We’ve been travelling even further than normal recently with a triumphant return to Malaysia’s capital city, Kuala Lumpur.  Last year we visited KL to help promote Scottish culture and tourism with the Scottish Executive, and whilst there we met up with a few members of the Selangor St Andrews Society, including Chieftain Paul Henderson.  The society is based in Kuala Lumpur and the guys went out of their way to show us some great hospitality as well as the sights of this marvellous city.  Little did we know that they had an ulterior motive in trying to entice us back there this year – and it worked!
We were returning to perform at the Society’s annual dinner/concert event, something they’ve been gaining quite a reputation for in recent years and, as the Chieftain himself commented, this promised to be the loudest to date!
Before reaching Kuala Lumpur though, the guys had also put us in touch with their sister St Andrews Society in Singapore, so it was here we travelled to first to begin our Southern Asian adventure.  Much like footballers travelling to hotter countries, we felt the need for a bit of acclimatisation so when we arrived on the Wednesday, we performed a smaller, more intimate performance at a Scottish themed bar and restaurant.  The temperature certainly took its toll on us but luckily there was lots of cold Scottish beer afterwards to refresh us and make us feel at home!  There was a great turn out and we thank everyone involved, we certainly felt welcome on our first visit to the city.
The Thursday was the main event for us in Singapore for the St Andrews Society and they had organised a great nightclub venue for us in the city called Howl at The Moon. It was a multi national audience with Singapore locals, Australians, Americans, a good dose of Scots and everything else in between.  As the place filled up, the temperature rose, and then kept rising to boiling point as we rocked their Singaporean socks off!  There were enough Saltires flying to almost make us think we were in Scotland (were it not for the temperature!) and the crowd reaction and dancing told us that everyone had a great time.
We’d like to thank the manager and all the staff at Howl at the Moon for looking after us and showing us some great hospitality after the gig and also thank Scott, Andy and George for making it happen for us, and also for ensuring we made it to Kuala Lumpur safely!
The following morning we made the journey up to KL by bus, which gave us the opportunity to take in the sights of the countryside and, more importantly, catch up on some much needed sleep.  With all the travelling and gigging, we’d never quite allowed our bodies the chance to get used to the time difference!  We were met by the guys from the St Andrews Society who took us to our hotel for a short rest before taking us out again to enjoy the nightlife of KL.  This began with the magnificent views of the city from the Trader’s Hotel’s open air “Sky Bar”, where we met up with a few more of the members of the Selangor St. Andrews Society, before we stopped in for food at the 60th birthday party of Roger, another of the Society’s members, at the very grand and ancient Royal Selangor Club. Afterwards we moved onto the Hard Rock Café and the rest of the night…
The next day we made the very short journey from our hotel rooms to the venue, which was handily enough in the function room of the same hotel and so just involved a journey in a lift downstairs!
The society had ensured a fantastic venue for the occasion, with a huge stage for us to jump around on, and ticket sales had gone so well that the whole room was crammed with tables for the dinner. Apparently they had so much interest for the event that they had to turn people away.  After a fantastic meal where we were each at different tables mixing with a huge variety of guests, our intro music kicked in an we rose from our individual positions to make our way through the tables to the stage, drawing in their attention as we did so.  We had been told beforehand that generally when the band starts to play, most of the guests make their way out to the bar and congregate there but on this occasion, hardly a single person left the function room till we had finished our third encore!
It was a fantastic night and we thank everyone at the society and everyone that came along to make it so memorable.  A special mention of thanks must go to Carol, who produced the fantastic souvenir programmes for the night, some great work there!
On The Sunday, we had some free time before leaving and Paul, Myra and Hector were again kind enough to take us out for some sightseeing and shopping including the Batu Caves, the KL Tower, Chinatown and also the local music store for some extra percussion items!
We really thank the society so much for organising this, and also their sponsors for making it possible, to Chieftain Paul and his girlfriend Myra, Hector, Alastair, Carol, Sue and everyone else we met along the way, thank you and if we all keep our fingers crossed, we’ll see you all again!
Back home, after the long, long journey, we had a few days to rest and recuperate, which was certainly needed, then a few wee gigs before flying out again, but this time a much shorter flight, across to the Isle of Man to play for the bike fans of the TT.
We had an idea beforehand that a crowd of bikers would be up for a good show, and we certainly weren’t disappointed!  The Isle of Man TT attracts people from all over and as they crammed into the grounds of the Villa Marina we knew we were in for a good time.  The crowd gave as good as they got and I think we had as good a time as they did, if not better!  Thanks to Dawn and Seamus and all his team at the Villa Marina, yet another place that we’d love to return to!
We’ve plenty coming up to keep us busy, including a concert at Alness Academy this weekend and Dundee’s Whitehall theatre on the 4th of July and then more European travels in July.  As always, keep your eye on the website for details of when you can see us live or just generally keep up to date with the all the goings on here in Chilliland, and we’ll see you here again soon!

