Findlay Napier

Artist Information

Biography

Heavily influenced by the music of Elvis Costello and Loudon Wainwright III Findlay Napier and his tight four-piece band deliver upbeat musical vignettes on a host of subjects that range from love sick librarians and dumb struck magicians to peeping toms and guilty johns all dispatched in his native accent. His catchy sing-along songs have been likened to that of Ben Folds or a Scottish Ian Dury.

Nominated as Songwriter of the year in the 2010 ‘MG Alba Music Awards’ Napier has been emerging as a writer and performer of increasingly impressive stature and is clearly relishing the chance to put his own work centre stage. It certainly merits such standing, especially matched with his colourfully expressive, thrillingly powerful voice.

The first Bar Room Mountaineers album, ‘Out All Night’ was released in July 2009 at Cambridge Folk Festival and received rave reviews. The album was followed by three single releases leading up to the launch of the new album on 15th May 2011.

Findlay and The Bar Room Mountaineers also run the Hazy Recollections mini-festival in Glasgow. Since January 2010 Hazy Recollections has celebrated and connected acts whose music meets at the boundaries of the indie, folk and roots scenes. Over the past year they have brought together a wealth of these versatile artists and built a loyal following in and around Glasgow featuring acts like Pearl and the Puppets, Admiral Fallow and the French Wives. This year Celtic Connections 2011 hosted three Hazy Recollections which featured, among others, The Staves, Amelia Curran, Humbert and Humbert, Alex Cornish, Kitty the Lion, and Woodenbox with a Fistful of Fivers.

Napier is a graduate of the BA Scottish Music Degree course at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama where he studied Scots song and guitar. On leaving the RSAMD he went onto form multi-award winning band Back of the Moon. The band released three critically albums and toured extensively in the UK, Europe and North America.

In 2002 Findlay began writing with Nick Turner and the writing project called ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’ was born. The pair have released two albums under the pseudonym ‘Queen Anne’s Revenge’ and continue to write together. He is also a member of the Northern Songs Collective led by Ronan Keating sideman Jimmy Docherty. In October 2010 The Northern Song Collective signed a publishing deal with Hornall Brothers publishing in London.

WHAT THE PROMOTERS SAY:

"One of the best folk artists we have had at Bella. Those that saw his performance here have talked of little else; those that missed it, rue the day."
Joe Gibbs- Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival 2011

"What a great live band! Excellent musicians and stage presence. They really impressed our late night audience at Wickham."
Peter Chegwyn, Organiser, Wickham Festival

Contact Findlay on: info (at) findlaynapier (dot) com

Instrumentation

Gillian Frame - Vocals, Fiddle
Douglas Millar - Vocals, Piano, rhodes
Scott MacKay - Vocals, Drums

Discography

New album: 'File Under Fiction' on the Watercolour Music label Scottish only release May 2011.

WCMCD: 'Valentine's Day' Released Feb 1st 2011

WCMCD: 'Raise a Glass' Single released February 26th 2010.

BRMCD002: When Harry Met Charlie EP, released in UK and Europe

BRMCD001: Out All Night - album, released in UK and Europe

Titles available on ALL digital download sites worldwide.

Other titles featuring Findlay Napier:

Just One Umbrella?- Queen Anne's Revenge WCMCD

Queen Anne's Revenge- Queen Anne's Revenge

Luminosity- Back of the Moon- Footstompin Records

Fortune's Road- Back of the Moon- Footstompin Records

Gillian Frame and Back of the Moon- Gillian Frame and Back of the Moon- Footstompin Records

Official Website

http://www.findlaynapier.com

Links

• Facebook
• Twitter
• MySpace
• Napier's Blogs
• Last.fm

Audio

• File Under Fiction
  Listen  
• Waiting in the Wings
  Listen  
• One For the Ditch
  Listen  
• Rasie a Glass- Single
  Listen  

Lyrics

• George
• When Harry met Charlie

Video

Photo Gallery

Press

• Single of the Week
  

  Harry Met Charlie- Daily Record Single of the Week 5 stars.

