pigtown fling » festival

Port Charlotte Hotel

Stephen — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 23:41:31 +0000

Pigtown Fling will be playing an informal acoustic session during Feis Ile in the Port Charlotte Hotel, Port Charlotte, Islay on the evening of the 27th May 2010.

Kilchoman Distillery

Stephen — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:42:40 +0000

Pigtown Fling will be playing on Islay at the Kilchoman Distillery open day on 27th May 2010. This is part of Feis Ile, an annual celebration of malt whisky and music.

Dent Folk Festival, Cumbria

Stephen — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:19:12 +0000

Pigtown Fling will be playing at The Dent Folk Festival, Sedbergh, Cumbria, England on Friday 26th June 2009. Chris is unable to make it so Rab and Stephen will be playing as a duo.

carnival 09 promo video

Stephen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:23:07 +0000

Hotel Mitra created this short video to promote our visit to carnival in Ptuj.

Combourg, Brittany, France

Stephen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:29:58 +0000

Pigtown Fling will be playing in Combourg, Brittany, France on Saturday 8th August 2009.
More details to follow.

La Fresnais, Brittany, France

Stephen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:24:50 +0000

Pigtown Fling will be playing in La Fresnais, Brittany, France on Sunday 2nd August 2009.
We will be playing some of our usual repertoire, but a large part of the gig will involve teaching Scottish ceilidh dances and hopefully playing for a few Breton dances too. We will be taking our dear friend Christophe Lefebvre with us on second fiddle and translating duties.

La Fontenelle, Brittany, France

Stephen — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 07:17:48 +0000

Pigtown Fling will be playing in La Fontenelle, Brittany, France on Saturday 1st August 2009. We have been invited to play at the Friends of Jean Langlais Festival for a second year running.
We will be playing some of our usual repertoire, but a large part of the gig will involve teaching Scottish ceilidh dances and hopefully playing for a few Breton dances too. We will be taking our dear friend Christophe Lefebvre with us on second fiddle and translating duties.

Ptuj 09 – day 6 – babies and wine

Stephen — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 10:16:27 +0000

Today we had a delightful gig playing for a local Mother and Baby group… unlikely I know but we will play tunes at any opportunity. 2 of our friends are new mothers so this was our favour to them. It was really sweet and we played some gentle tunes and let the kids bang some drums and twang some strings. We all really enjoyed it.

That evening gig was billed as ‘The Scots get to know Slovenian wine’. I know, it’s a hard job. This involved us playing a few tunes in the hotel wine cellar, the wine expert talking for ages about wine, us playing a tune, wine expert talking and so on. The only down side, and it was a pretty big one, was that the wine cellar was very cool with a lot of moisture in the air. This played absolute havoc with the instruments, and Sara’s fiddle became unplayable. My pipe bag absorbed so much moisture it felt like we had been playing outside in the rain. We forced ourselves to taste some of the wine and eat some of the nibbles then went back upstairs to play some more where the instruments started to dry out and were impossible to tune.

After the gig we got dressed up on our Scottish Kurent costumes again and made our way to the carnival tent again where we did the polka with a couple of thousand others in equally ridiculous costumes.

ptuj 09 – day 5 – bagpipes vs accordion

Stephen — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 09:49:15 +0000

Today started with us donning our Scottish version of the Kurent costume. These were initially devised for our now dufunct Portuguese style pipe band that Rob and I used to play in. We marched around outside the hotel wearing these costumes as everybody made their way towards the town centre for the main carnival procession.

That evening’s gig was titled Scotland vs. Slovenia. There was a local accordion player who would play 3 sets, then we would play 3 sets. By this time we had abandoned all notions of PA and just wandered about gypsy style. We really enjoy this style of playing and seem to be doing it more often at home to, maybe we should make a feature of it.

After our gig we took it a wee bit easier, attempting to catch our breath and keep some energy for the rest of carnival.

jean langlais festival

rab — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:27:44 +0000

Les Amis de Jean Langlais Festival, La Fontenelle, Brittany, France

It’s not too long now before our main gig of the year; to play in the local chuch of Saint Samson. The festival is to be held in a small village in Brittany called La Fontenelle, a village of just over 500 inhabitants. It’s basically in the countryside, around 30 miles away from the nearest large town, Rennes.

The Journey

My journey there is going to be just plain crazy. But if I was ever to pick a way of getting anywhere, it would be the stupid way! I’m going on holiday to the Algrave, Portugal, on the 1st of July, coming back on the 16th, landing in Eat Midlands Airport at hopefully aroung 4am, driving up to Glasgow because I’m sharing the driving (it’s only fair), then getting picked up and driving all the way back down again to Bournemouth (I think), getting on a ferry to St Malo, and driving the 30 odd miles to La Fontenelle!

The Festival

The last I heard we were not going to be playing in the local church because the local priest said if we weren’t going to be playing any church related music, then we wouldn’t be suitable to play in a church. Fair enough. But I looked up the festival related website and we’re still billed to play there. I’ve played in a church once before, at a friend’s wedding, but this is another thing altogether. This festival has classically trained choirs and church organists and the like playing at it, and this wee band from Argyll are going to be the main end of festival entertainment. Quite nervous thinking about it. But I’m sure we will get our music across and our collective vibe will win the day.

The festival organisers asked us for a programme of music that we planned to play, something I have never had to come up with before. I’ve maybe used set lists, but never a set programme before.

Really looking forward to it all though. I may well be completely jaked by the time I get there, but at least I’ll be tanned and fabulous!