Image: The Revelations. L to R: John Stewart, Sandy Bremner, Ricky Mackay and David Dunnet.
It may come as a surprise to outsiders that Country music was (relatively speaking) HUGE in the Highlands in the 1960s and 1970s, but it’s nevertheless true. Even today, the Northern Nashville Country Music Club (formed in 1987) still meets regularly in the British Legion Hall in Thurso and seems to be going strong. The NNCMC has run a Caithness Country Music Festival since 2004 from Halkirk’s indoor riding centre in the centre of the county, sometimes covered by BBC Alba, with both local and visiting artists from places like Nashville. It may come as a further surprise that Country music was also a strength of local Salvation Army mission music, which is the subject of this post.
Why does Country music hit a sweet spot in the far north? Folk in farming country everywhere may feel a kind of spiritual affinity with folk in the southern states, particularly livestock-rearing areas: checked shirts and jeans function as informal rural dress anywhere (although waterproof overalls may be a bit more practical in the Scottish Highlands). It could be that Caithness also hosted a small but culturally influential body of Americans, who might have brought over their own music. From 1962 to 1992, responding to Cold War anxiety about the Soviet Union, there was a US naval base at Forss in Caithness, with over 100 serving personnel and their families living locally. This was a listening and monitoring station, keeping an ear on the North Atlantic. North Americans voices were familiar in Thurso, the nearest town, where many of these folk lived. Wick, in contrast, does not seem to have quite the same affiliation with Country music as Thurso.
Today, Glasgow has its ‘Grand Ole Opry’ and Rothesay on the Isle of Bute shakes things up with its ‘Honky Tonk’ club. A fun night out in these contexts is likely to involve some fairly heavy drinking. However, in the far north, Country music also influenced evangelical music, and a very different night out. One such band who combined Country music with church work, was ‘The Revelations’, and this post continues with input from John Stewart, a founding member.
For the founders of the band, Sandy Bremner and John Stewart, country music was their first love: listening to vinyl records by country greats such as Hank Williams and Patsy Cline. Most Country singers had some church background and had gospel songs in their repertoire. The Revelations were a 4-man line up established in 1963: kit drum, banjo, rhythm guitar and lead guitar / vocals. Starting as the ‘Singing Strings’, after a year they changed their name in recognition that they were often playing in the context of Salvation Army meetings. Playing away from home, they appeared (often in Salvation Army uniforms) in church halls and meeting places around the coastal communities of the Pentland and Moray Firths as well as touring in Scotland and northern England to Salvation Army venues. A detailed journal kept by the lead vocalist Sandy Bremner show a busy schedule of gigs – often several in a week. Images of their busy schedule can be seen in a video recently posted to Youtube of their single ‘Peace’ (see Further Reading and Listening, below).
The band members were: David Dunnet on lead guitar (an Orkney man who came to work at the nuclear power station at Dounreay); Sandy Bremner on occasional banjo, the band chronicler; Ricky Mackay, drummer, still playing (we hear) in a Thurso Baptist church praise band; and John Stewart on vocals and rhythm guitar.
In 1964, they laid down one single, recorded by Wick-based indie record label, Grampian Records (no longer trading). Grampian’s catalogue included mostly northern folk and trad artists (look out for the Wick Scottish Dance Band), but also pipe bands and dance bands more generally as well as a couple of Country & Western singers. The “A” side song by Stewart and Bremner, ‘Peace’, is a simple gospel song sung in Country style, using some of Christ’s final words to his disciples from the Bible (John 14:27). The “B” side of the record has another song by Stewart and Bremner, “Home in the Glory Land” based on a traditional American gospel song.
With permission from John Stewart, below is ‘Peace’.
Reuse under Creative Commons License CC BY 4.0
1. Peace I leave with you
Peace I give to you.
Peace that passes understanding
Peace I give to you.
Chorus: Never let your heart by troubled
Neither let it be afraid
Never let your heart be troubled
Just listen to what Jesus said.
2. Fellowship I leave,
Fellowship I give.
Fellowship that o’ercomes trials.
My Fellowship I give.
3. Grace I leave with you,
Grace I give to you.
Grace that conquers each temptation,
My Grace I give to you.
The Salvation Army had a strong presence in the far north, often as a mission to fishing communities, and are perhaps better known for their brass bands than for their Country music. Salvationists were usually also tee-total, a useful message to working sea-faring folk when being drunk on a boat could cause wrecks and loss of life. In Thurso, the Hall was built down by the beach and rented for pennies for decades. However, this year, from April 2024, The John O Groat Journal reported that the congregation was ceasing to meet after 130 years in the area, although Wick and Kirkwall numbers continue to be viable.
John Stewart remembers:
“For the three-and-a-bit years the band was going it was our total obsession. Night after night rehearsing in the hall or in each other’s homes as well as a constant round of church events, woman’s guilds, and regular slots at the Thurso Folk Club. Highlights were our trips south in an old beat-up 12-seater van all over Scotland and a memorable visit to Yorkshire, playing in Denbydale, Leeds and Barnsley. In short we would go wherever we were invited. In early 1967 David moved South to university, and we decided to finish. Brilliant memories and it would be a great honour if anyone wanted to use the song “Peace” which seems especially appropriate in these troubled times.”
Further Listening and Reading
- The Revelations, ‘Peace’ – Youtube, with video showing journal entries of gigs.
- Glasgow’s Grand Ole Opry
- Grampian Records (Wick) – discography
- Gordon Calder, ‘Thurso Salvation Army Church Set to Close in April’, John O Groat Journal, 26 February 2024 , accessed 30 April 2024
- Frederick Coutts, The History of the Salvation Army, 1946-1977, 7 volumes (Hodder and Stoughton, 1947-1986)
- D G Mackay, Bubbleheads, SEALs and Wizards: America’s Scottish Bastion in the Cold War (Whittles Publishing, 2023) – a new history of Scotland’s strategic importance in the period, with notes on spy stations and the back-story to why the nuclear submarines are in the Holy Loch.
- Frances Wilkins, Singing the Gospel Along Scotland’s North-East Coast, 1859-2009 (Routledge, 2018)
- Rothesay Honky Tonk Club
- Thurso Northern Nashville Country Music Club on Facebook