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Castlemaine Golden Sounds Keynote Speech 2021

On The Road
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Next week I'm setting off on tour and announcing some exciting stuff so I'll be pretty flat out for the next three weeks. I'll endeavour to still post every week, but if there's a lull in proceedings, you'll know why :)

 This week is the transcript of a speech I was asked to make at the 2021 music conference Goldsounds in Castlemaine, regional Victoria. 
 
On my first ever trip to NSW…

Big City

Off The Road
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The last week has brought with a series of coincidental bits of contact with friends in Canada and it’s thrown me back into the time I spent living there, pre-pandemic. Canada has been a big part of my life over the last ten years and, were it not for Covid, I would most likely still be living there as a permanent resident, which I became just before I left Australia to…

Too Old, Too Fat.

On and Off The Road
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As I approach the release of a new album I’m faced again with the task of ‘creating content’ to promote it. This phase fills me with dread. Because of various delays this year, I’ve had to cram two photoshoots, a live video shoot and the filming of an official music video into the month of December and the onslaught of lenses has brought all of my neurosis and insecurities wriggling back…

Upstairs, Downstairs

Off The Road
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My blog is a little late this week. I endeavour to send these out on a Sunday morning (Australian time) but the pre-Christmas craziness has gotten the better of me. On that note, I'll be taking a little break over the holly-daze and will be aiming to post again on Jan 5th. 

Please be safe and happy over the rest. And I'll leave you with this rant about the conclusion of…

First Time Really Feeling

On and Off The Road
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This is a look back at the motivations and inspirations behind the songs for First Time Really Feeling, released in April 2021. The album has been a great friend to me and, as I approach releasing new music again, I'm having a little reminisce about its life and creation.

For most of my life, since the death of my mother when I was fourteen, I had thought that sadness and anxiety were…

The First Year is The Hardest. Part 1 - The Teaching Assistant

Off The Road
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 PREFACE
 
Inevitably, at this time of the year, I start looking back at what’s happened in my life since the last time January 1st happened. Time is a strange beast, divided into neat and strange segments of itself. A year is an important segment. The full turn of the season wheel, the ending and the beginning. 
 
I moved to London on December 31st, 2023. I arrived at 6am at Heathrow…

My Super Power, my Kryptonite

On and Off The Road
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I worked for a while with a person who didn’t like me. Now, without seeming like a knob, it’s very unusual for me to not get on with people. I’m good at people. I love them and I’m able, for all my other personal failings, to get on and connect with pretty much anyone I meet. I’m a people pleaser from way back, so there’s that, but I’m also genuinely interested…

The Other Side of the Counter

Off The Road
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There’s a guy who frequents the café I now make coffee in in central London. I work for a company that provides the catering and hospitality for some of the biggest businesses in the city, including for an internationally renowned structural engineering firm which has offices all over the world, including in Australia. The café I work in is situated on the ground floor of a six-story building in Soho and…

My Life as a Midnight Oil

On The Road
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This is a personal account of what it was like to be on the inside of one of the greatest bands Australia has ever, and may ever, produce. It’s the musings of an Oils fan who became, for eighteen glorious months, an Oil themselves. And a personal commentary of the impact they’ve had. On me and on the Australia I know. 

 
I vividly remember meeting the band for the first time…

Coming Home

On and Off The Road
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Firstly, thank you for being here to read my second ever blog post on this platform. I appreciate your support very, very much. 

It’s a wonderful feeling, releasing my first new music in over three years. A lot has happened in that time for me professionally, let alone personally, and the release of this new song signifies the start of a brand-new chapter in my life as a musician and artist. 

Made in Manchester

On The Road
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We played nine shows opening for The Teskey Brothers around the UK and Europe in September this year, including four in England. The tour culminated in Thursday and Friday nights in Manchester and the Saturday in Birmingham. I was particularly pumped for Manchester. I’d always romanticised the city, maybe due to my obsessive teen love of Oasis or the ubiquitous influence of that other 90s cultural spectre - David Beckham’s sixpack. I…