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Sleeve Notes
"A great performance by Scotland's best-loved solo folk singer recorded in front of his hometown audience."
THE "house full" signs went up at Glasgow's Star Folk Club just a few minutes before the hard-pressed bar staff announced good-naturedly that they were running out of glasses.
Weekly meetings of the popular club run a stone's-throw from the river Clyde are invariably well-attended but this turn-out was exceptional. "Standing room only" was the fate awaiting latecomers and the really tardy ones, sadly, just didn't get in at all.
Fortunately for them, what they missed can be found within the grooves of this album.
Iain MacKintosh is one of Scotland's folk ambassadors, an entertainer in the warmest sense of the word. He's perceptive as well as pawky, juggling the emotions of listeners with his well chosen repetoire. And that banjo - is no stage prop. He deftly finds just as many notes as he needs to match the verses of his differing songs.
A professional, and that's what Iain MacKintosh is, has inevitably acquired style and technique through long years of application and experience - all of it gained the hard way.
Fortunately in the process he has never lost his compassion or his warmth. He's an original in a world of stereo types. And when you listen to this recording of the man in action you'll hear for yourself exactly why that Thursday night. March 22nd at the Star Club was so very special.
Colin MacDonald.
Folk music has become not only my livelihood, but my life, and one of the nicest things about that life is the friends I've gained through music. It wouldn't have been possible to realise my long-held ambition to make a live club recording without the help of some of those friends. So my sincere thanks go to: Cilia and Artie who helped, encouraged (and pushed) me; Arthur Johnstone — as splendid a compere as he is a singer; Brian Young and Cy Jack for unobtrusively getting the sound "as it was" George Bell for his keen ear at the mix-down; Peter Cameron for the great photograph; Mick Meers, the staff, the organisers, and above all the audience of the Star Folk Club, who combined to generate such a friendly atmosphere.
Iain MacKintosh