Roddy Woomble

WEBSITE: http://www.roddywoomble.com

MYSPACE: http://www.myspace.com/rwoomble

Roderick Woomble is the lead singer of Scottish rock group, Idlewild.

Roddy Woomble was born in Ayrshire in 1976. During his childhood he and his family moved about frequently, living in France, England, and America before settling in the Scottish coastal town of Carnoustie, where Roddy spent his teenage years before moving, at eighteen in 1995 to Edinburgh to study Photography. After spells living in London, New York city and Glasgow, Roddy currently lives in the western isles.

It was at University in Edinburgh that Roddy met Colin Newton and Rod Jones and formed the group Idlewild. The band have gone on to record and release six acclaimed albums and two compilations, Two of these albums debuted in the UK Top Ten. They have released Twelve UK Top Forty Singles and have toured throughout the world, as a headline act, and also as support to REM, U2 and the Rolling Stones amongst others. For more information about idlewild visit www.idlewild.co.uk.

Their seventh LP 'Post Electric blues' was released in October 2009. In 2006 Roddy released his debut solo album 'My secret is my silence'. The record featured Rod Jones from Idlewild, Ailidh lennon and David Gow from Sons and daughters, and accalimed folk musicians Andy Cutting, Kate Rusby, Ian Carr and Karine Polwart. It was Produced by John McCusker.

The album featured in many 'best of the year' polls, and spent several weeks at Number 1 in the UK Folk Charts. The album was released in the US a year later on the 7-10 label. 'Before the Ruin' the debut album as 'Drever, McCusker & Woomble' was released to much acclaim in 2008. The trio toured extensively around the UK to support the album. Roddy is currently working on a follow-up to 'my secret is my silence' due for release in 2011.

Other musical involvement:

Duetted with folk singer Kate Rusby on her album 'the girl who couldn't fly'. The song they sing 'no names' was nominated for Song Of The Year at the 2006 Radio 2 Folk Awards.

Was the initial force and organiser of the 'Ballads of the Book' album. A collaboration between Scottish poets and writers, and scottish singers and bands. The album was released in march 2007 on the Chemikal Underground label.

Was a part of the 2007 Burnsong Songhouse project along side Teenage Fanclub's Norman Blake, and Midge Ure amongst others.

He is a part of John McCusker's 'Under one sky' project, involving musicains from England and Scotland who performed at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 2007.

Roddy is also a writer and contributer to several Scottish publications. From 2004-2006 he wrote a monthly column for the List Magazine, as well as contributing restaurant reviews to their eating&and drinking guide.

He has written several pieces over the years for the sunday herald newspaper, and in March 2008 started writing a weekly column for the magazine section. This ended in April 2009. He has also contributed to the Observor and The Sunday Times. In October 2008 he began writing a monthly column for the outdoor pursuits magazine 'TGO', his column, titled 'Woomble's Way' is all about his rambles around scotland and beyond. He has also posted a regular and popular web diary since 1999 on the Idlewild website (and now this site!). Roddy has made many appearances on the radio, including hosting the popular BBC radio Scotland 'Ian Anderson show' for two weeks in the summer of 2008. He has made spoken apperances at the Edinburgh book festival, the 'Aye write' book festival in glasgow , and the 'word' book festival in aberdeen. aside from all this, he likes to read and paint, and is a keen hill walker and supporter of Scotland's wild places.

plus support from

DRY THE RIVER

http://www.drytheriver.com

http://www.myspace.com/drytherivermusic

It has been an odd sort of musical upbringing for the five sons of Dry the River. Whilst today their rattly alt-folk is a rag-tag mixture of Americana, gospel and indie rock, their early collaborations were born of a shared infatuation with late 90s post-punk and progressive rock. Singer/guitarist Peter Liddle believes this unlikely marriage has been a formative influence: I think what we always admired about bands like At the Drive-In, Glassjaw, Refused, is the consumptive energy that they had post-punk is a really expressive, heart-on-sleeve kind of musical heritage and I think we still write and play that way. On the other hand, we were blind to a lot of other wonderful music I was probably eighteen or nineteen before I started to go back and really listen carefully to the records my parents played when I was growing up: Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Suzanne Vega and allow that to feed into the way we write music.

Following a musical hiatus spent in Central and South America, Liddle began to write again at university, often drawing narrative inspiration from the ethnographic and religious texts he was studying in the course of his Anthropology degree. What began as a solo acoustic project quickly grew into a haphazard array of musical endeavours, expanding and contracting like a folky amoeba over several years until guitarist and co-songwriter Matthew Taylor completed the formal 5-piece line-up early in 2009. In June of that year, Dry the River worked with producer Peter Miles (The King Blues, Sweet Billy Pilgrim, Young Soul Rebels), live-tracking their debut E P The Chambers & The Valves in just two days. This was followed by a thirty date acoustic tour with singer songwriter Matthew Reynolds, and a heavy schedule of band dates with acts including Hjaltalin, Broadcast2000, Plants & Animals, Port OBrien, Deer Tick and Bowerbirds.

Guardian 'New Band of the Day': http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/nov/09/new-band-dry-river

BBC Introducing: 'Tip Of The Week': http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/introducing/2010/02/tipoftheweekdrytheriver.shtml

**Dry The River - 'Black Cab Session': http://www.blackcabsessions.com/sessions.php?id=1267541961