The Edinburgh folk scene in the nineties was amazing. When I first got the call from Jim Sutherland to go along to The Tron Pub on Blair Street I hadn’t really been to many sessions apart from one at Rothbury festival. When I got there I met The Wrigley Sisters as well as Jim and other characters I would go on to spend a lot more time with. This first session spelled the end of my university career as I started to leave lectures earlier and earlier. I used to head into The Tron on a Thursday afternoon and meet up with Freddy Thomson and others and drink (lots of) Jack Daniels and Coke.
I ran a great Tuesday night session with guitarist Sandy Wright and met Eilidh Shaw, Katherine Nicol, John McCusker, Anna Wendy Stevenson, Simon Bradley, Iain Macleod, Jason Dove, Julia Legge and millions more fab musicians. The after session party’s were really good as well. We would leave The Tron and head to the Royal Oak and then on to kebab shop and then to a flat and then The Scotsman which opened at 5am (I think). The Scotsman was the pub with bagpipes on the jukebox which we would play until the pub stopped it as the neighbours complained. I was regularly getting on the no 10 bus on Princes Street to go in the opposite direction of people coming to work…
The other amazing thing about The Tron was that musicians of all genres hung out there. I met The Bancrofts, Kevin MacKenzie, Brian Kellock, John Rae and more all round the big table at the bottom of the stairs. This was all before they started hosting folk / jazz / improvising / song writers clubs down the stairs of The Tron. This led to lots of interesting music and folks not afraid to take chances in their music making.
It was like the this through the nineties. Other pubs entered the fray including Whistlebinkies that ran lots of great sessions and was open even later (to 4am). Sandy Bells was of course still going strong. I remember spending more time there in the mid to late nineties than at the start. Of course that was a short walk from the Royal Oak and the Cowgate which gave us opportunities to stay out even later.
This is what I like about the Flowers of Edinburgh concert this Saturday night in Teviot House (scene of fantastic Edinburgh Folk Festivals) Debating Hall. Edinburgh is still producing great musicians and some of the old ones are still coming back! Buy your ticket here!