Lismore Lighthouse Band
16 March 2004

Lismore Lighthouse Band was originally set up for the fun of playing together, said the Oban accordionist Anne Barr, their manager and guiding light, and that love of playing led to a sell out CD in 2002 and a gold medal in the under 18 fiddle group in the Royal National Mod in Oban in 2003.

Only three of the group, Marie Carmichael and her twin cousins Lorne and Douglas MacDougall, are Liosachs, while Maria and Richard Bartlett are brother and sister from Bathgate, but with grandparents in Oban and a mother from Mull they have strong local connections.

While this makes rehearsing with the full band difficult, Anne Barr has a house in Lismore so the three practise regularly here as do Maria and Richard in Bathgate, and they get together in Lismore for full rehearsals. 

The group has appeared and been well received at the Oban Accordion and Fiddle Club, their latest appearance being at the March meeting. On their first visit John Gibson of the Salvation Army heard them and invited them to play in a concert in Kinlochleven in aid of Chernobyl children. They did two half hour sets, which was quite an undertaking for a relatively new and inexperienced band. But it was a good chance to show their versatility with one of the fiddle players able to play the accordion and an accordionist the mouth organ, and the two girls having lovely voices singing a Gaelic song.

Both girls are trained by Mary MacDougall who also sings on the CD, which has 12 songs about the islands including Lismore, Mull and The Hebrides. Unfortunately all 100 copies of that CD, called Eileanan and produced by Finlay Wells, have sold but the group are hoping to get into the recording studio again at the end of this year: they have lots of new tunes plus some jigs and reels. Marie and Maria will sing again and they begin practising with Mary MacDougall at Easter.

While the group is often invited to play in Lismore, they are planning a concert of their own with support acts from local children on 30 July 2004 to raise funds for the new CD.