Earliest memories of music: There was always music playing when I was young, mostly 50’s and 60’s rock but having been brought up in the Salvation Army music was a given and gospel music had a major influence in my life in my early years. To this day I love the gospel quartet inspired harmonies you hear on a lot of modern recordings.

First Band: The first band I ever played in was when I was about 14 and if my memory serves me well we were called Alien, we were influenced by the music of the day and those days are amongst my fondest memories. I went on to play in countless bands in those days sometimes I sang some times I played guitar really badly but I was mostly known for playing the bass or singing.

First Big Break: My first big break came in 1985 when I was only 16 years old. Pioneer Gospel band “Turn The Page” were looking for a new bass player after bassist Brian Lambert left the band and they took a very big risk by taking me, a 16 year old on board but it changed my life. I played in Turn The Page for two years, did my first recording with them when I was only 17 and we toured extensively.

Greatest Memory From Turn The Page: Apart from some amazing friendships I think the amount of touring we did was a great way to become good at what you did. We were a very tight band and I remember one night on our 1986 tour in Maitland NSW we played three hours straight to a full house, encore after encore. That one night really stands in my memory and nights like that are what make musicians play live.

After Turn The Page: After Turn The Page I went on to work on the flip side of the music business, I managed artists and did a lot of studio work while still getting out and playing live in countless bands whenever I was needed to fill in, I was a bit over all the issues associated with personality clashes and divided visions that go hand in hand with playing in a band. I just wanted to make good music, or at the very least help other people make good music.

In the studio I have worked on around fifteen diverse albums over the years and done everything from singing to engineering. I find the studio is a great place to be critical of your own performances because you are aiming for a certain standard and you know that once the recording is released so is everything you have put down, whether it be good or bad its there in concrete for the world to hear.

What are you doing now? At the moment I’m working on my new album “Odyssey” which has come about mainly from my desire to play music again and I have had a great time doing it. I have written or co-written the majority of the songs on the album all in the last couple of months and specifically for the album. I called on the best musicians around that I knew and I’m grateful that I could co produce the album with Hamish McDonald and my good friend Jason Brooks. I’m more than happy with the sound we have come up with, we paid a lot of attention to keeping the music as pure as possible, and we used real drums not programmed drums. We tried to keep the sound as close to what we can achieve live as possible.

One big help for the album has been the songs written for the movie “Hobby Farm”, Brad Diebert, producer and director of Hobby Farm heard a couple of the tracks while still in production loved what he heard and really wanted me to come up with a song to help promote the movie so we went into the studio and came out with two songs that we all agreed were perfect for the movie, The Mirror which we had just started recording when Brad Diebert asked for a song. It was perfect for the movie, I had actually written it the Sunday afternoon before talking with Brad and the second song for the movie I wrote was Hold On. Hold On is being turned into a film clip to be used around the world to help sell Hobby Farm and I am so thankful for the opportunity to do this. A lot of performers and writers would give anything to write for a movie.

What’s Next? I am going back to the studio in coming weeks to finish the Odyssey album then start work on a live show, we are also talking again with film maker Brad Diebert to contribute to his latest full length feature film, and we are about to commence filming some film clips. We are in the early stages of planning a tour so everything is happening at a rapid pace and doors are being opened everywhere – you really have to love the universe 