Hailing from Shetland’s most northerly island of Unst Steven is without a shadow of a doubt one of Shetland’s most exciting fiddlers and one of its most prolific and talented composers, especially in the field of writing tunes for people who mean a great deal to him.

A huge influence on an embryonic ‘Fiddlers’ Bid’ in the late 80′s and early 90′s (who still record and perform a number of his tunes) Steven was an early member of Hom Bru, leaving Shetland to set up touring base camp with them in Edinburgh in the early 80′s.

After his return he performed more as an informal solo artist, again to great acclaim.

Then in the mid 1990′s Steven, for reasons best know to himself, decided to “give the fiddle a rest”. Sadly that ‘rest’ was to last until 2004 when once again he was bitten by the bug, releasing a new album ‘Spencie’s Tunes’, together with a music-book of self-penned tunes, his famous ‘Just Knackered’ T-shirts and even a locally brewed beer to celebrate the occasion. The beer was brewed by the Valhalla Brewery, run by his sister Sylvia and brother-in-law Sonny Priest on the northern-most Shetland island of Unst.

Launching these at the 2004 Shetland Folk Festival his ‘return’ was one of the musical highlights of the year and encouraged him to continue writing tunes and performing live, including an appearance on the Celtic Connections Open Stage in 2005.

Steven has now set up his own music business ‘Spencie’s Tunes’ on his home island of Unst (the furthest north of the Shetland Islands and thereby the furthest north island in the United Kingdom) which includes a tune writing service and cost effective music instrument retail sales.

Much is made of product ‘branding’ nowadays. However you view its merits one thing is for sure, if you see the name Steven Spence on a CD, or on the bill of a live concert, you can be guaranteed it will be a highly exciting experience of the very highest quality.

Music of Spencie’s Shetland

By Jan Nary
31 Leybourne St, Chelmer Queensland 4068 Publicist & Journalist National Folk Festival Publicist

Music of Spencie’s Shetland, a scatter of bleakly beautiful islands in the North Sea, has produced more than its fair share of good music. Shetland music has its own distinctive flavour; not entirely Scandinavian, not quite Scottish but nestling somewhere between folk and traditional styles with a soupçon of something slightly jazzy.

The original Scandinavian music was brought to the Islands by Viking settlers in about 900AD and the music, like the language, retains the unmistakable lilt of its Nordic antecedents. Shetland, along with its southern sister Orkney, was handed over to the Scottish throne as a wedding dowry in the 16th Century and the influence “fae sooth” (from the south) began to filter in.

The “something slightly jazzy” could be largely attributed to the influence of “Peerie” (little) Willy Johnson, the elder statesman of contemporary Shetlandic music, who introduced elements of post- war American jazz into the traditional music that was being revived locally by the late Dr Tom Anderson.

Nobody knows Shetland’s music better then Peerie Willie, so when he recommended Stevie Spence as one of the Islands’ foremost musicians, a visit was imperative. Fiddle-player and composer, Stevie –or Spencie – lives in Unst, Shetland’s northernmost island. He has been playing music most of his life.

“I was born into a musical family,” he says “My grandfather and father both played the fiddle, so does my brother and both my sisters. From my mother”s side of the family, the legendary fiddler and composer Friedeman Stickle was my Great, Great, Great, Great, Great Grandfather. I started learning at school here in Unst when I was nine years old – that’s a few years ago now! Dr Tom Anderson, who was an icon in the music scene, used to go around the schools teaching fiddle and that’s how my music began.”

Steven played in the acclaimed Shetland band Hom Bru but put professional music aside to take on a home brew of a different style, working in the family’s “boutique beer” business, the Valhalla Brewery. Valhalla beers are noted for their consistent quality and distinctive flavours (I can personally vouch for both) and his job as a brewer kept Stevie out of the performing circuit for a while. As well, he works on the Island’s ferries, the hardy, sea- going toilers that keep these scattered communities linked together through hell and high water.

“It’s about ten years since I played with Hom Bru and I haven’t played a lot in public since then- but I have kept composing,” he says.

“I’ve written about fifty tunes and even though I wasn’t performing them, other bands were – even bands like Fiddlers’ Bid. My work was also being recorded by other groups, though I often didn’t know about it until someone showed me a CD with one my tunes on it.”

(A bit of prompting – there”s no skite in Shetland – elicits the information that many of Spencie”s tunes have won awards in competitions, including two in just the last month).

