April 26, 2025 — Dublin, Ireland
Regular TNOCS readers may remember my 2024 article:
In the comments, our own JJ Live At Leeds recommended a band called Peat and Diesel.
I watched the videos JJ posted, and liked them a lot.
Peat and Diesel are a trio from Stornoway, Scotland:
The largest town on the island of Lewis and Harris, about thirty miles off Scotland’s northern coast.
I visited there with my family in 2000, and I recognize some of Stonoway’s streets in Peat and Diesel’s videos. Lewis and Harris is a starkly beautiful part of the world and the farthest north I’ve ever been.
Until two weeks ago.
When I showed the videos to the lovely Ms. Virgindog, she loved them. We watched every on that we could find. Repeatedly.
So when JJ mentioned that they were going on tour and that he had just bought tickets to see them in Leeds, I checked to see if they were coming to the States. They weren’t, so I joked that I should look into flights.
Which I then did.
All their shows in Scotland and England were sold out, but tickets were still available for Ireland. The Dublin tickets were only €25 each. Getting there was a little more expensive. I’ll cover the trip itself in a separate article.
JJ, Ms. Virgindog, and I arrived at The Button Factory in Dublin’s Temple Bar district just before show time.
After some struggles with using the Ticketmaster app in a foreign country, we got into the theater and grabbed seats in the front row of the balcony. After a few days of walking on cobblestones, I enjoyed that more than standing up on the floor.
Opening act Cody Feechan came out with a bassist and guitarist.
She played acoustic guitar while sitting on a cajon equipped with a bass drum pedal.
It’s a stripped down set up that sounded cool in the moment and was probably done for budgetary reasons.
But her songs— like the 2021 single, “Breathe” — sound better with, and deserve, the full band treatment.
She’s also Scottish and signed to Wee Studio Records, the same label that Peat and Diesel is on.
Her songs are in that vaguely Americana-ish singer/songwriter style, and her throaty voice suits that style perfectly.
I’d like to see her on a larger stage with a complete band behind her. The confines of this particular gig limited what I think she can do.
The intermission between bands was short and most people didn’t notice when Peat and Diesel’s drummer, Uilly Macleod, walked on stage. Some of that is due to the short intermission and some is due to the lighting.
Quick note to any lighting directors who might read this: There’s been a trend recently of pointing the lights at the audience. Please stop.
It makes it nearly impossible to see the band. I didn’t see Uilly all night aside from some drumsticks flailing around. I heard him playing and singing but never got a good look at him. It’s one of the reasons I didn’t take many pictures, and I had to time my shutter between the light flashes. Besides, we audiences will be grateful if you stop blinding us. Thank you.
Accordion player Innes Scott came on next and immediately apologized for wearing shorts.
They were appropriate attire for travel on such a beautiful day and he thought they’d have time to go back to their hotel after soundcheck, so we’d just have to put up with his “pasty knees.”
This is a reminder of the level these guys are at. They don’t have assistants to run to the hotel for long trousers. Sure, they sell out shows in the UK, but they tour in vans and still have their day jobs. Besides, Innes helped run sound for Cody Feecham’s set.
Singer and guitarist Calum John MacLeod, better known as “Boydie,” came out last. It’s amazing that he can barely acknowledge the audience but still has a je ne sais quoi that makes him instantly likeable. It’s a low key charisma that’s part riveting star power and part guy you might have sat next to at the pub. They’re just like us, only more talented.
Or are they?
They’re everyday blokes…
Innes is an electrician.
Uilly is a delivery driver.
And Boydie is a commercial fisherman.
And his dad drives one of the tour vans.
And: They happened to form a really, really, good band. They got together hoping to play in a pub every now and then, and turned out to be popular enough to headline big festivals. It reminds us that maybe we have that kind of talent, too, and we might be touring and recording if we had only found ourselves with the right bandmates in the right place at the right time. I think that’s part of their appeal.
The show JJ saw in Leeds was early on the tour, and he enjoyed its sloppiness. Since they have full time jobs, they hadn’t rehearsed for the tour. Not only did Boydie have to ask Uilly which guitar to use on the next song, he also wanted to do new songs he had written but didn’t have time to show the other two. JJ described it as loose but fun.
This show in Dublin, on the other hand, was the last one of the tour.
They weren’t what you’d call polished, but they had the kinks worked out. They transitioned from song to song without much looking at the set list or wondering which guitar to use.
Back in his original comment here on TNOCS, JJ described Peat and Diesel as “Pogues and punk influences but lyrically specific to their island locale.”
Their songs are about the Outer Hebrides, hard work, and Scottish history.
Some of the lyrics are in Gaelic so I don’t really understand them: At one point I thought they had a song about “carrot paranoia” though I’m pretty sure I’m wrong about that — but I understand the music.
With only a full drum set, guitar and vocals, and an accordion, they sound much bigger than they are, and their punk sea shanties are super fun.Their sound is a delicious stew of traditional melodies with punk energy.
New genres don’t form out of nothing. They evolve from existing ones, and that’s what’s happening here.
