REVIEW: The Old Fire Station in Carlisle. Friday, July 25, 2025.

SIX years ago I was between jobs in Carlisle, as the saying goes, and I ended up working on a newspaper in Inverness in the Highlands of Scotland.

And that was when I first encountered the phenomenon they Christened Peatlemania which describes the fanatical following of the band Peat & Diesel.

My introduction to their music was when I heard the track Stornoway which was regularly played on the sound system of the Highland capital’s branch of HMV. Having said that I had to use the Shazam phone app to work out who the band were.

I almost got the chance to see the band when they visited Highland Hospice, to perform for the residents, but at the last minute I was diverted to the home ground of Inverness Caledonian Thistle FC take pictures at a launch of a special gelato flavour ahead of a big match.

I actually got the hairdryer treatment from the manager, when I tried to get a comment and double checked that I had his correct name, because he felt I had not “done my research” when I did not know who he was. The top and bottom of it I never managed to catch the band live during my time in the north of Scotland.

Having said that I jumped at the chance to catch them when they visited Carlisle on Friday and up first was support act singer songwriter Calum Campbell who hails from the north-east of Scotland and recently posted that he was playing gigs at Highlander Bar and Gellions, which are both in Inverness, during the week leading up to his Carlisle appearance.

It was just him and a guitar on stage but he gave a powerful performance which included a cracking version of Donald Where’s Your Troosers.

After a strange mixtape of 80s tracks, which included Kirsty MacColl’s New England, Happy Hour by The Housemartins and The Pogues’ If I should Fall From Grace With God the band shuffled on stage.

Opening tracks included Stornoway, which is their punkish Western Isles reworking of the traditional Scottish folk ballad Lovely Stornoway, as well as a new track 01851, which is the telephone code if you need to contact a man from the Isle of Lewis.

Having said that singer and guitarist Calum ‘Boydie’ MacLeod said they were not going to elaborate on the rest of the number to protect the identity of the individual involved.

The band’s line up was completed with Innes Scott on accordion and Uilly Macleod on drums and it is bizarre to think that the band is made up of three self-confessed “Stornoway Coves” who met up in a house to have the craic on a Saturday nights playing music with just a dog and a cat watching.

I think it would be fair to say that the notoriously fanatical crowd need little encouragement to totally enjoy the show but a stripped back arrangement of The Pogues’ Dirty Old Town probably helped especially with the prominent accordion.

It was good to see the return of Calum Campbell who joined the band on stage for the later numbers of the set which included a cracking version of the much-loved John Denver classic Take Me Home Country Roads as well as Western Isles and I am fairly sure I spotted an overindulgence of the Highland fling in the crowd.

Things were nicely rounded of with Country Boy, which features the line “I am a country boy, and I don’t like the city, I’d rather be at home watching the telly”, and apparently it was written when Boydie was being pursued by the social because he had been signing on for what was considered to be too long.

I did note with interest that there were one or two cries from the crowd for “one more song” which were sadly in vain but I reckon no-one left the venue disappointed.