Big Jim McKenna

Fuck them afore they fuck you!

It's hard to criticise someone and make them feel good about themselves at the same time. Jim seemed to be able to do that naturally. He was at the first Back of the Moon gig in the Star Folk Club, Glasgow sometime in late 2000 early 2001. Quick to dispense praise and criticism each discourse was liberally punctuated with swearing... we all thought he was (fucking) great! I think we had immediate respect for him, he had a great voice and we loved his songs, he didn't seem to care that we were a bunch of upstart kids. We had already experienced a patronising attitude towards young bands so it was refreshing to be spoken to like what you had to say and your music was worth something; dues paid, welcome to the team.



He showed up at The Late Night Session at Celtic Connections last year. Security wouldn't let him in (no surprise there) and he was protesting loudly about their authority. I told them he was getting up to play which seemed to calm them down. "I'm not fuckin playing. They don't want tae listen tae an aul bastard like me. Fucks sake."


I did a short spot first, which garnered the usual appreciation and roasting... Go and show us how it's done then you grumpy old bastard... So he got up and played. The audience, who were getting a bit on the chatty side, went absolutely quiet. He played about four songs with no regard for genre; a bit of blues, a country tune, a folk song. When he finished the place went mental. One woman, moved to tears by one of his song pushed herself backstage desperate to talk to him. No act the whole year received that kind of reception. All the musicians hanging about backstage and in the room were coming up to me for the rest of the festival asking if he was going to go up on stage again.

Watch the video. It's funny, instructive and pretty much sums up the Big Jim McKenna we knew.

...And get some fucking backbone!

The First Gig (originally posted on www.gardensessions.co.uk)

Another Beatles anniversary blows by in a flurry of screaming teens and bigger than Jesus bonfires. They, those who say these things, say that no band will ever see the frenzied mass of jailbait combined with the unrelenting media presence that became known as Beatlemania.

Looking back to the sixties it seems like almost every week a now legendary band exploded onto the TV screens blowing the tinny speakers of the only telly on the street. It made me realise that, as a child of the eighties and a teen of the nineties, I don’t really remember any bands that grabbed me like the Beatles had done in their heyday. To make matters worse the only band I do remember getting any real media was the Beatles when their Anthology documentary was released.

I did listen to music. I can remember when Graceland came out and our Ghanaian next-door neighbour taught us to dance African style. A style I promptly forgot and reverted back to my failsafe ‘hide outside the village hall and smoke rollies’ the dance technique favoured by all sweaty palmed wallflowers.

And, during those long dark winter nights, accompanied by my brothers and a ramshackle team of neighbours and visitors kids, arranging frighteningly complicated dance routines to Micheal Jackson’s ‘Bad’. Routines that usually ended in a performance to a bemused group of tipsy parents followed by a fight and Southpark style cries of, “Screw you guys. I’m going home.”

But the band, and I mean the band, that drew me like a spotty moth to a distortion-laden flame was Wolfstone. They truly are the band, like the Beatles for many fifty somethings, are inextricably linked to my teenage years. They are the band that I can preface a story with, “I was there when”.

I think fondly of staring out a maths room window, oblivious to the lesson, with merry sound of tinnitus ringing in my ears. The previous evening had been spent standing next to the speakers of the largest PA ever crammed into Elgin town hall while Wolfstone, turned way past eleven, leapt about the stage.

So, forgive me, here we go. I was there when one November night a little known local folk combo from Inverness were playing in the Stakis Hotel Coylumbridge. This purpose built pleasure dome located at the foot of Cairngorm was home to an ice rink, the Swim Lunch (not the Lunch Swim as that would have been dangerous), the largest crossbow in the world and a sticky floored monument to the boozy weddings that had been before known as Cairngorm Suite.

 

I had never heard of Wolfstone and I must remember to ask my folks why they chose to take me. It was a ‘Birthday Treat’ it may even have been my thirteenth birthday which would make it in mid November 1991.

The band overcame initial problems with the cold vibeless function suite by turning off all the lights. This prompted my now blinded mother to complain loudly to all within earshot, including the band and probably some mountaineers camped out in the Lairig Gru that this was NO GOOD and she couldn’t see. Following my Father’s lead I shrunk beneath table hoping this would deflect the daggers of the seething crowd of around twelve people that were rattling about in the gym hall sized room.

The buzz of amps, a squeal of pipes, a flickering as a dark shape passes in before a Marshall half stack. The ubiquitous bang as an unmuted cable is plugged in and they were off. The disco lights came on and everyone went crazy. I’m pretty sure by the end of the night there were only about fifty people there and all, including my folks, were throwing themselves around the dance floor like bedlamites.

Aside from the volume, the lights and the pure excitement the thing that sticks most in my memory is that after the raffle (!) and before the encore the band asked the audience if they knew any good drummers or bass players. We’d been listening to a drum machine all night and hadn’t noticed, presumably because it was so dark. Imagine being in the cavern club when John, Paul and George were looking for a replacement for Stewart Suttcliffe or Pete Best. I was there. This was a major moment in musical history and I was there. I was there soaked in sweat, knackered and awestruck wishing that I could play drums or bass. I should have just lied and said I could. Surely they would have taken me seriously.

Officially this wasn’t the first concert I’d ever been to. But, if this makes sense, it was my first gig. This concert was different in that: a) I remembered it for longer than a week and b) It was, in the full sense Oxford English dictionary sense of the word, awesome. So awesome in fact that it made me realise that I did not want to join the Merchant Navy or be a vet or a bed tester for Silentnight or any of the other list of so called proper jobs a teenager dreams of. Each year this knowledge was further galvanised by other birthday trips, usually to Eden Court, to see the mighty Wolfstone strut their stuff before an unhinged home crowd. Unfortunately by that time they had a bass player and a drummer and had completely ignored all my letters offering services on bodhran and backing vocals.

I know that late at night many twenty and thirty something fans, their pride washed away by a high tide of nostalgia and alcohol share their teenage Wolfstone stories and listen to Unleashed on repeat. At 5am a neighbour will call the police complaining of thunderous dancing followed by loud singing. Then there is quiet followed by the occasional sniffle as ‘Song For Yesterday’ fades out.