Kyle Alden is a San Francisco based singer/songwriter/guitarist with roots in the San Francisco Irish music community, whose songs and voice have been compared to Canadian songsters Ron Sexsmith and Neil Young. Since the mid 1990s 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 his songs since the early eighties, as a bass player in the punk band called (ironically) The Young Republicans, who performed at 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 Howie Cort, 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.”

Also active in traditional-base acoustic music, Kyle plays with two bands: The Mild Colonial Boys (Rory McNamara, vocals and guitar; John Caulfield, vocals, fiddle and mandolin), and is the newest member of the traditional Irish music band The Gas Men.

Recordings include:

• 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 . . .