The Big Yin meets the Hydro: Gary Innes on Billy Connolly, banter and the biggest ceilidh in the world

Scotland’s biggest night of traditional music returns this December as Hoolie in the Hydro celebrates Sir Billy Connolly. Its organiser, Gary Innes, explains how a former shinty captain became the driving force behind an arena-scale ceilidh.

“Anyone who’s worked with me would say I’m extremely hardworking, easy to work with, and I’m enthusiastic.”

His wife calls him a workaholic, and you see why. The retired shinty star, and former Scotland captain turned accordionist, bandleader, broadcaster and festival organiser has ended up running Scotland’s biggest traditional music night in its biggest venue. The Hydro holds over 14,000: filling it once might have been audacious; filling it year after year has made the Hoolie in the Hydro the world’s largest ceilidh.

“I literally have such a drive and passion for making things happen — events and gigs and concerts and just, yeah, just pushing traditional music forward,” he says.

That restless energy has carried him from Highland sports fields to the world’s stage. And this December, precisely two months from today, it brings him back to the Hydro for the Hoolie’s fourth edition — one themed around a Glasgow icon whose career began in the same folk clubs that raised Innes: Sir Billy Connolly.

From shinty pitches to the Hydro stage

Innes’s restlessness has deep roots. “I’m probably the only 6’4” man in the world with wee man syndrome,” he laughs. Before music became his métier, he was captain of Scotland’s shinty side. Football, he insists, was never for him. “I look around at all these people tripping over their own feet and getting thousands a week, and you think of all these other sports, with dedicated sportsmen and women, who don’t get the money or opportunity to pursue their love. I was always trying to push shinty that way.”

The same instinct — that sense of injustice, that need to amplify what he believes is underappreciated — carried over when he turned to music. “When I was in my teens and early twenties, I was playing in village halls and pubs, because that’s where the scene was. We’ve been part of this wave… getting our music out to larger audiences. I feel our music is the greatest in the world, and I feel it should be enjoyed and appreciated by more people.”

That conviction has made him both a frontman and an organiser. With Mànran he has headlined festivals worldwide. On BBC Radio Scotland he hosts Take the Floor, introducing a new generation to Scotland’s dance-band tradition. And as producer of the Hoolie, he has created a platform to put it all together at unprecedented scale.

From Facebook post to Hydro

The story of the Hoolie’s birth is telling. Innes recalls hitting 20,000 Facebook followers in 2019. “I put a wee tongue-in-cheek post out saying, ‘If half of you guys fancy chucking a couple of quid in, we could hire Scotland’s biggest village hall, the Hydro, and have the world’s biggest ceilidh.’ It was a throwaway comment, in as such — I was basically thanking people for following me — but if it didn’t get any traction, it wouldn’t matter. But it did!”

“I feel our music is the greatest in the world, and I feel it should be enjoyed and appreciated by more people.”

Gary Innes

That response forced him to consider the idea seriously. “Well that left me with the thought of, what do I do here? So I had the meeting with the Hydro, had things in place, and was sitting on a date in 2020. Well as we know, the world closed down in 2020 — so the next year or so I sat — nobody knew at this point — I never got to tell people off the back of their post that this had happened. Well I was sitting there for a couple of years thinking, I might never get the chance to put this gig on!”

When restrictions eased, he announced the first Hoolie for December 2021. “The day I’d announced it, Deacon Blue and Amy MacDonald had just had to cancel all their Hydro gigs. My wife was like, ‘Why are you announcing a Hydro show when the rest of them are cancelled?!’ I said, ‘Well, I’ve just paid my deposit! People need to know it’s happening!’”

The gamble was real. “I spent the next year working my way through the fear of it failing, really, and having to sell the house and live in a tent,” he recalls. But the leap of faith paid off: “The first year was a success, the second we had over 10,000, and it’s sailed on ever since.”

