I’m not sure about ‘bios’, or at least my bio. I understand people want to know something about the songwriter. Born here. Did this. Then did that. Fair enough. Me too. I’m looking for a ‘backstory’ just like everyone else. Did So-and-So really write better songs before he quit drinking? Is So-and-So writing about the fling she had with that guy? I’m full of trivia about the songwriters I love. Ask me anything.

But bios mostly make it appear as if every step followed on logically from the one before – when this was rarely ever the case. I seem to have always stepped sideway or even backwards into the next thing I did. No stepping sideways into writing this bio, though. Or maybe I just did…

I’m from Cork, Ireland. I started off wanting to be a writer, and worked for a few years on a local newspaper. Moved to Dublin, had some stories published in the New Irish Writing section of the Irish Press and in In Dublin magazine, received a bursary from the Irish Arts Council, wrote a novel (unpublished), and hit a wall – I couldn’t write any more.

In my mid-twenties, I got a summer job singing and playing guitar in a bar in the Algarve, Portugal. When the gig ended, I didn’t want to go home so I became a migratory street musician – wintering in Portugal and Spain, travelling north to Germany and Sweden in the spring. Sounds kinda’ romantic and cool when I look at that in print, but there were tough times too.

After a few years the streets lost their luster for me. Luckily, I had an opportunity to come to the United States. New York first – couldn’t get anything started there. Then San Francisco where, for the first time really, I began playing with other musicians. Started a folk-rock band Resident Aliens. We were busy, got some attention. The San Francisco Herald made mention of our “exhilarating music” which “served as the soundtrack for many of our favorite memories of San Francisco.” We put out an album of originals. Ron Kavana, the Irish music legend, used us as his backing band for a series of shows. Recordings of these shows were later compiled in the Proper Records album ‘Alien Alert – Ron Kavana Live in California with the Resident Aliens’. Later still, Ron included me in his great four-disc opus ‘Irish Ways’ alongside Shane McGowan, Paddy Keenan and many others.

I recorded two more albums with Resident Alien cohort and multi-instrumentalist Scoop McGuire, and drummer Mark McCartney. Jon Preuss and Robert Powell played guitar, and the albums employed an ever-expanding array of instruments – uileann pipes, bandoneon, vibes.

The next album, ‘Bag Of Knives’, was an all-acoustic affair with ex-Alien Chad Manning. The album also featured Scoop McGuire on stand-up bass and Annie Lynch on vocals. Chad now plays with David Grisman.

I moved to Boston, and attended the Berklee College Of Music, graduating in 2009 which brings us to the reason for this web page, this bio…

… the new album! Scoop, Chad, Annie and Mark are all on there, as well as terrific musicians I’ve met more recently: Duke Levine and Curt Florczak on guitar, Maeve Gilchrist on harp, and Dan Gurney and John Polese on accordion.

So, that’s the ‘bio.’ As for ‘backstory’? How about: this is the story of a singer-songwriter who started out titling his albums ‘Some Assembly Required’ and ‘Enjoy Your Confusion’ and who has now come to call his most recent album simply ‘Bob Bradshaw’.