2011

The journey continued for Frankie Boy to Saturday….. Back on site one of my first assignments was to track down the Wee Jaunt being set up by Detour. Announced 24 hours before on social media sites the start location was the Big Face Meeting Point. In the minutes leading up to the one o’clock start a number of people began to loiter in the vicinity. However, on arrival the Detour team had to announce that the Wee Jaunt had to be cancelled, due to a number of reasons including the lack of an acoustic guitar and one of the artists … Read more

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  In order to promote the Hen Stage we managed to speak to Alice Bentley about her new act, Young Trees and there forthcoming performance at Belladrum 2011. invernessGigs: Hi there Alice Bentley would you like to give a quick bio about yourself? Alice Bentley: Hey, we met at Feis Rois 2007 but only started doing original music this year. We love all types of music but if you had to put us in a genre it would most likely be new folk. iG: What would you say are some of your biggest influences? AB: We are influenced by many … Read more

For the forthcoming Belladrum Festival we have a series of articles from Mark Thompson looking at one of the new stages: Each year the Belladrum Tartan Heart festival brings up many new and exciting features , this year the festival consolidates this with the inclusion of a new stage. The Free Range Folk Stage, ran through the Highland Environmental Network or HEN, brings together a mixture of classic folk, singer/songwriters, folk rockers, acoustic crossovers and everything marginally folk in-between. The brand new stage, set up by Glachbeg Folk Club organiser Rob Bull brings together a fusion of all folk music … Read more

“It’s fairly safe to say that (Kassidy)  isn’t your average Glaswegian band. They take their cues from across the pond, and the past. But thanks to the likes of Fleet Foxes and Mumford & Sons, that’s the fashionable attitude right now”, claims Mike Haydock (full review here). This certainly is no truer than in the Highlands of Scotland, Kassidy are hot property at the moment so when Frankie Boy managed to track down Saturday Hothouse headliners for a chat.: FB: You were at Belladrum last year. What memories did you take home with you? K: Walking on stage to a … Read more

Always nice to have, and publicly available on Facebook and the like, the organisers of the new Hen Stage have announced the stage times for their performances. We will ,with a little luck, have some more coverage of the Hen Stage in the next few days, but in the mean time: Friday 2100 Black Rock Ceilidh Band photos courtesy of Al Houdi Donnelly 2000 Dorec-a-Belle photos courtesy of Al Houdi Donnelly 1900 Last Summer Effect (acoustic) 1800 Adrian Telfer 1715 Corralach 1630 Graham Bell 1545 Ghillie Dhu Folk Band 1500 Alice Bentley 1415 Ally McLeod & Donald Forbes 1315 Corey … Read more

Rob Ellen is a man with several hats: promoter, radio presenter, organiser of Belladrum’s Potting Shed and raconteur. Recently we had the opportunity to ask him a few questions: Your very much part of the Belladrum family, can you tell us from your perspective what makes Bella so special? There a long an short answer to that, the short is one word “Community” the long is also very much tied to that idea, its a uniquely Highland event, in that regard it appeals to people from 8 to 80 with music at the heart, and what ever their musical taste, … Read more

  The annual Charity Bar B Q will be held on the 30th of July at Maple Court between 1 – 6pm organised i n conjunction with the Medicine Show. An interesting mix of acts sees Violet Parma (these medicine show folk are sneaky!) head up the line up . A band that is getting a lot of love and attention from the Medicine Show at the moment having had a couple of recent gigs at the Strathpeffer Coffee Shop. Acoustic Reverb are a collaboration between singer song writer Emma Shearer and DJ Steve Kaboodle, has been described as a … Read more