When Angus MacPhail and Andrew Stevenson formed a ceilidh band in 1999 they were both students on the traditional music course at the then Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow.
Weekend gigs helped them pay their way through the course and when they graduated the band became an escape from working on a fishing boat, in Angus’s case, and as a gamekeeper, in Andrew’s case.
Expanding into venue ownership and offering authentic nights of Highland entertainment to tourists in Oban kept them busy.
A change of direction
The bookings kept coming in and the CDs they made helped to sustain their popularity at a certain level.
Then, early in 2011, Angus had an idea.
What if the songs he’d been secretly writing since his schooldays could form the basis of Skipinnish’s set?
Outstripping Taylor Swift and Ed Sheeran
He backed his hunch. The band added a singer and more of a rock-inclined backline and four years later their single The Island overtook Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Ed Sheeran as it soared to the number one position in the world music download charts.
“It’s quite a feeling to see your own song out-selling these really well-known people,” says Angus.
He has grown accustomed in recent years to playing in venues including the famed Barrowland Ballroom in Glasgow, the Usher Hall in Edinburgh and Perth Concert Hall, where they return next weekend.
London and Germany have also succumbed to Skipinnish’s distinctive blend of Highland dance tunes and blue collar folk-rock.
“We’d been ticking over okay with the band up to that point in 2011,” says Angus, who grew up on Tiree and grew into two of the island’s traditions, playing the accordion and sailing boats.
“But when the roof of the Skipinnish venue in Oban blew off in a gale and took two years to replace due to insurance company problems, Andrew and I decided to change direction with the music.”
For their Atlantic Roar album in 2013, they turned the focus on singer Robert Robertson.
One track especially, Land Below the Waves, caught listeners’ attention. Angus was suitably encouraged and the next album, Western Ocean, released the following year, took the band up to another level.
“People have said that we’re following in Runrig’s slipstream, or whatever,” says Angus. “But we couldn’t have sat down and planned what’s happened and we certainly didn’t set out to emulate Runrig because we couldn’t. No-one can.”
His songwriting, he concedes, is simple and as someone who has spent years on the seas around the Hebrides, putting in at the island ports, on both fishing boats and pleasure cruisers, he knows families first-hand who have been touched by tragedy.
His song Wishing Well, written for Eilidh MacLeod, the teenager from Barra who died in the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, certainly chimed with the Skipinnish audience.
Mostly, though, he prefers not to say what lies behind his songs.
“There’s not a word in any of them that I couldn’t tell you the background to if I chose,” he says.
“Everything is there for a reason and the references might be specific when I write them. But, for me, the songs become stronger if these references are seen as more general.”
Having survived the departures of singer Robert Robertson and keyboards player Ross Wilson when they left to form their own band in 2016, Angus feels that Skipinnish has grown stronger.
Live Act of the Year award
Lewis-born Norrie MacIver, who had been singing with Gaelic folk-rockers Manran, replaced Robert Robertson and the first album to feature him,
The Seventh Wave continued the band’s upward sales trajectory.
They went on to win the Live Act of the Year award at the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards for the second time in 2017 and only the COVID-19 pandemic has slowed down their progress as a band.
“We played hotel gigs in Perth back when we were a ceilidh band,” says Angus.
“So to be playing Perth Concert Hall regularly now is amazing. I think we’re giving people what they want to hear.
“It’s still a Highland night out in a sense and nothing in the songs is contrived. They’re all about things that are happening in our lives and I think that makes it real.”
Skipinnish play Perth Concert Hall on Saturday December 11.