Chillipiper
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Our 2009 spring tour came to an end recently but there’s been no time to rest on our laurels as the summer is approaching and we’ve been as busy as ever.
The tour was a great success, with sell out shows every night, and we’d like to give out big thanks to everyone who helped to make it so good and especially everyone that came along and bought tickets to see us in Pitlochry, Inverness, Oban, Dunoon, Dunfermline, Arbroath and Galashiels.  It really was great fun for us, to be able to return to places we’ve had success in the past such as Inverness, Oban and Dunoon, but also to be able to take the Chilli show to new places such as Arbroath and Galashiels and entertain a whole new set of fans. 
A special thanks to the support acts for the tour, Stevie Lawrence and Fiona Cuthill, Ruaridh Macmillan, and Craig Jeffrey, and also all the local pipe bands who gave us so much support along the way.
To finish off in style, we returned to Glasgow and rocked the Arches, with a little help from our friends Skerryvore.
The ‘Hardest Working Musician on Tour’ award must go to Stevie Lawrence who, as well as playing with us, also provided the support with fiddler Fiona Cuthill at the concerts in Pitlochry.  With two evening performances plus a matinee, this amounted to six gigs in two days for Stevie, PLUS the duo had already performed at a festival in the afternoon before our first evening concert!
With the tour out of the way, we had a full schedule of gigs to keep us busy and rack up some more travel miles.
Our first trip took us to France and the little town of Evian (yes, where the water comes from!) to play a concert organised by Dick Reader and the Whisky Connoisseurs Club.  The venue was a fantastic building, which was made entirely of wood, and even had some trees growing at the back of the stage!  The concert went really well and the Evian crowd was very appreciative, and we had support provided by the Wallace Pipe Band from Malta.  The following night we were guests at the Whisky Connoisseurs Annual Dinner, where Stuart had the honour of being inaugurated as a Connoisseur.  Many thanks to Dick and his fellow Connoisseurs for inviting us across and to the Wallace Pipe Band who made the trip even more fun, hopefully we’ll make it to Malta sometime soon!
Back home in the UK and we were up and down the country like a yo-yo!
After the gig at the Arches in Glasgow, we jumped in the bus to go down to Norwich for a gig on the Saturday, then back in the bus and back up to Inverness for another gig on the Sunday where, bizarrely enough, we bumped into Sean William Scott, a.k.a. “The Stiffler “ from the film American Pie!
The following weekend was even busier, starting with three gigs in one day on the Saturday!  We began in Inverary, opening the Spirit of the West festival, in the fantastic setting of the Inverary Castle grounds, many thanks to His Grace The Duke for allowing us to use his back garden!  From there we went to Perth to perform at the PKAVS Party in the Park, a fantastic fundraising event, check out www.pkavs.org.uk for more details.  The wet weather did nothing to dampen the crowd’s spirits and we had another great gig before heading off again, up to St Andrews for a corporate event.  We stayed in St Andrews that night, and then made the long journey down the next day to Shepley, near Manchester, for the Shepley Spring Festival.
This was our first time at an English Folk festival and we were quite surprised to see a few Red Hot Chilli Pipers t-shirts in the crowd. We got a great reaction and the crowd were very enthusiastic, even though the weather was yet again trying to ruin the mood.
 After some rest in Shepley that night, we travelled back up the country to Ayr, where we were returning to perform again at the ‘Burns and a’ That Festival’ and played in the fantastic Spiegeltent set up in the town’s Wellington Square.
Some well deserved rest midweek , then we were back on the road again the following weekend as we travelled down to Cirencester in the south of England to play at the May Ball of the Royal Agricultual College.  The College grounds provided a fantastic setting as we performed in the ‘Big Top’. It was another fun event as we helped the students finish off their night in style.  We stayed for a wee while to enjoy the hospitality and enjoy some of the other acts performing, including some cool dance moves from a group called “Signature”.
We left Cirencester in the early hours of the morning for the long journey back up to Ayrshire, this time to Mauchline for the Holy Fair.  We seem to have been plagued by rain along the way recently but yet again the crowds still came out and filled the streets to watch our performance.  Thanks to all the organisers and also thanks to the local sports complex who kindly allowed us somewhere to shower and refresh ourselves before taking to the stage after our long journey!
So we’ve really been putting some miles onto the Chillibago in the past few weeks but it has a chance to relax now as we travel even further afield this week to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, where we are performing for the St Andrews Society.  We met some of these guys last year when we were in Kuala Lumpur and they’ve invited us back there to perform for them, definitely promises to be yet another great Chilli experience, we can’t wait!
One last thing, we found out this month that our live DVD, Blast Live, has gone triple-platinum! Huge thanks to everyone out there who bought it and made this possible, it is all of you who make us so successful and give us so much enjoyment , so thank you!

