MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards: Ewan McLennan

Congratulations to Ewan McLennan who has been nominated in Citty Finlayson Scots Singer of the Year sponsored by TMSA in the MG ALBA Scots Trad Music Awards 2014. Vote now!

We asked Ewan McLennan the following questions.

Tell us about yourself
Ewan McLennan has, in a short space of time, come to be known as a guitarist at the very forefront of his generation; a troubadour, balladeer and storyteller cut in the old style; a singer that can move audiences with his passion and pathos; and a songwriter for whom social justice is still a burning issue.

By the time he began playing the folk and acoustic music clubs around Britain in 2010 he’d already been playing music for years – guitar and piano and all kinds of styles but with a strong interest in folk songs. He was signed to Fellside Records also in 2010 and recorded his first full album, ‘Rags & Robes’. It received critical acclaim, put him firmly on the folk circuit and in 2011 won him the prestigious Horizon Award at the BBC Folk Awards.

His second album, ‘The Last Bird To Sing’, was released two years later in 2012 and again was enthusiastically received. He continued to win awards off the back of this: two Spiral Earth Awards in 2013 and then the Alistair Hulett Memorial Prize for Political Songwriting the same year.

This also led on to him being asked to be part of the acclaimed Transatlantic Sessions in 2013, which saw him performing and recording alongside some of the world’s finest folk musicians.

Having learnt from and worked with both Martin Simpson and Dick Gaughan over recent years, it’s evident in Ewan’s guitar playing and in his music that he has absorbed and inherited a great deal, and at first hand, from the older generation of ‘folk greats’ before carving his own path. The songs he sings and writes are deeply rooted in both traditional songs and the tradition of folk music as social commentary.