• Awesome Live Review
  

  "...he is emerging as a truly awesome talent."

• ...on Findlay Napier... [+ Show ]
  

  How many folk does it take to create a sensible name for a musical genre? In the past 10 years, the ...How many folk does it take to create a sensible name for a musical genre? In the past 10 years, the folk movement has scattered off in numerous directions, filed under sub-genres such as psych-folk, anti-folk, freak-folk, neo-folk and acid folk. In Scotland, folk comes straight up with fiddles. It has a distinctive Celtic sound that conjures up images of pub lock-ins on stormy islands and impossibly long walks up very steep mountains.
  Outside Scotland, folk means very different things. In America, it’s Americana; in England, it’s sea shanties and Morris dancing. It’s also used to describe a new generation of young acoustic bands singing thoughtful songs with a whimsical edge. It’s nu-folk.
  “There are so many different terms, it can get complicated,” says Findlay Napier, who is launching a nu-folk night to provide a platform for Scotland’s growing list of bands who fall under the umbrella. “But I like nu-folk because it’s finally a term that describes what the Americans and the English have been calling folk music for ages.”
  When Napier started his present band, Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers, he struggled to explain to people exactly the kind of music they made.
  “In Scotland we have this very lovely thing called folk music, which the rest of the world calls Celtic music,” he says. “Nu-folk is quite handy because it’s a pigeonhole that’s quite easy to put people in. It’s got acoustic guitars, nice singing, decent songs, but it’s not indie, it’s not rock and the issues are perhaps bigger than in the kind of music aimed at teenagers.
  “In the States, we were a folk band but over here we kind of fell between the cracks. People would say, ‘what kind of band are you in?’ and we’d say, ‘a folk band’, and they’d expect us to play pipes and fiddles. But that’s not what we do. And we couldn’t really call ourselves Americana because it sounds a bit silly. Scoticana? I think I prefer nu-folk.”
  Hazy Recollections, a bi-monthly afternoon nu-folk shindig at Stereo in Glasgow, begins on Saturday. For anyone still unsure of what exactly constitutes nu-folk, a few hours in the company of the six artists performing — including the hotly tipped Glaswegian female minstrel Pearl and the Puppets and the Virginian singer-songwriter AJ Roach — should provide the answers. Findlay Napier and The Bar Room Mountaineers, the Brother Louis Collective, Kitty the Lion, and Captain and the Kings complete the line-up.
  “We’d all been talking about starting something like this for ages,” says Napier.
  “It’s a way for all the bands to get together. We are all playing in the same town, some of us at the same gigs, and I wanted to replicate the atmosphere that there’s always been in the folk scene and at events like Celtic Connections and introduce it into the nu-folk scene. A camaraderie, instead of every man and woman working for themselves.”
  In London, the nu-folk scene is thriving, and Napier is convinced that there is just as much talent in Scotland.
  “I’d been reading about Mumford & Sons and the scene down in London, and wanted to try to replicate that,” he says. “It’s great to hear bands like that being played on Radio 1. They call themselves a folk band. So okay, the world has changed again, let’s get in there.”
  Napier, 31, studied for a BA in Scottish music at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD) and played in a traditional folk band called Back of the Moon. Before that, he spent a year working as the folklorist Margaret Bennett’s accompanist. After a trip to America he found a change of direction.
  “I had a new perspective on folk music and that’s why I started the Mountaineers,” he says. “It was a real eye-opener. We went to Canada and then America and we realised we were the token ‘Celtic music’ act and the rest of the acts were like Pearl and the Puppets.
  “We did one folk festival where the headline acts were Kris Kristofferson and Macy Gray. Celtic Connections, which has a really varied programme of music, is far more representative of what a folk festival abroad is like than what you’d imagine.”
  
  Napier now teaches at RSAMD, often covering classes for Phil Cunningham, the accordionist. He’s still involved in the traditional folk scene and runs the Festival Club at Celtic Connections. He has also been signed to a label run by Ronan Keating’s management team to write songs with the former Boyzone singer’s guitarist, Jimmy Docherty. Meanwhile, his band will release a new single in February and an album later in the year.
  “I’m very busy but I like it that way,” he says. “And at least when I tell people what I do, they’ll hopefully understand.”