Since then, the Hoolie has grown in confidence. Earlier this month Innes even exported it, staging the first Hoolie in New York at Carnegie Hall with Julie Fowlis, Dougie MacLean and Mànran among the bill.

Why this year matters

Each Hoolie has had a theme. Year Two celebrated Runrig. Last year’s Hoolie 100 lined up a century of band anniversaries, from Capercaillie at 40 to Skerryvore at 25.

For 2025, Innes wanted something that would resonate beyond music. “I knew about two and a half years ago what would make 2025 different. Of course you think of the biggest names. I knew Billy Connolly was celebrating 60 years of the Humblebums. But it was just a dream then — how the hell do you get in contact with Billy Connolly to ask him?”

Eventually, he did. With the Connolly family’s blessing secured last October, Innes could finally theme the show as The Big Yin — aligning it with Glasgow’s 850th birthday year. “I was over the moon when he said ‘yes’,” Innes recalls. “That was cool!”

The Hoolie programme

Connolly’s tribute will form the finale, but the rest of the programme has its own weight. “One fundamental part is Mànran getting to play the Hydro every year,” says Innes. “That’s our reward for all the hard work.”

Joining them are Trail West, celebrating their 15th anniversary after two Barrowland sell-outs this autumn; Elephant Sessions, all funk-infused trad and drum-and-bass rhythm, making their Hoolie debut; and Beluga Lagoon, the cinematic project of Andrew O’Donnell, finally booked after years of audience requests.

“Beluga Lagoon was a name that came up time and time again over the past three years,” Innes explains. “So we got in touch and made it happen!”

He is clear about the programming challenge: “Part of the programme each year is thinking, who’s going to set the world on fire for traditional music? This is the biggest gig you can do in traditional music right now. You want people who may be dabbling or just coming to see a concert, thinking it’ll be interesting. Well, you want them to walk in and think: That was unbelievable.”

And then there is the tribute itself. Innes stays tight-lipped about who will appear on stage with Connolly’s songs, but one name already announced is fiddler Aly Bain, who has known Connolly for more than fifty years. “Billy and I started our careers on a motorbike with a sidecar, and things only got better from there,” Bain says. “He’s a very special man and friend, and I’m really looking forward to celebrating the incredible life and times of my old pal at the Hydro.”

“Beluga Lagoon was a name that came up time and time again over the past three years,” Innes explains. “So we got in touch and made it happen!”

That means Hydro-scale spectacle. “I don’t want people to think it’s just like any other gig in a concert hall but bigger,” Innes adds. “You want the glitz, the glam, the thrills, the confetti cannons, the whole thing. It’s about getting a package together that people will enjoy, and walk away thinking their tickets and hotel stays and meals out were money well spent.”

Why live still matters

Behind the spectacle and the themes, Innes insists, lies something more elemental: the shared experience of live music. “There’s nothing better than being at a live music event,” he says. “Being at an event with people you don’t know and jumping up and down, or in a nice concert setting being entertained.”

That collective surge is part of the reason large-scale trad events have flourished. “There are more gigs now than there’s ever been before,” he notes. “What we’re finding with traditional gigs is there’s more bigger gigs than ever before, and bigger festivals. Fifteen years ago, there was nothing on the scale of even two or three thousand capacity events happening around the country — now we’ve got umpteen of them, and we have arenas selling over 10,000.”

But there is a flip side. “We’re in this transitional period where some of the smaller gigs and smaller festivals are possibly suffering — but the larger gigs aren’t, because people want to be part of that.” The risk, he suggests, is that intimacy gives way to scale, even as appetite for tradition itself has never been higher.

The point is clear. “People want to be part of something,” he says. “And when they’re in that room together, they know why.”

On air by chance

His radio career, too, came almost by accident. “Jennifer Cruickshanks, the producer, got in touch to say Robbie [Shepherd, long-time host] is away on holiday next. Would you be up for coming in to present the programme? I was absolutely over the moon — had absolutely no experience.”

