For Donnie, a musical life on two west coasts

Since 1983, that has mainly meant California but his Hebridean presence remains strong. This is underpinned not just by frequent visits over the years but also the continuing popularity of his music. Recordings made half a century ago are requested as frequently as ever on Radio nan Gaidheal; part of the soundtrack for a generation of island lives.

Donnie Large appeared on the scene in the early 1970s when Gaelic music was looking for ways to make the transition from ancient to modern without losing its authenticity. Na h’Oganaich, Runrig, Donnie Large were in that vanguard. Both the singers and the songs with which they became identified have stood the test of time.

Gaelic was certainly Donnie’s first language from an upbringing in his mother’s native Ness and his father’s homeland of Bayble in the 1960s but when he arrived in Glasgow, working as a PE teacher by day and singing in the bars by night, his repertoire had steered in the directions of folk and country and western, with a bit of Irish in the mix.

He attributes this to his cousin Etta, from Eoropie, who had a small record player that she would bring to Donnie’s home in Skigersta at weekends with a selection of EPs which featured the likes of Jim Reeves, Hank Williams and Bridie Gallagher. Musically, Donnie is entirely self-taught which is, he says, “why I can’t teach anyone”.

When he went into secondary school, the family was still living in Ness, so Donnie went straight to the Nicolson Institute and lived in the Gibson Hostel. It was only later that they moved to Bayble, so he missed out on the “junior secondary” years that kept children in Point at that time. This also meant he did not really get to know his musical contemporaries in Point, notably Iain“Costello” Maciver, until much later.

However, at hostel, he got himself a guitar which he learned to play and his mother brought a small accordion from Glasgow. Donnie’s ear for music did the rest. In Bayble, he recalls, if the school bus had been left unlocked, it became a preferred gathering place with plenty of music and song. By the time he left school and headed for college in Glasgow, he was competent enough to perform.

Donnie spent three years teaching PE and playing before going full-time at music in the mid-70s, travelling to gigs all over Scotland and beyond as part of various bands and concert parties which featured a shifting cast of musicians. One such engagement took him to the Carlton in Inverness. Such was the hospitality bestowed on arrival that the Gaelic singer in the party was not in performance mode by the appointed hour.

“Can you do a few Gaelic songs”, asked the bandleader and Donnie obliged. Shortly afterwards, the same scenario was repeated, albeit with a different singer failing to stay the course. Again Donnie filled in but these experiences had reminded him how limited and predictable his Gaelic repertoire was, at performance level. So he phoned his mother “because I was aware I didn’t have any Gaelic songs I could really believe in”.

Christina Macdonald had presided over Skigersta school for 18 years until it closed in 1965. She also wrote bardachd. As she explained: “Bha mi feuchainn re seann chleachdaidhean a chumail beò; uill chan e na cleachdaidhean idir ach na facal a bha timcheall orra a chumail beò. ‘S ann ‘son sin a sgriobh mi iad, ‘s ann a’ feuchainn ri na facal a bha dol à bith…”. “I was trying to keep old ways alive; not the old ways but the words connected to them … That’s why I wrote the songs, to try and keep those words that were falling into disuse…”.

Donnie asked his mother to send down some of these poems she kept in a drawer. She sent eight and he quickly put tunes to four of them and thus the distinctive Gaelic sound of Donnie Large was born, with songs like Ar Baile and Airigh Shamraidh Mo Gràidh. They have remained much-loved “standards” but might otherwise never have been given the wider audience they deserved; respecting the old ways and old words.

From there, Donnie’s career flourished and the music made it possible to combine earning a living with having a lot of good times for seven years, without being in too much of a hurry. He made his way round the village hall circuit which was very much alive in the West Highlands and islands in these days. “I always focused on the people who lived there year round, rather than going in the summer”, he recalls.

There were “the five day weddings on Barra” but also the busking trip to Holland and Luxembourg that led to an invitation to Iceland, and so on. He met the BBC Gaelic producer, Neil Fraser, at a party which led to his first television appearances on “Se Ur Beatha” with Mary Sandeman. He hooked up with Lismor Records and his first album, back in the days of vinyl, was “Here Comes Donny” released in 1977 with tracks in both Gaelic and English. The cover features a young Donnie and a motor-bike.

