This is a live recording made by the very wonderful Alasdair who creates such a magic sound in The Longhouse. It brings you the whole thing, warts and all. Although you will have to use your imagination to see the warts.

Thanks also to Nick Jenkins and Katch Holmes for inviting us to be part of the event.

This performance was presented at Knockengorroch Festival in Galloway in May 2026. We showed The Sailmaker’s Palm in The Longhouse, a very atmospheric and intimate space by the banks of the river Deugh. This was our forth appearance at the festival in as many years, and great fun.

Thanks to the marvellous Oceanallover team, and for those of you that couldn’t be there - we missed you!

Dance - Suzi Cunningham, Aaron Jeffrey, Dylan Read and Rosamund McCormac.

Music - Joey Sanderson (Jellobass & vocals), Richie Merchant (brass and charango), Nick Jenkins (fiddle), Emma Gillespie (Found sounds & vocals) and Fiona Stephen (violin).

Narration, direction and design - Alex Rigg

The festival has been running since 1998. I was there that year, playing with Two Left Feet ceilidh band. It continues to be a great gathering of open-minded and happy people. Both of my sons bring their music to the festival with their bands Muckle Spree and Samson Sounds.

Link to Knockengorroch - festival website

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On another historical note, I have a long-standing relationship with The Wickerman Music Festival which was also a big deal for the region. Trevor Leat (of Two Left Feet fame) and myself built the fire-giant for the festival every year from 2002 until it finished in 2014. Trevor is a consummate willow sculptor as well as musician.

The Wickerman Festival reached an audience of eighteen thousand people and we burned the sculpture each year at midnight on Saturday. We had the fire down to a fine art, albeit with the very basic technology of straw, willow and a lighter. A month of work burned in about thirty minutes. It was really exhilarating!!

Link to The Wickerman Music Festival - Wikipedia entry

I am not an avid festival-goer and slightly intimidated by large groups of people when mingling as a member of the crowd. However, I have very much enjoyed all of my experiences on the Galloway festival scene, including the very unique Nithraid which will be happening on August the 15th this year and will once again feature Oceanallover leading the progress of the Salty Coo.

You can read more about the festival here:

Link to Nithraid - festival website

Oceanallover have been part of many festivals and celebrations in Dumfries and Galloway over the thirty years that I have been based here. This next picture show Liz Rankin as Catherine the Great in a project that I made with Mark Zygadlo and Ian Smith called ‘ The Lost Supper’. In this particular version we performed in the snow outside The Stove Network, Dumfries as part of The Big Burns Supper in 2013.

Nithraid in Dumfries will be the next chance for you so see my performance work , followed by an appearance at the Pianodrome , Edinburgh on August the 20th.

Link to the Pianodrome website

We will also be performing as part of the Findhorn Bay Festival in October this year.

Link to The Finhorn Bay Festival website

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My new collaborative project Didar -The Encounter will be opening at Summerhall in October. I’ll write more about this soon, but here is an image to give you a flavour of the work. The photograph was taken by Xeder and we were working with Danna Sim.

This project is a collaboration with Xeder, Danna Sim, Topaz Pauls, Suzi Cunningham and Bram E Geiben.

Link to the Summerhall website

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