Steven’s tunes became increasingly popular and he was often approached by other players saying they’d like copies. The requests became so frequent that after years of urging from other musicians Spencie, with the enthusiastic assistance of the Shetland Arts Trust, produced Spencie’s Tunes, a CD and book of some of his compositions.

“I thought initially that I’d just publish a book of my songs so that anyone who wanted them could have them,” he says, displaying the generosity that is a trademark of these Island communities.

“Then I thought, how much better if I include some of the local stories, to give a feel of the place for people who may never have been to Shetland. So the book has a tune on one page and on the facing page there’s the story of how it came to be written, the people I wrote if for and photographs of them,” he says.

“It’s; hopefully it will be a nice thing to listen to and a lot of people will benefit from it. I’ve found it quite exciting – and I’m feeling the urge to get back on stage again!”

For local folk, the book and CD is an unofficial community diary of sorts; for the incomer (you, me and anyone else who’s lucky enough to visit this stronghold in the North Sea) it’s a privileged and welcoming insight into the sort of close and caring community that’s fast disappearing in the twenty-first century.

The tunes, a collection of jigs, reels, marches and waltzes includes pieces with such intriguing names as Pig’s Reel (written for Ivor Pottinger, another Hom Bru band member), Panic ida Tatties (inspired by the day the potato- digging tractor – and workers – bogged in the mud); Rayburn Reel (in memory of a solid fuel stove that blew up) and – an eerie one this – White Wife.

Spencie has had a Close Encounter of the First Kind with the White Wife, a local ghost who has given her name to one of Valhalla’s most popular brews. She was wont to appear, briefly but terrifyingly, on the seat next to cart drivers in the days of horse- drawn transport. After the advent of cars to the Island she took to appearing in the passenger’s seat of passing cars on the stretch of road that is her territory and she once settled in with Steven, driving home one night. He swears that he was stone cold sober at the time.

“There was a light at the side of the car and when I looked there she was, in the passenger’s seat, smiling at me. Beautiful eyes but terribly rotten teeth. I blinked and looked again – and she was gone. Just like that. It’s an interesting place,” he says, with typical Shetlandic understatement.

Since the launch of the CD Spencie has undertaken a successful tour of America and Canada, inspiring folk across the pond with a love of Shetland’s music, stories – and good ale. We can only hope that his next tour will take in Australia.

Jan Nary
31 Leybourne St, Chelmer Queensland 4068 Publicist & Journalist National Folk Festival Publicist

http://www.folkfestival.asn.au/

Co-host Acoustic Harvest Bay FM 100.3

http://www.bayfm.org.au/

tel. +61 7 3379 4178
fax +61 7 3278 2360
mob. 0429 898 328
UK 07905 976 173

SEEKING a worldwide customer base, musician Steven Spence is bringing some good news to Unst.

A well-known and respected musician throughout, and beyond, Shetland he is building up his business, Spencie’s Tunes.

After composing tunes for friends over many years, Steven, helped by grant assistance of £2,000 from Shetland Enterprise last year, has set up a business writing commissioned tunes for customers across the globe. It compliments his other activities which include the publication of manuscripts and the sale of new fiddles.

Working with recording engineer Jonathan Ritch and music teacher Alice Mullay, Steven will compose a fiddle or accordion tune, and supply a framed manuscript together with a CD recording of the piece.

He started playing fiddle aged nine and won his first competition at 13, going on to win many more and play with a string of popular bands.

His tunes have won numerous composition awards with his work Uyea Isle opening the televised Hogmanay Show in Edinburgh.

Steven”s versatility has always attracted folk to ask him to compose special tunes for occasions such as weddings or anniversaries, and it became obvious that there was a ready market developing for this unique product.

He said: “We have identified two main markets, private individuals wanting an unusual gift to commemorate a special event, and commercial or public agency clients looking for tunes for promotional reasons.”

He said: “If I’ m asked to compose a tune, I like to talk to the client and get an idea of the personality of the person it’s for, or find out about the event so that I can reflect relevant features in the music.”

It is hoped that in addition to the domestic market, Spencie’s Tunes will meet a demand from Canada, Australia, New Zealand and America.

Steven is also broadening his business activities by marketing fiddles, with his own brand, on the internet at www.spenciestunes.com.

Shetland Enterprise project officer Katrina Wiseman said: “Spencie’s Tunes has shown that businesses can be operated effectively from remote rural locations.

