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Pete Clark - Fiddle

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Jim Donaldson - Singer / Songwriter

Hello out there.! You may be thinking, who is this guy ?

Well,… for all the years I’ve been around music, I seem to have done a pretty good job in keeping a low profile, and fame has never really been my ‘holy grail’, tho’ I’d like some recognition.!! 

Born in Bridgeton, Glasgow where I had little choice but to absorb the music played of all the country music greats and not so great of the day, especially Hank Williams, Webb Pierce and many others of the early 50’s. Dad was an avid fan, a fine singer himself, played guitar and later in life, drums in the North of England working men’s clubs. 

A recollection of early life in Glasgow, was of many ‘parties’ where us kids would be given some ginger and sweeties which kept us happy and my folks would get crackin’ with the party or ‘singsong’. Everybody had to do a song or two but in the main my dad would sing  and mum harmonise with one or two playing a bit of back-up guitar. He knew more country stuff than most in those days. He’d quite a collection of LP’s,  loaned many out never to be returned, and some I dare say ended up in the pawnshop in hard times. It was a great period though. Now and then he’d get me to sing a wee bit of a Hank Williams song. A never-ending musical merry-go-round. Dad formed a skiffle group at one stage and on my latest CD ‘In This Society’ there’s a picture of me ( with banjo ) brother John ( on  ‘ T-chest ‘ base ), cousin Peter (guitar ) and cousin Bertie, as a skiffle group. Our ages ranged from 2 to 11 or so. We weren’t that good. ( ha ha ) I do remember my dad’s group having a washboard also, for a great bit of rhythmic racket.!  Don’t know if any photo’s were taken around that time, and my old man was a bit reluctant to have his pic taken, but someone reading this might recall their folks having one or two old pics, so…you never know.! so let me know.! 

Well times move on and my family moved to England via Castlemilk, and I reluctantly followed them, delaying my move by living at my grannies in Kinning Park for a while, by this time I’d got my first job ( Caledonian Tailors, at Glasgow Cross ), and was strumming a few chords on guitar and singing, no, not in the shop, tho’ I do remember singing ‘Summer Holiday’ with a stand-in manager one day. 

Moved to England and naturally gravitated to being in bands and singing all sorts of pop music of the 60’s, with The Beatles being among my favourites, for songs. 

Then for me, my epiphanic  moment.!
I would always be listening to radio shows that were folk/country biased and within one week ( I guess early 70’s ) I heard Gordon Lightfoot singing ‘Bitter Green’ and then Nana Mouskouri singing ‘Try to Remember’ with her band ‘The Athenians’. It wasn’t as if I’d never heard ‘folk music’ before, I had been doing a bit of Dylan, Tom Paxton, Pete Seeger and the like, so maybe it was the songs that drew me closer to the finger-picking style of Lightfoot. Whatever, and you know the other great hero of mine came along within months, the late Jim Croce.
A whole new style of playing guitar had opened up for me, and with my long-time lead player Kevin Cookson  we learnt loads of Lightfoot and Croce stuff, yet still retaining some country songs. People always ask me, quite rightly, about  influences, and I’d be foolish to deny the above. How much of it is still there in my songs and guitar style I’m not sure, for we all find our own identities  over the years.
We had a trio going then ( yes the same line-up as Lightfoot ) with the addition of Terry Walsh on bass gtr. and used to do sessions on what was then Radio Blackburn –now Lancashire, and we’d do a bunch of songs in an evening or afternoon to be broadcast the following week. We were so close on the Lightfoot stuff the producer said we were “ the next best thing to having Gordon Lightfoot live “ which I still believe was a nice compliment. Still do some GL stuff now.!

Around ‘75/76 we appeared on ‘Op Knocks’ a couple of times as ‘Triad’, singing a beautiful GL song, ‘Softly’. Ohh....Sooo… close to winning that we were invited back on the ‘all winners’ show. Made a couple of bad management decisions and the opportunity  was lost.! 

Always having been in that difficult area of being neither folk nor country, and still am, nobody knew how to place us, and they do badly want to, don’t they ? ( Pete Seeger was spot on ----little boxes---.) We were then doing the Radio 2 shows ( now as the James Donaldson Band ) every now and then on ‘Country Club’ and ‘Both Sides Now’ and they really kept our interest alive at that point. Wally Whyton was a fan, and it was with great sadness I learned of his passing. I once got him to sign a ‘Vipers’ skiffle album that I have when we were doing one of the shows, and he wrote “ How dare you “.A genuine music man. By the 80’s we disbanded and as I’d got a whole bunch of songs in various stages of completion and was keen to continue writing and so concentrated on the creative side. Come mid-decade put together another band that had great potential but didn’t last long. 

During that period had met up again with Charlie Landsborough and helped him out doing some harmonies on his first cassette based album ‘Heaven Knows’. In fact all the male harmony stuff was yours truly, but wasn’t credited. The old trio though was credited with backing on the one acoustic song on the album. He subsequently asked us to back him on a couple of radio 2 specials ( Pete Holroyd on bass sometime and Dave Thom on mandolin ). Even did a Royal Albert Hall gig.! So when Charlie needed a band, we were the guys. By this time I had my own cassette album done and he did a couple of songs on harmony for me. Name dropping done.!! As many of you know he went on to bigger things with Ritz using a new keyboard based band. Shame ‘cause he loves acoustic stuff. Doc Watson, John Prine, to mention a couple. 

In ’96 I put out my first CD ‘Doin’ Alright’ all self-penned using half the material from the previous masters and  other new songs. Excellent reviews from the country press and a fair bit of radio play, but with no distribution or back-up it was a struggle. Did a few things with Iona & Andy, a fine Welsh duo, live and recording, then the chance came to move to the Highlands, which we’ve had in our minds for many years. ( me and missus Megan ) This will be our third year here in the Great Glen and in between doing the cottage up found the time to write and record my second CD ‘ In This Society ‘. Still the same acoustic guitar based mix of folk/countryish songs ( dobro/banjo/mandolin to complement ). Too early for reviews-I’ve just got the CD’s from the pressing plant, but pretty confident of some airplay and such.

If you’re interested in finger picked acoustic gtr.based songs with something to say and excellent vocally too you might give both ‘Doin’ Alright’ and ‘In This Society’ a listen. Hell, I’ll even do some TAB guitar if you can’t figure out what I’m playing.—Sometimes can’t myself— but TAB by request only. 

                                                                                                             Yours in music,

                                                                                                                                        Jim   

Jim is featured in the singer/Songwriter directory