Catch Kris Drever at the Eastgate next month

Kris is about to embark on a UK tour that includes a stop-over at the Eastgate Theatre in Peebles on Thursday, June 1.

The tour is in support of an expansive 36-track 'Best Of' collection which includes tracks from throughout his near-20-year career, featuring collaborations with Eddi Reader, Kate Rusby, Norman Blake, among many others.

Although he most often tours as a solo artist this time he's on the road with his band, featuring multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Louis Abbott, double bassist Euan Burton and jazz singer Rachel Lightbody.

A father of two young kids, Kris can draw inspiration for his songs from the most mundane of situations.

His new song Punchbag is about "artists over-sharing on the internet".

He explained: "We live in a world where people are demanding your attention all the time. To be honest with you I was cleaning up a child's poo when I got this kind of belligerent message on Twitter from some artist and I just thought 'Jesus, your blog may be important to you but I'm doing nappies here', that was the gist of it. The message was to the artist's audience, demanding of their time, and I just thought 'I'll look at your twitter feed when I'm good and ready.'"

Another song, Catterline, is a response to the paintings of renowned Scottish artist Joan Eardley.

Although passionate about music the day-to-day reality of life keeps him focused.

"I have what I think is a quite healthy relationship with music. I am fascinated by it endlessly and it's part of my life but I am also aware that I have responsibilities to my family and my friends and music is not always the only thing that's going on.

"I am from the Orkney Islands and my wife is from the Shetland Islands, so what usually happens is that I keep my tours fairly short. My wife's mother will come down from Shetland when I am on tour just to help out with the two kids and it works out fairly well.

"We're based in Glasgow now and so my travel is much less onerous and I get home plenty.

"I'm taking my band out whereas normally I go out solo but my records all feature this wonderful collection of musicians. It's a rare outing for the four piece and we will do a load of things from the 'Best Of' and maybe some new things as well

"I am something of a serial collaborator, that's where I get my musical joy from."

Tickets for the Eastgate concert are available at https://eastgatearts.com/events/kris-drever-band/