By Fiona Shepherd

Published 3rd Jan 2024, 15:26 BST

Updated 18th Jan 2024, 15:33 BST

“Can you believe it?” Dougie MacLean is laughing, as he often does, down the line from his beloved Perthshire home, as he reflects on marking 50 years as a professional musician and his journey from playing fiddle with Paisley folk legends The Tannahill Weavers to developing an enduring solo career as one of Scotland’s best loved singer-songwriters. “I love to sing,” he says simply, “that’s the big thing.”

Simplicity and shrewdness appear to be the key to his staying power. While busking in Brittany in the Seventies, he penned a naïve number about feeling homesick – a wee ditty called Caledonia, which has grown and grown over the years to become an alternative national (and also international) anthem.

MacLean knew he had bottled something special when he debuted the song in a Berlin club. “The audience didn’t really understand the lyric,” he recalls, “but they could understand the sentiment, the sense of belonging that is encapsulated for some mysterious reason. That was the beginning of it and I’ve been fascinated by the journey of that particular wee song.

“I think I’ve written better songs lyrically but when you are very young, before the reality of life clouds your mind, sometimes you put your finger on very pure things and it connects with other people in an intense way. It’s a fantastic thing for a songwriter to have a song that becomes part of common culture like that – it’s played at weddings and funerals, football games, rugby matches and by pipe bands and brass bands and jazz bands.”

Caledonia is not MacLean’s only international hit. He was pleasantly surprised again when an instrumental tune called The Gael, originally written for an exhibition on the Loch Ness Monster which only just squeaked on to his 1990 album The Search, was orchestrated as the main theme for Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans. “It’s just a simple little tune,” shrugs MacLean. “It’s not got much to it, but it’s taken on a life of its own.”

Ask MacLean for his own personal highlights across the past half-century and these range from the modest to the epic. He cites receiving a delivery of the first Tannahill Weavers record as a pinch-me moment on a par with performing at the closing ceremony of the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow and teaching James Taylor to sing Auld Lang Syne for a Hogmanay broadcast.

MacLean and his wife Jenny also ran the Perthshire Amber festival for ten years – an invitation to the international audience he had built over his years of touring throughout North America and Europe to come and hang out in his hood, with gigs across the region’s town halls for ten days, culminating in a big bash in Perth Concert Hall. Post-lockdown, the MacLeans have developed a boutique incarnation of the festival called Shades of Amber, the latest in a long line of cottage industry innovations.

Dougie MacLean performs during the Closing Ceremony for the Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games at Hampden Park in August 2014 PIC: Cameron Spencer/Getty Images

“I’ve been very lucky because Jenny and I set up our own independent record company [Dunkeld Records] very early on when people said you couldn’t do it,” he says. “I was signed to an English record company for a couple of years and it was a disaster. Everybody said you need to go London or Glasgow or New York if you want to be a professional musician and I said ‘no, I want to live in Perthshire’ so we set up our own record company, publishing company and studio and it was the best decision we ever made. I’m here 50 years on and my career’s as alive as it ever was, only because I’ve had control over it.”

Such creative independence has allowed MacLean to be agile, adapting very quickly during the pandemic to set up regular Saturday night remote concerts from his Old Schoolhouse base in Butterstone. Much like the Scotsman’s own Scotsman Sessions, these performances have had a life beyond lockdown, with MacLean racking up more than 200 shows to date.

“I learned a lot from doing these broadcasts when it was just me on my own with nobody sitting in front of me and no applause,” he says. “It changed the emphasis for me from having to entertain to being a bit more thoughtful about the songs. I enjoyed that, being able to go back and look at my old catalogue.”

The home concerts have in turn fed into his plans for his forthcoming golden jubilee celebration at Celtic Connections.

“I’ve done shows with casts of thousands, big string sections, choirs and dancers,” he says, “but I really want this to be a personal show – me, my songs, my friends and an audience, so I’m not going down the road of surprise guests. I want to concentrate on the songs and do the show with musicians I have worked with over the years, the guys that went out on the road with me, played in bands with me, played on the albums, the ones that you don’t see. No big stars.”

Should he choose to, MacLean could bring his setlist bang up to date with something from his latest album GNA, a new set of songs and compositions recorded with his son Jamie. “It’s quite different from my usual records,” says MacLean. “It’s quite cinematic, a big broad canvas. I’m really proud of it.”

Fifty years on, MacLean radiates creative contentment. His recipe for longevity is, of course, simple. “I love music,” he says, “it’s magic. Once, when my daughter was asked by the schoolteacher ‘what does your daddy do?’ she said ‘my daddy’s a magician’ and it’s true – we’re working with magical stuff. The music industry is notoriously cruel and I know lots of people who maybe get two or three years, then it all dries up for them, but I feel really privileged that I’m still able to do these big shows and can still bring out new records. I never take it for granted. But it’s been a long journey and one day I need to write a book.”

Dougie MacLean: Songmaker 2024 – Celebrating 50 Years of Music is at Glasgow Royal Concert Hall on 23 January as part of Celtic Connections. GNA is out now on Dunkeld Records

Dougie MacLean on 50 years of music: 'I never take it for granted'