Freeland Barbour
A Man of Many Parts
by Charlie Todd
Freeland was born in Edinburgh in December 1951 and brought up both there and in Glen Fincastle, near Pitlochry, where his family, on his father’s side, had stayed for many huindreds of years. There was always music in the home, as had probably been the case right back through the generations. It was Freeland’s 4 x grandfather Dr Alexander Stewart, a noted fiddler who lived in Dunkeld, who introduced Robert Burns to Niel Gow, whilst the well-known songwriter Caroline Oliphant, Baroness Nairne, was also an ancestor.
Freeland’s father is very musical and taught him his first Scottish tunes – pipe tunes he had learned while serving with the local Regiment – The Scottish Horse – during the war. He was about five when he first went to piano lessons, mainly classical piano, which he kept up until he was 14 at which point he rebelled and tried to learn the guitar.
For as long as he can remember he had wanted to play the accordion and Jimmy Shand was his big hero. At that age though, he had little idea of the difference between Jimmy’s button key accordion and his own first instrument, a Hohner Lucia IV 96 bass, bought by his parents from Bill Wilkie in 1963. Thereafter he had a few lessons from Margaret Cameron, a very good player and teacher, who, along with her husband Bert had a local band in Pitlochry. She gave Freeland the rudiments of the left hand and bellows and he took it from there himself.
Freeland started to play quite a lot at University in Cambridge, but down there it was mostly Irish music which served as an introduction to a wider folk scene in which he was already interested through attending concerts by such as The Corries and The Dubliners. The other big influence then was ‘The Incredible String Band’ who were a highly electric outfit from Edinburgh. He started to meet and play with all sorts of interesting people at this time – Aly Bain, Stephan Grapelli and Sean McGuire to name but three.
Next he met up with another Edinburgh based band called ‘Silly Wizard’ and eventually joined them in 1975. They had a young whiz-kid fiddler called Johnny Cunningham whose younger brother Philip wasn’t a bad box player himself (although fortunately he was still at school!) From then onwards he found himself trying to introduce Scottish instrumental music into a scene that knew all about Scots song but inclined to Ireland for its instrumental repertoire. Silly Wizard worked mainly in England but also in France and Holland and he had a wonderful time. After a year and a half ‘on the road’ he decided on a change of tack and came back to Edinburgh from Liverpool where he’d been living and spent four years working in housing in various capacities.
Two or three years previously Freeland had got hold of an L.P. called ‘The Sound of the North’ by The Wick Scottish Dance Band and this really turned him back to what he had heard in his younger days. He knew that it was music like this that he would want to spend time on in the future. So it was that back in Edinburgh he met 3-row player Sandy Coghill, from Halkirk in Caithness, who had played with the Wick Band (particularly on drums) so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that they had an empathy. They certainly had a similar repertoire and influences.
On the back of a number of duo engagements they formed the Wallachmor Ceilidh Band with Neil McMillan, Gus Millar and Jim Barrie and began a run of incredibly hectic years. In many ways you couldn’t have put a more diverse variety of musical backgrounds together if you’d tried. When they rolled up on the first night Gus turned up with his dinner duit and a bow tie while Freeland turned up in a T shirt and jeans because that was what he had been used to in Silly Wizard. Gus thought he was the roadie and was surprised when he strapped on an accordion.
