Brian McNeill was born in Falkirk, Scotland, in 1950. He began his musical training in his early teens with 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 a music he had to play and as a direct consequence, in 1969 he picked up his fiddle again and formed The Battlefield Band, which has since become 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 recognised. 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.
1989 saw the publication of Brian's first novel, The Busker, and a year later Brian left Battlefield Band to concentrate more on writing and solo projects. In the last few years he has toured extensively with the eight-strong Scottish "supergroup" Clan Alba, with his old friend Iain MacKintosh, with the Scottish-Irish line-up of Kavana, McNeill, Lynch and Lupari and with Ireland's Martin Hayes and Nova Scotia's Natalie MacMaster in the highly rated US Celtic Fiddle Festival series.
His own audio-visual show about Scottish emigration to America, The Back O' The North Wind has also won critical acclaim and his continuing connection with America's Lone Star State led to him being created an honorary Texan in 1999 by the then Governer George W Bush . Brian's second novel 'To Answer The Peacock' was published that same year by Black Ace Books in Scotland , along with a fiddle album and tune book of the same name.
Brian is currently the head of the Scottish Music Course at Glasgow's Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama.
Check out Brian's CD with Iain MacKintosh Stage by Stage |
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