He may be a celebrated musician playing regular gigs at local hotspots like the Engine Room and The Exchange, but when we sat down at Arbor Seven Cafe with Nev Clay, the first thing he wanted to set straight was his connection to North Shields.
“I’ve actually never lived here!” he is quick to point out. “I was born in Forest Hall and only visited once a week, every week, from 1962 right up until my grandma died in 1976”.
While he considers himself a transient visitor who passes through occasionally for family visits, hospital trips, or Preston Crematorium, Nev’s family tree is rooted deeply in the town. It was only during the lockdown that Nev traced his father’s side of the family back to 1850s North Shields, when a young sailor from London married the grand-daughter of a mariner from the Shetlands. Each generation seemed to have rejected the livelihood of the last – a baker and confectioner, a publican (the Clock Vaults on Toll Square), a stonemason and foreman at Swan’s shipyard, and then clerical jobs. He tried to visit all their homes, many lost to demolition and redevelopment, and enjoyed a quiet communion with “the ghosts of places”. He still has his grandad’s gold pocket watch.
His dad’s family grew up in North Shields, moving from Bird Street to East Percy Street, Prospect Terrace to Toll Square, Little Bedford Street and Seymour Street before settling in Chirton, opposite what was Ralph Gardner’s school. Nev paints a picture familiar to many locals: he has many childhood memories of catching the electric – and then diesel – train from Benton to Shields with his family, visiting his grandma once a week – holding his breath in the increasingly longer tunnels, the last one before the station seeming endless – before emerging into what seemed like a “magical land,” with the sound of gulls and the smell and view of the river. These trips always seemed to involve a visit to T & G Allan’s (for a toy, maybe, or some crayons), Woolies for a bag of pick and mix, and a newsagent for a comic. Sometimes, being driven home in the car, and counting Christmas trees in windows, Nev and his sister would fight for the right side of the back seat so they could count the illuminated trees on the front of the Formica factory.
His grandma’s house seemed like it hadn’t changed since the Victorian times, wood panelling on the walls, an ancient chain-pull toilet, brass door handles and a heavy brass sneck on the back door, no fridge, and just a pantry with a cold shelf… the same thing, always, for tea – white Cheshire cheese on white bread, and homemade coconut haystacks. She had a huge mahogany TV with a tiny black and white screen on which his mam and dad, aunties and uncles, and grandma watched Dr Who, the Generation Game, then the Two Ronnies, Morecambe and Wise or That’s Life! His grandma had watched the moon landing, but never believed it had happened – she’d grown up without electric lights, in the age of gas mantles. In the front garden was a chunk of white vitrified rock that his dad said had been created when a bomb fell over the road. But most alluring to Nev was the coal fire in the grate, the flames endlessly fascinating.
His family history is a cross-section of local life, moving from a baker, a publican, and a stonemason who became a foreman at Swan’s shipyard. Nev’s father became a civil servant, and Nev himself branched out as a musician and mental health nurse. While some of his relatives moved away from heavy labour jobs back in the 1930s, the connection remains undeniable.
He has spent many hours in Preston Cemetery, looking for the resting places of these ancestors, and reading the stories on the headstones there has deepened his appreciation of, and affection for the area, with all its hardship, past and present. An interest in archaeology has led him to try and discover who was living around the north side of the Tyne, long before the foundation of the town 800 years ago – places like the possible Roman fort at Blackchester, the Roman remains at Tynemouth Priory, the Tynemouth Henge monument buried under a roundabout by the Park Hotel in the 1930s as well as the Neolithic standing stones and burial mounds that may have existed here before industry and farming erased them.
This act of research is not academic—it is deeply emotional and creative. Photographing the doorway of his grandmother’s former home, for example, becomes a moment of connection across decades. It is through these acts that Clay bridges time, turning memory into material, and history into song.
But despite his deep family ties, Nev insists he doesn’t embody the spirit of North Shields—a title he’d prefer to reserve for those who truly live and breathe the area.
“People like Aaron Duff, who sings in Hector Gannet, or Mark Elliott who runs The Engine Room, they’re the ones who fit the bill,” he states, also giving a nod to the old pub managers, shopkeepers, and the women from the Tyne Brand Factory. He credits Aaron Duff with accurately bridging the gap between North Shields’ past and present. He considers himself on the periphery of the local music scene, unlike central figures, he says, “such as people in pub bands, perhaps – Archie Brown and the Young Bucks, the Katy Freeway Band… and stars like Dunston’s Brian Johnson or the town’s own Sam Fender…”
For those looking for chroniclers of the area, he suggests checking out poets like Keith Armstrong and Paul Summers, Tom Kelly in South Shields, or the people running local history classes and Facebook history and heritage groups.
Nev is modest about his musical contribution to the town’s narrative, noting that his solo career only really started hitting Shields venues in the 2020s. Ultimately, though, the central philosophy of Nev’s songwriting isn’t about constancy or heritage, but impermanence. His songs find beauty in the temporary things we overlook: the affection for the hedgerow, the piece of graffiti, the crisp packet, and the overheard conversation on a bus.
Though Nev’s been doing solo gigs for over thirty years, it’s only recently he’s started playing in North Shields, most recently at the Engine Room on Tanners’ Bank, a favourite venue with a great team running it, and the beautiful Lovaine Community Garden. He meets friends for walks past the Black Middens, from the Priory to the Fish Quay and back, beneath Knotts Flats’ concrete clock face, as often as he can.
North Shields is a town in transition, new businesses are opening, artists are arriving, and cultural momentum is building at pace. This energy is exciting—but it also raises questions about identity, ownership, and balance. Nev mentions the old story of ‘New lamps for old’ and recognises a tension at the heart of places like North Shields. On one hand, there is a desire to improve, regenerate, and attract new energy. On the other hand, there exists a powerful instinct to resist change – especially in communities shaped by working class histories, where change has not always meant improvement. This tension and resistance, sometimes destructive, fascinates him. He highlights the fact that, despite North Shields’ application for Town of Culture, there isn’t a single affordable artists’ studio space available in the town.
Nev Clay’s most defining quality is perhaps his skill at bridging the generational gap. He embodies the legacy of the region’s folk singers, punk influences, and working-class storytellers, while also engaging with newer artists emerging from venues on the Fish Quay. His performances are not just gigs — they are conversations between eras, where the past and present exist side by side.
Importantly, he does this without hierarchy. Nev is a strong advocate for what he describes as “democratising the value” of culture—the idea that all details, no matter how small, hold meaning. Whether it’s a discarded object, a hedgerow, or a passing observation, everything has the potential to matter.
This perspective is central to his songwriting. Rather than grand narratives, he often focuses on the minute and the overlooked, capturing fragments of everyday life that others might miss. In doing so, he elevates the ordinary into something quietly profound.
His next gigs in North Shields are at the Engine Room, with Staithe, on 12th June, and at Lovaine Community Gardens, with Lesley Roley, on 20th June.
