Battlefield Band, Time and Tide

There will, on occasion, arise a band that possesses the capacity to continue producing good, high quality music year after year, and that can weather changes and shakeups without becoming overly repetitive and mellow. Battlefield Band is one of those bands, and their latest release, Time and Tide, is in keeping with their reputation for fine traditional (and sometimes not so traditional!) music. Battlefield (named after an Edinburgh burgh) has changed its lineup many times during its thirty year history, with an almost entirely new assembly of musicians for this release. Only Alan Reid (vocals, keyboard, accordion) remains from past lineups. He is joined by Mike Katz (Highland bagpipe, small pipes, whistle, bass), Alasdair White (fiddle, whistles, bouzouki), and Pat Kilbride (vocals, guitar, cittern). All are fine musicians, and work beautifully together.

Battlefield Band has been characterized by largely traditional music, though with plenty of innovation and new tunes and songs, in addition to older and traditional pieces. This album holds to such a pattern, with a mixture of traditional sets and newer compositions, but the whole album works together beautifully. The tunes tend to move along, but there are a couple slower, contemplative sorts of tunes as well, some portions with an ethereal feel to them – almost mournful but not quite.

The album starts us off with the quickly moving set headed by “Chuir i Gluin Air a Bhodach” (“She Put A Knee in the Old Man”), which we are told is the tune from an old ballad about a nasty innkeeper. I’m not sure whether that explains the title or not – at any rate, the music has a lively flair to it with a slight hint of unrest. After some fine guitar and fiddle work, Mike Katz’s pipes fire up and give us some excellent piping, including two tunes of his own pen, the whole set fixing the pace for the music to come. After this stirring opening, the first song of the album, Nancy’s Whiskey, bewails the dangers of whisky: “The mare I tried it, the mare I looed [loved] it, the mare I looed it, I wanted more. I was ensnared by Nancy’s pleasures, till all my senses had gone ashore.” The vocals are lovely, and rather mournful-feeling. Fortunately (or unfortunately I suppose, if you’re a morbid sort of person) this, and to a lesser bit, “Rothesay Bay” are the only really “downbeat” songs on the album.

The songs of the album overall are rather whimsical (as opposed to the sorts of ballads G.K. Chesterton described: breaking hearts and breaking heads), and all well-done and integrated with the album as a whole, with a balance between Alan and Pat’s vocals. “Camden Town,” a song written and sung by Pat Kilbride, is one of my favorite tracks of the album, with a nice instrumental background to accompany the charming lyrics, which describe the “Ireland across the water” of London.

“The Bonnie Jeanie Deans,” written by Alan Reid, commemorates a paddlesteamer that served on the Firth of Clyde off Glasgow, a boat “as braw as ony of the Queens” that “won the hearts o’ sailin’ men fae Arrochar tae Arran.” The music is well-done and masterfully accents the lyrics, giving us a lovely song, with a subject not terribly often heard (though not as rare as songs about curling, which Battlefield has also done). Though, men compose many songs praising women, so why not ships?

The fourth song of the album, “Rothesay Bay,” was composed by nineteenth century novelist Dinah Craik, and set to music by Alan. I must admit to having not particularly noticed or appreciated this song, it being slower and somewhat sparser instrumentally than the other tracks of the album, with a rather mournful bent to it. However, with listening I have grown to like it, imagining in my mind that day when “the sun drops doon and red comes high the moon. When the mist creeps o’er the Cumbraes and Arran’s peaks are gray and the great black hills like sleepin’ kings sit grand roon Rothesay Bay.”

The final song on the album is a delightful tune titled “Whiskey From the Field,” written by Karl Mullen. Celebrating Ireland, the song speaks of “The Irish soil the Irish soul the sacred place where the seed is sown through hunger and the pain, the beauty and the shame.” The music carries the song along with the energy of poteen, wonderfully accompanying Pat’s fine singing. The tune in the middle will be appreciated by our libertarian friends (but I will leave you to purchase the album to discover why).

The instrumental tracks – which make up the larger part of the album – are all excellent, and are gathered from traditional tunes, compositions from more recent times, and tunes written by band members. The sets “If Cadillac Made Tractors,” “James Cameron,” “The Walking Nightmare,” and “Banais Choinnich” are all quick-moving tunes, and all fine pieces of music. I particularly enjoyed the “Banais Choinnich” set, which includes an unusual and fast-moving piping piece composed by Charlie Williamson, after “Banais Choinnich” itself, a stirring fiddle strathy, though Battlefield has modified it more into the lines of a mazurka. The whole set is laced with movement and energy, making it quite hard to restrain one’s feet from moving.

The other two instrumentals on the album are both mellower and slower pieces. “Time and Tide” is a lovely tune composed by Alasdair White, with Alasdair’s beautiful fiddling weaving through Pat’s guitar accompaniment. “Sunset,” written by G. S. MacLennan during his combat in the Battle of the Somme, is a gentle, haunting air, and is rather mournful. The pipes at the end of the air are slow and stirring, calling to mind the sun setting slowly over the gloom and carnage of the battlefield – night falling, with brief respite from the day’s terrors.

Though diverse and ranging in style and composition, the musical quality of Time and Tide is uniformly superb. Battlefield Band has once again weathered a change to bring us beautiful, lively music from the leading edge of Scottish traditional music.

Related Links:
  Battlefield Band’s website
  Buy Time and Tide at Amazon.com