Chillipiper
X

More European travels for the band recently as we returned to a couple of our favorite gigs from the past.  As we mentioned previously, Ljubjana, capital of Slovenia, was where the band first performed with the addition of a guitarist and drumkit player so it was with great pleasure that we returned there to perform again for the Chivas whisky group.  Always a great night with Chivas and the hospitality is second to none (as long as you like whisky!).
From Slovenia, we travelled on to Luxembourg and a return to the Zeltik Festival.  Last year, organizer John Rech made sure we were well looked after and had a great time so we were delighted to return this year to fill the headline slot.  Carlos Nunez played a brilliant set before us and the packed Zeltik tent had a fantastic atmosphere when we came on.  We were pleased to be joined onstage by some of the members of the Luxembourg Pipe Band, who we had met last year.  Thanks to everyone involved who made this yet another memorable trip for the band.
Back home the following week, and we had a special performance at the Gleneagles hotel with opera singer Tony Henry.  Black and red was the theme of the evening and the guests got a real treat.  Alongside the sumptuous surroundings and lovely dinner at the hotel, they got to enjoy performances from both acts as well as ask questions, making a much more intimate experience.  The evening culminated with us getting Tony up on stage with us to sing Auld Lang Syne and, of course We Will Rock You!
The 2009 tour is now well under way and began a couple of weeks in Pitlochry.  This was one of the fastest selling gigs and we had two sell out evening performances and added a matinee on the Sunday.  The crowds were all great and it was good for us to be able to start off the tour with three gigs in the same venue.  The first night nerves were soon shaken off and we settled into some great performances that put us in good spirits for the rest of the tour.
The following weekend and we were clocking up the miles again.  After a corporate gig at Stirling Castle on the Wednesday night, we rendezvoused with the Chillibago and travelled through the night down to Porthcawl, in the South of Wales. Derek Smith, organizer of the Cwlwm Celtaidd festival was there to meet us in the morning and we were able to get a few hours sleep before the soundcheck.  The Pavillion in Porthcawl provided a lovely venue for us and a great debut in Wales.  The Welsh are obviously one of our Celtic cousins and we could see a kinship with the reaction we got from the crowd.  We must thank Derek and his team for looking after us, but unfortunately our visit had to be quite a short one.
After the gig finished on the Thursday night, we boarded the Chillibago again and travelled through the night to the next leg of our Scottish tour in Oban, quite a journey!  Arriving in a windy Oban in the morning, we had some time to relax and enjoy some of the local mussels before setting up at the Corran halls for that evening.  We’ve had some great times in Oban, including this same gig last year and a fantastic Hogmanay, and this trip was no exception. We’re having a great time involving the youth pipe bands as we travel around and support was provided this time by the Oban High School Pipe Band, who also returned to join us on stage later for Highland Cathedral and the Hills of Argyll.  Following them was guitar and fiddle duo Stevie Lawrence and Fiona Cuthill who put on a great performance, before Stevie does a quick change to join us on stage!
The following night we were in Dunoon and were joined at the Queens Hall by the Dunoon Grammar School Pipe Band.  Yet another fantastic night as we played to the packed out hall.
We’d like to thank everyone that has attended the tour so far and we’ve still got more gigs to come and we look forward to seeing you in Inverness, Arbroath, Galashiels, Dunfermline and Glasgow, see you there!

