Congratulations to Dick Gaughan Legacy Project (Colin Harper and friends) who has been nominated in the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards 2025. Vote now! It’s going to be another great night at the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards on Saturday 6th December in Aberdeen Music Hall. Why not join us for a brilliant night of music and awards. Buy a ticket here.
We asked Colin of Dick Gaughan Legacy Project (Colin Harper and friends) the following questions.
Tell us about yourself
Colin Harper, who created the not-for-profit Dick Gaughan Legacy Project with Scottish recording artist Karine Polwart and Irish producer/engineer Cormac O’Kane, is a consultant to various record labels on archive projects and a music history author, including a biography of Scottish folk icon Bert Jansch.
Inspired by a phone call from Dick’s old friend Robin Dransfield in late 2024, Colin felt that the presence of Dick Gaughan – who slipped off the grid after a stroke in 2016 – in the national culture needed to be re-established. Colin felt strongly that Dick was one of ‘the greats’ not only of Scottish traditional music but of the entire ‘rock era’ of the late 20th century, regardless of genre – a true one-off like Bert Jansch or Willie Nelson or Jeff Beck! Yet much of his pre-1990s music was unavailable physically, digitally or both.
Colin prepared a draft ‘early years’ box set and presented it to several record labels. He was told the audience for Dick Gaughan no longer existed. He believed that this was simply not true. In March 2025, with Dick’s consent, and morally and practically supported by fellow fans Karine Polwart, Ian McCalman, Barbara Dickson, Patsy Seddon, Billy Bragg and many others, he launched a 30-day Kickstarter campaign to raise funds to create a multiple-licensor box set himself.
He had already gathered much rare audio and had costed out various licenses from labels and broadcasters, and from friendly design, mastering, film restoration, photography and writing professionals.
The manifesto was ‘Preservation, celebration, remuneration – recreating a fabulous lost legacy of music and rewarding the artist directly’.
The £28,000 target was met on one day. After 30 days, the total was nearly £92,000 (£84,000 after platform fees) from 1,100 pledgers. So much for there being no audience for Dick Gaughan in 2025!
Colin established the Dick Gaughan Legacy Project with a Lloyd’s bank ‘Clubs & Societies’ account with himself, Karine Polwart and Cormac O’Kane as signatories. They immediately gave Dick – disabled and now partially sighted – £36,000 to help with the cost of living and with the rest began work on creating the box set R/evolution: 1969/83 and three ‘extra’ releases including the vinyl Live at the BBC: 1972–79.
The box set – 7CD+DVD+2 booklets, comprising 126 audio tracks (83 unreleased), 2.5 hours of stunningly restored film and 160 pages of text and rare/unpublished photos – will be sent to Kickstarter pledgers in January and is generally released via Last Night From Glasgow in February.
Every penny of profit goes to Dick Gaughan personally or, with his permission, to fund future archive releases. Colin Harper takes nothing whatsover out of it: ‘Gaughan’s been ripped off for years by people; this project is the exact opposite of that, and I’m proud that that’s resonating so widely with fans old and new. It’s not what you’re born with, it’s what you do with what you’ve got – that ethos, from the singing of Dick Gaughan, underlies this whole venture. I’m just about able to make this happen freely and that’s inspired others – designers, mastering engineers etc. – to work for much less than they usually would. Even one national broadcaster halved their fee to license out material. The goodwill around this project is incredibly heartening.’
Why are you involved in Scottish music?
Colin Harper says:
‘Not being a Scot – not really being anything, being from Northern Ireland – I can’t pretend to be a diehard Scottish traddie, but I’ve long been a fan of many specific artists from Scotland: Bert Jansch, Dick Gaughan, Karine Polwart, Jim Malcolm especially.
‘When I wrote for national rock magazines in the 90s (Q, Mojo, etc.) I had the opportunity to sneak in a few Scottish trad artists periodically, and was delighted to do so.
‘When I wrote my biography of Bert Jansch in the late 90s, a part of that was dedicated to painting a picture of the early 1960s Edinburgh folk scene he grew up in – wonderful characters like Owen Hand, Len Patridge, Robin Williamson, Archie Fisher, Dolina MacLennan. Just a few years before Dick Gaughan emerged on that same scene. I’ve also inherited a lot of 1960s Scottish folk club recordings, which will hopefully enter a national collection I due course.
