 |
Robin Auld | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Background information | |
| Birth name | Robin Morton Auld |
| Born | 1959 Lusaka, Zambia |
| Occupation(s) | Musician, writer |
| Instrument(s) | Guitar, slide guitar, harmonica |
| Website | www |
Robin Morton Auld is a South African singer-songwriter, guitarist, poet and writer. [1] He has released twenty albums to date, along with a novel and poetry collection.
Auld was born in Lusaka, Zambia in 1959, to Scots parents. His father was in the Crown Service as a magistrate and his mother was a nursing sister. After three years on the Zambian copper belt they moved to Sesheke on the Zambezi River, near Livingstone. [2] On his parents' divorce he moved with his mother and brother to Cape Town, South Africa, in 1970. They settled in the False Bay area and he attended both primary and high schools in Fish Hoek.
Auld learned to play the guitar by listening to Carlos Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Ry Cooder and Neil Young. [3] He was also influenced by the African guitar styles of mbaqanga and maskandi after seeing Philip Tabane and Malombo at his first concert experience. He started out playing as a sideman guitarist in several seminal South African bands, most notably the anti-establishment Lancaster Band between 1977 and 1979, which featured Brian Davidson as lead vocalist. Davidson had been the lead vocalist for Freedom's Children, South Africa's leading rock band of the 1970s. On leaving Lancaster Band along with Davidson after their conversion to ska, he joined the Steve Walsh Roots Rhythm band.
In 1982, Warner Brothers South Africa released his first solo album, entitled At the Corner. The album was produced by Kevin "Caveman" Shirley, who also produced another three albums for Auld and his band Z-Astaire [4] on the independent label Mountain Records. This partnership yielded five radio hits including "Baby you've been good to me" and "All of Woman".
In 1986 Auld moved to the UK. The following years saw Auld's music evolve into a roots based sound which further combined his Western guitar influences with the guitarists of Southern Africa such as Tony Cox, Louis Mhlanga, Steve Newman and Madala Kunene.[ citation needed ] The result was a style described by UK Unpeeled magazine as a "genuine and unaffected flowing together of cultural strands".[ citation needed ]
On his return to South Africa he won a SAMA in 1992, the South African Grammy equivalent, for the album Love Kills.[ citation needed ] He then recorded two albums, Heavy Water and Zen Surfing in the 3rd World, with Lloyd Ross of Shifty Records who was responsible for a massive catalogue of alternative South African recordings throughout the apartheid years. [5] After the relentless pattern of handing over albums to be mishandled by South African record companies, Auld started Free Lunch Productions in order to handle his creative output both musical and literary. To date it has released eight albums.[ citation needed ]
Auld's first novel Tight Lines was published in 2000 by independent ComPress. It tells the tale of a fishing trip through the eyes of a disaffected teenager and uses a South African version of beat writing. Auld acquired the rights back in order to release it through Free Lunch, along with his first collection of poetry, Kelp. Published in 2006, it contains themes concerning the sea, South African culture in general and man's dislocation from nature.[ citation needed ]
Currently based in Cape Town, Auld tours nationally as a solo artist and as an electric trio, with touring stints back to the UK.[ citation needed ]
Over the years many of Southern Africa's top musicians have featured in an Auld line-up or album. These include drummers Barry Van Zyl (Johnny Clegg, Peter Gabriel), Peter Cohen (Bright Blue, Freshlyground), Lloyd Martin (Lancaster Band, James Phillips), Anton Fig (Joan Armatrading, Joe Cocker, Bob Dylan, David Letterman Show). Other musicians who have featured on his recordings include Zimbabwean guitar giant Louis Mhlanga, bass player and producer Keith Lentin (Link Wray, The Band), Johnny Clegg, Schalk Joubert, Simon Orange, Jannie Hanepoot van Tonder, Nelson Barbosa and Robbie Jansen.[ citation needed ]
Songwriters Auld has collaborated and performed with include Koos Kombuis, Valiant Swart, Lesley Rae Dowling and James Phillips.[ citation needed ]
Warren Justin DeMartini is an American musician best known as the lead guitarist for glam metal band Ratt, which achieved international stardom in the 1980s.
Surf music is a genre of rock music associated with surf culture, particularly as found in Southern California. It was especially popular from 1958 to 1964 in two major forms. The first is instrumental surf, distinguished by reverb-heavy electric guitars played to evoke the sound of crashing waves, largely pioneered by Dick Dale and the Del-Tones. The second is vocal surf, which took elements of the original surf sound and added vocal harmonies, a movement led by the Beach Boys.
