GLASGOW

So Far

Ohio

***   "Hell" lyric video now live at https://youtu.be/_kPbNI98aIY   ***

Taken from our EP 'Mass Trespass' (available on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify etc, and on CD via our website), "Hell" is an autobiographical jaunt through one man's life – a song about identity,  self-determination, and songwriting. 

And going to Hell, of course.

Ringlefinch - Hell

First Collection: 2006-2009

He Doesn't Know Why

Following huge acclaim for his 2015 solo debut VIP: Very Interesting Persons, Scotland’s Findlay Napier again unites superb songwriting, magpie-minded imagination and compellingly vivid vocals on his new album Glasgow. A characteristically wry yet lyrical, offbeat yet heartfelt paean to his adopted home town - marking 20 years since Napier arrived from his Highland birthplace – it features freshly-penned, instantly memorable originals alongside classic and contemporary gems from the city’s rich ballad canon. Continuing their fruitful collaboration on VIP, revered UK songsmith Boo Hewerdine reprises his roles as producer and co-writer.

From modern-day vignettes like opener ‘Young Goths In the Necropolis’ - its bittersweet emotional charge evoking a Caledonian Loudon Wainwright - to the tenderly imagined love-story of ‘The Locarno, Sauchiehall St 1928’, reminiscent of the late great Michael Marra (whose wonderfully whimsical ‘King Kong’s Visit to Glasgow’ is also covered), the album’s musical map spans shipyards and late-night chippies, wily street veterans and warring football fans, patron saints and musical icons. 

Other covers include a terrifically gallus (Scots for ‘bold, mischievous, cheeky’ - ie quintessentially Glaswegian) version of Hamish Imlach’s ‘Cod Liver Oil and the Orange Juice’; a dreamily ardent rendering of The Blue Nile’s ‘A Walk Across the Rooftops’, and a gorgeous new ballad, ‘Marchtown’, by ex-Delgado Emma Pollock. 

With accompaniment mostly distilled to artful acoustic guitar, plus occasional piano and Donna Maciocia’s delicate backing vocals, Napier’s remarkable voice – by turns burly, gritty, fierce and forlorn, bitingly acerbic and exquisitely nuanced – is rightfully foregrounded throughout, capturing scenes and characters as potently as the CD cover image by Pulitzer Prize-winning Magnum photographer Raymond Depardon.

Napier’s fast-growing stature as one of the UK’s most distinctively gifted contemporary folk artists builds on his previous band work with Back of the Moon and The Bar Room Mountaineers, also reflecting his long-time immersion in the vibrant stylistic melting-pot of Glasgow’s world-famous music scene. As promoter of the decade-old Hazy Recollections concert series and founder of the Glasgow Songwriting Festival, he’s been particularly influential in fostering cross-fertilisation between the city’s folk and indie communities. Spring 2017 saw him touring with acclaimed contemporary protest-song showcase Shake the Chains, whose September album release is followed by more dates early next year.

While the sorrow and anger simmering through Glasgow track ‘There’s More to Building Ships’ (originally written for Shake the Chains) highlight Napier’s political leanings, humour is an equally vital element in his work, both recorded and live - as reflected in his recent sideline career as a stand-up comedic. Hence his readiness to embrace not only the oft-disparaged label of folk singer, but also
another, likewise timeless role: “I do love that old-fashioned, all-round idea of an ‘entertainer’,” he says. “But then that’s totally what the best folk singers are; they’ll have you in absolute hysterics, in between punching you in the gut - people like Loudon Wainwright, John Prine, Michael Marra: that’s the absolute pinnacle, as far as I’m concerned.”

Glasgow

Young Goths in the Necropolis

Wire Burners 					Findlay Napier & Boo Hewerdine

It’s a regular nine to five
It’s the way that we survive
The only way to stay alive
Wire burners

You might see us on the street
But our eyes will never meet
You will never see us greet
Wire burners

How I came to be this way
I couldn’t care, all I can say
Tomorrow will be like today
And everyday

Followed a rainbow over the Clyde
To the fireplace on the other side
In plain sight is where we hide
Wire burners

Pushing trolleys through the town
With the scrap that we have found
Daylight ghosts that walk around
Wire burners

And I know this much is true
For wire burners old is new
But for the grace of God we’re you

Inspired by a YouTube film called ‘The Wire Burners’ about homeless people in Glasgow who collect and sell scrap metal from building sites.

