I was born in London and brought up in Ireland. We lived for a while on a little farm in Wicklow. I started playing music when I was about twelve. Our neighbor's son played accordion at the pub. He taught me to play the tin whistle and we used to spend winter evenings in front of the fire playing traditional tunes - great stuff! My family then moved to Greystones, a little fishing village. A good friend Brian Flinn, got me interested in playing guitar and I was writing terrible songs and playing in local pubs at sixteen. I came out to Australia when I was eighteen. I worked on a cattle station in Queensland and then went to work in a hospital in Melbourne.I learnt finger style guitar from Peter Roberts. The last few years, I have been learning guitar from my friend Nick Charles, who has helped me tremendously with my songs and performance. I have also been getting singing lessons from my dear friend Julie Edwardson. If it wasn't for the tireless efforts of these individuals, you definitely wouldn't want to hear me play and sing!
I love old guitars and am lucky enough to have a few of them. My main guitar is a 1932 Gibson L-0. I bought it in St Kilda from the Trading Post and got it restored. It has a very warm resonant sound with a really comfortable V neck. Gibson only put out the fourteen fret mahogany topped L-0 for about one year. The guitar is very lightly braced and I use .011 gauge Thomastik strings. The other guitar I play live with is a 1953 Gibson J-50 which I bought from the States. I use passive Baggs pick ups in both guitars. I tried for a while just mikeing up the guitars but it's a tough trying to get good levels.
I only play my own songs and tunes. It takes me so long to learn someone else's songs that it's easier to just do my own stuff. I don't know whether it is arrogance or idiocy that makes me prefer to play my own material rather than songs by other writers but it is a lot of fun. I like writing songs about little things rather than big events. I hate trying to categorize my songs because as soon as I do, they have become partly my own and partly whatever genre box I have ticked - it nearly turns them into a sort of cover song. I seem to write mostly depressing songs which is strange because I actually prefer singing happy ones - got to work on that!
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