Sam Lewis. Waiting On you. Brash Music

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2015 is shaping up to be a bumper year with numerous releases mentioned previously on Blabber’n’Smoke (have a look around, I’m not going to recite them again) looking to settle into the “classic” album status once the dust has settled. Well, here’s another one, a superb collection of soulful country cuts from North Carolina via Nashville musician Sam Lewis. Waiting On You is Lewis’ second album and is the latest chapter in what could be considered a dream come true for this young musician. Apparently he’s yet another of those discovered at an open mic night good luck stories with Nashville producer Matt Urmey spotting his potential a few years back and hooking him up for his first release. Talent will out and if the quality of the backing musicians here is any gauge then Lewis has it in spades.

The album is excellent from start to finish. Lewis flows from country to folk to Southern soul with ease, his voice is a warm honeyed balm, at times recalling the ease of Charley Pride then heading into Dylan Nashville Skyline crooning mode. He gathers up antecedents such as Van Morrison, The Band and Dan Penn with Spooner Oldham and pours them into the songs. His regular band, JT Cure on bass and Derek Mixon, drums are joined by luminaries Darrell Scott, Mickey Raphael, Will Kimbrough and The McCrary Sisters although these are merely the icing on the cake – Lewis and his songs are the stars here.

There are 12 songs and each one is special. There’s the country element, sad and forlorn on Texas which is adorned by Raphael’s signature harmonica sound, down home country blues on Little Time with Kristina Train on backing vocals and dusty honky tonk on I’m Coming Home. 3/4 Time is a jaunty quickstep that funnels Sturgill Simpson into Van Morrison Tupelo Honey territory with some Sun Records action thrown in. Hard to believe perhaps but when the cork was popped on the song these were the aromas that wafted out. Time here to mention the production (by Lewis and Oliver Wood) as the drums and bass are so crisp and there’s a fine snap to the backing vocals, overall the album just sounds great, warm and comfortable.
Lewis dips his toes into soul waters with Waiting On You which actually recalls James Taylor initially before Gabe Dixon’s Wurlitzer piano wades in and The McCrary Sisters envelop the song in a Gospel veil. The McCrary’s feature again on the sublime country soul of Love Me Again which flows wonderfully with a similarity to Dylan’s Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You and on the slow burn of Talk To Me while She’s A Friend drives straight to the heart of Muscle Shoals territory with some Stax thrown in for good measure. There’s some bare boned folk blues on Virginia Avenue which has Lewis backed by the nifty resonator guitar picking of Welsh wizard Martin Harley and to top it all there’s a roustabout rock’n’roll jaunt on Things Will Never Be The Same with Garth Hudson rinky dink organ swirlings from Dixon and killer guitar from producer Wood.

A great album, perfect from start to finish and obviously well recommended. Good news is that Lewis is touring the UK in October including a date for Glasgow Americana Festival. Dates are here.

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you can hear some songs from the album here and there’s an interview with the man here

Case Hardin. Colours Simple. Clubhouse Records

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Case Hardin’s last album PM was a spare affair, its stripped back songs gathering comparisons to Willie Vlautin’s bare boned American tales. For Colours Simple the band have limbered up, taken a Charles Atlas rock’n’roll class and now show off their musical muscle. Singer and main writer Pete Gow continues to recount his tales of life’s casualties with a keen journalist’s eye but there’s a heft to the songs and in particular the sinewy guitar work of Jim Maving sparkles throughout. The four piece band (Gow, Maving, Tim Emery, bass and Andy Bastow, drums) are augmented by the keyboard playing of Mike Wesson while a horn section (composed of Robin & Joe Bennett of Dreaming Spires and Free Jazz Geoff Widdowson of Danny And The Champions Of The World) features on one song.

They nail their colours to the mast with the opening eight minutes and twenty seconds of Poets Corner, a song that is epic in its sweep in a manner reminiscent of Springsteen but without his swagger. A booming bass drum tolls as the song begins before organ and guitar creep in and Gow paints a claustrophobic picture of a hot and sticky urban scene. Halfway through the song Maving launches into a spiralling guitar assault as the song ascends a crescendo before eventually winding down and ending with that same tolling drum. A spectacular and intense song it leaves the listener somewhat winded, for the remainder of the album however (other than two songs) they continue to rock and definitely roll with less intensity and, dare we say, a sense of fun. Fiction Writer and High Rollers hark back to the spare sound of FM, the latter especially given the presence of Hana Piranha’s violin. Fiction Writer is a melancholic meditation on loneliness with Gow sounding world weary while High Rollers is a classic story telling song in the Townes Van Zandt/Guy Clark tradition. Bravely Gow sings here from the point of view of a female casino worker who does more than deal decks, describing the grimness behind the glitz and supposed glamour.

