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BIOGRAPHY
Alasdair Roberts is a Scottish singer and guitarist.
Raised in Callander, Central Scotland, he has
been based in Glasgow for the past ten years. His
first releases consisted of home-made four-track
recordings of his songs under the name Appendix
Out, including four songs on the Up Records (of
Accrington, England) compilation 4x4 (1995) and
the “Ice Age” 7” on Drag City subsidiary Palace
Records (1996).
Many of these early recordings
also featured Alasdair’s boyhood friend David
Elcock.
Appendix Out went on to release three albums
on the Drag City label: “The Rye Bears a Poison”
(1997), Daylight Saving (1999) and The Night Is
Advancing (2001), the latter of which was produced
by Drag City’s Rian Murphy and Sean O’Hagan of
High Llamas.
The band line-up was ever-changing,
but throughout its existence variously included,
among others, David Elcock, Louise Dowding,
Eva Peck, Tom Crossley, Aki Okauchi, Gareth
Eggie and Kate Wright.
Around the time of The Night Is Advancing,
Alasdair was gradually becoming more and more
immersed in the traditional song and balladry of
the British Isles, resulting in the first release under
his own name, the solo guitar-and-voice album of
traditional songs The Crook of My Arm (Secretly
Canadian, 2001).
In 2001 Alasdair also found the
time to collaborate with Jason Molina and Will
Oldham; the result was the Amalgamated Sons of
Rest EP (Galaxia), a brief collection of songs written
by the three individuals, covers, traditional
songs and one co-written track.
A couple of years later, the Appendix Out
name was abandoned for good with the release of
Alasdair’s second album, the Rian Murphy-produced
Farewell Sorrow (Drag City, 2003).
Unlike
its predecessor, this record consisted of Alasdair’s
self-written songs and featured a half-American,
half-British backing band of Tom Crossley, Gareth
Eggie, Bill Lowman and Rian Murphy. Although
by this point Alasdair had played extensively in the
UK and Europe, both alone and with accompanists,
in late 2003 he and his band embarked upon
their first month-long US tour.
Alasdair’s third album No Earthly Man (Drag
City), produced by Will Oldham, was released in
2005. A collection of traditional British ballads
of a tragic nature, this time Alasdair was accompanied
by a large cast of players including Isobel
Campbell, Tom Crossley, Gareth Eggie, Phil
Johnson, Kirsten Koppel, an anonymous chorus
of farm-workers, John McCusker, Alex Neilson
and brothers Paul and Will Oldham.
In late 2005,
Alasdair completed a six-week long solo US tour in
support of No Earthly Man.
At the time of writing, Alasdair and a band (Tom
Crossley, Gareth Eggie and Gerard Love) have just
finished recording a new album, another collection
of Alasdair’s self-written songs which will be
entitled The Amber Gatherers. It will be released in
January 2007 on Drag City Records. |
