It all started at the Crown in the Surrey village of Capel in February 2008. Kim Rowley had been part of the house band, the Capel All Stars, for eight years when Edinburgh born singer and guitarist David Jameson came along to play saxophone. Introductions were made by a mutual friend, Andrew McFarlane, and the pair were soon getting together to jam their way through a few covers and performing them at the Crown.

Then, in May 2009, David was invited to perform at the Royal Surrey Hospital in Guildford and asked Kim to join him. The pair felt that they should have a band name and very quickly came up with Across The Border.

More gigs followed but the turning point happened later that year when Kim gave David a couple of sets of unused lyrics that he’d written for his previous band, The Blue Cables. Despite having played in various bands since the seventies, including supporting Gerry Rafferty and Billy Connolly in their Humblebums days as well as playing many of the legendary London pub venues, David had never written any music. Kim’s musical history was very different. He’d spent five years in the eighties managing Eat The Bear, a band that also played the London pub circuit and featured superb musicians including Bill Oddie and his wife Laura Beaumont as well as vocalist and lead guitarist Bob Sellins who was part of the Wishbone Ash family. Once Kim moved from London down to Capel in 1987 he soon helped found The Blue Cables and became the band’s primary lyricist.

The first song that came out of the new partnership was Heatwave, a song that remains a favourite in the live set to this day. David set up a recording studio in his house in Capel and, by March 2010, the first album, Into The Light, had been written and recorded.

This was meant to be the culmination of David and Kim’s ambitions but it turned out to be just the start as four more albums were wrtten and recorded with the final one, Into The Night, finished in June 2014.

As well as concentrating on writing and recording, Across The Border have played hundreds of gigs to date including several sets at the very successful Capel Music Festival, touring the west coast of Ireland and performing at Crystal Palace FC.

Covid as well as David moving away from Capel brought a hiatus but the band is back together in 2024, and already being booked for gigs, with a renewed enthusiasm for performing their unique take on folk, rock and blues.