Date: Saturday 1st April
Time: Doors open 6.30pm | Support 7pm | Constant Follower 8pm
Place: The Oak Room, The Rockfield Centre
Age: 16+
Cost: £12 Standard
         £10 Concession

Booking is essential for this event

Live Music | Seated

Constant Follower’s drifting, heart-rending sound is a dreamlike reflection of McAll’s own life. Growing up in Glasgow, McAll was randomly attacked on his way home from his girlfriend’s house one evening near his 17th birthday. The catastrophic head injuries left him partially paralysed, unable to write or play guitar, and with all of his childhood memories up until that point gone. He spent the next decade on Scotland’s windswept West Coast, recovering, and gradually re-learning how to play guitar. He began reading the poetry of Norman MacCaig, as it was the only prose he could follow, and eventually the songs that make up his stunning debut began to emerge. The writing on the album breathes the salt spray, and the gentle beauty of the Scottish expanse.  

Constant Follower

Constant Follower is the band formed around songwriter Stephen McAll. Their debut for legendary New York indie label Shimmy Disc was nominated for the 2022 Scottish Album of the Year Award (SAY) and found its way onto the top of multiple ‘Best Albums of 2021’ lists, leading to a string of notable performances including Austin’s SXSW 2022 and a spellbinding set from the crown of Scotland’s National Wallace Monument.

A triumph after tragedy, the album was McAll’s first work many years after an unprovoked attack in his late teens left him with catastrophic head injuries, partially paralysed and unable to write or play guitar. The following decade was spent recovering on the West Coast of Scotland, learning to live, and eventually picking up the guitar to allow the songs that form his acclaimed debut ‘Neither Is, Nor Ever Was’ to emerge.

Reviews

“A gorgeous listen, full of bucolic melody and personal revelation, an album unafraid to speak its truth.” CLASH Magazine 

“Instantly compelling, memorable and moving” Folk Radio UK 

“Neither is, nor ever was is a gentle, understated, fully formed and utterly beguiling collection.” The Scotsman 

“An intimate and raw collection of songwriting, borne from small, personal moments and orchestrated into stirring layered beauty.” Under The Radar  

"Gorgeous atmospheric Folk" KEXP 

“The debut album from Constant Follower, Neither Is, Nor Ever Was, is solitary, forlorn, and wild – and in all the best ways possible.” SNACK Magazine  

“A gorgeous struggle, deeply human and complex and ground in McAll’s reckoning with vivid moments that seem to carry lifetimes within them." The Austin Chronicle