The Songwriters circle has been running at MacGregors for a while, Mark Forbes shares some thoughts on his latest excursion to it.
Whilst I had heard about the Songwriters Circle before at MacGregors, I hadn’t known what it was or what it was about. Eventually getting some spare time I thought that I would give it a go.
The circle is on every Tuesday from 8-10pm and run by a musician Nicky Murray at MacGregors. The bar is split into two rooms, the main bar and a wee restaurant. The circle is in the restaurant which is a smashing room with a wood burning stove to keep us warm on the dark winter’s night.
The evening is pretty much a simple affair of all the musician sitting in a circle taking a song of your own making and performing it to the group. Asking Nicky about it before we started he explained ;
“The Songwriter’s Circle is a safe place for songwriter’s to get together in wee cosy room with the fire on, to play a song each and chat about writing etc, it’s a place to showcase new material, be inspired, or just to hangout.”
The evening had a warm relaxed atmosphere, very enjoyable with a great selection of styles of playing and vocals. I kept in mind as to what Nikky said about a safe place and have chosen not to review the artist themselves or post any videos as it gives people the opportunity to perform songs in their purest form, as an artist performing my new songs on the evening. The songs I played weren’t buffed and didn’t have the edges rounded off and wouldn’t have been ready for them to be shown off to the world or for someone to critique them.
I gained a lot from this evening, I have left thinking about all the different techniques and styles I could try to integrate into my works from this night, also there are some faces that I will be looking out for in the future!
As you can probably make out from this piece, the evening its self is mainly to the benefit of the musicians, listeners are very welcome to the evening and if what all I witnessed this night you would be greatly missing out by not attending!
The Songwriting Circle is on every Tuesday from 8-10pm, run by musician Nikky Murray at the MacGregors.
