Tony Dwyer profile picture

Tony Dwyer

A Guitar is not a toy!

About Me

Picture this if you will – the year is 1974, the place is Canberra. A baby faced fluffy haired teenager with a seemingly bright scholastic future squints fate in the eye and boldly declares ’I will not go to university, even if the Australian taxpayer IS paying for it! I am going to be… (wait for it) …a MUSICIAN!’

After 12 years, hundreds of gigs of varying success in front of anywhere between 20 and 20,000 people, an appearance on the ’Hey Hey It’s Saturday’ TV show miming a single, and countless failed and sometimes artistically questionable bands, he renounces the music business in a huff and resigns himself to a life of inconspicuous drudgery and a series of crap jobs with no future. He sells his synthesizers, his guitars and everything else in order to fund a soul searching voyage to the UK, where all the money disappears in the course of a weekend. (The UK is a financial disaster on Australian money, especially in 1988.)

17 years later, having developed a career in graphic and web design, he makes an ignominious return to live music by performing at an open mic night at the infamous Coogee Bay Hotel. Before long things begin to fall into place.

His repertoire includes often obscure and sometimes quirky material from such widely varied acts as Elvis Costello, Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Jethro Tull, Kiss, James Taylor, Little Feat, Rose Tattoo and The Police, as well as blues tunes and unexpected gems from the early part of last century. As his confidence builds he begins writing songs. Before you know it he is recording said songs on a Mac in his basement. Then someone tells him about MySpace.

Bingo!

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 12/18/2006
Band Website: virb.com/tonydwyer/
Band Members: Just me - vocals, guitars, lap steel, bass guitar, keyboards, blues harp.About the recordings

They are demo recordings. They have not been professionally mixed, engineered or mastered. They were recorded on a Mac using Garageband software, which does have its limitations. Almost all the stringed instrument sounds (sitar, banjo, mandolin, guitars, etc) are Line 6 Variax equipment - a 700 acoustic, a 500 electric and a 700 bass. A Republic tricone resonator guitar (one of the first 20 ever made) was used on some tracks, as well as a 1950s Supro lap steel.

More recordings at VIRB.COM .


Influences:
Earliest influences were Jethro Tull, Crosby, Stills & Nash (and Young), Santana, Yes, Simon & Garfunkel, Joni Mitchell, and James Taylor. Later influences were Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, those old bottleneck blues guys from the ‘20s & ‘30s, jazz fusion, Broadway show tunes & movie musicals, heavy metal/hard rock, Frank Sinatra, folk, jazz, orchestral music, 'ethnic' music and the inspirational Bob Brozman .
Record Label: None
Type of Label: None