Elsewhere it’s all shoulders to the wheel as the band romp into the rockier numbers. These Three Cities has Gow telling of an encounter with a prostitute over a rolling bluesy and blowsy melody reminiscent of Del Amitri. Roll Damnation Roll sees Maving on acoustic slide guitar on a short introduction before the song kicks in much in the manner of an old Rod Stewart number. The song itself follows suit with its acoustic swing recalling Ronnie Lane’s sashaying strut as mandolin and honky tonk piano trill and roll. Cheap Streaks From A Bottle is a streetwise rocker with the brass section injecting the bustle of city living and again one is reminded of Rod Stewart, this time in his guise as one of the lads in the Faces, a sense repeated on the rollicking The Streets where The Bars Are with Wesson’s fingers flying across the keys and Maving sliding away. The inevitable hangover is memorably described on (Jesus Christ Tomorrow Morning) Do I Still have To Feel This Way? which bumps and grinds with a fury, guitars snarling over organ swirls and a tight backbeat. The album ends with the mandolin and acoustic guitar driven Another Toytown Morning with Gow coming on like a modern day Phil Ochs, full of fire and fury.

Colours Simple is the album which should elevate Pete Gow to the upper echelons of UK songwriters while he and the band are to be congratulated for carrying on the baton from the likes of Ronnie Lane carving out a rootsy rock and folk route that is not slavishly American.

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Michael Rank and Stag. Horsehair. Louds Hymn Music

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Blabber’n’Smoke makes no bones about our stone cold admiration for the music of Michael Rank, a man who has now released five albums of “wracked and raw” country music following the breakup of his relationship with the mother of his young son. The first album, Kin, was a blasted heath of an album with some fiery guitar work that might now be considered a catharsis of sorts, a casting aside of his old world (which included his band Snatches of Pink, wonderfully described by Rank as his volume and tantrum days). Rank admits that following the birth of his son he’d pretty much given up on music but after the split he picked up a guitar and songs came tumbling out. Five albums later he’s still hurting it seems but from his hurt he’s fashioned a great deal of beauty, a fragile and tender beauty to be sure but emotionally powerful and, more to the point, some of the best music of the past four years.

Horsehair continues Rank’s odyssey into classic seventies stained folk and country rock. His shape shifting collective band Stag here comprise of Nathan Golub on pedal steel, Alex Ingleheart, electric guitar, Ron Bartholomew, mandolin, Jesse Heubner, bass, Gabriele Pelli and John Teer, fiddle, James Wallace, organ and John Howie Jnr, drums. A plethora of players but a bare boned outcome with the full line-up rarely all present. The predominant sound is of jagged mandolin, ragged guitar and roaming fiddle, all swaying to Rank’s fine feel for the Stone’s country phase with some of Rod Stewart’s early work sneaking in. Neil Young’s ditch years are also in the mix while Rank seems at times to be striving for a less desolate landscape eventually finding harbour in the blissed out groovyness (or cosmic floppiness) of The Grateful Dead in the early seventies. Capping this is the presence of Mount Moriah’s Heather McEntire who sings with Rank throughout, her voice cajoling, comforting and supporting his frail husk of a voice. They pair wonderfully in the style of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris on their most famous collaboration, Love Hurts, wounded hearts waltzing around to wounded music.

Rank has nine songs here and they all have moments that raise the hair on the back of the neck. The opening Frontier is the starkest number, hesitant mandolin and lonesome fiddle on an ode to lost love. At the other end there’s the full band country stumble of This Side of Texas which opens with fiddle sawing over mandolin and acoustic guitars the song slowly building up with curling electric guitar and organ briefly added to the mix. It’s an awesome song, the lyrics by turn poetic, “stars are falling out like ashes, that great big sky done swallow me”,  fearsome, “we keep a list of all our captives, we string a necklace with their teeth,” but ultimately returning to the personal as Rank and McEntire sing “I wrote a song to bring her back son, one song don’t stitch a wound.” Husk is another wounded country song that barely stumbles out of the gate initially before the vocals come in. Pretty soon Nathan Golub’s pedal steel curls into view and leads the song into a lengthy outro with the players weaving and dancing musically creating a vibe not dissimilar to that of the Grateful Dead stretching out on their country ambles in the early seventies, real cosmic American music.

