The band has travelled all over, from the Hebrides to New York, from Majorca to Puerto Rico, and, not surprisingly they've spent quite some time in Cuba, one of the spiritual homes of Salsa “Cuba is the home of Sol music and Salsa, while some people say New York is the home of Salsa. It's an incredibly musical country. It's great to go there. We were doing 5 or 6 gigs a week in Edinburgh, and a couple of us saved up our pennies and eventually got enough for flights to go to Cuba, and headed off, not knowing what to expect. We arrived and got on the bus to go to Havana, and there was Salsa music on the bus, and I just though ‘yeh'(laughs). We hung out, got lessons from some musicians, and played and got the vibe. We went back later, playing in Santiago”. Toby's phrases are peppered with, naturally in a soft Scottish brogue, brilliant, and amazing. His enthusiasm for the music is contagious, and indeed you can hear him shouting excitedly at the end of one of the tracks on the band's last album El agua de la vida.
What are the lyrical preoccupations of the band? “There are some straight ahead – like Agua de la vida, which whether it be whisky or music or whatever, whatever that makes you feel that life is more than drudgery, that's the water of life. There's Whisky & Ron, which is a cheeky sort of thing, from when we were at a party in Santiago and this Cuban girl and Scottish guy got together, and it becomes a metaphor for the music and the fusion and the mix of the cultures”.
The band have had major successes, while not being on a major label, relying largely on the Internet and the all-important word of mouth. “The Internet is perfect for bands like us. We don't have a multinational record label, or marketing, so it's great to get emails from people who've heard the band, from all around the world. It's phenomenal. I love it! We get messages from Mexico, Ireland, Puerto Rico, New York – you name it. We got a message from the Miami Sound Machine last week saying ‘love your music, when are you coming to Miami?’ “.
Obviously, for regular readers of Three Monkeys Online, that brings us on to the six million dollar question (or whatever figure the record company executives are quoting this week!), what about mp3's? “It's a good thing – they have to catch up with it. It's got to be good for small bands and small record labels. If people download them and pay the small artists for them it has to be a good thing. I don't worry about it – I've always taped stuff from and for friends, and it's kind of like that”.
And so on to plans for the future. The band have three studio albums currently, and are working on a fourth “We'll probably record it in late summer, and release it in early 2005. “The stuff we're writing now is really exciting, it's got a great feel to it, with lots of pipe tunes, and our new banjo player – really creative. It feels like a new music. We're pushing things further now”.
We end with a discussion on the love of Celtic music throughout Europe now, particularly in places like Italy and Spain, with the obvious connection in Galicia. Toby is enthusiastic about Spanish music and culture in general, having heard great bands in Spain and having played great gigs there, but as Fusion would have it, some of the best Spanish audiences he's encountered have been in Cork in Ireland, at the Guinness Jazz festival, where the band played. “We'd loads of Spaniards at our gigs in Cork, and it was great. They're late night partyers, which for a musician is great – they're just right!“.