Their story; three Stornoway locals (Innes, Uilly and Boydie) met in a house to have the craic one Saturday night, playing music with just the dog and cat watching. After a few tunes getting thrown across the room Boydie stated muttering a few sentences. As he is a man of few words, attention wasn’t really given to him until he shouted “Quick, line me out!” Not a second to spare a set of old broken headphones were cable tied to a guitar amp and out came a few cobwebs followed shortly after with a sound nobody had ever heard before. What came next was five gallons of lyrics, verse after verse, song after song – PEAT & DIESEL WAS BORN! The person behind the lyrics isn’t your average man – if you listen and you can relate to it you are a special breed! Peat & Diesel – Light my Byre takes you on a journey to the heart of the western isles of Scotland, the land of the Gael.
Peat & Diesel frontman “Boydie” on vocals and guitar; Uilleam “Uilly” Macleod on drums and Innes “G” Scott plays the accordion. Christmas 2019 – Fairytale of Stornoway features local singer Mairead, to complete the line up to fabulous effect, after a viral video quickly clocked up over 150,000 views explaining ‘that’s the way we do it in the western isles.’ Drummer Uilleam says: “We certainly didn’t expect it to take off the way it has, as we only started it for a wee bit of craic”, filmed in and around Stornoway harbour and town centre, with locations including the Manor roundabout, it captures something about a band which can make lyrics out of a series of very distinctive island experiences. Calum Dan’s transit van, Collie dogs all tumble together in Boydie’s head, and the songs that come out just couldn’t be found anywhere else. Uilleam says: “Boydie’s songwriting is all about real island life situations, which most local folk can relate to, and that’s why they love it so much.” Last word to Boydie: “Well coves and blones, this here is our album. How it ever got this far we have no idea. It’s not everyone’s cuppa t, but the ones that understood exactly what was going on inside this cuppa t at the very beginning are the ones that have given us the ‘get up and go’ to get it done!”
Uptown Fank is available to download at https://peatanddiesel.bandcamp.com/album/uptown-fank and you can follow them at https://www.facebook.com/PEATANDDIESEL Selling out Glasgow’s iconic Barrowlands in one day as well as over 7,000 tickets across their debut tour happening in Jan 2020 has seen the band turn a corner in the public eye and with the band’s second album “Light My Byre” out on Jan 24th 2020 things just keep going from strength to strength!! They are storming up the Apple iTunes chart with their take on The Pogues’ ‘Fairytale of New York’ Fairytale of Stornoway. Lead singer Calum “Boydie” Macleod does a brilliant take on The Pogues’ Shane MacGowan and singer Mairead Nicholson takes on Kirsty MacColl’s part to add the singing skills to this revamped classic Christmas tune. https://www.youtube.com/embed/4mwgm1_UHiE