GABE McVarish is a man on a mission. Not content with life on the road with Daimh, fiddler McVarish has taken some time off touring to do two things: concentrate on his burgeoning brewery business, and to collect and publish more than 200 tunes from the three main areas of traditional Celtic music – Scotland, Ireland and Canada.

McVarish’s aim is to collate traditional and contemporary tunes being played just now at sessions across the Highlands, Ireland and maritime Canada to provide future generations with a snapshot of where Celtic music is in 2017.

“I wanted to publish a collection of tunes for people who want to expand their repertoire on the fiddle or other instruments,” says McVarish.

“It is reflective of tunes that people play in sessions here in west Lochaber and I think it’s interesting that people here play tunes from Cape Breton and other parts of maritime Canada or Ireland as well as west coast pipe tunes.

“Because I recognise them as such I wanted to have a book that presented these tunes from different places that have come together to become part of what is our tradition that we now have on the west coast of Scotland.”

Not all of the tunes, however , are traditional, with several recent compositions taking their place among the more recognisable old standards.

“I wanted to show that there are still tunes being written today and there are also tunes that were written three or four hundred years ago that are all part of the same tradition. I think it’s very much a living tradition.

“I just want to show that there are old tunes and new tunes and they all sit quite well together.

“It’s kind of a snapshot of what people are playing in this area of the highlands right now.”

McVarish’s unique style of playing has for the past 20 years been a cornerstone of the Daimh sound.

However, the hefty touring schedule associated with being in a successful band had recently began to become less attractive to McVarish so he is now confining himself to domestic gigs and giving himself time to concentrate on his Laig Beer Brewing Company business which he has established on the Isle of Eigg.

“I’m going to avoid the big tours for the next wee while. I’m rapidly approaching my middle 40s so spending months away from home doesn’t appeal to me as much as it did 10 years ago.

“I’m going to be concentrating on selling beer and selling this book.”

Apart from the book, which includes the sheet music for all the tunes, there is also an accompanying CD as well as an online resource which allows players to download music in PDF form and to listen to recordings of the tunes.

The project has been a labour of love for McVarish and has been four years in the making.

“It was actually meant to be finished last year but the audio component of it was a lot more difficult to facilitate than I first envisioned.

“The book is separated into three sections, one for each of the areas covered,” he says. “The CD follows the same format. Because it’s primarily meant as a learning resource, on the CD I try and play the tunes as slowly as I can –which isn’t that slow but I want to be quite clear with it.

“For the Scottish section I am accompanied by Ewan MacPherson (Shooglenifty, Salt House) on guitar, the next quarter is myself and Aaron Jones (Old Blind Dogs) on the cittern playing Irish tunes, and then for the third part I’m playing tunes from Cape Breton and Maritime Canada with Mac Morin (Beolach) on the piano which is the accompaniment they would use over there.

“For the final part of the CD, I have taken tunes from all the regions and mixed them together in three sets which is then played with all the backers as an example of how you can mix them up.”

This commitment to the entire range of Celtic and Celtic-influenced music is perhaps not surprising given McVarish’s background.

Originally from northern California of Scottish stock – the name McVarish is almost exclusive to the areas between Ardnamurchan and Mallaig – McVarish started playing fiddle at school and soon graduated to competitions across the United States.

However, it wasn’t until he travelled to his ancestral homeland in the early 1990s to study at the then-RSAMD that McVarish truly became enthralled by what he was hearing.

Time spent learning under the legendary left-handed fiddle player of Lochaber, Angus Grant Senior was put to good use at sessions across the Highlands.

McVarish’s background is apparent when he talks of the wider world of Celtic music.

“There are other collections which have tunes from Scotland, Ireland and the east coast of Canada but there aren’t many and they are often viewed as being totally separate things but I see them all as coming from the same root source.

“In this day in age with the availability of recordings people in North America can be listening to Irish or Scottish tunes as much as they are listening to music from Cape Breton.”

Is there, though, a danger that the ubiquity and availability of these styles may mean that the original, traditional music of these areas is lost and we are left with some kind of homogenised Celtic music which has roots in all three but is itself of nowhere?

McVarish does not see it in that way.

“I see it as a positive thing. I think it has in fact made people more aware of their own regional styles. Certainly, here on the west coast we have lots of pipers so you play with pipers and pipers play pipe tunes so as long as fiddle players are accompanying pipers then that’s going to keep it fairly Lochaber, or wherever.

“If you’re in Ireland you’ll find that people are more interested in repertoire. They like to play lots and lots of tunes. And even if they are Scottish tunes then the usual response when you point this out is to be told ‘Yes, but they sent it over to us to finish’!

“In Cape Breton they have a lot of their own great composers going right back to the end of the 19th century. Their tunes, though, are relevant to the dances they do which are different to ours so there will always be a uniqueness.”

It is McVarish’s hope that this collection will allow these tunes, new and old, to be passed on to the next generation as a time capsule of where traditional music is right now.

He adds:“There are still people who are quite precious about the different traditions but it seems really obvious to me that they are part of the same wider movement.

“So I want to have not just have a collection of tunes that are good enough that people will want to learn them but also to show that they all fit in the same format. They are all part of the same tradition.”

The Gabe McVarish Collection will be available from next month. For more info including audio downloads and sheet music go to www.gabemcvarish.com