The Glenuig Festival CD

The local community of Glenuig spent twelve years raising funds for the building of Glenuig Hall. We held prize draws, raffles, raced plastic ducks down the River Nevis, and of course held eleven Glenuig Games & Music Festival Weekends on the first weekend in August from 1983 to 1993 inclusive.

The first Glenuig Music Festival catered to upwards of 1,000 people, at a time when there was no mains electricity in Glenuig. The festival lasted for 3 days and 3 nights and saw bands such as Ossian and the then recently formed Capercaillie take to the stage along with many highly accomplished local musicians, including the late Fearachar MacRath.

Against all the odds and some horrific logistics for a small community of less than 40 people, the first festival was a roaring success and laid the pattern for many more to follow.

The marquees grew and shrank, the rain came and occasionally went, the midges held their annual feast.
Sometimes we even had toilets.

Over the years the festivals brought a wide variety of performing talent to the village. As well as established bands booked for the event, many well-known musicians came along for the craic and either played solo or came together to form impromptu one-off acts (such as Easy Seats on the CD featuring members of both Easy Club and Eat the Seats).

Cassette tapes and CDs of the Tenth Glenuig Music Festival are available by post. Tapes cost £9.00, CDs £12.00 (plus 50p per order for p&p). Please send cheques made out to Glenuig Community Association to Glenuig Hall, Glenuig, Lochailort PH38 4NG. For further information please contact Eoghan Carmichael on 01687 470267. E-mail GCA@glenuig.org.uk

The contributions from these musicians who often appeared for free or greatly reduced fees helped tremendously in making the festivals a success and also in enabling us to achieve our goal in raising funds for our new hall. We thank them all for their support throughout the years, as without them the Glenuig Music Festivals would not have been possible and Glenuig Hall may not have become a reality.

The Glenuig Music Festivals became very popular events and were a regular fixture in many calendars for the first weekend in August. We are very grateful to our many friends who helped to organise these events and who assisted in managing them on the day - we had helpers from all over the country doing everything from helping to erect tents (and take them down again), ticket sales, helping at the bar, organising games during the day, feeding the hungry (Alan & Mary Ann of Roshven Farm did some spectacular barbeques), cleaning toilets (when we had them) and generally helping out whenever and wherever necessary. Many thanks to all those who helped out

To celebrate ten years of the Glenuig Music Festival a recording was made of the 1992 Festival. The music released on the subsequent CD is a selection of the best from the Tenth Glenuig Music Festival. The choice of tracks is due as much to the quality of the original recordings as to the musical content. Tracks by the same artists and others appearing at the festival had to be omitted due to too much interference from dogs, generators or audiences noises - it was a truly live festival. Our thanks go to all those artists featured on the CD for their permission to use these recordings, and to all those who played at the Glenuig Music Festivals. Also to Nick Turner of Watercolour Music who produced the CD for us, and to Billy MacKail who sat through many many hours of sometimes poor quality recordings to find the gems we have on this CD.

Tracks featured on the CD are:

1 Iain MacDonald & Jim Sutherland (pipes & drum)

2 & 3 Ian Strachan & Veronique Nelson (guitar & fiddle)

4 Gail & Leza Niblock (gaelic song)

5 & 6 Michael Marra (fine Scottish singer/songwriter)

7 Simon Thoumire & Jim Sutherland (concertina & drum)

8 Fiona MacLeod (gaelic song)

9 Paul MacDonald (Mouthie) with Ben Wyvis

10 Dave NcNally (pipes)

11 Ben Wyvis & the Last Resort (great dance band)

12 Eat the Seats (up the tempo!)

13 Easy Club (renowned Scottish band)

14 Michael Marra (again)

15 Annette Milne (a mighty singer)

16 & 17 Easy Seats (members of Easy Club & Eat the Seats)

18 Duncan MacGillvary (wonderful piper & multi-instrumentalist)

19 The Glenooligans (local youngsters)