George’s trio gig with Keith & Julie Tippetts
24th August 2006Mad rush to clean Alex’s car last night, and then a moment of panic about whether it would start or not after I’d thrown a bucket of water over it.
Because of the “airports security alert” KT’s asked me to buy a disposable lighter and “Nivea Lipcare or Lipsyl” for Julie since this is the stuff that gets confiscated. They were allowed on with their umbrella which is full of pointy spikes. This is great fuel for one of Keith’s fine anti-correctness rants.
After all that, I miss them at the airport by waiting at the gate rather than the baggage reclaim. Keith eventually phones my mobile from a payphone. They’ve brought much less luggage than I thought they would, but I’m glad we’ve got the big car anyway; it’s a long drive.
I get off to a great start by going down the wrong road towards Linwood instead of towards the Erskine Bridge, so we have to go round a roundabout and go back to the airport. The hills above the Clyde remind them of the Cotswolds, but once we get up on the bridge they start raving about the scenery in earnest.
The journey takes a bit less time than I expected and when we stop for lunch at Tyndrum we’re about an hour ahead of where I expected to be. It’s a beautiful day, and Scotland is looking its best. One of the running jokes of the weekend is George getting bored with Keith & Julie exclaiming about how lovely everything is.
We use up some of the extra time at the Victorian Gothicky Masonic church at Loch Awe. They are delighted by the whole place.
Tobermory.
We adjourn from McGochan’s to the Mishnish which has Foster’s which both K & J drink pint for pint. K&J are starting to fade a bit, when a kilty lad comes up and says the local choir are just going to do a set. The Island Mod is coming up and the National Mod is a few weeks later so they’re taking every chance they get to perform their stuff.
Julie’s tired but really wants to hear a Gaelic choir. “Oh NO! Now I’m going to get another drink and then my second wind, and we’ll be up till 3 in the morning.” “Yes,” goes Keith sounding like Long John Silver predicting squalls ahead. “That’s Dangerous. The Second Wind…” Gordon introduces us, and the guy shakes all our hands and then Julie’s again when he reminisces about girls in his past who had the short hair and elaborate eye make-up when “Wheel’s on Fire” was in the hit parade. Gordon asks when the Choir plan to start. He looks at his watch and does a quick calculation. “About twenty minutes ago.” Tobermory time…
I get a round of half pints in, and once the football goes off the telly, the choir start. We stay for the first set (which sounds great) then K&J make their apologies and sneak off. I do get something like a second wind and have another pint. We stay to the end and get talking to members of the Choir to drum up some business for tomorrow night. The chap who first spoke to us works at the Tourist office at Craignure. The last Ferry officially gets in at 7, and they close at 7.15, which means there’s usually a mad scramble to explain to seven Italian tourists that yes they can get accommodation, but two might be in Fionnphort, one in Tobermory three in Bunessan and one in Dervaig. So he reckons he’ll make it to the gig if the Ferry is 15 minutes late…. It turns out there are choir practises, ceilidhs, sessions and gigs on all over the Island, so we might be out of luck with the Island’s musicians.
The extra pint of Guinness has affected me profoundly (two’s my limit really) and I walk up and down the famous seafront of Tobermory farting enormously, then hike up the Post Office Brae, past the house where Mendelssohn (Felix, not Tamsin) stayed, to the B&B.
Friday 25th
This is the day of the gig and KT’s birthday. Kay wanted to get him a copy of “Tobermory Tales”. I thought this was a completely useless idea and very cheesy, but now I’ve changed my mind. I’ll see if I can get a copy in the Book & Tackle shop. Or maybe I’ll get him a Lifejacket or a distress flare.
I’ve got to talk business with Gordon later on, so I’m going for a bracing intellectually stimulating walk round to the lighthouse. I get the old boots on and stride out with the OS map like a proper tourist. The path goes past the Ferry terminal and up the side of the cliff. Very muddy going some of it, but the weather’s beautiful, and eventually gets quite hot. I sit for about twenty minutes looking at the view, and in that time about eight small boats, a couple of fishing vessels, two ferries and a warplane go zooming past. It’s the maritime equivalent of Sauchiehall Street on a Saturday night, but, of course no half-dressed women and less public drinking.
Little creatures (voles? field mice?) scamper out of the bracken as I come blundering through. If you stay still for a minute you get dragonflies, different kinds of bees and wasps, and a big bird that I guess is a buzzard, but looks a bit more purposeful…
At the lighthouse there’s a cottage which looks like an ideal holiday home, if a bit isolated… you would have to carry everything along that path, or else buy a boat.
A fat guy comes down the path and asks if I’ve seen any “wildlife”, by which he means whales or dolphins. I resist the temptation spin him some yarn about a giant squid nibbling a couple of basking sharks…
I make my way back along the golf course, and have a doze on a commemorative bench. Another jet fighter goes past at eye level. They’ll be practising for whatever Hebrides they happen to find in the Middle East I suppose…
At around lunchtime I go down into Tobermory and queue up for a sandwich from the Highland Bakery. Isabella’s Clock is surrounded by people eating fish & chips.
I get a couple of books for Keith’s birthday, and go up to the B&B to get my gear, and spend an hour or so practising and getting in Gordon’s way while he efficiently sets up the room for the show. We avoid talking the business. (IT MUST BE DONE TOMORROW!)
At four I drive down to pick up Julie and Keith. He’s leaning on the railings having a fag while she scampers about on the beach.
They are extremely efficient and professional at the soundcheck. Keith rumbles away at the piano frowning a little at a low c-sharp; “Well,” he says, “only a prima donna or pedant could possibly complain about this piano…” Yes, Keith. And…?
