From their debut gig at one of the largest Celtic music festivals anywhere in the world – Brittany’s famed Festival Interceltique de Lorient – the exhilarating, genre-busting quartet Mec Lir have been frenzying festival audiences for almost a decade.
Well-known for their tight, lightning-fast playing and huge sound, fusing trad with unapologetically electro synths and drums – yet all the while with the fiddle melody at the forefront – the Isle of Man/Glasgow four-piece have brought their infectiously joyous energy to stages in many corners of the folk sphere; from Cape Breton’s Celtic Colours to the Shetland Folk Festival, Musika Bizian (Basque Country) to Schots Weekend (Belgium), Speyfest and Killin Music Festival in Scotland, and a sell-out, rapturous appearance at Celtic Connections 2022.
Fronted by virtuoso Manx fiddle player Tomas Callister (Ímar), along with fellow Manx musicians Adam Rhodes on bouzouki (Ímar) and David Kilgallon on keyboard (Neear Nesañ), and expertly grounded by Scotland’s Greg Barry on drums (Elephant Sessions), the group’s second album, Livewire, met critical acclaim upon its 2020 release, and topped the iTunes World Music charts – a feverishly-anticipated follow-up to their groundbreaking debut, Not An EP (2014).
Mec Lir’s live shows, though, are the stuff of legend – and not to be missed!