BEGBIE’S haunt from Trainspotting. A gourmand’s delight with waterside bars and Michelin-starred restaurants. The place where the sun shines to a Proclaimers’ song after a home victory at Easter Road. Clearly Leith means different things to different people. But as far as singer-songwriter Dean Owens is concerned, Leith’s special spirit is embedded in those who call it home.
“Growing up in Leith there was a strong community spirit,” says Owens, who will line up alongside folk veteran Dick Gaughan and rising star Ross Wilson (aka Blue Rose Code) at Edinburgh’s Queen’s Hall for the Men From Leith concert tomorrow night. “When I was little, we still felt the power of the docks, even though it was dwindling and they weren’t building much there.”
In a way it was Leith docks, and the fact that Owens’s father had worked there as a younger man, that provided an initial spark for this gig. The song Man From Leith, which places a strong father-and-son bond beneath the shadow of a lost heavy industry, was the standout track on Owens’s 2008 album Whisky Hearts.
“I always thought it was a really parochial song,” Owens admits. “I wasn’t going to put it on the album but all the Americans playing with me loved it, even though they didn’t know where Leith was. And it has become one of my most popular songs. I can’t really get through a show without playing it.”
Owens’s humble words don’t do justice to his songwriting talent. Man From Leith cuts through easy sentimentality to paint a powerful portrait of a relationship that resonates everywhere, from Liverpool to New Jersey. It has also provided a handy title – and concept – for tomorrow’s concert, when Owens and fellow Leithers Gaughan and Wilson will play their separate sets before (fingers crossed) uniting on stage together.
“Dick is a much more political guy than I am,” admits Owens, who first met the folk legend when they both played a Johnny Cash tribute concert at the Southern Fried Festival in Perth in 2012. “I really fell in love with his album Handful Of Earth. There’s something in it that is really earthy and honest and pure.”
Owens then crossed paths with Ross Wilson when Blue Rose Code were doing a Janice Forsyth show for BBC Scotland during Celtic Connections. “I liked where he was coming from,” Owens says. “It was different from myself, with lots more soul and jazz influences. I hear a lot more Van Morrison on his new album, which is no bad thing.”
To a certain extent, then, you could draw a Venn diagram featuring these three performers: Gaughan sitting in a socially conscious folk circle, Wilson bringing a freer jazz vibe, Owens leaning more towards Americana and country music. But they would always intersect in the middle. Or as Owens puts it: “Dick’s the trunk, we’re the branches. We all stem from the big man.”
Owens has a few other projects on the go at the moment, including plans for a deluxe version of last year’s superb Into The Sea album and a new EP with his band The Whisky Hearts (the first time they’ll have recorded as a unit in the studio).
He’ll also be arranging a few more live dates for Settin’ The Woods On Fire, his Hank Williams tribute show (“he’s the guy who got me into country music, roots music, bluegrass”), adding the finishing touches as producer of English country singer Ags Connolly’s latest album, and travelling to the US to embark on Buffalo Blood, “a collaboration with three American musicians looking at the subject matter of immigration, migration, refugees and ethnic cleansing through the eyes of the Native Americans”.
And, although Owens currently says otherwise, there’s also the outside possibility of resurrecting tomorrow’s “one-off” concert. Perhaps a venue could then be found that would allow the Men From Leith to play together on home turf, closer to the shore, secure in the EH6 postcode. Another reason to refurbish Leith Theatre, anyone?
Dick Gaughan, Blue Rose Code and Dean Owens & The Whisky Hearts play the Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, tomorrow at 7.30pm. www.queenshall.net
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