Brian McNeill

Brian was born in 1950 in Falkirk, Scotland. He began his musical training in his early teens with formal violin lessons but soon forsook that instrument for the electric guitar. A comprehensive musical education and a mildly misspent youth were the result - until his student years brought him to Celtic music. He knew immediately that this was his music, and, as a direct consequence, in 1969 he picked up his fiddle again and formed the Battlefield Band, one of Scotland's best-known ensembles.

Brian plays fiddle, viola, mandolin, cittern, bouzouki, guitar, concertina, bass and hurdy-gurdy, and the importance of his songwriting (mostly about Scotland's past and future) has long been recognized. The Yew Tree, The Lads O' The Fair, Montrose and The Snows Of France And Holland were among the best-loved of Battlefield Band's repertoire, and The Devil's Only Daughter won Britain's prestigious National Songsearch competition in 1987. In 1990, recognition also came in the USA with the Texas Celtic Music Award for The Rovin' Dies Hard and since then compositions such as Strong Women Rule Us All With Their Tears, Any Mick'll Do and No Gods And Precious Few Heroes have established Brian as one of Scotland's leading songwriters.

His first novel, The Busker, came out in 1989, and in 1990 Brian left Battlefield Band to concentrate more on writing and solo projects. In the last few years he has toured with the eight-strong Scottish "supergroup", Clan Alba, with his old friend Iain MacKintosh, with the Scottish-Irish line-up of Kavana, McNeill, Lynch & Lupari, and with Ireland's Martin Hayes and Nova Scotia's Natalie MacMaster in the highly regarded US Celtic Fiddle Festival series. His own audio-visual show about Scottish emigration to Amereica, The Back O' The North Wind, has also won wide critical accalim. His continuing connection with America's Lone Star State has led to Brian being created an honorary Texasn by the then Governor, George W. Bush, in 1999. His new novel, To Answer The Peacock, was published in 1999 by Black Ace Books in Scotland, along with a fiddle album and tune book of the same name.

In much demand as a live performer - due not least to the critical success of his albums - Brian is currently touring solo. His production skills are also in increasing demand, and his name can be found on the back of recent albums by many of the Celtic scene's most important artists, among them Eric Bogle, Davey Arthur, The John Wright Band, Jock Duncan, Ed Miller, Heather Heywood, and Tony McManus.

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Last updated on June 11, 2001
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