Dougie McLean

It has been said of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, the great Scottish author, that he was the voice of Scotland's past. Scotland's Poet Laureate Neil Gunn said, "You can hear the earth itself speaking in Gibbon's prose." These same descriptions also would not be out of place to characterize the music of Dougie MacLean.

Since his earliest days as a solo artist after leaving the fiery Tannahill Weavers, MacLean has written song after song that speaks in the voice of his beloved homeland. "Solid Ground," "Ready for the Storm," "Singing Land," and "Caledonia" are all love songs to the earth, sky and ocean. These songs, and more, have been gathered together in the newly-released Putumayo recording The Dougie MacLean Collection. Also out is a CD of new material called Marching Mystery [Dunkeld], and, as if to confirm the image of the Scottish work ethic, MacLean has been involved in a theater project based on Gibbon's finest work, A Scots Quair. On a recent tour of New England, MacLean took a few moments to sit in the warm spring sunshine and talk about many of his projects.

"The Dougie MacLean Collection is basically a selection of songs from many of my previous albums on Dunkeld Records. Putumayo is a chain of fine imported clothing stores, and their president, Dan Storper, is a big fan of the music. He approached me about putting together a kind of Best Of..., so he put this compilation together with my blessings. It's not the sort of thing I would have done myself," MacLean admitted, "because I'm too busy creating new music."

Marching Mystery was released in 1994 and is one of MacLean's most mature works to date. Songs include the anthem-like "When the People Speak," the pastoral beauty of "The Land" and the title track, inspired by a set of ancient chess pieces found on the West coast of the Isle of Lewis.

It was during the spring and summer of 1993 that MacLean was invited to be composer and musical director for the TAG Theatre Company's Production of A Scots Quair. The play is based on the trilogy of books by Gibbon (a rather odd pen name for Scottish author and journalist James Leslie Mitchell), and it follows the life, loves, joys and sorrows of its central character, Chris Guthrie. Set between the Grampians and the North Sea, it accurately portrays the peacefulness and hardships of those granite towns and cities at the turn of the century.

The three books (Sunset Song, Cloud Howe and Grey Granite) follow the story through the long farming depression, the first World War, the General Strike, and the hunger marches of the 30s. Guthrie is torn between her love for the land and the desire to escape the narrow horizons of rural living. Gibbon's command of language, character and settings is nothing short of extraordinary, with the wheat fields, the sky and the rain being as much characters as the human ones. The TAG Theatre Company performed all three books (as one play in three parts) during the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland in the fall of 1993.

The album Sunset Song, released on the Dunkeld label, gives some idea of the high caliber of the work. "If you saw the play or know the books it was based on, you can make sense of why the songs were written certain ways, as to invoke the mood of the story," said MacLean.

"Sunset Song has a very timeless quality to it," MacLean recounted. "The woman who played Chris was a really good singer and I managed to get a few really moving songs that I wrote for her to sing, like when her father died. There were many moments when you had tears in your eyes because it is such a simple, honest little story. I had never read the story before I was asked to do the play, although I live not far from where Grassic Gibbon had written it."

MacLean makes his home in the town of Dunkeld in Scotland. He lives with his wife Jenny (an artist, she also designs his album covers) and their two children in a restored schoolhouse, where he had once attended classes as a youth. "I live on the border between the Highlands and the Valley of Strathmore, where all the agriculture was. You follow the Strathmore up towards Aberdeen and you get the Mearns, where A Scots Quair took place. I worked on farms when I was young, just like those farms in the book. In fact, I went and got props for the play from all my old farmer friends. Real straw potato creels and things. I've got a collection of old farm implements at home that I've grabbed over the years. I collect old plows and horse carts and things for sowing grain by hand. My house is full of them, I go to old sales and people think I'm crazy," MacLean laughed. "I actually bought a huge old scatter plow, a big iron thing that sits out in front of my house." MacLean poses with one of his many prized plows on the inside jacket of Sunset Song.

MacLean has often sung of the modern world's slow intrusion on the peaceful, almost ageless rural areas of the Scottish Highlands. Like his ancestors, MacLean continually finds new and inventive ways to combat the intrusive ways of the modern world. "One of the old farmers retired and they were selling off all his old farm equipment. They're just tenant farms, they don't own the farms. When their tenancies are finished, all the old farmers come around and pay `silly' money for pieces of old shit, just to give him some kind of retirement money. So he sells off all his shovels and spades and the local farmers will bid for them," explained MacLean.

"These days there are a lot of antique dealers coming to these things. At one, the prize possession was this big wooden butter churn. The local farmers are really very simple people and they don't realize the value of these things to antique dealers. I was there with a friend and all these antique dealers started bidding for this big butter churn and it was going up 30 pounds, 35 pounds. So me and my friend said, `Right, we're going to pull together to get that butter churn.' 'Cause we're locals you know, they're not taking that butter churn away. So we were going 40 pounds and they'd say 45 pounds. Of course all the old farmers who knew me as a boy, started cheering me on saying, `Come on Dougie, you can get it!' I think we wound up paying 85 quid for this butter churn. But when we beat all the antique dealers, there was this cheer from all the old farmers, that our churn was kept more or less in the valley. Me and my pal had become their champions, 'cause they would have never spent 80 pounds on a butter churn," MacLean said with obvious glee. "I would have spent anything on that churn, even if I didn't have the money, I would have still bought it because it became a matter of principle, rather than the value of the butter churn."

MacLean's love for his homeland and his ties to the Scotland's past are very evident in the new semi-biographical music video, The Land. "I made a film called The Land in which I had my father come up to the cottage where my grandfather was born and we were using him as sort of an extra. We did eight or nine takes of Dad coming out of his cottage lighting his pipe. It wasn't until we got back into the editing suite that we noticed that every time he came out from the door to light his pipe, he'd look at the sky, to check the weather. He did it completely instinctively, because he grew up in the country. So many people don't even bother about the weather, now. These old people were wonderfully in touch with it. I put these wee things into my songs and I try and write as honest as I can."

The ever-busy MacLean has since been involved in yet another project. "I've got this TV program that's coming out which we filmed around Christmastime in Scotland, it's called Transatlantic Connections. It's a seven-part series for the BBC and they brought a lot of American musicians across to play with Scottish ones. We had a scratch band with Aly Bain and Jerry Douglas as well as a lot of country people who came over, like Kathy Mattea. Donal Lunny came over from Ireland and Danny Thompson was there, playing bass. It was great " you'd have Iris DeMent and Phil Cunningham in the same room."

With these new-found musical connections and by utilizing recent studio innovations, MacLean has been inspired to work with a more diverse group of musicians on his next album. "I'll be making a new album this year. Some of the tracks may feature my touring band but I'm thinking about calling up some of my pals and doing some sessions. With the advent of the new digital ADATs in the studio, you can post them around the country or send them to Nashville to musicians like Jerry Douglas. You can say, `See what you hear in this' and they can add their things to it."

It is clear measure of the integrity of his music that MacLean can call upon the lessons of the past and actualize them with the newest technologies available.

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