Diary of a Shopkeeper, 10th August

With show week past, it’s time to look forward to an autumn of festival entertainment. At the end of September there’s the Food & Drink Festival, which we’re excited about being part of. (We’re hosting two wine tastings: more about those nearer the time.)

At the start of September there’s the Science Festival, which overlaps with the Rock Festival. Heavy metals meet heavy metal! There’s also the Archaeology Festival, the Kirkwall Flower Festival, the Festival of the Horse, and finally in October there’s the Storytelling Festival, providing a twist in the tale of festival season.

Orkney must be the festival capital of the country. Maybe we should start up a Festival Festival to celebrate our great festival culture.

The one I’m most excited about is a completely new event, the Water Sound Bluegrass & Roots Festival, which takes place in Burray from Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th this month. As the name suggests, its focus is on acoustic American music, and especially the high energy mix of blues, jazz and Irish and Scottish fiddle that is bluegrass.

Bluegrass is unusual as a genre, in that it was invented by one man. Most styles – like western swing, country, or rock ‘n’ roll – evolved over years or decades, as hundreds of different musicians experimented and improvised with different approaches, which gradually coalesced into a more or less standard form. But Bill Monroe was single-handedly responsible for conceiving of bluegrass – even the genre’s name comes from his band, The Blue Grass Boys. He had many outstanding musicians in his bands, not least Lester Flatt and Earl Scrugss, but it was always Monroe who was the undisputed leader. In the mid-1940s he wrote the book on bluegrass, and everything everyone has been doing since is variations on his theme.

Monroe was a dazzlingly fast and inventive mandolin player. Only the best of the best side-musicians could keep up: he insisted on musical excellence, perfect harmony signing, and tight discipline both on stage and off. A strongly religious upbringing in the Methodist faith influenced his ‘high lonesome’ tenor singing but also his behaviour. He had a stage presence somewhere between a preacher and a stern headmaster - a bit like Jimmy Shand with a Stetson instead of a kilt - but his music was anything but stern. It was sometimes eerie, sometimes biting, but always wildly energetic and entertaining. I’m sure we’ll get a lot of that bluegrass ebullience from many of the acts featured at the Water Sound festival.

In Ethan Setiawan – half of Hildaland, with Orkney’s own Louise Bichan – we’ll see one of the very best mandolin players operating in the USA today. Speaking of the best, there’s no finer electric mandolin player than Dick Levens, returning to Orkney for a reunion with the legendary Smoking Stone Band on Friday evening. The SSB did an enormous amount to kick-start the county’s folk music boom of the past 20 years. Their deft interweaving of Orkney fiddle, bluegrass banjo and electric mandolin broke down barriers and spread inspiration like confetti on a windy wedding day.

But really it’s impossible to pick out highlights. With over two dozen bands performing across the weekend, there’s an amazing array of top-notch talent. A quick scan of the biography of each on the festival’s website makes me keen to see them all, from visiting virtuosos The Often Herd to local old timey mavericks Stoatfinger. But there I go again, picking out a couple of names from an amazing roster. Pete McAndrew and the rest of the organising committee have done an amazing job in putting the festival together. This new venture deserves hearty support.

There’s more. Workshops are planned, with details still to be announced. Jam sessions are encouraged in the Sands Hotel and the Burray Hall. Food trucks and a bar will pop up for the weekend, and a special campsite is being established for tents and motor homes. Fool disclosure: I am playing in two bands over the weekend. Being averse to self-promotion, I haven’t mentioned them by name here, I would much rather promote the festival overall rather than any specific act like, say, the Driftwood Cowboys and the Water Sound Western Swing Big Band.

See you in Burray!

Tickets and more information are available from www.watersoundfestival.co.uk. You can buy a ticket for the whole weekend, or for any of the three days the festival covers.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 14th August 2025. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.