Tom was born in Aberdeen in 1947. He started attending Aberdeen Folk Song Club in 1962. The club was a fertile ground and he heard the best of the tradition, from Jeannie Robertson to Jimmy McBeath. Tom played fiddle in a group doing a mixture of folk styles from Bluegrass to Scottish Traditional. He started singing along in the chorus, initially without the fiddle, and latterly with the fiddle, without really thinking about it. He was encouraged to learn traditional material initially by Arthur Argo, and then by Peter Hall, who invited him to join a new group he was forming - this group later became The Gaugers.
Tom Spiers is also part of the group Shepheard Spiers and Watson.
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