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Bad times are great for Battlefield Band

In Olympia: Scottish group rolls with economy

MOLLY GILMORE; For The Olympian | • Published October 26, 2009

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Who considers the economic climate to be a good thing? Well, for one, Mike Katz of Scotland's Battlefield Band, playing Wednesday and Saturday in Olympia.

It’s not that Katz, the band’s bagpiper, wants to benefit from other people’s misfortune. It’s just that the band is just out with an album about economics, the gold standard and, well, luck.

“We started off trying to put together a bunch of material to do with gold and the various gold rushes around the world,” he said, including the title song about illegal miners in South Africa and a reinterpretation of Nina Simone’s “Plain Gold Ring.”

But the band also offers songs about coal mining and whaling — and one called “Robber Barons,” which compares the greed of today to the greed of the past, arguing that not much has changed since the Middle Ages.

“Quite luckily for us, as we’re doing all this, the stock markets all crashed,” Katz said.

And an early review suggests that he could be right.

“The album, when all is said and done, has the potential to be recognized as the Celtic soundtrack for our current economic downturn and financial Armageddon,” Allan Wilkinson wrote in a review for Northern Sky (www.allanwilkinson.co.uk).

While most of the songs on the album don’t address the current crisis, those from or about the past can illuminate the present, Katz said. “You’re using history to make the same points. These things never change.

“When we sing these songs, we’re not trying to depress people,” he added. “Some of the songs are quite hopeful.”