He had an ear for topical songs which became equally popular. His gratitude to the CalMac crews and shore staff of the era for their unfailing assistance in getting him from one venue to the next was reflected in “Working for MacBraynes”. Such matters as late arrivals at ferry terminals by itinerant musicians were conducted a lot less formally in these days!

“Sometimes, I would perform by myself”, he recalls, “For a while, I had a variety concert group and they were all able to contribute to the dances after. At one stage, I had a band called The Norsemen and Kintail Lodge Hotel became quite a haunt for us. We played all around that Dornie, Kyle area. Iain Matheson, who owned Kintail Lodge became a lifelong friend and I got to know the shinty boys very well”.

He says: “I don’t really know how connections were made in these days. There were no e-mails to take bookings, no mobile phones, but somehow it worked. You just met people and one contact led to another”. It was also a network which led to encounters with some colourful characters; including a guy called John D. Maclennan, a singer-entrepreneur who billed himself as “The Singing, Swinging Highlander”.

When Donnie asked him where the “D” came from, he said he had borrowed the idea from John D. Rockefeller, the original oil mogul. By the early 1980s, John D. had discovered the potential of the American-Scottish trail and was going back and forwards between Florida and Scotland.

In 1982, Donnie ran into him while having a game of pool in the Crown Hotel in Stornoway. It proved to be a fateful encounter.

John D. had a proposition. He was about to move to Long Beach in California. He had gone into business with Andrew Rankine, one of the most celebrated Scottish dance band leaders of the era, to open a Scottish heritage shop in a “British village” adjacent to the great Cunard liner “Queen Mary” which by this time was serving as a tourist attraction in Long Beach. He wanted musicians to work in the shop and play on the ship. Would Donnie like to join for the summer?

Donnie worked there for three years while other opportunities began to present themselves on the musical front.

Part of his work was to travel round the numerous Highland Games in the north-west of America and the contacts built up.

He became involved in the Irish music scene and by 1987, had teamed up with an Irish musician, James Keigher, to form a duo called “Men of Worth”. They have now been on the road together for 37 years.

They perform not just the songs but also tell the stories behind them.

It is a formula which has built a large and loyal audience throughout the north-western US and has extended into the education system. Sometimes, Donnie explains, a single booking by a municipal authority covers a week of concerts and also an “educational programme” in local schools.

The latter, according to the “Men of Worth” web-site “includes songs and melodies pertaining to emigration and language; both in English and Gaelic. We discuss the historical and geographical aspects of the music and language and its influence on American music.

“We encourage participation and hope to field questions in relation to any aspect of our work as travelling musicians and any questions the students may have in regards to historical and modern day Ireland and Scotland, where we were raised”. Sounds like a format which might usefully be emulated closer to home!

There was never any chance of Donnie losing his island connections but his own entrepreneurial streak created another way of underwriting them. He remembers “waking up in Bayble in 2001” with the idea of organising guided bus tours of both Scotland and Ireland, built on the following which “Men of Worth” had established. And so it came to pass.

Over the past 20-odd years, there have been 80 of these tours divided between the two countries. “When it’s Ireland, James is at the front of the bus; when it’s Scotland; I’m at the front of the bus”. Until recently, the Scottish itinerary included the Cabarfeidh Hotel in Stornoway and culminated in a grand ceilidh.

“When it started”, he says, “I thought it would be helpful for the local economy if we brought the tours on the shoulder of the season. Since then, of course, the season has extended. We always included the luadh group and the children from Tarbert and we raised money for local charities. Latterly though, the logistics became too difficult, particularly with ferries, and I’ve now discovered the Borders and Galloway!”. Donnie intends this to be his last year on the buses.

There are plenty other reasons to maintain the transatlantic connections, however.

Donnie and his wife Phyllis, whom he met after she came to one of their gigs in Sacramento more than 30 years ago, were on Lewis this week to visit relatives and friends.

Their daughter Fiona studied sustainable development in Edinburgh and now works for a cashmere company in Ayr.

But there is still work to draw Donnie back to the other west coast. The next gig in the diary for “Men of Worth” is in a town called Petaluma, close to San Francisco, on January 25th. Then it’s on to a few more in Oregon. Donnie says: “The rural areas are the best where the kind of show we put on is an event which people travel to attend. You don’t get that in the cities”.

Just like here in the 1970s, where it all began, he might have added!