  
- Casualties of Retail
- Track Listing
- Band
- Interview
- Tour Dates
"Casualties of Retail" opens up with an unrelenting and hypnotic reel called "Music Box" propelled with a smart syncopated rhythm section, (deftly performed by Mark Abraham and James Campbell on the bass and drums, respectively), and dissonant, yet effective electric guitar, (played by Trevor Lewington), then there's Craig Downie's highland bagpipes (he also plays the Deger pipes, tin whistle, jaw harp and harmonica - sings, too), and of course Brian Buchanan's beautiful fiddle (he also sings, and plays acoustic guitar, banjo, and mandolin) each setting the tone for the whole sound.
“Another Round” is a bonafide Whiskey Drinkin’ Tune landing somewhere between The Count Bishop’s cult classic “Train, Train” and the Charlie Daniels Band. “Congress” is an instrumental of recognizable reel styling, but comes out of the gate executed, not on the traditional fiddle, but on guitar. The whole thing eventually breaks down to near-abandonment of the initial genre setting until it sounds like something perpetrated by the Buena Vista Social Club before snapping back to an all-out Celtic folk jam. “Minstrel Boy” is like the best stuff on Elvis Costello’s This Year’s Model and the Pogues’ Peace and Love, then “Moved Through The Fair” is a classic and poignant love song ambling between the sheets with Nick Drake, Paul Simon and Cliff Richard, if that’s possible.
And on it goes… big, bright pop rock/Celtic loops/fiendish promenades/hi speed funk and blues/traditional Irish folk…something for everyone with any soul played with boundless heart on everything ETH could possibly get their hands on.
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Track Listing
1 Musicbox
2 Another Round
3 Gasoline
4 Twirling Towards Freedom
5 Congress
6 Haven 2:57
7 Minstrel Boy
8 Martha Stuart
9 Moved Through The Fair
10 Life For Love
11 To The Quick
12 Down With The Ship
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Enter The Haggis are:
Brian Buchanan: vocals, fiddle, acoustic guitar, banjo, mandolin.
Craig Downie: highland and Deger bagpipes, vocals, tin whistle, jaw harp, harmonica.
Mark Abraham: Electric Bass
James Campbell: drums, percussion, vocals.
Trevor Lewington: vocals, electric and acoustic guitars, banjo.
congas, timbales and cowbells by Anthony Gilies.
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An Interview With Enter The Haggis:
Listening back to the interview with Enter the Haggis (taped right before their recent performance at the Scranton Cultural Arts Center) I knew it would be hard for me to capture the great mood of that hour in words for this article. With their easygoing manner and good-natured kidding of each another (and then me) it was evident from the start, this is a band who loves their work.
They spoke about their influences, the arranging and writing process, their fans, and a little of what is involved putting a tour together. We got laughing as each told stories of their experiences in the bands early years; playing in small pubs, trying to drive great distances in a short time between gigs; trying to get a little sleep in the van, spending so much time together, (they finish each other sentences) it quickly got to the point where everyone was laughing and talking at the same time, I stopped trying to keep track of who was saying what and just let the tape roll.
Judging by the packed houses on their tours and the ever increasing fan sites on the net; this is a band whose time has come.
Nicole:How do you like Scranton so far?
Brian: We haven’t gotten to see too much of it, but it seems nice.
Craig: Warm, is it always so tropical? [laughs]
Nicole: No, this is the warmest it’s been in a long time; usually we have a lot of snow.
Craig: Hmmm. [pretending he didn't know]
Brian: What would you like to know?
Nicole: When did Enter The Haggis begin?
Mark: Craig started the band up...1995, St.Patrick’s Day was the first gig. It’s been going for 11 years now, the current lineup is together 5 years...just a long process people coming in and out.
Brian: We all came from different backgrounds, bands, different kinds of music.
Mark and James studied jazz in college. Craig was in theater at the time and doing his acting stuff., it wasn’t working out very well [laughs].
Craig: It was working well, just wasn’t making enough money, so...actor or musician?
Brian: Bagpiper or musician [laughs].
Craig: One or the other, I had to make my choice.
 Nicole: Who are your influences?
Mark: All sorts of different stuff...each of us I guess; Progressive Rock, Jazz, World music; we like to listen to a lot of rock; creations of rock.
Trever: I’ve had various stages Acoustic Appalachian, and Bluegrass in those days were most what I liked.
Mark: In the beginning we were just kind of mixing Celtic music with Rock music together; and as the band has grown and developed we’ve done more experimentation blending two different world elements, Funk, some more Bluegrass on our last album,.We try and keep it interesting for ourselves and hopefully it’s interesting for other people.
Brian: Our playlist and stuff we listen to in the van when we’re on tour is pretty much all over the place; eclectic.
Nicole: You have sounds from lots of different music styles.
Brian: It’s goes from as heavy as we can get...to elevator music, pretty much [laughs].
Nicole: It’s interesting to hear some people say you’re Celtic while others think you’re Bluegrass or Rock.
Brian: Really, it’s curious to hear that. We have one song on our last album, well actually two songs that are sort of Bluegrass Fusion and but neither sound anything like traditional Bluegrass. One of them has a hard Funk groove with full band arrangements...you don’t hear a lot of drums in Bluegrass.