Soon however it took off in a big way and they played all over the place and in all sorts of locations, became regular on TV and radio, produced 5 albums and generally had ‘a very fine time’. ‘The Wallochs’ as they became known were unusual in that both Sandy and Freeland played unison lead accordion – there was no second box – and they found that the sound appealed to a wide range of ages, including fairly large numbers of their own age group. This last point enabled them to do a fair amount of work with contemporary bands (Runrig in particular) and they were also in demand in the Highlands and Islands and in Shetland. It was a great experience and they wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
In the middle of all this Freeland decided to leave housing and joined the BBC. He was the Producer of all of the ‘light music’ programmes coming from Aberdeen including, of course, ‘Take the Floor’ and ‘The Reel Blend’. He had been learning about production but this was definitely getting thrown in at the deep end. “The amount of help I was given by many during this time was incalculable, and it certainly seemed an exciting time to be so centrally involved in the Scottish music scene” says Freeland. He became involved in producing all types of music and found himself invited to join the BBC’s Gaelic Department in Glasgow to help with their music output. This was a bit daunting since he couldn’t speak any Gaelic (still can’t really) but everyone was hugely helpful and patient and he enjoyed it enormously.
All this while life was becoming hectic and he decided in 1985 to leave the BBC in order to concentrate on running the record label that Sandy and himself had set up (Lapwing Records) in addition to his own music, composition and production work. He also fond himself becoming involved in teaching, and that is something he has tried to keep going on an ad hoc basis (he currently helps with the accordion tuition on the BA course in Scottish Traditional Music, at the R.S.A.M.D. in Glasgow).
1985 was a year of change as Sandy Coghill decided to move from Edinburgh up to Skye and take up the hotel and campsite trade. Inevitably the work that they did as the Wallochmor had to be scaled down and Freeland had already started to play with Brian Miller (vocals and guitar) and Charlie Soane (fiddle) in a Trio they called The Occasionals. Over the next few years this became the main event for Freeland in terms of playing dance music. Various players have been involved in The Occasionals over the years – Neil McMillan, Gus Millar and Jim Barrie (all from the Wallochs), Kevin MacLeod (banjo) has been virtually ever-present, and other main players have included Malcolm Jones of Runrig (guitar), Mairi Campbell (fiddle), Ally MacIntyre (drums) and Ian Hardie (fiddle). The current line-up is Ian Hardie, Kevin MacLeod, Gus Millar and Freeland and their third CD is due out within the next few weeks.
On the recording front things have gone very well in that The Wallochmor LPs and The Occasionals CDs have sold very well. Perhaps because of that Freeland has been able to make three solo CDs and one with fiddler Iain Fraser with whom he has had the ‘good fortune’ to paly on many occasions. He has also been a member of a group called The Ghillies, along with Ian Hardie, Duncan MacGillivray, Jack Evans and Andy Thorburn. This is a sort of ‘house band’ for United Distillers and was set up by Ian Hardie to play music from a sponsored volume of new music – ‘The Nineties Collection’. They’ve produced one CD and a lot of fun, as one would with such a sponsor!
Another great interest of Freeland’s has been Scandinavian music and he has had the good fortune to play with Spaelimenninir I Hoydulum from the Faroe Islands. They have played all over Scandinavia and the USA. This in fact led him to the American Traditional Dance scene and he has played quite a lot for American contra and square dancing, as well as producing a number of recordings on the other side of the pond.
Freelance production has taken Freeland all over the place and he has enjoyed working on most aspects of traditional music. Recording harps during an earthquake in Tokyo was a new experience, but in so many way music has proved an international language and a great breaker of barriers.
Freeland has always had a great interest in the technical side of things because PA equipment and recording is so much a part of a musicians life nowadays and he has long felt it useful to know the tools. For a few years in the eighties he ran a PA hire company with friend and colleague Alan Marin in Edinburgh. He also, for a short period in the mid nineties, had a mobile recording set-up with sound engineer Alastair George, based in a mobile bank that had spent its days touring Islay on behalf of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
In 1998, however, he really took the plunge and bought Castlesound Studios in Pencaitland, East Lothian, from old friend and colleague Calum Malcolm. This recording studio had been set up by Calum in 1978 and had been leading the recording industry since then with all manner of leading names amongst its clients. Along with Calum and engineer Stuart Hamilton, Freeland now runs the studio and deals with all types of music, including a fair amount of Scottish and folk music. “It’s a hugely exciting enterprise and should keep me busy for a while to come” says Freeland.
