Television! Yes, at the stroke of midnight on January 1st 2009 Caledon’s year began live on TV, the holy grail of all performers! For years we had been standing on various stages, campaigning shamelessly to you, our loyal fans and audiences, to contact the BBC, STV, …whoever, (MTV would have been fine!) in a bid to get Caledon on the TV and finally it paid off. So a big “thank you” to all of you.
The glossy start to our year continued a couple of weeks later with a corporate night on the Royal Yacht, Britannia at her permanent mooring on Atlantic Wharf in Leith. Slightly alarmingly, the stage floor area on Britannia has been built in glass directly over Her Majesty’s bed chamber so, fortunately for us kilted fellows, the Queen was not trying to take a nap during our set or all hopes of Caledon’s knighthood would have been dashed right there!
Next stop was Brussels and an evening for the Scottish department of the E.U. One of the guests that night was a lady who introduced herself after our concert. She told us that she was responsible for booking acts at various other E.U functions and that she had a grading system to fit the act to the various clients: Grade 1 would be high-brow…perhaps a Classical Recital of German Lieder…all the way down to grade 7, bawdy songs for, let’s say, a Hen night. Before we started singing she looked around the room at the audience, most of whom she knew, and decided it was impossible as people from every ‘grade’ taste were there and she wondered which level we would appeal to most. We struck up with A Man's A Man and she decided we were grade 1 or 2 and so would only be enjoyed by 15% of the room. 45 minutes later she had watched us move through the Tartan Medley to Besame Mucho and finally, the Pop Medley and delighted in the fact that we were the only act she knew who could truly appeal to all seven grades! Hurray!
The most significant addition to our repertoire this year has been the (Mac)Elvis Medley. Complete with glitzy-white, bedazzled Jacobite shirts, white kilts and silvery, tartan-lined capes, we shimmy and thrust our way around the stage to a handful of Elvis hits, secure in the knowledge that Elvis’ ancestry of a Great Grandfather from Aberdeen makes the King as Scottish as we are, and don’t let anyone tell you differently. (Mac)Elvis provided the finale for our new Berlin show “Whirlin’ ‘n Berlin” in March and April. The show was built around a ‘Homecoming’ theme to tie in with this year’s Scottish Government initiative.
Our Scottish Tour this year was concentrated, with most of the dates tightly grouped in late August and September. We were delighted with the turnout after theatre managers had warned us that the recession was affecting ticket sales across the board. Our audience numbers held steady even if they didn’t increase and we hope 2010 brings a happier financial climate and fuller theatres for all.
Later in September we were back for our second visit to the Dominican Republic, courtesy of the British Ambassador, Ian Worthington, who fulfilled his promise of getting us out there once more before his term of office was up. This was a tough trip: Three gigs spread over eleven days leaving, oh I don’t know, eight days?!.. to bask on white sandy beaches, play a few rounds of golf, or sip rum and smoke cigars in His Excellency’s pool. Empire!