Scottish band Skerryvore coming to play Colonial Theater in Idaho Falls
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IDAHO FALLS — Skerryvore, a band whose sound fuses rock and pop sounds with traditional Scottish instrumentation, is coming to Idaho Falls. The band will play a concert at the Colonial Theater in Idaho Falls this Saturday, April 22. (Click here for tickets.)
Formed in 2005, Skerryvore is an eight-piece group that combines rock and pop elements with instrumentation and melodies from traditional Scottish music. The resulting sound is energetic and passionate and will appeal to anyone who enjoys Celtic music.
“The band’s been going for quite a long time,” Skerryvore fiddle player Craig Espie told EastIdahoNews.com. “It’s grown and changed and evolved quite a lot over the years. It started out as a 4-piece on the west coast of Scotland on the island of Tiree.”
The initial lineup included brothers Dan and Martin Gillespie, Fraser West and Alec Dalglish. The quartet started out as a dance band playing traditional Scottish. They played pubs, weddings and other events throughout the west coast of Scotland.
The band expanded its lineup, with Espie joining a few years after the original quartet got together. The band currently plays original songs along with traditionally-influenced instrumental pieces. They do so in a sound and style that is at once comfortably familiar and completely distinct.
“I think (our sound) has grown out of the way the band has evolved and the different band members bringing their own influences,” said Espie. “There’s guys in the band who come from a far more traditional Celtic, Scottish folk music background, so they bring the influences that come with that, the bagpipes and the Gaelic culture and the dance music. So the roots of the band have a lot of traditional Scottish elements.”
“But then a lot of the other guys in the band come from a pop or a rock background,” he added. “Alec, who is the singer/songwriter, he grew up listening to a lot of Americana and pop music, so it’s a mixture of all of these things that come together to form the sound that we have now.”
That sound has led Skerryvore to become quite successful, especially for an independent band. They’ve released six studio albums and will drop their latest full-length, titled “Tempus,” on April 28. Their popularity has allowed them to tour across the world, including the U.S., Canada, Australia and all across Europe.
“We’ve been touring the U.S. quite a lot the past ten or fifteen years,” Espie said. “We’ve been all over, from Florida to Alaska and thirty-six states in between.”
Regardless of where they play, Skerryvore’s goal is to get the audience involved and have a good time.
“Generally, the audiences in Scotland are quite lively and energetic,” said Espie. “They want to get up and dance. Mostly in Scotland, we would play standing shows whereas when we’re touring out here (in the U.S.), often it would be to seated theaters we might be playing. It’s a bit of a different atmosphere in that sense in that we have to work a wee bit harder sometimes to get people on their feet and join in. But generally, that’s what we’re all about. We don’t want people to just sit and watch us. We want them to interact and sing along and clap their hands and dance.”
Skerryvore is playing at the Colonial Theater in Idaho Falls this Saturday, April 22, at 7:30 pm. Tickets are still available and you can click here to purchase them.
