06 May 2008
Phew! Well its been a busy old time here in Chilliland but just taking a wee breather to catch you all up!
We had a couple of days to get back to normality and catch up on sleep after the New York trip but then it was straight back to business as we played two concerts, in Liquid Rooms, Edinburgh on the Thursday and then up to Fat Sam’s in Dundee on the Friday. Both of these gigs were excellent and we thank everyone who attended for welcoming us back home!
The following day the Corporate Wing of the Chilli’s flew down to London to play at the Candy Ball, a fundraising event for confectioners, we certainly added some spice to this sweet event (sorry!). It was a great night, one of the highlights being when we were joined by the Brian Rodgers Dance Troupe, who had rehearsed a routine to our very own signature tune, We Will Rock You!
A week later, the Chillicoaster took us to the south of France and the small island of Les Embiez, for an annual party for the Pernod Ricard drinks company. We were there, representing Chivas, to entertain the many delegates from around the world as part of the end of week party. While the sun was beating down upon us, the unusually strong winds managed to rip the roof off the massive tent that was to be our venue, but with some reorganisation we were still able to unite the multi-national audience in a celebration of whisky! After the performance we just enjoyed the party, sampling some delicious cocktails from the top brands under the Pernod Ricard umbrella – whiskies, vodka’s, gin’s, rum’s, champagne’s……. - it’s a tough life in the Chilli’s sometimes! (I’ll let you know when that happens!)
It was just a short jaunt to France, returning on the Wednesday, 23rd April. We had a day off for sleeping, then a full schedule for the weekend, on the Friday we played at the Annual Sports Dinner for the University of West of Scotland Paisley Campus (we return there on May 22nd with the full band for the 1 Day Music Fest 2008).
On Saturday we were down in Chester-le-street, Durham for the wedding of Paul and Jill at the beautiful Lumley Castle, congratulations to you guys!
On Sunday afternoon we played at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, the main part of the museum is closing for 3 years for refurbishment and the Chilli’s were the last music to be heard there. A beautiful day and a great turnout made this a great event. We weren’t finished there though as we travelled straight from the museum up to Inverness for an event for Drambuie, a few Americans there loved rocking out to the Bagrock!
A couple of days later and we were back with the Chivas brotherhood up at the Glenlivet Distillery near Elgin.
Which brings us nicely to the start of May!
We started May off by taking the gift of Bagrock to the pupils of Drumchapel High School, Glasgow. The school’s headteacher, Mrs May Winton is the mother of our very own Chillisound engineer, Paul, and he called in a few favours to make sure the kids were blown away! Bill Smith very kindly gave us the use of some PA equipment to lift the roof and Ricki Smith provided and engineered the lighting rig to brighten up the event, Paul was also very ably assisted by Nick ‘Finders’ Findlay. The band, and Paul especially, would like to say a big thankyou to these guys for making this a success. Paul’s mum may have been surprised at the amount of effort that had been put into putting on this show (she was expecting just a wee acoustic set - the Chilli’s don’t do things by half!) but this was nothing compared to the reaction we got from the kids! None of them had ever seen a show like this before and it was great to be able to take it right to them in their own schoolhall!
Kevin said : “this was great fun, Paul had asked us to do this as a favour for his mum and it was a great pleasure for us to go out and put something back into the community, especially in Drumchapel, which is quite a deprived area of Glasgow…… it was great to see the reaction on the kid’s faces!”
So that’s us well into the May schedule now, we left from Drumchapel for a corporate gig in Glasgow that night and as I type this, we’re sitting in the picturesque town of Drymen, near Loch Lomond, on a sunny May evening.
This Saturday, 3rd May, some of the band are attending the Big in Falkirk festival to support our bandmates, Stav and G-man, who are performing on the main stage with their other band ‘Danse Or Die’. They are playing after The Complete Stone Roses, and just before the Levellers, stellar company indeed! Good luck to the guys, some of the Chilli clan will be shouting you on from the crowd!
After that, it’s back to business with gigs across the central belt of Scotland this week, before we head over to France again for Nuit Interceltique de Rennes in the Stadt de Rennes on 17th May, this promises to be an excellent show and we are looking forward to seeing our French friends there!
