A CLASSIC of Scottish songwriting is to be included in the new, hotly anticipated Songs for Scotland 2 album.
Dean Owens’s Man From Leith has been chosen for the album, which is to be released as part of a project aimed at putting Scottish culture at the heart of a renewed independence campaign.
A crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo is raising money for the project that will not only fund the album but also go towards creating an Alasdair Gray Scholarship Trust to support young musicians. There are plans to stage a musical event at Òran Mór beneath Gray’s own ceiling murals.
Project sponsors include The National, Scotland’s only pro-independence daily newspaper, and Gray himself, who has provided both the artwork for the album cover of Native Musicians: Songs for Scotland 2 and contributed signed, limited-edition silkscreen prints as perks.
Recognised as one of Scotland’s finest modern singer songwriters, Owens’s fans include Bob Harris, Ricky Ross, Irvine Welsh and Russell Brand.
Man From Leith is about his father George, a former worker at Leith Docks, and his influence on his son and his life as a musician.
“The song is a bit of an epic to be honest,” said Dean. “It has a really strong Celtic flavour and it is very much a Scottish song as it is about the strength of the people and their relationships.”
It was inspired by an old photograph that showed George with Dean standing behind him looking over his shoulder.
“I looked at it and thought it was really the other way round – it was always my dad looking over my shoulder, watching over and encouraging me. He still does and still comes to my gigs.”
Dean is delighted the song is to be included on the Songs for Scotland 2 album.
“There are a lot of great people involved and it is always good to support anything that is going to help young musicians,” he said.
He is also in favour of a new independence referendum, especially since the “Brexit fiasco”.
“I believe more than ever that independence is something we have to go for,” said Dean. “We can stand on our own within Europe – we have been managed for too long by a part of the country that doesn’t really care about us.”
Coinciding with Man From Leith's inclusion on Songs for Scotland 2, Dean’s much acclaimed Into the Sea CD is being reissued on September 30 as a deluxe edition with four extra tracks, all recorded in Nashville, including his recent single Cotton Snow, recorded with Dave Coleman.
Into the Sea was recorded with producer Neilson Hubbard at his Mr Lemons Studio and featured a host of acclaimed US musicians including guitarist Will Kimbrough and renowned singer songwriters Kim Richey and Suzy Bogguss.
The lead single will be Virginia Street, which Bob Harris declared “a really great song” and his favourite from the album. Defying genre categorisation, it has had radio play on rock, indie, Americana, country and folk shows. Recent live sessions include Under the Apple Tree at “whispering” Bob Harris’s house in Oxford for WBTV, BBC Radio Scotland performances including on Ricky Ross’s Another Country, The Janice Forsyth Show and the Iain Anderson Show, and Bob Harris Country on BBC Radio 2.
Dean recently returned to the US to work with Neilson Hubbard’s Neighborhoods Apart Productions in Breaking Bad territory in Abiquiu, New Mexico, on a new documentary film/album project called Buffalo Blood, a follow-up to the company’s award winning The Orphan Brigade: Soundtrack to a Ghost Story, which is scheduled for release in 2017.
He is currently on tour in the UK and will then head back to Nashville to record a new album.
For more information go to deanowens.com.
For more on Songs for Scotland 2 go to songsforscotland2.eu, or visit the crowdfunding page on Indiegogo: igg.me/at/s4s2.
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