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In the third and final of our Wickham Festival interview-shorts, Johnny Whalley catches up with Scottish fiddler Ryan Young, who chats about having to learn to play the fiddle again and how one his big heroes, Martin Hayes, will produce and perform on his third album.
Scottish fiddler Ryan Young released his second album, Just a Second (reviewed here), in late 2023. It meant there’d been a six-year gap since his debut recording. Ryan was keen to talk about the reasons for the delay, not surprisingly, given the dramatic full stop it had put on his career. After recording and touring his first album, an undiagnosed issue resulted in Ryan progressively losing control of movement in his left hand, leaving him virtually unable to play his fiddle. Diagnosis and treatment were a long process, with movement only restored after surgery two years ago. Ryan soon discovered that his fingers had forgotten how to play and simply weren’t doing what he wanted them to do.
His solution to this dilemma: “I decided when I couldn’t actually move my fingers the way I wanted to, that I’d just focus on the tune. And if my fingers didn’t do what I wanted them to, then it didn’t matter as long as the tune was there. I’d take me out of it as much as I could; the tune’s the thing. If the tune is beautiful, then I don’t need to worry about it.” But that wasn’t a complete solution; Ryan still needed to identify tunes he could play. “I chose a lot of tunes that I remembered from when I was little and revisited them. Cos I thought, if I was learning to play again, I’d go back to the tunes I originally learned on.”
So what will we be hearing from you today, tunes from Just a Second? “Not necessarily; a lot of today’s tunes haven’t been on either album. So I’m trialling them and they could well appear on the next album. I’ll be joined on guitar today by David Foley from Rura. David has told me that when Rura put together a new album, they write it, record it and then tour it. And that’s made me realise that I do it backwards. I’ll play stuff, and then I’ll record it just before I get fed up with it.” Pause for laughter. “It can lead to people coming up to me after a gigsaying, I’ve got your new album, but you didn’t play any of it.”
“Previously, I’ve played and recorded with Craig Irving on guitar, but he’s now moved to Australia. I like playing with lots of different people because they all play in their own different ways, and it makes me play differently as well. It keeps me on my toes. I never decide in advance how many times through I’ll play a tune or what the shape of it will be, I love finding that as you play it. And when you play with someone new, they push you in different ways; it’s really fun for me.”
You seem to enjoy it when you can play extended pieces, either by repeating or combining tunes?
“I do choose what tunes I’ll play in advance and then I’ll think very carefully about what tunes go with what. But as I’m playing, I don’t know. The set list I have is just a list of keys, essentially. And it would never say, for example, O’Sullivan’s March x3. I’d never write that; I might get to the third time around and think, I can’t play this again.”
And finally, you sneaked in a mention of a third album. What can you tell us about that?
“Well, I’m sure you know that one of my big heroes in life is Martin Hayes. So when I start the recording of my third album, Martin is going to produce it and play on it with me. So, it’s at the stage of pinning Martin down, getting dates when he’s free.”
So, while you’re waiting, any plans?
“I’m just trying to play as much as I can, then later in the year, I’m off to Austria and then Canada.”
Watch a video of Ryan Young (fiddle) with Owen Sinclair (guitar) in Orange, NSW, Australia. They are performing Dolina MacKay by John Scott.