The Shetland Times

By John Robertson “The Shetland Times” on 30 April 2004

FOR many who learned to scrape out a tune in the early days of the official Shetland fiddle revival it was like being sent off for military square-bashing. But without the fun. Then beyond the classroom there were those concerts where po-faced players did their duty as po-faced punters scowled on.

Of course it was all about pulling a tradition from the edge of its grave, a noble mission for sure. But trying to preserve it emotionless in a fusty old Victorian straightjacket was doomed to kill it off anyway sooner or later. Thankfully the young ones came through it and long ago kicked over the traces to remind us it’s all about everything that regimentation is not: expression, agility, flair, venom, fragility, fun, tenderness, sex – yes, even sex.

Ok girls, that bring us round to our world-conquerors Fiddlers’ Bid. But from whom did they borrow their hurricane delivery, juice-generating stagecraft and indeed a few neat tunes too? Step forward the forgotten man of fiery fiddle, Steven Spence of Unst, as he breaks cover with his first “solo” album for 22 years.

Back in the ‘80s and early ‘90s when he fronted local folk kings Hom Bru, the Bid boys were looking on in their short trousers. From Steven’s hell-for-leather delivery they learnt of the devilish trick they call “lift”. The showmanship looked pretty good too and, having seen the future of Shetland traditional fiddle they were soon making it all their own.

For Steven though, 10 gruelling years in the eye of the hard-gigging Hom Bru storm proved more than enough. In 1993 he headed home to his beloved Unst and has hardly handled his bow since, preferring instead the laid-back pleasures of banging a bass in the shadows with wobbly Unst rock ‘n’ rollers Da Bonxies.

Now he’s back in a blizzard of rosin on a new-found mission to keep music-making fun, hopefully spreading fiddle fever to another generation seeking that all-important inspiration.

“I’m gotten the bug again,” he said this week, and who knows where that will lead.

Funnily enough it’s exactly five years since one of Steven’s old fiddling partners in Garster’s Dream Band, the wonderful Debbie Scott, bounced back after her decade in the musical wilderness with a ground-breaking Shetland fiddle album which she launched at the folk festival. Perhaps Trevor Hunter, Steven’s old fiddle teacher, will be next to return to the limelight? But I digress.

Steven is breaking some new ground with his album, Spencie’s Tunes, too. But rather than recording a cutting-edge taster of 21st century Steven Spence, he has chosen to bring together the best of the 40 or more tunes he has written over nearly 30 years. Working closely with Unst former music teacher John Laughland, who arranged the tunes and provided tight accompaniment on electronic piano, he has set out his archive for posterity. Perhaps it will clear the decks for a new phase of creativity.

At first listen many may feel he has sacrificed a slice of his art for the sake of education by toning down his ferocious playing style a notch or two, even keeping the brakes on during sets of reels where he would naturally be inclined to go into orbit, although, having said that, the first set fairly cracks at, particularly George’s Reel for Steven’s young son. Sylvia & Sonny’s Wedding Reel set has a fair swagger to it too. The approach is very deliberate, he maintains, and definitely not an indication that he can’t cut it anymore. The recording is largely intended as a teaching aid, he said. Even one of the waltzes is slowed down to help learners grasp the sequence of notes.

If, like me, you’ve the memory of a lobotomised prawn, it should help solve the mystery of how real folk musicians store all those hundreds of closely related ligthning-fast fiddle tunes in their bonce.

With the motive being to teach, Steven’s novel approach to book and CD suddenly makes sense: an album and music book of the same tunes (although unfortunately not in the same order which will require some lightning page-turning if you are trying to follow a set of reels), played in an easy-to-decipher manner and packaged in a cartoon-style cover to dispense with any air of formality or fustiness.

The glossy book is lavishly illustrated with old photos and super cartoons of Unst and Yell characters ranting away in their dialect. The tunes are clearly transcribed and chord boxes are provided for guitar accompanists, which may be a first for a publication of traditional fiddle tunes. Both products carry the health warning “Spencie’s tunes can ruin your chances of being miserable”, so you are in no doubt as to his intentions. For the ultimate confirmation of this, check out the hidden track which is quite possibly the most shocking piece of recording ever put to tape. Never have so many well-oiled Unst vikings sounded so unlike a Welsh male voice choir.

In utter contrast is the delicate and moving rendition of Calum’s Waltz by the Sound School primary 6 bairns and their music teacher Genny Robertson. Calum Risk, who suffers from a rare condition, was able to participate fully on his own tune, leaving his individual stamp on the recording.