Don’t worry, there are plenty of chances to catch the Chillishow, just keep your eyes on this website!
Chillipiper x
21 April 2008
The Chilli’s got to experience first hand the chaos that is Heathrow terminal 5 as we made our journey across the pond to New York to take part in the Scotland Week celebrations. We arrived in London to be told simply that our flight to New York’s JFK airport had been cancelled due to ‘staffing issues’! Six hours after our scheduled departure time, we boarded a plane, but not to JFK as planned, but to Washington DC, where Kevin had arranged for a bus to pick us up and take us on the five hour drive up to New York. In other circumstances we may have relaxed in Washington for a night and flown up in the morning, but we had a job to do in New York and the Chilli’s are not a group that will let people down so we travelled through the night to get there!
We arrived, a bit bleary eyed, at the Helmsley Hotel in New York, which was to be our base camp for the week, at around 3am on Sunday and as soon as we were checked in, went straight to our beds for some much needed rest. A mere four hours later, however, we regrouped in the hotel foyer to depart for our first engagement of the week – never let anyone say we don’t work hard! - and with a major injection of caffeine and breakfast muffins, we were ready and raring to go!
Our first performance was at the Scotland Run, held by the New York Road Runners, around Central Park. Although it was a very Scottish (cold!) morning when we arrived, the sun shone through and it was a beautiful day as we led the competitors to the starting line. Luckily we managed to avoid having to actually compete in the race but we were there to entertain spectators and runners at the other end as the race finished.
The next day was fairly relaxed and we only had one engagement at the rather fancy University Club (collar and tie must be worn – a bit different to university clubs in Scotland, we even heard a story of senator Hillary Clinton being kicked out for using a mobile phone, but we were allowed to jump around in our kilts playing rock music and bagpipes – only the Chillis!) We also met up with Chillipal and fellow RSAMD Scottish Music graduate, Jennifer Port, who was also there to help represent Scotland.
We pretty much had the day off on Tuesday to relax, see some of the sights, do a wee bit of shopping, all the usual New York experiences, but also that day it was Chilli snare drummer Steven Graham’s birthday and we celebrated in style with food and drinks before going to see the percussion and dance extravaganza that is ‘Stomp!’ It was a great performance and was nice for us to be in the audience for a change, happy birthday to Stiggy!
On the Wednesday, we took the Chilli team to the capital city, Washington DC. It was a gloriously sunny day and we took some time to admire some of the awesome architecture and awe-inspiring monuments of the city, before we headed to the venue for the evening, the equally awe-inspiring Jefferson Building at The National Library of Congress. On this evening we were to play at the Tartan Day 10th Anniversary Dinner, where our First Minister, Alex Salmond was in attendance along with some other MSP’s, including former First Minister, Henry McLeish and some members of the US Congress. One of the congressmen commented that in the hundred years of the Jefferson Building, there had never before been heard such a sound as we created that night!
Thursday morning, we returned to New York and went straight from the train to check out our venue for that evening, the Stout Bar, where we would be putting on a full hour and a half show. Stout is just one of the many (very many!) Irish pubs in New York and it provided a great atmosphere for us. Thursday night is regarded by many as the main night for going out in NYC, and the crowd we gathered certainly didn’t disappoint, and neither did the Chilli’s as we rocked through a blistering set. We played in the Stout on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights and the crowds just got better and better each night, with the temperature soaring through the roof! It also gave us a chance to meet up with Jimmy Lee and some of our other friends from the Fire Department of New York that we met, and performed for, last year.
One of the highlights of the week for us came on our last full day when we led the Tartan Day Parade down 6th Avenue, with the First Minister. The weather was luckily very un-Scottish-like and the sun was high in the sky as we marched down the street. The Scots were very well represented with many different clans in attendance as well as a large number of pipers and drummers to entertain the crowd.
We met a great number of people in our time in America and we’d like to thank everyone who we spoke to that made us all feel so welcome. Special thanks to Justine Watt from the Scottish Government who looked after us all week and Elaine for taking us over there, thankyou to Abbot at Abbot Audio who provided the PA for us in New York (our saviour!), and John who gave us tours and provided the PA in the Library of Congress in Washington. Thanks to all the new friends we’ve made and of course, thanks to everyone that came to see us at any of the events in New York, hopefully we will return very soon!
