gatheredinamber
Gathered in Amber
Nothing like amber, in fact. But here we collect the work of Alasdair Roberts, especially the droppings and chaff that don't get mentioned on his official site — this is a remora to that turtle.
If you have links or stuff to contribute, use the Ask or Submit links below, or email to davidjennings at me dot com and I'll do my best to help.
See also the sister site, The Library of Aethers. If this is the stream; that's the pool.
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From this afternoon's Kings Place book launch with Robin Robertson, we learned that the span of the collected lyrics - 1994 to 2024 - is identical to the time between Alasdair's first and last driving tests (he passed the latter). He has never bought an acoustic guitar in his life, just inherited his father Alan's.
Robertson's question to Alasdair, "When did you feel you settled on folk music?" was answered, "I'm not sure I have settled on folk music." Robertson said that what first drew him to Alasdair's writing on the Farewell Sorrow album was its lack of humour, which led to the two swapping gentle barbs about whether any of this toxic humour stuff could be found in their respective work.
The songs in the book are arranged in chronological order, as they were in the setlist:
Autumn
Tangled Hair
Cyclone’s Vernal Retreat
Farewell Sorrow
Waxwing
Unyoked Oxen Turn
Song composed
Scarce of Fishing
A Keen
Hymn of Welcome
The book has three appendices, including the unrecorded Ruby in the Hawthorn that was played live a couple of times in 2011, and possibly earlier. Long term followers of this site may wish there were thirty such appendices.
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I have a vague feeling Alasdair may have performed this before, but I may be getting it mixed up with his 2010 performance of Neil Young's One More Sign.
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In a parallel universe not far from this one, there has been little else discussed on social media for the past month but speculation about the nature, whereabouts and implications of this performance. And now, fellow travellers, here it is…
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From the gig in a Sheffield a couple of weeks ago.
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You should have stayed at home yesterday
Can anyone elaborate or corroborate Pete Paphides' tweet from yesterday?
Heading into #Laugharne for Day 2 of the festival where, at 12pm in The Fountain, I'll be sharing the confessions of a teenage pacifist. Music will be provided by the great Alasdair Roberts. He tells me he's going to tackle OMD's Enola Gay. I dare not believe it until I hear it.
I've witnessed him doing Kraftwerk's Radioactivity and Abba's The Day Before You Came, but not this.
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In London we'd probably like to refer to this as the Scottish book launch, but let's be honest: it's just the book launch. In collaboration with regular Glasgow haunts, the Glad Café and Monorail Music, this link goes to a book-and-launch bundle; you can also get launch-only tickets from the Glad Café website
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Book of lyrics now has a title and a cover. (I guess if I ever get round to resurrecting the sister site mentioned on the left sidebar of this site, I shall I have to find another name for it.)
Book launches in Glasgow (17 April) and London (21 April).
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On tour with Donald Lindsay
Coming up in September and November, Alasdair is going out on the road with long-time fellow traveller, Donald Lindsay, the piper (and sometime 3D-printer of pipes). So far just one gig that I can find, but there is a request for folk to help put on other gigs, hopefully beyond just Glasgow and London, so if you know someone who could do this, please pass this on and direct them to their booking agent.
On that latter page is a link to a playlist of four pieces by the pair. It says it's private, but if the booking agent is sharing it, I hope it's OK if we do too.
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Very occasional links 2024-02-11
Fancy creating your own Furrow Collective? Here's a training course on how to do that, led by people with experience of doing it.
An interesting assessment, in French, of the 'meaning' of You Muses Assist.
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Thanks, for the umpteenth time, to Folk Radio UK (but for the last time under that name, it seems) for highlighting this unearthed film of The Green Man festival in 2005, the year before it moved to its present, larger location. It includes Alasdair singing Down Where the Willow Wands Weep, but there is much else to enjoy in the film, including a few words from honorary Friend of the Amber, John Williams.
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2024-01-26 The Ivy House, Nunhead, London
This was the night after Burns Night, so we were treated to several songs by the big man, one or two of which Alasdair told us had never been performed in front of an audience before.
Set 1
The Fair Flower of Northumberland
Kilbogie
The Bonny Moorhen
Mary Mild
Rattling Roaring Willie / Cúnla
Song Composed in August
Such a Parcel of Rogues in a Nation
The Heathery Hills
Hallowe’en
Freedom Come All Ye
Set 2
Coral and Tar
False Flesh
A Keen
Europe
Orison of Union
Farewell Sorrow
Waxwing
Roomful of Relics
The Silver Tassie [Encore]
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Alasdair has been added to the bill at the Laugharne Weekend. He's playing on Friday 15 March. Tickets to the Weekend are sold out, but £10 gets you an online feed of the whole weekend.
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This video has just been posted today. There's no indication on the posting of when it's from, but some trawling through our own archives suggests it is from October 2011. In the same year, Alasdair had a track on a tribute album to the late Alistair Hulett, called Love, Loss and Liberty.
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Some childhood reminiscences from Alasdair in this curious podcast interview.
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Alasdair and Emily Portman are interviewed briefly by Mark Radcliffe about the recent Furrow Collective album. The programme is available to listen to (in the UK, not sure about beyond) for 27 days, and the feature begins around 27 minutes in.
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There are several parallel Alasdair Robertses at large to distract the gatherers of the amber. Most commonly found is the Canadian academic, but there is also the writer of Tales of the Morar Highlands. It seems that the latter is responsible for this piece in a journal from the School of Scottish Studies (mentioned in passing several times on these pages) about a gaelic poet who settled in Nova Scotia - where 'our' Alasdair recently visited. Could it be that these parallel Alasdairs are approaching some shamanic convergence?
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David Honigmann reviews The Furrow Collective's recent album for the Financial Times. First three to click the link will get the whole review, then the paywall comes back…
On the eeriest songs, notably “The Wife of Usher’s Well”, Rachel Newton’s harp sparkles with the deep cold light from faraway galaxies, and Lucy Farrell’s viola and Portman’s banjo bring their own shivers. Alasdair Roberts shifts between an undertow of cello like the water beneath an iced-over stream and skirls of electric guitar as murder ballad “The Wild Wild Berry” reaches its agonised climax. Roberts sings lead on the 17th-century bawdy of “Apprenticed in London” where “My father and my mother in yonder room do lie, a-hugging one another, so why not you and I?”, to a vigorous Appalachian stomp.
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