“Pfft, I didn’t ask for your life story.”

Well… I’ll tell it anyway.

I spent a fair proportion of my late formative to teenage years playing air guitar on a tennis racquet to Billy Joel, blissfully unaware he was in fact the ‘Piano Man’ - also we didn’t have a piano in the house, so the air guitar seemed like the next best option.

I remember some time around my eighth birthday, my mum bought me a quad cassette of BJ live in New York, a pawn-shop special / no-branded / cherry-red ‘Stratocaster’, and a piece of shit amp that I would imagine to have been no more than fifteen bucks. And oh boy, you’d better believe it played and sounded exactly like a 50 dollar cash converters combo, but to me it was a turning point - all of a sudden I had “the key” in my hands and I knew that great things were to follow from here on out.

Jump ten years into the future where I began my tenure as the songwriter of ‘Red Jezebel’. I remember clearly where I was the first time I heard one of our songs on the radio, and later, the first time on the national broadcaster. Its hard to nail down a definition of that particular feeling of elation - it only happens the one time, the first time, then it’s soon put to the side and replaced by an overwhelming desire for more. But you never get that same one back, just variations and iterations along the way.

I quit university to go touring, for what seemed like a decade, with any band that would put our name on their posters. Chasing the dream. Although, I’m not sure what particular dream I was chasing, I was just ecstatic to be on the journey - that was what mattered most to me, and to this day, it still does.

After another ten years or so I joined up with ‘The Ghost Hotel’, writing alt-country bangers, winning J’s unearthed, on tour with much, much bigger bands in much bigger venues and stadiums, on festival lineups and all the other icing on the cake. Still chasing the dragon, song after song, wanting to out-do myself at every turn. Moderate success seemed enough to satisfy the monkey on my back and I was still working day jobs to save up as much as I could to spend it all on musical misadventures.

It was a good life.

…still is.

I’ve had a few WAM and JJJ awards given to me over the years for songwriting with both the Ghosties and Red Jez (which is always a nice thing) and to continue that trend, I’m up for one right now in WAM’s 2024-SOTY for my work with Good News Now We Can Eat All The Vampires ‘The Miner’.

(UPDATE: We won two - both category and runner up GP, which brings my SOTY awards tally to five)

Last year my old mate Kav invited me along to participate in the Artsix.io project - a world-first event that brings together musicians and artists to create and exhibit digital art, alongside a slew of handpicked Aussie artists to bring the project into the world and I must say… it was one of the most rewarding experiences of my career; not in any measured value of profit or celebrity but a very real, honest, and personal connection to both the people in the room and the art that came out of it. Every artist, musician, and creator should have the chance to experience something like this, at least once in their lifetime. Hopefully we’re gonna rock that boat again soon.

Out of that project, I became friends with wonderfully talented Dallas Frasca. We paired up once again to write and arrange a couple of songs for her upcoming debut solo album that should be released by the mid year (‘24) and I cant wait to hear it.

More of late, I’ve been diving head first with old friends into a musical project that possibly has the stupidest name one could ever have dreamed up (read above) - sewing together my muscle memories of contemporary songwriting and arrangement with impactful and dynamic orchestral movements, distant sweeping soundscapes, all the while exploring new sounds I can create by hitting things that shouldn’t really be hit with other things that definitely shouldn’t be hit.

All in all, music has been a fickle mistress for the most part - always there, nagging, drawing me away from the responsibilities of an adult life, or a “professional” career like my brothers either side of me would argue (finance and banking - snooze fest), but in all honesty, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I am well over the 25 year marker of diving head first into this chaos, working within and across the Australian music scene in any and as many forms as I can find time for - performance, song writing, collaboration, live & studio production, broadcast, & anything and everything in between.

Nowadays, I comfortably label myself with that extra tag of “producer/engineer” (to accompany my “writer/musician” passport) without the imposter syndrome that always seems to come with an artist’s territory.

It’s an ongoing journey with no end in sight, and I am forever grateful.

xo

woogie

Sept ‘24