Dundee debut

Clark’s on Lindsay Street, Dundee, February 23

There’s bad news and good news for fans of Withered Hand’s music who have been eagerly anticipating his new album after waiting three years.

The bad news is, sadly, the elusive record is not yet imminent.

The good news is he pops in to Clark’s on Thursday to make his long-awaited Dundee debut, when he’ll play live on stage with his five-piece band.

“I’m still working on my third album,” he says. “The gap between my albums has been about four or five years so I’m probably still keeping to that schedule but hopefully it’ll be a bit sooner than that.”

Withered Hand is the songwriting output of Edinburgh musician Dan Willson. A cult figure on the Scottish music scene since 2009, Dan has released two widely acclaimed albums, New Gods (2014) and Good News (2009) and several lo-fi EPs.

“I think I’m quite hard on myself in terms of songwriting,” he explains. “I don’t really write that many songs. “Sometimes I do put out little singles and EPs but they’re a bit low key. Hopefully for the album the songs will have more of a link to them than just being a collection of songs.”

Dan started writing songs almost 10 years ago during a period of reflection following the birth of his first child and the death of a close friend.

With a wayward tenor and unaffected charm onstage he has come to be celebrated in his adopted country and further afield as a songwriter and lyricist of rare wit and remarkable honesty.

“My songwriting goes down a lot of different paths but you do find links,” he says. “I suppose you could say my main inspiration is trying to make sense of being alive, people close to you, your family, just trying to make sense of all that and being here.

“It’s quite vague really but I think you can say things in songs that you can’t easily say down a telephone.”

Dan does a lot of home recording, just him and his guitar.

“I’m not a virtuoso player by any means so I just use my guitar to put down the bare bones of songs,” he says.

“I tend to take some notes of the songs and let my more musically able bandmates hear them and bounce ideas off them. It’s really quite a lot to do with my friends that I’m able to do this. People like Bart Owl of Eagleowl and Neil Pennycook of Meursault. They gave me a lot of encouragement.

The Clark’s show is a one-off and a bonus for him and his fans, “I’m in the middle of some downtime just now, although I’ve got a couple of gigs coming over the next couple of months,” he adds.

“It was a good chance to play in Dundee as I’ve never played there before so I’m looking forward to that.”

Dan Willson, Withered Hand, is looking forward to his Dundee debut.