The Magpie Arc is a cross-Border band out of Sheffield, Arran and Edinburgh featuring the multi-award-winning talents and wide musical influences of Nancy Kerr, Findlay Napier, Tom Wright, Alex Hunter and UK folk legend, guitarist Martin Simpson.
Formed from the idea of bringing together a group of established folk musicians who would mix their songwriting styles and musicianship in a full-on electric band to create exciting new music and update the classic ’60s and ’70s British folk/rock sound, the possibilities of The Magpie Arc being something special and unique on today’s folk scene became obvious very quickly.
Having three strong writers, the focus has naturally been on new material, however they’ve also tackled some great covers plus their own re-workings of traditional songs. There’s folk, rock, a bit of country and even some prog-rock elements, but whatever the genre the band are their own musical mix of everything you could expect from such a line-up, with excellent songs, lush harmonies, scything electric guitars, gorgeous fiddle lines and rock-solid bass and drums.
The buzz about seeing the band live and the anticipation among those in the know all became clear as they hit festival stages during the summer of 2022, where only their fih gig was the Main Stage at the Cambridge Folk Festival and 2023 kicked off in style with a live session on Mark Radcliffe’s 10th Anniversary BBC Radio 2 Folk Show, followed by a trip to the Costa del Folk Festival on Ibiza and summer festival appearances which included main stage slots at the Sidmouth Festival and Friday headliners at FolkEast.
Their first full length album, Glamour In The Grey, was released in November 2022 and has enjoyed an unbroken run of eleven months in the UK Official Folk Chart where it debuted at number 9 and was punningly compared by Mojo magazine to the first ever album of the folk/rock genre in 1969 from Fairport Convention as being “Liege and Leif affirming” and also “an elemental racket”.
The start of 2024 sees them heading out on a UK tour starting with a headline show in Glasgow as part of the Celtic Connections Festival on the 30th of January, and a 10-date sweep round England which includes their own one day festival, the Indoor Festival of Folk, at Cecil Sharp House in London on Saturday the 3rd of February featuring Tom Robinson, The Trials of Cato, the Rosie Hood band, Janice Burns and Jon Doran and a very special interview session where Folk On Foot podcaster Matthew Bannister will be talking to the co-creators of the classic UK Folk/Rock genre producer/manager Joe Boyd and producer John Wood (Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Richard and Linda Thompson, the Incredible String Band John Martyn and Nick Drake).
Tour dates
30th January – Celtic Connections Festival, Oran Mor, Glasgow
2nd February – Memorial Hall, Sevenoaks
3rd February – Indoor Festival of Folk 2024, Cecil Sharp House, London 9th February – Love Folk Festival, The Atkinson, Southport
10th February – Wiltshire Music Centre, Bradford on Avon
11th February – Phoenix, Exeter
16th February – The Cast, Doncaster
18th February – The Fire Station, Sunderland
23rd February – Southside, Lincoln
24th February – The Met, Bury
25th February – The Musician, Leicester
Further information and all tickets links are available at https://themagpiearc.com/live