Our next trip abroad takes us to the South of France to play at a party on a tiny wee private island – it’s a tough life in the Chilli’s sometimes!
See you all soon,
Chillipiper x
09 April 2008
Oban / Dunoon (March Madness Continued!)
It was a triumphant homecoming this weekend as the Chill’s returned to Scottish soil for sell-out gigs in Oban and Dunoon. We were blessed with fantastic weather as we made the journey up through the magnificent scenery of the Argyll region, as celebrated in the tune “The Hills of Argyll”, (featured on ‘Bagrock to the Masses’, available now at all good record stores…….. etc etc!). Many of the bandmembers have fond memories of times spent in this region at various pipe band events and were excited to be returning in this capacity.
The strong tradition of piping and drumming in the region was shown both nights as we were supported by the local youth pipe bands, on Friday night, the Oban High School Pipe Band opened the show, and then on Saturday, the Dunoon Grammar School Pipe Band got us off to a great start. We’d like to thank both bands for joining us and wish them all the best in the forthcoming pipe band season.
We always have a good time performing onstage but to be in front of such appreciative Scottish audiences made the experience all the better, and with both venues being full to capacity, the atmosphere was fantastic!
We all felt great after these gigs and thought that they were two of the best performances we’ve had. Many people also commented to us about the lighting for the shows, which was amazing, this was put together by Ricky Smith who has worked with us on a few occasions now and has put together an excellent lighting accompaniment to our show, making it even more exciting! Thanks to Ricky and Alan for their help and ‘enlightenment’ (sorry!) both nights!
The weekend was a bit of a family affair for the band with Stav’s mum and dad with us on the Friday night and on Saturday, G-man’s mum and dad, who have a home in Dunoon, were joined by his two older brothers (including the godfather of ‘bagrock’!) to show their support. Meanwhile, Kevin’s parents, Hector and Allison MacDonald not only attended both nights, but they were also running the merchandise stall for us, and did a fantastic job at selling our Chilligoodies to the people of Argyll!
Of course, it would all have been for nothing without those people of Argyll who attended so thanks must go out to all of you for making such an enjoyable weekend. We’re looking forward to returning to Dunoon later on this year when we will be performing at the Cowal Games, held in August, come along and see us there!
With a wee bit of time off now, we’re packing our bags and preparing for our upcoming trip to New York to perform at ‘Tartan Week’, the huge celebration of Scotland and it’s culture. We’re really excited to be taking part and doing our bit to represent Scotland and really looking forward to taking our Chilli Spice to the Americans! If you’re lucky enough to be in New York at this time please come along and say hi, you can see a list of where we’ll be performing on the main page of our website, hope to see you there!
Chillipiper x
20 March 2008
So it was some very tired Chilli’s that touched back down in Edinburgh Airport this week after our impromptu mini-tour, those of you who have been paying attention will already know, but to any newcomers, we had a few gigs in a row which just happened to line up together but in completely different parts of the world!!
We started our journey with a flight to Frankfurt, Germany where we had arranged to hire two cars. Kevin and Willie had the unenviable task of driving from Frankfurt Airport to our venue, the town of Dudelange in Luxembourg. Now, some people may have looked into this beforehand and maybe got some kind of information on how to make this cross-country journey, but, with Kevin at the helm, we needed no such preparation. After half an hour of circling Frankurt Airport, we stopped at a garage and found a kind young German gentleman who reprogrammed our car’s satellite navigation system into English and we were on our way!
After a short Cassells-inspired detour through France, we arrived in Dudelange at the Zeltik Festival in plenty of time to be two hours late for our soundcheck! Other bands would get stressed in this situation but not us! With Chilli Engineer Paul Winton on hand, we took to the stage later that night with full confidence and a rocking sound that blew the Luxembourgians away!
