Alan has been playing the guitar for over 55 years and during that time has played with many different bands in many different styles.

Alan started gigging on a solo basis when he was still in his teens and initially played solo fingerpicking guitar in the style of Stefan Grossman, Bert Janch, Davy Graham and John Renbourn.

When he was in his early twenties he was asked to form a band with Pete Veitch, a keyboard player, and that band eventually became Café Jacques which was a successful local band playing a mixture of progressive rock and funk. Finally, Alan went back to college to finish his architecture degree, but played with other musicians including singer Freddie king, Saxophone player Gordon Cruikshank and Lawrence Mclachlan on keyboards in a jazz funk outfit called Clean Slate. Finally, he left music to concentrate on his architectural career.

In the early part of this century he met up with Lawrence again and formed “The Xecutives ”, a blues duo featuring acoustic guitar and harmonica. He also joined a modern jazz quartet called Jazz Batch in which he played the bass guitar, completing a classic jazz line up of piano, drums,bass and saxophone . Sadly this band split when the saxophonist, who was South African, couldn’t get his visa renewed and he had to go home.

In 2017 he joined up with John and the Aberlady Moonshine Orchestra was born.