Creative Scotland Crowdmatch has provided £3,648 of match funding
New Poozies album!
Edinburgh, United Kingdom
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Aim
Help us raise the remaining funds needed to bring out our new album by pre-ordering your signed copy or indulging in a unique Poozie reward!
We are now able to share with you Sarah's newly painted cover art for the album. Unfortunately there's no way to edit it in to the rewards page but this is what the album will look like, and this is what you'll get if you purchase the print or the painting.
The Poozies started life 35 years ago as an all-woman folk band - pioneers from the beginning, with a healthy dose of sass and irreverence, paving the way for sparkly women in a beardy man’s world. The band are ever-evolving, and this new album sees us embracing our unique brand of Trad-Punk with defiantly idiosyncratic, new music; riotous fiddles, shimmering electric guitar and distorted electro-bass harp, all bursting with energy, seduction, rascality and invention.
This album marks the beginning of a new era for the band and we're very excited to share it with you. In the interests of equality we've accepted two men into the line-up, and it turns out they're very very good at what they do too!
The album is being recorded at Castlesound Studios in Pencaitland, Scotland. We love this studio and we love the engineer there, Stuart Hamilton. He's worked on loads of projects with us collectively and individually over the years and he's incredible at his job. The Blue Nile have recorded there, along with REM, Simple Minds and The Proclaimers, to name a few.
Who's in the band?
The band continue to be anchored by the glorious bass of founding member Mary Macmaster’s electro-harp. Mary is an inspiration to all who know her - we won't say how many years but for a lot of years she has been the undisputed goddess of this amazing instrument. To watch her play is to watch the epitome of cool, and the sound she gets out of that thing is unreal. She is also queen of the best party house (and Poozies HQ), with a kitchen that not only serves up the most delicious food but also may have been visited by aliens and/or messed about with the time/space continuum. Sometimes things get to the stage where you have to say, 'what happens in Mary's kitchen stays in Mary's kitchen.' But that's only if you can't really remember what happened.
Eilidh Shaw has been a fiddle player with The Poozies for a very long time now; in fact it's probably safe to say she grew up and became an adult in this band. There's allegedly a slightly mischievous bent to her personality which pokes through in her general music-making and composing. She is west-coast highland to the core with a style that is instantly recognisable, and her songs and tunes have a way of reflecting a life filled with good times and great music. Eilidh and Sarah met in the early 90s and went on to travel the world together, founding cult alt-folk explosion 'Harem Scarem' and prog-ceilidh innovators 'The Squashy Bag Dance Band' along the way, so it was the perfect match when Sarah was able to join The Poozies in 2017.
Sarah McFadyen from Orkney is not only a fantastic fiddle player, banjo player, guitarist and singer - she is also a brilliant abstract artist and a violin maker. Her music and art are influenced by the edge of the land and sea and the folklore of the northern islands, and she has an otherwordly, ethereal vibe to her that can lull you into a sense of sweetness and light... Not necessarily false but once there you may be jolted out again by her kitchen-sink lyrics, so worth pointing out. That said, she is always good to have around - especially on long car journeys, as she's a great advocate for stopping every 20 minutes or so for ice cream and/or fish and chips. If possible these stops will include a trip to a charity shop too, where her sense of style is a wonder to behold.
The shimmeringly joyful guitar powerhouse, Mike Bryan, joined the band in 2023 and quickly became part of the furniture.... the equivalent of a sparkling, multi-faceted, celebrity-frequented nightclub mirror ball. For those of you who would like to know how he got in to an all-woman band - there are various answers. Some are public, some are private, some are true, some are made-up, some of them started off as made-up and then became true, some are just so eye-poppingly out-there it's better you don't know. But it's a very good thing. He's a man with an industrial sized ice box - and this is seriously important in these challenging times.
Lastly, the most recent addition to the line-up is the incredible Donald Hay on drums. He is not your normal drummer, oh no, he is Donald Drummy, and that means drums like you've never heard before. Unless it was him. Because nobody else sounds like him. Apart from being the coolest drummer he is also a brilliant cook, and can regularly be found cooking up some amazing meal in the aforementioned Poozies HQ party kitchen. For many, many years all five of us have spent an inordinate amount of time around that kitchen table, unaware that at some point in the future we would all be Poozies together. Wow, it's truly beautiful and serendipitous.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 31st July 2026 at 12:38pm