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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Friday, April 12, 2002

Scottish quartet blends old with new

By Derek Paiva
Advertiser Staff Writer

The 33-year-old Battlefield Band is made up of, clockwise from top right, Alasdair White, Mike Katz, Pat Kilbride and Alan Reid. The band performs tonight at 7:30 at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's Andrews Outdoor Theater.

Battlefield Band

7:30 p.m. today

Andrews Outdoor Theater, University of Hawai'i-Manoa

$15 general, $10 students, UH faculty and staff

956-8246

Also: 7 p.m. Saturday at Kaua'i Community College Theatre. Tickets are $20. (808) 332-9323 or 956-8246

The Battlefield Band's name comes from the Glasgow suburb they were founded in and not the warring history that once marked much of their Scottish ancestors' dealings with the English.

Even so, long-in-the-beard Battlefield bagpiper Mike Katz couldn't help but get a bit medieval on the umpteenth fool who dared to label the band's deliciously contemporary repertoire of old-school and original Scottish reels, ballads and waltzes ... um, "Celtic" music.

"Personally, I think the Celtic music label is a wee bit of a marketing term that doesn't really mean an awful lot," said Katz, his Scottish brogue a buttery melding of Connery cool and McGregor cocksureness.

"I mean, I understand why people use it. But I think that ... all music is really much more cosmopolitan than people realize in this day and age. (Our music) isn't as tied to a particular region as maybe it was 60 or 70 years ago."

And despite the presence of more than a few tears-in-my-heather-ale ballads at its concerts, the Battlefield Band manages to take that music to mostly high-energy levels. In fact, the last thing to expect when the Edinburgh-based quartet takes the Andrews Outdoor Theater stage tonight is the ancient wheezings of a long-dead ancient music form.

"There are obviously some songs about farming that don't make a whole lot of sense to anybody, but there are also a lot of songs that are just as current as anything being written today," said Katz.

In addition to touching on the historical (wars are a popular topic) and the joys of agriculture, "There are lots of songs about gossip ... sex, unrequited love and incest. Lots of gory topics, y'know?"

Wait a minute. Gory?

"Yeah, you know, lots of songs about killing and adultery and people having children out of wedlock and all this kind of stuff," said Katz, laughing. "It's kind of like soap opera music. And a lot of it is fairly ribald because these are normal people's experiences."

The Battlefield Band has experienced several lineup changes over its 33-year, 20-album history. Its current roster includes founding member Alan Reid on keyboards, guitar and vocals; Pat Kilbride on vocals, guitar and cittern; and 19-year-old fiddle master Alasdair White, who also plays banjo, bouzouki (think long-necked mandolin) and bodhran (an Irish goatskin drum), among other instruments.

Now 33, the Los Angeles born-and-raised Katz took up the highland bagpipes at age 10. He's been a Battlefield member since 1997.

"The thing that has always appealed to me about this music is the energy of the thing," said Katz. "It's the same sort of thing that attracted me to other types of music and attracts young people to music like funk, punk and whatever the current trends are. All of it has to do with aggression and excitement."