Scotland On Sunday
Scotland on Sunday - June 2006
Last month the Scottish Fashion Awards played host to Laura McGhee and Sandi Thom. Thom's rags-to-riches story, the internet viewing figures of her online performances and No1 success have all made great copy for the first of the inevitable post-KT Tunstall flood of female singer-songwriters. Not one for bandwagons, however, Angus-born Laura McGhee has built up a reputation over the years by playing everything from murky folk clubs through to the gigs in New York

The 25-year-old classical graduate of the RSAMD cut her teeth doing session work for Ian McCulloch, of Echo and the Bunnymen, and Shane MacGowan. After arranging strings for McCulloch he recommended that Pete Seeger consider her for the Broadway production of the Matt McGinn tribute on Broadway two years ago. Seeger advised that she should make herself sound more Scottish; contrary to the advice she was being given at home.
McGhee's fervent Scottish accent is one of the most arresting attributes on her debut album Green Eyes - a diverse collection of traditional folk, gospel, pop and country. For McGhee it all travelled from Scotland to the US and back again, and her fascination with Scotland's multicultural musical landscape is captivating and infectious.

The Scottish and Irish songs about emigration that fed American folk and country music is the subject of Bruce Springsteen's recently released The Seeger Sessions. McGhee says: "Both the traditions are the same when you look at American roots music, where it comes from and the Celtic Scottish tradition. On the album I do a cover of the Beatles 'I've Just Seen a Face' to take the song back to its roots. The Beatles had an American country influence which was obvious around the mid-60s. I wanted to explain the journey of Scottish traditional music over to America, through to English pop in the 60s and back to Scotland again."

Since the birth of mainstream pop there have been few Scots that sing with their own tongue. The Proclaimers are one of the few who have managed massive international success. Is it more acceptable to be fed the influence second-hand through America? For McGhee it's something that has been thrashed out of the nation. "Singing in a Scottish accent is important to me because it's natural. People forget this music in America would originally have been sung with a Scots accent. The country and folk influences work with a Scottish accent as well.

"I think people need to be a bit more open-minded; everything comes from something. It's folk and country music with a pop hook, which is no different from what the Pogues were doing with Irish music, Loretta Lynn with country or Diana Ross with soul. It's all rooted in something but the important thing is that the songs are hook driven; that's why they appeal to a lot of people
McGhee uses Scottish folk, Gaelic mouth music and church hymns for her passionate descriptions of doomed love affairs and modern-day morality tales. The musician is determined to buck the trend of roots music appealing to only the elitists. For the tradition to survive it has to blend and evolve.
Next weekend McGhee will begin a short tour round Borders bookshops in Scotland before heading off to New York to record her forthcoming single 'Reaching Out'. "It's really a whole other side of it, the influences of church music from Scotland and how that fed into gospel and black American music. We are going to do the song with the Harlem Gospel Choir. 'Reaching Out' was inspired by Gaelic mouth music which is a dying language. If there was a course on how to learn it I would do it but there is no funding in Scotland like there is in Northern Ireland.
There's something refreshingly honest and organic about McGhee. "The way I look is for me, I don't think this is how a folk or country singer should look; where does that idea come from? The American audiences don't bother they just enjoy music