Today’s featured band are well-loved by many in Scotland.
Fatherson hail from Kilmarnock, a blue-collar industrial town some 22 miles south-west of Glasgow. They are, individually, Ross Leighton (guitar, lead vocals), Marc Strain (bass) and Greg Walkinshaw (drums) who came together along with a past band member Chris Beltran (guitar, keyboard and backing vocals in 2011. The first singles between 2011 and 2013, a period in which the band toured extensively.
Debut album I Am An Island was released in 2014. It has been followed by Open Book (2016), Sum Of All Your Parts (2018) and Normal Fears (2022) – only the debut album was as a four-piece as Chris Beltran left in 2015.
At this point, I have to confess that I own none of the albums, or indeed any of their singles or EPs. I just never took to the band, but that’s really a matter of my taste. As I said, they are popular with many, and have won new audiences the old-fashioned way, through hard work in the studio and out on the road, where they have opened for many a big name including Biffy Clyro, Frightened Rabbit, Panic! at the Disco, Feeder, Twin Atlantic, Enter Shikari and Idlewild.
What I do have is their contribution to Whole Lotta Roadies, a charity digital album issued in 2020 with the aim of raising monies that could go members of live crews in Scotland who were facing the prospect of at least a year with no income as a result of shows being cancelled as the COVID pandemic took its ferocious grip on society. The album featured 12 well-known Scottish bands, but with the twist that the crew members themselves would play on the songs – we’ve all been to enough gigs to know that roadies are often very talented and possibly frustrated musicians:
mp3 : Fatherson – Just Past The Point Of Breaking (Whole Lotta Roadies version)
The original version can be found on the Open Book album.
More info on Whole Lotta Roadies can be found here.
JC
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 