Glasgow Music City Tours

To celebrate the forthcoming publication of Themes For Great Cities: A New History of Simple Minds by Graeme Thomson  (published by Constable on 27 January) we’re delighted that the author has penned a brilliant guest blog for us. We also have a one copy for one lucky winner in a giveaway, lookout for details coming…

Anyone who has taken our Merchant City Music Past and Present tour will already know how much we love Jim Lambie’s Album Pathway in Barrowland Park, which records the artists who have graced the Barrowland stage since its conversion to beloved gig venue in 1983. For International Women’s Day,  on Friday March 8th we want…

In between raiding the mince pies and making inroads on the whisky, Glasgow Music City Tours will spend much of the festive period polishing our stories for our Trad Trail Walking Tour for Celtic Connections 2019. The tours have sold out for the past 3 years so if you’d like to get your hands on…

Ahead of her sold out album launch at the Glad Cafe for the Glasgow Americana Festival this week, we’re delighted that the brilliant singer-songwriter, Martha L. Healy, found the time to pen a guest blog for us and has given us a copy of  Keep The Flame Alight for a competition (see our Facebook page…

How did all these people get in my room? It’s time for Side Two of our virtual LP, marking the 100th anniversary of Frank Sinatra’s birth, featuring tracks chosen by a swinging gang of musicians, writers and other Charleys, Barn-burners and Clydes. If you missed it, you can still give Side One a spin here. Careful not to spill while you sip… “Watertown” chosen by Jill Rodger I’m just currently a bit obsessed with  Sinatra’s Watertown album – and this title track in particular! It was a new one on me, brought to my attention by my pal Grahame Skinner (Hipsway) – who is working on his own version of some of the songs at the moment. I sought it out and immediately fell for the whole album. It’s now been on repeat for months. (Jill Rodger is director of the Glasgow Jazz Festival, and busy getting ready…

We found Dave Pollock’s Guardian piece about the ‘slow death of music venues’ thought-provoking and a lot of research has gone into it. We’re less convinced that it told the whole story about Glasgow. A number of us at Glasgow Music City Tours have or still do work as music journalists. We understand that an article has to fit the brief, make clear points and not muddy the waters but Glasgow’s live music scene appears to be in rude health rather than facing a slow death. We wrote a reply on the article’s comments page: ‘As a former music journalist who wrote about many of the same Glasgow and Edinburgh venues as David Pollock, I appreciate the power of a punchy headline. However, this article greatly exaggerates the slow death of live music in Glasgow. While the closure of The Arches was indeed a…

It has been a beezer week for Glasgow Music City Tours. Yesterday, we finished our last of four special tours for Merchant City Festival. We had lots of guests come out on tour with us and our TripAdvisor reviews are all glowing with good comments. We finished each tour with a concert from special guests at Mono. Many thanks to Miracle Strip, Spinning…