A while ago me and my friend Jamie made the short walk from my house in Lochwinnoch up to Starla Studios. My dad had recently been to a songwriting workshop there as part of a community-music project called Clachan, and he recommended that we check it out.
Starla Studios is a beautiful new recording studio nestled between fields just outside of Lochwinnoch. It has a single control room attached to one big live room covered in wood panelling and fun musical instruments. When we got there we were welcomed with cups of tea by the studio’s owner Mark Robb. Mark then led us into the live room where we were introduced to Pauline Vallance – one of the team responsible for setting up the Clachan project, and James Grant – a professional singer / songwriter who had been brought on to facilitate the songwriting workshops. Aside from me and Jamie there were also a few other folk who’d come along to participate.
The initial idea behind Clachan was simply to record an album by musicians based in or from Lochwinnoch, but it quickly developed beyond that;
“We want to create a kind of legacy I suppose” Pauline told me
“So it was important that working on songwriting came into it and then we thought it would be really nice to gather stories as well, you know gather stories from people who live and work in Lochwinnoch, and some of those stories might be turned into songs.”
This led to the project evolving into a series of songwriting workshops led by James Grant, where people could come along with songs that they had written or were working on to get some useful advice and guidance about how best to take them forwards. James explained to me about his role in the workshops;
“If I can help you access the thing that you want, that’s my job. I’m not like ‘here’s what you should do to make it something that I like’. I want to facilitate it and sometimes it’s not the same rules for everyone. Mostly what I would do is just editing and it’s just a suggestion.”
Once we’d got settled we went round the group one by one, and each person performed a song that they were working on. I didn’t have any songs about Lochwinnoch, but James said that that wasn’t a problem and I could just play anything I wanted to get some advice on. Performing your own music can be very daunting, especially when it’s a song that’s not finished. But the group and the environment helped a lot to make me feel more at ease. Everyone was very kind and complimentary about my half-song and James made some great suggestions for sections which I could add to make it feel more complete. That particular song won’t feature on the Lochwinnoch album, because of it’s lack of Lochwinnoch based themes, but I’ve resolved to write one better suited.
The last in the group to share something they’d written had come up with this really funky piano part. There was a Fender Rhodes electric piano in the room and when he played it on that it sounded awesome. Jamie is a free-style rapper, so he came up with some really cool lyrics to put over it, and James came up with a funky guitar part and some vocal harmonies. It was really invigorating to hear something come together so effortlessly between three people who had only just met each other.
Both James and Pauline told me that they’d been really surprised by the diversity of genres and instruments that people had brought forward. There’s been acoustic singer / songwriters, but also a saxophone quartet, and even a kora.
Aside from the songwriting workshops at Starla, Clachan has also set up guitar lessons and a monthly open mic night – both of which are led by local musician Crawford Smith. Each strand of the project aims broadly to strengthen the existing music community in Lochwinnoch and to try and bring different types of people together.
Both James and Pauline seemed very keen that after the project has come to an end, it has a lasting positive impact.
The hope is that people who might not have worked together otherwise, will collaborate on the recordings of each other’s songs. For example if someone has written a song that could use some piano, then they’ll be a pianist available through the project to help them, or a bassist, drummer, recording engineer etc. Everyone can bring their own skills to contribute to the album as a whole, and hopefully create relationships that will long outlive the project itself. Often age is a factor in who you tend to work with as a musician, people are used to working with other musicians of a similar age, but through the Clachan project people of all ages have started collaborating together.
It’s a project that’s open to people of varying degrees of technical musical ability. You don’t need to be a virtuoso or an experienced songwriter in order to get involved. James put it best;
“I just don’t want it to be closed off. There’s always value in someone singing their own song. There’s something emotive about it because it absolutely means something and it’s maybe something that they really want to say, and I think people get that.”
I asked James and Pauline both if they had any advice for someone who was looking to set up a community-based music project in their own area. Pauline’s key piece of advice was to think about legacy. Know your goals before you begin, and think carefully about how your project can make an impact beyond it’s own lifespan.
For James community is the selling point of a project like this. In Lochwinnoch he said, people seem to be quite self sufficient and therefore a little bit sceptical of an organised project, but a community-based project comes with the advantages of bringing people together in a way that making music as an individual or within your own bubble doesn’t.
Thanks so much to James and Pauline for taking the time to speak to me about the Clachan project!
If you are interested in getting involved in the project drop a line to Clare at hello@lochwinnochartsfestival.co.uk
Written by Creative Renfrewshire’s Marketing and PR Intern, Sam Cameron.
