My background is in songwriting, both for myself as a singer-songwriter and for other artists. Since my band the Bedlam Six split in 2016 I have been mostly writing for theatre commissions rather than personal pleasure. It wasn’t until I stopped performing live that I realised how lucky I’d been in having an immediate outlet for my work – I’d write a song and had the option of performing it whenever I liked. During the pandemic almost all live performance instantly stopped, leaving songwriters with nowhere to air their work, bringing home the everyday reality of non-performing songwriters – that all this material has nowhere to go. Songwriting is such a therapeutic form of self-expression but the composition is only half of it, often the sharing is key!

With that in mind I looked around to see if there was anywhere I could go to try out new work or help others develop theirs. There is a brilliant folk club at the village hall in Breakish and a well respected regular session at the Old Inn in Carbost, but many of the established music nights around Skye and Lochalsh have been chased off by the changing priorities of the hospitality sector and a lot of the others have yet to recover their contributors post-lockdown (though hopefully this will change with time). 

In an attempt to plug some of the gaps I have set up two free monthly get-togethers for songwriters of all abilities: one in Dunvegan Hall on the first Tuesday of each month and one in Kilmuir Hall on the second (though dates can be subject to change – check the FB pages for updates). These are designed to provide a safe non-judgemental space for people to share work and pick up constructive advice, not to mention an excuse to meet up with like-minded people after a lot of enforced isolation!

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