The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Eddi Reader
Craigie Hill Music Festival, Craigie Hill Golf Course, Perth, August 26
Scottish songstress Eddi Reader is delighted to be working hard on her music again in 2017.
Currently preparing for her November UK tour, she is balancing her domestic life with bringing out new material and playing live performances.
She explains: “I am mining away for gold and diamonds when I can find the time.
“We started recording over three days in January and I am now editing and overdubbing. I am pleased with what we have so far,” she continues.
“I’m home just now and that means paying the car tax and fixing the roof. All that stuff is a distraction.
“I love being on tour because it gives me space to work on new songs and be creative.
“The best I can offer the world is what I leave behind so I am hoping to leave something lovely for people to enjoy long after I’m not here,” she adds.
Eddi recently had a cathartic experience which read like something from the popular TV show Who Do You Think You Are.
“I found out quite recently that I had a three times great grandfather who had done exactly what I did at 18,” she says.
“He had travelled from home to go busking. He hailed from somewhere in pre-unification Germany.
“He ended up in Edinburgh busking and married in Dysart, working as a piano tuner and teaching music. I am pretty amazed at that discovery.”
And Eddi, who grew up in Glasgow, believes that her ancestor’s connection to Scotland has a large part to play in her career.
“If anything is going to make me believe there is a grand plan for us it’s that. I have managed to become the same sort of person as that ancestor back in 1850,” she says.
“In 1978 when I was 18 I did the same thing, went to France and busked and lived there for a year and a half.”
In the future, she also hopes to incorporate her roots into her music.
“I want to get into my mum’s head. I have an idea for a Caledonia Romantica album. Growing up in the west of Scotland I noticed how men were able to express love to each other and to women only in song,” says Eddi.
“Phil Cunningham talked about the kind of Scot who loved his wife so much he nearly told her.
“So I think there is a beautiful album to be made, maybe launched on Valentine’s night. That’s the romantic in me talking.”
Eddi Reader and her band top the Craigie Hill Music Festival bill at Craigie Hill Golf Course on Saturday, August 26.
Other acts include The Red Pine Timber Co, True Gents, The First Ladies of Country and The Cascades.