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Dick Gaughan 1969-83 box set via crowdfunder two weeks away

by 37 Comments

19/03/2025

Dick Gaughan – R/evolution: 1969–83
Advance notice of Kickstarter campaign (due in mid-March)

Music biographer Colin Harper is launching a Kickstarter campaign in mid-March to crowdfund R/evolution: 1969–83 – a 7CD+DVD Dick Gaughan box set, with all proceeds going to the Scottish folk icon, who was forced to retire after a stroke in 2016.

For complex reasons, seven of Gaughan’s 12 albums from 1972–88 have never or only briefly been on CD and are not on digital platforms, nor available to third-party licensors. Of the other five, only one – the classic Handful of Earth (Topic, 1981) – has been remastered/re-presented in the past 28 years. The Harvard Tapes (Greentrax, 2019), a 1982 concert, was a welcome but isolated archive release in recent years. Where other artists of similar vintage see their names and music kept alive by reissues, anthologies, use of music in films etc., this hasn’t happened with Gaughan. To a new generation of people who might be interested, it’s almost as if he never was.

‘I found myself thinking about this late last year,’ says Colin Harper. ‘It felt alarming – upsetting, in fact – that such an incredible artist who had seemed to be a powerful, righteous, invincible performer when I saw him at concerts in the 80s and 90s had faded almost completely from view. I had to do something about it.’

Colin got in touch with Dick, who is ‘off the grid’, living modestly in Edinburgh, with health challenges. Dick eventually allowed himself to become excited about it. Many record labels that Colin works with on other archive projects just didn’t see a market; Colin thought differently – and the response from a recent Facebook post in a folk music interest group ‘announcing the forthcoming announcement’ of a crowdfunding campaign generated many hundreds of shares and comments. The overwhelming message was that people remembered Dick standing up for good causes in his decades of music in service to social justice and wanted to give the love back. ‘We need his voice more than ever now’, was a common response.

A Kickstarter promo video was filmed in Edinburgh at the home of Ian McCalman on 24 February with Colin, Barbara Dickson and Karine Polwart – two generations of Scottish folk royalty who venerate Gaughan as an artist and a human being. It’s currently being edited.

This box set will restore a whole era of lost music – 128 audio tracks (83 unreleased) plus 90 mins of vintage film licensed from BBC, STV, DR, WDR and others – with an extensive booklet to be written by Edinburgh native/acclaimed biographer Graeme Thomson. If its 1,000 units sell out, it will deliver a very meaningful sum for Dick Gaughan, which will make a difference to his way of life. If it succeeds, further unreleased gems from Gaughan’s career are promised – as is a tribute concert at Celtic Connections 2026.

Phot: Dick Gaughan in Edinburgh, February 2025, taken by Ian McCalman

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Comments

  2. Gaughan – ‘Farewell to Whisky’, John Peel session, Radio 1, 17 July 1977. A glimpse from the forthcoming box set ‘R/evolution: 1969-83’, launching via crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter (dot) com, Monday 24 March.

  3. A performance from the limited edition ‘Untroubled: Live in Belfast 1979-82’ digipak CD – signed by Dick Gaughan and with a booklet note by Tommy Sands – which will be an ‘extra’ reward in the Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund the 7CD+DVD Gaughan box set ‘R/evolution: 1969-83. The Kickstarter campaign launches on 24 March 2025. Gaughan often opened his shows with ‘Magdalen Green’ around 1980/81 but he never recorded it commercially. A version from his very first US concert (1981) will be included in the box set proper. 🙂

  5. Another trailer for the forthcoming (touch wood) Gaughan box set ‘R/evolution: 1969-83’. This one, ‘The Three Healths’, was recorded live at The Goat in St Albans by Tony Rundle (and mastered by Cormac O’Kane). The song concerns the 1715 Jacobite Rising in Scotland and was featured on DG’s now ‘lost’ (to licensors / reissue possibilities) first album ‘No More Forever’ (1972). Happily, the box set will include 6 of the 11 titles from that first album, in alternative (live or BBC) performances.

    • Re: “…was recorded live at The Goat in St Albans”

      What … you mean the Goat pub in Sopwell Lane, St. Albans? Really? That’s amazing. I’ve been there many times. It’s right near where my Dad lives. Very nice pub. There’s a beer garden at the back. I had no idea that they used to have folk gigs there.

      My favourite Dick Gaughan song:

      “So I’ll keep trying to make people happy
      I’ll keep trying in the best way I know how
      And for me to help make the most people happy
      I must make you even more sad and angry now

      So you see where you misunderstand me
      If you listen again then you might even find
      All the songs that I sing are love songs
      …But their love is a different kind”

      • Indeed – a masterpiece. There will be an STV performance of it on the box set plus the whole ‘Different Kind…’ album will be on it, remastered for the first time in decades.

    • Good article. Hoping for a good launch on Monday. We live in a world filled with trivia and trivial ‘celebrities’, where artists of substance like Dick Gaughan and – to take a very different example – Mike Westbrook are almost unknown. It’s not right I tell ye.

      • I couldn’t agree more! Seeing abject nonentities dominating popular culture is a significant incentive in doing something like this project – it really does feel like standing up for something worthwhile.

  9. £5,000+ in the first hour – blimey…

    Here’s the KS promo vid via YouTube – me, Barbara Dickson and Karine Polwart with a cameo from a certain Leith legend himself…

    • It’s astonishing, Lando. I actually had a proofreading deadline today (my day job, I suppose) so wasn’t as mesmerised by it as you might think! In fact, I only just noticed 15 mins ago that the box set + extra live album combo (limited to 200) had all but sold out – which seemed unfair to those just hearing about the set, or yet to do so. I’ve posted a ‘cunning plan’ update…

  13. Lovely to hear Lauren Laverne play a DG track earlier this morning on 6 Music…

    …As an added bonus, she “bigged-up” the box set and crowdfunder campaign.

    • Indeed! I’m in danger of being associated with something successful! Day 8 and £72,000+ raised so far.

      For the ease of the masses, here’s Radcliffle playing a Gaughan exclusive last week.

    • Thank you, Lodey 🙂 Its success means that several other Gaughan projects WILL happen – bringing further unreleased or rare tracks into the limelight, from other era of his music-making.

  17. Here’s a taster of something that will be on the box set’s DVD – an ‘orphaned’ pro TV film of a half-hour Vienna concert in 1981 (i.e. I can’t trace the broadcaster so it’s restored for the set from a bootleg source). The guitar mic failed here and there on the original broadcast, including for the last minute of this opening song. The mighty Eroc has flown in the missing guitar from a same-period concert recording (audio). Compare it with the original (below). 🙂

    After:

    Before (first song only):

  18. Here are three catalogue rarities that I’ve just uploaded (from vinyl) to Soundcloud. They’re NOT on the forthcoming box set – ‘Seven Yellow Gypsies’ comes from a 1974 festival album ‘Kertalg ’74’, issued in France (owned now by Universal – licensing from whom would have taken months); ‘Vigilante Man’ and ‘Pastures of Plenty’ derive from ‘Woody Lives!’ (1987) on Black Crow, a label regrettably sold to Dave Bulmer in the 90s and thus unlikely to ever see legitimate reissue. Dick is supported brilliantly on ‘Vigilante Man’ by Rory McLeod on harmonica and on ‘Pastures…’ by Rod Clements on bass.

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