Coffee with Kevin

This is Glasgow-based musician, Kevin McDermott. I met Kevin for a coffee today to talk about the work he's planning as part of an artist-led project called Absent Voices.

I'm helping to spread the word about this fantastic initiative which aims to tell the creative story of the sugar industry in Greenock.

Over the course of the next year, Kevin and seven fellow artists, will be offering up their own individual (and sometimes collaborative) take on the rich legacy left by the once mighty and all-pervasive sugar industry.

The focus is the historic A-listed sugar warehouse in Greenock, which sits in the shadow of Greenock's Titan Crane and is directly opposite Cappielow, the ground at which Greenock Morton FC play.

Absent Voices is on Blipfoto HERE

Kevin, known to many as frontman with The Kevin McDermott Orchestra, is buzzing with ideas for Absent Voices and various other projects.

Expect the unexpected with Mr McDermott... more details to follow! Let's just say he'll be popping up in unusual gig venues.

We'd a great blether and Kevin was telling me about an impromptu night many years ago when the late Gerry Rafferty and fellow Stealers Wheel bandmate, Rab Noakes, gave him what amounted to an elite songwriting lesson.

Oh to have been a fly-on-the-wall as Gerry Rafferty played Stuck in the Middle with You in a flat in Glasgow, unpicking it for a chippy aspiring Glasgow songwriter who told him he wasn't into the sax 'bit' on Baker Street.