Along the way the album’s tunes and the tales behind them weave a vivid tapestry of rural Shetland culture over the past 30 years, immortalising Davie Henderson’s exploding Rayburn in the now-standard session tune Rayburn Reel, there is Radio Shetland, Steven’s tribute to the start of our first radio station in the 1970s, the bright and bouncy Da BO Lasses, dedicated to the Ulsta ferry booking girls (Steven works on the ferry), White Wife for sister Sylvia and brother-in-law Sonny’s Valhalla brew (Steven helps out at the brewery too) and the wonderfully named Panic Ida Tatties.

There is another tack to Steven’s album that makes it stand out a mile among Shetland recordings: it’s mainly a celebration of that crowning glory to our jagged string of isles, Unst, or “the island above all others”, as Steven puts it.

Over the years he has written tunes celebrating some of its magical places that I also cherished in my childhood, like Uyea Isle, where some of his ancestors came from; Lums o’ Lund for one of Unst’s great treasures at the Westing and the hidden tranquility of Woodwick is honoured in Nigel’s Stivla, a tune for a one-time playground sparring partner of mine Nigel Stickle.

The tunes are a roll-call of great Unst characters like various members of Gibby Gray’s family past and present, The Maundeville Waltz for Brian and Margaret Hunter, tunes for all Steven’s family and an oddly phrased one in tribute to Unst’s oldest resident, former nurse Mima Sutherland. It is true that the purists may wince as cheesy fake banjo breaks out of the keyboard for a quick spurt now and again, or the pretend accordion when his box-playing sister Sylvia might have been hauled in instead for more than just her single appearance, on the Scandinavian-flavoured Inga’s Waltz.

There are other Japanese plastic moments which, depending entirely on your taste, either detract from or enrich pretty tunes like Bonar & Mabel’s Golden Wedding. But I’ll leave you to discover them yourself. Of all his tunes, the one that still sticks out for me, and probably his least traditional, is Sylvia, the distinctive, rousing opening tune to one of Hom Bru’s albums. He wrote it when he was 14! Here’s hoping there’s a few more like that up his sleeve in the coming years. Great fiddlers, it seems, are never lost, they just get waylaid for a decade or so. Welcome back Steven and have a great weekend.

John Robertson

Fiddlers’ Bid

Steven Spence, is from the island of Unst in Shetland. Unst’s music tradition is the source of many of Shetland’s most popular traditional tunes and names synonymous with Shetland traditional fiddle playing such as Stickle, Gray and Spence.

Steven started playing the fiddle as a young boy and continues a family tradition of fiddling. His father, Arthur teaches fiddle in Unst. Whilst at school Steven had fiddle lessons from the late Dr Tom Anderson and it was during this time at 11, that his talents as a composer began, with his first composition for his mother, which he called “Ruby’s Success”.

Steven is not only one of Shetland”s top fiddlers, he also plays guitar, bass and mandolin. At the age of seventeen he recorded his first album “Me and My Shadows”, playing all instruments. Recognition as one of Shetland’s top fiddlers certainly came whilst playing with internationally renowned Shetland folk band “Hom Bru” with whom he played for ten years.

It was during his time of playing with Hom Bru, that a few keen young fiddlers, now the band Fiddlers’ Bid, used to go to their gigs and were inspired by Steven’s high energy, driving style of playing. When Steven’s fiddle kicked into a set it provided an incredible lift that was infectious through the band and audience. Steven”s energy and rhythmic playing comes across in his compositions and tunes such as Pig’s Reel, Gibby Gray and the Rayburn Reel, all are now popular Shetland session tunes. Uyea Isle is always a favourite with Fiddlers’ Bid audiences.

Since his days in Hom Bru, Steven’s fiddle playing isn’t heard so much outside of Unst but his tunes have been recorded on dozens of albums and he has been a winner of no less than 8 tune competitions to date.

In the Hairst of last year, duo Steven Spence and John Laughland took to the stage in the Baltasound Hall, and raised the roof with their concert set, leaving the rightfully proud local audience, joost braaly high. Most of the tunes they played were Steven’s compositions, a number of them great tunes we had never heard before. It was certainly evident from the quality of the tunes played that night and the performance given, this book and CD are long overdue. We hope Steven will continue to perform his compositions on stage and inspire further generations of Shetland fiddlers.

An excellent collection of tunes, a source of material to enhance any fiddlers repertoire.

Fiddlers’ Bid