Concert features Scottish songwriting legend

For the past 35 years, Dougie MacLean has traveled the world in troubadour fashion, a singer with a bag of songs and stories and a guitar.

In those three-and-a-half decades, he's amassed critical acclaim and achieved legendary status in the folk music world. But he's never been to Sisters.

"I've been up to Oregon before, but never to Sisters, never to your part of the country," MacLean said from his home in Scotland last weekend.

That will change on Saturday, as the Scottish troubadour caps the Sisters Folk Festival's Winter Concert Series with a performance at Sisters High School auditorium on Saturday, March 20, at 7 p.m.

MacLean got his start as a professional musician at age 20 when he joined the folk band The Tannahill Weavers as a fiddle player. That instrument earned MacLean a career highlight when a fiddle tune he composed was featured in the Michael Mann movie "The Last of the Mohicans." The tune is a signature of the film, played first as a solo in a scene at Fort William Henry, then orchestrally during an epic chase scene across rocky cliffs.

"It was a real thrill to have my piece used in the movie," MacLean said, especially since it was something historical and "not just cops chasing around New York."

MacLean has performed in bands and with orchestras, but he always gravitates to solo performance.

"There's something fantastic about one man, one guitar, a bunch of songs and a bunch of stories," he said. "You can have a communication with an audience in a very personal way."

MacLean credits his longevity as a songwriter and a performer to decisions he made 20 years ago. He set up his own record label, created his own recording studio in Scotland and took complete creative control over his career.

That sort of thing has become common in the Internet age and with the rise of technology that puts quality recording in the reach of a working musician, but it was a practically unheard of risk for an established artist in the 1980s.

"I wanted to be in charge of the whole process," he said. "You don't want to have a bunch of businessmen in between you and the public."

Achieving creative control has allowed MacLean to pursue his muse unburdened by pressures to follow trends and fads and that has given him a repertoire with a timeless quality.

MacLean says that the key to his remaining fresh and relevant as an artist and songwriter is that he has an active life outside of music.

"I'm a great believer in having a life outside being a songwriter," he said. "I fix old houses, I fix old tractors - I meet a lot of people."

A historically minded traditional archer, MacLean hopes to track down a source of yew - the traditional material for English longbows - while he's in Oregon. Yew is all used up in the British Isles and Oregon is one of the last places where the wood can be found.

All that activity constantly recharges the creative well.

"These days, I don't make a CD until I have 10 songs that I really like," he said.

Music lovers in Sisters will get a chance to hear songs from across MacLean's career - and the stories that go with them - on Saturday night.

Tickets, at $20 each/$10 for students, are available at Paulina Springs Books or through the festival office, 549-4979. Tickets will be available at the door.

For more information visit http://www.sistersfolkfestival.org and http://www.dougiemaclean.com.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.

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