September 2004 Feature: Campbell and MacNeil

THAT THE MUSIC scene in Stornoway and the Isle of Lewis in general is in robust good shape and firing on all creative cylinders at present is old news, with a string of original, energetic talents having emerged to form such embryonic icons as Sign Red, among other notable bands. But what was good has just gotten better with the return of the native, Willie Campbell.

Willie Campbell

Tolsta’s Willie Campbell will be familiar to pop-pickers for his seminal song writing and guitar work at the helm of the once mighty Astrid. But Willie, having parted company with his erstwhile Astrid chums, is now back in the northern Atlantic and blowing up a storm of new material.

Some of that material had a first outing in early September in a set that also premiered Willie’s new project with stellar Lewis poet, novelist and generally inspirational creator, Kevin MacNeil. Their union looked good in theory, bringing together two of the island’s most vaunted artists of the contemporary generation, both of whom have recently returned to live on the island.

But, as with all cross art forms collaborations, the proof would be found in how they manage to negotiate the intertwining of two usually isolated elements.

Speaking during a hastily grabbed interview a few hours before the start of their maiden gig, Kevin was clear that working with Willie was a not a reflex against the strictures of the blank page but an embracing of the potentialities offered in such collaborations:

“One of the beauties of being a writer is that you can, quite literally, do anything. Quite literally you can create and destroy worlds, but my incentive for doing this is very, very simple and it is that I love music, almost every kind of music.

“It’s very unpretentious, and we’ve an unspoken commitment towards providing something that is entertaining rather than self indulgent.”

“I’ve collaborated with visual artists before and I’ve done bits and pieces with other musicians for television and film before, but I’m excited about this project because it exemplifies the fact that for one reason or another a lot of artists who went away from the island to make a name for themselves are now gravitating back to the island, in that magnetic way that islands have, and right now it seems like a very, very exciting time to be doing what we are doing. I hope that this is just the beginning of lots more collaboration between various arts.

“In terms of what I’m doing with Willie, I hope that it is the kind of music that would convert some music fans to liking literature and some literature fans into liking music. It’s very unpretentious, and we’ve an unspoken commitment towards providing something that is entertaining rather than self indulgent.

“The first we wrote took its title from a compilation disc of island bands called ‘Local Man Ruins Everything’, and we made a song that takes a wry look at what it is like being an artist living and working in this community, because, it must be said, this community has not always valued its artists, and that’s changing now. Ever since I moved back a year ago, and I hadn’t lived here since I was 18 and I am now 32, I’ve seen a lot of changes in the attitude toward artists.”

Willie Campbell and Kevin MacNeil

For Willie, the return home, life without Astrid, the start of a new project with Kevin, the development of his own solo material and forming a new band with Sign Red’s Calum Macleod, means a new found freedom and an opportunity to push the frontiers of his work. But Willie remains bashful about the claim – universally agreed as it is – that Astrid were one of the seminal starting points in the growth of self-belief and success for a new generation of island rock and pop musicians, especially as they did it all on their own terms:

“The break-up with Astrid”, says Willie “means that I won’t have to pander to anyone else anymore or to my friends, because in Astrid we were all friends. It means that I won’t have to change anything for anyone, I won’t have to make compromises.”

On Monday night’s showing any residual bitterness over the split is clearly being channelled into the formation of a new set of solo material that reveals quite how far Willie’s song writing has developed.

“It was a set that few present will forget in a hurry.”

Kevin and Willie’s set featured ‘Local Man Ruins Everything’ and was constructed around Kevin reading short passages of text against a melodic accompaniment by Willie on guitar and singing a chorus.

Kevin’s writing for these songs is witty and shaded with dark ironies and with Willie’s gentle backing the effect created is disarmingly ambiguous and engaging, a factor heightened by the differences in their respective performance manners with the laid-back, laconic humour of Macneil, against the intensity of Campbell. On this showing, the collaboration has huge potential to become one of the most original acts around.

After the duet, Willie played a handful of new solo songs and each underlined the fact that the ex-Astrid man is a song writer and singer of immense sensitivity, honesty and imagination. Bitterness, longing, hope, despair all are present in equal measure in his music, but the achievement is all the greater for the troubling ambiguity that he brings to his music.

Here are lessons learned from Lou Reed and Michel Stipe, that the power of strong emotion is accelerated by understatement and by the proximity of seemingly conflicting musical moods - darkness and light blended in every single moment. It was a set that few present will forget in a hurry. This is powerful music delivered with raw emotion by a song writer who is lyrically and musically inventive, and who is surely on his way back to the top.

Willie Campbell performs at the Market Bar in Inverness on Saturday 11 September, as part of the goHI festival.

Willie Campbell and Kevin MacNeil play Inverness Book Festival on Friday 8
October at Eden Court Theatre.

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