Dirty Linen

This is an excerpt from the print edition of Dirty Linen #130 June/July 2007).
The full article is in the magazine, available on newsstands, by subscription, and at the Dirty Linen webstore.

Five Hand Reel CD cover

Shaking Out the Sheets

Dirty Linen Classics

by Steve Winick

Five Hand Reel
5 Hand Reel/For A' That/Earl O' Moray
Beat Goes On BGOCD712, reissue

In the early 1980s in New York City, those of us interested in Celtic music heard about Five Hand Reel, a great Scottish folk-rock band that had existed for only the latter half of the 70s. Similar to Fairport Convention, but featuring the vocals and guitar of the already legendary Dick Gaughan, the band was rumored to be fantastic. Sadly, its records were already out of print and impossible to find, and it never toured in the United States. I had pretty much given up on ever hearing the band when, in about 1987, I stumbled upon its third album, Earl O' Moray, in the landmark Manhattan shop, Colony Records. A couple of years later, word reached me that the two earlier LPs, 5 Hand Reel and For A' That, had been reissued in England. Taking advantage of the fact that my dear friend Philip Hemming had a trip to Old Blighty scheduled, I sent him off with a shopping list and soon had those two LPs, as well.

Flash forward to 2006. I hadn't heard from Philip in years. I hadn't listened to my Five Hand Reel LPs in even longer. In the same week, two things happened: Philip sent me an email out of the blue, and Dirty Linen sent me this reissue to review, encompassing the three LPs on a two CD set. Funny old world, eh?

There was some inaccuracy in the buzz we had all heard in the 80s; this was not strictly a Scottish band. Three of the band's members were Scottish, including Gaughan on vocals, guitars and whistles, Bobby Eaglesham on vocals, guitars, mandolins, and dulcimers, and Dave Tulloch on drums and percussion. However, the group also included Belfast fiddler, keyboardist, and singer Tom Hickland and English bass player Barry Lyons. The latter was a former member of both Trees and Mr. Fox, and therefore one of the top musicians in English electric folk. The band combined Irish and Scottish elements with punchy rhythms that Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span had been working with in England. In that sense, it was an international Anglo-Celtic electric folk band.

[cover #130]