Classic Album - 'Home Is Where the Van Is'
Saturday 24th January
ABC
Time: 7pm
Tickets: £15
Find out more and book tickets on http://www.celticconnections.com/whatson/event/79268

This one-off show will feature the Battlefield Band's 1980's line-up alongside today’s, uniting Alan Reid, Brian McNeill, Duncan MacGillivray, Ged Foley, Mike Katz, Alasdair White and Sean O’Donnell, to perform material from both Home Is Where the Van Is and the band’s recent repertoire.
As classic albums arguably should, the Battlefield Band’s 1980 album Home Is Where the Van Is enraged purists aplenty on its release, but is now justly regarded as a landmark in the contemporary evolution of Scottish folk music.
Its pioneering integration of non-traditional instruments like synthesiser, electric piano and harmonica with fiddle and bagpipes proved an enduring inspiration to countless other musicians – among them being current Battlefield Band fiddler, Alasdair White, who recalls hearing it in his father’s record collection as a child.
It also marked longtime member Brian McNeill’s first notable emergence as a songwriter, in The Lads O’ the Fair, and was the group’s debut release in America.
Donald Shaw, the artistic director of Celtic Connection and one of the founder members of the group Capercaillie, stated at the festival's press conference that this particular album had been particularly influential on him and had a very important effect on the way that he thought about Scottish music.

A couple of quotes from "It's not the time you have"
Notes and Memories of Music Making with Martyn Bennett

Brian McNeill advised Martyn that

"If he was annoying the traddies he had to be doing something right, for there was an element amongst them which would always bleat against anyone who used the tradition as a foundation stone instead of a fossil"

How true.

Brian also comments "We (Himself and Martyn) agreed that the OLD fogeys weren't the problem, it was the YOUNG ones you had to watch out for "

...Emphasis and text in parenthesis are mine........

Although not everything which is done in the name of innovation always pleases me, I have to say "How true" once again!
Especially after the comments by some of contributors to the "folk label" thread whom I suspect are much younger than me.

I particularly like his album of Scottish songs - Astral Breeks.