• Dramatic Live in Edinburgh Review [+ Show ]
  

  FOLLOWING the swansong late last year of his previous band, the popular traditional outfit Back of t...FOLLOWING the swansong late last year of his previous band, the popular traditional outfit Back of the Moon, the singer, songwriter and guitarist Findlay Napier has wasted no time launching this new four-piece line-up, again featuring his good lady Gillian Frame on fiddle and backing vocals, now alongside percussionist Paul Jennings and Douglas Millar on keyboards.
  
  Napier has been emerging as a songwriter of increasingly impressive stature for some years now, in his Queen’s Anne’s Revenge side-project with Nick Turner (of Watercolour Music) as well as via Back of the Moon’s repertoire, and here focused primarily on original material, much of it again co-written with Turner.
  
  Not that he’s turned his back on traditional songs, featuring three such in the set-list on this occasion, among them a brilliantly dramatic rendition of the corpse-strewn classic ‘Lambkin’ (the plot of which was trenchantly summarised as “The Shining meets EastEnders”). And with this being only the Mountaineers’ third-ever gig, after a well-received debut at Celtic Connections, there are plans to incorporate more as their repertoire evolves.
  
  Right now, however, Napier is clearly relishing the chance to put his own work centre stage, and it certainly merits such standing, especially matched with his colourfully expressive, thrillingly powerful voice.
  
  It takes a brave soul to write a song about a suicide note being mistaken for a shopping list (‘The Note’), or one expressing the viewpoint of a coma victim on a ventilator (‘Just One Umbrella’) – and a highly skilled author to carry it off as Findlay does, bringing story and character to life with wonderful vividness and economy.
  
  Another number, whose title I didn’t catch, drew inspiration from the Green Welly Shop at Tyndrum, picturing a café worker on night shift being visited by imaginary friends – or are they ghosts? – with a winning blend of poignancy and whimsy. Having ended on a high note with the irresistibly catchy, ebullient ‘George’ – already a favourite among Queen Anne’s Revenge fans – Napier returned to thornier subjects for the encore, addressing US high-school shootings and gun culture in oblique but telling fashion in ‘Hard To Stay’, its punchy lyrics aptly framed by bluesy riffs and honky-tonk piano.
  
  His overall stylistic palette, and that of the band’s arrangements, took in elements of folk, rock, pop, country and even a touch of jazz, united by a voice whose rugged, vibrant, superbly commanding accents remain entirely his own.
  
  © Sue Wilson, 2008
  

• 'Out All Night' Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  "brilliant album that that brings together a fantastic writing team, a charismatic singer and three ..."brilliant album that that brings together a fantastic writing team, a charismatic singer and three superb musicians; the result is a dynamic, colourful and vibrant collection of modern songs with a traditional twist. Exceptional."
  -Neil Pearson, Fish Records

• Impressive Debut [+ Show ]
  

  "...lively fare is counterbalanced by some gorgeous ballads... the songs have irresistible hooks, es..."...lively fare is counterbalanced by some gorgeous ballads... the songs have irresistible hooks, especially George, Point of no Return and The Note, all conjured up by the magical playing... an impressive debut."
  -David Burke, Rock N Reel

• Sophisticated Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  SCOTTISH AMERICANA This debut from the Back of the Moon, Croft No. Five and Celtic Connections st...SCOTTISH AMERICANA
  
  This debut from the Back of the Moon, Croft No. Five and Celtic Connections stalwarts is a peculiarly natural Scottish Americana that weaves traditional Scots instrumentation with an altogether wider influence, exemplified by the oddly inconspicuous use of funk keys. The local folk flavours win out with classic storytelling seeped in spit, sawdust and whisky, delivered in Napier’s fine Gallic burr, but the blend brings to mind the journey Celtic music took through the frontier into the roots of American country. It makes for unmistakably Scottish folk music but with a sophistication that distances itself from your average pub sing-along and marks the Bar Room Mountaineers out for distinction.

