Bio
“My happy place is a round table with pens everywhere and scribbled pieces of paper in high piles held down by half-full glasses. That’s my favourite summit to climb!”
Galen Ayers is a multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter with a long history of social and environmental activism via the power of song.
Galen’s debut solo album was released in the United States in 2018, and she completed a successful tour of Japan in 2019. Her musical roots go back a long way, and her life has always been steeped in music. As a kid, ‘normal' days involved touring with her father, Kevin Ayers, and learning to play and write music. Ever since, she writes both solo and in collaboration, making and listening to eclectic music in both of her native languages, English and Spanish.
Galen was born in an alternative commune in France with her father’s mates as neighbours (Tangerine Dream, Caravan), then grew up in artists’ haven Deia, Spain. Travelling and a life-long passion for anthropology and study has proven fertile ground for a deeply personal style of songwriting and performance. She collaborated with London groups such as Drugstore and, during university, found a home writing top lines for local bands. She also started her long creative collaboration with film director Mike Figgis, using the first money she earned singing in one of his commercials to buy her first guitar.
After recording a demo, she was invited by Chris Franz and Tina Weymouth (Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club) to live with them and continue recording. Eventually, she went back to London and formed the band Siskin with musical powerhouse Kirsty Newton. They toured extensively across Europe and the UK to much critical acclaim and radio support from BBC4 and BBC6.
When Galen was a kid, she quickly became the go-to girl in school for writing her friends’ love letters and break-up letters. This passion and facility for the persuasive written word also became a weapon for her social and environmental activism and as an expression of her academic career. She holds two masters – one in Buddhism and the other in the psychology of religion.
As part of her activism, Galen has worked with survivors of the Rwandan genocide and as an ambassador for Friends of the Earth, the Conservation Collective, and the UK organisation Centrepoint which works to protect the young and homeless.
2023 sees Galen back in duet form with a new album scheduled for release via Sony in May this year.
