ABOUT ME

I come from a family of musos. My parents both had brilliant voices and loved to sing. Most Saturday nights they would invite their friends over for a few beers (a lot of beers actually) and a singalong. They didn’t play any instruments except our dad liked to play the occasional comb. My older brother started teaching himself to play guitar after being influenced by the Beatles and it created a domino effect with each of us in our own time, teaching ourselves to play guitar too. We are all self taught and none of us boys can read music.
I remember sitting on a bed when I was about 13 yo and next to me was my older brothers guitar. I was curious about this fascinating work of art and sat there looking down at it. I didn’t pick it up because I really had no idea how it worked other than there were two dimensions to playing it properly, the first was centred around the hole in the body which I could understand that the hollow chamber within had a lot to do with the overall sound when the strings were plucked or strummed. The second dimension involved the players other hand which formed all sorts of strange combinations of notes when the player held the string down hard against the neck. There seemed to be an infinite amount of places along the length of the neck where the player could use some or all fingers to make wonderful sounds and to me the potential for enjoyment and the knowledge to gather along the journey were like a magnet.

So, I sat there and just started randomly plucking each string and it was all music to my ears! From that moment I was totally hooked but it wasn’t until I left home aged 16, that I was given my first guitar and as I sat in my flat each night I barely put it down at all. I would be watching the tv and every commercial break I’d reach for the guitar, an acoustic with nylon strings, and play anything and everything that came into my mind. I was hooked!
I started playing in bands when I was about 20 and joined various inner-city bands in Sydney and when we moved to Hobart I had to play in cover bands because being a small city, the scene was geared up towards that and it's where the money was..
Unfortunately, I had to give the live playing away in the late 1990’s after I developed musculo-skeletal problems which also saw me retire from the workforce. I didn’t stop playing though, instead I developed a keen interest in using computer software apps like Cubase, Logic & GarageBand.
I guess I’m sort of retired as a muso, I live with chronic pain and the days of reaching for my guitar whenever I felt the inclination have past. I do still play occasionally and it’s like riding a bike, you never forget but you do get massive blisters! I still have my very first proper electric guitar, not the cheap copy I first bought but the first expensive guitar I ever owned. It’s an Aria Pro II and I bought it back in ’77 for $400 which back then wasn’t far from what I earnt in a week! It’s modelled on a Gibson 335 and being a mad Larry Carlton fan that’s what drew my eye to it in the first place. I’ve long since sold off my Marshall and all my effects pedals except for a Pearl distortion pedal that I bought at my local music store which while the Five Dock store is no longer there, Lombardo’s Music still thrives out in Rockdale, Sydney to this day.

One of the highlights of my music career would have to be the time when my brothers and I decided to work together and formed a band called the Willesees, (after the Willesee brothers a la Mike Willesee). We were short lived as a 4 piece but the others kept on playing together for a few years after I left. We had the youngest on drums, myself on lead/rhythm guitar and one of my older brothers on bass and the eldest on lead vocals/rhythm guitar. We played all originals and did a few gigs. While we are all guitarist primarily, between us we had broadened out enough to be able to do something we wouldn’t have dreamt of before. It was great fun and thankfully someone recorded one of our live shows, but you know what siblings are like.