One For the Ditch: Live at the Diving Bell Lounge

Here's the second of two videos I made with Richard and Jolene Crawford of Precious Productions at The Diving Bell Lounge in Glasgow.



Live at The Diving Bell Lounge - Findlay Napier - One for the Ditch from Precious Productions on Vimeo.


There are loads of Christmas songs but really, for me anyway, the best time of the festive season is Hogmanay and I felt it deserved a song. I was staying with my Auntie and Uncle in Rogart, Sutherland over New Year. We were discussing music and my Auntie reckoned I needed to write country songs as there's probably more money in country music. Later that night at a party her brother suggested the title 'One for the Ditch'.  So I set about writing a country song in the style of coke and booze addled country legend George Jones.

“Country music to me is heartfelt music that speaks to the common man. It is about real life stories with rather simple melodies that the average person can follow. Country music should speak directly and simply about the highs and lows of life. Something that anyone can relate to.”
George Jone

If you're not reading this on my blog you're probably not able to link to the George Jones videos I've posted here... FrankSinatra said he was the second best singer in the world... Sinatra was full of shit.

Celtic Connections 2011: Day 7 (19/1/11)

The front row of today's Bar Room Mountaineers Gig.

It's hard to even remember what happened this morning. I was so sleepy. I woke up in front of 700 Primary School kids half way through a Bar Room Mountaineers gig. Sound checks for the Celtic Connections schools concerts begin at 8:30am, about the same time we used to come home from the festival club. I barely had time to iron my shirt (ie 45 minutes) before we were loading the gear into the car. Considering I'm usually a total nightmare before I've eaten I think I handled the load in and soundcheck fairly well only throwing a little strop when we weren't allowed to park in the Concert Hall Yard. I'm a fucking artist daahling. I want to park behind a big electric gate.

I'm not really sure if they enjoyed the concert but Kevin 'Singing Kettle' Macleod assured me if all the kids are jumping about and all the teachers have their arms folded and look pissed off you have won. We had a laugh at the one School who had obviously been told that if they ever wanted to see their parents alive again they'd better sit the fuck still and shut the fuck up. They were clustered in one little group surrounded by dancing, shouting and swaying kids like miniature Wee Free's at ferry terminal.

Showing the rainbow.

While searching for something funny I found this quote. While you read it, and some other's like it, I'd like you imagine the sound of a rugby team being sick into an empty skip. “There are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child. There are seven million.” Oh and this one too... “The work will wait while you show the child the rainbow, but the rainbow won't wait while you do the work.”

The real dark side of Whitby Folk Week

Tonight is the last of the pub session style Late Night Sessions for this week. I've been enjoying the singing of Arthur Johnston and the self confessed second worst banjo player ever and Aberdeen fish merchant Danny Couper. I last met Danny at Whitby Folk Week a couple of years ago. Whitby Folk Week is the most mental English Folk Festival I've been to. It terms of silliness it fares well beside Orkney, Shetland and Haapavesi. Apparently there's events on during the day but to be honest with you I only saw daylight for a couple of hours in the three days I was there. The hour and a half when I arrived and was wandering the crowded streets searching for Last Night's Fun and the half hour I waited for the train home with one of the most beautifully crafted hangovers I've ever made.

After 3 days of Whitby Folk week.

I have kind of blurry memories of being so pissed I couldn't play guitar but for some reason could remember the words to every folk song I'd ever learned. Then Danny leading the massed ranks of drunken folk singers on an unaccompanied singing rampage that ended with everyone being thrown out of the pub by the campest barman in all Yorkshire. By 5am on the last night of the festival the barman had long since passed safe his folk music tolerance threshold.  The floodgates burst and he threw the most spectacular tantrum it has been my pleasure to witness. My favourite part was when he literally screamed 'How about some fooking Abba. Eh? Fooking fal a laddy sheeiite' before continuing his tirade about 'shit-shit-shit folk wanker-dancers'. Thinking he was joking, we exasperated the situation by laughing at him hysterically and approximating Abba songs in Doric.

Something from the Doric side of the Moon... these two maniacs were also involved in the Whitby pub tantrum. Everywhere they go the bar is always well stocked.

Harry Met Charlie EP

Harry Met Charlie the EP is here! You can buy an individually numbered copy from our myspace or when we're playing live.

We have a lot of gigs coming up including a few dates supporting the Peatbog Faeries.

I originally posted this on Qype

At the time of writing the Central has just closed down. In the wee small hours of Monday the 2nd February, as the final night party for Celtic Connections raged in a back room, members of staff were finally alerted to the fact that the Hotel was to finally shut it’s doors.

Guests who had bookings for Monday night were turned away by police and the front doors which had remained open twenty four hours a day seven days a week were locked shut.

Admittedly the hotel was in no shape for custom. The fire exits were blocked and, as the city council had not been paid, all their rubbish was festering in a couple of basement rooms. The rooms were unkempt with paper hanging from the walls and the main corridors had not seen the loving caress of a hoover for a few weeks.

The freaky, supposedly haunted, corridor on floor seven was left unlocked, unlit and uncared for. The suicide room with the crazy drawings on the wall remains intact.

While the people made their way to work around 7am members of a certain French Canadian folk band climbed up a ladder from Floor 7 onto the roof of the hotel and had a snowball fight.

However badly the staff treated us, however bad the beer, no matter how smelly the room or how peeled the wallpaper, even if they ignored such simple rules as fire regulations and basic hygine, I think I will miss the central hotel and it’s nice to know that it’s last night went with a bang!