Shooglenifty

Shooglnifty...what a great name for a band, seen here playing at the MacArts Centre in Galashiels on Saturday 26th July 2014

This is the second time I've seen Shooglenifty play, the first was at Denholm Folk Festival back in 2010 where they were the headline act and had the whole place up on their feet and dancing, it's dificult to describe their style as it's quite unique, it's as if they start with a traditional template, then build and build, each tune they play is like a juicy story with a begining, a middle and an end, they have this way of sucking you into the music by starting off really slow and building it up to a frenzie of foot stomping excitement, in fact they very celeverly do that throughout their whole performance, raising you up with some authentic traditional tunes, then calming you down with some lovely gaelic ballads and onto full throttle when even if you wanted to you just can't keep still, it's like some kind of hypnotic power they have over you sending you into a wonderful musical trance..or maybe that's just me..but whatever it is they are very much respected as musicians and performers with a large fan base who follow them loyally..

Angus R Grant in the photo above is a very animated performer, who wiggles when he plays, or should I say shoogles, I find him very entertaining to watch, it's as if he's playing from the souls of his feet (as my Granny used to say) and letting the music take over his body, the whole band are exceptionally tight and brilliant musicians in their own right, they work great as a team, each bringing a very important dimention to the tunes they play, I've taken a wee video of them from Saturday night so you can see and feel the buildup they create for yourselves, you have to watch the video all the way through to fully appreciate their performance and you can see that by the end the audience and the band are in full swing...