Sidewaulk

A wonderful album,
The first of Capercaillie, very cool. Listen the Gesto Reel with a spichotic Donald Shaw on Box.
🙂
A beautiful tune composed by McKerron “Maureen Kennelly’s ” enjoy for Fiddlers !!!

Jonathan

Actually, this was at at least their third recording -- they did a soundtrack album called “The Blood is Strong”, and their first “real” album was called “Crosswinds”. Sidewaulk is still one of my favorite records, and I like the way it really demonstrates Capercaillie’s unique sound, but remains very traditional. Great cover too!

Greg

Silly Wizard delivered better, precisely because their material wasn’t and maybe couldn’t have been so smoothly and hygienically (!) arranged as Capercaillie’s. In the Scottish TM cafe, Caper serves up the latte where Silly Wizard served up pints of espresso. For all that, “Both Sides The Tweed” on this album is a beauty.

Capercaillie’s first album was “Cascade”.

Sidewaulk is the album that actually sewed the seeds of diddley music in me brain, though it took about a decade for them to sprout… this crowd made it all accessible to my jazz-oriented ears, combining brilliant precision playing with very interesting harmonic backdrops… not to mention the lovely vocals. Worth revisiting anytime.

Any relation?

Mrs Campbell of Shinness is played on both track 1 & track 2, but in different keys.

The 3rd jig on track 2 is just called “Irish jig” on the cassette tape sleeve I have, but it’s “Seamus’s / Jimmy Wards”, only played in “D”, rather than what I believe was the original key of “G” in Ireland. If you come across this tune in a session in Scotland, it’s most likely tp be played in “D”, and the reason for that can be traced back to the popularity of this recording.
The last reel on track 4 is in the sleeve notes as “Maire’s”, which refers to the composer / fiddler Maire Breathnach. It’s the first of a pair of reels composed by her, collectively entitled “Branohm”, and again, made popular in Scotland through this recording, I would say.