Folk - Michael Marra

When leading Scottish folkie Michael Marra was asked to give a fingerprint sample at Washington Airport last year, he was reminded of the case of Shirley McKie, a detective at the centre of a late nineties justice row. She was wrongly accused of unauthorised access to a murder scene on the basis of what turned out to be flawed fingerprint evidence. She claimed her innocence, and was later acquitted at trial. Marra realised how much he had admired her campaign to clear her name, and decided to write a protest song about her case. “I am Shirley McKie, She is me and I am she, You are too, Shirley is you, We are she because Shirley is we,” it goes.

Marra is famous for penning songs with a Scottish and particularly Dundonian bent - one of his more famous numbers is about the splendidly named former Dundee United goalkeeper Hamish McAlpine, called ‘Hamish the Goalie’. Another audience favourite is a number named ‘Frida Kahlo’s Visit to the Taybridge Bar’, a song imagining the Mexican painter paying a visit to one of Dundee’s most famous pubs. Marra, who draws his influences from the likes of Tom Waits, Bob Dylan and Randy Newman, is famed for his brilliantly entertaining live act, and has chosen a hugely eclectic range of subjects for his songs, from a song about the French pop-star Johnny Hallyday to one about a music-loving couple who have to split their beloved vinyl collection when they divorce, called ‘Blood and Beefheart’. Cult stuff. DL