Glasgow music venues

Glasgow is a great place for music. But don’t take our word for it – listen to what some of the city’s musicians have to say on the subject. We’re pleased to introduce the first in a series of (very) short films we’ve put together, in which Glasgow musicians talk about making music and going to gigs in town. First up is Mr Francis Macdonald – composer, label impresario behind Shoeshine Records, and drummer with popular beat combo Teenage Fanclub. For more on Francis, check out his website. Huge thanks to the legend that is Scott Paterson, director, interviewer and general man behind the camera for all of these films. We’ll be putting up another little video soon…watch this space! (Meanwhile, you can check out our other clips here.)

The Old Hairdresser’s in Glasgow will host films, performances and live music every day during the GI Festival. We’ll be highlighting some of the events over the next couple of weeks, beginning this weekend with the Fantom Cinema programme. Saturday 9th April features short films including What Is A Group? the new film by Ian Svenonius, and footage of Glasgow punk…

Glasgow Music City Tours founder and guide Fiona Shepherd is the subject of one of the twelve beautifully-shot, documentary-style online films which capture the spirit of Scotland through the eyes of those who live and work here. Images of Glasgow will be beamed worldwide as part of the new VisitScotland cinematic TV advert set to be shown…

VisitScotland have just launched their new Spirit of Scotland campaign and our guide Fiona plays a starring role in the campaign’s video about Glasgow’s music scene. From the Barrowlands to Franz Ferdinand, Fiona talks about the venues and bands which have shaped the sound of the city. Experience it for yourself by booking on one of our walking tours.

On our recent Celtic Connections tours, we really enjoyed chatting to our guests after the tours. Lars from Norway sang to us, John told us about his job —counting Capercaillies in the Cairngorms —and there was even an unexpected family reunion. Most memorable though were the treasures that our guest Joan Brown brought along to share with…

A couple of weeks back, Glasgow Major Events sent out a film crew on one of our Glasgow’s Music Mile tours. We had a chat with them about why we set up Glasgow Music City Tours; how the tours work and what we would like to do in the future. For some reason, Hollywood agents have been…

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…

One of the real pleasures of doing Glasgow Music City Tours is the experiences that our guests bring to the tours. We have had people who remember going to the dancing at Barrowlands and guests who have performed on the band stand at Kelvingrove. Some have met their life partners in the venues we visit and others have had their lives changed…

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…

We got a great turn out for our first Merchant City Festival tour on Sunday. It was a pretty varied group in terms of musical interests but with content ranging from music hall acts to Glasgow’s post-punk scene via the classical conductor with the world’s longest name, we had stories for everyone. UK’s oldest music…