I was born during the second world war to a father from the Isle of Lewis and a mother from south-east London. My father was, at the time, one of the "amateur soldiers from the Isles" as Sorley MacLean describes them, and in his day was considered quite a good gaelic singer. My mother played piano so there was always music around the house.

Due to my father's work I moved around the UK a fair bit as a child and was quite used to being "the new kid who speaks funny" for a while before being made part of the group. Having an outsider's view of things can be useful to a songwriter.

I first fell into the world of folk music while I was briefly at Edinburgh University. Hamish Henderson was running a club in Chambers Street and there was a bunch of lunatics in a derelict first floor room on The Royal Mile who described themselves as The Sporranslitters. This soon became The Howff and I became one of a bunch of ne'er-do-wells who used the place as a semi-home.

A year or so later I found myself in London in places like 'The King and Queen' and 'The Troubadour' where there were any number of excellent singers and players but big-city life didn't suit so, for assorted reasons, I ended up in the south west of England. Due to general inertia I've been around this region most of the time since then.

In the mid-1960s a folk club was started in Bath at 'The Hat & Feather' and before long I was one of the regular performers and started doing a few gigs at other local clubs and festivals. In those days my songs were almost all Scots traditional - not too much local competition in that area! As a result of needing a group to make a lot of noise at the start of an evening, three of us learned some suitable songs and came up with the name Chanticleer (Mary MacGregor Dave Galloway and myself). This group survived for about four or five years during which time we did several festivals including twice at Sidmouth.

Through the 1980s I helped run the Bradford on Avon Folk Club with Rosie Upton. Although only a small venue we booked most of the top performers who were touring at that time but everything has its season and after a while the premises changed hands and we decided to do other things.

I've been singing my own songs for a while now and, after much nagging from various sources, have at last recorded a selection of those I am most likely to be singing at the moment. Some are 'of the moment' while others will perhaps last a bit longer - who knows?