Level 42 are an English jazz-funk band formed on the Isle of Wight in 1979. They had a number of UK and worldwide hits during the 1980s and 1990s.
Mark Freuder Knopfler is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was the lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of the rock band Dire Straits from 1977 to 1995. He pursued a solo career after the band dissolved, and is now an independent artist.
Georg Albert Ruthenberg, better known by his stage name Pat Smear, is an American musician. He is best known for being the lead guitarist and co-founder of Los Angeles–based punk band The Germs and for being a rhythm guitarist for grunge band Nirvana, and Foo Fighters. After Nirvana disbanded following the suicide of frontman Kurt Cobain, drummer Dave Grohl went on to form Foo Fighters, with Smear joining on guitar. Smear left Foo Fighters in 1997 before rejoining as a touring guitarist in 2005 and being promoted back to a full-time member in 2010.
Britny Fox was an American glam metal band from the Philadelphia area, initially active from 1985 to 1992 then subsequently reforming from 2000 to 2003, again in 2006 to 2008 and final time reforming in 2015 to 2016. They are best known for their music video for "Girlschool" and their minor hit "Long Way to Love". Bassist Billy Childs has been the only band member to be a part of each of the band's many lineups.
Showaddywaddy are a rock and roll group from Leicester, England. They specialise in revivals of hit songs from the 1950s and early 1960s, while also issuing original material. They have spent 209 weeks on the UK Singles Chart, and have had 10 Top Ten singles, one reaching number one.
Sniff 'n' the Tears are a British rock band best known for their 1978 song "Driver's Seat", a moderate hit in many countries. The band is led by singer/songwriter Paul Roberts, the band's sole constant member.
Sundazed Music is an American independent record label founded in Coxsackie, New York and currently based in Hillsborough, North Carolina. It was initially known as a '60s-centric surf, garage, and psych label. Over time with the additions of imprints such as Modern Harmonic, Americana Anthropology, Beat Rocket, Dot Matrix Recordings, and Liberty Spike Recordings, their reach spans most genres and many decades while still firmly rooted as an archival label.
Maskandi is a form of Zulu folk music, originally associated with migrant workers, that is evolving with South African society. Thought to be pioneered by Phuzushukela. Often characterised by a picking guitar style which draws on a variety of historical influences it also has an important social function with players being given sanction to publicly criticise powerful people.
Jeffrey Steven Pilson is an American musician best known for being the bass player in the glam metal band Dokken and currently classic rock band Foreigner. He has also had an extended stint with Dio in the 1990s.
The Surf Coasters are a Japanese surf band, started by Shigeo Naka in 1994.
Dif Juz were an English instrumental post-punk band, formed in London in 1980 and remaining active until 1986. The band comprised Dave Curtis (guitar), Alan Curtis (guitar), Gary Bromley and Richard Thomas.
Shifty Records was a South African anti-apartheid record label founded by Lloyd Ross and Ivan Kadey in 1982/3, which existed for around ten years.
Mark Stephen Gardener is an English rock musician, and a singer and guitarist with the shoegazing band Ride.
Rowland Charles "Boon" Gould was an English musician and one of the four founding members of Level 42.
Louis Mhlanga is a Zimbabwean artist based in South Africa, an award-winning guitarist and producer. Mhlanga taught himself to play the guitar at a young age and is considered one of the best Southern African guitarists.
Jerald Edward Kolbrak, known professionally as Jerry Cole, was an American guitarist who recorded under his own name, under various budget album pseudonyms and as an uncredited session musician.
Warrick Swinney, more commonly known as Warrick Sony, is a South African composer, producer, musician and sound designer. He is the founder and sole permanent member of the Kalahari Surfers. They made politically radical satirical music in 1980s South Africa, and released it through the London-based Recommended Records. During this time the Surfers toured Europe with English session musicians.
Sunset Sons are a three-piece British-Australian indie band, based out of the town of Hossegor, in the Landes region of the south west of France, known as 'The European Surfing Capital'.
Shifty put out a few good albums through BMG, among them Sunny Skies by James Phillips, End Beginnings by Lesego Rampolokeng/Kalahari Surfers and Robin Auld's Zen Surfing in the Third World. Unfortunately, most of this music was lost on the sales force at BMG. After two or three years, I negotiated our separation.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Artists | |
