U.K.’s Peatbog Faeries bring more than traditional bagpipes and whistles to the musical table during performances and the band is gearing up to showcase its world sound in Canmore.
The band has built a 20-year career on incorporating many influences, taking them from traditional jigs and reels through jazz, hip hop, reggae and African musical styles.
“We’ve been playing together for the best part of 20 years – Scotland, England, Europe and we’ve been to Canada a couple of times. We’re hard to explain – we’re kind of a dance band with pipes, fiddles and whistles, but with a contemporary backing,” Peatbog Faerie member Peter Morrison said. “It’s an up-to-date Celtic kind of thing. And we’re really looking forward to Canmore, it should be a lovely wee trip.”
Peatbog Faeries, presented by the Canmore Folk Music Festival, play Canmore’s Cornerstone Theatre, Thursday (March 13).
The Faeries incorporate the usual instruments one first thinks of for a traditional style of band – drums, keys, bass and guitar, but it’s their eclectic musical styling that separates them from their contemporaries.
“We have a guitarist as well that’s got a bit of an African style – it’s sort of a mix of world styles and we bring it together to make a dance band, basically,” Morrison said.
The band was last on Canadian soil in 2010 and played from Vancouver to Winnipeg. “We had a lovely time really and we’ve played the Edmonton Festival before, so we’re looking forward to getting back to that area,” said Morrison.
The band’s last release was 2011’s Dust, the band’s seventh studio album, and they are busy working on an upcoming release.
“We’ll play a lot of material from that (Dust) and a wee bit from the previous albums, plus some material we’ve been working on for the new album. It will be out late in the summer, so we’ve been playing a few of these tracks live through the winter season,” said Morrison. “We play a mix and look at it from venue to venue depending on whether or not it’s a dancing crowd, a listening crowd or whatever – and take it as it meets us.
“We’ve pretty much got all the tracks up to final recordings, but we’ve still got a fair bit to go and we’re quite busy this summer actually. We’re going straight into a three-week (U.K.) tour as soon as we get back from Canada, Scotland and England in fact, so we’re doing 17 dates. We’re quite busy right up to the end of April, then we’ll see if we can get another wee spell at the album and push it on a little bit further.”
Morrison said the band tries not to go in any certain direction with their material, which leads to such a wide variety in style.
“If you listen to various albums there’s differences on different tracks – you can hear different parts of world music on different tracks and we just take them track by track and see what the tune sounds like and let it develop,” Morrison said. “This (new album) is like the others, it’s a mix of bits and pieces of what we’ve done before with one or two new ideas, and hopefully it’s a bit of an eclectic mix.”
Most of the Peatbog Faeries are Scotsmen, so the question of Scottish independence needed to be addressed. “We’re getting asked that a lot now in interviews and it’s a very hot topic,” Morrison said. “We don’t all agree the same way we do as a band. I don’t think we’ve got any noes to independence, but there are at least two or three yeses and two maybes and our drummer Chris isn’t eligible to vote because he lives in Newcastle.”
When asked about a World Cup prediction, Morrison said, “well, it’s not going to be Scotland – that’s for sure!”
