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Celtic Clanjamphry

The Radio Show

Celtic Clanjamphry started airing at the beginning of July 2007, but its genesis lies in monthly shows that Jack hosted on Heartland fm broadcasting from Pitlochry in Scotland between 1992 and 2002. Jack’s good friend Wayne Bean began a weekly show called Keltic Korner on WETS fm and arranged for Jack’s Scottish programs to be sent over and broadcast as part of his series and when Denise Cozad took over the Celtic music reins from Wayne she continued to include Jack’s Scottish shows, until her untimely death.

When Jack and his wife Dr. Wendy Welch moved to Big Stone Gap in Virginia (only and hour from the WETS studios) he got in touch with station manager Wayne Winkler, who invited him to re-start the station’s in-house Celtic music series and Celtic Clanjamphry was born. The Scots word ‘clanjamphry’ means a gathering of an untidy nature or a rabble, by the way.

Because the show goes out immediately before Fiona Ritchie’s ‘Thistle and Shamrock’ program, Jack felt it was important to produce something a bit different. Jack knows Fiona and didn’t want to be tramping on her toes!

So the show features not only traditional Celtic music played by ‘natives’ and their transatlantic cousins, but often plays American musical descendants of Celtic music and songs. The geography of the Celts is interpreted very loosely, so that music from England, France, Italy and even Louisiana and Newfoundland will frequently be heard alongside that of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, Brittany and Galicia. The musical offerings will often venture into pop and avant-gard territory as well. Truly a clanjamphry!