Herd mentality
Crofter who wowed Hollywood on The Late Late Show is happier down on the farm
A CROFTER is combining peaceful island life with an international music career.
Colin Macleod remembers being knee-deep in mud during lambing season, and not even the prospect of American music festivals and a gig on James Corden’s Late Late Show could stop nature taking its course.
Within a week or so, he would be on stage in Hollywood being beamed into homes across America. Right now, though, there were lambs.
Looking after a flock of Blackface and Cheviot sheep back in his home village of Swordale on the east coast of Lewis, growing vegetables, occasionally surfing and fishing is hardly the typical rock star image.
And even if Sir Paul Mccartney did manage to mix island life and the buzz of the music industry while living on Mull Of Kintyre, most musicians are likely to find juggling life on the fringes of the west coast fairly incompatible with major success.
Yet despite a major record company deal, an album launch in America and support gigs at London’s O2 to legends such as ex-led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant and Van Morrison, Macleod insists he has no intention of quitting his gentle crofting lifestyle for a music star’s lifestyle.
“When I was younger, it didn’t seem possible that the two worlds could go together. I couldn’t be a crofter and a musician, it doesn’t work,” he admits. “But I think I’ve just settled into it a bit. Now it’s second nature.”
The extraordinary leap from island crofter to international musician is captured in a BBC documentary that follows the 35-year-old singersongwriter as he switches from life on the Isle of Lewis to strolling through New York, performing at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and onwards to Hollywood.
The contrast between the windswept Western Isles and the glitz of Hollywood could scarcely be more evident than when Macleod is introduced by presenter James Corden to loud whoops from the Late Late Show audience in Hollywood.
“It was the biggest moment in my career,” he says. “You don’t have time to think about it, it’s so fast paced and then it’s ‘boom!’.”
Macleod, who has been touted as one of the most promising, original talents in the Scottish music scene, began by playing rock covers at weekends in Stornoway pubs and dance halls. He switched to writing his own material when he was 19 and was spotted by a record company A&R man while performing at an Inverness festival.
He initially turned down the offer to quit the Islands to join an industry talent development programme after being told he would have to ditch his band’s drummer and bass player if he was to have any chance of success.
However, he eventually took up the opportunity, which included the chance to explore recording at the famous Abbey Road and Olympic Studios.
He later signed with one of the world’s biggest record companies, BMG Records, and a leading London agent who has helped secure appearances at major festivals and support gigs for acts like Sheryl Crow.
However, the lure of the islands has always drawn him back home to the seven acres croft he works with his father, Callum.
I was deep in mud with a sheep, and then I was on the Late Late Show
It was while he was in America on tour and writing with his friend
Paul Wilson, bass player with
Snow Patrol, that his Late Late Show break cropped up.
“The album had been picked up by American label and released over there,” he says. “People over there started to pay attention.
“We had been writing together in LA and I went to dinner with Paul and Gary Lightbody. James Corden was there. They kept saying ‘Colin’s a great artist, you should have him on your show’. And James Corden said ‘okay’.
“It was the biggest moment in my career and I will be forever grateful to him for doing that.
It was surreal.
“We had been lambing the week before I’d left for America. I was deep in mud in the middle of the night with a sheep, and then I was on the Late Late Show.
“I’m pretty lucky,” he adds. “I’ve just managed to find a little path for myself and been very fortunate that people over the years have stood with me.”