CHEERY ODIN – The Folli Up

If you listened to the first Cheery Odin album, you’ll know what to expect, “A recording project to celebrate and recall the auld Hawick tongue, some light-hearted in tone and others nostalgic and celebrating old ways and valued traditions” – Scottish Borders, great musicians, a sense of fun – and an album quite unlike anything else …. other than Gang Yer Dinger, the first Cheery Odin album.

Which will be why this album is called The Folli Up … and why, if you’ve got the first album, you’ve probably already got this one. The Folli Up, like its predecessor, celebrates the people and language of Hawick. Like its predecessor it’s also a gem that repays multiple listens.

There are eighteen tracks, mostly local, though ‘June 2025’ tackles American Wars and Middle East politics in a track where the arrangement and playing are a case study in how to create a tone – particularly given the serious nature of the lyrics:

“Wull oo ever ken how mony died
How mony mothers and their bairns a’ cried?
An a’ cos men wi’ muscles for brains
Greed for land, an’ their fake claims
Cannae live in peace an’ harmony
Prefer the bomb frae the armoury”

The other tracks in the album sprang from, “casting my mind back to the 1950’s and 60’s and remembering some great characters, personal experiences which were out-of-the-ordinary and stories, some of them amazing.” Listening to the album, you feel you know the characters or, at the very least, have stood in the same bar as those who did and who keep their memory alive.

‘Bob & Wattie’s Close Encounter Wi’ The Godfather Of Grunge’ tells of two old friends, who’ve played in bands with Cheery Odin since the ‘60’s, who drove to Selkirk, talked about their admiration for Neil Young, called for a cuppa and (after he’d left) were told by the waitress that Neil Young had been at the table next to them. The fact that they later discovered the waitress had got it wrong (it was Whitesnake’s bass player) only adds to the tale, both its veracity and the enjoyment of it. The tale will no doubt be told for years to come, and you hope that the song will be sung as well

To give a sample of others:

• ‘Tadpole’ is the nickname of a former teacher and a song about what happened when the class wound him up too much.
• ‘Honkeldice , Ah Ken Um Still’ is a tale of nicknames that Cheery Odin still remembers – Johnny Giro, Midnight, Chalkie, Jock the Dog – about seventy of them .. and they all make the lyric.
• ‘Yince’ is a tale of the younger artist being ill in bed and receiving a visit from an older girl who had, errr, made him feel rather better by the time she left.
• ‘Uffish’ is a play on the Tolkien term and has led to a song where each line ends with the ‘uff’ sound’.

The eighteen tracks are centred on the vocal and a light musical tone, skilfully created and embellished by many of the musicians that Cheery Odin has worked with or promoted over the years. There are arrangements that could only be created by people with a deep understanding of how music and tone work (no machine or standard engineer would put an arrangement on a track, ‘The Foonder’, including what I suspect is are a party blower and a slide whistle?).

I make that final point as a way of reiterating that this is an album like no other (apart from its predecessor). In its use of local language, stories of larger-than-life characters, tales of one-off events that will be repeated whenever Hawick people gather. There’s a deftness in its lighter musical tone which serves to make the album accessible.

The Folli Up is a musical delight – but it’s also the record of life in a Borders town in the 1950’s and 60’s that, I suspect, will be even more cherished in a generation or so, when the human stories of life-as-it-was-lived have been lost in the depths of time.

Another gem.

Mike Wistow

Artist’s website: https://www.facebook.com/CheeryOdin

Cheery Odin isn’t big on videos so if you find one please let us know, Alternatively, if you are Cheery Odin, please send us a video.

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