Iain Scally is a Scottish Singer / Songwriter and all round good guy! Married with 5 children and 7 and a half grandchildren, (a whole story in itself), he has always been interested in music from taking part in the school concerts of the mid to late 40's through Bill Haley and the Comets in the late 50's and lead singer in "The James Fitzpatrick Quintet", at the start of the 60's. In 1963 he joined up with a fellow postman who knew a guy who had an accordion who knew a guy who sang like Slim Whitman who knew a guy who played drums, the amalgamation of which produced, "The Jacobites", a kind of show band that enjoyed a lot of success across the central belt of Scotland into the early 70's.
Started singing with youngest daughter, (and only offspring living within a hundred miles of him which must say something), around 1998 and eventually got off the ground as a duo 5 minutes after someone said, "I'll give you a fiver if you'll sing in our club!" Never looked back since! Laura turned up the Irish gaelic name "Scalaidhe" which they have used ever since and have mangled the pronunciation to "Scally" simply because it suits them! Professionally they are known as Grumpy Green and his daughter, Gretna. That probably just about says it all, doesn't it? But it doesn't stop there! When joined by Cambridge graduate Karen White on fiddle, the duo grows to the trio, "WYSIWIG" and provides an excellent range of music to dance to or sing along with for ceilidhs, wedding or dances.
Laura, an accomplished pianist and musician in her own right, also plays piano and sings with a recently formed 4 piece "café jazz", group "Four on Six", which features two of Inverness' more well known musicians and a young drummer of startling talent for his years.
Iain discovered a latent talent for song writing around the time youngest daughter was moving from primary to secondary school when he wrote a school song for Cawdor Primary which is still being sung at all school occasions of note. Scalaidhe have produced on CD entitled, "The Bridge" and some details are included below. Iain has recently completed a project he started 3 years ago to write and record a suite of songs from stories of the Cawdor area where the family had lived for 20 years. The result is "Cawdor 'n' Aboot", 11 songs associated with the area.
His next project is to do the same with Cannich and, "The Glens", as the material so if there is anybody out there with a story which could be interesting, don't keep it to yourself, let's see it shared. With the Hydro Boys of the 40's and 50's and the colourful history of the Lovats and the Chisholms there is bound to be a rich harvest. After all that's how we learned a lot of our history through songs like "Glencoe", "Ye Jacobites by name", "Killiecrankie" and many more. Watch this space! Iain finds a story, rewrites the story as a poem and then finds a tune which hopefully makes the poem interesting enough to remember.
Iain Scally lives at Craskie in Glen Cannich. If you would like to contact Iain e-mail him at:
scalaidhe@btinternet.com