Voices: Back of the Moon

Musicians Gillian Frame, Findlay Napier, Hamish Napier, and Ali Hutton have each worked on other projects, but when they joined together as the band Back of the Moon they found musical connections which inspired them to go deeper into the tradition and to take it in new directions as well. The tradition, in their case, is that of Scotland. They've been touring together for seven years now, during which they've rocked crowds at the prestigious Celtic Connections festival, developed a strong fan base across Canada, been named the best folk band of 2005 at the Scots Trad Music Awards, and explored even further there own collaborative instrumental and songwriting chops.

They've recorded three albums, the most recent of which, Luminosity, has just been released in the US. Their work is an evolving conversation among band members and between their twenty first century lives and Celtic tradition. To that end "we tried to include as much of our own original material as we could, so in the run up to recording we were all writing tunes, new tunes," says Frame. She plays fiddle and viola and shares lead vocal duties with Hamish and Findlay Napier, who are brothers. Findlay has written several songs on the album as well. "Findlay has just been getting going on his song writing." Frame says. "He's written songs for a while, but only recently have they been of a style that we think would work with our line up for the band."

Work they do, with the haunting Ship in a Bottle sounding like something which could have come from centuries back, There are equally fine compositions from each of the other band members , and "we always use as much older traditional material as we can and just try to arrange it in our own way," Frame explains. That's not going to be your old familiar favorites. "We go right to old collections and try to find tunes that people haven't heard before," Hamish Napier says.

The Napier brothers and Frame each come from musical families, Frame from the isle of Arran and the Napiers from Strathspey. Ali Hutton,who plays border pipes, whistles, and bodhran with the group, is from Perthshire. "I remember my grandfather speaking of his grandfather being a pipe major in the Scots Guards, I think it. was. That was always in my head," Hutton says.

"When when I went to the Edinburgh military tattoo and saw the piper on top of the tower -- I always wanted to be the piper on the top of the tower!" he recalls, laughing. That led to lessons and pipe bands and study with the late Gordon Duncan, a renowned master of the pipes. "He opened up lots of different styles of music to me," Hutton says. "Pipers, it's mainly just about pipe tunes and the pipes, but I was lucky enough to have him show me different sorts of folk musics." Hutton met Frame and Findlay Napier through RSAMD, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow. Hamish Napier, who plays flute and piano in the band, initially took his grounding in traditional music in a different direction "These lot all went to RSAMD," Hamish says, "but I went and did physics [at the University of Strathclyde, also in Glasgow] for four years. Instead of going to one of my lectures I was always going to RSAMD to rehearse!"

Older brother Findlay is the guitarist with the group. "Our mum was involved in starting up Feis Spe, "he recalls. "It was like a summer camp, and for four hours a day you got to try out three different instruments. Through that we found traditional instruments that really suited us."

Frame grew up playing fiddle, and listening to Scots trad as well as Emmylou Harris and other country artists. On the last day open for applications to RSAMD, she sent in her papers, and was accepted, crediting the move to Glasgow, with its vibrant local scene and place as a musical crossroads, as a major factor finding her musical path.

The band memebers continue to work on technique as well as collaboration and individual creativity. With three different singers, there are guaranteed varied approaches in one evening's gig, and across one recording, along with the solid rhythm and high energy, and the intertwined instrumental voices of border pipes, fiddle, guitar, and whistle. All four also play several other instruments, and they each write, so they aren't about to run out of material. Or inspiration. They learn from their travels, and there's a well of creativity back at home also. "There are just so many really good players here in Glasgow," at festivals and in sessions too," Hamish Napier says. "That's been really good for our learning."

Back of the Moon has an American tour in prospect for the early part of November, with dates in Michigan, New England, and DC, and they regularly tour in the UK, Europe, and Canada.

You'll find music content from many genres and plenty of other music fans at Gather Essentials: Music. For more of Kerry Dexter's Voices columns, look here. It's published on Thursdays.

Kerry Dexter, Music Correspondent Kerry's credits include VH1, CMT, the folk music magazine Dirty Linen, Strings, The Encyclopedia of Ireland and the Americas, and The MusicHound Guides. She also writes about the arts and creative practice at Music Road and contributes to Fred Bals' Series of Tubes.