This website contains both a biography about the English musician Royston Michael Wood as well as a display of his œuvre. Royston was a central contributor to the English folk revival of the 1960s and 1970s, and is most commonly known as the co-founder and bass-baritone singer in the influential London folk group The Young Tradition.

Born on February 20 1935 into a lower middle-class family in suburban Surrey, the second world war drove Royston and his family up to North East Scotland, where he spent the greater part of his childhood and developed a deep infatuation with classical music as well as an early inclination towards literature. On finishing high school, Royston commenced his first job as a cram school teacher and, not yet twenty, entered a precocious marriage with Denise, the mother of his first daughter and his only son. For some years he worked as a P. R. clerk and copywriter in the advertisement industry, until in the early 1960s Royston was fired for fighting with a customer. A crisis ensued, in which Royston left his family and an orderly existence to become a strolling singer in London's burgeoning folk scene and a lorry driver. In 1965 Royston became a founding member of The Young Tradition with Peter Bellamy and Heather Wood (no relation). The trio sang English folk songs in close three-part harmony and became instant stars in the English folk scene. When Royston met and married his second wife Leslie, a student teacher from America, he soon became a father to a second and a third daughter and, after the disbanding of The Young Tradition in September 1969, led a rural family life in Suffolk, where he would spend the best part of the 1970s and – amongst various other activities – learned how to play the English concertina, his instrument of choice. After inconsequential attempts at starting a solo career as a club singer and concertina player between late 1969 and mid-1971, he co-founded the electric folk group The Albion Country Band with the visionary bass player and experienced bandleader Ashley Hutchings in December 1971. When the group imploded after less than a year, Royston briefly joined the Yorkshire unaccompanied folk trio Swan Arcade as a bass singer in 1973, before going solo again and temporarily abandoning his musical career to become a middle school teacher.

In 1976 Royston teamed up with his former bandmate Heather Wood, who was then about to leave the UK for the USA to start a new life. The duo toured the USA and soon after recorded a studio album in England in January 1977; for both their album and their touring duo they chose the moniker No Relation, reflecting the common error that the pair were siblings or spouses. In the spring of 1977 Royston, then aged 42, followed his bandmate Heather to the USA and moved to New York State, where he became part of the East Coast folk scene, with occasional forays into Canada. He either appeared solo, or with Heather as No Relation, or in other formations. In 1978 he met Natasha, an American artist, who became his third wife in 1980. By then, making music had become a sideline to his full-time occupation as a journalist in the regional New York State press.

Four years after the birth of his fourth daughter, Royston suffered a severe car accident on March 17 1990 while returning home from an assignment. Royston, the seasoned lorry driver, had helped a fellow motorist on the emergency lane, when another car propelled the defunct car into Royston. He spent weeks in a coma, and, unable to recover from his traumata, died on April 10 1990.

Royston was a man of many talents, and – in a rough chronology which does not claim completeness – busied himself as: an unqualified teacher, P. R. and advertisement clerk, copywriter, bum, stonecutter, barkeeper, lorry driver, folk singer, stockboy, talent scout, percussionist, arranger, tape editor, assistant engineer, record producer, concertina player, fruit sorter, guarantor, roadie, manager, songwriter, folk club consultant, chicken keeper, teacher trainee, music teacher and scholar, comedian, short story writer, drawing model, journalist, darts player, environmentalist and, finally, an arts writer and theatre reviewer. Even 35 years after his untimely death, many of his former friends and colleagues remember and admire him for his character, deep knowledge, humour and kindness. Those musicians among them acknowledge that his rich voice and his overall vision remain an enduring inspiration.