James Yorkston

A Scottish singer songwriter with a literary, folk bent and unconventional approach, singer, songwriter, and author James Yorkston emerged out of Fife's burgeoning indie scene in the early 2000s as part of the Fence Collective, an eclectic but like-minded creative alliance that also included King Creosote, The Beta Band, and KT Tunstall among its ranks. Early appearances supporting U.K. folk icons like Bert Jansch and John Martyn led to a long-running contract with Domino Records , for which he produced career standouts like 2004's Just Beyond the River and 2008's When the Haar Rolls In. The following decade, Yorkston's output became increasingly more cerebral in tone, with unique releases like 2014's Cellardyke Recording and Wassailing Society and a series of minimalist trio albums he recorded with English bassist Jon Thorne and Indian sarangi player Suhail Yusuf Khan. Having already published a touring memoir, he branched out into fiction writing with his 2016 debut novel, 3 Craws, before returning to the studio for 2019's exploratory The Route to the Harmonium. In 2020, he began working with Stockholm's The SecondHand Orchestra, Domino Records once more releasing their collaborative album 'The Wide, Wide River'. In 2022, James and the Orchestra joined forces once more, this time for the album 'The Great White Sea Eagle' which bought Nina Persson, vocalist with The Cardigans, into the fold. James was born in Kingsbarns, a small village in Fife, Scotland.