He filled in, then was asked back. “She then said, ‘Look, Robbie’s turning 80 next year, and we don’t know what’s going to happen with the programme, but we do have to start interviewing and trialling a few presenters. Would you be interested?’”

Expecting to be one of four candidates, he turned up to discover he was the only one. “I asked where everyone else was, and they said, ‘We’re just going to give you a shot first and see how you get on.’ Well, that was nearly nine years ago!”

The lesson is the same as the Hoolie: seize the opportunity, and don’t be afraid to make it up as you go.

What Billy Connolly can teach

Connolly’s folk career can be obscured by his later stardom, but Innes is clear about its importance. “I think people forget slightly that that’s what he did for a living for nearly a decade before his comedy career took off. This is the part we want to touch on — coming out of the shipyards, grabbing his banjo and guitar, him and Tam Harvey starting the Humblebums, playing folk and working men’s clubs.”

There is a lesson here, he suggests, for musicians now. “It’s just as important as being able to play the tunes or songs that you’re delivering. That’s what sets some musicians apart — being able to command an audience and take them on a journey, hold them in the story, not just sing your songs at them.”

Not everyone has to do banter, he adds, but those who can, gain a real connection. “It does make for a far better show if, as an entertainer, you can connect with the audience and have a blether with them. It’s horses for courses.”

Keeping the magic alive

Sustaining a spectacle is harder than launching one. Innes is frank about the challenge. “It’s a funny one! I think if you capture the imagination of folks and make them think they can’t miss out on something because it’s so special — that’s a great thing. The difficult thing is emulating that year in, year out.”

Part of the answer lies in making each Hoolie distinct. “We’re just back from New York, having put on Hoolie in Carnegie Hall. Having a big Hoolie in New York was just incredible, but equally, so many people from Scotland came over because they wanted to be part of that.” The event worked not only because of its scale, but because it offered a once-in-a-lifetime story to tell.

“I think people forget slightly that that’s what he did for a living for nearly a decade before his comedy career took off. This is the part we want to touch on — coming out of the shipyards, grabbing his banjo and guitar, him and Tam Harvey starting the Humblebums, playing folk and working men’s clubs.”

The trick, he says, is balance. “Of course, if you do that every year, you dilute that slightly and the magic’s lost — people like to try other things, and rightly so! But the hard part is capturing the imagination each year with something folks will think: I’m not gonna see that anywhere else, let’s go and do that!”

For Innes, that is the creative burden as well as the opportunity. Each year must feel unmissable, but never routine.

The Big Yin — and beyond

“The hard part is keeping these themes going — looking into next year and asking what will set it apart. That’s my challenge each year,” Innes admits. He grins: “Not so much a calendar, more a dart board! Throwing darts, seeing who we hit!”

For now, though, all roads lead to the Hydro. “It’s a huge buzz just looking around that incredible venue,” he says. “It’s a buzz to watch and be part of so many young people coming into the event — and all people — just the love for the music and the event, to all feel part of something. People from all walks of life come in and think, You know what, this is brilliant. We’re all helping by buying tickets, helping traditional music, giving it a forward trajectory. It’s for all of them.”

This year’s Billy Connolly tribute gives the Hoolie its sharpest focus yet: a folk legend whose Glasgow roots match the scale of the city’s 850th celebrations. But the bigger story is the Hoolie itself: a once throwaway idea that has become an institution, and a marker of ambition for Scottish traditional music on the grandest stage.

P.S. The latest news is that none other than Elaine C. Smith will be taking part in that special VIP tribute line-up. “I’m delighted to be involved in such a fab event, ” she says, “and this celebration of Billy Connolly – a true star, and icon in mine and so many people’s lives. That’s why I’m high-tailing it to the Hoolie after two shows at the King’s Panto to be part of it. I’m sure Billy will appreciate this wonderful celebration!”

Featured Image: Gary Innes – Hoolie in the Hydro promo