IN CONCERT
What: The Tannahill Weavers
Where: First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1205 Pandora Ave.
When: Saturday, Sept. 28, 7:30 p.m. (doors at 6:45)
Tickets: $30 at Lyle’s Place (770 Yates St.), Nicholas Randall (2180 Oak Bay Ave.) and the Royal & McPherson box office (250-386-6121; rmts.bc.ca)
Note: The Tannahill Weavers also perform Friday at the Qualicum Community Baptist Church in Qualicum
An acoustic amalgam of key Celtic instruments — flute, tin whistle, bodhrán, fiddle, Highland bagpipes, Scottish smallpipes and bouzouki — is traditional by definition.
Some acts would take umbrage with such a tag. But the traditional designation is more than acceptable for singer-guitarist Roy Gullane, who has been at the helm of Scotland’s Tannahill Weavers since 1968.
The band was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame in 2011, more than four decades after the group started using the poetry of early-19th-century Scottish poet Robert Tannahill as a foundation for its music, and Gullane is still committed to the original sound.
“The instrumentation has remained pretty much the same over the years — there’s no reason to change anything,” Gullane said Tuesday, shortly before a concert in Eugene, Oregon.
“We don’t think for a minute that people who enjoy us would particularly like it if we made any radical changes.”
Gullane and Phil Smillie, who plays flute, tin whistles and bodhrán, have been with the group since its inception, and provide the harmonious vocal core for the band’s often-intriguing Celtic music.
The quartet celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2018 with Òrach (which means “golden” in Gaelic), their first album in 15 years and 18th of their career.
The current version of the Tannahill Weavers — which includes fiddler Malcolm Bushby and piper Mike Katz — is celebrating the release with yet another world tour, one that brings the group from Paisley, Scotland, to Vancouver Island for dates in Qualicum on Friday and Victoria on Saturday.
The band makes it to North America twice annually, Gullane said, adding Germany is also a regular tour destination. But one country has never made the tour list, the frontman said.
“People are quite surprised by the fact that we’ve never been in Australia, for example. We’ve never managed to get down there. The biggest reason was always financial. We could never quite justify the enormous costs.”
The Tannahill Weavers do quite well in North America, where generations of U.K. transplants have made their homes.
Given that the band mines the sounds of Scottish traditional music, it would make sense that every concert is a chance for fellow Scots to come out and dance to the jigs and reels of past generations.
But that’s not often the case, according to Gullane.
“Scottish bands are in a slightly different situation than the Irish bands. The Irish bands have got exiles coming out in droves to see them. We don’t have that. Scottish people, once they get abroad, tend to keep pretty much to themselves.
“Canada is a bit different, of course. But if you travel around the States, one thing you notice is that people will say: ‘This is the Italian part of town, this is the Irish part of town.’ You never hear: ‘Here’s the Scottish part of town.’ ”
Gullane lives in the city of Groningen, in the Netherlands, where he has been based since the mid-1980s.
He hasn’t been on Vancouver Island since 2010 — a visit he vividly recalls, as it took place during the World Cup soccer final between the Netherlands and Spain.
“I arrived at my hotel just in time to see that fateful goal,” Gullane said of Spain’s 1-0 victory. “Still stings,” he added with a laugh.
Gullane and Smillie are the two constants in the group (“or the two old codgers,” Gullane said with a laugh), so there’s an assumption the music will remain steadfastly similar with each release.
But that is only a portion of what goes into the decision-making of the Tannahill Weavers.
It often comes down to communicating the spirit and emotion of the music, Gullane said.
“It’s a joyous music form, and was for people from the get-go. The way it was written by the people who performed it originally, if they wanted to do something quite poignant, it was very, very obvious. It’s not like you have to tell non-English speaking people, for example: ‘This is a sad song.’ They immediately feel it in the music.”