Another long term interest has been the dance that goes with the music and for the past two years he has been on the Board of the Scottish Traditions of Dance Trust – a recently established body set up to foster interest in and provide links with the various forms of Scottish traditional dance. He has also done quite a bit of playing for dance teaching and, most particularly of late, old time dancing with Jessie Stewart.
Freeland has also helped, together with The Occasionals Dance Caller Karin Ingram, as Northbeat, to run a ceilidh dance class and club in Glasgow for about four years as well as a number of other dance orientated events across the country, particularly in Skye at Easter at the Gaelic College. Sabhal Mor Ostaig. In fact, on the subject of teaching The Occasionals were one of the first bands to introduce a Dance Caller, something that he had run across in England and America.
They were finding that many folk, particularly in the cities, seemed to be losing a traditional dance repertoire and the use of a Caller seemed to be a good way to do something about that. As Freeland points out there’s nothing new about this, of course, as this was the way it was done in the days of the old itinerant dancing master or ‘dancies’. Aside from weddings, where the Caller is often the most important person in the band, his personal preference is to play for classes / clubs where the Caller / Teacher runs the show, or to do a full night’s dancing with the band with nothing more than a reminder if needed now and again.
Perhaps the last thing worth touching on is the instrument that Freeland plays. His original Hohner Lucia together with a second one that he bought, kept him going for many years, but in time he felt the need for something more up-to-date. With enormous help from John Huband and Owen Murray he managed to persuade the Pigini company in Italy to build an instrument for them. It was to be a small 96 bass, 4 voice accordion, and about 24 were made – one of which he still plays as his main dance instrument. However his travels to Denmark introduced him to a most interesting tuner, repairer and reed maker called Torben Ejersbo and through him and along with fellow Dane Leif Ernstsen and Klaus Werner from Hanover they persuaded then Zero Zette company to build an accordion, the 5 row version of which is particularly good. The instruments all have 140 bass in a 96 bass frame and include an extra inside row (a sixth diminished).
“And that’s about it as far as I can think at the moment. Music has given me a wonderful life and I’m only half way through! Roll on the next forty years” and who can disagree with that.
Box and Fiddle
October 1999
Freeland’s father is very musical and taught him his first Scottish tunes – pipe tunes he had learned while serving with the local Regiment – The Scottish Horse – during the war. He was about five when he first went to piano lessons, mainly classical piano, which he kept up until he was 14 at which point he rebelled and tried to learn the guitar.
For as long as he can remember he had wanted to play the accordion and Jimmy Shand was his big hero. At that age though, he had little idea of the difference between Jimmy’s button key accordion and his own first instrument, a Hohner Lucia IV 96 bass, bought by his parents from Bill Wilkie in 1963. Thereafter he had a few lessons from Margaret Cameron, a very good player and teacher, who, along with her husband Bert had a local band in Pitlochry. She gave Freeland the rudiments of the left hand and bellows and he took it from there himself.
Freeland started to play quite a lot at University in Cambridge, but down there it was mostly Irish music which served as an introduction to a wider folk scene in which he was already interested through attending concerts by such as The Corries and The Dubliners. The other big influence then was ‘The Incredible String Band’ who were a highly electric outfit from Edinburgh. He started to meet and play with all sorts of interesting people at this time – Aly Bain, Stephan Grapelli and Sean McGuire to name but three.
Next he met up with another Edinburgh based band called ‘Silly Wizard’ and eventually joined them in 1975. They had a young whiz-kid fiddler called Johnny Cunningham whose younger brother Philip wasn’t a bad box player himself (although fortunately he was still at school!) From then onwards he found himself trying to introduce Scottish instrumental music into a scene that knew all about Scots song but inclined to Ireland for its instrumental repertoire. Silly Wizard worked mainly in England but also in France and Holland and he had a wonderful time. After a year and a half ‘on the road’ he decided on a change of tack and came back to Edinburgh from Liverpool where he’d been living and spent four years working in housing in various capacities.
