Graeme Miles

Graeme Miles was an English folk singer and songwriter based in Middlesbrough. Born in Greenwich, London, he grew up in Teesside and studied at West Hartlepool Art School. He became enamored with folk music and with the Teesside area in his teens, and upon realizing there was little to no folk music about Teesside itself, he set out to create it. He worked at the Middlesbrough Museum for a time, but gave up that comfortable job to work in the foundries and factories in order to better understand his community and what he was writing about. His mission was to find the beauty in the traditionally "ugly" and overlooked Northeast of England. His famous songs included "Sea Coal", "Jack Ironside," "Blue Sunset," and "Ring of Iron".