All posts by Marshall Cullen

A guitarist at heart, the process for Kalen is always the music first, layered secondly by the melody for the lyrics to lastly follow. The track has a dream-like quality, filled with melancholy, which sings of a knowing that not all can be saved. Kalen wrote the song after seeing a story of a young person dying in the arms of their parents. It’s a song about wanting to be saved but equally wanting to leave a pained broken body.

Kalen Hogan is a 17 year old solo guitarist singer songwriter, living a very chilled out life an hour north of Sydney, near Wamberal Beach.

Influenced by his musical uncle, Kalen started out jamming on a ukulele as a toddler, before advancing to his first acoustic guitar in primary school. Now in high school, Kalen is composing songs and recently recorded his first track at Damien Gerard Studios, in Gosford.

Kalen’s upcoming debut gig is planned for this summer at Wamberal Beach Surf Club. Kalen will be showcasing a couple of tracks he has recorded to release in 2022 and playing some of the new upcoming tunes, planned for future recording and distribution in early 2023.

Kalen Hogan – Help Me I’m Dying is out NOW (September 23rd)
Foghorn/MGM

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Videos

CJ Shaw Releases Music Video for ‘Lonely Road’

Video September 7, 2022 Marshall Cullen

News and Touring

CJ Shaw releases single ‘Lonely Road’

September 2, 2022 Marshall Cullen

Lonely Road is the latest single from ARIA Award nominee CJ Shaw and is an exciting collaboration with international film and television composer Allyson Newman (The L Word: Generation Q, Kusama: Infinity).

A chance meeting on Newman’s return to Australia in 2020, saw her generously lend her expertise to an orchestral vision for the song. This original score, featuring four violin and four cello parts, brings an emotive depth to a poignant song of solitude. Her composition was brought to life by members of the Canberra Symphony orchestra (Alex Voorhoeve and Timothy Wickham) with backing vocals from Hannah Czaban.

This moving and beautiful song is a highlight of CJ’s latest album ‘All Sorts’. The song was written as a parable for CJ’s experience of the music world and the sensation of falling short. Shot in the heart of winter on the Monaro Plains, south of Canberra, the Lonely Road music video clip sees CJ Shaw taking on the persona of a train guard, walking deserted railway carriages, waiting for passengers that never arrive. With the Canberra Railway Museum and the Michelago Railway Station in the backdrop, this beautifully crafted video clip visually plays on the haunting emotive nuances of the song, leading the audience on his journey of fulfillment.

“‘Lonely Road’ is proof that Shaw is a poignant singer-songwriter” Michael Smith (Rhythms
Magazine 24/2/2022).

Song Description

Lonely Road starts out with soft picked guitar and whistling! Strings, piano and female background vocals add to the magic feeling of this mid-tempo folk tune from CJ. The chorus is truly haunting with violins playing a ghostly counter melody which is reflected in the keys and strings. A timeless classic.

Armed with a guitar and a swag full of harmonicas, singer-songwriter CJ Shaw’s intricate finger-picking, word play and storytelling never fails to captivate his audiences. CJ Shaw’s music is distinctly Australian in style, influenced by Paul Kelly and Slim Dusty. His lyrical storytelling and musicality lends itself to audiences of all ages.

In 2020, CJ Shaw was nominated for an ARIA Award for ‘Music Teacher of the Year’ with Jimmy Barnes as his official ambassador presenting him with the nomination. This prestigious music industry acknowledgement recognised his dynamic and poignant songwriting for primary-aged children. These celebrated songs are woven through his performances and albums, played alongside satirical and storytelling Australiana folk songs.

In 2021 CJ Shaw released his album ‘All Sorts’. Combining the best of his children’s songs with his unique brand of contemporary Australiana, Shaw has dubbed ‘All Sorts’ “the ultimate Family Album”. With over a decade’s experience touring and performing at music festivals in Australia and Timor-Leste, CJ Shaw is an exciting Canberra musician at the top of his game.

CJ Shaw – Lonely Rd is out NOW September 2nd through Foghorn/MGM
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Videos

The Burley Griffin – Being Alive(Official Video)

Video September 1, 2022 Marshall Cullen

News and Touring

The Burley Griffin Releases Music Video for ‘Being Alive’

September 1, 2022 Marshall Cullen

Video Premiere On Scenestr

Upcoming Shows

4th September 3pm at Yulli’s in Sydney with Hedy Blaazer – Free entry, table bookings recommended
https://www.facebook.com/events/s/hedy-blaazer-the-burley-griffi/2215326415283870/

24th September at Grace Emily Hotel in Adelaide with Bromham – Tickets on sale now
https://www.facebook.com/events/s/the-burley-griffin-act-w-bromh/872445094159479/

28th September at Shotkickers in Melbourne with Final Final, James Fahy, & Jim Dusty

https://facebook.com/events/s/too-good-five-bands-free-sunda/1160170284848952/

‘Being Alive’

Being Alive is a song that finds beauty in despair and reflects on lessons learned in defeat. Written in the wake of a relationship breakdown, Being Alive takes place directly after Hong Kong, the preceding single from The Burley Griffin’s latest record, Lost Limbs. Whereas Hong Kong tells the tale of separation, Being Alive sits in the realisation that everything has changed, and not necessarily for the better.

