Bio

Born in San Francisco and raised in Berkeley a generation into the free speech movement, Owen Roberts' songwriting has been called "a gritty, folksy acoustic melange that manages an edgy side." In 2008 Owen moved back to the west coast after five years in New York and two in Italy, and in 2010 he and San Diego's lap steel wizard Greg Peters formed the band Shady Maples. They have toured the California coast as a duo creating a sound much larger than the size of the group and play hard driving full band shows in the Bay Area in some of the most renowned local venues.

Influenced by Manu Chao's multi-lingual songwriting, Xavier Rudd and Ben Harper's swampy guitar style, Nick Drake's thoughtful lyric writing, Leo Kottke's fingerstyle and Sam Cooke's soulful vocals, the band slides smoothly from gritty and hard hitting to mellow and whimsical.

While living in Brooklyn in 2007 Owen released Bay to Maples, an independent bi-coastal collaboration with an old friend, guitarist and cellist Yair Evnine. They recorded the record in Oakland, San Rafael, San Francisco, Tivoli (NY) and Brooklyn. Owen wrote the songs on the record after moving from the Bay Area out to New York where he lived both upstate on the Hudson River in the small, progressive town of Tivoli and in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood.

From 1999-2002 Owen lived in Bologna, Italy where he became fluent in the language and began writing songs in Italian. Singer songwriters Fabrizio De Andre and Francesco Guccini came to influence his songwriting as much as Bruce Springsteen, Leo Kottke and Mark Knopfler had earlier on. He played shows around Bologna and Southern Italy and collaborated with the Bermuda Acoustic Trio to record a few songs at their studio in Modena.