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!