• Album of the Year [+ Show ]
  

  "Scottish Album of the Year... I don’t remember who put this album in my hand and asked me to listen..."Scottish Album of the Year... I don’t remember who put this album in my hand and asked me to listen to it. But to whomever it was, I am eternally grateful."
  -Shay Clark, Irish American Times

• Humerous Album Review [+ Show ]
  

  "This is a sharp and dryly humorous meditation on life. For some, these tales may produce a smirk of..."This is a sharp and dryly humorous meditation on life. For some, these tales may produce a smirk of recognition, others a shudder, either way you'll be entertained for sure."
  -Dave Kushar, Spiral Earth

• 5 Star Live Review [+ Show ]
  

  "5 Star review: in essence a fabulous gig from a band on their way up" - Paul Murray, Edinburgh Fes..."5 Star review: in essence a fabulous gig from a band on their way up"
  - Paul Murray, Edinburgh Festival 2008

• Islands in the Sun [+ Show ]
  

  Then there was the splendid contemporary songcraft and punchy roots-rock arrangements of Findlay Nap...Then there was the splendid contemporary songcraft and punchy roots-rock arrangements of Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers

• "more rock ‘n’ roll than fifty shitty indie rock bands. Fact!" [+ Show ]
  

  Findlay Napier & The Bar Room Mountaineers File Under Fiction Catalogue number: WCM042 Rele...Findlay Napier & The Bar Room Mountaineers
  
  File Under Fiction
  
  Catalogue number: WCM042
  
  Released: 2011
  
  
  
  Another day, another genre. I’ve lost count of trainspotter level categorisation of the many types and forms of music. Hey, the shit either works or it doesn’t as they would most likely say in a New York cop drama. Before I hit my head with a toffee hammer again, let’s try some Scottish nu-folk from Findlay Napier & The Bar Room Mountaineers.
  
  
  
  I’m not entirely sure what nu-folk is supposed to be but it, apart from a bit of the old fiddle, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with Highland Clearances, boats from Liverpool or Aran sweaters generally. In fact, judging from the good Mr Napier’s album “File Under Fiction”, it has more to do with raising the IQ of Scottish song writing whilst cleverly packaging it as a descendant of luminaries of Deacon Blue or even the Blue Nile. It’s a worrying thing to say but he might just be too good for the mass market.
  
  
  
  You won’t find me complaining about the spirited use of a Scottish accent in an enclosed space – as happens here – when that accent uses its parochial disguise to reflect on that greatest source of inspiration for any sort of music. That would be women, by the way (but you knew that, I hope?). Don’t get me wrong for this isn’t a relationship management kit. No, it’s a confident, and eminently melodic, look at the foibles of dealing with someone that doesn’t need a gun to be dangerous. Whether driven to drink (“One For The Ditch”), the long goodbye (“Don’t Look In My Eyes”) or the bleakness of confused inadequacy (“Heels Over Head”), the mark gets squarely hit every time. Perhaps surprisingly, there is little in the way of misogyny to be found in the words with the affection for the subject bringing much in the way of humour. That is indeed the way of a proper storyteller.
  
  
  
  Ok, standout track time. There was a lot of competition here – as you might have guessed by now – but the winner had to “Cut Me Off” that started with a fiddle, overdosed on black humour and even managed to squeeze in a mention of Facebook. It’s obsession summed up in 3 minutes and 55 seconds and it’s more rock ‘n’ roll than fifty shitty indie rock bands. Fact!
  
  
  
  If you haven’t been there then you’ll want to be after hearing this album and iIt grieves me to say it – especially given my notorious cynicism - but this is a quality album.
  
  
  
  
  Review by: Bluesbunny

Setlist

The band are totally flexible - capable of playing solo acoustic shows or shows as a full 4 piece, trio, duo or Findlay solo. They can play up to a 2 hour set where required, and can throw in a few interesting and quirky covers if required!

Flexibility is key!

Basic Requirements

Calendar