Silly Wizard
Silly Wizard "evolved" in Edinburgh in about 1971 - around a nucleus of Gordon Jones, Bob Thomas and Johnny Cunningham. they didn't play many gigs away from town at first as Johnny was still at school! (although he had been known to be picked up by the band at the school gate to be driven to Sutherland for a gig and be decanted from the van at the school gates next morning!). The band then ran the Triangle Folk Club in Edinburgh on Saturday Nights. After some hard touring mostly around Britain with a girl (Maddy Taylor) singing with the band we were approached by Transatlantic Records to record an album. Maddy left the band and the album never saw the light of day. It was recorded in two days and has never been seen or heard since!
An album was started, and around the same time a band they had seen a lot of at festivals in Scotland broke up. They were from Perthshire and were called "Puddock's Well" they included Andy M. Stewart as singer and tenor banjo player, Dougie MacLean on fiddle and Martin Hadden on bass.
Johnny's brother Phil came into the studio (from school) and played some accordian and Alastair Donaldson took over on bass from Neil Adam who had worked with us for a while. Now they were a six piece band and as such toured for many years throughout Europe. A high point of these years was being asked to write music for and perform in some plays at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool - a great learning experience. Around this time Alistair and Freeland left and their obvious replacements were Phil Cunningham (he'd now left school) and Martin Hadden.
Once they added America to our already busy touring schedule things became frantic and could book the Edinburgh Playhouse for a concert once a year during the Edinburgh Festival and fill its 3000 seats. After 9 albums and around 17 years of touring the band decided to call it a day and gently closed for business after a final album "Glint of Silver" in 1986.
Today Gordon Jones and Bob Thomas run Harbourtown Records (they also both play guitar in local dance bands), Andy M. Stewart still tours regularly and does freelance technical work for TV production, Martin Hadden does duplication and replication work for the recording industry in Scotland (he's Birnam Duplication) and does radio presentation work with both Heartland Radio and Radio Scotland. Phil Cunningham does much production and music writing work for BBC Scotland and still tours and plays live, mostly with Aly Bain. Johnny has toured both solo and with other musicians - most recently Celtic Fiddle Festival and Susan McKeown and done a great deal of production work. Notably Johnny wrote and played the music for the Mamou Mines production of Peter and Wendy. Sadly Johnny passed away on the 15th December 2003 in New York.
Buy Silly Wizard music from Amazon.co.uk
Back to Scottish Folk Bands and Singers index page
Back to Scottish Music home page
In and Around Aberfeldy
Blog Links