to assemble, a riot of kilts and bagpipes and hairy guys and a good lookin’ guy wearing an acoustic guitar, who I take to be the singer. And then, to loud cheers and general good vibes, Horse is off.
But before I can get on the stage to unplug amps and pull gear to the side, Skerryvore’s well-drilled machine begins to pack the stage with their gear. This makes it impossible for me – for it is I alone who is Horse’s roadcrew, and Horse and her group are lapping up the attention as they make their way backstage – to deal with the situation I am in. I end up having to take the gear off bit by bit at the opposite side of the stage – unchartered waters as far as this tent goes. Luckily, Danny has by now unplugged his desk and swapped his space with Skerryvore’s live sound engineer, and he’s found me floundering around with Horse’s gear as Skerryvore tune-up, the start of their set imminent. Between the two of us, we wrangle all of Horse’s equipment off stage, just as a huge cheer rises and Skerryvore start their party.
We get everything bit by bit back to the gazebo. It’s started raining by now. In fact, by our third or fourth run, it’s properly chucking it down. I get my electric blue cagoule from Danny’s van and go from stage side to gazebo, the grass below my feet turning to mud. I get slapped on the face by a stray flap of gazebo canvas as I wheel the last of the gear in.
‘Right,’ says Danny. ‘Let’s get the desk.‘
We make our way inside the tent and jostle our way past a thousand leaping, dancing Skerryvore fans. We wheel the desk – heavy as fuck, remember – back towards the gazebo and Danny’s van, the crowd unwilling to part like the Red Sea, Danny and I (and his mixing desk) sinking slowly in the mud. Mercifully, one of Skerryvore’s crew spots us in distress and rustles up a couple of heavies and they push the desk to the gazebo as if it were a curling stone at the Winter Olympics. Heroes! Danny turns to me.
‘I don’t feel well.’
He’s got beads of sweat on top of the beads of rain. He’s milky white. His face is drawn. Shit, I think. He’s having an actual heart attack. I mean, this is a stressful situation we’ve found ourselves in.
‘Danny. Get to your van and sit down. I can take it from here.’
‘Everything needs to go in the van,’ he explains. ‘Doesn’t matter which order. It all goes in somehow. Van Jenga,’ he smiles. And heads, not to his van, but for the sanctuary of a wee backstage area we’ve not been allowed in.
I set about loading the van. It’s heavy, physical, unpleasant work. It’s raining heavily. It’s blowing a gale. I have no idea really what I’m doing. I am, at most, three flight cases from completion when Danny runs into the gazebo, looking flustered with a bottle of beer in hand.
‘We’ve left the bass bin on stage!! That needs to go in the van first!! Then you can pack everything in around it however you can. We’ll – you’ll – need to unpack the van. Sorry!‘
‘….?….!!!…?…’
I do as I’m told.
‘We’ll need to wait for Skerryvore to finish their set, Dan. We can’t pack the van until then.’
‘Nah,’ says the bold Danny. ‘We’ll take it off the stage just now…’ And with that, he’s off backstage and watching Skerryvore as they whip up their polite Highland storm. I watch as he boldly climbs the small set of stairs that leads to the stage. A bagpiper spots him and eyes him up, blowing up his teuchter storm as he does so. Danny stands right at the lip of the stage. The singer is leaning across the photographers’ pit to touch the outstretched arms of his faithful.
‘Hey, hoi-de-diddle!‘ he goes.
‘Hey, hoi-de-diddle!‘ they chant back.
I watch Danny clamber between bass player and bagpiper, who is still eyeing him suspiciously. Danny spots his piece of equipment. He turns and signals to me, waving me up. No fucking way am I going up there, I think. For one, the band is mid-set, clearly playing a crowd favourite. And two, I’m still wearing my stupid electric blue cagoule from earlier. Roadies wear black, right?
Fuck that!
I pretend not to notice Danny’s signal.
This annoys him. Danny gesticulates wildly towards me, which only brings further attention from the bagpiper who, by now is performing some sort of choreographed dance routine with another bagpiper, and a member of the Skerryvore crew who looks like he’s about to lamp Danny for invading his stage. I can see them shouting in one another’s ear as the band on stage whip up a wild dervish of a reel. The roadie though decides to help Danny – he wants him off his stage ASAP – and so he and Danny drag this huge hulk of equipment to the top of the stairs.
Danny signals to me again.
I can’t ignore him this time, so I get to the top of the stairs. God, I think. A full house, all jumping around to your music is a wonderful thing. It all looks quite brilliant from on-stage.
Danny though is blind to the audience, with eyes only for his bass bin. ‘Grab it!’ he shouts above the unholy Scottish din. ‘Like this…and we’ll take it slowly down the stairs.’
I, being neither strong nor a seasoned roadie, fail to comprehend the sheer weight of the thing. I drop my end. It clatters on the metal stairs. Can they hear it above Skerryvore? I think so. Danny lets rip a string of expletives; something about expensive equipment and taking care. Can they hear him above Skerryvore? Yeah, I think so too. I sook my hand where I’ve cut it. Some of the crowd are now watching us instead of their heroes. We are quickly becoming the entertainment on the main stage, a pair of idiots, one a whisker from a heart attack, the other not qualified to be anywhere near a backstage area, as we wrestle the thing finally off the stage and out to the wind and the rain and Danny’s van.
We pack it in first. The rest of the gear goes in. We are done, in every sense of the word.
‘Where did you get that beer, Danny?‘ I ask.
‘Hospitality tent,’ he replies. ‘Follow me!‘
We enter the hospitality tent. There’s not much in it. A battered couch. A couple of packets of cheese ‘n onion crisps. A six pack of Fanta. A fridge! With maybe eight bottles of beer! Result! A wee woman appears.
‘Can I help you?‘
‘I’m just grabbing a quick beer before we’re off,‘ I answer cheerfully.
‘I don’t think so, son. They beers are for Skerryvore and Skerryvore only. Off wi’ ye!‘
After all that, no beer.
‘We’ll get one back at the hotel,’ suggests Danny.
The hotel bar – the entire hotel, in fact – was in darkness by the time we got there.
And that was the time I appeared on stage with Skerryvore.
Plain Or Pan 