Alasdair Roberts

Alasdair Roberts is a Scottish singer, guitarist, interpreter of traditional songs and writer of new songs based in Glasgow, Scotland. Since 1996 he has worked with Drag City Records of Chicago, releasing three albums of original material under the name Appendix Out as well as five albums under his own name, featuring both original and traditional material. In that time, he has worked with a wide variety of collaborators from many different musical and artistic backgrounds.

In terms of traditional material, Roberts has a predilection for song and, in particular, the kind of narrative ballads which feature on the album 'No Earthly Man' Drag City, 2005) and the forthcoming album 'Too Long In This Condition' (Drag City/Navigator, 2010). His own song material, such as can be heard in his work as Appendix Out and on the albums 'Farewell Sorrow' (Drag City/Rough Trade, 2003), 'The Amber Gatherers' (Drag City, 2007) and 'Spoils' (Drag City, 2009), draws on traditional material in various melodic and lyrical ways. With a background in English and Scottish literature, he has a recurrent interest in themes mythopoeic, metaphysical, naturalistic, historical and folkloric.

Alasdair has also worked on several film soundtracks ('Young Adam' [dir: David Mackenzie], 'Angus McPhee, Weaver of Grass' and 'Mentiras' [dir: Nick Higgins] and the forthcoming 'Burke and Hare [dir: John Landis]). In 2009 the award-winning Glaswegian filmmaker Luke Fowler made a video to accompany his song 'Under No Enchantment (But My Own)'. He has been involved in several multi-artist collaborations and events such as the Amalgamated Sons of Rest project with Jason Molina and Will Oldham (Kentucky, 2001), the BBC Electric Proms tribute to the music of Lal Waterson (London, 2007), a Joe Boyd-curated tribute to the music of the Incredible String Band (London, 2009), a Hal Wilner-curated tribute to Neil Young (Vancouver, 2010), a short tour of East London with Englishwoman Kami Thompson and Cameroonian Muntu Valdo (London, 2010) and a collaboration with Icelandic pop singer Benni Hemm Hemm as part of the Reykjavik Arts Festival (Iceland, 2010) to mention a few.

Throughout his musical career, Alasdair has toured widely in the UK, Europe, North America and Australia in both solo and band configurations, and will continue to do so to promote 'Too Long In This Condition.' Since completing that record (with an ensemble of fine fellow musicians including Alastair Caplin, Shane Connolly, Tom Crossley, Christine Hanson, Robert Hubbert, Bill Lowman, Emily Portman and Ben Reynolds), Alasdair has been working on writing and arranging new non-traditional song material, with a view to a future release, mostly likely towards the end of 2011. In the autumn of 2010 he will be involved in a project with the School of Scottish Studies in Edinburgh to celebrate its 60th birthday, along with two other musical artists, using material within the School's archive to create new work focussing on the Scottish mummers' play 'Galoshins'. This will tour in Spring 2011.