GUITARS made from a Ouija board and cigar box are specially-picked parts of a Peeblesshire rock musician’s instrument collection.
West Linton guitarist Doug Veitch, 64, joked that he can summon the dead with just a few notes on the Ouija board instrument known as “the tool of the devil”.
He said: “In guitar collecting I have gone full circle from what are nowadays expensive instruments – like a 1964 Fender Telecaster and 1978 Stratocaster – to homemade items, like the three-string Cigar box, exquisitely crafted by Shonky Musical Instruments in Somerset.”
Shonky says its guitars and musical instruments are made from recycled, reclaimed or re-used materials.
Doug said: “I have never paid much for my vintage guitars and now have about 30.
“In Birmingham there is a real scene for cigar box guitars and I hope to bring the first festival to Scotland, in West Linton on Friday, May 10.
“I found the Ouija Board and Shonky added a hand-carved fret board for a very reasonable £180.
“I also have a Shonky double bass made from a six-bottle wine box with the fret board made from an old carved table leg.
“At school in Hawick I got into music listening to The Country Hour on Radio 2.
“Not like my pals who listened to Jethro Tull and The Bay City Rollers!
“Aged about 17 I headed to London to get involved in music, filling in doing various jobs like window cleaning which was an early start and finish.”
Doug’s first disc, recorded in 1982, impressed a record store owner, the boss of ‘Rocks Off Records’ in London’s Hanway Street, so much he asked one of his workers, Shane MacGowan (the late Pogues front man) to get him 100.
Back then, known as ‘The Champion Doug Veitch’, the West Linton Community Council member hovered on the fringes of the 1980s London music scene.
And his singles featured on the Radio 1 John Peel show.
His two-minute-and-50-second debut disc ‘Gone Train’, produced by dub legend the Mad Professor, was recorded with his Clydeside Rebels: drummer Roger Hilton, violinist Bobby Valentino, accordionist Camilla Saunders, and Jim Craig, on pedal steel.
Doug said: “The single had a pull-out poster sleeve and back then if you sold 1,000 discs you were in profit, at least 4,000 were pressed.
“John Peel played it as his single of the week and many of the music papers featured it too.
“Shane MacGowan said my boss wants 100 of these. We became good mates.”
Doug cut six singles in total with the musical papers declaring each one ‘single of the week’, but he did not make the big time and was known as the “maverick Scots genius”.
Doug said: “I never signed to a major label and wanted to do it all myself.
“I founded Disc Afrique with Owen Elias who I’d met in a squat in the Old Brompton Road.
“We went to Zimbabwe and decided to release some music by the Bhundu Boys and again John Peel went nuts about the music.”
Doug left the London music scene in 1988 and did not play professionally again till a renaissance in 2007.
That year and into 2008 he joined Rise Kagona, of the Bhundu Boys, for a series of gigs and festivals, including on the Avalon Stage at Glastonbury.
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