For who doesn’t know yours truly, I am the metal/heavy music editor for Echoes and Dust, and I also often contribute to the website with my own heavy music reviews, interviews and features. So, you might ask yourself what I’m doing here, reviewing a book about the Fife music scene, which doesn’t involve much metal nor heavy music? Well, everybody has a guilty pleasure and mine is the alternative indie-pop/rock/folk by names such as James Yorkston, King Creosote, Lone Pigeon, The Pictish Trail, UNPOC and even KT Tunstall. What do all of these names have in common? Well, they originate from Fife and through various relationships and events they connect to the underground label Fence Records and its related Fence Collective.
Vic Galloway is a well-known BBC Radio presenter, TV presenter, and DJ and he decided a while ago that he also wanted to add writer to his extensive résumé and so he wrote Songs in the Key of Fife: The Intertwining Stories of the Beta Band, King Creosote, KT Tunstall, James Yorkston and the Fence Collective. Vic has much in common with the artists he writes about as he is a Fifer himself, born and raised in a village near St Andrews. So he was born in Fife, raised in Fife and he befriended most of the Fence Collective whilst growing up there, or at later stages in his life, either as the presenter or even as a musician. This makes it a very personal story, but also gives some great insight into the lives of the Fife artists, and as the subtitle suggests, their intertwining stories.
The Fence Collective is an amazing group of musicians and artists and what becomes very clear from reading this book is how involved they all are with each other’s music, recordings and live performances. Each chapter in the book is dedicated to an artists or band, going back from the very beginning to where they are now. The “big” Fife names of course feature heavily throughout the book, such as Kenny Anderson (King Creosote) as the main drive and inspiration for what seems everybody else’s musical career, the Beta Band as the next big thing back in the 90’s, James Yorkston as the person who actually got Fence Records into the bigger spotlight, and of course KT Tunstall, who started as a backing vocalist with the Scuobhie Dubh Orchestra and eventually making into global stardom with her radio friendly pop/rock songs.
There is good focus on the many “intertwining” relationships the various artists and musicians have with each other, such as the three Anderson brothers, Kenny (King Creosote), Een (Pip Dylan) and of course Gordon (Lone Pigeon/The Beta Band/The Aliens). Reading about the history of the Beta Band and is at times amusing, inspirational but also slightly sad as they never seemed to “make it” to the big stardom they perhaps deserved.
The book is not all about the fun, humour and musical histories and anecdotes though as it also focuses on some of the more personal issues such as the serious depression some of the featured artists suffered from, in particular Gordon Anderson and Steve Mason, but also to a certain extent Kenny and Een Anderson. This makes it a very gripping read as some of the people in the book never openly discussed these issues in much detail before, but Vic Galloway, perhaps due to his personal relationship and history with these people, managed to get them to open up to a certain degree about some of these issues. As many artists and musicians suffer from mental issues, it is very interesting and inspirational to read about other artists suffering from similar issues and how they dealt with them or in some cases are still dealing with them.
But the main focus of Songs in the Key of Fife is the music and how these artists grew up in St. Andrews or various small towns in the East Neuk of Fife and somehow managed to get Fife on the musical map. Fife is a very quiet area, almost hidden away along the east coast of Scotland below Dundee. As mentioned throughout the book this could very well be an explanation for vast amount of musicians and artists originating from this small Scottish area. As there wasn’t much to do growing up there, so many featured names started playing music. Kenny Anderson with his original Fence Records shop in St. Andrews and later his DIY label and which with the help of Johnny Lynch (The Pictish Trail) and many others grew out to become a well-established name in the alternative underground world of music. Reading about the people involved and how it all came together is great and Vic Galloway did a brilliant job bringing it all together.
I love reading books about music, musical genres, musical histories, band biographies and these don’t necessarily have to deal with heavy music for me as I simply love reading about musicians and what happened in their life to get to the point where they are now and what their inspirations are etc. If you are like me then you would do a great job picking up a copy of Songs in the Key of Fife as you’ll no doubt enjoy reading the stories and funny anecdotes and you’ll be soon listening to your copy of the Beta Band’s Three EPs or King Creosote’s Rocket DIY. What’s probably missing from the book is a compilation CD to go with it, but as Vic explained on one of his book presentations during the Edinburgh International Book Festival, this was something he was hoping for, but simply couldn’t get done due to various reasons. Maybe one day there will be a new edition which comes with Vic’s favourite songs by the artists/musicians he knows so well.
Around the time when Songs in the Key of Fife was published, it was announced that the label Fence Records in its current form was closed and Johnny Lynch started a new label with many of the Fence Collective artists called Lost Map Records. Kenny Anderson however has indicated that “Fence is alive and well” and will be relaunched next year. Maybe this will involve Kenny’s Alter Ego Trading Company label he’s been involved in since last year, taking things back more to his DIY roots where Fence Records initially all started with. It will be interesting to see where this story will continue.