I’m getting serious pre-gig feelings: pre-minstrel tension, as Andy Shanks puts it. We meet in 20 mins for a meal and then go and get ready. I help stuff envelopes for An Tobar’s latest mail-out as a bit of therapy.
Gordon gets Keith early so he can do a warm-up, and I get Julie. We drive round the long way to the centre to avoid the Post Office Brae. Keith is pacing about making nervous jokes about the “audient” (singular), but by gig-time there are around thirty people, which looks ok in that small room.
I stay out front for the first half. They start with a very dark bit which eventually comes round to a very pretty little Christmas carol style melody and ends with a colossal upward thing. In loud bits, Julie does overtone singing. I wonder if she gets a bit swamped at times, but they insist this is how they want it; it’s not a singer being accompanied by a pianist but a duo.
I go back stage at half time and we have a chat which eventually gets round to the factionalism that has plagued the improvised-music scene after the early idealistic days. K does an anti-factionalism rant, and Julie says that these things are natural and necessary when people are trying to find their way in a new development. “Props!” he snorts, “Crutches! Fuck’em!” They bicker on for a bit, then Keith says quietly, “you know, I could play a bit now”. I take a swift hit from a bottle of beer and we chatter away until we realise that Gordon’s cut the music and it’s time to go on.
We assume our reverent pre-performance stance, and the audience is ready, but I break the pre-gig quiet by confessing that I’ve forgotten to tune up, so all that kerfuffle breaks the ice a bit.
We start very quietly and mysteriously, but then there’s a kind of bluesy riff that develops, then a percussion bit. I use my jacket to muffle the strings, but unlike Raymond who empties his pockets before he goes on stage (and I’d been making jokes about at half time) my pocket are stuffed with rubbish, and my sunglasses, diary and ferry tickets fly across the stage. Julie rescues them “Oh no…!” she sings… Then there’s a kind of Kwela sounding thing, a big noisy minor bluesy thing and a very quiet ending with a trio of Keith, Julie and a music box.
Lots of applause, and we do that linking arms “1,2,3 bow” thing.
K&J’s old friend Sam is back stage, and she roars at them in broad Bristol: “Ello, mey Babbies!” I get my beer and go out front to see if I can start tidying up and punt some cds. I put my jacket on, but I’m in such a state that I don’t realise I’m still holding the beer bottle until I feel the liquid pouring down my back. Classic comedy: give the boy a drink then ask him for the time…. whoops!
We go down to the Mishnish where they have Fosters. It’s Karaoke night, and there are a fine range of singers. Keith dares to say what we are all thinking and suggests Julie go on and do Wheels on Fire, and for a moment she’s tempted…
We wind up in McGochan’s where there’s a two man heavy metal ceilidh band on. Then go happily and a bit drunk to bed.
Saturday 26th
Tourism day! Even better, tourism with a local. We’re supposed to meet at 11.30, and I think I’ll get there early to shmooze Gordon a bit. An Tobar is pretty busy, and I pounce on a couple of tourists from Seattle, Washington who are eyeing up the CDs. It seems they memorialise their holidays by collecting music by local musicians, so I go into the Isabella spiel. I open one up to let them hear a bit, and manage to snap the hinges off the cd case. Then the little teeth that hold the disc in the case snap off and bounce on the floor. After all that they don’t buy it. I go and get Julie & Keith and tell them about the very polite Canadian couple I met at breakfast. (This reminds me of a Canadian joke: how do you get 500 Canadians out of a swimming pool? You say “Please get out of the swimming pool.”) There’s a nuisance child being ignored by his parents who starts kicking my shins.
Gordon guides us (me driving, K&J in the back “canoodling”) to Croig, a minute harbour where coal, cattle, fish, lobsters and crabs have been landed for generations. We can see the point of Ardnamurchan and the islands of Rum, Eigg and/or Muck. It is extremely quiet, and the sea looks thick and glutinous. A couple of Dutch tourists are chatting to Nick the crab fisherman who is telling them tall tales about otters. Gordon introduces us and he tells us about how much trouble escaped mink have become. There is speculation that they have reached the Treshnish isles where they will cause terrible damage to the seabird colonies. They talk about the daft things tourists say. Nick was salting fish one day when somebody asked “where do these fish come from?” Then, when this didn’t get a very helpful answer, “where do you send them after this?” We put them back in the sea… Bright sunshine and short showers alternate for the rest of the day.
We move on to Calgary, and have lunch at the hotel. There’s a gallery and a kind of sculptors play park around a glen where sculptures emerge out of the trees. Julie loves it. It rains briefly and heavily. Gordon is chatting away to the hotel owner, and Julie’s looking at the pictures in the gallery, so Keith and I go out and sit in the sun for a bit. A party of young women cyclists come in, wearing waterproofs and skin tight cycling shorts. They look extremely fit. They fuss around for a bit, putting their gloves on the handle bars to dry, packing the waterproofs away, tidying up the panniers, doing a couple of little repairs. They all disappear into the trees. We sit peacefully in the warm sunshine for a bit, then Keith says, “you could crack walnuts with those thighs.”
Gordon suggests we go a slightly longer way back by way of Loch Tuath and some fantastic views. I miss the turn and have to go backwards getting a certain amount of humour about the clutch pedal exercising my thighs.
Going back to the Tobermory side of the Island, we pass the cyclists steadily pushing up a steep hill. I misjudge a passing place and reverse back to the previous one, nearly running one of them over. We all have a good stare at each other, and move on. We stop at the Mishnish for a pint and decide to go to the Sagar for dinner. I go back to the B&B and fall asleep. The curries are really good. The Seattle couple are there and the Other Gordon shows up later. We wander along the front for a drink in the Macdonald Arms. We pass the Youth Hostel and I catch a quick glimpse of the cyclists in the lounge. Keith looks again to check. It’s them all right….
