Blog

Our first guest blog of 2021 is from the writer, Alison Irvine. Alison wrote her brilliant new novel Cat Step at the same time as she was writing about the Barrowland Ballroom for the beautiful Barrowland Ballads book, which we previously covered on our blog: https://glasgowmusiccitytours.com/blog/category/barrowland-ballads/ photograph by Chris Leslie We know Alison loves her…

This time last year, Amy Macdonald was preparing to record her fifth album, The Human Demands, probably fairly secure in the knowledge that she would have another hit on her hands, such is her avid fanbase. Recording commenced at the start of 2020, then a certain pesky virus reared its head and Macdonald found herself…

Well, that was a strange year for our tours. And everything else in the world. Because of you-know-what, our season didn’t start until August this year and, to be honest, we didn’t know if anybody would want to come out on our walking tours. We had capped numbers, done risk assessments and satisfied the government’s…

As our final Saturday walks of 2020 approaches we’ve been reflecting on what a strange year it’s been for our tours. And everything else in the world. Because of you-know-what, our season didn’t start until August this year and, to be honest, we didn’t know if anybody would want to come out on our walking…

Like many festivals in this strangest of years, the wonderful Glasgow Americana Festival is taking the live music online with an excellent line-up of country songwriting talent from home and away, including the luminous Laura Cantrell, hometown heroine Jill Jackson, the fertile transatlantic partnership of Boo Hewerdine and Darden Smith, Robert Vincent – the Scouse…

In part two of our interview with top pop auteur KT Tunstall, she talks about completing her trilogy of albums inspired by the themes of mind, body and soul, and of the sensorineural sudden hearing loss she suffered in 2018 – as well as living through a pandemic in Trump’s America. Being in America is…

Here at Glasgow Music City Tours, we have been known to share with our guests the tale of KT Tunstall’s big break on Later with Jools Holland (there is a Glasgow connection) in late 2005. Fifteen years on, she remains one of Scotland’s most respected, engaging and resourceful musicians, who always has an interesting, eloquent…

Regular live music is planned for Shout! Inspired by the Rip It Up exhibition which took place at the National Museum of Scotland in 2018, Shout! The Scottish Music Experience is a newly launched exhibition, bar and performance space in Edinburgh’s Waverly Mall. At the heart of Shout! is an exhibition comprising memorabilia, listening posts…

We’d like to thank our guest blogger, musician, songwriter and producer, Rosie Bans, for taking the time to write about Song Seeds, the songwriting retreat she set up with Becci Wallace and which now runs online, the next one is from 21st-24th September. Read on to find out more about this brilliant project. Creatives working…

On September 3rd, Stuart Cosgrove’s brilliant new book, Cassius X is published and it’s already garnered rave reviews. We’re running an excerpt here and over on our FB page there’s a competition to win a copy: thanks to Alison Rae at Polygon and to Stuart for this. Miami, 1963. A young boy from Louisville, Kentucky,…

On our Music Mile Tour we tell our guests about the former Maryland club, which was located in what was once a private villa and is now within the CCA in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street. We’re delighted to be able to share our guest blog on the club by friend of the tours, David Beckett. David contacted us after reading our previous blog on the club by Francis McKee, Director of the CCA, and naturally we jumped at the chance to find out more. We’d like to thank David for taking the time to get in touch and share his experience of the fabled venue. Following on from David’s  blog he’s put together a related playlist with commentary (below) for us, which you can listen to here: The Maryland Spotify Playlist https://spoti.fi/31eHICd Jimmy James and the Vagabonds: Amen Although Jimmy…

On our Music Mile Tour we tell our guests about the former Maryland club, which was located in what was once a private villa and is now within the CCA in Glasgow’s Sauchiehall Street. We’re delighted to be able to share our guest blog on the club by friend of the tours, David Beckett. David…