No sooner had I asked one of the nation’s favourite Caledonian chanteuse Eddi Reader for an interview about her upcoming solo dates in Inverness and Aberdeen, than the news broke that she and her old bandmates from Fairground Attraction are to reform for dates and an album this year.
The group split in 1990 after just three years, but earned a number one single and two Brit Awards along the way.
“I’m not going away for long, but I’ll be away for a while, and then I’ll be back,” says Reader of these final solo shows for a while. “There was an October solo tour planned, so I’ve moved that aside. I’ll probably be singing Robert Burns songs for the last time this year here.
“It’s good, because I love that feeling of coming home to something. I’m coming home to Fairground for a wee while, then I’m going to come home to my own solo friends. It’s another way of feeling amazing about music, I get to not go near it for ages, then I get invested in it. That helps it feel brand new all the time, and making it brand new has always been my drive – making it feel like I’ve never sung in front of an audience in my life.”
These won’t just be Reader’s last dates playing these songs for a while, but her last with her solo live band, which includes Boo Hewerdine and her husband John Douglas, also of Trashcan Sinatras. They’re all so comfortable together that she no longer uses a setlist.
Eddi back together with Fairground Attraction
“What’s been coming out lately is quite a few things from (2009’s) Vagabond, quite a few things from (1998’s) Angels and Electricity,” she says of her recent shows. “Cavalier (2018) has got a look in. I’ve been enjoying doing Maiden’s Lament and the Loch Tay Boat Song. I have no idea, though. I’m going to get there and something will happen six inches from the mic, just like Billy Connolly.
“It’s about spontaneity, it’s about rawness, it’s about being authentic and real in the moment. I really need the idea that music is whatever the room brings, rather than something pre-planned or rehearsed. You can do the same thing every night for twenty years, but you maybe lose a bit of yourself. I’m trying my best to maintain my authentic vagabond singer vibe.”
It was Reader’s appearance in the West End version of Brokeback Mountain last year which reaffirmed to her that she prefers doing things this way, without endless fine-tuning rehearsal, and it also brought her back together with Fairground Attraction.
“I was excited to go back to my old manor in London, as they call it down there,” she says (she moved back to Scotland at the turn of the 2000s). “In the play, the character Ennis ends up at the end of his life regretting the loss of his friend, so every single night I was watching this older man regarding his past life and feeling quite alone in the world.”
When is Eddi Reader in Inverness and Aberdeen?
“I reached out to Mark (Nevin, Fairground Attraction’s guitarist), because I was in the environment I was in thirty years ago, when we were number one, and I just decided life was too short to live with any regret. I wanted to first honour the friendship, to say to all three of them how important they were to me, that this thing that happened to us was still an important event in our lives.”
Both major events this year – the pausing of Reader’s solo career and the return of Fairground Attraction – will bring her to Aberdeen.
“I have so many memories of being there,” she says. “Doing John Byrne’s Your Cheatin’ Heart up there in the Beach Ballroom, doing my own Candyfloss and Medicine tour and going for an ice cream at the beach the next day, playing at the Lemon Tree. It used to be run by a woman called Marge, and I adored playing there after Fairground split up, she really looked after me. I don’t know what it is about Aberdeen, but it’s got so much that haunts me.”
Eddi Reader is at Eden Court, Inverness, on Friday, April 19; Tivoli Theatre, Aberdeen, on Saturday April 20. For more information go to eddireader.co.uk
