2025 · Blues Bytes archive
Interview by Bob Gordon
What’s the best thing about playing festivals?
I have been playing festivals for 25 years, particularly through the early-mid 2000’s, the “renaissance period of roots festivals”. They have been one of my main lifelines to a range of audiences, discoveries of other acts, discoveries of others Australian states, international travel and friendships. They are the immediate source of creative and performing energy, inspiration and connection to locally driven music enthused groups and organisations. They have slowed down in the last couple of years due to multiple local and global factors but so have I.
Do you have a Blues at Bridgetown experience that you’d like to share, either performing or as an audience member?
Bridgetown was my first entry into the festival circuit and I have good memories of watching, meeting, jamming with and becoming acquaintances with artists that I would usually read about and listen to for years both local and international. There are so many musical memories but I have very fond memories of when they would house most musicians in the camp school. They lumped every aging but equally underdeveloped artist into that place, creating a sense of being on Year 5 school camp for immature musos and wannabe rock stars and hangers on. Health, safety and self-care practices would not approve of such conditions, shenanigans, laughing fits and sleep deprived showing off that ‘snort fort’ produced over that weekend.
Where do you feel you fit in musically along the blues and roots scale?
I believe I comfortably fit into the spectrum of the blues genre but have a foot in acoustic approaches of folk also. I like artists that straddle genres depending on the mood, the collaborations and the artist’s point of journey. I think WA musos are bred to both produce high energy keeping drinkers, dancers and ferals energised but can keep teetotallers, sophisticates and the gumnut brigade engaged with more thoughtful and nuanced music. I have been very lucky to play to a range of audiences, produce music of ranging styles and been recognised in different scenes with awards and invitations to different festivals.
What have you been mainly focussing on in 2025 and how is it coming along?
I have stepped back from creating music due to a few big factors for the last few years. I actually burnt out towards 2018 and had to reassess a lot of things now in my almost mid-50s. I still play constantly professionally to live off and stay connected to the WA scene but it has not been the season for that full immersion and music life that I did non-stop for 18 years.
I am building the energy for new music though, and my real passion is for electric slide and electric playing where it all started for me. I have great a trio with the ex-Baby Animals lads called The Electrik Co that allows me to be that adolescent with a guitar again and at very least stand up and play. I’m really into approaches by Joey and of course Sonny Landreth (not related), Derek Trucks and the other usual names that utilise the electric with such beauty, intelligence and power. I am building up lost confidence and energy again to produce new music, believe in it and perform it with less pressures that ground me into the ground.
What can folks expect from your performances at Blues at Bridgetown?
I have not been to Bridgetown for a few years despite some nice invitations, so I am looking forward again to giving as much energy that I can muster to my shows, while trying to deliver some nuanced stuff in often intimate settings for people. I will be selecting a range of songs from my 6 albums, always sprinkling unexpected covers of my favourite 80s pop tunes (bluesified of course) and bringing the odd gem from the rich history of blues done a bit differently. I also enjoy talking to people on stage, ditching the ego and joining music enthusiasts in full blues immersion. Maybe they’ll let me get a bunk at the camp school again for old time’s sake?
