Why HEADSTRONG?

These Headstrong Women

Heisk’s new album, Headstrong is coming out on 26th January 2024, and we couldn’t be more excited to launch it at Celtic Connections! Join us for a party and a half at Tramway on 25th January with Calum Stewart Trio too! Tickets Here.

The title ‘Headstrong’ is taken from my (Sally’s) tune, These Headstrong Women. I first came across this phrase when working with Glasgow’s ‘Bard in the Botanics’ open air Shakespeare company, whose 2017 season was on the theme ‘These Headstrong Women’- a quote taken from The Taming of the Shrew. For my millennial generation, that’s perhaps better known as the inspiration behind 10 Things I Hate About You… In the play, sisters Katherine and Bianca are pitted against each other, with none of Bianca’s many suitors allowed to wed her until her ‘unruly’ older sister Katherine has been married off, and ‘tamed’.

As they always do so brilliantly, Bard in the Botanics approached this from a feminist angle, and combined elements of ‘The Tamer Tamed’ by John Fletcher with Shakespeare’s original to create an incredibly compelling yet comic production (directed by Gordon Barr). I was lucky enough to work with (the ever-creative, ever-supportive and ever-tolerant!) director Jennifer Dick on the music for Queen Lear during that same season. Inspired by my experience with Bard in the Botanics and fuelled by more than a little rage at the state of the world, I wrote These Headstrong Women in August 2017, as a celebration of all the brave, creative and headstrong womxn (and their allies) in the creative industries and the whole team at Bard in the Botanics.