[sound bites]

Celtic Grooves:
Enter the Haggis at the Soapbox

Andrew Kinback

In preparation of interviewing the Celtic-rock band Enter the Haggis (ETH), I felt it best that to understand the subject at hand, I would have to try haggis myself. Haggis is the traditional dish of Scotland comprising sheep’s heart, intestines, oatmeal, onion and spices all rolled into a sheep’s stomach.

Upon trying the nightmarish-sounding plate with a side of mashed potatoes and turnips, I found its unique components created a rather piquant taste, almost a sort of salted corn-beef flavor. That uniqueness is exactly why the band chose haggis for its namesake, guitarist Trevor Lewington says during our phone interview last week.

“We came up with the name right before we played our first show ever,” he explains. “It’s a metaphor for our music. We mixed all these musicians together to come up with something unusual but palpable to people.”

The first show took place in 1996, and since then the Toronto-based group—which also has Brian Buchanan on the vocals and fiddle, Craig Downie manning the Highland bagpipes and tin whistle, Mark Abraham on bass, and James Campbell on drums—has taken their brand of Celtic-rock, multiple grooves, and bagpipes to various festivals, venues and even the “Live with Regis and Kelly.” Needless to say, they have won the allegiances of thousands of fans worldwide.

Their particular genre of music has witnessed a boom in the past decade thanks to bands like Flogging Molly, The Dropkick Murphys, The Young Dubliners and MacKeel, fusing traditional Celtic influences with more modern-day musical disciplines from punk to folk music. While such other bands tend to get larger publicity, as well as surly bar crowds riled up, ETH believes they offer a varied take on the rising musical style.

“The difference between us and those other groups is I like to think we incorporate a lot of different grooves like a laid-back funk groove, bluegrass groove and even Caribbean grooves,” Lewington notes. “We are often grouped with jam-bands by promoters, so we improvise onstage. Arrangements change every night, solos change; we want to catch the improvisational spirit.”

That spirit explains why they have already released two live albums (Live! and Northampton) and a live DVD (Live at Lanigan’s Ball) in their arsenal along with four other albums. After over 10 years of playing together and introducing the world to their sound that can only be described as “haggis,” the band continues to pound out fresh, rocking material.

“Musically we all have different influences, from jazz to world music to Rage Against the Machine,” Lewington explains. “We are influenced by reading and what is happening in the world around us. We never know where we will be going from one album to the next.

[The material] speaks for itself and lets us know if it’s going to work or not.”

So far, their muse has served them well and has put many a folk in kilt a dancing.

I told Trevor about my haggis-tasting. “Dangerous job—eating haggis,” he laughs. He confessed that he had tried many kinds before—now, essentially, he’s vegetarian. After one taste, I understood why.

However, listening to ETH will satisfy even those with the most diverse musical tastes.

Enter the Haggis will be rocking the Soapbox on June 24th at 8:30pm at 255 North Front St. Tickets are $8. To pick up any of ETH’s fine musical wares, visit their Web site at www.enterthehaggis.com.