Reid gets ready to vacate his piano stool as Batties go marching on

BACK IN 1975, a young, part-time Glasgow folk musician decided to put his embryonic career as a teacher on hold for two years while he went on the road with a group he had co-founded in 1969.

Thirty five years on comes the end of an era and yet another incarnation of the Battlefield Band as its keyboard player, singer-songwriter and sole remaining founder-member Alan Reid doesn't so much hang up his boots but signs a transfer, as he puts it, and leaves the Scottish folk institution at the end of this year to further pursue his occasional duo with singer-guitarist (and Battlefield sound engineer) Rob Van Sante.

The band plays on, however, adding fresh and youthful blood in the form of multi-instrumentalist Ewen Henderson, yet another member of the Henderson clan who virtually permeate Highland music.

The group's transitional line-up, with both Henderson and Reid, can be enjoyed this weekend (17-19 September) at its own mini-festival, the Battlefield Band Music Tryst, at Dalkeith's Newbattle Abbey College, when the band is joined by such long-standing musical acquaintances as Gaelic signer Christine Primrose, harpist Alison Kinnaird, veteran singer and broadcaster Archie Fisher and singer-songwriter Peter Nardini.

As well as three nightly concerts, the weekend features music workshops conducted by Battlefield players and their guests. The event will, however, also be Reid's last official UK gig with the band, although next week he heads off with it on lengthy tours of Germany then the USA before departing at the end of the year.

Now the senior figure in one of the first Scottish bands, along with the Boys of the Lough and the Tannahill Weavers, to embark on the global "Celtic Music" circuit back in the 1970s, Reid reckons that 35 years on the road is quite long enough.

"I've been doing this for so long that I started wondering, 'Am I just going to toddle along until I fall over. I'm 60 but I'm still pretty healthy, touch wood, and I'm simply interested in playing more of my own music."

Asked what he reckons he'll miss about life with "the Batties", he laughs: "The sheer power - being on stage with fiddle and bagpipes and guitar. What I'm going to be doing is far more song orientated. I'll be playing piano and a wee bit of accordion but some guitar as well.It will be much more harmony based than with the band."

He'll miss the camaraderie, he says, but also remarks, candidly, that his departure and the 23-year-old Henderson's arrival shifts the band's age demographic somewhat.:"So instead of having this old guy on the piano, it will look and feel like a much younger band."

The changes could also see Battlefield's fiery sound become more instrumentally orientated, and with less emphasis on keyboard accompaniment, as Henderson brings piping and fiddling skills, which, says the group's long-time manager and director of Temple Records, Robin Morton, frees up other members such as its established piper, Mike Katz, who is also a very able guitarist, and fiddle player Alastair White to take on other instruments.

"Henderson is also a great pianist," says Morton, but he also sings Gaelic songs, which will be a new diversion for the band."

And as the new Battlefield rolls into Newbattle, Morton hopes that the association with Scotland's only adult education residential college might be a lasting one.

In the past, the Midlothian college has been associated with some notable Scottish literary figures - the poet W S Graham was a student there, as was Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown, during fellow Orcadian Edwin Muir's tenure as warden. As a place associated with life-changing fresh starts, it could be construed as an auspicious venue for all concerned.

• For further information see www.musictryst.com and www.battlefieldband.co.uk