Music

Background

I play keyboards, have done on and off since the late 80’s.  Since re-locating to South West Victoria in 2020 I started singing lessons in earnest and have gotten pretty solid as a singer too – very much in the Baritone range.

It’s still a work in progress, really, all music is, but that aside I can manage a good go of singing and playing piano at the same time now as well which has been as unexpected as it has been fun.

Bands/Live Work

Since 2022 I’ve been working with a local guitarist and between us formed malugh.

Prior to the move to Victoria I’d been fortunate enough to be involved with two Canberra bands on a regular basis, the Kevin Windross Band (KWB) – a melodic/progressive rock outfit and Pivotal Point a blues/soul group. As at 2017 both outfits are on extended hiatus for various reasons – me leaving town not being one of them :) I’ve been able to contribute to some of Kev’s solo and band projects since remotely.

In addition to work with KWB and Pivotal Point, early in 2015 I was part of Ivoj Nob. We did a Def Leppard/Bon Jovi tribute show to well over 950 people at the Hellenic Club in Canberra. Was an amazing night and great fun to play tunes of my mildly mis-spent youth :)

Prior to all this I had a great time working with another local band, ZZG. I’m particularly grateful to Dan, Keith, Stu and Craig not only for some great memories from the time together but also for encouraging me to get serious about playing again after a 15+ year hiatus.

Even further back in time were some other bands – Matrix (no relation to the film franchise that came much much later) and Harlequin.

Musical Theatre

In March of 2016 I had was honoured to be part of Canberra Philharmonic’s production of Rock of Ages – a member of the six piece house band for the show (Drums/Bass/Guitar x2/Keys x2) which did a three week season to over 3,000 patrons. RoA is a “jukebox” musical with a pretty fun and irreverent storyline winding it’s way between some 80’s rock classics. The memory of playing the finale – Journey’s “Don’t Stop Belevin’ ” with a ~30 strong cast of exceptional singers in five part harmonies gives me goosebumps to this day. The while experience an absolute joy – hard work of the best kind. I wrote a blog post towards the end of the season, published here.

Fast forward to 2022 and, encouraged by a Musical theatre master class run in a nearby town and some nudging by my singing teacher, Leah Oswin, I auditioned for a local community theatre production of Cats!  I did an initial blog post about it here but now realise I never really followed it up after the show. Suffice to say it was a wonderful experience and the show received some great reviews.

In 2023 I was involved in another production – this time of The Wizard of Oz. This was quite the adventure – very different to Cats! in all sorts of ways. I was in the ensemble and the understudy for Lion (I seem to be typecast as slightly dottery old felines, but whatever ;)  The show was dual cast which meant we understudies got to do a show one evening which was quite a delight.  The Company received some great reviews for this show as well.

I talked a bit about the journey from behind the scenes to performing musical theatre on stage in a post published in March 2023

Recording

In addition to band related recordings, I’ve had the joy of contributing to a few other projects. The most recent of these was through a mate of mine, Carey who was recording some tracks with the fantastic Julia Lenhardt I contributed some B3 organ to “Wasting Time” which is just a cracker of a tune I reckon :). Continuing the Organ theme was a solo on the track “One Minute” from The Barren Spinters third EP “Audionary”.? I also play B3 and some Clavinet on the Pivotal Point album “It Doesn’t Look Good On Paper” – a collaboration with a bunch of Canberra musicians back in 2014.

Gigs

I used to maintain a page here with information about shows I’m playing at or in some cases just going to myself :) It’s badly in need of update…

Equipment

For the technically inclined and/or curious a page with a little information on my keyboard rig as it was some years ago.