Jenna Reid: 10 Things That Changed My Life

I left to study for a BA in trad music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland [formerly the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama] in Glasgow when I was 17 and I was the last one on the boat. It was in the old days when you had to walk up the gangplank and I remember the crew telling me I had to get going so I had to drag myself up it.

I didn’t really want to go and I nearly quit a couple of times because I wanted to be back in Shetland.

I am from a really small village and went to primary school with 19 other children and I was suddenly living in a flat in Sauchiehall Street and it was a huge culture shock. I used to go into shops to change a tenner, then pump £1 coins into the phone box to phone home.

However, I had a wonderful piano teacher, Walter Blair, who was such a kind man and told me to think about it before quitting.

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I remember my mum also asked me to think about what I would do if I did go back to Shetland and that was a reality check.

I am still down south and in fact I’ve been away longer than I was on Shetland. It’s crazy how things work out. I stayed and met people who were pivotal in my life and started playing with Deaf Shepherd and Dòchas which was brilliant fun.

2. MY HUSBAND
I MET Iain Sandilands when I went to uni and we worked together on some things, but did not meet up again until nearly 10 years later.

He is a musician as well, a percussionist and drummer and works at Big Noise in Stirling.

His work is really busy as he is bringing on children from primary one to primary six of all different abilities but he is still such a support for me – not just in our personal life but also in my work. He believes it is really important for me to do what I do and believes we should work together on being parents. I would struggle to manage what to do if I did not have such a great, supportive relationship.

We used to play a lot together and he has played on a few of my albums but it is tricky now we have two children.

3. THE SHETLAND BUS
THIS was a project I worked on with my sister Bethany in 2010. It was not only a chance to get our heads down and write music together but also a way of finding more about a massive historical event that we felt we should know more about.

It gave us the opportunity to go to Norway a few times and we met the nephew of Jan Baalsrud, who was the only crew member to survive the bombing of their ship after they were betrayed on their journey back from Shetland.

As well as breaking the blockade and bringing supplies back to Norway, they carried messages for the resistance. There’s a film about it on Netflix called The 12th Man, as well as a book.

Our music still does not seem enough of a tribute but the Norwegians seem really inspired that young people in Shetland have championed this and kept it going.

It is quite an incredible story and was a big thing for me as it was the first fully composed album that I was involved in as a writer. It was well-received – better than we expected. People really seemed to connect with it.

Jan died in his 80s but the rest of the crew were captured and shot or tortured, although they refused to give anything away.

4. MY FIDDLE TEACHER 

WILLIE Hunter taught me the fiddle from the age of nine or ten right up until he died of cancer in 1994. The whole of Shetland was shocked to the core when he died. It left a massive hole for me and lots of other people.

I was only 14 and I remember going to the funeral not really comprehending what had happened or what it would mean. He was such a gentleman, always in a shirt and tie, and there was nothing heavy about his lessons. It was always just a case of him saying let’s find great tunes and play them. You grab kids and engage them when it’s like that. The tricky stuff can come later but in that half hour you want it to be spontaneous and fun and exciting.

I left Shetland with all his teaching under my belt and now I really love teaching too as it feels like I am connecting with him somehow. I’m just trying to copy what he did with me. I feel so lucky to have had him as a teacher.

5. BECOMING A MUM
I’VE never known a feeling of purpose like it. The realisation that it is not about you any more is almost a relief in a funny kind of way.

It’s realising that what I need can wait and I just need to look after these two little people in the best way I can. It is the best job and the hardest job I have ever done in my life and they are still only four and two so we are only just starting! I feel really thankful they are here and healthy.

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It doesn’t mean you stop being you but it is a massive learning curve that the two things can run simultaneously.

Any job comes with requirements and a demand on your time. The kids are great though and it is a total privilege. They are a barrel of laughs. It’s chaos but amazing.

6. MY LAST ALBUM
WORKING Hands is the fifth I have recorded and I feel it is the one that means the most to me. I wrote it on the cusp of becoming a mum of two children as I thought it was now or never.

I have since found that was a dramatic thing to think as you do have time to do things once you have two children but it seemed such a massive chunk of work that I wanted to do it before she was born.

