I first picked up a guitar at the age of 14 after a good friend of mine dubbed me a cassette tape of Radiohead's 'Pablo Honey' and I realised that playing guitar was suddenly all I wanted to do. Learning my way around the guitar [it's a long way], I started writing songs almost right away, and after that just kept at it. My other big inspiration was listening to Ani DiFranco and Joni Mitchell, and I ditched the electric guitar for an acoustic and started to get real delusions of grandure, dreaming of self-releasing my own records.

Between 2000 and 2002, I recorded and sold three albums on my own label, Pickled Records. Those first songs were awkward, heartfelt and embarrased, like anyone's first songs I suppose. I still love them for what they are. I moved to Aberdeen in 2002 to study at university, having already ventured out to some venues in Dublin and starting to learn the ropes of live performance, most notably at The Music Room songwriter night at The Plough In The Stars where I got my first taste of the joys of an appreciative audience. 

In Aberdeen I kept working hard at my writing, and found other talented folks to play with. It was a huge learning curve. I also got to play on stages in Edinburgh and Glasgow, and support performers like Gruff Rhys and Jess Klein. Along the way, I developed my home recording skills, and put out some recorded and live e.p.s which were sold at my shows.

The songs I love most are those that challenge your thinking on some level, give you a new idea or awareness about something. As such, political songwriting has always been a love of mine, but it took me a long time to find the right words to do it myself. One thing I can't abide is a songwriting cliché. In 2006 I submitted ‘We Marched,’ a song about the anti-war protests of 2003 to Songs for Change, and in November 2007 I travelled south to Bradford to perform at Raise Your Banners, the only festival of political song in Europe to be held that year. It was an amazing time.

In 2007 I became part of the local Aberdeen collective So Quiet it Kame, and they released 'Medicine E.P' for me. That same year I recorded, mixed and co-produced my friend Brigid Lefevre's 'Uniform Times' album, which was released in June 2007 and distributed by Woven Wheat Whispers. We recorded it in my flat with various players, including the wonderous Caroline Kemp, and it was some fun. I pick up that record every so often and am stunned at how good it sounds - it was me wielding the gear after all.

Recording Brigid's CD spurred me on, and I started work on my next long-overdue record, and released 'A Waiting Room' in May 2008. It nailed my colours to the mast in a lot of ways. The thirteen songs were recorded, mixed and produced by me at home, and they sing about the personal and the political. I enlisted the help of several other musicians, my friends who had gigged with me and taught me along the way. I licenced the music through the Creative Commons, allowing the album to be copied and distributed freely for non commercial use, and so made the mp3 version available to download for free from my website [a nod to all those pirated albums that developed my ears]. And I housed the CD album version in a one-of-a-kind handmade cover, each one assembled by me. Very much DIY.

'A Waiting Room' proved a gateway to a lot more gigs in and outside of Aberdeen, and my writing continued with a more confident air. In November 2008, I started college, this time to study Sound Production for a year to get in amongst the theory of the practice. It was lovely. Then in May 2009, I lucked into supporting David Rovics and Attila the Stockbroker on three dates in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow. It was a small but profound touring education.

Right now [it being October 2009], I am having a small gigging break and working on some other far-removed project, preparing to record my next album and getting my driving licence so that 2010 will be full of gigs further afield. And, of course, learning the lesson that biographies are much better when they're not written in the third person.