Hi folks!

This year is shaping up to being a pretty exciting one here in LB land, so I thought I’d let you know what’s going on!

Albums

I have been working on two new albums – ‘Continuum’ will the The Shee’s fourth studio album, and will include the six pieces we has commissioned to celebrate our ten year anniversary. We all chose a composer each, and mine was Martin Simpson. It was so exciting to get to work with Martin, and it was an absolute privilege (and somewhat scary!) to perform a brand new song of his at Celtic Connections. The song will also be on the Continuum album, which will be released on the 23rd of September. For more info check out The Shee website.

I have also been spending time working on a debut duo album with Jenn Butterworth which I am really excited about. It will contain a mixture of some of the songs we have been gigging for years as well as some brand new tunes and songs. We plan for the release to be in November, but we will keep you updated over on our Facebook page.

Catywompus

Last year I was approached by Flex Dance who asked me to co-write some music for a dance piece. I jumped at the opportunity, and after months of co-writing and arranging with Simon Tarrant, tomorrow will see the first public performance of Catywomous at Stockton International Riverside Festival. The dancers are fantastic, and the music and choreography really feel like they feed off each other. Oh, and the set is amazing! We are very hopeful that the show will tour further next year. For more info on this weekends performances see – http://sirf.co.uk/performer/caty-wompus/

Teaching

I have really been enjoying getting more involved in lots of different educational projects. I am one of the mandolin tutors at the Glasgow Fiddle Workshop as well as teaching mandolin at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. John Somerville, Innes Watson and I have ideas in the pipeline for an exciting new youth project based in Glasgow which will be announced soon, and I am happy to be a part of the Hands Up for Trad team working on next years Easter Gaitherin’ for the Edinburgh Youth Gaitherin.’ I am teaching the fretted instruments class at next week’s Folkworks Adult Summer School, and really enjoyed teaching at Fèis Gleann Albainn again back in February – what brilliant fun!!

What’s next

Next up for me is the Shee album launch tour which will take place through September and October. Jenn and I get to return to Colonsay Folk Fesival next month, as well as a few other gigs in the diary – see jennandlb.com for more info. I have been working on new songs and am hoping to record a new solo album soon, but in the meantime there’ll be one new song on the new Shee album and one on the duo album.

There are a couple more new projects in the pipeline, but I’ll save them for the next post.

 

Over and out x