FINDLAY NAPIER

Event information

FINDLAY NAPIER

From the main stage of Cambridge Folk Festival with folk rock supergroup The Magpie Arc to an intimate acoustic show in the back room of a pub, Findlay Napier is widely regarded as one of the finest performers on the UK music scene. This fact was further highlighted when Napier was the first solo act ever to be nominated for Live Act of the Year at the Scot’s Trad Music awards. Tirelessly creative he has been touring and releasing music since the early noughties; first with groundbreaking trad folk band Back of the Moon, then with Nu-Folk pioneers, Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers, and most recently as a solo act working under the guidance of legendary songwriter Boo Hewerdine.

Described as a "miracle lyricist’" by the Sunday Herald and “an original and engaging treat” by The Telegraph his skills as a songwriter and collaborator have led him to work on some surprising and interesting projects. In 2017 he was invited to take part in Greg Russell’s ‘Shake the Chains’ project with Nancy Kerr and Hannah Martin where they toured, recorded and released a double live album. After meeting award winning songwriter Megan Henwood at an EFDSS songwriting retreat they formed the duo The Story Song Scientists writing songs about science, releasing two EPs and touring the UK. In late 2021 he joined folk rock supergroup The Magpie Arc performing on festival main stages and art centres across the UK. Their debut album “Glamour in the Grey”, featuring three of Napier’s original songs, was released in October 2022.

In the live arena, Findlay is engaging and audacious. There’s a down to earth honesty about every song that he produces, his music talks about everyday life with pathos and humour and an obvious love. The audience rightly wallow in his disarming demeanour and devastatingly superb wit, his powerful songs and the smile that could stop a charging rhinoceros. He sings his gorgeous, melodic songs with a fine clear voice allowing the words to sink in., a great attribute as he's a fine lyricist, but, being a natural showman, he also has the audience in stitches at times with his jokes and asides. For Findlay the bond between performer and audience is sacrosanct, he knows the crowd come out to be entertained and taken out of themselves, and such is the moral duty of this particular musician he takes this task very seriously but with the widest of smiles. This will be a fine evening indeed.