The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
AREAL GONEKID
Deacon Blue drummer and TV presenter Dougie Vipond talks music and beating Covid p4
Homegrown hyacinths. Home-baked soda bread. Being cooped up is certainly producing results.
Over the last few days, tomatoes and sweet peas have been sown.
Now tucked into small pots and ready to germinate in a place of warmth.
This week the bird feeders have been washed and the cellar has been swept.
Why, I even tackled the shower drain. Not a job for the faint-hearted.
The knots have been banished from the spaniel’s ears. The naughty Norfolk has been brushed twice – much to his dismay.
Because the devil finds work for idle hands.
These jobs would not normally be a priority. But time is something that many of us have quite a lot of.
Yet, as folk from John o’ Groats to Gretna are discovering, there is a limit to practising to be a domestic goddess.
Cooking is something else. I never mind being at the stove. And during the various lockdowns all manner of soups and stews have been stirred up in the kitchen.
Then there is the baking. I can just about get away with a Victoria sponge, and even produce a half-decent scone. But when it comes to a loaf, that’s another matter, and the family joke has always been of doorstops.
The fact is, yeast and I have never got on. That said, soda bread is my new best friend.
Take a mix of brown and white flour. Add a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and a dash of salt.
Pull it all together with a pot of plain Greek yoghurt. Shape it into a mound, pop it in the oven – and Bob’s your uncle.
There is no kneading. There is no two-hour wait for a rise. Just bake for half an hour and eat whilst warm.
It’s a pretty heavy bread, admittedly. But dipped into a bowl of soup, it is delicious. And it is so very easy peasy.
Yes, soda bread is good. Unlike the sourdough disaster.
During the first lockdown, it seemed as if half the population went sourdough crazy.
Folk vied for the best recipe. They held virtual sourdough parties. Clever people wrote longingly about it in newspaper columns.
I, too, was swept along by the fervour. Starting the starter, feeding the starter, stirring the starter, keeping the starter warm.
Why, the starter got more attention than Macnaughties.
Then, when we were finally able to buy a bag of flour from the supermarket, this much pampered potion was poured into the flour mix and left to work its magic.
The result? A loaf that was as flat as a pancake. Slices of bread that the birds found hard to get their beaks in to.
But soda bread. Now there’s a winner. Associated with the Irish, but not invented by them.
Which is no problem. The Scots boast the bagpipe – and they didn’t invent that, either.
In this strange world we live in we keep going as best as we can. the
I, TOO, WAS SWEPT ALONG... STARTING THE STARTER, FEEDING THE STARTER, STIRRING THE STARTER, KEEPING THE STARTER WARM
D ougie Vipond isn’t keen to talk about lockdown. Of course he isn’t. Is anyone?
However, anyone watching Dougie behind his Deacon Blue drum kit or in a far-flung Scottish location on Landward, can’t fail to recognise his positive personality.
Among the problems we have all faced over the past year, he has identified some elements of lockdown life that he hopes will continue.
From his home in Bridge of Allan, he admits that he’s luckier than most in being able to cope with being cooped up.
“I’m so lucky here. Within seconds I can be in beautiful woodland. The Ochils are not too far away, so you can get up there and pretty quickly I can be in wilderness. I used to love living in the city but there’s nowhere else I’d rather be now.
“We know that more people have been getting out in open spaces more and it’s clear that when we first locked down last spring, people who weren’t accustomed to getting out and about were surprised at how they were using their senses.
“They opened their eyes and their ears and even their olfactory systems! It was a lovely thing to see, but hopefully that sense of connecting with nature has been as helpful in subsequent lockdowns.”
In 2019, Dougie, 54, couldn’t have been further from home, with Deacon Blue touring in Australia and in New Zealand for the first time.
The album City of Love was ready to be released and the band knew that it was a great collection of songs that they were looking forward to going out and touring in 2020.
The album was released. It went to number one in the Scottish charts and number four in the UK charts.
“Two weeks later the country locked down,” Dougie says. “We had been so excited about getting out and playing the album but as it turned out we weren’t together as a band until December.”
There might have been the forced live hiatus, but the band managed to put together the new eight-track album, Riding on the Tide of Love, a companion to the successful City of Love.
“It’s been great to still be creative with the band, albeit it from a distance. For me it has been a great opportunity. Like many bands with prolific songwriters we went into the City of Love sessions with too many songs, so three that didn’t make it on to that album are out in the world now. It’s never that songs aren’t good enough, it’s just choosing the songs that hang together best for an album.”
The remaining five songs were brought together from home recording, but that
proved a little more difficult for Dougie who was having extensive work done on his house at the time.
“I couldn’t even set up my kit, so we worked out a way that, following Covid-19 restrictions I could record my drum parts at Gregor Philp’s home studio in Dundee.
“It felt alien in that we’re the type of band who record by getting in a studio together and playing, but it’s been a great way for us to keep up that connection at a time when we should have been out playing together. I miss my pals!”
The pals finally had a chance to reunite in Glasgow, as the headliners on BBC Scotland’s Hogmanay show. The show was pre-recorded and the band had to be spread throughout dressing rooms for social distancing, but the experience showed Dougie what he was missing. It also showed him that getting match fit for a tour would take some effort.
“As I said I didn’t have a kit set up at home, so I had to book a sanitised rehearsal room in Glasgow where I could sit alone for an afternoon and play. It was brilliant, but it did show me how it’s easy to lose the match fitness. Then, when we did the sound-check we were all so excited to be playing together that we all played it like a gig. I had to try and calm everyone down and say we needed to keep that energy for the recording!”
The band have been doing as much promo as they can in the circumstances for the new album, but Dougie knows that it’s more than just music fans who are missing that shared experience that comes from music, theatre, sports and even the cinema.