Being Alive was recorded by Louis Montgomery at Infidel and Myall Street studios and produced by Louis Montgomery and Evan Buckley. Electric guitars were played by Samuel McNair with Steve Paillas on bass and Steve Fitzgerald on drums, as well as additional vocals by Cathy Diver.
Mastered at Studios 301 by Andrew Edgson.

Video

Premiered on Scenestr
Filmed on Ngunnawal and Gundungurra land, on locations of Lake George, an abandoned orphanage in Goulburn and a secret patch of roadside gravel, director Tim Kent aka Stackhat and songwriter Evan Buckley captured the visual world elicited by Being Alive, in all its tragic absurdity.

The decaying walls and collapsed floors of the old orphanage mirror the burden of grief, fallen structures that once held so many stories, now mostly forgotten. The broad vista of Lake George echoes the stark internal landscape that remains when shared courses are abandoned and direction loses its meaning.

Yet in its final scenes Being Alive offers a wry smile and nod to the audience, acknowledging how little we can control and how much still lies ahead, joy and pain, hope and loss, all part of the ride.

Stackhat – Tim Kent Video Director BIO
Stackhat is an award-winning Director/Producer currently based in Sydney, but originally hailing from the small town of Queanbeyan. Having worked with an impressive roster of artists including Sampa the Great, L-Fresh the Lion and Flying Lotus, Stackhat is an artistic tour de force constantly searching for new challenges both locally and abroad.

About The Burley Griffin
Evan Buckley (The Burley Griffin) grew up in Canberra, homeschooled in a religious fundamentalist cult, and has since hitch hiked and toured through 37 American states, exorcising and befriending his demons along the way. His most recent US tour took place during the 2016 election and his newest songs reflect the absurdity of the American dream.

The third Burley Griffin album, Lost Limbs, was launched with a twelve piece, beefed up band on June 26th 2021 to a sold out theatre at The Street, celebrating a vinyl packed with moving songs of loss and joy.

Long-time members Evan Buckley and Sam McNair are now joined on stage by “Reverend” Michael Bones, Hannah Beasley and featuring an energetic new rhythm section in Ben Cumming and Somesh Putcha. The Burley Griffin has seen Evan’s songs accompanied and interpreted by some of both Australia’s and the USA’s most intuitive musicians.

Watch the Music Video for ‘Being Alive’ here

Stream ‘Being Alive’

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News and Touring

Luke Escombe Releases New Album ‘Whale Beach Road’

August 19, 2022 Marshall Cullen

Finally out on all digital platforms here is Luke’s latest album, an ode to brilliant songwriting and musicianship all wound up in family stories.
Luke says -
“I genuinely believe that Whale Beach Road is the best album of “adult music” I’ve made, and it’s very special to me because of all the family history written into the songs.

Whale Beach Road is the first full studio album I’ve made solely under my own name. I started writing the songs in early 2020, towards the end of the fires and before the first lockdown. Initially, I was working on a memoir but then the stories started turning into songs instead.

At first, I was hesitant to apply for Jobkeeper in 2020, as I felt like other people needed it more than me, but then I realised it would give me the funds to go and employ all of the amazing musicians on this album, like drummer Evan Mannell, bassist Zoe Hauptmann, Aaron Flower on guitar and Clayton Doley on Hammond organ. There was even enough to get string and backing vocal arrangements for most of the songs, which gives it that luxurious 70’s soul vibe I was after while still sounding modern and clean. I could have been a hermit and lived off beans and rice, but instead Jobkeeper enabled me to keep creating and collaborating with my community.

Whale Beach Road is a very personal album, but I think there’s also something very universal there in that the songs are all about searching for love and hope in an uncertain world. It was all written and tracked between the Northern Beaches of Sydney and the Central Coast, and I think those beautiful locations feed into the sound. Hopefully the album takes listeners to a good place.”

Family – On Feature Track ‘Max and Melanie’

“While I was writing Max and Melanie I had the idea that it would make a good 70th birthday present for my Mum, a way of paying tribute to her family and where she came from. I’d never actually realised it before, but she was a political refugee, an asylum seeker in her own country. I carried on her story in another song on the album – “Lady Sunlight” – and then started to think about my own story, and all the events and circumstances that had led me to the exact place I found myself at the time of writing these songs: a house on Whale Beach Road. That’s how the album found its narrative, and its title. It’s about people trying to hold on to love and hope while confronting the powerful tide of history. To paraphrase the chorus of Max and Melanie, history makes plans for us, but we can still make plans for ourselves. I find that idea very hopeful.”

