In Brief:
Singer Songwriter and Storyteller
Bare fingered autoharpist.
Celebrating Tasmania’s rich west coast mining heritage.
Steeped in the folk tradition of contemporary social commentary and songs of protest.
Always with a story to tell and a lyric to tease, question and savour.
In More Detail:
I have had a life. It’s not over yet. My formative years were spent on the West Coast when it was much more isolated than it is today. Burnie was a four hour train trip from Rosebery. Car ownership was small and a road trip meant heading south on unsealed surfaces to Queenstown, across Arrowsmith and the Highland lakes and through Deloraine to reach the North West Coast.
I was never regarded to have much of a singing voice. At boarding school I was unceremoniously evicted from the school choir by the jerk of a thumb. Still I loved to sing. I plugged away at guitar and Chromaharp without much commitment. It was not until 2009 when I made a conscious decision to purchase an autoharp with a pick-up that things began to dramatically change. Playing an amplified instrument with 37 strings in tune across three octaves my voice improved. Then I began to record myself. And so my education had finally begun. Those early recording sessions were a great learning tool. Instant feedback on what was working and what was not.
I have always been a writer. Poetry. Short stories. Now I began to write my own songs. My first live performance was at the Bradshaw Sawmill in Queenstown in 2012 – just two weeks shy of my 60th birthday. I have since gone on to perform at the Cygnet Folk Festival (three times) The Unconformity (twice) Rosebery Festival (three times) and I have been a regular at the Tamar Valley Festival since 2015. I was among a group of west coast poets included in the Miner Poets doco on ABC with my song Thirteen Level Blues featured in the promo. A lot of the inspiration for my material has come from those early years in Rosebery. I have also put together a body of work on contemporary themes and performed them as concerts under the following titles: Letters to the Editor. A Short History of 20th Century Oz in Music and Verse, Fathers, The Twilight Zone, Fifty years Hard Labour.
Although I have recorded a couple of CD’s it is live performance that nourishes me. I come from an era that has long gone. My songs will most likely die with me. My instrument is not fashionable. I play bare fingered and amplified. The autoharp purists frown on this practice. The best players are pickers and they are magnificent but that is not for me. The Autoharp is an accompaniment instrument. For me the lyrics and singing are paramount, nonetheless a well-tuned autoharp is still a beautiful thing.
The medium in which I thrive is where the audience comes prepared to listen. It can be a hall of over two hundred or an intimate setting of a dozen or so. My songs are always intertwined with stories. I am now into my eighth decade. The voice is still strong and the spirit is still willing.
