Have You Seen My Red Yo-Yo - The Songs of Matt McGinn
Wednesday 11 March 2026
Have You Seen My Red Yo-Yo
The Songs of Matt McGinn
Time: 7.30pm
Tickets: £15.00/£12.00
(Subject to £1.50 transaction fee)
Matt McGinn wasn’t actually born in Rutherglen. He was born just ‘down the road’ in the Calton and was one of a family of nine. However, him, his wife Jeanette and their four children, Anna, Matt, Eleanor and Shonagh lived in Rutherglen.
Jimmie MacGregor described him as ‘the archetypal Glaswegian of his class and generation: short, stocky, robust with a ruddy complexion and rough-hewn features surmounted by a tartan bunnet.”
He was a genius sometimes writing several songs in one day. Also, his subjects varied from Wee Kirkcudbright Centipedes to Red Yo-Yo’, from Miners Lullabies to Rolling Hills of the Border, from Horse Manure to Bananas. If he got a subject in his mind he had to write a song about it.
Initially he worked in the shipyards and eventually became a shop-steward. He was very political which often caused problems for him. At the age of 31 he won a Trade Union Scholarship to Ruskin College in Oxford. He gained a diploma in Economics and Political Science and then on to Huddersfield Teacher Training College.
When there he entered a newspaper song writing competition and won. His song was about a factory worker who drowned his foreman by holding his head down a toilet. One of the judges was Peggy Seeger and this is where the McGinn/Seeger relationship began. Cutting it short, Peggy’s brother Pete was so taken by Matts work that he got him a concert in New York’s Carnegie Hall with Bob Dylan as one of the support acts.
Having returned to Glasgow after College as a teacher but soon became known as ‘this new songwriting phenomenon’, and he was.
This show in Rutherglen will be presented by several singers singing at least 24 of Matts songs and you will probably recognise them all!
Also check out other Workshops in Glasgow, Music events in Glasgow, Concerts in Glasgow.
