Mr Boom sings of A9 in new CD
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WICK and the road north to it are the subject of a newly recorded song by one of the town’s most famous musical sons.
Andy Munro aka children’s entertainer and one-man band Mr Boom has included "The A9 to Wick" on his forthcoming CD – Come to the Festival – an invitation from me and Mr Boom.
The CD has been produced by Munro for the Orkney International Science Festival, where he has been an annual participant since the event got under way in 1991.
Andy is well-known across Scotland and beyond as the children’s entertainer Mr Boom, with his one-man-band kit and lampshade hat, and a generation of far north children have grown up looking forward to doing the Solar System Dance with Mr Boom at the Science Festival each September. But he is also renowned as a session drummer and is proud to have learned the basic drum rudiments with Wick Pipe Band at the age of 14 and to have played in various Caithness dance bands, including Eileen and the Talismen, during the 1960s. When he was 16, he won the North of Scotland song-writing competition and has continued to write songs and perform as a folk/blues singer guitarist ever since.
On "The A9 to Wick", a parody of Bobby Troup’s "Route 66" written in 1946, he plays blues guitar and harmonica in a foot-stomping tribute to the road that "goes from Stirling to Sinclair Bay, more than two hundred miles all the way".
For Andy himself, there is a family connection, as his late father, William Munro, was the roads civil engineer for the upgrading of the Causwaymire road from Latheron to Georgemas in the 1960s and Andy says that he is sure that his father would be pleased to know that this route was re-designated in recent years as the A9. The change is alluded to in the final verse of the track.
The new CD includes songs with lyrics written by science festival director Howie Firth, and Andy’s daughter Flora accompanies him on one of these new songs – about one of Scotland’s greatest scientists, James Clerk Maxwell.
Howie also joins in on many of the songs, including the choruses of "Did He Go?" – a cheerful musical contribution to the debate over whether Henry Sinclair of Orkney sailed to America a century before Columbus.
The new CD is to be launched on the opening evening of this year’s Orkney Science Festival on September 6.
There are details of the launch and sample tracks to hear, with lyrics to view, on the science festival website www.oisf.org.
The song can now be heard on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvbBqsqZvLQ
