phenomeNEWS - This Month's Music Review

This Month's Music Review
by Greg Ozimek
music@wwnet.net

Soapbox Heros
Enter The Haggis (ETH)

Soapbox Heros is a major step up in sound and performance for Enter The Haggis (ETH), the band of Toronto-born men who are sweeping the world with their own vibrant revival of Celtic-infused sound. ETH has found a formula that is light years ahead of “just including Highland bagpipes” in a tune.

ETH spent two months sequestered in a closed studio with four-time Grammy winner Neil Dorfsman and Soapbox Heros is the fitting result.

Dorfsman has produced for rock star who’s whos including Eric Clapton, Sting, Bjork, Dire Straits, The White Stripes, Oasis and Bob Dylan.

But the ETH sound profile is still evolving and as yet, undefined. “We’re running wild,” and having a great time of it, founder Craig Downie told me.

ETH is the progeny of Downie, once an actor hopeful, who was busking on the streets of Toronto in 1995. Members added in from surrounding Toronto beginning then.

Enter The Haggis is:

Trevor Lewington – vocals, guitar

Brian Buchanan – vocals, fiddle

Craig Downie – highland bagpipes, Deger pipes

Mark Abraham – bass

James Campbell – drums

Brian said, “Our music is insanely diverse going all over the map. It gives us a freedom to experiment and explore as long as it sounds like what we call our (ETH) music.” They know it when they hear it. We do too!

I had the opportunity to see these young men perform live in May. It was an eye-opening experience.

The music was the kind of great, high energy, can’t-resist-hand-clapping Celtic flavor we’ve come to expect from ETH in their previous albums including Casualties Of Retail: rock, fusion, bluegrass, traditional Celtic, Irish, agitpop, folk, even Latin roots (someone counted 18 musical genres) with each done exquisitely well.

We talk of a hot band having an “energy.” Certainly ETH has “The Energy” but it also has something subtle and consistent that was very elusive to being labeled.

The current, kilt-wearing band members have been together, playing and touring, for over five years. Recall that “touring” means performing, packing up, eating and essentially living together in a very large van, driving for hours and over night from gig to gig, nearly every day, criss-crossing North America. The van is on its second engine.

Mark added, “As long as we have audiences that love Enter The Haggis, we’ll be playing.”

In May, ETH was at the very beginning of a six month international tour which would have performance stops in the USA and Canada as well as dates in Germany, Scotland and Ireland.

Being swept up by an ETH live performance makes it easy to understand why audience members (Haggis-Heads) follow ETH around North America like deadheads used to follow the Grateful Dead.

While each ETH member is a sparkling, stellar-talent, professional performer, for the new CD, Soapbox Heros (release date July 28th), let’s profile one ETHaggis – James Campbell.

It’s nearly a sacrilege to even mention that Campbell “just” plays drums because the current result of his life’s investment is a “drumming sound experience.” He creates more than layers and textures of “sound” that far exceeds the limits of his drum kit, surpassing beat and rhythm by miles. Such a “sound” is not background but an essential foundation to a group poised to go supernova.

Imagine a “sound experience” that makes flight possible: James Campbell.

Campbell has transcended the whole “drum thing” and uses his walls of skins and alloys to create a being which has a personality, a shape and an almost tangible form. Readers much more psychic than I can describe the being – but it feels in-sync and great. He then projects this being to the souls of the rest of the group and ETH is the blended result.

“I have a tremendous amount of fun doing this (drum playing),” he said.

While Campbell certainly has the drive of the consummate mad-man drummer who works his craft, his life-balance secret is revealed here: he told me he is a physics/science geek during part of his carefully structured free time – and he pushes his balance point by jumping out of perfectly good air planes (he’s a licensed sky diver and is solo jumping this month for his first time).

“He is also a fashion designer with a line of ‘Shorts for Drummers’”, Craig added.

You really must experience an ETH live performance, supplemented with ETH CDs twice daily!

That elusive “it” that is the rip tide that brings you back into the ETH music again and again? It appears to be a superlatively strong friendship between all of the members of Enter The Haggis. After hours of observation and speaking to each man, it is clear they are genuinely comfortable with each other, like brothers who support each other and don’t try to be superstars at the others’ expense – true brothers who are great friends.

Craig told me, “This is the group of guys that are going to make it happen.”

“The main thing that has happened is, these 5 guys, we’ve found out what each of our strengths are, as musicians, and we bring them to the foreground. But we do go outside of our comfort zone for sure,” Trevor noted.

Remember the ETH profile formula? For now, they know it in their bones.

It’d be great for the next band to cross-over into main stream music to be Enter The Haggis with it’s Celtic plus rock infusion wafting through speakers worldwide.
There is a little Haggis on the horizon: Mark and his wife are expecting their first child in December.