We speak to country singer Kevin McGuire about Glasgow’s growing scene at Maggie’s Rock ‘n’ Rodeo

National World - LocalTV

Singer Kevin McGuire speaks about the growing country scene in Glasgow at Maggie’s Rock ‘n’ Rodeo in Trongate. The bar, formerly Maggie May’s, recently underwent an entire renovation.

Transcript

00:00 Yeah, that's a difficult question. Cut that. I'm Kevin McGuire, I'm a country pop artist

00:10 from Glasgow. Well, I mean, I've been a country pop artist for a wee while now in Glasgow.

00:14 I've been trying to hammer country music for a good number of years now and yeah, it just

00:20 seems to be taking off. We've stuck with it. I don't know where this influx has come from.

00:24 I know we've had a lot of success with Wagging Wheel that I've done with George Bowie, but

00:28 this is really, really cool to see. It's great to see that people are finally getting involved

00:31 in country music, which I think has been like a sleeping giant in Glasgow maybe and in Scotland

00:35 in particular. But yeah, it just seems to be going boom and we're so happy to be a part

00:40 of it. I wasn't really brought up around country music. I was brought up around good music.

00:44 My parents had a great taste in music, but in terms of the country side of things, I

00:48 just, during school and stuff like that, I would always come home and I would, I just

00:53 got into country songwriting and the sonics of the sort of traditional instruments and

00:57 I would come home from school and I would like Google the top sort of country songs

01:01 in America and I would download them all and I would sit with my headphones on and just

01:05 listen to them myself. I didn't know anyone else that liked country music, so it kinda,

01:09 it let me feel like it was like my own little world that I was in, away from everybody else.

01:13 It kinda helped me shut things off, so it just grew from that. Started songwriting,

01:18 started playing guitar and it's been ever since. Listen, I think with any genre of music,

01:23 there are always fans of it in the place that you come from. In Scotland and in Glasgow

01:28 in particular, it's been a wee bit of a struggle. Over the last sort of 12 months, we've been

01:33 breaking down big barriers with Waggon Wheel and seeing the response to that, which has

01:37 really let us know that there is an audience here for country music. Even for so many years,

01:42 it seemed like maybe it was looked at a little bit differently or looked at as if it was

01:45 uncool. It certainly isn't now, so we're happy to be a part of this wave and it's only gonna

01:50 get bigger. Listen, we're so happy that there's someone like this in Glasgow now. There's

01:55 been a talk of more places taking this influence and opening up and bringing the country aspect

02:00 and I think it's a bit of fun for everybody as well, whether you like country music with

02:04 a passion or whether you just want a good night out and a chance to kinda delve into

02:09 a different side of things that you would normally do, a little bit of a different culture,

02:15 then it's just for everybody and there's sad songs, there's happy songs, there's line dancing

02:20 songs and hopefully this is the start of many in Glasgow. So Best Friends Since You Came

02:25 Out last Friday, it is, well we've all been loved and we've all been lost and we've all

02:30 been left, so it's a little bit of that kind of story. It's a really southern Nashville

02:36 sounding record and it just kinda tells the story of somebody that you thought was everything

02:41 to you and it turns out that they're not. It turns out that they are, you've uncovered

02:46 the mask and the times that you thought they'd be there for you, they're not there. So it's

02:50 just that story and apart from that it's up to other people to make up their mind about

02:54 the rest of the songs. The great thing about songwriting is and the reason I think I fell

02:58 in love with country, I fell in love with country music so much is that songwriting

03:02 is universal and it's so relatable so everyone goes through heartache, everyone's been loved,

03:08 everyone's lost somebody in their lifetime so it doesn't really matter what genre that

03:11 is I just choose to write in the way that country music is. I love the chords, I love

03:18 the lyrics, I love the lifestyle of it as well. And in terms of particular songs, I

03:23 mean Best Friends Since You, my new single, we did that slightly differently to the way

03:29 we'd normally write a song. Sometimes I'll start with the lyrics and I'll have the chords

03:32 straight away and then I'll write, whereas this time we knew that we wanted a kind of

03:36 upbeat record so the production came a little bit earlier and then I picked the topic that

03:41 I wanted to write about, the first couple of lines just came so really country music

03:46 is all about the songwriting, it's all about having a good time or crying your eyes out

03:50 and I think that's why it resonates so much with people across the world.

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