NORMAN Paterson is living proof that it's never too late to embark on a new career.
At the age of 65 he is about to release his debut album of self-penned songs. He only started to write his own compositions two years ago, during lockdown. Impressively, a follow-up album has already been recorded.
The songs on the debut album, Torn, reflect the rich heritage and history of, and daily life in, the Outer Hebrides, where Norman was born, in 1957. Their influence on him has remained undimmed despite the passing of so many years.
One song, The Alchemists, the first single from the album, has as its background the huge industry that for almost a century up until the late 1930s employed some 3,000 Stornoway women as “Herring Girls”.
Says Norman: "Their work, while lucrative, was harsh. My granny, from Point, was a herring girl. My grandad, who was originally from Glasgow, was a Kipper Man. That’s how they met".
On the album Norman sings and plays guitar, and is backed by such musicians as Angus Lyon, of Blazin' Fiddles, on accordion and keyboards, Anna Massie on guitar and mandolin, Susy Wall, Fin Napier, and Willie Campbell.
"I moved away from the Hebrides in 1990 and have been living south of Glasgow ever since", says Norman. With his wife Angela, he runs The Energy Bug, a renewable energy consultancy partnership that does work mainly on islands and in remote areas.
"Like most folks I bought a guitar when I was sixteen and played it for a couple of months and then forgot all about it", he said.
"My nephew, Keith Morrison, is a leading name in the Scottish trad scene and runs a production studio on the isle of Lewis, but I did nothing musical until two years ago", he adds.
"During the lockdown, one of my pals posted a song on YouTube and I thought, that's really cool and that I would love to do that.
"I've written some 200 songs in nearly two years. I find it not too difficult to write the words. I don't know how, to be honest.
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"I've done a lot of newsletters and advertising over the years and have learned how to write short, snappy adverts. I thought, if that works for adverts, it might work for songs.
"I was lucky in that some really good people have helped me. The writer Donald S Murray, who was raised in Ness, on Lewis, is an old schoolfriend, and he gave me some really good tips about trimming back songs.
"The first song I wrote was 490 words long and when I rewrote it it was 150 words long.
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"I was also helped by Willie Campbell an Island legend in weekly Zoom sessions during lockdown. Fin Napier as well been a wonderful help and mentor. I've been very lucky to meet some brilliant people these last couple of years.
The album starts and ends with a poem. The opening one is called The Pier. "Island folk are fascinated by piers", maintains Norman.
"Piers take people away and sometimes they take them back, but most of the time they just lie there empty and then there's a flurry of activity for a couple of hours.
"The title song, Torn, is about a young girl who has reached an age when she is thinking about leaving the island. But she is torn between leaving and staying at home with her parents.
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"Island folk have always been torn. We're torn to leave when we're young and then we're torn to go back at a later date. I'm 65 and half of me thinks, should I go back home? But the other half of me thinks, well, my two daughters and my grandchildren live in Wishaw, so if I go back home, I won't have too much contact with them".
"Three of the songs are set during the First World War, about the impact of so many men leaving the island in order to serve.
"Some six thousand Hebrideans volunteered for the Great War within 48 hours of it being declared. Five years later, eighteen hundred of them did not come back, and this in turn led to the mass emigration of the Twenties".
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Islands, says Norman, are small communities, and exercise a lasting pull over their inhabitants, no matter where they now live. "The Stornoway page on Facebook has twenty thousand people on it. It's a really busy page, and there are people all over the world who are on it.
"I've managed to build up quite a following there just by posting wee snippets of songs."
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The album will be released on July 21 via Bandcamp and Norman's own website. The launch party will be held at An Lanntair, the hub for creativity and the arts in the Outer Hebrides, and Norman will play a couple of charity concerts on Stornoway in December.
The second album, which contains songs set in Stornoway between 1965 and 1980, will be released later this year.
* normanpaterson.com
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