‘Where God’s taking us’

UNTIL everything ground to a halt a year ago, it felt like music from the Highlands and islands of Scotland was having a ‘moment’.

Fuelled by social media, bands like Tide Lines and Peat & Diesel – both less than five years old – have achieved mainstream chart success, while longer established groups such as Skippinish, Skerryvore and Manran have hit new heights, playing to thousands in iconic venues such as Barrowlands and the Usher Hall.

While the styles of music vary enormously, from the traditional pipes and accordion of Skippinish to celtic-accented pop of Tide Lines and the anarchic folk-punk of Peat & Diesel, all of them are firmly rooted in the Highlands and islands, and the various threads – language and history, a deep connectedness to land and sea – that make up the tartan of Highland culture.

Of course, another of those threads is faith.

Robert Robertson is a singer and songwriter who was the voice of Skippinish for several years, before forming Tide Lines in 2016. Announcing themselves on YouTube with the endlessly catchy Far Side of the World (the original video now has nearly a million views), by 2019 they could sell out the 1900-capacity Barrowlands within a few minutes of tickets going on sale, and in June last year their second album reached number 12 in the UK album charts.

Robert is quite happy to describe himself as a Christian and says that his personal faith ‘has a huge influence on my life’. While his songs are not overtly Christian, he regularly explores issues around spirituality and the big questions.

“I don’t like to analyse my own writing,” he says, “But there are moments that are spiritual. These are not necessarily there deliberately or consciously but are probably a result of the way I was brought up as a Christian and also my musical influences.

To take one example, I’m a massive fan of Bruce Springsteen and there’s a lot of spirituality in his writing that, on an average listen, you wouldn’t necessarily find and I think that’s something I find really powerful.

“I love hymn music and the church hymnary, but I also love it when you find spirituality in songs when you least expect it.

There can be moments in pop music and rock ‘n’ roll music when you suddenly realise there’s something spiritual – or at least it can feel spiritual to you, whether or not it was intended as such.

“The thing about religion is that everybody has their own experience of it, and that’s also the thing about music. You and I could be standing at a gig and we could both be belting out a song and it could mean everything to both of us, but for entirely different reasons, and I think that’s the beauty of music. Somebody could be reduced to tears by a song for reasons of faith, and somebody else could be reduced to tears by exactly the same song for a completely different reason.” He cites a song they released last year, Shadow to the Light, which includes the line ‘No matter what lies ahead of us now we’ll be okay’.

“We wrote that long before anyone had heard of coronavirus, but we rerecorded it literally the week they announced the first lockdown. We were recording in Glasgow, and I was waiting on lockdown being called because I was going to be away back up to the Highlands so that I didn’t get trapped in my flat in Glasgow for months on end.

“So it was one of my last days in Glasgow and we recorded this wee acoustic version of Shadow to the Light, and we put it out – just that line and the video – around about the time we went into lockdown. And everybody who commented talked about that lyric and how they would hold onto it through the weeks that lay ahead of us.

“And I suppose if you’re looking for faith in those words then it’s there. But at the same time if you’re not looking for faith in a religious sense then there’s hopefully some kind of comfort in those words anyway just from the belief and the hope and the optimism.” A large part of it, he says, is the Gaelic culture, not just the language of the Highlands but the history (the legacy of the Clearances being a frequently recurring theme for many Highland bands) and way of life, as well as the music.

“It’s a massive influence, particularly musically. We’re basically a pop or rock band, but all four of us in the band have been strongly influenced by folk and Gaelic music as we’ve grown up, and I really don’t think we could produce something that isn’t rooted in Gaelic, even if we wanted to. And it’s the melodies where that reveals itself.”

Tide Lines – Robert Robertson second from left

And he has rock royalty to back him up. “Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones said that the foundation of all rock ‘n’ roll music is obviously blues, but also Scottish and Irish Celtic music, and he justified that by saying it’s all about simple melodies. Melodies are always most beautiful when they’re simple.

“When I read that it totally blew my mind, because it gave me an understanding of all the music I enjoyed listening to. Suddenly it all connected – the reason I love rock music and pop music so much is that it actually comes from the same music that I come from essentially. So I think that’s the best way to explain how Gaelic manifests itself in Tide Lines.

“We always include Gaelic songs in our sets and on our albums, so we can turn to the audience, and particularly people who haven’t heard us before, and say the songs we write are in English, 99% of what we write is our own material but to give it some kind of context and to give you some kind of understanding, this is where it came from.” Another band exploring the meeting place of Scottish music and faith from a different angle is the overtly Christian Celtic Worship.