Chillipiper x

We’ve another new country under our belts as a couple of weeks ago we took Bagrock to the people of Kiev, in the Ukraine.  It was a rather cold but unique experience for us to be in this part of the world and strangely enough, we were there to play at another Burns Supper! This year we’ve played more Burns suppers outside Scotland than ever before, with Calcutta and now Kiev being the most exotic!

This particular dinner was being held on Valentines Day so it was cause for double celebrations.  The Kiev Lions Club, part of a fantastic organization that helps so many people in many ways worldwide, organized the event.  We are always pleased to be involved in great causes such as this.

Now in its 14th year, there was a great turnout for the dinner and lots of money was raised for the good causes.  We’re not sure if the people of Kiev have heard much of the bagpipes before but they certainly hadn’t heard anything like us and judging by the reaction it’s not something that they’re likely to forget in a hurry!

We were taken to Ukraine by two Scots now living in Kiev, Stuart and Robert who, along with Ozi, made sure we were well looked after in our time there and we had a great time at the party afterwards, especially the performance by Boney M and some well known Ukrainian acts!  The guys even made sure the football fans in the band got to see the ‘Glasgow Derby’ on the Sunday!

If you’re ever in Kiev, we recommend you check out one of their other business interests, Shooters bar, where we were wined and dined and also gave an impromptu late night performance after the Burns Night!

Our thanks to Stuart, Robert and Ozi, to Iryna our translator, and everyone that made the night such a success.

This week, we’re returning to a couple of gigs that we’ve enjoyed in the past.  Our first stop is Ljubljana, in Slovenia, where we are performing at an event for the Chivas Whisky group.  We first played at this event about 4 years ago and it was then that the band really became what it is now with drumkit and guitar being added to give us a bigger sound.  This obviously has fond memories for us and we’re looking forward to it, although last time it was very cold!  From there we travel to Luxembourg and the Zeltik festival, where we performed last year.  We got such a great response there last year that we cant wait to go back.

It promises to be yet another great week for us, we’ll see you here again soon!

Chillipiper x x

Germany to India!

Last Thursday we set off again on our travels, which were to take us halfway around the world.

Our first stop was in Frankfurt, from where Kevin had the unenviable task of driving some very tired Chilli’s for three hours to our destination, Freiburg, in the south west of Germany. A new friend of the Chilli’s, Petr Pandula, is working for us in this part of the world and had invited us here to take part in a showcase for performers and artists.  There were a great number of performers from all kinds of genres here, from bands such as ourselves to theatre acts, street performers and many more.  There were many good bands here but once again it was the Chilli’s who stole the show as the performance venue was packed out and we got a huge reaction for our performance.  Freiburg is close to the borders with France and Switzerland and as such brings in many agents and bookers from three different countries so it was a great buzz to get such a good reaction from them, especially as we were playing to another new audience who had never heard us.

Many thanks again to Petr and his team at Magnetic Music, thay always look after us well and we look forward to a great relationship!

The next day we had an early start as we began our long journey from Germany to India.  Kevin drove us back to Frankfurt, from where we flew to Dubai, then on to Calcutta (or Kolkata as it’s now known!)  One of the things we enjoy so much in the band is the fact that we get to travel so much and see so many different places and cultures, and Calcutta definitely ticks those boxes!  The British Council in Scotland and in India had worked so hard to get us there and looked after us so well while we were there.

On the Friday night we performed a concert in the exclusive Tollygunge golf club, where they had set up a fantastic stage in the grounds for an open-air concert.  India is another new territory for us but the British Council had obviously done a great job spreading the word as around 6,000 people filled the gardens and judging by the reaction every single one of them enjoyed the night!  Every audience is different and we get such a buzz out of getting such a great reaction from a new crowd, and new nationality of fan!

On the Saturday we visited the Calcutta School of music where we met some local young musicians.  We showed them what we do and the different instruments (obviously the bagpipes being the most exotic and interesting for them!) and had a great ‘jam session’ with them.  Yet another fantastic experience with such a mixture of ideas and cultures!

