A potential glimpse into the future of one of Scotland’s best-loved bands is imminent in Dundee.
Skids frontman Richard Jobson will be making an appearance at Beat Generator next week for the latest in a series of intimate music-meets-conversation performances he’s given over recent years.
He’ll be joined at the all-seated show by his regular collaborator Martin Metcalfe – and the leader of Goodbye Mr MacKenzie and Filthy Tongues has just been named as the new guitarist in a rebooted version of Jobson’s outfit.
Richard, 63, decided to act late last month after wrestling with the uncomfortable prospect of losing his dual six-stringers Bruce and Jamie Watson for the foreseeable future due to their ongoing commitments as part of fellow Fife legends Big Country.
“Over the past few years playing with The Skids has been a joy,” says Jobson, who also fronts his side project The Armory Show.
“It didn’t matter if the venue was large or small, presenting the music and words to an audience with a relationship to the band was amazing. That hasn’t changed and never will.
“Bruce and Jamie have been a brilliant part of that journey to date. However their main concern was and will always be Big Country, who are playing to bigger and bigger audiences all over the world.
“Their diaries are pretty much booked out non-stop because of a resurgent popularity which is well deserved.
“This of course left me with a dilemma – do I sit around and twiddle my thumbs or get out there and play the music I love? It’s an easy answer.”
The Skids hit bumps in the road before
Also recruited to the new-look Skids line-up that’s been put together to honour previously booked tours in the UK, Europe and Australia will be GMM and Filthy Tongues bassist Fin Wilson and Dunfermline-born guitarist Connor Whyte.
It’s by no means the first time that the Ballingry-raised writer has radically reconstructed the Into The Valley and The Saints Are Coming firebrands.
When guitarist Stuart Adamson quit the punk combo in 1981 after three-and-a-half years and three albums, Jobson completed their fourth album Joy with bassist Russell Webb standing in for the future Big Country star.
He later reactivated The Skids in the late noughties for a series of gigs, before comeback album Burning Cities surfaced in 2018 with Bruce Watson and his son Jamie at the band’s crux, alongside veteran duo Willie Simpson and Mike Baillie.
‘The fun can be addictive’
The Watson-Jobson-Watson nexus has since carried them on through a relentless touring schedule and a further three albums up to this year’s Destination Dusseldorf.
Major commitments for The Skids’ rejigged line-up lie in wait in 2024.
For now though, Richard’s in the midst of a run of Scottish gigs with Metcalfe – and while that points to future offerings it also represents a chance to pause and look back.
“Most of us these days are playing with musicians who are in lots of different bands and they have different commitments,” he explains.
“Big Country play all the time and I was having to turn down a lot of stuff that I quite wanted to do. It didn’t really bother me that much, but then it slightly started to irritate me that I couldn’t do things.
“So without any acrimony – because these things can be misread – we decided that I would create a new version of The Skids for the upcoming gigs. The time was right and Bruce and Jamie were cool about it because they’re pretty much booked out for the whole of next year.
“In all honesty I didn’t really expect to be doing anything with the band at this stage of my life, but I’ve had so much fun doing it that sometimes the fun can be kind of addictive – you just keep on wanting to do it.”
A renowned orator, Jobson does all the talking at the acoustic shows, touching on such themes as past times with The Skids, his family and Fife background and the nature of fame, while Martin provides the soundtrack.
The duo perform stripped-down renditions of highlights from their respective back catalogues, with a plethora of covers of standards by the artists who influenced them also featuring.
Jobson and Metcalfe play Beat Generator on October 21. Bookings can be made online at Tickets Scotland.
