Long Gone Lonesome

Thomas Fraser sung the country blues. His posthumous albums have been called "the best American music you will hear", and tell of small-town frustrations and love in the tradition of singing cowboys and Nashville loners. Yet Fraser was a fisherman who never left his native Shetlands. He is celebrated by an annual festival, but Duncan McLean admits that Long Gone Lonesome, a new offering from the National Theatre, emerges from personal enthusiasm.

"I loved his albums when they came out," he smiles. "And there are connections between my band and Fraser. Fraser grew up in a community without electricity until 1952, when he heard Jimmie Rodgers. Our violinist came from a self-sufficient family with no electricity."

Mclean's experience as musician and playwright insisted that he was the writer to lead the tribute. The form of Long Gone draws on the traditional pub session, incorporating story-telling and live music alongside the script. With the atmosphere of a Highland Ceilidh – most nights will be followed by dancing to Mclean's Lone Star Swing Band – it even tours the sort of fishing villages that Fraser inhabited. In the past, Scottish Theatre has had a hard time creating something that drew on its own traditions without being nostalgic and has tended towards gritty urban drama with dismal social realist scripts. Long Gone Lonesome hopes to bring theatre into the community, explore a personal history and, like Fraser himself, bridge the gap between tradition and contemporary art.