The first photo is a monument to the legendary Black Watch regiment, in Aberfeldy, Scotland. My ancestry on my father’s side begins in Scotland, as part of the Clan McDonald, not too far from Aberfeldy, in what is lovingly called The Kingdom of Fife. I visited Aberfeldy in February, 2009, for the first time. I had been to Fife and the surrounding area many times, as well as Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, but never to this part of Perthshire. I filmed a couple of episodes of “Transatlantic Sessions” at a beautiful estate, inside an ancient barn, near Aberfeldy, in Fortingall.
The second photo is of the filming in the barn, with my friends and great musicians Phil Cunningham, Aly Bain, Jerry Douglas and several other superb musicians. I found out something very strange during the filming. In the year 1692, there was a bloody massacre called the Massacre of Glencoe, in which the men from the Campbell clan murdered 38 unarmed McDonalds in one horrible night. I found out that the very estate where we were filming “Transatlantic Sessions” was where the plan for the massacre hatched, and just over a little hill from the place where
38 unarmed McDonalds were killed in this infamous raid, which is still memorialized every year in Scotland. I looked around the barn where we were playing, which was in existence during the massacre, and I walked the very grounds where the massacre was put in motion. I thought about the fact that I, with my Clan McDonald ancestry, was making music with men with Campbell ancestry, on a night over three hundred years after those distant ancestors met in mortal combat, in the very same spot. It was a transcendent moment, and a very potent reminder that music is the great connector. No matter how profound our differences, even those that are part of our DNA, even those differences that somehow merit memorials and rituals and centuries of bitterness, can be dissolved very quickly with an A minor chord, a piano, a guitar and a violin. This knowledge, and the music, is perhaps the most important thing I have received as a legacy.