That night we attended and performed at a Burns Supper, that was a strange experience, sitting in Calcutta eating haggis sent over from Edinburgh and hearing the Selkirk Grace!

All of these events were part of the Kolkata Book Fair, which we were there to help promote, and also the Scotland-Kolkata Connection.  On the Sunday night, this all came to a close and it was our job to make sure it finished on a high note!  The closing ceremony in the past has been a low-key affair and the original plan was for the three pipers to play acoustically to an expected 200-300 people.  Word of our appearance had obviously spread though, and as the crowd kept coming into the book fair, it became clear that the plan had to change!  A PA system was quickly erected and the full band went on to perform to around 3,000 excited people!  This was perhaps one of the craziest gigs we’ve done but it was also so much fun!

We had an amazing experience in Calcutta and we’d like to thank everyone involved, everyone who came to our performances and made us feel so welcome.  The students we met at Calcutta school of music for sharing ideas.  Back home we need to give huge thanks to Pria Achall at the British Council, without whom we’d never have made it!  The directors of the British Council, in Scotland and India respectively, Roy Cross and Sujata Sen and all the British Council workers who looked after us so well while we were there.

We’re very confident that we’ve now made some new fans in another new country and are very hopeful that we can return again some day.  Until then it’s back to our humdrum lives, we’re just about to head over to Kiev in Ukraine this weekend, followed by a return to Slovenia (where a lot of the Chilli story first began some years ago!) and also to the fantastic Zeltik festival in Luxembourg……. tough work but someone has to do it!

Take care chillifans and we’ll see you soon!

Chillipiper x x
 

The Chilli train is rolling again as we get back to business for 2009! 

On the 23rd of January we headed up to Srathpeffer, near Inverness and The Pavilion, where we were playing a gig for a lovely lady named Dottie Grant.  Dottie runs a charity called HIV Mission Impossible, which helps kids in Romania suffering from HIV.  As well as helping them in Romania, she also brings them across to Scotland where they can enjoy many activities and experiences, which are not available to them at home.  Through speaking to Dottie herself and also many of the locals who attended, it was clear to us how passionate she is about this cause and made us very proud to be able to help out.  After the gig was announced, tickets went fast, possibly our fastest ever sell-out, and the lucky ones who made up the crowd gave us a fantastic response to welcome us back to the concert circuit in the New Year.

When it was all over, almost £10,000 had been raised for this great cause and we’d all inherited a new Nana! We’d like to thank everyone who attended and made this a great night, and also thank “Nana” Dottie and her daughters and colleagues at HIV Mission Impossible for inviting us and looking after us so well, we all felt very humbled to be able to donate some Chilli magic to this cause!

2009 is the Year of Homecoming and the 250th anniversary of the birth of Scotland’s National Bard, Robert Burns, and the 25th of January is celebrated around the world every year.  Coincidentally, Chilli Kevin also has his birthday on the 25th; he’s always ensured a good party! This year, we were taking part in Glasgow’s celebrations with a concert in George Square.  The Glasgow weather didn’t keep the crowds away as thousands filled the square for a night the Bard himself would’ve been proud of!

Afterwards a few of us attended a civic reception in the very impressive City Chambers where we were treated to the traditional whisky and haggis. We also want to mention Alive and Kicking, a group of ‘mature’ ladies and gentlemen from Glasgow who treated us to some songs from a bygone era, some of them had enough energy to put even our stage show to shame!

The following week brought another Burns Supper, this time down in London for a good friend of the Chilli’s Clark McGinn.  Clark is in much demand around the world as a dinner speaker especially for Burns suppers, where he is known as ‘Serious Burns’ and it was a great pleasure for us to see him in action again. A banker by trade, Clark certainly has many other strings to his bow! (check out www.seriousburns.com)

We were joined again for this gig by the Gary Blair ceilidh band and between us we had the whole place jumping with Scottishness, no mean feat when you consider that the majority of the guests were English bankers, (I do mean that they work in banking!) Staying in the hotel where we were performing meant we had an easy journey to our beds before an early start the next day.

