Sam Shackleton

He was born in Stirling and raised in many parts of Scotland, from the Borders to the Highlands. He learned much of his repertoire busking with his father, Norman Shackleton, on the streets of Edinburgh, singing American and Appalachian songs that had come from Scotland, Ireland, England and Wales with emigrants. His research degree at the University of Edinburgh, taken with distinction, specialized in folklore and ethnomusicology.

His first album, Causeway Recordings, came out in March 2022. He recorded it alone in his flat in Causewayside, Edinburgh: ten of his own songs and three traditional ones, “House Carpenter,” “Cuckoo Bird” and “Gambling Davey,” and Songlines magazine made it a Top of the World selection. Later that year the EP Scottish Folk Ballads of Freedom turned to Scottish material from Robert Burns, Hamish Henderson and the Glasgow streets: “Johnny Laddie,” “Tramps and Hawkers,” the old Scottish instrumental “MacPherson’s Rant” on banjo, and Henderson’s “Freedom Come All Ye.”

Videos and singles such as “The Lone Prairie” and “Wild Bill Jones” reached a large audience online, and he has toured in Britain, Ireland, Europe, the United States and Canada, opening for the Mary Wallopers, Pokey LaFarge, Willi Carlisle and Lukas Nelson. In September 2025 he released a second album, Scottish Cowboy Ballads & Early American Folk Songs, sixteen songs he and his father had sung together, among them “Pretty Saro,” “The Jolly Cowboy” and “O Death,” with one original, “Scots Yodel.” Like his earlier records, it was recorded and released on his own, without a label.