Two or three years previously Freeland had got hold of an L.P. called ‘The Sound of the North’ by The Wick Scottish Dance Band and this really turned him back to what he had heard in his younger days. He knew that it was music like this that he would want to spend time on in the future. So it was that back in Edinburgh he met 3-row player Sandy Coghill, from Halkirk in Caithness, who had played with the Wick Band (particularly on drums) so perhaps it wasn’t surprising that they had an empathy. They certainly had a similar repertoire and influences.
On the back of a number of duo engagements they formed the Wallachmor Ceilidh Band with Neil McMillan, Gus Millar and Jim Barrie and began a run of incredibly hectic years. In many ways you couldn’t have put a more diverse variety of musical backgrounds together if you’d tried. When they rolled up on the first night Gus turned up with his dinner duit and a bow tie while Freeland turned up in a T shirt and jeans because that was what he had been used to in Silly Wizard. Gus thought he was the roadie and was surprised when he strapped on an accordion.
Soon however it took off in a big way and they played all over the place and in all sorts of locations, became regular on TV and radio, produced 5 albums and generally had ‘a very fine time’. ‘The Wallochs’ as they became known were unusual in that both Sandy and Freeland played unison lead accordion – there was no second box – and they found that the sound appealed to a wide range of ages, including fairly large numbers of their own age group. This last point enabled them to do a fair amount of work with contemporary bands (Runrig in particular) and they were also in demand in the Highlands and Islands and in Shetland. It was a great experience and they wouldn’t have missed it for anything.
In the middle of all this Freeland decided to leave housing and joined the BBC. He was the Producer of all of the ‘light music’ programmes coming from Aberdeen including, of course, ‘Take the Floor’ and ‘The Reel Blend’. He had been learning about production but this was definitely getting thrown in at the deep end. “The amount of help I was given by many during this time was incalculable, and it certainly seemed an exciting time to be so centrally involved in the Scottish music scene” says Freeland. He became involved in producing all types of music and found himself invited to join the BBC’s Gaelic Department in Glasgow to help with their music output. This was a bit daunting since he couldn’t speak any Gaelic (still can’t really) but everyone was hugely helpful and patient and he enjoyed it enormously.
All this while life was becoming hectic and he decided in 1985 to leave the BBC in order to concentrate on running the record label that Sandy and himself had set up (Lapwing Records) in addition to his own music, composition and production work. He also fond himself becoming involved in teaching, and that is something he has tried to keep going on an ad hoc basis (he currently helps with the accordion tuition on the BA course in Scottish Traditional Music, at the R.S.A.M.D. in Glasgow).
1985 was a year of change as Sandy Coghill decided to move from Edinburgh up to Skye and take up the hotel and campsite trade. Inevitably the work that they did as the Wallochmor had to be scaled down and Freeland had already started to play with Brian Miller (vocals and guitar) and Charlie Soane (fiddle) in a Trio they called The Occasionals. Over the next few years this became the main event for Freeland in terms of playing dance music. Various players have been involved in The Occasionals over the years – Neil McMillan, Gus Millar and Jim Barrie (all from the Wallochs), Kevin MacLeod (banjo) has been virtually ever-present, and other main players have included Malcolm Jones of Runrig (guitar), Mairi Campbell (fiddle), Ally MacIntyre (drums) and Ian Hardie (fiddle). The current line-up is Ian Hardie, Kevin MacLeod, Gus Millar and Freeland and their third CD is due out within the next few weeks.
On the recording front things have gone very well in that The Wallochmor LPs and The Occasionals CDs have sold very well. Perhaps because of that Freeland has been able to make three solo CDs and one with fiddler Iain Fraser with whom he has had the ‘good fortune’ to paly on many occasions. He has also been a member of a group called The Ghillies, along with Ian Hardie, Duncan MacGillivray, Jack Evans and Andy Thorburn. This is a sort of ‘house band’ for United Distillers and was set up by Ian Hardie to play music from a sponsored volume of new music – ‘The Nineties Collection’. They’ve produced one CD and a lot of fun, as one would with such a sponsor!