Wire Burners

There’s More to Building Ships 		Findlay Napier

There’s more to building ships than smashing champagne off the stern
Than royals and the crowds and the blaring of the horn
There’s someone counting pennies and there’s someone needs new shoes
And there’s someone up the pawn-shop buying back their weekend suit

There’s more to building ships than nostalgia, ache and pride
Of watching hulks slide down the dock and turn into the Clyde
There’s ten guys in the hospital, four men in the ground
And everyone worked there breathed that dust into their lungs
And everyone worked there breathed that dust into their lungs


There’s more to building ships than shaping steel into a hull
There’s labourers and managers, flying flags and fighting wars
From the draughtsman in the office to the man who welds the plate
Everyone among them should get fair and equal pay

It’s more than building ships it’s their every working day
They stand there on the dockside and they watch them sail away
There’s someone in the government who wants to make their name
They scupper it and cut it, and the unions take the blame
They scupper it and cut it, and the unions take the blame

They watch them sail away.

From a conversation about reopening Scotland’s shipyards with my Dad. He was a marine engineer and occasional builder of ships. It became clear to me that without a long plan, agreed on by all political parties, we’ll never see industry like that in Glasgow again.

There's More to Building Ships

St Anthony's Digging a Hole

Marchtown 					Emma Pollock

Let’s walk down to Marchtown
Before it became home
To the soil not yet built on
And the factory gates
To the Lands of Westfield while they sit and they wait
For the breaking of new ground

No squalor in Marchtown
Where the sinners repented
To the station dismantled
Through the gate we reclaimed
From the bushes and trees on which we carved our names
With all limbs entangled

She lost the fight in spite of crossing palms with silver
And neither sister nor the bell and fish would save her
In defence of adulterous Queens
It’s goodbye to Marchtown

What have they done Marchtown?
They’ve crowded and cut you up
Pushing in the people till the sirens ring
Hands over their ears cause the walls are too thin
And change makes a strange sound

But I’m seeing signs that I’m losing my mind 
Stuck in Marchtown It’s fine 	   
Just not every day, 
All this green, what a wonderful scene 
But why is it that I only see red today?
Got to get away

In this pocket of plenty
I’m rescued from roaming
I have surely lost count of the houses I’ve known
But this one I count on cause this one is home
No more running on empty

I walk through Marchtown every day. Marchtown is the original name for Strathbungo, an area on the southside of Glasgow. A lot of the street names and locations surrounding Strathbungo relate to the Battle of Langside between Mary Queen of Scots and The Earl of Moray. The place name Crossmyloof refers to Mary’s meeting with a fortuneteller. Cross my hand (loof is Scots for hand) with silver.

Marchtown

Glasgow 					Julia Doogan

Streets get ready for another fight
Between the boys in blue and green and white
And they sing along to the same old songs
Saying one is right, the other is wrong
They want nothing more than the winning score tonight
The will scream and shout and they will drink on through the night

Oh Glasgow
I’m coming home

Wind it whistles all around 
And through the streets up in the town
Past the ballroom and the boats
And the River Clyde as she flows
And the girls and boys they’re all out in force tonight
They will chance their arms for a shot of love at first sight

She don’t make no fuss about the places I have seen
She don’t care too much about where I’ve been


Julia Doogan is a hidden gem of Glasgow’s songwriting scene. I always think of this song when there’s an Old Firm game on.

Brutalism

Mother

A cover of ONE OK ROCK - Kanzen Kankaku Dreamer , ENJOY ! 

Kanzen Kankaku Dreamer - One Ok Rock (COVER)

Findlay Napier is one of the most highly-regarded performers and creative forces on the Scottish music scene – thoroughly active and truly energised with a heart-warming zing.

He made his name touring and recording with multi- award winning traditional Scottish folk band Back of
the Moon. In his more recent projects “Queen Anne’s Revenge” and “The Bar Room Mountaineers” his song- writing took centre stage and was described by The Sunday Herald as “Genuine songcraft and wit following in the Difford & Tilbrook tradition”. Findlay is also well known for hosting Glasgow’s premier open mic night at Bar Bloc, as the host of Celtic Connections’ Late Night Sessions and for his Hazy Recollections concert series which showcases the very best in new roots music.