Search - Enter the Haggis :: Northampton

When you re a workhorse group that tours nearly 150 dates out of the year, has fans travel from one gig to the next and continues to grow more and more with each tour, there must be something engaging about your live show. Over the past decade and five albums, Enter The Haggis has been winning fans the grassroots way: one show at a time.

Recorded March 9 and 10, 2007 and mixed with Zach McNees at Saint Claire Studios in Lexington, KY, Northampton (Live) marks the sixth release by Celtic rock quintet Enter The Haggis. After years of studio albums, and a great deal of musical evolution since 2003 s Live at Lanigan s Ball, it was about time the band recapture the raw energy and musical prowess of the kind of live show that has left not only fans, but die hard Haggis Heads in its wake nationwide.

In a way, this album is a response to the fans who ve told us they love our studio albums, but that nothing captures the excitement and energy of our live show, said main vocalist, fiddler and keyboardist Brian Buchanan. It had been nearly five years since we did a live record, and our band and our music has evolved so much since then that we felt the time was right.

And so it went... One chilly March weekend in Northampton, MA, fans lined up outside the Iron Horse Music Hall in the rain for not one, but four sold out shows in two days. Our Celtic rock heroes emerge and begin greeting fans by name from teenage girls wearing studded bracelets to college kids to moms and dads. Yeah, ETH is big in this town. And not only here, fans traveled from at least 10 states to be a part of the recording.

Although these guys call Toronto home, Northampton, MA will claim it loves them more. The Iron Horse will always be part of the ETH story, said Buchanan. We've gone from a single 25 minute opening slot set a couple years ago to four sold-out shows in two nights this March

Consider Northampton (Live) a Best Of album, pulling the most rocking songs from the band s last two records onto one disc. Not only that, but the recording captures everything that has changed in the songs since those records came out. It s an album of new approaches both improvised and rehearsed to music from the past few years.