The Lone Prairie

Sam Shackleton is a Scottish singer and folklorist, born in Stirling and based in Edinburgh, who also goes by the Gaelic name Sorley the Bard. He holds a research master’s degree in Scottish Ethnology from the School of Scottish Studies, and he records and releases his music himself, with no label. His first records were the Green and Yellow EP (July 2020) and the album Causeway Recordings (March 2022). He recorded the album in his flat in Causewayside, Edinburgh, and it holds ten original songs and three traditional ones. The EP Scottish Folk Ballads of Freedom followed in December 2022.

“The Lone Prairie,” issued as a single on 7 March 2023, is his version of “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.” SecondHandSongs credits that song to Edward Hubbell Chapin and tradition, and lists Bentley Ball’s “The Dying Cowboy” as its first recording. He names it and a field recording of “Wild Bill Jones,” released as a single in 2024, as the songs that found him a wide audience online. Singles of “Pretty Saro” and “O Death” came out in 2025. On 19 September 2025 he released Scottish Cowboy Ballads & Early American Folk Songs, sixteen cowboy and Appalachian songs sung to banjo, guitar and harmonica. All are traditional except his own “Scots Yodel.” He dedicated the album to his father, Norman Shackleton, with whom he had busked many of the songs on the streets of Edinburgh.

Session details drawn in part from the Bluegrass Discography.