"No, I am not from around here. Yes, I come from the land down under. What am I doing here? Read on..
I learnt to surf before I learnt to sing, and although I do neither that well, I love doing both. I went to big school in Western Canada in the early ‘70s and it was there, at the age of 16 that I was taught to play the blues harmonica by a dude named Keith.
Back in Australia in 1973, I was sharing a surf shack with a couple of hippie mates and they had a spare guitar. I ‘m left-handed but I picked it up anyway, turned it upside down and taught myself to play the chords “cack-handed”, much to the amusement of my mates. It was only a matter of time before I was doing the Dylan thing, playing six-string and harmonica at the same time, upside down.
I returned to Canada in ‘75, and got together with a native girl of the Secwepemc (Shuswap nation) and spent the next six years with her, travelling around the wild west, from Vancouver to San Francisco to the Yukon. I heard an awful of a lot of country music during that time.
I spent the 80’s back in Sydney, with a big mullet and padded shoulders, listening to Midnight Oil and Cold Chisel, surfing, and occasionally drinking Bundy Rum down at the Bondi Hotel. I married an English girl, we had a baby and before you know it I’m living in King’s Lynn, the Norfolk version of the wild west. Got together with some local lads and formed Lynn’s greatest ever folk/rock band - Map of Tasmania - playing Pogues, Levellers and original songs. Moved to Norwich in 2000 but kept on playing. Johnny and I were Mapotazi, the house Irish band at Delaneys for five years until I went walkabout around Australia and Asia. Back in Norwich, 2006, Johnny, Tim and I decide that we are the Rum Brothers! Life is a trip; life is a song!"