It’s definitely Punk Rock, it’s definitely Scottish Folk, and it’s definitely Celtic Rock, but it’s the mixture of them that’s new. Other bands have done something similar, like Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly, and Skinny Lister.
But the ratio of Punk to Folk is slightly different with Peat and Diesel.
It’s enchantingly inclusive, as in throwing your arms around your drunken mates while singing your favorite songs at the top of your lungs.
Maybe that inclusiveness comes from the singalong nature of some of their songs.
There were points where Boydie stopped singing and the audience kept going. It’s a pub singalong in a Rock venue.
The down-home inclusiveness continued even as Boydie left the stage to go to the bathroom and the other two played an instrumental and possibly improvised waltz. There’s no rock star mystique here.
The bass player in me wondered how Innes got such a cool bass tone out of his accordion. I’m sure it’s not a backing track — they’re not that kind of band — so I imagine he’s running the bass reeds of his accordion through an octave pedal. That’s just a guess. I don’t even know if accordions have separate bass reeds.
But the Scottish flag on his accordion’s bellows is brilliant.
My favorite song of theirs is a cover of “Dirty Old Town,” originally from a 1949 play called Landscape With Chimneys.
It was written by Ewan MacColl, father of singer Kristy MacColl. She often sang with The Pogues, who popularized the song, at least in the British Isles, in 1985. It was also a 1966 hit in Ireland by The Dubliners.
Singer Jenna Ross joined the band for a couple songs, including a cover of Blondie’s “Maria.” She was very appreciative to be playing with them and her pop vocals contrasted nicely with Boydie’s gargling-with-gravel voice.
The Rowdy Energy of Live Celtic Punk
Towards the end of the night, some in the audience got a little rowdy. Alcohol may have been involved. Empty or partially empty plastic cups were thrown. Innes warned that he was glad they were having fun but to knock it off. If anything hit his accordion, he said, the show would be over instantly.
That stopped the cups being thrown on the main floor, but several were still tossed from behind us in the balcony. It stopped after a while. Maybe they ran out of cups.
Ross, Feechan, and Feechan’s band returned for the last few songs. Everyone seemed to be celebrating, wrapping up the tour with a final jam. They finished with John Denver’s “Country Roads,” resulting in another singalong. The crowd left happy and I think the musicians did, too.
I’m writing this on the 4th of May, the day Peat and Diesel are playing the Black Isle Belter festival near Inverness, Scotland. They don’t have another show scheduled until July, so they’re back at their day jobs as you read this. That should be nothing new to them. Hard work is how they do it on the western isles.
“We feed the sheep and cut the peat until the day we die.”
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Sounds like a fun concert and a great trip. So cool you and JJ were able to meet up in Dublin. I think that’s my favorite part of the story.
What a great experience! Thanks for sharing it with us!
It was a great show and great to meet Bill and his wife in person. I was surprised at how quickly my message that P&D were touring snowballed into tickets being bought and preparations to fly across the Atlantic for it. The power of music right there!
If Bill and his wife could make that journey I thought it only right that I make the short hop across the Irish Sea to join them.
It was interesting seeing the contrast between the Leeds and Dublin shows. As Bill said, they were all over the place in Leeds. Straight from the off they walked out and Innes had a problem with strapping his accordion on then with the cables. It took several minutes to resolve and was the most shambolic start to a show I’ve ever seen, setting the tone for the whole evening. With other bands it might have broken the night but for them it emphasised the bond with the audience and their personalities. They kept talking, between themselves and to the crowd and turned it into something like a comedy routine.
It was a night of great music and they were hilarious, making a virtue of their lack of preparation.
By Dublin they knew what they were doing while still having a rough and ready approach that’s ideally suited to them. The bond between them and the audience again evident. I was telling some friends about Innes warning the audience for drinks being thrown and how it put a stop to it. Whereas my friends had examples of being at Guns N’ Roses and Primal Scream shows where the same happened and the crowd met the warning as a challenge to up the ante, resulting in both coming to a premature end. Despite the raucous nature of the Dublin crowd they were there for a good time and respected the band.
I’m glad it was worth the long journey for Bill and his wife.
It was totally worth the journey, and the journey itself was a whole bunch of fun, too, as I’ll describe in my next installment. Meeting you and your family was a highlight, and Dublin is a fascinating town. And Peat & Diesel are a hoot.
Or maybe I just have Peatlemania.
Oh boy…
She loves you, aye, aye, aye…
It’s a small TNOCS world. I’m glad you got to go to the concert. Sounds like a fun time was had by all. Interesting that a John Denver song closed the show.
Country Roads is one of those oddities that was never a hit in Britain for John Denver, it’s in a genre not that well received here but everyone knows it.
There was an Olivia Newton John version that was a minor hit and an awful Europop version from the early 00s that made the top 10 but it only did that because the original is so well known.
I guess despite the specificness of West Virginia it’s a universal message about going home.
Wonderful recounting of a great evening. Can’t wait to hear what else you have to share about your visit there with the rest of us, Bill!