On Thursday February 2, Celtic Connections hosted the launch of ERA, a new solo album by Gary Innes. Robert Robertson recounts the success story of the album’s single, The Caman Man, released the previous week.
Towards the tail end of last year, I received a phone call from Gary asking if I would pop round and hear a song he had written, and whether I would consider singing it on his forthcoming solo album. A matter of months later, Friday January 27, The Caman Man was released as a single and rocketed up the iTunes UK official download charts to the giddy heights of number 56, while hitting number one spot in the World Music charts.
No-one was more surprised than Gary (who had intended it more as a personal account of his shinty retirement than a commercial venture), but the single’s success represents proof of both the unassailable link between shinty and traditional music, and the huge influence Highland music lovers and shinty fans alike can exert on the UK charts. I keep a fairly close eye on the movements of the download charts, and the appearance of a genre outwith the popular mainstream is not particularly common – or, I should say, not particularly caman! Yet, in recent years, there has been a pretty constant stream of chart hits rolling out of the Highlands. In early January, Skipinnish’s fantastic new single Alive shot into the top 40 most deservedly.