Tag: bagpipes

Ruby Plays Glasgow’s Barrowlands with The Charlatans

How did you celebrate your seventeenth birthday? Did you pop up to Glasgow to accompany The Charlatans, on bagpipes, at the historic Barrowlands ballroom, and then have your latest single spun by Chris Hawkins on BBC Radio 6?!

Being honest, the memory of my seventeenth birthday is vague at best, but I’m pretty certain it wasn’t even in the same ballpark! A huge happy birthday, then, to our upcoming superstar Ruby Darbyshire, and an even huger “wowzers;” although this is amazing news, it’s fully deserved in my humble opinion. In what she dubbed her “biggest gig yet,” on social media, last weekend was a huge success, playing with The Charlatans at Barrowlands.

Ruby now lives on a narrowboat on the Kennet and Avon Canal near Bath with proud dad, Brian, who happened to call me with this astounding news last week. Exploding in exhilaration, he then told me I would have to wait to publish it. I think he just wanted to relay the story to someone, to best contain his understandable excitement!

Previously from Dumfries, Ruby used to busk in Buchanan Street, Glasgow, on many Saturdays, playing guitar and singing, where she raised thousands of pounds for Save the Children. Taken under the wing of the wonderful Pipe Major Jim McConnechie in Dumfries at the age of eight, while Ruby loves playing traditional music, for Remembrance Day, Burns suppers and other fitting occasions, she’s also known for using the pipes for rock music.

Homeschooled, Ruby now studies music at Bath College, and has become an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter and Highland bagpiper. You may well have seen her busking in the Brittox of Devizes, and various other local locations. Particularly memorable in town, was her impromptu appearance with Wayne Cherry on his one-hundred hours of Remembrance fundraiser. You may have been lucky enough to see her play live locally, after listening to and reviewing her debut EP, Don’t Give Up Now, We’re Nearly There, I made it top priority to attend her next gig, supporting Amelia Coburn, with Meg, at Trowbridge’s Pump.

On the couple of occasions I’ve had the honour to meet Ruby she remains modest about the attention, but if she doesn’t like to blow her own, erm, bagpipes, journalist for the Times, Nick Fraser reviewed the Charlatans’ gig, stating her guest appearance as the “most startling moment” of the event. 

Her forthcoming single “Caller Unknown” was made possible by the support of Tim Burgess of The Charlatans who spotted Ruby at Kendal Calling Festival, and through his new charitable initiative, Help Us Help Bands, Ruby won a recording session at the Cheese & Grain’s Bert Jansch Studio in Frome. I, for one, can’t wait to hear the latest song, once I’ve gotten over how simply fantastic this is for our locally-based artist; I’ve gone all goosebumpily! Well done Ruby, we are rooting for you.

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Don’t Give Up Now, Ruby Darbyshire

As discoveries of young local talent never seem to wane here at Devizine, here’s one with a difference, we’ve not featured yet; you may have seen Ruby Darbyshire busking a showstopper with bagpipes, but it’s far from the limits of this girl’s mind-blowing talent….

Her live studio recording is a four track EP, acoustic folk originals, titled Don’t Give Up Now, We’re Nearly There, and it’s something you simply MUST listen to, I order you to! My benchmark for a great writer is imagining myself at the same age merely attempting to scribe something on par, the conclusion being the profoundness and emotive expression of Ruby here crosses the winning line while I’m not even off the starting block, and me, with bagpipes, don’t even contemplate it!

Using a comfort blanket as a metaphor, a pensive ditty called Insomnia opens, the title explaining the lucid theme, first person prose reflection on growing up and fatigue. The EP ends with the struggle for self-control customarily portrayed as the devil on one shoulder, angel on the other, but perhaps questioning her impulsive behaviour moreso. Devil Doesn’t Want This leaves you aching for more, it’s edgy and darker than the two relationship subjects between them.

Pandora is perhaps the deepest dimensionally, a personification of the Pandora’s Box idiom, Ruby nails the process of a labyrinthine of issues once pursued generates greater problems, and it’s conveyed sublimely. Don’t Want to Hear You Cry is less abstract, but equal in emotive, matured outpouring. In summary of the whole EP, it’s a beautiful thing, sublime. 

Echoes of Opportunity Knocks winner and Paul McCartney’s first venture into production, Mary Hopkins in her delivery, Ruby bears all the hallmarks of a classic female folk singer, of Holly Near, vocally, of Joni Mitchell in calibre and of Dar Williams in emotive outpouring, akin locally to the rapturous Daisy Chapman.

Often seen busking or at open mics with her dad, Brian, it’s clear Ruby’s music evolved from a musical family at a tender age, a prodigy flourished, to hear the results is blissful. Gig dates can be found on her website, here. She’s at the George in Lacock on Wednesday evening (6th Sept.)

Ruby supports Amelia Coburn at the Pump on Saturday 14th October, with Meg, she writes to tell me she “just heard yesterday that I’m on stage at the Bradford Roots Festival in January,” and goes onto explain Tim Burgess from the Charlatans, organiser of the Kendal Calling festival asked to return next year, donating her a day’s recording at the Cheese and Grain, with musicians and Freddie Cowan from the Vaccines as producer. Full-gone conclusion, in my opinion, Ruby’s music will grow into a phenomenon, and you need to hear it blossoming.

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