While growing up, I was a big fan of the folk singers of the early sixties, The Lettermen, Peter Paul and Mary, and Gordon Lightfoot. I started playing guitar at 13 and the music and lyrics of writers like Paul Simon, James Taylor, Cat Stevens, Lennon and McCartney, and Justin Hayward, really spoke to me, and that was when I started writing.
I’ve played in clubs in Boston, New York, Atlanta, and Nashville TN, where I lived and shared my songs at Writer’s Nights around town, for 15 Yrs
Since then, I’ve moved back to Eastern NC, where I lived for most of the ‘70’s, and the city of Raleigh is where I now call home.
I guess I’m a “folk singer”, though I resisted that label for a long time.
I’ve written lots of songs, some good some not so good! My songs are…what they are. Some are character driven observations; others are love songs of unrequited romanticism. Some are eulogies, and I’ve been told some of my songs are quirky! I like to think that they are different, in a good way! Whatever they are, they’re me
I look forward to playing some of them for you, and I hope you like them.
Alan Oatley
