YOLObirder’s guest in the post-environmental apocalyptic wasteland is Dr Brian Briggs, a conservationist and musician on a lifelong quest to tune into the natural world. Brian is both a manager of an internationally important nature reserve, and the singer/songwriter for the band Stornoway.
Stornoway were the first unsigned band to appear on Later… With Jools Holland and have subsequently toured worldwide and enjoyed main stage appearances at festivals including Glastonbury, Latitude and Isle of Wight. Stornoway’s three acclaimed albums and three EPs combine Brian’s two great passions of music and nature and their most recent, Bonxie, entered the UK Charts inside the Top 20 and featured the songs of twenty different species of birds.
‘I am a nature manager but I don’t manage nature – I nudge it and fight it and kick it about on a small scale, but really it manages me and my days – it is my church, and its power shapes and drives everything I do’
In this episode Brian talks about using birdsong in his music, having seabirds in his bath and the time finding a rare bird led to the deployment of riot vans!
