Leanaidh Mi (Macmeanmna)
Skye-based accordionist-composer Blair Douglas's Cajun music fixation featured in a memorable TV documentary, Am Bràighe's Am Bayou, some years ago and the programme's title could easily be expanded to include the connection that Douglas also makes between bluegrass and country music and Gaeldom on this joyful collection. Joyful and Gaelic? Oh yes, because while Douglas can break hearts with the instrumental pictures of Uist and Barra included here, he's created a country-Gaelic pop, sung splendidly by Kathleen MacInnes and Cathy Ann MacPhee, that sounds entirely natural and is all the more impressive for the transatlantic Skype-calling that brought heavy-duty Nashville pickers together with local players including fiddler Gordon Gunn and piper Angus Mackenzie. Douglas's waltzes would sit as easily in western saloon as West Highland village hall and while guitar hero Albert Lee couldn't make the sessions, Mackenzie's piping, Brent Mason's fleet-fingered guitar playing and Douglas's melody writing capture his spirit perfectly on Albert Lee's Welcome to the Isle of Skye.