It would be easy to paint Rank as a miserabilist wallowing in his loss but even on a song like Trails where he sings “The one you left behind you’re running through my mind you’re always on my trail.. I wish I was enough so you would stay here with me…ain’t nothing about it easy”  is dressed in a wonderfully sparse arrangement with delicate organ and spare guitar conjuring a spiritual feeling towards the end. There’s also a beautiful moment when McEntire almost sobs, capturing the feeling evoked by the song.

Mexico jumps into view with a Stone’s like guitar lick on the raunchiest number here while Horseman is dusty Americana with the fiddle given free rein in the manner of Sid Page on Mike Wilhelm’s magisterial reading of Me and My Uncle with some Scarlett Rivera thrown in for good measure. However before ending we must allow mention of the album’s highpoint.

Two Shades is simply one of the best love songs of the past ten years capturing as it does the ecstasy of togetherness and the pain of separation. Rank acknowledges his ex partner’s role as his son’s mother and allows that their time together was special singing “I’ve got a boy here and he’s two shades of something that once upon a time was something to behold”  but it’s the chorus that raises the song well above the ordinary. Rank and McEntire rival any celebrated duos as they entwine around each other singing “And I know we ain’t covered in roses and I know we ain’t covered in jewels but I know that when I used to hold you most everything looked better for me and you, near everything looked better for me and you”  over a gorgeous simple melody garlanded in honeyed pedal steel. If Dolly Parton recorded this it would be considered a classic.

So five albums in and Michael Rank just seems to get better and better. It’s a Blabber’n’Smoke bucket list deal to see him at some point but presently he’s keen to stay close to home. Fortunately there’s a wealth of videos of him and various permutations of Stag populating YouTube, all of which support our contention that he’s the bee’s knee’s right now. We now await album number six.

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Emma Swift

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Emma Swift might be a new name to many in the UK, although it’s apparent that she picked up quite a few fans on her recent tour with Robyn Hitchcock, in her native Australia however she was well known as the host of radio shows In the Pines and Saturday Night Country. All the while she was finding her way as a songwriter and performer both solo and as half of the duo 49 Goodbyes before eventually taking the step of locating to Nashville a year or so back. This self-titled mini album is her debut and was released around a year back in Australia but Swift has just relaunched it on iTunes.

Live Blabber’n’Smoke described Ms. Swift thus

…her lachrymose country songs were well received. Her version of Gram Parsons’ Brass Buttons highlighted her aching bittersweet voice while the suicide note that is Rowland Howard’s Shiver was delivered with a fine mix of tenderness and defiance. Her own song, Seasons, marked her as a writer and singer who could be up there with the likes of Lucinda Williams…

The album reinforces this with Swift’s voice in particular commanding attention. She combines the languid manner of Lucinda Williams with the effortless swoon of Linda Ronstadt while also managing the sultriness of kd Laing in torch song mode. In addition she’s a great writer, the five songs here all worthy of attention (in addition there’s a cover of The Motels’ Total Control) and to cap it all the band she’s assembled play some very sweet heartbreaking country music.

She opens with the bittersweet Bittersweet, a soft rock country balm for the soul effortlessly singing over the slow rhythm shuffle with pedal steel and Wurlitzer curling around her voice. Woodland Street has a late night jazz feel to it with Swift vulnerable in her pleading, a sense continued on Seasons, an initially brighter, summery song where again she’s looking for affection (with her voice here reminiscent of Lucinda Williams). Swift manages a neat trick here with the first half of the song optimistic as she waits for her lover in the spring, honeyed pedal steel and sparkling guitar like reflected sunlight on the sea before she fears he’ll be gone by the fall and there’s an almost imperceptible shift in the mood of the music, the guitars sadder, keening instead of honeyed. At the heart of album is the lengthy King Of America, eight minutes of hesitant, slow flow twang guitar and cosmic country tinged pedal steel that recalls the glory days of NRPS and Garcia himself as it weaves an unsteady course over deadpan percussion. Almost as if the Grateful Dead had scored David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Swift offers a portrait of the narcotic pull of the likes of Gram Parsons or Hank Williams as she succumbs to their invitation to dance. It’s a glorious song that places Swift at the forefront of our singer/songwriters today.

