Innes Watson, from Glasgow, is an award-winning multi-instrumentalist with over ten years of contemporary and traditional Scottish music performance, recording, teaching and producing experience. He grew up in the Scottish Borders in very supportive musical surroundings encouraging an extremely eclectic mix of skills, abilities, interests and accolades that combine to make Innes one of the most highly-regarded and sought-after musicians on the scene today.

He teaches at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland (having graduated from there with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Scottish Music in 2006) and is a firm favourite for adult and youth learning organisations up and down the country. He has appeared on at least 24 albums released in Scotland in the last 15 years and has worked with some of the most notable performers in the country. In 2011 he won the title of “Instrumentalist of the Year” at the MG Alba Scots Trad Music Awards.

Guitar Colloquium is his highly-anticipated debut solo album, recorded with the help of more than a few friends he has picked-up over his extensive career in the Scottish music scene. The music was originally written for a New Voices at Celtic Connections in 2011. The tracks were written and arranged by Innes with the express intention of playing with three of his favourite colloquial guitarists in Glasgow. The project was called “Glasgow Guitar Colloquium”. Every track was inspired by current everyday affairs in Innes’ guitar world such as the inspiration of his father, a town he likes, meaningless names for melodies that just appeared, imaginative stories and the friendship and warmth he felt from the hive that was Glasgow’s music scene at that time. There is some more recently composed music on the album such as a tune for his luthier, Roger Bucknall, and a melody he composed in honour of the original line-up.

The list of guest musicians who lent their talents to the album reads as an all-star cast, representing some of the finest proponents of Scottish contemporary music. Ali Hutton, Alice Allen, Alyn Cosker, Barry Reid, Chas McKenzie, Duncan Lyall, Elliott Morris, Mike Vass, Patsy Reid, Seonaid Aitken, Steven Byrnes and Will McNicol all lend their talents.

The album was recorded over a year and a half. In April 2017 the drums, bass and rhythm went down at Grans House Studios under the engineering of Barry Reid. An unsuccessful funding application meant the project was halted while a rewrite was in progress. Finally in August 2018 time had been put aside by Andrea Gobbi in GloWorm studios and the album was completed over another ten days!

With music that is hard to define but easy to love, this is an album that would sit comfortably within any music lover’s collection.

It’s just great music that comes from a man who is simply an enigma as he sits squarely in the middle of the burgeoning upturn in Scottish Traditional Music yet creates an album that stands alone, unique, refusing to be pigeonholed into any particular genre. Kenny Graham, Scottish Field

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