Salut! Live

I’m not going to do the full setlist here—there’s one on a Spotify playlist—but here’s some highlights. In the first half, her self-written song Machir Bay is a sunny song—literally and metaphorically—about a day out on a beach on the whisky paradise that is Islay. It’s a got a jazzy tinge, and I can imagine other people covering this.

Dh’Eirich Mi Moch Madainn Chétein is a Hebridean waulking song—as in “waulking the tweed”, a process that used to take hours. Hammill found this work song while co-editing a new book of Gaelic songs, which also seems to have been a slow process. She managed to get us to sing along to the Gaelic chorus, which was a first, at least for me.

Hamill was a bit apologetic about the highlight of the first half, a Gaelic version of the gospel song Sinnerman, best known in Nina Simone’s version.

Her translation—Pheacaich—came out of a project called G-Jazz, which paired Hamill and another Gaelic singer (hence the G) with a jazz group in Glasgow. On record her arrangement is a rich and distinctively Scottish piece of folk rock. On stage Toby Shaer’s guitar drives the song along, while Sam Kelly fills in some electric guitar riffs.

During the second half she breaks into the Fable set to play a couple of numbers from her earlier record, Not Just Ship Land, a set of self-written songs about Govan in Glasgow, the gritty working class area on the south side of the Clyde that was once the home of the city’s shipbuilding industry.

As with Machir Bay, the title track—also written by Hamill—is a portrait of a place that brings it to life in song.

The Belle of the Ball is a celebration of someone who ought to be one of Govan’s sporting heroes. Belle Moore took part in the 1912 Olympics, the first where women were allowed to compete, and won a gold medal in the 4 x 100m relay. Moore is still the youngest British woman to win an Olympic gold—she was 17 at the time—and was for more than a hundred years the only Scots woman to win a swimming gold. (“I didn’t realise the Scots were so bad at swimming”, said Hamill as she introduced the song.)

The Cailleach, also in the second half, is a traditional song about the woman of winter (definitely a track for my annual off-centre winter compilation when I get to it in December), and a reminder of the old tales and stories that run through Fable. The opening song of the set, Cumha An Eich-Uisge, is the story of a shape-shifting water horse trying to regain the affections of a woman who has had his child.

And yet, on Spotify, Ainsley Hamill barely has more hits than my son’s hobbyist electro music—it’s another reminder of how Spotify’s algorithms do folk music and folk musicians a huge disservice.

We have put together a playlist highlighting tracks from her solo records, from her time with Barluath and a couple of her collaborations, but to support folk acts you really need to buy things from them or at least send them the price of a coffee if you do listen them on Spotify.

Listening to Ainsley Hamill on her recordings and at the gig, she stands comparison with the queen of Scots music, Capercaillie’s Karen Matheson. I don’t say this lightly.

Hamill has a big voice, with a lot of range and a lot variation. She’s as comfortable singing a traditional English language shanty as a Gaelic lament, and switches easily between the two traditions. There were times listening to her in the hall when her singing made my spine tingle. Indeed, stumbling across Fable and exploring Hamill’s back catalogue as a result has been one of the highlights of my musical year so far.

It can be hard to get visibility in the British folk scene from Scotland, especially when you’re largely financing your records yourself—Hamill got a small grant to help with the marketing of Fable. All the same, I’m pretty sure that she’s going to be playing to bigger audiences and bigger venues than the compact Irish Cultural Centre fairly soon. She ought to be.

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