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Roberto & the Tickety 2. Middle Age Spread.

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Humour in music is difficult to write about. Is a humorous act just a joke or something to be listened to in the same manner one would listen to the latest album from, say, Ryan Adams? Probably not yet the rock’n’roll road is littered with some great songs, usually listed under “novelty,” that stand the test of time. One of the arbiters of what’s a good “novelty” song is the great Dr. Demento, an LA institution since the early seventies and champion of Nervous Norfus, Weird Al Jankovic and Barnes and Barnes (the exquisite song, Fish Heads). So, it’s a badge of honour that Dr. Demento has recently cast his eye in the direction of Scotland, specifically those kings of Mirth ‘n’ Roll Roberto & The Tickety 2 featuring two of their songs on his show, White Wine from their first album and Harley Davidson from Middle Age Spread, their latest release.

Well, who are we to disagree with Dr. Demento as he’s spot on with his picks here. Roberto & The Tickety 2 are a Perthshire based trio who actually have some great musical chops. Roberto handles his double bass with some dexterity as Dave Clelland lays down some fine percussion. Topping this is the guitar work of Owen Nicholson, an ace guitarist who, instead of his usual country rock licks, plays some excellent jazzy guitar lines; in fact I’m sure that if you were to hear the album without the vocal track you’d think this was by someone like Barney Kessel. Fine as that is Roberto Cassani ensures that the songs have the main ingredient required of a fine novelty song, i.e. novelty, fun, humour and such. Listening to the songs here which accurately spear some social notions and poke fun at well-deserved targets there was a thought that he’s working in the same sphere as ace humorists Tom Lehrer and Ivor Cutler, his words fired at various Aunt Sally’s. So we get a salute to baldness (“men are boys until they’re bald”), the perils of the male menopause (Harley Davidson) and a jab at hipsters (Grizzly Adams) among others. There’s broad humour in the very funny Man For My Mum with Cassani importuning George Clooney lookalikes in the pub lavatory in a search for a new dad, sleazy Soho boho jazz on Pane & Salame with Cassani coming across like Paulo Conte and some very fine cod Mexicali drama on Pedro. Best of all is the hazy, almost Tiki laidback groove of Don’t Grow Up, a fine warning to children throughout the world.

It’s all still tongue in cheek but definitely a step up from their first album Manflu and best of all for a comedy album it’s one that you can listen to time and again as it does groove and the lyrics reveal new nuggets time and again.

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Phil Lee. Some Gotta Lose… Palookaville Records

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A new album from Phil Lee is cause for celebration, a musical Maverick perhaps but as Blabber’n’Smoke said in the review of his previous album, “he captures what may be the true sense of Americana, able to toss songs off with just an acoustic guitar that stand alongside the likes of John Prine, hit the honky tonks with tremendous truck driving stories, dig a southern soul groove or get deep and dirty with the blues. Irreverent, profane and above all laughing at the cosmic irrelevance of it all.”  And so it is with his latest, Some Gotta Lose… the title coming about as Lee explains in a recent interview with Blaine Schultz., “Mainly I got the idea from never having a snappy come back to the query, “you’re so dang fabulous (I paraphrase) how come it is I’ve never heard of you?” (That with the implication it’s somehow it’s my fault. The noive)…My pat answer became ‘Hey, some gotta lose’.”

It’s this sense of not taking himself too seriously that endears him to many but deep down Lee is seriously stewed in rock’n’roll with a back history that would make a fine biopic peopled with the likes of Neil Young, The Burritos, Wilco and Alison Moorer. Above all he’s a gifted songwriter and his albums should never ever be filed under humour despite the occasional joke.

Produced by Willy Mason Some Gotta Lose… is a wonderfully warm and loose limbed album. Recorded pretty much live, warts and all in a house in upstate New York Lee visits the blues, country, soul and even tango with his band hitting a fine groove throughout. Drums rattle and guitars buzz and burn, the organ glowers and Lee’s hipster voice is accompanied by female harmonies on several of the songs. The groove is important with Lee explaining that the live recording set up allowed the band to stretch out at times trying “telepathically to figure out who should play a solo or just hang out.” There’s some bum notes apparently but the overall impression is of a bunch of musicians cutting loose and having a great time.