Another great interest of Freeland’s has been Scandinavian music and he has had the good fortune to play with Spaelimenninir I Hoydulum from the Faroe Islands. They have played all over Scandinavia and the USA. This in fact led him to the American Traditional Dance scene and he has played quite a lot for American contra and square dancing, as well as producing a number of recordings on the other side of the pond.
Freelance production has taken Freeland all over the place and he has enjoyed working on most aspects of traditional music. Recording harps during an earthquake in Tokyo was a new experience, but in so many way music has proved an international language and a great breaker of barriers.
Freeland has always had a great interest in the technical side of things because PA equipment and recording is so much a part of a musicians life nowadays and he has long felt it useful to know the tools. For a few years in the eighties he ran a PA hire company with friend and colleague Alan Marin in Edinburgh. He also, for a short period in the mid nineties, had a mobile recording set-up with sound engineer Alastair George, based in a mobile bank that had spent its days touring Islay on behalf of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
In 1998, however, he really took the plunge and bought Castlesound Studios in Pencaitland, East Lothian, from old friend and colleague Calum Malcolm. This recording studio had been set up by Calum in 1978 and had been leading the recording industry since then with all manner of leading names amongst its clients. Along with Calum and engineer Stuart Hamilton, Freeland now runs the studio and deals with all types of music, including a fair amount of Scottish and folk music. “It’s a hugely exciting enterprise and should keep me busy for a while to come” says Freeland.
Another long term interest has been the dance that goes with the music and for the past two years he has been on the Board of the Scottish Traditions of Dance Trust – a recently established body set up to foster interest in and provide links with the various forms of Scottish traditional dance. He has also done quite a bit of playing for dance teaching and, most particularly of late, old time dancing with Jessie Stewart.
Freeland has also helped, together with The Occasionals Dance Caller Karin Ingram, as Northbeat, to run a ceilidh dance class and club in Glasgow for about four years as well as a number of other dance orientated events across the country, particularly in Skye at Easter at the Gaelic College. Sabhal Mor Ostaig. In fact, on the subject of teaching The Occasionals were one of the first bands to introduce a Dance Caller, something that he had run across in England and America.
They were finding that many folk, particularly in the cities, seemed to be losing a traditional dance repertoire and the use of a Caller seemed to be a good way to do something about that. As Freeland points out there’s nothing new about this, of course, as this was the way it was done in the days of the old itinerant dancing master or ‘dancies’. Aside from weddings, where the Caller is often the most important person in the band, his personal preference is to play for classes / clubs where the Caller / Teacher runs the show, or to do a full night’s dancing with the band with nothing more than a reminder if needed now and again.
Perhaps the last thing worth touching on is the instrument that Freeland plays. His original Hohner Lucia together with a second one that he bought, kept him going for many years, but in time he felt the need for something more up-to-date. With enormous help from John Huband and Owen Murray he managed to persuade the Pigini company in Italy to build an instrument for them. It was to be a small 96 bass, 4 voice accordion, and about 24 were made – one of which he still plays as his main dance instrument. However his travels to Denmark introduced him to a most interesting tuner, repairer and reed maker called Torben Ejersbo and through him and along with fellow Dane Leif Ernstsen and Klaus Werner from Hanover they persuaded then Zero Zette company to build an accordion, the 5 row version of which is particularly good. The instruments all have 140 bass in a 96 bass frame and include an extra inside row (a sixth diminished).
“And that’s about it as far as I can think at the moment. Music has given me a wonderful life and I’m only half way through! Roll on the next forty years” and who can disagree with that.
Box and Fiddle
October 1999