Photos of Silly Wizard

My brother, Gordon was part of one of the most famous Scottish folk bands of all time, Silly Wizard. They were the most exciting traditional folk band of their time. Gordon is brilliant at percussion, he was also probably one of the best bodhran players in the world. He was the rhythm man. He held them all together, but over the time you had John and Phil Cunningham, Phil now writes music for the BBC. He runs the Hogmanay show on BBC Scotland and he’s part of transatlantic sessions.

Phil, when he was 14, came down here and stayed with us for a couple of weeks. And I actually went and round folk clubs with him sang with him. And it was brilliant to do, what a talent. And Andy Stewart, who was one of the greatest songwriters to ever come back to Scotland, everybody sang his songs. But they were an incredible band and I used to go up when I was a kid to Edinburgh to the festival, great times. I learned to play the mandolin whilst on sessions with Silly. We used to play the Triangle Folk Club with people like Barbara Dickson

Then Silly Wizard became a proper band, they were touring the world. Any time they came anywhere near here, I would go and meet them and then I’d play with them, I have never played pipes so fast in my life, it was just an absolute joy to do. It was one of the highlights of my life to be able to do that. It all went silly when we started to do quite a lot of concerts with them when we were Jones and Company. They actually came down to the Floral Pavilion.

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