Nicole: I was talking with people outside and someone asked if there was a mosh pit.
Brian: We have had crowd surfing and line dancing at the same show.
Craig: Brian actually crowd-surfed once in a kilt. [all laugh]
Brian: Everybody was very...polite. [laughs]They took me out and then back and rolled me onto the stage just in time to come back into the song. Couldn’t have been timed better if it had to.
Nicole: What is a Casualty of Retail?
Brian: Well, it’s a name that we picked is part of a lyric of our song Gasoline; it’s one of the one’s that is more Bluegrass. We thought it was a cool name because it could be interpreted in several ways. In the song context, it’s literal: being a casualty of retail is sort of being somebody who is at the mercy of the retailers and advertisers. We identified with it because of the independent band we were completely dependant on retail. You kind of get to feel like your kind of the retail of the retail business, sometimes...trying to get airplay, or get placed in the record store.
Nicole: What is your writing process?
Brian: Some songs are like basic melodies and the approach is...we sort of all get together and flesh out together to come up with arrangements. Others are more complete when we get to them, and more obvious in our approach, so it doesn’t take a whole lot of arranging...the first person that brings it in sort of already has it set out.
Mark: The songs that sound most traditional probably take the longest to do. Because we’re always trying to make them sound non-traditional, our take on it always seems to take forever. [all laugh]
Brian: We spend a lot of time on instrumentals too trying to find the real groove behind it, make the arrangement, bring in different parts.
Nicole: What is the best part about touring?
Brian: Everyone probably has a different answer, but for me, it’s probably travel; because at the point of our careers we’re at we do get to see more of the areas that we travel to.
Mark: Travel. Although we don’t get to see a whole lot. We were in Vancouver this past weekend and I’ve been there before, but it was just nice to go and see things you don’t see all the time. We do a lot of our Northeast dates heading down 84, 81 and 90 and back around.
Trever: We toured Germany Last year and went through the Alps in Austria, and that was great.
Nicole: Do you get time between dates to check out the area?
James: Not as much as we’d like to.
Brian: We did in Italy and Germany...we scheduled some extra time to drive around. That was worth a lot of dues we had to pay in the years previous, it was a good payoff.
Nicole: What about the previous years, when you first got started?
Trever: We in the past had agencies that booked places that were 15 hour drives between shows. Consecutive days. Spent a lot of time setting up, play, and tearing down, trying too sleep sitting up in a van for hours on end.
 Brian: More than a few times we’ve had overnight drives and James has driven pretty much all night and we tried to go to sleep in the van; the worse was the ride was between North Carolina and Tallahassee we played until 12:00 we were out of there by 1:00 and we had to play in Tallahassee 11:00 the next morning.
James: We had to be there at 10:00.
Mark: It was a 12 hour drive.
Brian: It was a 12 hour drive, and we did it in 10 hours, and we literally got there just in time to set up in the blistering heat...sound check and then play.
Mark: it was a really foggy morning.
James: I was driving all night. I was toast when we got finally got there. [all laugh]
Brian: We’d would play a show where there’s no one there but the staff and we’d play the whole set. Waitresses walking by.
Craig: Thank you, thank you.
Brian: There was one show back then I remember where the only person at the second set was my Dad and he left before the third set. But, you can’t really complain I guess, because it was better than washing dishes.
Craig: I did that once, in High School. but got fired [laughs].
Brian: Craig’s had every job. He did everything from speechwriting on Parliament Hill to quanity surveying.
Nicole: You got fired from dishwashing?
Craig: I did, yes. I went to a Nazareth concert instead of going to work and I got fired when I got back. It’s funny because we did a show up in Ontario north of Lake Superior and Nazareth was playing at it, and never in a million years we would have thought that we would play on the same stage as a huge band like Nazareth...the band that got me fired from dishwashing at 16. [all laugh]
Brian: The one place we played...you walk around this little thing behind the stage, which looks like we’re walking off into a back stage room, but it was actually a closet, so in order to get out of the way so people can’t see you anymore, until the encore...you walk into this closet...we’re crammed in there climbing up on top of one another. [all laugh] Please ask us out for an encore!
Nicole: Do you have any pre-performance rituals?
Brain: This. We do interviews before every show.
Craig: We don’t have anything we actually do before a show.
Nicole: Whatever you do or don't do is working.
Brian: Craig does change the batteries in his hearing aid. [all laugh]
Craig: I knew that was coming.
[Someone comes into the room to let them know time is up]
Brian: Well, we hoped the interview was everything you hoped it would be, and more.
Nicole: Oh, it was...
Craig: Some are not much...well...sometimes it’s not as much fun. It gets quiet after 15 minutes and we’re just sitting there watching the wheels turn on the tape recorder [laughs].
Brain: What we’re saying is your interview was way more fun.
Craig: Yea, good questions, quality of questions...
Nicole: Are you lying?
[Silence]
Craig: No, why would we lie about something like that? [all laugh]
Craig: We, really enjoyed it. Thanks.
Nicole: Well, [laughs] thank you.
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