Beyond presents:
C.Macleod
+ Liam Ross + Sam Cain
Entry Requirements: 18+
A farmer from the Isle of Lewis makes a debut album with the intensity of Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness On The Edge Of Town. It may seem surprising, but Colin Macleod’s influences are the same: wide open spaces, hard physical work, and a love for his local community – though in this case, a community that goes back 600 years. Bloodlines is folk music, according to producer Ethan Johns (Ryan Adams, Kings Of Leon), but not as you’ve heard it before. Modern, moody and epic, the album owes more to The National or My Morning Jacket than Hebridean reels. Just don’t expect Colin to go on tour at lambing time.
Macleod had always been inspired by American artists, as by all the Scottish rock bands who’ve embarked on that long-established musical trade route across the Atlantic. But it was producer Ethan Johns, whom he befriended on a short solo tour, who told him he was actually writing Scottish folk songs.
“Ethan said, these are really traditional Gallic songs,” he recalls. “You’re rewiring old stories of ghosts, seafarers. It wasn’t until he pointed it out that I realised that’s what it was!”
And that’s what’s unique about Bloodlines. Macleod’s music is folk music in its attitude rather than technique - filled with ancient archetypes and an overwhelming sense of the landscape, all in a modern, cinematic setting.
So at the end of the day, what does it really mean to be a country boy? “When you’re from a place that is really beautiful, you struggle to be anywhere else,” Macleod explains simply. “There is a Gallic phrase, a Lewis man would be homesick in heaven, and it’s true. When I was younger, I used to get stressed thinking the island would disappear. If I stayed away too long, I’d look back one day and it would be gone.”
Now, he finally has music and island life in balance. “Having my feet on the ground fuels my song-writing,” he says. “Everything I draw on from comes from being outside.” Bloodlines is proof that folk music is really a way of seeing the world.