“The thing about religion is that everybody has their own experience of it, and that’s also the thing about music. You and I could be standing at a gig and we could both be belting out a song and it could mean everything to both of us, but for entirely different reasons, and I think that’s the beauty of music.

Formed less than half a decade ago, they have amassed a worldwide fanbase playing well-known hymns such as Be Thou My Vision and How Great Thou Art on traditional instruments.

The band was founded by fiddler Mhairi Marwick and her husband Scott Wood, who plays pipes and whistles. They agree that there are a lot of faith ties for musicians from the Highlands and islands, who have grown up steeped in a culture where going to church was the norm.

They also suggest that growing up in such a beautiful part of the world lends itself to thoughts about faith and the big questions.

“Looking at these beautiful places, it’s hard to think that all of this comes out of nothing,” says Scott.

Mhairi said the idea for Celtic Worship ‘just happened’ one Christmas while they were visiting her family home in the north east. “We were playing some hymns with my mum on the piano, and while we were playing we just said ‘it would be so good if there was a band that could intertwine Scottish instruments and that Scottish sound but with hymns and worship music’.

“So we just collected a bunch of other people who were all Christians and all musicians, although all the work we did was secular except when playing at our churches on a Sunday. The only person we didn’t know was Steph [Macleod, the popular Scottish singer and worship leader], but somebody recommended him and he was really up for it too, so we met up for some rehearsals and it started from there.” Scott says: “The idea was just to take the really old hymns that anyone would recognise and put a Scottish twist on them.

We try to think about whether the melody is Scottish enough – it doesn’t have to be written in Scotland, but could you imagine people singing it on their croft? That’s how we imagine the songs to see if they would fit with the band. There have been one or two that we’ve tried and didn’t work, but generally we can tell what will be a good one.” Mhairi adds: “I think that’s partly why it’s reached so many people. Because these songs mean a lot to people all over the world, in different languages, they just resonate with a lot of people.” Their first ‘gig’ was accompanying worship in a Glasgow church during the Celtic Connections festival in January 2017, and from there it has grown ‘more than we ever would have imagined’ says Mhairi. “We’re just so thankful it seems to have reached a lot of people around the world.”

Celtic Worship on Songs of Praise – Mhairi Marwick second from left and Scott Wood far right

Celtic Worship

“A large factor for me in becoming a Christian was music, and seeing a lot of great Christian music acts. Some people connect with God through reading the Bible and others connect more through listening to worship music or through songs, and I really believe it will help bring people to God.

“We’ve got a lot of people who keep in touch and follow us online from America, Australia, literally all around the world,” says Scott. “It is just amazing to get these old songs and put a new twist on them, and be able to share them with the rest of the world.

“A lot of times, people have messaged from America saying they’ve used our version of a song at their father’s funeral, or through a hospital operation, or significant moments like that. It connects them to God, but also to their cultural heritage back in Scotland, so they link to it in two different ways.” Scott has a foot in both camps, as a member of another popular celtic rock group, Skerryvore. He says that his colleagues in the secular music world are ‘really supportive’. “I think we were all a bit hesitant going into it, because it feels like two very separate worlds, but every time we’ve done something or talked about this I have so many conversations with people saying ‘I’ve seen you doing the Celtic Worship stuff, I think that’s amazing’.

“A lot of it is really resonating with musicians as well. Because we’re musicians they’re used to hearing in other bands, but they’re seeing us in a different context.

We did a concert at Tiree Music Festival, which is a secular music festival but we got to do Sunday morning worship playing on the main stage. And lots of the musicians who were also playing at the festival got up early and came along, and were talking and raving about it which was just so nice to hear. And it makes them ask questions about God or think about life a wee bit as well.

“A large factor for me in becoming a Christian was music, and seeing a lot of great Christian music acts. Some people connect with God through reading the Bible and others connect more through listening to worship music or through songs, and I really believe it will help bring people to God.” Mhairi says: “We’ve had so many emails and messages from people who might have had faith when they were younger, but listening to the music just resonated with them and brought them back to their faith.” Celtic Worship, like Tide Lines, have seen their social media engagement increase over the past year – Scott says the number of people watching their YouTube videos tripled in lockdown – and with a second album due to be released this year and a major tour to be rescheduled, they say they’re ‘looking forward to where God’s taking us’. “We might come out of this with a lot more people wanting to worship with us, hopefully.”

This article appears in the March 2021 Issue of Life and Work

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