Noted Scottish performer Brian McNeill will present “The Back o’ the North Wind,” his original folk song-cycle and storytelling program, at Down Home on Friday, April 21, at 8:30 p.m.
In this multimedia presentation, the singer-songwriter, composer, multi-instrumentalist and storyteller depicts the legendary and historical connections between Scotland and America.
His appearance in Johnson City is co-sponsored by East Tennessee State University’s Center for Appalachian Studies and Services (CASS), its Appalachian, Scottish and Irish Studies and Bluegrass, Old-Time and Country Music programs, along with the ETSU Master’s Degree Program in Storytelling.
The title, “The Back o’ the North Wind,” comes from the European legend that Britain was the land behind the wind. McNeill examines that phenomenon through the lives of individual Scots who have come to America during the last 250 years.
These include Flora McDonald, the girl who was most noted for helping the “Young Pretender,” Prince Charles Edward Stuart, escape from his redcoat pursuers in the days after the Battle of Culloden, but whose compelling life story didn’t end there, but in the Carolinas; Andrew Carnegie, “the poor Scots immigrant who became the Pittsburgh steel millionaire” and Ewen Gillies, a man “who found gold far from his home, the remote Hebridean island of St. Kilda, but paid the highest of all prices for it.”
Others are missionaries, environmentalists and even members of McNeill’s own family.
Born in 1950 in Falkirk, Scotland, McNeill began his musical training as a teen with violin lessons. He then picked up the fiddle and later learned to play viola, mandolin, cittern, bouzouki, concertina, bass and the hurdy-gurdy.
McNeill has been a major presence on the British folk scene since the late 1960s, when he co-founded the seminal Scottish folk group, The Battlefield Band. This band earned acclaim for “The Yew Tree,” “The Lads o’ the Fair” and “The Snows of France and Holland,” as well as “The Devil’s Only Daughter,” which won Britain’s prestigious National Songsearch competition in 1987.
He has also garnered recognition in the U.S. for his songwriting, earning the 1990 Texas Celtic Music Award for “The Rovin’ Dies Hard,” and such compositions as “Any Mick’ll Do” and “No Gods and Precious Few Heroes” have established him as one of Scotland’s leading songwriters.
McNeill has toured extensively with the eight-member Scottish “supergroup” Clan Alba, with the Scottish-Irish group Kavana, McNeill, Lynch and Lupari, and with Martin Hayes of Ireland and Natalie MacMaster of Nova Scotia in the U.S. Celtic Fiddle Series.
McNeill’s many recordings include No Gods, Unstrung Hero, Monksgate and The Back o’ the North Wind, as well as collaborative albums with other artists, including Stage by Stage and Live & Kicking with Iain MacKintosh and Horses for Courses with Tom McDonagh.
He is also the author of two novels, The Busker and To Answer the Peacock, both of which are accompanied by albums of the same titles.
McNeill is director of the Traditional Music Program at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, the principal Scottish professional conservatory of music and theater. An exchange program is currently in the works between ETSU and the Academy.
Admission to this program is $15 for the public and $10 for students and seniors over 65. Down Home is located at 300 W. Main Street.
For more information or for special assistance for those with disabilities, call Down Home at 929-9822 or CASS at 439-7865.

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