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<< Dougie Maclean
LONG-AWAITED DOUGIE MACLEAN CD, INSIDE THE THUNDER, SET FOR RELEASE FROM BLIX STREET RECORDS
The U.S. release of his new recording, INSIDE THE THUNDER from Blix Street Records, and a ten-city tour guarantee a very busy February in the States for Scotland’s Dougie MacLean. Long in the forefront of the Scottish music scene and an international folk hero, Dougie MacLean is known for his rich imagery, lyrical melodies and an innovative style deeply rooted in his Scottish heritage.
MacLean’s upcoming tour will take him to select folk venues on both coasts beginning Friday, February 3 at the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. Concurrently, his long-awaited new CD, INSIDE THE THUNDER will become available in the U.S. with its national release slated for February 21, 2006.
Recorded in the summer and autumn of 2005 at MacLean’s Butterstone Studios in Perthshire, Scotland, INSIDE THE THUNDER is the singer/songwriter/ musician’s first solo studio album of original material in some four years. In words and music, it is traditional Dougie, and, in a bow to new MacLean traditions, it was produced by his son Jamie.
The album takes its name from a line in “Song for Johnny,” written in memory of MacLean’s good friend Johnny Cunningham. A fiddler and composer, Cunningham was an extraordinary talent, a man of good will and a founder of the seminal Silly Wizard, a band in which MacLean once played.
MacLean’s vocals and acoustic guitar are the heart and soul of the album’s ten original songs. Two of them— “Seventh Sea” and “It’s Not For Me”—are pure Dougie MacLean:
vocals and acoustic guitar. On the eight other tracks, MacLean is joined by musicians, including Jamie MacLean (percussion, keyboards, drums), Ali Ferguson (electric guitar), Greg Lawson (violin, viola), and Owen Nicholson (lap steel guitar, dobro, Weisenborn) and backing vocalists Fraser Anderson and Julia MacLean.
MacLean’s less-is-more approach to vocals, composing, playing and arranging plus his unerring ear for instrumentation breathe life into each and every track. Viola and violins open the boundaries in “Open Fields.” Lap steel guitar fuels “Into The Flames.” Bagpipes and whistle are central to “Eternally You” and a dobro underlies “Home.” Gently reflective and driven, the measured instrumentation of “Seventh Sea,” “Not Look Down” and “Strathmore” provides fertile, rewarding ground for MacLean’s incisive and searching vocals.
INSIDE THE THUNDER is the eighth Dougie MacLean release on Blix Street Records under an exclusive agreement with the artist’s Dunkeld Records. It follows Blix Street’s most recent release of LIVE – From the Ends of the Earth and PERTHSHIRE AMBER, a musical suite in four parts, and is the latest in a catalogue that features RIOF, TRIBUTE, MARCHING MYSTERY, INDIGENOUS and the classic CRAIGIE DHU.
Dougie MacLean’s upcoming concert dates are as follows:
February 3 - The Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, MA; 4 - Center for the Arts of Homer, Homer, NY; 6 - Institute of Musical Traditions, Rockville, MD; 10 - Sebastopol Community Center, Sebastopol, CA; 11 - Lobero Theater, Santa Barbara, CA; 12 - Sherwood Auditorium, MCASD, La Jolla, CA; 15 - Community Center for the Performing Arts, Eugene, OR; 17 - Hollywood Theatre, Portland, OR; 18 - Town Hall, Seattle, WA; and 19 - Discovery Theatre, Anchorage, AK.
MacLean will return to the U.S. in September for another cross-country round of tour dates, many yet-to-be-added. To date, September includes East Coast concert dates in Virginia, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire and, on the West Coast, an appearance at the legendary Annual Celtic Festival in Grass Valley, California.
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For further information and review copies, contact: Sharon Weisz or Elizabeth Pendleton,
W3 Public Relations, 323-852-1043, w3pr@yahoo.com
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