Dick Gaughan

Dick Gaughan live in the "Rätsche" in Geislingen / Steige, May 6, 2006, photo: Markus Großmann

Richard Peter “Dick” Gaughan (born May 17, 1948 in Glasgow ) is a Scottish folk singer.

biography

Gaughan's family moved from Rutherglen to Leith , a port town outside Edinburgh , when he was one and a half years old. He never returned to Rutherglen. Dick's mother was from Lochaber and spoke Gaelic as her mother tongue. His paternal grandfather's mother tongue was Irish . He was from Mayo and could play the fiddle . Dick was the oldest of three children. He started playing the guitar at the age of seven . Although he later sang songs in Scottish Gaelic, it remained a foreign language for him, an echo of a distant past. He sang in folk clubs in Edinburgh and was a professional musician from 1970.

In 1972 he released a first solo album, No More Forever . He then came to the Boys of the Lough , which he left after the release of their debut album in the same year. 1975 followed a guest role with the High Level Ranters on their album The Bonnie Pit Laddie . This was followed by a hectic period in which he pursued two career strands simultaneously, once as a member of Five Hand Reel (three albums between 1976 and 1978) and as a solo singer, as which he released four albums during the same period. This was a time of heavy drinking, truck travel and very rare encounters with his wife and daughter. A life crisis occurred when his daughter was run over by a car while he was traveling. The daughter survived, but the incident caused Dick to reorganize his life.

Eventually he learned to read and write music as an autodidact. He wrote for the Scottish folk magazine Folk Review and had more contact with his family. He joined an agitprop theater group called "7:84". He seemed very consciously to be following the example of another socialist theater director and singer, Ewan MacColl , to whom he dedicated an album in 1978. Gaughan also participated in a memorial album for Woody Guthrie . In the early 1980s he was campaigning for an organization called "Perform" whose goal was to unite professional folk musicians and amateurs to negotiate fees and transfer rights and maintain artistic control. He was its chairman for two years.

A stroke was diagnosed in October 2016. Gaughan has been in physiotherapy at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary since February 2017. Another course is unclear.

plant

On his solo albums he interpreted both great ballads as well as self-written songs. Even before Sting , he opposed the widespread view that the Russians were bellicose conquerors ("Think Again", from "A different Kind of Love Song"). A Handful of Earth (1981) and A Different Kind of Love Song (1983) are among his best releases. He has very determined views on many things, including the internet. While he was curing vocal problems in 1984, he took a computer course and is one of the few singers who could easily get a job as a webmaster. He designs and supervises its website itself He is also a regular participant of. Usenet - newsgroup uk.musik.folk.

In 1995 he founded the group Clan Alba with Davy Steele , which only released one album. With this group he could also be heard at the folk festival of the WDR , as well as twice at the largest folk festival in Europe, the Tanz & FolkFest in Rudolstadt .

Artistically, his performance as a singer and interpreter of foreign works, as well as a guitarist, predominates. In addition, many of his better-known titles are Gaughan's settings of mostly older texts by third parties, e.g. B. "Both Sides the Tweed" or "Revolution". His own compositions, on the other hand, are less successful, as can be seen from the fact that they have hardly been sung and recorded by other performers. An exception is "A Different Kind of Love Song", which Hannes Wader recorded in 1986 on his album Liebeslieder in German translation. However, this song from Gaughan's pen has not become a folk classic either.

subjects

Gaughan reinterprets traditional Scottish and Irish songs, emphasizing political or social aspects of these songs that are often overlooked by others, for example in his recording of Erin-go-Bragh , a song that describes traditional discrimination against Irish people in Scotland from the perspective of a person concerned describes and at the same time ends with a total rejection of “national identity” (“Come all you young people wherever you're from / and don't give a damn to which place you belong”).

An at least as large part of his repertoire is made up of contemporary author songs on current topics ("topical songs"), be it about the situation of disabled people ("What you do with what you've got"), about the Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch ( "Shipwreck") on historical topics such as the life of Thomas Paine ("Tom Paine's bones") or an anti-feudal uprising in England ("World turned upside down"). Gaughan is a staunch atheist without condemning Christians in general. He rejects any fanaticism. He illustrates his attitude in Son of Man (album Sail on ). On the same album he deals with the collapse of real socialism . The socialist Gaughan counters those who see this as the end of socialist utopias: “I see no cause for alarm / No reason to get downhearted / You'r trying to say our time is passed / Hell! It hasn't even started ”.

The genre of love songs is practically absent, something Gaughan made a firm statement about in A different kind of love song .

repertoire

In addition to self-written and traditional songs, Gaughan reinterprets works by other well-known British and American songwriters such as Woody Guthrie , Pete Seeger , Brian McNeil , Tommy Sands or Si Kahn .

In addition, there are new dubbing and re-poetry based on traditional materials.

Instrument and playing style

Gaughan is a multi-instrumentalist. For example, he recorded the entire release "Lucky for Some" himself, but his original instrument is the acoustic guitar . According to Bert Jansch and Eric Clapton, he is one of the best folk guitarists in the world. He used the model for his music D-28 from Martin , which is equipped with two cartridge systems Fishman. It consists of a small microphone in the area of ​​the sound hole and a pickup under the side bridge. He has left the standard tuning of the guitar according to EADGHE and plays almost exclusively in the DADGAD tuning at concerts . However, he also uses a number of other tunings, especially when it comes to interpreting instrumental pieces. Gaughan's style is characterized by a certain harshness, which is brought about by his play against the beat and the almost complete absence of classical chords . He accompanies his singing with unusual phrasing and runs that define this style.

Discography

• No More Forever (1972)
• Kist O'Gold (1976)
• Coppers and Brass (1977)
• Gaughan (Songs of Ewan MacColl, 1978)
• A Handful of Earth (1981)
• A Different Kind Of Love Song (1983)
• Fanfare For Tomorrow (1985)
• Live In Edinburgh (1985)
• True and Bold (1986)
• Call It Freedom (1988)
• Sail On (1996)
• Redwood Cathedral (1999)
• Outlaws And Dreamers (2001)
• Prentice Piece (2002)
• Lucky for Some (2006)
• Gaughan Live! At The Trades Club (2008)

Folk Friends

• Folk Friends (1978)
• Folk Friends 2 (1981)

Dick Gaughan and Andy Irvine

• Parallel Lines (1982)

Clan Alba

• Clan Alba (1995)

literature

• Richard Schuberth : CrossRoots. Moers 2002, ISBN 3-935943-00-8 .

Web links

• Dick Gaughan. Discogs.com, accessed November 13, 2016 . 
• dickgaughan.co.uk Dick Gaughan's official website

swell

1. ↑ Stoneyport Associates - Dick Gaughan. Retrieved October 3, 2018 . 
2. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk
3. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk ( Memento of the original from January 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
4. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk
5. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk
6. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk
7. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk
8. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk
9. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk
10. ↑ dickgaughan.co.uk ( Memento of March 6, 2008 in the Internet Archive )