I play alone but on my recordings the following musicians helped me immeasurably:
Paul Hankinson (keys, and writing string parts)
Jamie Clark (lead guitars)
Chris Pickering (drums and percussion)
Luke Foran (backing vocals)
Sue Ray (backing vocals)
Madeleine Cocolas (bass)
Influences
If you hear it in my music I was probably influenced by it. I am influenced more by people and their "dramas" than I am by music. However these people have truly inspired me:
Ryan Adams, Love, The Shins, The Fruit Bats, The New Pornographers, Queens of the Stoneage, Doves, Kings of Leon, Crosby Stills & Nash, Jackson 5, Bob Dylan, The Frames, The Rolling Stones, Billie Holiday, The Super Furry Animals, Gomez, Supergrass, Nirvana, Johnny Cash, Frank Sinatra, Nina Simone, Any artist from Motown, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Nick Drake, Beck, Augie March, The Band, Eric Clapton, The Kinks, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Jackie Marshall, Chris Pickering, Tom Cooney, Marty Brown, Bobby Flynn, Edward Guglielmino, Jacob S. Harris, Luke Foran, Loren, Radiohead, Early White Stripes, Creedence Clear Water Revival, Dr John, Stevie Wonder, The Doors, Wilco, Crowded House, Jurassic 5, DJ Shadow, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Paul Kelly, Dan Kelly and the Alpha Males, Gelbison, Jeff Lang, Jeff Buckley, Tim Buckley, Tom Waits, Bob Brozman, Iron and Wine, Jim Croce, John Lennon, Jimmi Hendrix, Outkast, Ztrip, George Orwell, William Wordsworth, Aldus Huxley, Herman Hesse, Jack Kerouac, And thousands more...i will expand the list when I have time.
Sounds Like
Bob Dylan's grandson meets the ghost of ol' nick drake and gets jiggy with Sam Beam. Rollicking country, old timey folk with a strong emphasis on story telling.
I listen to music because its vibrations enable me to feel emotions I have no words for as they fall outside the realms of our day to day experience. The two songs that epitomise this feeling for me are Tchaikovsky's Serenades for Strings in C Major and Debussy's Claire de Lune. They take you to places in your heart that nothing else can penetrate through to. To me, truly great music is like God's elevator. It instantly errodes all walls within us and between us and we find ourselves face to face with our true selves.
So why do I write music? I write it in the hope that one day I might come close to offering the tiniest of windows for someone else to crawl through into that quiet true space in their heart. I listen, write and play music because it is the only thing that feels effortless in my life. Everything else feels like a struggle. There is resistance there. But in music there is nothing but boundless flow...
Sorry, Bio's are supposed to be about what I have done, where I have been and who I have screwed to get there...well...no amazing story here. I have no quirky history of note, no gimmicks or funny anecdotes. I am just a run of the mill singer-songwriter from Brisbane who once had dreams of making a living out of music and now would rather stay sane.
Thanks Cam!! I've got the single pressed and in my possession. I'm finally sellin them. Thanks for your comment, means a lot. See you round- PS. I'm going to come to your show at troub with Steve Grady. Can you play Argentina for old times sake- That was the first song I ever listened to when I joined myspace and I still love it as much as I did then. Looking to forward to hearing the new compositions as well. Dan
I with Myspace made it more obvious that your comment is being truncated for its sheer length. There be a lesson in that for me, I am sure.
[continued] Going well but craving with a madman's thirst something centreing and simple, that's me old chap. That's what I'm up to. That and trying not to tread on toes. That's me.
And yourself? You threw wind up about recording before the year's out, how's that plan going for you? In passing some day I might throw a few questions your way because as a complete rookie to recording my initial impressions of it are as follows: 1) pain in the arse, 2) expensive, 3) confusing. And maybe (hopefully) it's not.
I shall cease polluting your page forthwith, but save to wish you well my friend. I hope that we can cross paths soon and speak of adventures made, being made, and to be made. Til then!
Given the extraordinary hour (perhaps not so extraordinary for a musician, but eh, I'm older than my birth certificate would have you believe), I'll message you my number to yeh on Ye Olde Myspace.
I've been pretty sweet my friend. I have made some home recordin's which for once don't sound like complete garbage (partial garbage? I'll go with 25% garbage and be ambitious with that).
Which is all swell to me, given that my usual home-recording efforts sound like a peyote-tripping shaman is dangling a 1950s dictaphone over a down-pipe on a building three blocks away from where I'm recording, flushing the cassette down the toilet where after 30 years in the Pacific ocean is eventually discovered by the descendants of Nordic Sailors, sold in a Calcutta flea market, played on a four-track with a broken left-channel into a Taiwanese mobile telephone which is internationally calling a payphone outside of a Pearl Jam concert with a guy named Rupert holding the receiver to his RRW minidisc recorder, resampling the audio at 1kbps and uploaded directly to Myspace and loaded onto an early-model IMB laptop the size of a small school, which is promptly thrown into a spa bath filled with traditional Mexican wrestlers wearing ill-fitting prada collared shirts and pinstripe underpants, lime jelly, and 14 kilograms of drinking-quality icepacks from the 7-11.
After that self-review I think I'm completely immune to criticism hahaha.
My mind is still a bit McStuffed after Big Sound. After a while all the advice and jargon and anecdotes from important people and so on eventually turn to white noise for me and I feel like huddling up under a tree somewhere far from industry people in a cacoon of solitude and quiet. Maybe take a guitar along; that's what appealed about that place you were photographed in. Going well but craving wi
Heya Cam. Well I'm glad that you liked it. We try our best to capture the moments, no? As for the all-singing, all-dancing Pensive Penguin... I have a couple of gigs lined up in October, and I think that's when it'll start to take off some; I actually had a solo gig on Sat in West End, but I'm trying to tee some more of that kind around town at present - so I shall keep you posted. And if you ever need a supporting act... :D
Heya Cameron! Yep, it seems a little full on, but more or less what I was trying to itirate is basically what you said - everybody only exists in this one moment. That's it, that's all it is; though it was more convoluted, it was a bit of a necessity because I wanted to try and capture the energy behind it which made me so freaking happy, and offer a tiny window, as you so eloquently put in your bio, for other people to glimpse it too. I like your bio, by the way. Anyway, just thought I'd say hello... Hope you're keeping well. (:>={ ~!
Welcome 'home' Cam:-) I got rather excited to see your message, hoping that it meant you had some of your new recordings up on your page...maybe I'll get to hear the newbies while you are up here on the coast. I'm around this week so give me a buzz x
i can finally say i saw you play . the troubadour .. and all my critic fans will flood your account and have a listen ,. cos they follow me everwhere like flies, buzz, just to see what i listen too
hey cam, i see you are playing at the troubadour on 3rd may...can't make it 'cause i'll be in mackay; but are you playing anywhere else at the mo? update your freakin' page lad!
Was so good to watch you last night man. That may have been the best I've ever seen you perform. You were bang on with everything. Thank you sincerely.
