An Evening With Noel McKay
Noel McKay was born and raised in Lubbock and the Hill Country of Texas and has traveled the world, singing his songs and playing a self-built acoustic guitar on world stages from Nashville, TN, Austin, TX, California, Ireland, Spain, and the U.K. Noel has co-written songs with David Olney, Guy Clark, Richard Dobson, Becky Warren, John Scott Sherrill, and Shawn Camp, and his songs are being recorded by Sarah Borges, Sunny Sweeney, and Guy. He has released three solo albums over the years, starting with Is That So Much To Ask (2015), Sketches of South Central Texas (2015), Blue, Blue, Blue (2021), and now the fourth, You Only Live Always, out in 2024.
Noel picked up the guitar around age nine and, by fifteen, was playing the beer joints and honky tonks in Bandera and the surrounding hill country. He landed a job at Flying L Dude Ranch in Bandera, TX, in the middle of his high school years, which proved to be a great training ground. By the time he was in his early twenties, while playing at a festival in Kerrville, TX, he met Guy Clark and formed a mentorship and friendship that still resonates with Noel to this day, long after Clark’s death.
Creating a band with his younger brother, Hollin, was a no-brainer, and the two enjoyed a long run of albums, shows, and press that they found themselves in The New York Times (May 2005) talking about grub on the run. The duo released four full albums (one produced by Gurf Morlix and the other by Lloyd Maines) and one EP between 1994 and 2003. Their songs garnered a lot of attention from Texas radio and press, but it was the legendary Ray Wylie Hubbard who called them “absolutely phenomenal!”
McKay took a break for about four years, spending time in carpentry and guitar building over at the famous Collings Guitars in Austin, TX. Noel found himself daydreaming about getting back on stage, and that’s when he recorded his first solo album, Sketches Of South Central Texas, in 2011. Around 2010, he met Brennen Leigh, and they formed McKay and Leigh, an alliance that took them around the world. They released three albums until about 2020 and were always an anticipated highlight wherever they played.
During this time, Noel was still hanging out with Guy Clark in his guitar workshop when he built a guitar he still plays today. But Clark died before he could hear it finished, “the specific skills I learned from him are things I’ll treasure for the rest of my life,” smiles McKay. The guitar is modeled after the Martin 00-000 series, and it’s his number-one go-to acoustic.
Moving to Nashville for Noel meant getting involved with the vast songwriter community. While he was off the road these past few years, he’s taken part in many songwriters’ rounds at various venues like The Bluebird Café, Brown’s Diner, Robert’s Western World, and his stint as host at the weekly songwriting in the round at the American Post Legion #82 in East Nashville. As many as 25 songwriters would show up to take part on a Thursday night. They would end the evening with a full show by an artist handpicked by McKay himself.
Noel has shared the stage with the best of the best: David Olney, Sunny Sweeney, Guy Clark, and Whitney Rose. Some of the stages and venues over the years have been the 30A Songwriters Festival (Destin, FL), Westport Bluegrass Festival (Ireland), Riquela Club (Spain), Hill Country BBQ (Washington, DC), Levon Helm Studios (Woodstock, NY), Gruene Hall (Austin, TX), and The Bluebird Café (Nashville, TN) and many more. He toured Florida with the late great David Olney a month before he died in January 2020.
Two cool facts about Noel: his grandfather started a radio station in Frío County, TX. KVWG (Pearsall, TX), “The Kind Voice of the Winter Garden,” a station that played everything from easy listening to country and western and Mexican music. Two songs he co-wrote with Guy Clark are now in the archives at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, TN.
Noel spends time on the road crisscrossing the world playing shows, and when he’s not, he hangs his hat in Nashville, Austin, and or Spain.