The Tannahill Weavers ready for trip down memory lane

The Tannahill Weavers, from left: John Martin, Phil Smillie, Roy Gullane and piper Lorne MacDougall

THE ill-starred Paisley bard from whom they took their name died under tragic circumstances when he was only 35. Now approaching their half-century, the Tannahill Weavers, however, are still alive and very much kicking with their trademark fiery bagpipe and fiddle instrumental front line, and marking 40 years of featuring the pipes with a celebratory concert next weekend at Glasgow’s Piping Live! international bagpipe festival.

One of the first Scottish folk bands to add Highland pipes to their instrumental armoury, the Tannahill Weavers’ rumbustious combination of hard-driving instrumental sets and songs from their ebullient singer and guitarist Roy Gullane, has made them a hugely popular Scottish act on the international touring circuit since the 1970s. As well as gleaning various album awards during their career, the “Tannies” were inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame in 2011.

Next Sunday’s concert at the National Piping Centre in Glasgow will see the band’s present line-up of long-standing singer-guitarist Gullane, piper Lorne MacDougall, fiddler John Martin and flautist Phil Smillie joined by several of their previous pipers.

The Tannies took the not inconsiderable step of adding the great Highland bagpipe to their line-up in 1976, but let’s first go back to their origins. “The band actually started in 1968, from sessions in Paisley,” Gullane recalls, speaking to me from his home in Groningen in the Netherlands, where he has lived since the mid-1980s. “It was a bunch of young guys who were very influenced by people like the Clancy Brothers and the Weavers.” Hence the name they adopted, combining that of the Paisley poet and songwriter, who died in 1810, and the popular American folk group.

Gullane, now 66, knew the initial members but had been singing with another outfit until he joined them in 1970. “The first time I went on stage with the Tannahill Weavers there were three of us – myself, John Cassidy and Stuart McKay, and then it was just a bit of a hoot, to be honest.