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From The Desk Of Alasdair Roberts: Sheila Stewart

Alasdair Roberts’ songs are difficult to digest. Like a large pill you can’t quite swallow, that lodges toward the back of the throat, they are dense, layered, poetic ballads coupled with a forcefully picked acoustic guitar, abrasively fragile vocals and a thick Scottish accent. His new self-titled album is not the kind of thing you put on while washing dishes. But it’s the kind of album you go back to again and again, trying to parse the lyrics, trying to understand why these songs grate at the base of your spine. Roberts will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on him.

Sheila

Roberts: I was raised in the small town of Callander in central Scotland. There has historically been some dispute as to whether the town lies within the boundaries of Stirlingshire or of Perthshire, but now my family is no longer in Callander and some of them live near the town of Blairgowrie, which is definitely in Perthshire. Blairgowrie was traditionally a part of Scotland where the Travellers, the indigenous nomadic people of Scotland (ethnically distinct from other itinerant groups such as Roma but with a similarly itinerant lifestyle), would go at certain times of the year to pick berries (strawberries and raspberries) in the surrounding fields. The Scottish Travellers are renowned as carriers of an ancient oral tradition, and their culture has historically been rich with songs, ballads and wonder tales; one of the most well-known musical families of recent years were the Stewarts of Blairgowrie. The late Sheila Stewart, who sadly died in December 2014, was the daughter of Belle Stewart, the clan matriarch, and was more or less the last in the line of tradition-carriers within the family—a formidable performer with an astounding, unique voice and powerful delivery. I had the pleasure of hearing Sheila sing several times, usually at the Celtic Connections Festival in Glasgow, and also had the great honour of appearing on the same bill as her a few years back at the Tolbooth in Stirling. Her command of what she called the “conyach”—that ineffable feeling at the emotional core of a song or a voice (perhaps akin to the Spanish concept of duende) can be heard in recordings of her performances of such auld Scots ballads as “The Twa Brothers” (a song I recorded myself on the album No Earthly Man).

Video after the jump.