10. Bones - King Tut's Wah Wah Hut, 2006

MS ANNA WEBSTER
Keyboards, Vocals, 2000, 2006-

Uncle’s for the Summer holidays. After one too many experiences of sitting in
Buchanan Street Bus Station with the scary people because someone had invariably forgotten to communicate the bus times properly, he and my father came to an agreement whereupon he would come up to ours first, stay for the weekend, then drive me back down to Glasgow himself. And so my musical education began.

Iain liked to play things he could sing along to, and very quickly discovered that this was a good way of entertaining and distracting me from that incessant childhood question, “Are we nearly there yet”? And his favourite things to sing along to were of course the ones that made my horrified Highland ears bleed the most – Tom Waits, Bowie, Devo, Crash Test Dummies… grizzled growling was his thing. I was a little slower on the uptake, but then eventually I reached an age where I realised his record collection was worth nicking, and to be honest it’s all been just grand since then.

Many years later, when we first recorded Bones, I gave a copy of the EP to Iain. He had of course seen us live many times, what with his musical tastes being so naturally inclined towards the macabre of tone and topic. What I didn’t expect however, was to walk in a few weeks later, to babysit his young children, and to find two childish souls of three and five jumping around on the sofas and quite merrily singing the chorus of Bones at me like rosy cheeked gargoyles! Iain told me that it was their favourite thing to listen to. When I relayed this to the rest of the band, we did try our best to work out how we could get them to repeat this wonder at the upcoming T-Break heats, but eventually we got bogged down in the logistical challenges of child labour and the legalities of sneaking them into King Tut’s so very underage. We didn’t need this extra layer of theatricality on the night, as the gig went down a storm anyway. Uncle Iain was of course there, gravelling along in the audience. Which was probably a good thing, as back then all those growly vocals meant by the time we got to Bones (our common chaotic closer for many a gig), we would often have begun to lose our voices onstage…

Last Sunday I met up with Iain for a curry. He told me he is away to the hospital in January to have an operation on his vocal chords. Something about singing too many songs in a whisky bar drawl, apparently. Who knew?

INK WILSON: Vocals
SEAN CALLAGHAN: Electric Guitar, Vocals
MARTIN DOCHERTY: Bass Guitar, Vocals
PATRICK JOHNSON: Cello
MHAIRI ROSS: Violin
ROSS McCRAE: Trombone
EUAN ALLARDICE: Trumpet
HEATHER NORTH: Flute
JENNY WAN: Keyboard
ANNA WEBSTER: Keyboard, Vocals