Congratulations to the staff, board of directors and volunteers of the Fergus Scottish Festival and Highland Games on another awesome event. Eighty years is a community feat. Thanks for letting me join in this year. I had a great volunteer experience.
The event was everything I hoped it would be and so much more. I made new friends. Hugged old friends. I met incredible people from around the world. Heard wonderful stories of generations of families who return to the festival every year. Laughed hard. Danced harder.
But there is one highlight that I wanted to share with you, because I manifested this in last week’s column, when I confessed my childhood crush on the Bay City Rollers.
On Friday I was invited to attend a media event with the Bay City Rollers. I tried to be a professional, but inside, I assure you, the significance of this moment wasn’t lost on me. Kindergarten Kelly, the freakishly scrawny little girl with great big glasses and a short “are you a boy?” haircut who carried her BCR tartan saddlebag to school to show allegiance to the band, would never, ever have believed this day could or would happen.
And then it did. They say you shouldn’t meet your icons, but now that I have met Stuart “Woody” Wood, the only original member of the current band, I am absolutely chuffed that my wish came true. He’s a survivor of an industry that spares few, whose passion for music never wavered despite surviving the boy-band drama that should have been the textbook lessons of what not to do for boy bands that followed. Still his eyes were alight with gratitude for the audiences that support the music of the Bay City Rollers, something he does not take for granted.
That’s my takeaway from the event. A musician meeting a fan and realizing the gift that is the power of music to stand the test of time. The simplistic joy of a melody. Nostalgia that heals. In a world gone sideways, music is the thing that gets us out of our heads and into our hearts. We need that.
The Bay City Rollers couldn’t have been more generous with their time or their answers to the questions fellow media members asked. They were happy to be asked. No egos in the space. They were genuinely excited for their show in a town that immediately felt like home.
Come Saturday night (see what I did there?), while standing in the crowd watching the opening band, the BCRs came out into the audience to watch their friends take the stage, unbeknownst to most everyone, it seemed. They stood right in front of me. At some point, they turned around and saw me standing there and it was like we were long-lost friends. Hugs and handshakes. Laughter and conversation about how they’d be sure to get Fergus up and dancing in their set. No celebrity arrogance. Just friends talking with friends. My six-year-old heart was happy.
Behind me, my family were all smiles, because they knew what this meant to me. True to form, that was the moment our son turned to the Carpenter and said with dry sarcasm, “Mom never laughs with you like that” (sarcasm is a love language in our clan).
Bye, bye, Bay City Rollers.
Thanks for the memories.