The album opens with the Southern soulfulness of Ain’t No Love with guitar licks aplenty summoning up a swampy rhythm before harmonies and harmonica glide in. Halfway through the song picks up tempo as the band riff on the melody while Lee sings the chorus before taking it home. There’s more Southern grooves on Don’t tell me Now with Lee getting lascivious with an ex who has blossomed into a catch whose “breasts got fuller and kiss got sweeter.” Lee and the band plead wonderfully with yearning guitar echoing his sentiments as the song meanders to its end. Sex rears its head again on No Taking It Back only here Lee is hesitant in the moment of triumph, pondering the aftermath while the churchlike organ drenched This One is another soulful meditation on a past lover that is bitter sweet in its Muscle Shoal type delivery. Lee ends this song on harmonica as the organ swells taking it into Stray Gators territory.

Wake Up Crying is a zippy Dylan fuelled 60’s blast sounding like an outtake from Highway 61 with Bloomfield like guitar bursts and there’s some real retro rockabilly on the cover of the traditional Lil Liza Jane. Kiss Of Fire is an audacious tango with Lee playing up to his comic persona but even so its compelling listening. Finally, there’s the country lament of If Frogs Had Wings, a fiddle sawing away offering comparison to Dylan again, this time circa Desire. A death row prisoner’s final thoughts with Peckinpah imagery thrown in it’s simply fantastic.

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The Deslondes. New West Records

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New Orleans isn’t the first place you’d expect to hear classic country music although in the past few years acts such as Hurray For The Riff Raff and Gal Holiday have proved that pedal steel can cut it in the Crescent City. now along come The Deslondes, a five piece band who sound as if they’ve been marinated in old time country spiced up with some blues and soul, the end result a very fine ramshackle sound that can be likened to The Band, The Felice Brothers or even Doug Sahm (on the fiddle sawed Same Blood As Mine). And while they don’t (as yet) achieve the heights of these acts this debut album is a heart warming collection of songs that variously swing, rock or pull at the heart.

Some of the band have been together for several years (recording as The Tumbleweeds) and have strong ties with Alynda Lee Segarra (of Hurray For The Riff Raff) before eventually coalescing as The Deslondes. With several songwriters in the fold and four of the band able to sing lead there’s variety aplenty on the album and despite the country tag we’re pushing here theres’ a definite Big Easy influence at play most evident on the opening and closing songs. I Fought The Blues And Won rides on a Fats Domino like piano riff with a laidback singalong quality. Out On The Rise is starker with the piano more in tune with barrelhouse blues and a clarinet solo nailing the NO vibe although a lonesome pedal steel cries throughout.

Sandwiched between these is the fine country gospel of Those Were (Could’ve Been) the Days and the trucking Less Honkin’ More Tonkin’ (guaranteed to please fans of Junior Brown or Bill Kirchen), the spaghetti western twang of Time To Believe In and the Johnny Cash meets Ricky Nelson chicka boom of Louise. There are laments. Simple and True stumbles and starts fitfully and Heavenly Home is a mighty slice of pedal steel garnished southern grit. Best of all is the lonesome howl of Low Down Soul which is indeed indebted to Hank Williams and well worthy of being mentioned in the same breath.
The Deslondes (Sam Doores vocals/guitar, Riley Downing vocals/guitar, Dan Cutler vocals/stand-up bass, Cameron Snyder vocals/percussion and John James Tourville pedal steel/fiddle) play several UK shows this week, dates here. There’s a fine interview with the band from Uncut magazine which you can read here.

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Martin Harley and Daniel Kimbro. Live at Southern Ground. Del Mundo Records.

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UK lap steel and slide blues guitarist Martin Harley gained a good deal of recognition with his 2013 album Mojo Fix. Live At Southern Ground, the follow up was recorded “live” (no audience as far as we can gather) in Nashville’s Southern Ground Studios with double bass player Daniel Kimbro after the pair met up and jammed at a Tennessee festival. Almost a spur of the moment decision then, the album was recorded in one day with Harley playing regular, resonator and lap top (Hawaiian style) guitars with Kimbro slapping the big fiddle.

