AS an Abriachan lad, appearing at Inverness venue The Ironworks tonight should certainly count as a hometown show for John Somerville.
However, one recent show was certainly much further afield — Tokyo in Japan.
"I was out there playing with a Japanese violinist," he explained.
"She spent some time in Scotland and took a shine to Scottish music and so she was looking for a Scottish accordion player to do a recital. We played in a concert hall in downtown Tokyo and it was a great experience to see how Scottish music went down — and it went down very well, there’s something about the rhythm and the subtleties that folk can identify with.
"And Tokyo was an amazing place to hang out in for a week, so I’m very lucky. It’s amazing the way that everything works over there. There’s just this kind of seamless flow and you kind of stand in amongst it all and think to yourself: how is this all working?"
So would he like to go back and take the other 11 members of the Treacherous Orchestra with him?
"We would love it," he said.
"There are bands like Lau or Fiddlers’ Bid from the Scottish scene who have already gone out there and proved quite successful. Lau are now at a stage where they are going out and doing regular tours. For that reason you can only assume that Scottish music as a whole is going down well, but also some of the more inventive and innovative stuff.
"But taking a 12 piece band like the Treacherous Orchestra is a very different prospect from taking a three-piece like Lau. You would assume that at some point it would be a nice place to go and play music, but with the logistics for the Treacherous Orchestra you would really need someone who knew what they were doing in terms of organisation."
Much easier to organise are shows closer to home and this summer the Treacherous Orchestra have enjoyed a busy round of festivals, including another nearby engagement at Belladrum in August.
"We’ve been doing some great gigs up and down the country and we were in Brittany at the Lorient Festival as well and we’ve had some great shows," Somerville said.
"This summer we’ve just been lucky that we’ve picked up some of the bigger festivals like the Cambridge Folk Festival and Shrewsbury down south as well as Belladrum, so we’ve really enjoyed our summer.
"This tour is a way for us to get back on the road and play some indoor venues, but also a chance to cement what we’ve done over the summer with the usual mix of mayhem."
The current tour, in contrast, allows Treacherous Orchestra to take their music inside, which brings its own challenges and rewards.
"The Ironworks is quite a big venue in itself, but you feel there is a real collective energy," he said.
"You get that at a festival, but you feel that when there is a roof over your head you can feel there is a bit more of a connection with the audience. There’s a bit more of that cauldron atmosphere."
It also gives the band a chance to let the public hear a little bit more of debut album "Origins", which was released earlier this year.
Considering the band traces its origins back to a musical meeting of minds at Glasgow’s Celtic Connections Festival back in 2009, the debut album can fairly be described as long awaited. However, fans will be glad to know the band hope for a shorter period prior to unleashing album two.
"We’re going to get back into the rehearsal studio and we’ll be working creatively for the next few months," Somerville said. "Hopefully it’s not going to take as long as the first one, so we should have something out fairly soon."
Somerville, who has chalked up membership of several other bands over the years, among them Croft No.5 and accordion supergroup Box Club, has plenty of other things to occupy his time other than Treacherous Orchestra.
One of these is Halcyon, the more dance orientated outfit he has formed with fellow Treacherous members fiddle-player Adam Sutherland from Foyers and guitarist Barry "Spad" Reid from Kilmorack. Somerville revealed he is working on some material for the trio just now, with a tour coming up over the festive season.
"Beyond that there are lots of different things," he added.
"I’m off to Austria, playing with a musician out there, then Berlin with a couple of other musicians, the Basque Country and Spain, so keep moving. At some point you have to narrow down and make a decision because you can’t keep on being transient all the time, but at the moment I’m just really enjoying the learning aspect of playing with so many people. One week it’s a Japanese violinist, then the next it’s a jazz fiddle player from Austria. Musically you feel very lucky to be in that position."
However, Somervile always had a wide breadth of influences.
"There are definite Eastern European roots there with my mum being Czech," he acknowledged.
"I’ll listen to anything. I’m not someone who’s always listening to Scottish music. I like every genre and I think that, along with these roots in Scotland and the Czech Republic, it all seeps in and means that musically I always try and keep moving and trying new things."
• John Somerville appears with the Treacherous Orchestra at The Ironworks, Academy Street, Inverness, this evening. Doors open 7.30pm.
