Tea towel immortality at a village hall far away

Down to earth: Dougie MacLean, on stage at
Clunie village hall (Photographs by Heather Brain)

You know you're doing well when they put one of your songs on a tea towel, Dougie MacLean told the audience. We and the other 80 or so souls who sat on the wooden foldaway chairs in the tiny village hall, had travelled through unlit countryside and foothills to reach the remote venue on a single-track road in deepest Perthshire.

Our reward was an evening of music and tales from MacLean, who happily mingled with the audience during the half-time interval when tea, coffee, biscuits and bowls of crisps were laid on for free. During the break, MacLean also shared "nips" from a large bottle of The Gael gin - named after another of his tunes - which included the musical notation of the composition on the inside of the label, where it was magnified through the bottle's glass and its rapidly diminishing contents.

Clunie village hall is more often used for "knit and natter" evenings than staging concerts - but there was a good reason why MacLean, who was awarded the OBE in 2011 for services to music and charity, had chosen such an out-of-the-way location to sing his songs.

Earlier we had waited outside for the doors to open. It had been a day of clear blue sky, but as the long dusk settled so the temperature slid to the chill expected in March among foothills leading to the southern fringe of Scotland's Cairngorms mountain range. The thinest reminder of day clung precariously above us, a deepening blue turning to night; while the countryside silhouetted against the remnants of dusky light was all but swallowed by darkness.

Family assist: the stage decorations were
prepared by MacLean's grandchildren

Scattered on one horizon were distant lights of a few homes and farms. The final calls of birds settling in their nests echoed in the still air. The arrival of darkness in this remote spot leaves an outsider slightly disorientated, but not so for a local. MacLean's life and the lives of his parents and grandparents are deeply entwined with this place and the surrounding landscape.

As we were to learn from anecdotes shared between songs, as a boy MacLean had lived in a small house next to the village hall, and it had featured in his youth. He now owns and lives in a former village school a few miles away, where he has his own recording studio. Earlier generations of his family had had been taught at the school.

The landscape that stretches out from the village hall resonates with stories and meaning for MacLean and his family, who have maintained strong ties to the locale. Indeed, members of MacLean's family, including his wife, son and grandchildren, all pitched in to prepare the stage for the evening show, operate the mixing desk, serve the refreshments and look after the small merchandise stall at the door. His mother, now in her eighties, was among the audience.

It was at the entrance to the hall, next to a selection of CDs and DVDs, where a few tea towels emblazened with the lyrics to Caledonia were to be found. Caledonia is a spirited and beautifully uplifting ode that some have suggested is a future national anthem. It wrestles with The Gael as MacLean's most successful composition. The latter is an instrumental, a version of which took off a few years after MacLean's original, when it was prominently featured in the movie soundtrack of The Last of the Mohicans.

Evening to remember: MacLean
met all the audience during the interval

During the first half of the evening, MacLean presented us with a trove of stories and songs from places near and far; from Clunie village hall to Alaska and Australia. His instruments included a didgeridoo, and fiddle, but mostly acoustic guitar. The Gael was played on fiddle, augmented by an instrumental backing track created by MacLean's son. After the refreshment break, MacLean scanned through the request notes he'd encouraged and played, among others, the haunting Broken Wings, and the moving This Love Will Carry.

MacLean has travelled the world and performed on stages large and small, but he has retained a down to earth approach. To see him on a tiny stage in an intimate and personal setting, and share a moment of his time at the interval break as he made a point of meeting every member of the audience, made it an evening to treasure.

Before we knew it, almost three hours had passed and it was time to leave. After we ventured from the village hall into the night, the songs and voice of MacLean, and the love he showed to all, carried us safely home.

Video: Dougie MacLean sings Caledonia at his studio.