King Creosote ready to hold court at HebCelt Festival

His forthcoming album, to be released later this year, will be no exception.

“The songs recorded most recently cover such topics as my dislike of wind turbines, my yearning for inter-galactic travel, tackling Broughton Street in Edinburgh on crutches, apologising for bad behaviour and the similarities between break ups and trench warfare”, says the artist better known as King Creosote. “I also wrote my first overtly political song recently but so far I’ve kept it to myself.

“When we played in St Andrews on St Andrew’s Day, the front row was made up of Mediterranean teenagers all waving saltires - that image also found its way into a song.”

This wide ranging collection will be gathered onto his 41st album - yes, the 41st album from the prolific Fife artist who will be making his debut at the Hebridean Celtic Festival next month.

Why has it taken him so long to play the award-winning festival?

“One of my main pastimes is to keep myself busy whilst waiting to be asked.

“Three of the King Creosote band missed our slot at Latitude (festival) last summer having been booked to play HebCelt with their other bands. So I’m thinking they maybe put in a good word for me.”

HebCelt will be a new experience, but it has already set his imagination working: “I’ve no idea what to expect really, but I recently read the ‘Lewis Trilogy’ by Peter May so I hope there’s an ongoing (fictional) murder mystery as a backdrop to the festival.

“I’ll have played at Louis-from-Admiral-Fallow’s wedding the night before, so here’s hoping I don’t get into a muddle and open with a Taylor Swift song.”

He added: “Festivals are the shows that can afford a bigger band, so the sound is more lush, and we tend to drop the really slow songs. I cut out 90 per cent of my ‘hilarious’ between song banter. And each time I play a festival I thank my lucky stars that I’ve no chance of ever becoming a one hit wonder.”

The success of ‘From Scotland With Love’ has exposed King Creosote music to a new demographic and a new level of fame for the man behind the songs: “Since FSWL, the average age of our audience switched from being 10-15 years younger than me to 10-15 years older.

“I’m delighted with that result, for this older lot still buy records and DVDs, and have no interest in streaming and the like. I live in a village full of retirement homes, so it’s good to be recognised in the Co-op at long last.”

In the meantime, he will keep writing using everyday life as inspiration: “There’s nothing like a new musical toy to get the tunes flowing, meaning I quickly have something to sing against and a hole in my bank account to fill.

“Fitting words to existing la-la-la tunes is a lot harder than surreptitiously copying down the conversations overheard on the train.

“I bought a new drum machine in November, so even though I didn’t take it out of its box until last month I like to think that in some parallel universe that one particular purchase attracted all those flag waving exchange students to the front of the stage on November 30th.”

The 21st HebCelt will be held from July 13th to 16th.

Pictured above Kenny Anderson ‘King Creosote’ makes his HebCelt debut this year.

Image courtesy of Ross Trevail.