Arts - Scottish blood and American roots
Scottish blood and American roots S cottish songwriter Malcolm MacWatt has gone back into the roots of country music with his latest folk/americana crossover EP.
Skail, an old Scots word meaning to disperse, scatter and sail over water, sees MacWatt weaving traditional Scottish yarn into the fabric of Americana for his third 2020 studio release. The EP, which MacWatt has described as a cross between “Old Crow Medicine Show jamming with The Corries� is
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already generating huge interest on both sides of the Atlantic.
he grew up.
The EP features three songs with the Appalachians, evictions, slavery and independence at their heart and is a meeting of Scottish and American roots music with MacWatt playing all instruments throughout.
During the weeks of isolation he happened across an article about the Appalachian Trail, which runs from Georgia up the east coast of America to Maine, which now includes the Scottish Highlands due to ancient geological links going back millions of years.
Written and recorded at the height of the coronavirus lockdown from his home in south-east London, MacWatt found himself longing for the fresh air, clean water, open spaces, familiar faces and above all the safety of Morayshire where
Coming from the Moray Firth with the northern mountains of the Black Isle an everyday skyline, the stories of the Highland Clearances were already well known to him but in the context of a pandemic, together with the
