Alison Humphries is a singer/songwriter, guitarist, concertina player and all-round entertainer from Gabriola Island BC. One of Northern Ireland's "more outrageous exports", Alison was a regular on the folk scene in England until 2001 when she came to live in Canada.
In England, Alison performed at folk clubs, festivals and anywhere else, she says, where the doors could be locked to prevent the audience from escaping! She is now terrorizing British Columbia's peaceful shores with her repertoire of parodies and comic songs, and has been spotted at the Islands Folk Festival as well as coffeehouses and folk clubs on Vancouver Island and Gabriola Island, where she now lives, teaching fingerstyle guitar and performing locally.
With Irish charm and 'gift of the gab', Alison delights audiences and makes them laugh between songs just as much as during them, with a sense of humour that has been described as "delightfully twisted", and is a popular MC. There is, however, "nothing funny about her guitar playing". Instrumental arrangements of O'Carolan tunes demonstrate a fingerstyle technique adapted from Travis picking to become very much her own. She also plays English concertina, playing sets of dance tunes as well as using it to accompany songs like the Music Hall standard "Waiting at the Church".