We had a great time in Luxembourg, onstage and off. Thankyou to our new Chillifriend Danielle, who showed us some of the sights of Luxembourg City and also helped us find a Scottish pub to watch Scotland beat England at rugby!! Also a big thankyou to John Rech, who booked the Chilli’s and is already trying to get us back again next year, we can’t wait!
After an easier return leg to Frankfurt, we boarded the long flight to Shanghai and then onto Jeju, a small island off the south coast of South Korea and some decidedly brighter weather than was beating the shores of Britain at the time!
We were in Jeju to help Ballantines Whisky Group launch the first leg of the European Golf Tour to be held in South Korea, The Ballantines Championship. We were to play at the launch dinner with some of the top golfers from around the world in attendance and we certainly made sure the event got off to a blistering start!
With a couple of days to spare, we took advantage of the facilities in the fantastic golf resort hotels; the pools, the saunas and steam rooms (and also a couple of the bars and restaurants!) as well as taking some time to see some of the sights of the island. So, by the time we came to leave the island, we all felt relaxed and refreshed for the long journey ahead back to Europe, which was just as well as it was quite a stressful one!
A day or so of travelling later and we touched down in Paris early in the morning, with a couple of hours to kill before we could get into our hotel. Being in the cultural centre that is Paris though, we easily found a little café to refresh ourselves with coffee and a little breakfast.
We were performing the following night at the Bercy Arena, as part of Festival Interceltique’s Saint Patrick’s celebrations, ‘Nuit de la St. Patrick’, with other acts including Bagad Brieg, David Pasquet and Alan Stivell. The Bercy Arena is a great venue which attracts the biggest acts from around the world and with an audience of around 15,000, the atmosphere was electric. We received rapturous applause after every set and had the whole audience on their feet clapping along. This was a great experience and a fantastic way to wrap up our mini- tour! We’d like to thank Gaedig and all at Festival Interceltique for everything they’ve done for us. Later this year we are performing for them in Rennes and are also appearing again at the Lorient Festival, two big gigs we’re all looking forward to!
We’re now getting ready for a couple of big gigs back here in Scotland, we play at the Corran Halls in Oban on Friday 21st, then the Queens Hall in Dunoon on Saturday 22nd, they should both be great nights, come and say hi if you’re going!
The following week we leave for New York City for the Tartan Week celebration, the culmination of our March madness!!
Stay tuned for our news on all these great events,
Take care,
Chillipiper x
05 March 2008
Hello again Chillifans!
Well, 2008 is well under way now and it’s been a great start to the year for the Chilli’s. We had a nice leisurely January, with the sell out concerts being the obvious highlights, but then it was full steam ahead as we hit February.
A big thank you must go to Valerie Posner, Head of the Dishwasher Division of BSH (Bosch Siemens) Home Appliances. Valerie was running a two-week series of events and dinners in Scotland to launch the new range of appliances from BSH and hired in the Chilli’s to spice up her guest’s dinners every evening at various venues including the Falkirk Wheel and the Scotsman, Balmoral and Hopetoun House Hotels in Edinburgh. With different guests from all around the world every night, the Chilli’s made each event a truly memorable one. Valerie, who is a very recent convert to the sound of the bagpipes, attended every evening and enjoyed the last night as much as the first. Well done, and thank you Valerie!
Now we’re in March, which is truly a month of madness for us! As you will have seen from the main page, we’ve just come back from London, where we were performing again for the charity Burn’s Supper (entitled ‘Not Another Burns Supper’) hosted by Ewan McGregor and Sharleen Spiteri, in aid of the Children’s Hospice Association Scotland (CHAS). As well as being a great cause, the event is a great fun night and a chance to mingle with the stars! The highlights included watching KT Tunstall playing our G-man’s guitar and leading the guests through ‘My Bonny Lie’s Over The Ocean’ and also having Ewan McGregor join us on stage to play the snare drum with us for a couple of tunes. With Ewan’s help we had the whole place jumping and everyone we spoke to afterwards told us we were the highlight of the night, and a lot of the guests here know a thing or two about entertaining people – check the photo’s!
The biggest highlight though, came just after we finished our performance, as we were walking off stage, we were called back up to be presented with a platinum disc for album sales!! It was a great experience to receive this in such prestigious company and also to be presented it by Ewan, another of Scotland’s heroes!
