Shooglenifty interview - Luke Plumb | putakiltonit on Xanga

Tuesday, 29 April 2008

Shooglenifty interview - Luke Plumb
Sharon Armstrong:

In a follow-up to her piece on a recent Shooglenifty gig, Sharon Armstrong catches up with the alt. Scottish band's self-confessed "things with strings" player.

Put A Kilt On It: When did you join Shooglenifty?

Luke Plumb: I am from Tasmania and I met them at the Cygnet Folk Festival, the second week of January about six years ago. I did a tour with them and at the end of the tour they kind of hummed and haahed, and shuffled their feet and said. “You know, it would be pretty handy if you were living in the UK, and things kind of went from there.

"People tend to congregate together irrespective of what kind of traditional music they are playing, simply because it is roots music."

Is there a big folk music scene in Australia?

It’s probably not quite as specific and integrated with mainstream culture as it might be in Scotland. Everybody in Scotland has a vague idea of the country-dances and all that kind of stuff, and they know people within one or two degrees of separation that play a traditional instrument. That is not quite the same in Australia. But the flip side is that people who are involved in traditional music are involved in traditional music from all over the world. I think that is partly to do with the multicultural society that Australia has. It has huge numbers of immigrants wanting to preserve their own cultures. People tend to congregate together irrespective of what kind of traditional music they are playing, simply because it is roots music.

You are self-taught. What instruments do you play?

Things with strings. Mandolin. Guitar. Tenor banjo. I’ve got an Irish and a Greek bouzouki at the moment. I am getting a lot into Greek music, so I have a baglama, which is a tiny little instrument, kind of like a baby bouzouki, and a loweter, which is like a big bouzouki. The first day I took my mandolin outside to go busking the then President of the Irish Association was walking by and invited me out to a session, so as an underage seventeen year old I went to a pub and started learning from the source, as it where.

How would you describe your journey from Tasmania to Edinburgh?

It has been, I don’t know, about coincidences, or however you describe things if you don’t believe in coincidences. I don’t believe in fate either but there are a lot of extreme chance meetings. I reckon I am in the right place. The great advantage is the proximity to the rest of Europe, and as result of that proximity to cultures that are very different. You kind of have to go a long way to get out of Australia if you live in Australia. It’s a continent surrounded by a lot of water. I heard the other day that if you rotate the globe to a certain angle then all you can see is the Pacific Ocean. That is one of our neighbours.

What other bands have you been in?

Shooglenifty is my first professionally functioning band. I was in quite a few bands playing acoustic music back home, but there were all kind of take gigs as they come. Certainly not any band that you would claim fame from.

What do you think makes Shooglenifty so popular?

I think it comes down to the personnel in the band. It’s a really tight bunch of fellas. I think that musically there’s something that happens when you have a group of people who are that tight. There are really not artistic boundaries for any individual member of the band. If Malcolm (Malcolm Crosbie, guitar) wants to bring a straight our Led Zeppelin rift to a tune that Garry (Garry Finlayson) banjo and banjax) is playing straight African whatever on and James (James Mackintosh, drums) is doing unashamed Clash drumming to, then that is fine. The sound is a product of six individual people’ musical tastes. Describing it in music terms really kind of pigeonholes it, and that is against the whole thing.

You guys are just back from playing at the Kremlin. How was that?

I was totally blown away by Moscow, constantly impressed by it. It was a kind of trail cultural exchange thing. A well-known band in Russia invited a bunch of their friends to come and play at a type or gala cabaret event. It had sold out around 6000 people; some very wealthy members of Moscow and most of the Government were there. Kind of odd but I think it went well.

Will Russia be part of your next tour then?

Yeah, absolutely. It would be brilliant. St Petersberg. Bring it on!

You look a bit tired.

It catches up. There is a great Indiana Jones line that is in my head because the new movie is coming out. You know when he said ‘It’s no the years: it’s the mileage.’
What a cracker.

"Here we all are, we don’t have any language in common, but the music was our common language."

Do you think that politics and music mix well?

I think it’s in the nature of every musician to be extremely optimistic. You know, it’ll be all right. I’ll make a living. I’ll pay the bills. It’s going to happen. Someone is going to come to the gig tonight. We are out in Sarawak playing at a festival in the rain forest. All the rest of the band is back at the hotel. I got a tune together with some American old time musicians, real hillbillies. We had this tune and there were Bolivian and Chilean refugees, Afghani refugees, guys from Madagascar and these American hillbillies and Brits and Australians all of whom had troops out there and what have you. There was this real feeling of if only it was this easy. Here we all are, we don’t have any language in common, but the music was our common language. We played the night away. It makes you sad but it also makes you hopeful.

What is next?

Most of this summer is going to be taken up in tours of England and Scotland. We have a couple of trips to Canada this year, and a couple to Spain and Portugal.