How three unlikely Lewis lads became folk heroes
A Hebridean rock band who have gone from pub gigs to selling out Glasgow’s Barrowlands say they are “holding on for dear life” after being named the best live act in the country at Scotland’s annual trad music Oscars ceremony.
Peat & Diesel say they can’t cope with the growing demands to book them after becoming social media sensations with their “nonsense songs” inspired by life on the Isle of Lewis.
Even before winning the honour at the Scots Trad Music Awards in Aberdeen, they had sold more than 7,000 tickets for their first ever tour after being mobbed at festivals around the country this year
Fisherman and frontman Callum “Boydie” Macleod, electrician Innes Scott and delivery driver Uilleam “Uilly” Macleod have become unlikely folk heroes since they started playing and recording videos at home with last year. Their success, which has been fuelled by a #Peatlemania campaign on social media, has been credited to the songs created by fisherman Macleod, who turned up to the Scots Trad Music Awards ceremony in Aberdeen in a boiler suit.
He said: “It was totally unexpected to win. I was holding my dram in my hand thinking: ‘Please don’t announce us – I didn’t want to go up there.’
“We’re just a small band from Stornoway and didn’t expect to be up against these other bands.
“I’m not trying to do anything with my songs. I just write them to get them out of my head. I’ve been writing since I was at school.
“They’re all really inspired by island life. It’s all I’ve really known. I don’t come off the island very much. I’ve been off the islands more in the last year than in my whole life. It’s all a learning curve.”
Peat & Diesel, who will play their first Glasgow gig at the
Barrowlands as part of next month’s Celtic Connections festival, have added a second show at the venue, as well as gigs in London, Manchester, Belfast and Dublin.
Macleod said: “We can’t keep up with the amount of bookings we’re being asked to do now. It’s ridiculous. We just don’t know what’s going to happen next.”
Scott said: “Everything seems to be getting busier and busier for us. We’ve had to stop replying to the messages we’re getting about bookings.
“All the acts we’re playing alongside are full-time musicians – this was meant to be a hobby for us.
“This isn’t down to us, it’s down to the crowds we’ve been getting from the day this all started 18 months ago.
“They wanted to see these three guys do as well as they can and keep pushing things to their absolute limit. We’re just holding on for dear life.”
Great artists have long drawn inspiration from everyday life. From LS Lowry’s famous ‘matchstick men’ to Bob Dylan’s superlative protest song Hurricane about the wrongful imprisonment of boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter, the seemingly mundane and the often overlooked have been the basis of some of our most cherished works.
We are willing to bet, however, that no one has written about the experience of being stuck on a rural bus after it knocked down a sheep, being dragged out of the pub to mend a flat tyre or spending the night getting intoxicated in their mate’s shed before. No one that is before Calum ‘Boydie’ Macleod, Uilleam Macleod and Innes Scott got together to write songs in Stornoway.
The trio’s tales of everyday life in the Western Isles, recorded as Peat and Diesel, have made them Scotland’s latest musical sensation. Their rapid rise from pub band to festival headliners has even got its own name, being dubbed Peatlemania. Peat and Diesel are authentic and good fun. In a world full of style over substance pop stars, the Western Isles’ finest are a breath of fresh Hebridean air.