A phone call from Simon Thoumire is seldom unproductive, mainly because he is such a productive sort of chap. The man behind the Scots Trad Music Awards and the Young Scottish Traditional Musician of the Year competition - to name but two of the balls he keeps in the air - seems hot-wired to a celestial ideas hotline.
There are things an artist - and Thoumire, a musician as well as a tireless advocate for Scottish music, considers himself an artist - does just for self-satisfaction. If other people like it, that's a bonus. If they don't, that's fine. In other words, any response is a valid response.
Which is why Thoumire would welcome visitors to his latest project, Self Portrait 2009 - the UK's first album to be released on YouTube. If it lacks the polish of albums released through longer-established media, that, says Thoumire, is because it's about life and life is not perfect.
"I wanted to make something that showed how things really are. I live in an old house and I wanted to reflect what goes on in that house - which is where I work on things like the Young Musician and the Trad Awards, practise my music and look after the boys when my wife's working. I wouldn't change it for the world, but it is difficult at times."
Hence the track Give Me Peace, which features the line "Can you no' do it yourself?" a line and a scenario that, he says, is "so true".
"Because I do so many different things and because I'm not the sort of person who can compartmentalise my life, it's particularly hard to get the focus within the domestic mayhem.
"One thing I did want to be perfect, or as close to perfect as possible, about the album is the concertina playing. I've worked really hard to get to get to the level I'm at as a player and although I seem to play fewer gigs, I still work really hard to keep up to that standard."
In other clips Thoumire can be seen in a Darth Vader outfit, playing a bebop tune, Atom Buster, by the late jazz guitarist Barney Kessel - an example of the sort of concertina playing that first brought Thoumire to The Herald's attention as a teenage free reed demon - and playing a concertina-snare drum duet, which he thinks might also be a first.
"Generally and genuinely, I think with this album I'm creating stuff that hasn't been done before," he says.
Self Portrait 2009 follows his Experiments in Culture CD, which intercut largely conventional music with soundtracks recorded on streets and in train stations, and Free_C, a solo recording of completely improvised concertina playing.
He has another wheeze in mind - a pipe band parade with a difference. The top bands from the World Pipe Band Championships marching along Princes Street but playing free improvisation rather than normal pipe band music.
A slightly less surreal ambition, to compose a Scottish work for percussionist Evelyn Glennie, is part of Thoumire's efforts to feature traditional instruments in a series of concertos.
As much as Self Portrait 2009 is about Thoumire and his life as art, there's a hope it will raise the profile of Scottish traditional music in general and the concertina in particular.
"There's so little Scottish music on YouTube and since I'm one of the main putter-uppers, you can take my word for that," he says. "It's such a waste because this is the medium of the moment with worldwide access. I wanted to create art with Self Portrait 2009, but I'd like to think that people working in traditional music will see it and decide to do something of their own. The more Scottish music that's up there, the more chance we have of spreading the word and reaching new audiences." Self Portrait 2009 - www.youtube.com/profile?user= simonthoumire1&view= playlists
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