‘Really, I’m a historian and lots of the books and archive music projects I’ve been involved in – across vintage British jazz, British rock and British and Irish folk – have been at least partly motivated by a feeling that the artists in question are not being appreciated as much as they should, that they’ve maybe fallen off the radar a bit, that (in my opinion) they should be better known in the here and now.
‘Dick Gaughan is maybe the ultimate example of an artist whose personal circumstances (his disability and being ‘off the grid’ in terms of public visibility) and external circumstances (so much of his pre-1996 music being unavailable for a variety of reasons) have combined to the extent that within ten years of retiring he slipped ‘out of the conversation’, with very little happening around his back catalogue, with nothing much being or broadcast written about him.
‘The huge, immediate support around the box set project and the media interest on the back of it testifies to fans of Gaughan having long memories and resilient loyalties – and maybe that is a characteristic that applies to Scottish folk fans in general. I hope so! If that’s the case, I’m thrilled to be associated even tangentially with the world of Scottish folk music and to have been a blow-in from Erin nudging open a door for a load of Scots to run through! Dick sang about that sort that sort of thing once…’
Any particular career highlights?
The ‘career’ of the Dick Gaughan Legacy Project spans March 2025 to the present, but there have already been great highlights:
• Proving by the scale of the crowdfunding campaign and the hundreds of messages of love posted on social media and sent privately that the Dick Gaughan audience does exist in 2025 – and exists fervently and passionately (a) because of the love and solidarity for others that Dick gave out during his career and (b) because his music is exceptional
• Inspiring BBC Radio Scotland’s Laura Guthrie to create a new two-hour Travelling Folk documentary on Dick’s career in July 2025
• Helping Dick to launch a further crowdfunding campaign in July 2025 towards legal fees to pursue the retrieval of several albums of music currently out of reach to licensors and mostly unavailable to listeners for decades
• Inspiring Donal Shaw to run True And Bold: A Night for Dick Gaughan at Celtic Connections in January 2026
• For Colin Harper personally, the highlight of the project during the year has been seeing the joy that the revival of interest in his music has brought to Dick Gaughan himself
What are your plans for the future?
Several further Dick Gaughan archive releases are planned. The first will be an expanded remaster (CD & download) of the long out of print 1986 album ‘True And Bold’ – the rights gifted back to Dick by the STUC – with a new essay by Billy Bragg, a rare 1986 interview with Dick, a new cover design and unpublished photos by Dave Peabody.
Other release aspirations are:
• A 2CD set of ‘The Complete Andy Kershaw Sessions (Plus)’ – six 1984–2005 BBC radio sessions and selected BBC concert tracks from that period
• ‘Collaborations’ – a single disc collecting the best of Dick’s 2000–2015 studio strays (tracks gifted to compilations, guest vocals for other artists)
• A 2CD ‘Live in Edinburgh 1966–71’ – gathering extraordinary recordings from the School of Scottish Studies (unavailable to the box set for temporary administrative reasons), with much rare repertoire
• A ‘Selected Concerts 1979–2012’ box set presenting a concert per disc – from Europe, Australia and North America – from the mature phase of Dick’s career, with several unique collaborations
Also, if/when Dick establishes his ownership of albums long unavailable, these will be made available with fabulous new mastering – perhaps even given away freely online. Dick would much rather his music be heard than locked away. And so would everyone else who cares about it.
Dick Gaughan Legacy Project (Colin Harper and friends) Social Media
Website: https://dickgaughan.com/home
Facebook: Gaughan Box Set supporters
The 2025 MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards are on the 6th December 2025 in Aberdeen Music Hall! You will be able to watch it live in person (buy a ticket here). Watch it live in the UK at 9pm (GMT) on BBC ALBA and and around the world here. Hosted by Scottish personalities Alistair Heather and Mary Ann Kennedy, the night in the Granite City will also welcome live performances from some of the brightest lights on the thriving trad scene today including beloved singer Hannah Rarity, UK folk legends The Poozies, trad pop band Mec Lir and BBC Radio scotland Young Traditional Musician and Scots Performer o the Year Ellie Beaton and many more!
If you would like to support Hands Up for Trad in their work with Scottish trad music and musicians why not become a friend of Hands Up for Trad. In addition to our high profile events like the Scots Trad Music Awards, we also deliver a less well known, education programme for young people from 8yrs right through to young adults at the start of their careers. Read more here.