Thanks to Ewan for this, but the biggest thanks must go out to all of you out there who bought the album and gave us our platinum sales, thankyou! You might also like to know that our album ‘Bagrock to the Masses’ was the biggest selling record of 2007 from a Scottish label, and we achieved this in just the last 6 weeks of the year!! Wow!!!
As if all of this wasn’t enough, to reward us for our achievements and for what we’ve done to promote bagpiping in general, world-renowned bagpipe makers McCallum Bagpipes presented us with three sets of custom made and personalised bagpipes! These pipes are truly unique and we really can’t thank the guys at McCallum’s enough. Each set features red marble mounts and the ferrules are gold plated and have the chilli logo engraved on them, very ‘bling’!
Here are some pix of our funky new pipes. Cool eh?
So that brings us up to now, and, at the time of writing, we’re packing things up in Chilliland for another great trip. On Thursday 6th of March, the Chillibago will take us up to Aviemore for a corporate event. We will come off stage there and the Chillibago will take us straight to Edinburgh Airport, from where we are travelling to Luxembourg for the ‘Zeltic Festival’. From Luxembourg, we are travelling to Jeju, South Korea, to perform at an event for a long-standing friend of the Chilli’s, the Chivas Whisky Group. We will then fly from South Korea to Paris, where we are performing at the Bercy Arena as part of ‘Nuit de la Saint Patrick’ and then we will eventually travel home. Whew! This mini tour takes us about 10 days and we hope to have some time to enjoy each country. It should make for an interesting Blog anyway! We’ll tell you all about it when we get back and if any of you are attending any of these events, please do come and say hi, it’s always great to meet Chillifriends around the world!
For those of you in Scotland, we have a couple of ‘home’ gigs when we get back, in Oban on 21st March and Dunoon on the 22nd March, which we are looking forward to hugely, there’s nothing quite like the Scottish audience! Details are available on the main pages of this site.
We have a week’s break after these gigs and then, to cap the month of March off nicely, we travel to New York in the last week to perform at the Tartan Week celebrations, a huge, annual celebration of Scotland in the Big Apple!
Details and stories from all these great events will appear here as they happen so keep your mouse pointed this way!
Hope to see you all soon at an event near you!
Chillipiper Malk x
06 February 2008
Hey fans! Guess what? Chris Evans has been playing Chilli tracks quite regularly on his BBC Radio 2 Drivetime show between 17.00 and 19.00 on weekday evenings. Chris has been saying seem really cool things about the Chillis and their music. Thanks a lot Chris - we are really grateful. Here is a copy of his playlist for last week
04 February 2008
A great friend of the Chillis and a fabulous piper, Ross French, is recovering from a serious accident. Ross is a firefighter and was badly injured when a garage collapsed on him as he was trying to put the blaze out. Ross is a former world champion piper with the famous Shotts and Dykehead Pipe Band and he has actually played as a Chilli Piper on quite a few occasions to help the lads out. The Chillis have enormous respect for Ross - both as a piper and as a top class guy! Get well soon. We are thinking of you and your family and if there is anything we can do to help just let us know. Here's a picture of Ross actually playing with the Chillis.
If anyone wants to send a card or a message to Ross and his family you can use this address 12 Knowehead Gardens,Uddingston,Glasgow,G71 7PY.
22 January 2008
Hello again Chilli fans!
Well, what a weekend it has been for the Chilli’s. We’d taken a small break after the excitement of the Edinburgh Hogmanay street party. Thank you to everyone who was there and helped us get the New Year off to a blistering start. Even the weather seemed to stay clear(ish!) to make sure everyone had a great time!
Tis’ the season to celebrate Scotland’s National Bard, Robert Burns and on Thursday 17th, we travelled down to London to perform at The Grove Hotel for the Audi UK Sales Burns Supper. This was a great fun night, hosted by Scots funnyman Craig Hill.
