GrooveOut

by Gregg Shapiro

KILT COMPLEX

Gay, punk, and Celtic, Ashley MacIsaac fiddles

Put on a kilt and kick it with gay, punk, Celtic fiddler Ashley MacIsaac. The Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, native has returned with his first new album in a few years. Anyone who was swept away by the musical greeting of his 1995 album Hi! How Are You Today will probably feel the same way about this raucous self-titled album (on Decca/ Universal Classics). From the stylishly pumped-up dance-friendly interpretation of Nick Drake’s “Cello Song” to the more traditional love sentiments of “Lay Me Down” to the Celtic rock of “I Don’t Need This” and the unexpected cover of Paul McCartney’s “Mull of Kintyre,” there is practically something for everyone on this album.

Gregg Shapiro: How do you think your sound has changed in the years since your 1992 debut disc and subsequent 1995 breakthrough album and your new self-titled album?

Ashley MacIsaac: This is much more adult contemporary. Furthermore, this is more radio friendly, where my first album was more Celtic. I’m trying to get at all the audiences that are out there. I know I have a huge gay audience, a lot of gay fans who have been there. And it’s not just because I play the fiddle. It’s because I wear a kilt, and I show my nuts. I have no interest in not trying to sell to them, so I made songs for them to try and get played on the radio for everybody.

GS: I think that you succeed. You open the disc with a cover of Nick Drake’s “Cello Song”…

AM: Well, there’s a lot of traditional Celtic folk sounds on there, like the Nick Drake cult-sort-of-figure that he is. That sort of stuff is cool. But there’s also “I Don’t Need This” and “Lay Me Down,” and other new songs.

GS: Was Drake someone that you would consider to be an influence or an inspiration?

AM: I don’t know anything about him. Never did. They just brought me the song.

GS: There are times when an artist sings a love song, and the listener is left unconvinced…

AM: I sang love songs on this record to everybody that I’ve ever loved.

GS: Your performance on “Lay Me Down” had me convinced that you are singing the song to a loved one. Is there someone to whom this song is being directed?

AM: There is only one true love in my life. I’m with him right now.

GS: How long have you been together?

AM: How long have we been together? Not long enough. I hope to spend the next 50 years with him.

GS: And is he a musician as well?

AM: He is a musician as well. And since I’m not looking to leave things up to hope, I don’t imagine 50 years. I imagine 60 or 70 years. And by that time, he’ll be a good musician [laughs].

GS: Roger Greenwalt, who produced your new album, also wrote or co-wrote some of the tracks.

AM: Roger Greenwalt is a great guy. He had a lot to do with it.

GS: The song “Captain America” sounds like something of a political statement. What was the inspiration for that song?

AM: I started writing that song in Atlanta, when the guy [Eric Rudolph] who was recently arrested for the abortion [clinic] bombings, the first time he set off a bomb in Atlanta. I was also, the day before 9/11, in New York, sitting and looking at the World Trade [Center] towers. I took the vibe from that day and wrote a patriotic American song.

GS: Of all the songs on the album, “I Don’t Need This,” which you referred to earlier . . .

AM: That’s exactly how the whole thing started out.

GS: In what way?

AM: I definitely didn’t need to do this. But I did it because I needed to think that one more stab at the American market was worth it. But, on the other hand, it’s a big market, and this is my last stab at it. “I Don’t Need This” is sort of a take on how this record was an idea, with music, how this is my last big record.

GS: It’s a great song, and it sounds like it has the potential to become a hit single.

AM: I want to shoot a video on Laguna Beach with boys.

GS: I think you should definitely do that.

AM: I hope so.

GS: Are there plans for a U.S. tour?

AM: I don’t know. That might springboard me to my next big plan, which is to get a tour next summer of all kinds of typically Celtic punks, but there could be gay punks involved in it, too. Just people like myself, together on a stage in a big summer concert tour. That’s what I want to have happen. I want to become the Sarah McLachlan of gay Celts.

At the 2003 OutMusic Awards in June, Gregg Shapiro received the annual honor for Outstanding Support, which recognizes involvement by non-musicians in furthering the work of GLBT performers.

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