Nick Keir
Encyclopedia
Nick Keir is a musician from Edinburgh
, Scotland
, who is best known for his work with The McCalmans
. More recently he has emerged as a singer/songwriter, producing three solo albums and performing as a soloist with The Tolkien Ensemble. He regularly plays in both Scotland and Denmark at folk festivals and on tours, both with The McCalmans and at solo gigs.
Keir studied at Stirling University, where he founded Finn mac Cuill, a folk/rock band which for a while expanded into The Finn mac Cuill Folkshow, a small touring theatre group, for which he wrote the scripts. In the late 1970s he joined 7:84
Theatre Company Scotland as a writer and musician, and soon after joined The McCalmans Folk Group.
Now working with Stephen Quigg (also a former member of The McCalmans) in a duo as well as solo.
Other collaborations include work on The Complete Works of Robert Tannahill and appearing regularly with the Holbaek Ensemble in Denmark in a programme of Scots andBaroque Music
Nick mostly plays the acoustic guitar
and the penny whistle, although is proficient in many other instruments.
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, Scotland
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
, who is best known for his work with The McCalmans
The McCalmans
The McCalmans were a folk song trio from Scotland. Formed in 1964, they recorded and toured without interruption up until they disbanded in December 2010....
. More recently he has emerged as a singer/songwriter, producing three solo albums and performing as a soloist with The Tolkien Ensemble. He regularly plays in both Scotland and Denmark at folk festivals and on tours, both with The McCalmans and at solo gigs.
Keir studied at Stirling University, where he founded Finn mac Cuill, a folk/rock band which for a while expanded into The Finn mac Cuill Folkshow, a small touring theatre group, for which he wrote the scripts. In the late 1970s he joined 7:84
7:84
7:84 was a Scottish left-wing agitprop theatre group. The name comes from a statistic, published in The Economist in 1966, that 7% of the population of the UK owned 84% of the state's wealth....
Theatre Company Scotland as a writer and musician, and soon after joined The McCalmans Folk Group.
Now working with Stephen Quigg (also a former member of The McCalmans) in a duo as well as solo.
Other collaborations include work on The Complete Works of Robert Tannahill and appearing regularly with the Holbaek Ensemble in Denmark in a programme of Scots andBaroque Music
Nick mostly plays the acoustic guitar
Acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...
and the penny whistle, although is proficient in many other instruments.
Discography
- Finn mac Cuill (1975) Finn mac Cuill. REL Records
- Sink Ye Swim Ye (1977)Finn mac Cuill. REL Records
- Rumours of Snow (2000) Laverock Records LRK1
- All Over This Town (2004) Laverock Records LRK2
- Fishing Up the Moon (2008) Laverock Records LRK3