Welcome!
Thanks for stopping by. My name should be rather obvious from the web address; please hold onto your jokes, I’ve heard them all before! Today’s was ‘Wow, your skin looks a lot lighter than in your videos’. Not the wittiest I’ve heard. So there are pros and cons to having my name. People tend to remember it for one thing. Plus I love THE James Brown. I have to say I feel quite lucky to have snagged the domain jamesbrown.com.au! Woo.
I am a guitarist, bassist, composer, small time producer and teacher. I live in Adelaide, Australia. It’s a very nice place to be. It has a high standard of living and it doesn’t take too long to get into the bush when you want to get away from the city. The only other place I have lived in for any length of time (as an adult at least) was a very big city. It was London, England. There are twice as many people living in London as there are in the whole of New Zealand. I didn’t like it too much. Grey skies, grey buildings, grey cars. Even the people looked grey. Thousands of long, grey faces attached to robotic legs marching through dark, dank underground passageways, squeezing like sardines into tiny fast moving tin cans Monday morning to Friday night. Great place to visit though, such a rich and amazing history, but the day to day was just too much for a fragile petal like me. It really is a nanny state too, CCTV is out of control. At sometime in Britain’s colourful history they decided that a good way to tackle crime was to film it. Others thought that maybe there were some things that could be done to reduce it or even prevent it, but the government thought that filming it would be best. So now they can watch you being robbed or stabbed, maybe have some hope that the ‘criminal’ has committed a crime in the past and therefore match the grainy image to their records, and finally hope they have the resources to look for them AND catch them. A ‘bobby’ (they have very funny names for things over there) once told me that there weren’t nearly as many ‘bobbies’ (far too close to boobies to be taken seriously!) on the beat as the country was lead to believe. At least he was honest. But to be fair there were some good things about London too. It was close to places that were good for one thing (I got to see a nice chunk of Europe). And I got to play some good ol’ Rock’n’Roll again, which I hadn’t done since my teen years.
So that was 2007 through 2009, and now in ‘Twenty-
Funk/Pop band Space Junk
Contemporary Jazz Quartet Splinter Group
Free(ish) Jazz Trio Entropy
Funky/Jazzy/Sort of Rock Trio Bestseller
Groove band Kubrick
I don’t quite know how to describe 1.1 Immermann
Improvised live doof (as in doof doof) experience The Raucoustra
In these bands I was fortunate enough to play with some of the best players in town, including Craig Lauritsen, Lyndon Gray, CJ Rhodes, Jarrad Payne, Chris Martin, Jon Hunt and Adam Page just to name a few. It was a real treat. A lot of these people are also my friends which makes things pretty darn sweet. Here is a list of bands I am playing in now:
The Raucoustra
Mystery Project! (That’s not the name. It doesn’t have one yet but I wanted to put it down so it looks like I still play with loads of bands. Which I do! But I wanted you to know that... I can tell you it involves members of 1.1 Immermann, Satan’s Cheerleaders and The Audreys).
Only The Sky is my latest project. I’ve been conceptualising and writing for this
band for over 2 years so I’m very excited that we will be gigging very soon. I also
get to play with some people I haven’t played with before, namely Adam Ritchie, Tim
Hogan and Emily Newcombe, as well as Craig and Jon (they were in my little bass-
What other bio type stuff can I write here? I went to Uni and got a Masters degree, in music. Some of that was fun (the music part, not so much the masters). I was involved in setting up ‘Creative Original Music Adelaide’ or COMA for those in the know. The organisation is still going strong and I will be a part of the team again soon. If you don’t know, COMA put on fantastic gigs at a fantastic pub on the first and third Mondays of every month. It’s at the Wheatsheaf hotel, by far my favourite pub in the whole world. It still costs only $8 or $5 if you’re a member or a student. That’s fantastic value if you ask me! And for two bands.
So there are some words about me. Please contact me if you want any more info or if you’re a press person I can send you a real bio. If you’re interested in guitar or bass lessons send me an email or visit the teaching page.
Anyway thanks for checking out the site!
Peace.
jb