As such it’s a really fine slice of acoustic blues, well recorded and definitely an album that will please anyone who recalls Taj Mahal in his acoustic prime or the many finger picking wizards from the sixties folk boom who peppered their sets with blues covers. Harley writes the majority of the songs with a fine handle on the classic blues rhetoric while his guitar playing is at times mesmerising and vocally he answers that age-old question as to whether white men can sing the blues with some aplomb. The interaction between him and Kimbro’s nimble bass playing is a delight with some passages demanding to be replayed as one decides which instrument to concentrate on. Together they have a similar sort of musical telepathy to that of the late John Martyn with the great Danny Thompson.

Acknowledging his roots Harley covers Lead Belly’s Goodnight Irene and Blind Willie Johnson’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine while a cover of Tom Waits’ Chocolate Jesus is given a razor edged slide guitar thrust which takes the song into acoustic Led Zep territory. The album ends with an uncredited song that harks back to Johnson’s Dark was The Night, Cold Was The Ground with its sinister slide playing laid over some sombre and spine tingling double bass bowing. It’s a hidden track so if you do get the album wait for it at the end, it will blow you away.

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The Roseline. Townie

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Kansas band The Roseline are essentially a vehichle for Colin Haliburton’s sweetly sad songs which are delivered with a gentle flow. Haliburton has a light voice, not dissimilar to Ryan Adams at times while the instrumentation is primarily keyboard driven and burnished with scrubbed acoustic guitars and slender electric embroidery.

The eleven songs here deal with tough subjects including mental illness and substance abuse but there’s no descent into hell here. Rather there’s always a glimmer of hope, the music like a ray of sun peeping through a cloud. At times there’s a resemblance to the poppier elements of Calexico particularly on the title track and the closing A Children’s Game. At his best however Haliburton delivers some swooning country tinged numbers with Dark Love Is Still Love featuring keening pedal steel while Selfish Heart is simply wonderful, a yearning desire to spend time with a sweetheart that isn’t realised because “love ain’t on the cards for a man with a selfish heart.”

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Iain Morrison. Eas. Peat Fire Smoke Records

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Summer’s almost gone and the nights are drawing in. Almost time to light the fires and gather round the hearth and a perfect time to consider listening to Isle of Lewis musician Iain Morrison’s peaty and misty soundscapes. Morrison is a Scot steeped in local musical tradition, his father a famed piper, and schooled in the bagpipe tradition of Ceol Mor aka The Big Music but his albums have been of a singer songwriter bent up until now. On Eas Morrison returns to his roots with the album composed around piobaireachd, the classic form of the Highland pipes and he weaves a mystical and moving tapestry that is wreathed in Gaelic and reeks of Celtic mystery. In a similar manner to The Unthanks and Seth Lakeman (and the late Martyn Bennett) Morrison is creating a new music carved from the past. He summons up folk memories be it Ewan McColl’s radio ballads or the witchy weirdness of The Wickerman soundtrack with a nod to the likes of Robert Wyatt and his sonic soupiness.

The album ebbs and flows like the tide. There are grand moments as on the anthemic ending to My Letting Go and the tribal chorus on the barbed folk rock of To The Sea while there’s grainy, almost Grierson like documented snapshots such as Too Long In This Condition which features the voice of Donald MacLeod, a late legend in piping circles, over a restrained piano led backing. Crackle features piper Allan McDonald speaking in Gaelic as pipes and fiddle gently gather before the song transforms into a misty lament with a nice vocal clamour. Morrison’s whispered voice creeps throughout the album with the opening and atmospheric Subhal (47) summoning up visions of misty moors, Eas, a mighty flight into a Celtic faeryland which knocks the likes of the music for Lord Of The Rings for six. On A Flame Of Wrath For Patrick Caogach Morrison strides magnificently on a ballad suffused with woody cello, strident whistle and pulsating percussion before The Little Spree sneaks in as a tender love song where Morrison is ably assisted by Lori Watson on vocals.

Some albums set a mood and Eos is one of these. The Scottishness of it all is a balm for anyone pining for Highland mist but it stands out as a brave example of new strains arising from old refrains.

Iain Morrison will be playing some Scottish dates later this year. Dates here

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