Robin Williamson - Biography
Robin Williamson was one of the founder members of the influential The Incredible String Band, but when that group disbanded around 1973, Williamson continued playing music based on Celtic traditions, first with Robin Williamson & His Merry Band, and then as a solo artist. He got interested in folktales and storytelling in the early ‘80s and has written several books about the subject and recorded about forty solo albums.
Williamson was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1943. He grew up playing guitar and listening to both jazz and Scottish traditional music. He left school at fifteen to play jazz guitar but, after meeting Bert Jansch in 1961, immersed himself in folk music, learning fiddle, mandolin and Celtic harp. Jansch and Williamson moved to London to play the folk circuit but by 1965, Williamson returned to Glasgow to play traditional Scots and Irish songs, as well as bluegrass with Clive Palmer, who had a coffeehouse called The Incredible Folk Club. When Mike Heron joined, they became The Incredible String Band and signed to Elektra Records. After making thirteen albums of influential psychedelic folk music, Williamson left the ISB. Heron wanted to do folk-rock and Williamson wanted to pursue purely acoustic music. They both agreed to never use The Incredible String Band name for future solo projects.
Williamson had made Myrrh (1972 Island), a solo album of lovely ballads, just before the ISB broke up. He then moved to LA with his wife, Janet, and started writing music instruction books, poetry and prose, including The Penny Whistle Book, Five Denials on Merlin's Grave: a Poem with Annotations and The Glory Trap — a detective novel co-written with Dan Sherman. But music called to him and he started the Far Cry Ceilidh Band, although they never recorded. Robin Williamson & His Merry Band was his next project, with harp and harpsichord player Sylvia Wood, Chris Caswell on flute, concertina and percussion, and fiddler Jerry McMillan. They were more Celtic-sounding than the ISB and made three excellent albums before Williamson moved on, including Journey’s Edge (1977 Flying Fish), American Stonehenge (1978 Flying Fish) and A Glint at the Kindling (1979 Flying Fish). The latter included Williamson’s epic “Five Denials on Merlin's Grave”.
As the ‘80s dawned, Williamson started investigating bardic traditions. Recordings that blended music and storytelling include Songs of Love & Parting (1981 Flying Fish) and Music from the Mabinogi (1983 Flying Fish). These were followed by the traditional recordings of Legacy of the Scottish Harpers 1 (1984 Flying Fish) and Legacy of the Scottish Harpers 2 (1986 Flying Fish); a collection of Celtic songs about winter and Christmas, Winter's Turning (1986 Flying Fish); Songs for Children of All Ages (1987 Flying Fish), Ten of Songs (1988 Flying Fish), and a spoken word collection, The Fisherman's Son and the Gruagach of Tricks (2006 Gottdiscs UK). He also contributed to Ron Howard’s Willow in 1988, but none of the music appeared on the soundtrack album. He also started raising money for the Scottish Wildlife Trust and Caledon Forest Project.
In 1996, Williamson started his own label, Pig’s Whisker, and released Music for the Newly Born (1990), Wheel of Fortune (1995) with John Renbourn (featuring a blend of Pentangle, ISB and traditional tunes and stories). Bloomsbury 1997 was a one-off ISB reunion with Mike Heron. It was followed by The Merry Band Farewell Concert at McCabe's 1979 (1997), the spoken word, Gems of Celtic Story 1 (1998) and Gems of Celtic Story 2 (1998), Ring Dance (1998), a program of traditional folk songs, The Old Fangled Tone (1999), and At the Pure Fountain (1999). Just Like the Ivy (2000) contained traditional tunes played with original ISB member Clive Palmer. The Just Like Ivy Band, which included Palmer and his wife Bina Williamson, began touring and led to a brief series of ISB dates with Heron back in the fold.
In 2000, Williamson signed with the jazz label ECM to do a series of albums setting poems and prose of Celtic bards to music. On The Seed-at-Zero (2001 ECM), Williamson sings songs based on writings by Dylan Thomas, Henry Vaughan and Williamson. Skirting The River Road (2003 ECM) has a lush, folk-jazz band playing Williamson’s orchestrations of works by Walt Whitman and William Blake. The Iron Stone (2006) continues to explore folk-jazz with poems by Sir Walter Raleigh and Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as a new version of the old ISB song of the title. His latest album is Just like the River & Other Songs with Guitar (2008 Quadrant UK), which includes new and old songs plus covers of Dylan’s “Absolutely Sweet Marie” and the Stones “Wild Horses.”
