Nan Spowart spoke with Finlay MacDonald, director of piping at The National Piping Centre and artistic director for Piping Live!
1 Neilston and District Pipe Band
I GREW up in Neilston and this is the band where I started learning to play pipes.
My dad was the pipe major and for me it was what football and other sports are for other kids. My sister, my pals and cousins played in the band and my mum did the country dance group that went along with the band so it really was a family event. Pipe band practice was Tuesday and Thursday nights and we usually played in the parades or gigs at the weekend. It was a huge part of my life and really got me into piping in the first place.
I was about eight when I started but it was so ingrained in the family it just kind of happened. Like many things, when you get the bug, that’s it. It was very much a social thing for us too – it was our social life. I have fond memories of it as it really got me started on the pipes.
2 My passport
WE travelled a lot with the pipe band and by the time I was in fourth or fifth year at school, we were going to Japan, Spain, France and China. It was a real feeling of freedom to be able to do that.
I got the travel bug early on and travel has been a huge passion of mine. I’ve spent a lot of time travelling, not only for music, sometimes with friends.
3 Going to my Granny’s for Sunday Roast
THERE was no debate – the whole family went on a Sunday and it was the place where everyone met. My father’s mother was from Lewis and you have never seen a feed like this in all your life. But it was the craik as well and it sparked my passion for food.
I would sometimes go and help my gran and spend the afternoon cooking with her. She did not play an instrument but she sang all the tunes. Gaelic was her first language so she knew a lot of Gaelic songs.
She was one of 13 in the family and came down from Lewis to train as a nurse and ended up as a matron, having come down with just a few words of English. She married a guy from the next village to her in Lewis, another MacDonald who was down here as well. She would have been 100 last year and was an amazing character.
We would always just congregate there on a Sunday afternoon. It was a great way to round off the weekend and set you up for the week.
4 Cooking
LOTS of people play music for a hobby but I have done that as a career so cooking is my hobby. There is nothing better than going somewhere and learning what the local food is and how it is cooked.
For me, the food tells a huge part about the culture and the traditions of an area and my ideal pastime is planning a meal, getting the best ingredients and cooking for people.
I actually applied to MasterChef a few years ago and got an interview. It was the most terrifying moment of my life and I wondered what I had done. It was quite a long interview process but at the end I found out you had to be available from September to February and I had a lot of gigs lined up so I couldn’t do it.
I was slightly relieved. I think my weakness would be pastry. It’s not one of my strong points.
5 My family
MY wife, Joanna, and kids, Elliott (14) and Fionn (11), are a gamechanger.
Jo is from Buckinghamshire and was working for a marketing company when she got a bonus of a weekend of her choice at any MacDonald hotel in the UK. She chose Edinburgh, went with a pal and on the same fateful night my mate was getting married in the same hotel. I was piping at it and was in the residents’ bar at around 2am in the morning when Jo and her pal came in to see what the racket was. There we were playing tunes and having a craik so we invited her in and that was it.
We did the long-distance thing for a bit but as there is not a huge call for pipers in Buckinghamshire, she moved here. We’ve been married for 16 years and with the two boys it changed everything.
Some people see it as settling down and not doing much more but, for me, having that secure and positive family environment actually allowed me to do more. You have a base, you have a home, and it made me more creatively open and free. They are very supportive of all the stuff I do. The boys play the chanter but they are not overly keen and I am not going to force it.
I lost both my parents a few years ago within four months of each other and that was a tough time but having my family there and the support made a huge difference.
6 The National Piping Centre
WITHOUT a doubt that has been a huge part of my life. I reckon I got the first-ever lesson there from Pipe Major Angus MacDonald, the first teacher employed by the centre. He was in the process of moving to the centre so I got a wee show around before it even opened to the public. He helped me out massively and I ended up studying there through the RSAMD for the first-ever degree in traditional music. For me that was a huge thing.
Being in that environment with like-minded musicians and artists was a real formative part of my career and I think back to that so fondly because I was getting to play pipes all day every day, learn about tunes, write tunes, arrange music and work with other musicians. To me it was heaven on earth.
It was a real springboard too as I met people there in 1996 that I still work with and am extremely close to. It’s been a huge part of my life and friendships. The piping centre in some ways has been a full circle thing because three years ago I got the job of director here. It’s kind of mad to think that 27 years ago I was here as a young boy getting a lesson and now I am responsible.
7 My first album deal
THAT was with Foot Stompin’ Records just after I was finishing at the academy and was thanks to Simon Tournier at Hands Up For Trad and his mum and dad who ran the label at the time. It was a great opportunity to record my own music and form a band and I ended up touring after that and building up a reputation.
At that time an album was your passport to getting gigs and travelling. It was a real chance to get my music out there and work with musicians I wanted to work with. It was a huge turning point for me and I did another four or five albums after that.
8 Touring
THAT has been such a big part of my life. Being on the road with a band is a brilliant thing and such a great feeling for a musician. At the time I did not have my own family so you feel free, travelling and meeting people. When you get the chance to just play music in different places to different people it is a real privilege.
I always saw it like that. A lot of people see touring as a slog and it can be hard but at that time in my life, it just seemed liked a privilege. We went all over the States and all over Europe. You would think nothing of doing five weeks the States, just touring away and having a great time. It was pre-social media and mobile phones – I used to phone home once a fortnight to tell them I was still alive.
9 Piping Live!
I’VE been involved with that since the first one in 2004 when I was helping out. It’s great getting the opportunity to work with so many different people and just seeing how something can grow like that – not just in size but in name.
It has become very much part of the trad music scene and it’s not just a piping thing. It has opened up so much and I love the social aspect.
Putting bands on is amazing and some of them have been the best I have ever seen or played in, but there are moments where you just see folk sitting having a blether and catching up with pals and I just think that festival vibe is so important to us all. It’s not just having the music. It’s also the social element and the craik.
I feel very proud and privileged to be in the position of artistic director now, having worked on the festival for so long. It gives me a chance to see it from the other side as well. We were straight into Covid for the first one so we did it all online. The last two years have been hybrid so this is the first fully back.
Ticket sales are looking really healthy and we have quite a number of sell-out shows so far. We are still maintaining partial online stuff because I feel strongly that we were supported by people around the world for those three years and we can’t just withdraw that. We are still putting online stuff out there so we can engage with people all round the world.
10 Celtic Connections
AGAIN, I try and imagine my own career without that and it is just impossible. It has been such a support for musicians in Scotland to have a platform. From those very early days when I was just playing my first gigs, there was a platform there.
My dad was one of the first people to do the folky piping thing and they had to really fight to get their music heard anywhere. The fact that in Glasgow we now have one of the biggest Celtic festivals on the planet is an amazing support for us. It is a really special thing and there is a great community around it. We all like to catch up and play music with each other.
These festivals are so intrinsic to our scene and without them we would be so much worse off.
Piping Live! runs across Glasgow until Sunday, August 20. Tickets and more information available at www.pipinglive.co.uk.
