Seven Nations

Free outdoor concerts begin
Series kicks off Thursday, July 9th
By Laura Bell
Last year one of the highlights of the summer was the weekly free outdoor music at the Meadow Village Pavilion sponsored by The Arts Council of Big Sky.
This year’s concert series begins with Celtic rock band Seven Nations on Thursday, July 9th.
The band receives lots of letters from Iraq “as lots of soldiers are fans over there, which is excellent,” says lead singer and guitarist Kirk McLeod
Gates open for the event at 6 p.m., with the music starting at 7 p.m. Coolers are permitted into the venue, but please leave pets, glass containers, and outside alcohol at home. Beer, wine, soft drinks and a variety of food will be available for purchase from local vendors.
Based in Orlando, Florida, this high-energy band has sold more than a quarter-million records since its inception in 1993. Throughout its career, Seven Nations has been sponsored by Dewar’s Scotch for four years, played the Torch Lighting Ceremony at the Salt Lake Olympics in 2002, signed to a major label, and performed with the Grammy-winning Atlanta Symphony—in addition to playing nearly 48 states (this will be the band’s first time in Montana) and Europe on tours that often reached more than 300 days per year. According to the Denver Post, “Seven Nations could do for a Celtic and pop music mix what the Squirrel Nut Zippers did for rocked-up swing.”
Their name refers to the seven nations of the Celtic world, now known as Scotland, Ireland, Wales, Brittany, Cornwall, the Isle of Man and parts of Spain.
McLeod recently sat down to tell the story of the band. Here, then, in his own words, is the genesis of Seven Nations…
I like to think the band started back in 1993 with our first show. We were from New York … New York City at the time and late ‘93 was the first time we added bagpipes to the show, bagpipes and tin whistle.

Before that, we’d just been a regular rock bank in New York and we played a show at Fordham University and did a couple of songs that we actually have in our set now, so ‘93 is probably the first year.

Individually, most of us in the band grew up playing Celtic music as kids. We’ve only done our own music since the early ‘90s, late 80s even, but we always used our instruments, bagpipes and fiddle mostly, and that’s what makes us different.

In Scotland, we played New Year’s Eve on the Royal Mile for about 40,000 people, that was very cool. We did a National Trust-sponsored tour of Scotland. We just played England back in May 2005.

We were sponsored by Dewar’s Scotch for about four years. As a result of that, they put us in. I don’t know it was like 20-something different magazines. We appeared in some of those 20 magazines like three or four times, everything from Penthouse and Playboy to Rolling Stone.

We also played the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake. We actually play for the Torch Lighting ceremony. That was amazing. Lately, we’ve been doing a lot of symphony shows. We got to play with a couple different symphonies. the most notable being the Grammy-award winning Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

We tour very hard actually. We’ve been touring now since ’94; we’ve been on the road full-time. We’re actually trying to slow things down a little bit tour-wise right now, because in 2002. our tour bus was on the road 301 days that year. Plus, we had recorded an album in LA that took us quite a few weeks. so we were hardly at home at all. So now, we’re trying to keep organized and stay home as much as we can. We just released a new CD. so thanks for waiting.
The original lineup from back in ‘94 - the four of us just got together and released a “Best of” CD of the first five CDs. plus some additional recordings. That’s something we should mention. too. When we first started the band, we were called “Clan Na Gael” and we changed our name in ‘97 because of copyright disputes.

Sales-wise we’ve done probably a quarter of a million combined units that we’ve sold. and most of that was done independently. We’ve toured with a lot of great bands…we’ve opened for Live and Cowboy Mouth. and Great Big Sea from Canada extensively. We’ve shared stages at rock festivals with a lot of acts from Black Crows.

One of the astronauts took our CD up on the Space Shuttle one time. I thought that was kind of cool. because they don’t get to take too much stuff.

Scott Long is our piper from Halifax. Nova Scotia; Dan Stacey is the fiddle player from Waterloo. Ontario; Christian (Crisco) Macelli is our drummer from Orlando. Florida; Jim Struble [“ Struby”] is the Bass player from Jacksonville. Florida.

One thing is since we’ve been on the road for so long. we eventually all left New York City and just moved to wherever we either came from or just where we happen to like to live. We just fly up and meet each other now.

The new album is the longest album we’ve ever done. It came out at 55 minutes with 16 tracks. There’s no electric guitar in it at all. which is cool and different. I got to play bagpipes on two of the tracks myself. for the first time since our very first CD.
The Arts Council of Big Sky is a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing musical and artistic performances to the Big Sky Area. Free Thursday night concerts continue on July 13 with the acoustic pop duo Sam and Ruby. and don’t forget the Doobie Brothers will be performing on September 4. For more information call 995-2742 or log on to www.bigskyarts.org.