2009 - 2012

Silverbirch; A Tear in the Fabric of the Night Sky

(Podcast Sessions - Venice Beach, CA / Perth, WA)

Back Story:

I began writing songs on my own for the Silverbirch Podcasts accidentally as part of my solo music project called Unleash The Phoenix. I wrote about 10 songs during this period in 2005 when I was living in Venice Beach, California. I had no idea at the time I would be using most of them as instrumental songs for Silverbirch. I just wanted to get some music out of me that was floating around inside my head. Five years later, they were finding their home as backing music to the Silverbirch Podcasts, but I'm writing many more new songs as I go along...

You can hear the Silverbirch podcasts here.

2007

The Flood The Flood

(Demo Sessions - Unreleased - Gold Coast)

New Life

Back To Zero

Dark Times

The End

Satellite

Back Story:

I moved to the Gold Coast at first to play bass for Sunk Loto. Unfortunately, within six months of me joining,the band, it ended. Some fans of Sunk Loto blame me for the split, but believe me, it's purely coincidence and bullshit that I had anything to do with it. I had nothing to do with Jason and Luke not getting on.

Anyway, brothers Jason and Dane Brown asked me to remain there to work with them on a new three-piece project they wanted to create. We wrote about twelve songs over six months in a cheap rental-storage shed, and I've put the best five on this page for you to listen to...

Basically we would show up, Monday to Friday, from anywhere between 3 to 6 hours a day - in the hot-box, and Jason would show us riffs he had come up with the night before, then me and Dane would help structure them.

I recorded and mixed the songs myself, as demos (only 4 mics on the drums!), with the aim of showing some people to score some money to record them properly one day. Obviously this never happened, but at least you get to hear the demos.

These five tracks contain some of the best emotionaly charged musical moments I have ever been involved in. It would have been awesome to record them properly.

Jason's lyrics perfectly reflect what we were going through at the time, as artists.

Jason and Dane are extremely talented musicians and you should keep an eye on them in their new project, Electric Horse.

2006

Sunk Loto

(Unreleased - Gold Coast)

Kill Your Soul

Back Story:

I used to tour with Sunk Loto in my other band, Full Scale.

A few years after Full Scale disbanded Sunk Loto asked me to join their band.

We did a few tours and I played bass on this track (that was already written) on a session recorded by Forrester Savell in a tiny studio on the Gold Coast.

Metal!

2005

Unleash The Phoenix

(One Man Band Project - Venice Beach)

Trust & Guns

We Don't Need Them

Back Story:

After my major-label band, Full Scale, called it a day, I wrote and recorded ten songs on my own.

It was a pretty weird time for me - not being in a band anymore or signed to a label being paid to write music - and some ultra-weird stuff came out of me... but here are two of the songs with vocals that came out okay.

Little did I know at the time, that I would use most of these tracks five years later as part of the Silverbirch Podcasts.

2000 - 2005

Full Scale

(Major Label Release - Columbia Records / SONY - America)

Feel It

The Sickness

The Rapture

Five Six

Party Political

Back Story:

Full Scale was like taking a ride on a rollercoaster for five years, non-stop. There was drug-taking, rockstar mentality and scarce moments of clarity. We were known as one of the hardest touring bands in Australia, which eventually saw us being signed to the biggest record label in New York and living and touring in America for a few years.

It was full-volume, full-time and full-throttle. Luckily it also consisted of incredible moments of brilliant heavy-melodic song-writing (in my eyes).

I have especially included the above five songs, because these songs were my favorites and never would have existed without me.

When we first moved to Melbourne we were homeless. We were staying at our drummer's family friend's house for a little bit, and this is where we wrote Feel It. I came up with the initial riff and my guitarist thought it sounded like a Pink Floyd song, so we tried to emulate the song he was talking about, even though I didn't know which one he meant.

I basically wrote the music and structure for The Sickness within an hour. Just before our producer in L.A. was about to record our album, he asked us to write another balled type song, an Incubus-type song. I strolled over the road to the rehearsal room on my own, powered on my amp, added shit loads of delay to my bass riff and walked out of there about an hour later with pretty much the entire song. The bridge part was changed a bit once the vocals were added. And yes, the vocals ended up making the song and were some of the best our lead singer ever wrote, in my opinion.

With The Rapture, we were still in Melbourne. Our drummer was living in a shit-hole in Brunswick, basically an empty shell of an old store front. I was still buzzing from the riffs our guitarist had come up with for Five Six and wanted to write something equal in quality. I came up with the verse and chorus riffs and the three of us put it together gracefully. I'd have to say The Rapture is my favorite song from this period. We were broke and desperate for something bigger to happen.

Five Six came about when our guitarist counted out loud the riffs he had created, to teach me and the drummer how to play it, "One, two, three, four, five . . . one, two, three, four, five, six . . . " You'll figure it out when you hear it. Me and the drummer vibed off it so much, but it took the three of us at least three months to get the structure and riffs perfect before we would allow vocals to be added.

Party Political came about by our lead singer coming up with the verse lines first, before the music was even written. This was unusual for us. He told me he had a new song, as he was sitting next to me in a plane - flying back to Melbourne from a gig in Sydney. As soon as we got back, I had the lyrics stuck in my head and came up with the opening rumbling bass line to match his rant.

Most of the other songs on the albums were initiated by one of the other three members . . . but across the board, none of the songs of Full Scale would have existed without any one of us. This bunch of music was created from a unique chemical combination of four different individuals feeding off each other's inability to fully grasp what was going on in the other guy's head.

Although Full Scale was a drug and alcohol fueled rollercoaster ride for me, I think we made a solid world-class debut major label album and definitely all individually found our true characters.

A documentary about Full Scale was made and is available from Rella Music. You can view the preview below.

1997 - 2000

Wax Tadpole

Gotta Get Up Today

Keen As

Don't Tell Fibbs

My Sister's Boyfriend

Spiderman

Back Story:

Wax Tadpole was the third band I was in, but the first of any sort of quality and originality.

Basically Marcus Bancroft and myself were heavy into surf-rock at the time, and had also been influenced by a mate of ours called Keith Grassick.

Keith showed us the early Green Day stuff, Ramones, The Meanies, The Hard-Ons . . . so we found a drummer who had a jazz background and started writing quirky surf-rock tracks and gigged as much as we could around Perth and the south-west.

I recorded and mixed My Best Suit, but everything else was done by Ben Glatzer at a small Perth studio.

Marcus and I shared the vocals and lyric writing for most of the songs, but I specifically remember with Gotta Get Up Today - being woken up by a dream around 4 a.m. and jumping out of bed and writing the vocals and bass line within ten minutes, then going right back to sleep.

You can catch Wax Tadpole at a backyard party filmed in Perth in 1998 below.

And . . . If you're really REALLY keen . . . you can find some extreme demos from Wax Tadpole here.