Long Gone Lonesome

26/01/2010

Making a drama out of a lone star @ Tron, Glasgow

Long Gone Lonesome
The Tron, Glasgow
3/5

So, is this Celtic Connections festival foraying into drama, putting a National Theatre of Scotland production on its 2010 bill? Or did the NTS stage an incursion into rock ‘n’ roll territory when it enlisted a gang of country-lovin’ troubadours to write and perform a homage to a remarkable shy Shetlander who hid his prodigious musical talent under a bushel?

Either way, staging this show – which toured small venues across Scotland last year – in Glasgow during this music festival, which draws a loyal horde of American music obsessives to the city year after year, is a stroke of genius.

Scripted by Orkney-based author and country music aficionado Duncan McLean, it traces the true story of Thomas Fraser, a humble fisherman and crofter on the tiny Shetland outpost island of Burra who, after a childhood illness, finds himself drawn irresistibly to the country music strummers, crooners and yodellers he hears on the wireless. Jimmie Rodgers is his idol, Hank Williams another hero, and their music among many other American luminaries is liberally wound through this piece of storytelling-cum-gig, which must surely be one of the more offbeat productions in the NTS’s not inconsiderable canon.

The stories of the lives of the performers on stage – McLean’s compadres in his Lone Star Swing Band – are interwoven with that of Fraser, down to the embarrassing childhood photos dug out of the archives, projected on the backdrop alongside enchantingly rustic monochrome images of the man himself working the land and the sea, and mugging into the camera.

The notion of that hard, harsh life on the edge of civilisation, where electricity apparently only arrived in 1953, seems incredibly alien here in cosmopolitan Glasgow, and I can’t help wondering if those less formal halls in the nooks and crannies of Scotland’s farther-flung reaches where this show meandered last year might be a more appropriate, and relaxed, setting.

When it comes to Fraser’s musical talent, McLean is undoubtedly a clear-eyed evangelist, eager to see this individual take his place in the roll-call of Scotland’s finest performers, as well as Nashville’s country greats. And he relates with empathy the strange and twisting tale of this eccentric man who committed to tape dozens upon dozens of songs, covers and his own compositions recorded in his croft kitchen, which were unearthed and released on CD a quarter of a century after his untimely death following an accident on his boat, in 1978.

The Lone Star Swing Band seem a tremendously affable bunch, and their music is great, the first few rows of the audience getting jiggy in their seats and itching to kick up their cowboy boots and join in the hoedown.

Of course, Glasgow has a rabid country music community thanks in no small part to its Grand Ole Opry cabal. So, while Celtic Connections and the NTS should be lauded for finding it a choice slot on the city’s musical calendar, one can't help thinking the cowboys ‘n’ cactus-adorned surroundings of the Opry might have been a more suitable location for Thomas Fraser’s lowland conquest.

By Vicky Davidson

Long Gone Lonesome is at Orkney Folk Festival, May 21-23