Alan Moorhouse has been busking and gigging around central Europe for over twenty years now. We'll spare you the usual bragging and hype. He is a passable singer, an unexceptional lyricist and a mediocre guitarist. He is not universally popular and never will be. He does have a small and loyal audience and the ability to win over new ones quickly.

Perhaps what marks him out is extraordinary luck. He has always been fortunate enough to have good material for a songwriter handed to him on a plate. As a child he had already lived in harbour towns in both southern England and the industrial north as well as living in a quiet village in north Cornwall. He began playing guitar (rather badly) on leaving school in the early seventies. His first jobs were as a waiter in hotels in southern England, followed by a year working for the Inland Revenue in Oxford and then a two and a half year spell as a kitchen porter in a mental hospital near Reading. A more robust education for a soft middle class boy from Cornwall would have been difficult to arrange!

During his time in Reading, he began to play floor spots in folk clubs and watch and learn from the folk singers who played in the area. There were songwriters around at the time like Johnny Coppin, Allan Taylor and notably Bill Boazman, to name just a few. There were brilliant musicians like Gerald Moore, Simon Mayor, Mike Cooper and Richard Cox-Smith. There were very funny men like Jeremy Taylor, Richard Digance and Bill Zorn and there were people who seemed to be good at everything like Paul Downes and Phil Beer.

To the great relief of folk club audiences in Reading, Alan left the area permanently to become a busker in Cologne in May 1979. The simple inducement of playing for his dinner forced him to develop power in his singing and a degree of physical presence. The street is a hard school, which is unforgiving towards losers. One summer in Cologne turned him into an immeasurably better singer and performer. Not only that, his luck continued because he met Glyn Nicholas and Brian Flynn (then a pop comedy duo). Their show was simple, tight, funny and geared up to making money. He played a few shows with Brian Flynn, in which he learned more in the course of a few weeks than he might otherwise have learned in years.

Realising that he was ill equipped to survive the winter, Alan returned to Britain with the intention of returning the following summer. Indeed he did play in Germany every summer, while continuing to plague the folk clubs of Britain. When he finally returned to Germany to live in 1984, he was equipped with a driving licence (acquired during a stint as a Chesterfield bus driver), a degree in Drama and Writing and some
basic guitar.

It was typical good luck (for a folk singer) for him to have been in Chesterfield in the early eighties. He got to work in an iron foundry and to drive miners to work during the final years of the coal mining era. These first hand experiences form the background to songs like "Marie Dubois" (about a day dreaming miner) and "Men of Steel", which contains the sort detail which only a former foundry worker could give.

Since living in Germany he has mainly lived an impoverished life as a busker.
However, that only means impoverished in financial terms. He has travelled and made friends in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Holland, Belgium and Italy. There have been festivals, clubs, pubs, parties, trade fairs, TV and radio shows along the way. His luck has held. In the mid eighties friends and family helped him back onto his feet after serious illnesses and he is now one of the longest surviving performers who is equally at home indoors or on the street.

He has recorded his first CD with his old friend and colleague Markus Apitius, who has the happy knack of opening up Alan's songs and giving them musical depth. He supplements rather than drowns Alan's more abrasive style. Alan is no Bob Dylan and personal songs are not his strongpoint! The songs tell stories or give character sketches of some of the characters he has met on the way.

Live gigs are planned again and are resuming at the beginning of autumn 2001.He has had to take an enforced layoff because of a sinus operation in autumn 2000, which helped to restore his voice, which had collapsed earlier in the year. He's be back alright. You just can't shut him up!