Capercaillie - Biography
By Scott Feemster
Capercaillie are a contemporary Scottish band that blends traditional Scottish and Celtic music with modern instrumentation and influences, including bringing in elements from rock, pop, new age and electronic dance music. Though they are seen by fans of traditional Celtic music as being controversial for their embrace of other musics, they have become one of the most popular Celtic bands both in Great Britain and thoughout the world.
The original nucleus of what would become Capercaillie were three high school friends who met each other while attending school in Oban, in the west of Scotland. Donald Shaw, who was born in England but raised in Scotland, was a keyboard player who had played in several bands in the area, including some with bodhran and whistle player Marc Duff. The two got together with vocalist Karen Matheson, a grand-daughter of noted traditional Scottish vocalist Elizabeth MacNeill, and liked the sound of what they were coming up with, and decided to form a full band around the songs they were writing together and the traditional Gaelic songs that Matheson had learned from her grandmother. The trio recruited bass and fiddle player Martin MacLeod, fiddler and vocalist Joan MacLachlan and guitar and bouzouki player Shaun Craig to complete the new band Capercaillie, named after a grouse species native to Scotland. The band played around their local area, and eventually, all over Scotland, and built up a strong reputation as a new force in traditional Scottish music. In 1984, the group gathered together some of their material and entered the studio to record their first record, Cascade, recorded in just three days and released on the small independent label Taynuilt. The album relied heavily on traditional Scottish and Celtic tunes, many of them sung in Gaelic, and showed the first signs of Capercaillie using more modern keyboard sounds and dance rhythms mixed with their more traditional sound.
The band continued to play gigs and became popular enough to attract the attention of Celtic music label Green Linnet, who signed the group in time to release their next album Crosswinds (1987). Crosswinds continued the modern Celtic sound the band was developing, mixing in funk basslines and modern keyboard sounds and non-Celtic percussion in with the group's rendition of mostly traditional Celtic reels and dance songs. After the release of the album, Capercaillie embarked on it's first American tour, which brought them to the attention of a whole new audience. The line-up of the group had shifted by the time of sessions for their third album. MacLeod, MacLachlan and Craig were gone, and were replaced by fiddler Charlie McKerron, bassist and guitarist John Saich, and bouzouki and guitar player Manus Lunny, an Irishman from a distinguished family of traditional Irish musicians. Their third album, The Blood Is Strong (Green Linnet)(1988), was actually the soundtrack to a BBC Channel 4 documentary about the history of the Gaelic Scots. The documentary and the accompanying album exposed the band to audiences all across the United Kingdom, and was wildly popular in the band's native Scotland, going on to sell more than 100,000 copies in that country alone.
For the band's next album, Sidewaulk (Green Linnet)(1989), the band tapped Manus Lunny's famous traditional Irish musician brother Donal to produce, and introduced more English language songs into their repertoire, most likely to attract more of the non-Celtic audience who had found out about the group from the success of The Blood Is Strong. The group continued to build upon their successes and the time seemed to be right for them to break out into even bigger success. In 1991, Capercaillie released Delirium (Green Linnet), an album that was a true fusion of all of the band's traditional influences mixed with modern production and instrumentation. Delerium also introduced both programmed and live drums into the Capercaillie sound.The album included the song “Coisich A Ruin”, a 400-year old traditional Scottish song that was released as a single, and went on to become the first song sung in Scots Gaelic to reach the U.K. Top 40, due, most likely, to it being used as the theme song for a BBC program featuring Prince Charles titled A Prince Among Islands. Another song from the album, “Breisleach”, featured lyrics penned by Edinburgh poet Angus Dudb, and went on to become the theme song of the Gaelic language serial program Machair. Because of the group's seamless mix of old and new and modern production sheen, they have been often compared to Ireland's Clannad, though it seems that Capercaillie have kept much more of their links to traditional dance music and have kept more of their material bouncy and upbeat.
Capercaillie followed up the acclaim granted them for Delerium with the mostly-live album Get Out (Green Linnet) in 1992, and introduced drummer James Mackintosh into the band's line-up. Get Out was followed by Secret People (Green Linnet) in 1993, again produced by Donal Lunny and again featuring the band's now-trademark blend of traditional Celtic tunes mixed with their original material. The album was a hit across the U.K. and reached as high as #40 in the album charts. The self-titled 1995 album Capercaillie (Arista) was a mix of older material and electronic dance re-mixes on the band's one and only major label release. The group returned to it's more traditional roots when they were asked to score the Liam Neeson/Jessica Lange movie Rob Roy in 1995. The band, now minus Mackintosh, returned to Green Linnet for it's next album, 1996's To The Moon. During 1996, Matheson also recorded her debut solo album, The Dreaming Sea (Survival). To The Moon, and it's follow-up, Beautiful Wasteland (Rykodisc)(1997) further refined the band's traditional/modern hybrid, and garnered favorable reviews. The group recorded the album in the Andalucian Mountains in Spain, and introduced drummer Wilf Taylor, percussionist David “Chimp” Robertson and whistle and flute player Micheal McGoldrick into the line-up. In 1998, Capercaillie made available the album Glenfinnan (Songs of the '45) exclusively through mail order. The music was composed in 1995 for a BBC Scotland program about the 250th anniversary of the last Jacobite rebellion.
Capercaillie didn't release another album until 2000.By this time, founding member Marc Duff had left, as well as bassist John Saich, who was replaced by bassist Ewan Vernal. The band's old drummer James Mackintosh was also back in the line-up. Nadurra (Survival) was hailed as a return to form for the band, as they seemed to balance their mix of traditional and modern in more subtle and nuanced arrangements. Nadurra was followed up by the live album Capercaillie Live In Concert (Valley)(2002), documenting a home town performance by the band in January of 2002 at the Royal Concert Hall in Glasgow. 2003 saw the release of Choice Language (Sanctuary), which saw the band introduce more world-beat elements into their Celtic sound. Over the course of the next few years, the members of Capercaillie worked outside of the group in various capacities, but eventually joined together again to record and release Roses And Tears (Vertical), a fine return to form with the emphasis on more traditional Celtic material. The album featured the talents of new drummer Che Beresford.
