Singer, storyteller combine talentsfor unique and personal evening show–Danielle Shapiro
Inspired by a trip to Scotland, shared ancestry and each other, songwriter Beth McIntosh and author/filmmaker Charlie Craighead will join forces Tuesday night, January 18th at Dornan’s for an eclectic evening of music and stories and humor.
The show in some ways marks a return to the musical scene for McIntosh, whose last full-length CD came out in 1997. It will also be an opportunity for these long-time friends and collaborators to explore themes of travel and family, people and places, tradition and innovation.
McIntosh traveled to Scotland to study Celtic music to add to her repertoire of jazz-spiced folk and blues singing and writing. There, she says she was influenced by the confluence of classicism and originality in the music, the people and even the architecture surrounding her.
“There was a strong sense of history alongside a cutting-edge, super informed, sophisticated and worldly outlook,” McIntosh said. “Charlie and I jumped off of [Glaswegian designer] Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s quote: ‘There is hope in honest error, but none in the icy perfection of the mere stylist.’ His intent is to put you into a place to think differently. I’m hoping in this show to present something that’s not so formulaic.”
Though Craighead says the show will be two-thirds musical, he will weave throughout tales that broadly reflect the themes in McIntosh’s songs. He will regale audiences with stories about his grandfather, the creation of the universe, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the desert. In a lighter moment, he will even read from the Southern Utah phonebook.
“We’re taking two known quantities – her songs and my stories – that work together and we’re going to see if they mix,” said Craighead. “We’re always looking at the bigger thing, to see if by combining our work we can leap to a new level. Often you just reach a plateau and you’re not sure if you’re improving or not. This is a good opportunity for both of us to either break through or start over.”
McIntosh will play new songs she has written and in an unusual step for her, will cover two songs by a Scottish woman she met named Karine Polwart, because, she says, the songs “matched a template” inside of her. She will also be asking the audience to sing along.
“I saw this in a whole new way in Scotland,” McIntosh said. “You do it because the songwriter is actually working for the people. The American music industry misses that. With Karine, she writes about world events – battered women, women’s lives, political situations. The Audience is so relieved to hear someone saying these things. It gives the audience a chance to siphon off the joy and the pain. It feels good to sing.”
In Scotland, McIntosh was not only impressed by the high quality musicianship she witnessed, but also the political acuity of the people there.
“In Scotland, they love their country and they are highly critical of it,” she said. “That’s important to me because what I’m writing, the material is very dense … I’m going for what I think. I don’t hide my thoughts in my lyrics.”
Craighead says that he and McIntosh live in “parallel universes.” McIntosh notes that they are “aligned in [their] intentions.” Indeed, these long friends both found that their Scottish ancestry and love for land were integral in the collaborative effort that will result in their Dornan’s show.
“Both of our families left Scotland in the 16th and 17th centuries because of religious persecution,” said McIntosh. “Both of our families were booted from Scotland as the ‘de-wilding’ there was happening. Then they came here and the richness of the natural resources helped them to succeed … Here we could thrive again. I have an enormous debt to this land. I do my work to pay homage to this place.”
McIntosh writes music that is heavy on guitar and that she says explores the relationship between the internal and external wild. Craighead, who has written several books on natural history and historical figures, says his interest lies in studying people as a wild species, their behaviors and personalities. The mixture, they hope will be intriguing, entertaining, even perhaps, edifying.
“We actually don’t work together very often, but we exchange ideas a lot,” said Craighead, who wrote lyrics in the past for a song on McIntosh’s album Songline. “For some reason we’re able to inspire each other a lot in our respective work. We’ve been friends for about 15 years; it’s a great friendship. We know we’re going to have fun and we hope that translates into a good time for everyone else.”
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