The Biggest Encore
Musicians emerge from the wings to take centre stage once more
IDIDN’T actually go to the last gig I had booked before Covid-19. I was tired from a long day at the office, and I had just come back from a weekend in London with my husband, to see American rockers The Hold Steady in Camden.
We had walked from our hotel to the venue rather than risk the Tube, the headlines about the coronavirus by then insistent enough to encourage precaution. I sneezed in Euston as we waited for our train back to Glasgow, and a couple of people backed away.
Like I said, I was tired – too tired for a Wednesday night standing in the Barrowlands, even for my perennial live favourite, Frank Turner. Had I known that, by the following week, his tour would be cancelled and I’d be settling into a long spell of working from home I think I would have powered through and gone.
After 16 months almost entirely without live music in Scotland, it’s not surprising that the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) is billing its programme as “a significant turning point” for the industry. With a lineup boasting some of the finest contemporary and traditional Scottish talent – two Scottish Album of the Year award winners, Erland Cooper, Talisk – and a diverse international programme – Damon Albarn, Caribou, Laura Mvula, Fatoumata Diawara – it’s hard not to get excited.
But at the time of writing, the festival has already had to cancel its three-day opening event due to quarantine restrictions for the French performers.
However Kathryn Joseph, 2015 SAY award winner, who will be performing at Edinburgh Park on the festival’s opening weekend, is not letting this temper her excitement. “After a year of not being able to play at all, to be part of something as beautiful and great as EIF is really special,” she tells me. “To get to play in front of actual people again will be best of all.”
It’s a sentiment shared by The Snuts, the West Lothian four-piece who became the first Scottish band in 14 years
to top the UK album charts with their April debut album.
The band’s self-shot video for single Somebody Loves You, featuring refugee families from Glasgow, was the perfect lockdown love letter to the city, and they donated their promo budget to the Scottish Refugee Council.
“Playing live for us is something that resonates to our very core,” says bassist Callum Wilson. “This past year has stung, but we’re ready to get back out and put on a show.”
Both acts have kept busy over the past year. Kathryn used the time to write and record new music, while The Snuts bubbled up so that they could perfect their live show. But it has also been a time for reflection says Karine Polwart, making her return to EIF following her wellreceived Scottish Songbook show in 2018.
“
Ready to get out and show” put on a
“It seems clear to me that as artists and makers, festivals and audiences, we have to ask some difficult, urgent questions about how we make music and performing arts happen, and what value we put on them,” she says. “One of the harsh consequences of social distancing at gigs is, I fear, that ticket prices will increase, and participation will decrease. I don’t have a solution to that, but it’s a worry.”
For now, though, Karine is looking forward to what will be her first ticketed public show since February 2020. “That’s a long time to not meet an audience and do the job you’ve trained for,” she says. “Music is so much about resonance in bodies and space.”
EIF runs in Edinburgh and online from August 7 - 29.