The Acoustic Balladeer

My good friend John Broomhall gave me the nick name, “The Wild Irish Rover”, and it stuck, to my good fortune. But as an Irish/Australian singer/songwriter I’m not just that, I’m all of the above! My evening show is based around the characters I’ve met and those songs that I’ve written about them. Then I throw in some Irish songs and tunes that I’ve adapted and play them on a range of instruments and in various tunings including the Bodhran (The Irish Drum). Then I stir this melting pot and present this feast from a stage and I know that you’ll know some of my material. I’m a singer song writer, performer and a finger style guitar player. I love alternate tunings on my guitars and I love guitars as well as other stringed instruments, in their many shapes and form. I also love performing to an audience, presenting what I’ve found in the form of songs & tune or stories and I believe the old saying ‘There are new songs within old melodies”. It is all very true. This is why I lean on my Irish heritage for assistance and my childhood in England and Australia and particularly what was played on the radio & TV from pop to jazz ,blues folk and of course the acoustic singer song-writer so I am “The Acoustic Balladeer”. I have a mother who danced a father who sang and a granny that played fiddle in Dublin, Ireland. And having been born there, that’s enough reason for me to carry on the tradition. I think! As a player I use a lot of musical styles, I am constantly being teased and seduced by what I hear. Can I play this on my guitar I ask? What would that sound like? An audience would love this! So now you know a little about me, read on I’ll explain my recordings and my travels, because travel is the food of inspiration. I have performed from wooden boats festival Brest, in France, to the magic of Port Fairy, Woodford, ABC concerts in Australia. I’ve had airplay for my songs with radio & TV. I’ve attended music lessons in North Carolina, under the tuition guitarist El McMeen. And I have played with and supported many performers on many stages. I also teach guitar each year at The Lake School of Celtic Music Song &Dance. As a songwriter I will always be working on my next album. But my last was a few years ago called ‘Between the Moon and Sun’. Written for George Town, Tasmania’s Bi-Centenary. So I have been working on a new bunch of songs to be released 2007 and I refer to these as my “Story Songs”. I come from a story teller’s background and love to tell the tale accompanied by music. As a fulltime musician and performer I work with adults and children in early childhood, were stories and music play a big roll in their life’s. So a story is heard or sung or played out, from the cradle to the grave. The album is about my travels and the people whom I’ve met along the way and their influences and stories. But not all is from the spoken word. I read a lot and get excited about history, people like Charles Strutt, whom accompanied Lord Earl Grey’s Orphan girls to Australia as a surgeon onboard The Thomas Arbuthnot . A great story worth of a song! Exploring the strings on the neck of my guitar for newer sounds excites the hell out of me. The discovery of one new chord and preferably through finger moves rather than from a book, creates a whole new pallet of chord and melody and colour discovery.