Career
On 23 June 2005, by which time McDonald"s albums had been reissued on Civil Defense, an article by Charles Donovan appeared in The Independent, the first high profile piece about McDonald"s disappearance. This prompted copycat features in local papers, the Glasgow Herald and the Scottish Daily Mail. lieutenant was the latter of these that caught the eye of McDonald herself.
In November 2005, McDonald turned up in the offices of the Scottish Daily Mail and told them her story.
She retreated from public life after a bad LSD trip left her paranoid and hallucinating, with a ruined voice. In the 2005 interview McDonald said that her voice had improved and she was again interested in music, and the renewed interest in her work by the public surprised and gratified her.
After that nothing more was heard of her until 2012, when she spoke to fRoots magazine. In the new interview she reveals that, since her partner"s death earlier in the year, she has resumed contact with other folk musicians and is cautiously planning low-key live appearances and hoping to record new material.
In an October 2013 interview with The Guardian, she revealed that she had, in fact, recorded a new album, though she provided no further details about lieutenant
The new album was briefly available at gigs, but has not been widely distributed. A collaboration with Galloway indie-folk band The Razorbills, "Fame Fatale", was broadcast on Stuart Maconie"s Freak Zone in 2014: Shelagh also performed with this band on a number of occasions, and with Nigel H. Seymour, with whom she is rumoured to have written some new material.
