Folk, Jazz etc: Thick Skinned artists thinking about best way forward in tough times

The tour was originally planned to launch Thick-Skinned's first two CD releases, but work on the Rae-Stephen collaboration, recorded at Dave Gray's Sound Caf studio, nestling against the Pentland Hills, was held up by the snowy weather. Kellock, a pianist of international stature, recorded his album under the working title of Think About It at the same studio over a year ago but the recording has now attracted interest from some larger labels, who are now indeed thinking about it.

"We phoned round venues to let them know the concerts wouldn't be album launches any more and they were all fine with that," explains Cathie, member of the Rae jazz dynasty and a director of Thick-Skinned Productions. "We recorded our album at Sound Cafe but then it was completely cut off. It's now at the mixing stage so it'll be out in a couple of months."

Kellock's album was recorded at the same studio more than a year ago, his brilliantly loose-limbed playing in the company of Kenny Ellis on double bass, and another Rae, John, on drums - the same trio with whom he made his award-winning Live At Henry's album of 2001. The current album was recorded during John's last visit from the Antipodes, the drummer, also a Thick-Skinned director, having been until recently composer-in-residence at Wellington University in New Zealand, where he still lives. For the forthcoming tour, Kellock and Ellis are joined by another well-established Scottish jazz drummer, Stu Ritchie.

Think About It, once it finally appears, will be the pianist's first album since his acclaimed Live at the Lampie collaboration with singer Liane Carroll in 2009 and 2008's Nine Mile Burn Sessions collaboration with another Thick-Skinned stablemate and director, saxophonist Julian Argelles.

"Because Thick-Skinned is a really small label," says Cathie, "and we believe Brian deserves a much wider audience, I can't really say who just now but a couple of other labels are interested. It'll be worth waiting for."

Cathie Rae's own forthcoming album, Back to the Mother, finds her in the company of guitarist Graeme Stephen, whose work habitually straddles jazz, folk and beyond, and features several of Rae's own songs and one by Stephen. A sample finds her singing over spacey sighs of electric guitar.

"All my influences come into it," she says."I was brought up with the likes of Earth, Wind and Fire, Stevie Wonder, Jimi Hendrix, and I didn't want to restrict myself by saying it has to be a jazz album, although there are a few standards on it as well."

These include a number better known as an instrumental, Lament, which Miles Davis made famous with Gil Evans. "When I found out it had lyrics, I was over the moon."

Stephens, by the way, will also tour in Scotland at the end of March as part of the experimental jazz-rock outfit NeWt, with guest reeds player Silke Eberhard (see www.myspace.com/newttrio ).

In the meantime, Thick-Skinned, with funding from Creative Scotland's Youth Music Initiative, have been developing pilot schemes to record emerging young musicians from all genres, while Cathie, wearing her hat as development officer for the Scottish Jazz Federation, has been conducting seminars for musicians on marketing themselves at music trade fairs. A positively Thick-Skinned response, one might say, to difficult times.

• The Brian Kellock Trio with Cathie Rae and Graeme Stephen are at the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, on 11 February; Corn Exchange, Biggar, 12 February, then Easterhouse, Glasgow, Stirling, Arbroath and Livingstone. See www.thick-skinned.com