“Luke Escombe is a rock-soul singer, raconteur, blistering blues guitarist, comedian and songwriter, and very good at them all” – Sydney Morning Herald

Luke Escombe is an ARIA-nominated singer-songwriter who combines his blues, rock and soul influences with subversive humour, poetic lyrics and heartfelt storytelling. He is the creator of the internationally acclaimed one-man show “Chronic” and the writer and front man of multi award-winning Aussie kids band The Vegetable Plot.

Luke has released numerous albums and EPs with his band Luke Escombe and the Corporation and one album solely under his own name, 2017’s Skeleton Blues. The album was recorded direct to tape in a three-hour session at Damien Gerard Studios, featuring his smoky-voiced cover of Bob Dylan’s “Man in the Long Black Coat” alongside distinctive originals like Punctuation Blues and The Lipsi. This new Luke Escombe studio album, Whale Beach Road, was recorded in between lockdowns with some of Sydney’s most in-demand session players.

Luke received his early musical education in London, where his father’s job in the rock and roll industry enabled him to see hundreds of legendary performances by artists like Freddie Mercury, Prince and Bruce Springsteen while he was just a boy. When he’s not channelling his childhood idols, Luke is an ambassador for a number of health charities, a member of the NSW Arts Advisory Panel, a teaching artist with the Sydney Opera House’s Creative Leadership in Learning Program. He is also a song writing mentor with the Sydney Children’s Hospital’s Chronic Illness Peer Support program [ChIPS] with whom he wrote and recorded the track “Wake up Call” in 2021. He believes strongly that music and storytelling can play a transformative role in health, education and society. Among his more obscure awards is the title of “Sydney’s Sexiest man voice”, which he won in a competition on a once-popular Sydney radio station.

Luke Escombe – Whale Beach Road (Foghorn/MGM) August 19

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News and Touring

Daxton Releases Music Video for Single ‘End of the Road’

August 12, 2022 Marshall Cullen

Daxton’s latest music video is for his new single ‘End of the Road‘ lifted from his current ‘Electric Satellite‘ album.

With a green screen now part of his home garage studio and a tonne of spare cardboard boxes lying about it’s amazing to see what Dax has managed to create with nothing but his imagination and time on his hands.

End of the Road’ Official Music Video:

The video and song is reminiscent of Beck’s ‘Loser’ and is a bit of a nod to that era although the slide blues element (a signature of Daxton’s) gives it a timeless quality as well and could fit any era from right now to way back.

The album has also just started to garner warm reviews internationally, here are some of the most recent:

“Although it’s blues-based, Daxton plays these songs with an alternative rocker’s edge.” – Dan MacIntosh
https://www.curiousformusic.com/post/daxton-s-new-album-electric-satellite

“A wild, animalistic energy ties together “Electric Satellite” revealing Daxton’s uncanny ability to craft a truly timeless sound.”
https://beachsloth.tumblr.com/post/689331784743272448/daxton-electric-satellite

“Electric Satellite is another blast of electric and eclectic blues, taking in the grunt and groove of rock and the accessibility and melody of pop and using this to forge his own southern fried take on the genre.” – Dave Franklin
https://dancing-about-architecture.com/electric-satellite-daxton-reviewed-by-dave-franklin/

Daxton released his new album ‘Electric Satellite’ earlier this year, a twelve-track slide blues album with up-tempo spacious songs produced by Pat Dow and Marshall Cullen. Daxton has worked with Pat on many projects – someone who has a keen ear for Daxton’s rustic blues mixed with psychedelic pop/rock sounds.

The album is Daxton’s seventh following the release in 2018 of ‘In Verses’ which features songs covering his favourite themes: life and death, the yin and yang of life, love and loss, while still keeping his always positive and up-tempo vibe.

Producing and playing music since his early teens, Daxton’s passion has kept him continually creating new material both for his band and solo career. On stage, Daxton comes across like he was born to play, his unique guitar style blending perfectly with heart-warming vocals.

Daxton has appeared at major festivals including the Sydney Blues & Roots and Tamworth Country Music Festival where he supported artists such as Kasey Chambers and Beccy Cole. He also has had one of his tracks ‘Moody Liz’ featured in the popular American TV series Doll House.

Based in Sydney, Daxton is best described as a blues/rock artist with a twist of pop and rock. He plays slide guitar rock/blues songs with a fresh and innovative sound. His latest album ‘Electric Satellite is a heavy, rustic blues rock album with psychedelic pop/rock sounds.