On the Friday, we moved into the centre of London to the Grosvenor House Hotel for another supper, this time for The Chartered Institute of Bankers. With almost one thousand guests in attendance this is reputed to be the biggest Burns Supper held in the world! Music was provided by the Gary Blair Ceilidh band and there were some excellent speeches and toasts, including the ‘Lassie’s Toast’ by friend of the Chilli’s, Clark McGinn. It was thanks to Clark that the Chilli’s were able to make their first appearance in the USA back in November, when we were hired for the Royal Bank of Scotland’s St Andrews Day celebrations. As well as working for RBS, Clark is in much demand to give speeches at Burns suppers the world over, after his visit to the UK, he’s off to Sydney, Australia and then a mini tour of the US, good luck with them all Clark!!
After another excellent night, we had an early rise on Saturday to perform a wee promotional spot on the breakfast show on BBC Radio London, thankyou to the folks who looked after us down there.
It was after all this though, that the excitement really began to build as we flew back up to Glasgow to prepare for our homecoming gig at The Renfrew Ferry with Skerryvore. With 8 of us in the Chilli’s and anything from 6 to 10 in Skerryvore, there is obviously a lot of setting up involved! Luckily though, we have our very own Chilli engineer Paul Winton who made sure that every nuance of this veritable orchestra could be heard clearly through the Ferry’s system!
As the doors opened, the excitement level continued to rise as we neared the start of this much anticipated, sell out concert. By the time Clyde 1’s George Bowie took to the stage to introduce Skerryvore, the ferry was at full capacity and the waiting crowd certainly weren’t disappointed as Skerryvore, “Tiree’s answer to Westlife”, got the party started with a set ranging from traditional reels and jigs to classic songs such as ‘Sweet Home Alabama’.
To give the crowd a chance to catch their breath, comedian Des Mclean performed a stand up set while the Chilli’s donned the now famous black and red uniforms. As the band took to the stage, the excitement (and the temperature!) went through the roof! From the very first crash of cymbals to the very last squeeze of notes from the pipes, the crowd were in great voice and the energy emanating from both the crowd and the Chilli’s on stage, would have been enough to power a small country! These concerts also marked a UK premiere for some of the tracks from the new album, including Clocks and band favourite, The Pig Jigs. Judging by the reaction we got, it certainly won’t be the last time we play them! There was also a wee added surprise as we were joined onstage for a couple of tracks by Red Hot Chilli Dancers, Sam and Lauren, who helped whip the crowd into even more of a frenzy!
For a very special finale/encore, both bands took to the stage. With about 20 musicians it was a bit of a squeeze but it was a great way to end a fantastic night!
Both Saturday and Sunday were great nights, with Saturday being a complete sell-out and Sunday not being far off. We’d like to thank all of our friends and family and also all the new friends we made over both nights, thankyou to everyone who came along! This has been undoubtedly one of the best weekends ever for the band and that is all down to all of you. 2007 was an amazing year for the band and, judging by how 2008 has been already, this year is going to be even better!!
Lastly, a few people to thank:
All the Staff of The Ferry for helping it all go smoothly, Trevor - the Ferry’s house engineer, Ricky – who provided and ran the excellent lighting and smoke, Sam and Lauren – the Red Hot Chilli Dancers, George Bowie and Des Mclean from Clyde 1, Paul Winton – the Red Hot Sound Engineer, and of course, the fantastic Skerryvore, excellent musicians and all round good guys – Slainte!
And thanks to all of you reading this, without whom none of this would be possible!
Look forward to seeing you in 2008!
Chillipiper x
05 January 2008
Step up and take a bow Karen Theobald. You have been nominated as the very first Chilli Hero of 2008. This is an honour which Chilli Headquarters bestows on Chilli fans and other members of the Chilli community and family who have impressed us.
Karen Theobald is a huge Chilli fan and she runs a website called The Furry Monkey. Click on the wee monkey below and go and take a look for yourself. Karen suffers from Primary Bone Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma and she has set up an award winning website to help, support and give advice to fellow sufferers and people newly diagnosed with this awful cancer. Karen has impressed us tremendously with her spirit and good humour and we are so proud to have her as a Chilli fan - and now a Chilli Hero.
Well done young lady. You are an inspiration to us all.
02 January 2008
Look who's at number 7 in this week's BBC Indie album charts?
