Laureation address: Kenny Anderson

Honorary Degree of Doctor of Music
Laureation by Revd Dr Donald MacEwan University Chaplain

Tuesday 28 June 2022

Vice-Chancellor, it is my privilege to present for the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa, Kenny Anderson. 

Kenny Anderson or King Creosote, the name under which he performs, is a singer and songwriter born in St Andrews, a recording artist who has released over 40 albums, and a tireless supporter and promoter of music. The last time I saw King Creosote on this stage was at a festival called the Eye of the Dug in 2012, when he played alongside fellow St Andrean KT Tunstall. I doubt that he – or anyone that day – expected he would return here on an occasion like this, in the town he has always loved, which has inspired so much of his music. 

Kenny was brought up in a musical household – his father Billy Anderson (who I am pleased to say is in the audience) is an accordionist, bandleader and teacher, and his brothers Een and Gordon have also had musical careers. Kenny attended the local secondary school Madras College, and then studied Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Edinburgh University. But his heart was in music, and on graduating, he busked his way across Europe, forming the skiffle group the Skuobhie Dubh Orchestra. 

When that ended, as did a later band called the Khartoum Heroes, Kenny became a solo artist, performing and recording songs from 1998 on acoustic guitar and accordion, often at home, drawing on folk and electronica, with tape loops and samples, making something uniquely his own. King Creosote’s songs touch on the realities of ordinary lives, relationships gone awry, false starts and wrong turnings, struggles in mind, and moments of exaltation. Often laced with humour, they revel in wordplay, and are always sung with conviction in Kenny’s beautiful, revealing, emotional vocals. 

As the albums poured forth, three or four a year, initially released on his own Fence label, so the Fence Collective grew: a gang of bands and artists drawn to Kenny’s love for the underdog, about as far from corporate polish as can be imagined. A Fence gig or festival would usually be in a village hall in Fife, often in Anstruther, with five or six bands on the bill, musicians joining in with the others’ sets, Kenny on the sound, Fisher & Donaldson fudge doughnuts sustaining the audience. 

King Creosote’s reputation grew beyond the East Neuk of Fife: he briefly flirted with commercial success with the album Bombshell, and in 2011 he was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize for his collaboration with Jon Hopkins, Diamond Mine. 

Kenny has said that he writes songs with nostalgia built in, and so he was the perfect choice to write the evocative music for From Scotland with Love, a beautiful and moving documentary released in 2014 featuring archive film of Scots at work, in dancehalls, playing as children in the streets, on holiday at the seaside, or leaving for a new life. 

Still writing, performing and recording, King Creosote continues to give pleasure to audiences in Fife and far beyond, in songs rooted in the lives of people we would usually call unsung. 

Vice-Chancellor, in recognition of his major contribution to music and culture in Scotland, I invite you to confer the degree of Doctor of Music, honoris causa, on Kenny Anderson.