Danie Nel

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Add to my PageI grew up in small fishing village on the West Coast of South Africa, in Lambert's Bay. I didn't have much of a high school social life so I spent my time playing guitar, reading, watching music videos taped from Top of the Pops (reruns) and listening to music. At this time I was composing a lot of mods on computer and a lot of my songwriting started there. When I finished school I moved to Cape Town to study photography (my profession today and big passion). Here I started writing songs on my guitar for the first time. That was almost 10 years ago. I must've written in the thousands of songs, but I'm my own worst critic, and songs seldom make it to the next day, or my memory! While studying I played in a band which started out as First Century - we performed 1 show, before the bassist left. I became bassist and the band transformed into EVEN. This was a funk/accoustic/blues/pop outfit and we played original material and wrecked the odd 70's cover. The band was me on bass, Brent (a rocker) on drums, Greg (a jazzo) on percussion, and Dave (a pop vocalist with blues guitar skills) on vox and guitars. We played a couple of shows and generally got a good review. Then it was time for Dave to go and Greg to disengage somewhat to focus on getting married! Brent and I brought in Charl ..boards and I moved to vocals and guitars. Another 2 or three shows followed with a totally different pop sound. Then we reformed into Solid House that never made it out of the garage and from then on I was on my own. During the time of Solid House and slightly before I started rehearsing and composing with Robin Hermanus (see Robin Kurt @ myspace). We spent countless hours writing and playing. He's a gifted lyricist and exceptional vocalist. A couple of our songs still scream to be recorded, but he finds himself in London these days working at his demo. He brought a much needed vocal savvy to my writing, especially making me aware of jazz and soul influences. We performed our songs in congregational settings, and once or twice for friends. With his long-time duet partner, Sharon, I was even also able to write a song. We act as song leaders in our congregation still to this day. Since 1999 I've been playing on my own and loving it. In 2004 I released an accoustic EP, Mental Pictures, and now in 2006 I was able to follow it up, or rather bring it to fruition with a full-length album called "Painting with light". You can check out all the tracks at www.danienel.co.za.Currently I'm writing mainly for worship in our congregation, also acting as guitarist and songleader.