Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas Farewell Tour

Title blog photo by Irene Young

I'm constantly astounded by people who play at sessions and eschew anything Scottish. I've seen folks just completely disengage when a Scottish tune comes up. It's frustrating. Half the tunes we're playing at sessions seem to also have a Scottish name associated with them. And one of the many reasons I like this music is the variety of melodies, grooves, rhythms, and timbres. Turns out Scottish has its own mixture and flavor of all that. And I've always been prone to enjoying Scottish music. For me, it's all dance music. In fact, my very first fiddle teacher taught me a few Scottish tunes. I naturally sought out recordings of that music and I found Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas [1][2]. The duo has been part of my internal soundtrack for years. Still are, too. To me, they represent creative interpretation, lush tone, and just... musical excellence. When I heard that they were coming to town, I actually was going to skip it. Life's been insane lately with the family, and I've been doing a few too many extra-familial musical activities. But then came the news that this was a farewell tour and I made the necessary arrangements (a.k.a. ask the love of my life to watch the people I cherish most while I leave for an evening of trad. Don't worry, I did a ton of extra stuff around the house to ensure I didn't leave the wife in a bad way. Plus it was after the kiddos went to sleep.)

The Venue

The concert was held at the Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center [3], Main Stage, which was surprisingly wonderful. Not that I was expecting something bad, but I had always seen the Montgomery College sign while dropping off my dogs at their groomer across the street, and I hadn't expected a concert hall that sounded this good to be so geographically close and yet unknown. Parking was confusing, but I just followed the crowds to find my way. Follow your nose and all that. Inside, it sort of felt like a university study hall. Except when I entered, there was some sort of electronic music and rap meetup thing happening right outside the concert doors. While I was grabbing a beverage, the folks in this larger side-venue started their titular track "Fuck my landlord". It was actually pretty good. I was initially worried I'd hear music from the side event bleeding into the Fraser & Haas concert, but once the hall doors closed, I couldn't hear a thing.

Like most things in trad, the crowd in the concert hall skewed older, mostly 60+, making me quite the oddball sneaking in while (barely) in my 30s. And I'll say the energy of the crowd was somewhat low, but this was 100% a “sit-and-savor” type concert rather than a high-energy engagement. Less moshing, more gnoshing. I spotted a couple fellow session players in my area in the audience who leaned Scottish, which was wonderful to see. The program director for the Montgomery College Cultural Arts Center's Global Music Series came out and talked about some cool upcoming folk and other shows happening. I had no idea all this music was going on, dispersed throughout the Montgomery College campuses. After that, there was a brief wait, and the show began!

The Music

Two very unassuming musicians walked out on the stage, and immediately announced they were not playing anything old or well-known. Essentially, just only their newly released album full of completely original, newly composed music. Gimme a break dude! Lemme hear ya play a few classics that have been bouncing around my head longer than my kids have been around. I'm more than happy to listen to the new stuff, but I really was hoping to hear my favorite Scottish fiddler play some of my favorite Scottish trad tunes. Are any of these new tunes from the new album on thesession? Just checked: nope. And I'll say that I found this choice very unusual for a farewell tour, where folks often play their biggest hits. It really felt slightly confusing that the entire set lacked even a whiff of nostalgia.

But their new music was quite good. I loved how they traversed portions of the globe, dabbling in various genres. And we learned a lot about the performers as well. Alasdair discussed living in California, but told stories from Scotland and what he does when he visits home, such as eat Oatcakes. I had never heard of these savory snacks, but he wrote a tune about them. A few folks in my area liked that tune enough that they were passing around sheet music for it on the email list a week later. Natalie talked a lot about her moving to Spain and her love of the folk music of Sweden. She played us polskas that she wrote, and Spanish folk music she composed for local weddings near her house. It was all beautiful. They both were mic'd up, but they were coming through the sound system crisp and clear... with a sound remarkably close to their albums.

Now there's something special in the trad scene my session-mates and I have been noticing. This old time american sound sneaking into our own American trad musician's sound. And we're loving it. Think Maura Shawn Scanlin [4] and Jenna Moynihan [5]. Obviously, they are playing Scottish and Irish music. But there's a slight accent on their bows and my friends and I are loving it. I think... Alasdair and Natalie were trying to do something similar with the Highland Hoedown. But for me, that was the only track on the new album that didn't quite land. Which is fine. 9/10 is still an A! It's just very interesting because they tried to attack the problem of adding a little old time american twang to trad, and came up with a completely different answer than some of their peers. I appreciate the effort, I truly do.

But Natalie and Alasdair had stage presence. They obviously had years of experience performing together, and the entire time you could taste that magic that brought them together years ago. The energy was there. The tone. The musical conversation. It all felt rehearsed but oh so real

The End?

I almost titled this section "Reflections on Farewell". While listening I could just not get out of my head that this did not feel like a farewell tour. They had just released a new album 6 weeks prior called MERIDIANS, come on! [6] There's gotta be a story there. But I wish everybody well and just hope there will be a reunion some day. There was not a sour note this entire evening. Honestly at times, they sounded exactly like they do on the albums which was kinda crazy. Alasdair mentioned that he only brought like 15 CDs from their new album and he'd be selling them outside. On my way out, I saw him just standing the middle of a group of people chatting everyone up. Damn I love that. Anyway, I hope this isn’t actually goodbye. Oh! And go buy their new album!