I wrote it with the intention of doing something totally different from what I had written before. I did not want to do an album that sounded the same as the last one.

There is nothing wrong with doing an album of fiddle tunes but I wanted to expand and test myself and put myself in a situation that was not so straightforward.

I wrote it for Mr McCall’s Chamber Orchestra to play with me and I have never done that before. I have followed the band for a long time. They play stuff like Frank Zappa and Bach and my husband plays a lot of music with them so I asked them if they would do an album with me.

I had musicians in mind with nimble fingers so that’s why I called it Working Hands. Our hands are our tools.

The album came out this year and won the Composer of the Year Award at the Scots Trad Awards. I loved the process of writing it but it was hard and winning the award felt amazing. It was a huge moment for me. I felt like it bookended that time in my life.

It’s a massive encouragement and makes me want to do more. I am on the cusp of turning 40 and now it feels like I can still do stuff. I don’t need to settle but can keep pressing on.

7. BLAZIN' FIDDLES
AFTER I finished university, I gigged and toured for about eight years but wasn’t sure whether to keep going with that.

I decided to do a postgrad in teaching and was due to start on the Monday when I got a call on the Saturday asking me to join the band.

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It was nerve-racking and thrilling at the same time. I decided to go with the band and I am thankful to have had that opportunity.

I’ve been with them nearly a decade now. They are great people and I love them to bits. It’s good fun up on the stage and it has changed my working life.

Alongside this I also play in RANT, a fiddle quartet – we’re just about to launch our third album in the Mackintosh Church in Glasgow as part of the Celtic Connections festival. It’s an inspiring band to be part of. 

8. MY FAMILY
I COME from a really close knit family and my mum and dad, brother and sister are a fantastic support network. If I need to do anything my mum and dad tell me just to do it and they will look after the kids.

My sister Bethany used to live in the same street as me in Glasgow and we would help each other and we now play together. She’s a music teacher and she’s brilliant. Bethany and my brother Tom have got my back all the time which means a lot. They are both good fiddlers but Tom plays the drums now.

My mum is a great piano player and also writes brilliant poetry and songs.

9. BEING A BBC ANNOUNCER
THIS is a weird curve ball but about a year ago I was invited to be a freelance announcer on BBC1 Scotland. It came out of nowhere and I had to do three months training for it.

I think I was invited because I had been encouraged to go for a full-time job doing voice-over work at BBC Scotland.

I had done a couple of things for friends and enjoyed that, but I did not get the BBC job which was probably just as well as I would have struggled to do it full time. But this has been amazing and I love it.

There’s more to it than you would think as we have to take control from London, put the news on air and then hand back control. You feel like you are on a spaceship sitting there as there are so many screens in front of you. It’s all live so you have to react to what’s going on.

I’m at the end of my thirties and my job so far has been working as a musician and teaching children and this has let me see there can be other aspects of work to try out. I didn’t know this was possible.

10. SIMON THOUMIRE
SIMON is behind Hand Up for Trad and the Scots Trad Music Awards and actually gave me my first chance at doing an album. That was in 2004 after I was on the shortlist for the BBC Young Traditional Musician of the Year. I didn’t win but he phoned me the next day and asked if I fancied making an album. I didn’t expect it since I hadn’t won. I was still in my early 20s and making an album wasn’t really on my list of the next things to do.

However Making With Silver and All was great as it was the start of my solo career because once you have made an album you have to promote it and go and play gigs.

It was also the first time I worked with Harris Playfair who has been the piano player on all my subsequent albums. He is actually from the same village as me on Shetland but he is a wee bit older and by the time I was playing gigs he had already left. It wasn’t until the competition that I met him again and it started the whole thing of us playing together. His piano playing is out of this world and playing with him is incredible. It’s a great buzz.

Funnily enough before the competition, Harris asked me if I could get tickets for one of his former students. It was all sold out but I got James to come to the sound check. I also had asked my sister to come to tell me what she thought  and now they are both married with two kids!

Not winning the competition was the start of something really special and Simon was behind all of it.