JOHN ALEXANDER
There’s a certain yearning to head for the hills in singersongwriter John Alexander’s Scots man Sessions offering, Breathe.
“It was specifically a summer lockdown song,” says Alex - ander, a performer steeped in blues and wider Americana, yet with a gritty style of his own – or, as the title of his popular Fringe show declares, “Dustbowl blues with a Glasgow kick”.
Alexander’ s songs can be inspired by landscape, weather or life in general, which fits with a Glasgow-based singer with a love of hillwalking and travelling. His last album was 2017’s Of These Lands.
“I haven’t done one since,” he says, “but I’ve managed to use the lockdown fairly creative - ly, so I’ve got a whole bunch of songs that I’ll be doing something with in the new year. And Breathe is one of them.”
He agrees that the song might reflect a need to be up and away.
“I like getting into the hills and I like travelling, which obviously hasn’ t happened much this year.
"I like just losing myself in the mist or in the sunshine – more often in the mist – and I try to capture that.”
His music seems to strike a certain dark chord with television producers on the other side of the Atlantic: his song Nowhere to Go featured in the US mini-series The Lizzie Borden Chronicles, while Let Me Die was used in the western crime TV show Longmire.
The 44-year-old Alexander, who when not performing freelances as a construction consultant, spent his formative years listening to the likes of Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and John Mar t yn, as well as blues greats such as Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker.
“I don’t actually perform straight blues, bu tc erta inly everything I do is tinged with the blues. It’s not 12- bar but it’ s heartache and struggles all the same,” he laughs.
For more inform ation on John Alexander, visit www.johnalexander. info.