The following morning was a quick dash back up to Edinburgh, then across to Glasgow to the Rangers FC football stadium, Ibrox.  Rangers were joining in the celebrations of Scotland and Robert Burns and drafted us in to help get the crowd in the spirit!  Earlier in the week we had been invited to their training grounds where we met some of the team, and got to watch them training.  It was great to see that team coach “Super” Ally McCoist has lost none of his passion and abilities, even up against all the youngsters in the first team squad he still showed off some silky skills!

He left it to the youngsters on the Saturday though and we got a great response from the 50,000 strong crowd.  We also had the privilege of watching the game from the corporate boxes, though we did have to dash off to play again at half time!  Thanks to everyone involved and especially Louisa who had the unenviable job of running around after us all day taking us where we needed to be, well done to her for making it all go smoothly!

Our next few gigs are a bit further afield, we’re just getting ready now to head over to Freiburg in Germany, where we always seem to get a good crowd and are well looked after.  From there we travel even further to India, where we are helping the British Council promote Scotland at an Arts Festival, this promises to be another unique experience for the Chillis and you know where to come to find out how it went!

Until then, take care and lots of Chillilove!

xx

Happy New Year Chillifans!
A wee bit late we know but, as some of you may have noticed, we’ve been treating ourselves to a wee well-deserved break over the festive season but we’re back, feeling refreshed and ready to hit 2009 with a bang!
Before we look forward, we’d like to have a brief look back at a great year.  Our ‘Bagrock to the Masses’ album was released at the end of 2007 and was greatly received, this success continued into 2008 with the album actually achieving platinum sales!  Along with this came much more success in concerts, with many sell out performances and, as you’ll know if you’ve been following the blogs, a great deal of enjoyment for us in the band.  There really are too many highlights for us to name any single one, but we’ll try and name a few!
We had great return performances in Aviles, Spain and Lorient, Britanny. and, of the many  new opportunities there were highlights at home in Scotland at the Hebridean Celtic Festival, Loopallu, Speyfest, Arran, The Wickerman Festival, and the inaugural GlenRockhart Festival!  We also had many new experiences abroad including Pipes in the Valley in Connecticut, Folk im Schlosshoff in Germany, Galaicofolia in Portugal and Zeltik festival in Luxembourg. We also had other performances in South Korea, Paris, Kuala Lumpur, Rennes, the list goes on and on!  Apologies to anyone we haven’t mentioned, there just isn’t enough room on the website!
Later in the year we had our hugely successful Blast tour, which culminated in ‘one unforgettable night’ at Glasgow’s Fruitmarket where we filmed and recorded out live dvd and cd, ‘Blast Live’.  These were released near the end of the year and have also been very well received.
We know that none of these things are possible without all the support we get from friends, family, fans, clients and the ever growing Chillifamily behind us making all these things possible, so a huge thankyou goes to everyone reading this and many others!
A few names we must mention:
Douglas Gillespie - agent extraordinaire; Paul and Finders - sound; Ricky and Doug - lights; George – driver and fixer of the Chillibago; Neil, Charles, Jane and Bel – REL Records; Aarti and Luciana – PR and promo; Steven Lawrence – bazouki and bass master; Leon, Douglas and Chris - aka The Red Hot Brass Boys; The Red Hot Chilli Dancers – dancing!  Huge thanks to all these people and anyone who has booked us, helped us, bought an album, bought a ticket, seen us anywhere or basically even heard about us and smiled at the thought! Thankyou!
We’ve had a great 2008 and are now looking forward to an even better 2009 – is this even possible? Watch this space!
Lotsa Chillilove!
xx

Well, here we are Chillifans, the year is almost over and what a year it's been for us!

We're taking a wee bit of a Christmas break at the moment, taking some time off to catch up with our respective Chillifriends and Chillifamilies (theres a few mini-Chillis out there looking for pressies!)

We have been quite busy up to this point though, including some great gigs to celebrate St Andrews Day, one of our favourite was definitely a blistering party up in Inverness (where we were lucky enough to be joined onstage by the (very) late G-man! - long story!)

To end the main part of the year, we had a great gig over in Germany, playing at a Christmas party for some new Chillifriends, Saturn Media. This was a great event and we had a lot of fun, both performing and mingling with the party people!  This time we were lucky to be joined by an (also very) late Stuart Cassells!  Big thanks must go out to Saturn Media for getting us involved in a great party!

