Not to be confused with the OTHER Norman Lamont, former chancellor of the exchequer (that's Britspeak for a finance minister to you international people). He may not have been the most popular politician but has given this Norman more publicity than money could buy!
The REAL Norman Lamont, hailing originally from Ayr,
has been living in Edinburgh since 1990. His songs have won acclaim at
song competitions locally and nationwide. He has played support to John Renbourne, Michael Chapman, John Cooper Clarke, the Coal Porters and Ballboy.
Between 1992 and 1997 he led the band Hungry Ghosts, finalists in the Edinburgh Festival song competition and semifinalists in The List Battle of the Bands.
After Hungry Ghosts, singer Tricia Thom went on to form Bespoke with Ghosts bassist Sean Doyle. Norman carried on playing solo or with guitarist Gil Murray. He appeared on Radio Scotland's The Usual Suspects with singer Polly Phillips, another friend and collaborator, and at the Edinburgh Festival with Gil.
In 2001 he gave up singer-songwritering for a while to learn Arabic percussion for belly-dance classes, but that sidetrack didn't last too long. At the end of 2001 he was a runner-up at the String Jam Club's Musician of the Year competition and won the award for best song with The Ballad of Bob Dylan.
In 2002 he recorded Hungry Ghosts with producer Iain McKinna and appeared on a Bob Dylan tribute CD produced in the States, Thinking About Bob Dylan. He contributed The Ballad of Bob Dylan and his unusual cover of Dylan's Series of Dreams.
After the solo years he formed another band, Norman Lamont and the Innocents, who appeared extensively at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival, as well as Celtic Connections and the Edinburgh Rush.
In October 2003 he appeared at the London launch of Adrian Whittaker's book about the Incredible String Band and recorded the medleys he put together for that occasion on the CD I Remember It All From Before. He also released recordings from the Innocents' Edinburgh Festival gigs as Living Water.
Over the start of 2004 he produced Innocents bassist Lynsey Hutchinson's successful CD Strange Armour while shaping the final form of his own album The Wolf Who Snared the Moon, released in June to warm reviews and radio play. He gigged extensively in Edinburgh with the Innocents and as bassist with Lynsey's band The Houdini Box.
In 2005 he contributed a song and composed music specially for the US-made independent film Godot. In August he released the follow up to The Wolf, an EP of 'relationship songs' called Romantic Fiction 1.(which won Best CD in the2006 Edinburgh Acoustic Underground poll), followed in 2007 by Romantic Fiction 2. He was a co-organiser of the Queensferry Arts Festival in 2005, 2006 and 2007, and composed music for a short film Ferry Forth about the Queensferry area and the Forth Bridges. Currently, he is recording songs from his back catalogue for release on this site, developing a form of meditative ambient guitar, WaveForms, inspired by Robert Fripp's Soundscapes and rehearsing for a new electric band with former members of Hungry Ghosts and Bespoke.
As a day job, he works in e-Learning for a major financial institution and blogs about e-Learning at http://normanlamont.typepad.com/eellearning/.