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We're brought together for a collaborative project called 'Coming Home', which was commissioned by Celtic Colours Festival (and based on a Scottish writers project called , which I was involved in a couple of years ago).

My experience of Burnsong and of working on the ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio Ballads back in 2006 convinced me that I write best within a thematic framework, and so, as nominal project co-ordinator, I set a wee bit of 'Coming Home-work' leading up to the project to help focus our ideas.

And the ideas that emerge are just beautiful.

Rose brings a newspaper clipping about a barely remembered school colleague who was murdered in her hometown in the summer. She takes it to Dave Gunning and they write a soaring elegy to people left behind, and people forgotten, which starts and ends -

"You only travelled on the wind as far as this town goes and how your story ever went no-one really knows."

It has the most moving duet 'ooh' chorus I've ever heard (why is it that sometimes not using words packs more emotional punch?) and just about finishes me off on live on stage.

David joins Rose to finish a song he's been carrying round in his head for 20 years and writes another from scratch that vividly recalls, like an old postcard, the day he shipped out of the Clyde for Canada with his parents more than thirty-five years ago.

David also polishes off my favourite song to emerge from the whole week, the half-written psalm-like 'Ashen Town', which Dave Gunning brought to the house:

"Here lies the village church
No cross, no hymn no verse
The colours congregate in shades of grey"

Dave proves himself a masterful storyteller in his joint work with the excellent Mr Keelaghan too, creating a Texas Border style hangman's tale, which hinges on the murder of the local banker (an image that resonates strongly in the current climate!).

The collective nod to current politics and the notion of 'coming home to roost' finds it most explicit form in 'House of Cards and a Pack of Lies', a bluesy six-way co-write with a satisfyingly tidy rhyme scheme ­

"We bought the dream and sold it on
And it ain't worth nothing now the money's gone
For the only shelter that credit buys is a house of cards and a pack of lies"

I bring a simple song structure that rest on the image of an elderly woman with dementia being cared for by her husband, whom she can't recall. And Lori, whose mum turns out to work in a care home, refashions the husband as the woman's son:

"When's Billy gonna come home?, she asks. Soon now, soon now. When's Billy gonna come home?, she asks. There's care in the old man's eyes. He says, Billy's at the park for a kick around and he won't be back til the sun goes down"

On our final afternoon of co-writing, the three fellas write a hilarious barber shop style ode to our chief cook and 'house mom', Flo Sampson (whose son Gordie is himself a Grammy Award winning songwriter), whilst the three lassies write what you might, politely, call a 'concept piece'. Or just a really weird three part harmony thing in several time signatures...

It's an amazing week and nearly twenty new songs arrive in the world as a result, none of them duds either.

Now we're all just gasping to see what happens next...

Karine