Now we're all just looking forward to eating, drinking and being merry over the festive season and we hope you do too!  As a certain wise man we know would say, "Ding Dong Merrily!"

Also if there's anyone out there who hasn't made plans for Hogmanay yet, get yourself up to Oban for what promises to be an amazing party, with the Chillis taking to the stage just after the bells to get 2009 off to a rocking start!  We hope to see you there!


Merry Christmas from all of us here in Chilliland!!

Hi Chilli fans.
It was a big night for the band on Friday night. Well, when we say the band, we mean the pipers, sorry G man. As part of this years Children in Need we were asked to perform on the charity single 'I have a dream.' While the rest of the band enjoyed a well earned break, it was back into practice mode for the pipers. This is never an issue with us as it was for such a very worthwhile cause.
 On arrival at the BBC studios it was clear that something special was about to happen. All the reception staff were wearing fancy dress and everyone was getting into the spirit of the day. We were shown to our green room and were delighted to be sharing it with no other than the legendary Phil Cunnigham. Within seconds the banter was flowing and we had a wee dram or two with Phil. The day was taken up with rehearsals and sound checks and it was soon time for the show. I was looking around me thinking the people in this band are true greats of the music world. The great Edwyn Collins, frontman of the 80's band Orange Juice and a very successful solo artist with hits including  'Never met a girl like you before'. An inspirational figure if ever there was one. He survived a double brain haemorrhage, but is back performing at his best. BA Robertson, a musical genius. He wrote the original 'I have a dream' in 1982. But is also prolific in other areas. Writing the No1 hit for Mike and the Mechanics 'Living Years.' And our Phil. Not just a musical genius, but a really good laugh and very down to earth.
 It's not often we ever play without the rest of the gang, but if your going to play with another band I think you'll agree the band above are not bad stand ins. At one point during the performance I'm sure I saw a guy with  bright red hair, bright red guitar and a very zany look on his face running past me on stage. Was it the G-man? No!..................I was 'having a dream'. Total raised on the day from the people of Scotland was over £1.75 million. What a great day!!
 
Chilli Willie

Blast Off!
Well, the moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived, our new CD and DVD Blast Live, has been released!
We had a great time in the run-up to the release with a mini-tour of Scotland, taking the Blast show to the masses!
We put on the show at the Gaiety Theatre in Ayr, The Albert Halls in Stirling, The Rothes Halls in Glenrothes and then The Ironworks in Inverness, and even managed to squeeze in a wee trip to Germany to play an event for Saturn Music!  Every night of our tour was sold out, it was such a thrill for us to see the support we get in different corners of the country.  We really couldn’t pick a favourite out of them, with each crowd giving us fantastic support throughout the whole night, and as always, it was brilliant to meet so many fans after the gigs for some signing and chat!  Thanks to everyone who attended these gigs and gave us such a buzz in the run up to the big day.
The day of the album release really was a big day, starting off at 8am with a press call in Glasgow’s HMV.  The BBC were there to film us performing for a segment which would be running throughout the day, whilst we were in the Chillibago spreading the news.  After finishing interviews and performance, we headed off to Stirling, to the HMV there. We weren’t alone though on the Chillibago, as we had a trainee Chilli with us.  Daily Record journalist Craig was following us for an article on what it’s like to be a Chilli for a day.  Slanj Kilts kitted him out with a full Chilli outfit and Craig – a piper in his youth – brought his pipes with him, we were going to make sure he got the full Chilli experience, including performing!
A crowd had already gathered as we arrived in HMV Stirling and it just got bigger and bigger as we gave them a wee taster of what to expect from the DVD and CD.  Journalist Craig joined us for Flower of Scotland and Nathan, a young lad in the audience, got his own Chilli Experience, when Stuart noticed he happened to have his pipes with him!  Well done to Nathan and Craig, our pipers better watch out!
After a great album signing session (thanks to everyone who bought it while we were there!) we jumped back on the bus and went back through to Glasgow to do it all again on Argyle Street!   We had another great crowd and great fun meeting people and signing albums, thanks to all who turned out for us!
Afterwards we went for a wee celebration of our own, we’d all been waiting a long time for this day and it was certainly worth celebrating!
If you’ve bought the album, we thankyou very much and if you’ve not, go and get it and see what all the fuss is about!