About

Bob McNeill is a New Zealand musician who plays with the groups Even the Lost, Half Light and triske.  A guitarist, he is a prolific songwriter whose songs have been covered by artists in New Zealand, Scotland, Australia and the USA.  The Dominion Post compared him to Jackson Brown, James Taylor, Luka Bloom and Dougie Ma­cLean; New Zealand Musician compared his songwriting to Bruce Springsteen and Mark Knopfler.

McNeill made most of his mistakes in other people's bands before releasing a series of solo albums in the 2000s, two of which won Best Folk Album at the New Zealand Music Awards.  His three year collaboration with Orcadian fiddler Kenny Ritch, Ben the Hoose, resulted in the album The Little Cascade, which also won Best Folk Album.  In 2010 he released the retrospective Me and Mary Ann, and moved on to non-music projects.  People thought he'd died.

After an extended sabbatical he returned to music in 2016 and began to record a backlog of rediscovered songs, mostly written before Me and Mary Ann but never worked up.  Many of the songs were written during extended stays in California and were influenced by the Spanish-tinged American music he fell in love with in Santa Barbara.  With Emily Roughton and Rob Henderson, he formed Project Feijoa and released the songs as The California Tapes in 2019.  Rob and Bob teamed up again with Em Griffiths to form indie folk group Even the Lost in 2023.  They tour the North Island in 2024. 

While in North America with old friend and fiddle player Gillian Boucher in 2019, Bob began writing the songs that became Lost Stars, his most recent solo album.  They took an unforgettable journey around New England in the fall, before finishing the tour on the Oregon coast.  At night, he played among legends, looked out at whichever ocean was handy, and scribbled away.  Boarding the plane home in LA, he had ten songs, sorta kinda.  When New Zealand went into lockdown in March 2020, there was space to finish them.  Working alone in a makeshift studio, he decided to release the album track by track, as the songs were finished.  In 2022 he partly re-recorded and re-mixed Lost Stars and re-released it. 

Half Light, his duo with flute virtuoso Rennie Pearson, released the debut EP Air in October 2023.  Half Light toured Australia in support of Air in November 2023, and will tour the South Island in January 2024. 

His latest project is Even the Lost, an indie folk group making noises and playing songs he's wanted to play for a long time.  They tour the North Island in July. 

 

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