About

Kyle Alden is a San Francisco based singer/songwriter/guitarist best known for his award winning folk music settings of W.B. Yeats' poetry. With roots in the San Francisco Irish music community, Kyle has played guitar accompaniment for top Irish musicians (including Randal Bays, Athena Tergis, Todd Denman, Tommy Peoples, Gearoid O’hAllmhurain and Paddy Keenan) in concerts, dances and sessions, performing on stages from Palm Springs to Redding, from Berkeley to Honolulu.

Kyle has been writing and performing original songs since the early eighties, as bass player for ironic punk outfit The Young Republicans, who played the legendary Mabuhay Gardens, San Francisco, and the old Sleeping Lady, Fairfax. Currently Kyle performs solo and with a talented band featuring Robert Powell, guitar; Scott Thunes, bass and Eddie Berman, drums. “You could call his music Americana, though Californiana might be a more accurate label”, says Australian journalist Bob Johnstone. “Kyle has long since absorbed and assimilated his sources, and given them his own, distinctive twist”. These are, “well-crafted songs, with catchy tunes, sung in a gentle, plaintive voice ”, that evokes Canadian songsters such as Ron Sexsmith and Neil Young.

Also active in traditional-based acoustic music, Kyle plays with Irish/Americana combo The Mild Colonial Boys (Rory McNamara, vocals and guitar; John Caulfield, vocals, fiddle and mandolin), and traditional Irish band The Gas Men.

Recordings include:

• Songs From Yeats' Bee-Loud Glade (2011, produced by KA)
• Rainshadow (1993 cassette, remastered 2003 CD)
• Ballad of a Sleepwalker (2004, produced by Jim Brunberg)
• hubbub EP (2005, produced by Scott Mathews)
• Tangletown (2008, produced by KA)
• Hello Again Kind Stranger (2008, produced by Robert Powell) read more . . .