Re: The Well #14 - Welcome to WahWah World!
Mind giving a short bio detailing your rise to stardom and it's subsequent...erm... Duncan Board joining?
I did my first gig as a bass player at the age of 13 (1975). I switched to guitar at 16, and for the last two years of high school, I was doing 3 gigs per week. At 19, I quit my last "real" job, and started touring with an original band up and down the east coast of Australia. That band finally moved to my current home of Melbourne (from Brisbane) when I was 21. Within 6 months, the band had split, so it was a couple of years of abject struggle and poverty until I started making a few contacts. I got offered a gig in a cover band, and took it coz I really needed the cash. Up until then, I had been overly concerned with "artistic integrity." That band was working about 4 nights per week, and I was earning better money than I had ever seen. I left that to do some duo work with a great female singer. Then I got an offer from another cover band who had just started up and were doing really well.
I stayed in that band for 5 years, during the late 80's. We made a lot of money, and ran it like a business. Towards the end of that band, I got the offer to be the Marshall clinician for Australia, which meant a lot of travel and clinics, and a sudden upsurge of Marshall product in my living room. I was there for the release of the JCM 900 series. By this time, I was completely sick of that cover band, and during a gig I remember thinking "Why am I doing this...oh, that's right, just for the money." I decided that wasn't a good enough reason, so I gave 2 months notice that night, and did my last gig with them New Years Eve, 1991. The keyboard player from that band decided to come with me. We didn't know what we were going to do, but we started jamming with his brother, who is a great drummer, and we started working on original material.
Within 4 months, we had found a singer and formed an original band called "The Truth." We did a Sunday resident gig for a year to finance an EP. We released the EP and were selling it at the gigs. We got a call one day from a friend who said they had heard one of our songs on Triple J, a national radio station. They started playing it on high rotation, 5 times a day. Everything started going crazy. We were offered the support spot on a national Bryan Adams tour, we had 6 different management companies courting us, and two record and publishing deals on the table. We signed to Mushroom Records, the largest independent in Australia, and made our debut album, which went Top 40 here. We were nominated for "Best New Group" at the ARIA awards, and were beaten out by Silverchair. We also received a "Song Of The Year" APRA nomination for the song "My Heavy Friend," written by the singer and myself. You can see the video clip for it here...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRrIU7NGtG8 We were beaten out by Neil Finn's "Distant Sun," which I consider a privilege!
The Truth split in 1997, after making our second album. We had toured constantly for 3 years, supporting some of the bigger acts in Australia, and a few international artists, including Adams, Roachford and Jon Bon Jovi. When the band split, I started getting offers for sideman and session work. I worked with some very fine artists, and was offered a European tour with a girl named Tina Arena. The tour included the gig at Wembley Stadium supporting the Bee Gees, September 1998. I came back to Australia and kept working as a sideman with various singers, as I still do to this day, along with a lot of TV backing work and the occasional session.
The Seymour Duncan connection came about because I was asked by the Australian distributor to put together the SD User Group Day here in Melbourne, September 2006. I'd been using SD's since 1985, and I was very happy to get the chance to work and jam with Seymour. Curiosity led me to this site, and I've been enjoying it ever since.
Cheers..............................wahwah
