Bob Pegg
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| Bob Pegg - Roots and Flutes |
Musician, Songwriter, Educator, Storyteller
When Bob Pegg tells stories, the legends, myths, riddles and tales of wonder are interwoven with music and song. Traditional songs and his own compositions, and the sounds of the instruments he has picked up on his travels – among them the ox horn, snorrie bone, buckie shell, lyre, deer bone flute and jaw harp – infuse his performances with a resonance and universality that bridge cultural divides.
Bob was brought up on the classic tales of the Grimm Brothers which he heard from his Nana and his Auntie Lizzie - Rapunzel, Hansel and Gretel, Cinderella, Snow White, Rumpelstiltskin: a strange world full of witches and wicked step-mothers, high towers, locked doors and deep, dark woods. More recently he has found inspiration listening to the great Scottish Traveller storytellers, and has organised many events highlighting their work.
Living in Strathpeffer in the Highlands, Bob takes a special interest in Northern lore. He has helped children in the Highlands and Islands schools to explore local traditions and feed them back into their communities through CD recordings, drama, pictorial art, and prize-winning animation. His own repertoire includes the stories of the Last Wolf in Sutherland, how the Swelkie whirlpool was formed in the Pentland Firth, and what happened to Finn MacCool and his warriors when they lived in Knockfarrel fort above Strathpeffer.
In 2005 Bob was awarded a Scottish Arts Council Storytelling Bursary to study Norse traditions and their locations in the Highlands and Islands. This allowed him to build on an invitation the previous year to tell stories in Iceland, and led to the creation of Fire and Ice, an evening of stories and music inspired by the Vikings. Another one-man show, The Last Wolf: and other Tales – international stories, songs and music inspired by the theme of canis lupus – was launched in Bleddfa (The Place of the Wolf) in the Welsh Borders, and he has also devised a “prehistoric” presentation, Stories from the Stones, originally for Kilmartin Glen in Argyll, but appropriate to any ancient site.
Bob is a compelling performer, at ease in intimate gatherings, but equally capable of gripping the imaginations of families filling a school hall. He specialises in diversity, successfully undertaking storywalks from Glen Nevis to Aberdour, schools and special needs work from Portree to John O’Groats, festival work from Whitby to Aberdeen, and straight-down-the-line performances from Borgarnes in Iceland to St Magnus Cathedral in Orkney.
(thanks to the Scottish Storytelling Centre)
Bob came out of the thriving British folk scene of the 1960s, where he performed in a duo with his then-wife Carol. They recorded one album with Bill Leader, He Came From the Mountains, before going on to form the cult folk-rock band Mr Fox, where they combined tunes in the traditional idiom with gothic storytelling and eerie, swirling psychedelia on two albums, Mr Fox and The Gypsy, now reissued together as Join Us in Our Game. Following the dissolution of the band, Bob released an album with Carol of Sydney Carter songs, And Now it is So Early (1972), followed by two albums with Nick Strutt – Bob Pegg and Nick Strutt (1973) and The Shipbuilder (1974).
His first solo album, Ancient Maps, came out in 1975. These three albums are now anthologised on a double CD Keeper of the Fire along with the lost song cycle Bones and other unreleased and rare recordings. Since then Bob has focused on his parallel calling as a storyteller and educator, releasing one further album of songs, 1996’s wonderful The Last Wolf.
Contact: Bob Pegg
Address: The Bungalow, Ardival, Strathpeffer, Ross-shire, IV14 9DS
Telephone: 01997 421186
Email: moc.liamg|kcabstac#moc.liamg|kcabstac
Website: http://www.bobpegg.com
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