Biography
Napier was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in November 1978 and grew up in Grantown on Spey. In 1996 he moved to Glasgow to join the BA (Scottish Music) course at the RSAMD (now the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland). He graduated from the RSAMD in 1999 playing with a series of Scottish traditional music bands in Glasgow. In 2000 he had been working as Margaret Bennett's accompanist and had toured with her in Scotland and France. After working on "In the Sunny Long Ago" with producer Martyn Bennett he was invited by Gillian Frame, Hamish Napier and Simon McKerrell to join Back of the Moon. That year Back of the Moon recorded their debut album "Gillian Frame and Back of the Moon". Back of the Moon toured from 2000 till 2007 releasing three albums and finishing with a final gig in the Kennedy Centre in Washington, D.C., on 21 November 2007.
Napier was approached by producer and engineer Nick Turner to begin a songwriting project which they later named "Queen Anne's Revenge". They began writing on the evening of 14 December 2003 and had written four songs by the next morning including "Ship in a Bottle" and "Out All Night".
Before the demise of Back of the Moon, Napier began working on a project called Findlay Napier and the Bar Room Mountaineers. As the project developed it moved further from traditional material towards a contemporary Indie Folk sound.
With help from Creative Scotland and Hands Up for Trad Napier began a mentoring project with singer songwriter Boo Hewerdine. The pair ended up writing seventeen new songs and recording and releasing an album called VIP: Very Interesting Persons in 2015, which reached number 2 on the Daily Telegraph's top folk albums. Each song on VIP is about a real life character who has led an interesting life. Hewerdine produced Napier's second solo album "Glasgow" a collection of covers and original songs about the city.
Naier met and co-wrote with Megan Henwood and Rebecca Loebe. These collaborations led to Loebe and Napier's 2018 EP and tour "Filthy Jokes" and Henwood and Napier's 2019 Story Song Scientist EP and tour.
Napier has hosted the 'Late Night Session' at Celtic Connections from 2011 until 2022 and was the creator and musical director of Hazy Recollections a mini festival within a festival that celebrates and connects acts whose music meets at the boundaries of the indie, folk and roots scenes.
Napier has run many songwriting retreats with Boo Hewerdine. He has also run songwriting courses with Karine Polwart, Reg Meuross, Lorraine Lucas, katie Melua, Pete Astor,Bella Hardyand many more. He was the director of Glasgow Songwriting Festival.
He is married to Gillian Frame. He worked for many years as a lecturer on traditional music at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. He has lived and worked on the Isle of Arran since 2022 while touring the UK and further afield.
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