The Other Dave Gray

I've been accepted for the 2002 Woodford Folk Festival.
The country contingent includes John Williamson, Ted Egan, Nichole Brophy
and Jody Moore and ....yours truly.
Furthermore my backing artists will be two gold guitar winners ..Andrew
Clermont and Kelly Crosby. A boy from the country couldn't ask for more.
Woodford is the biggest Music Festival in Australia (86,000 through the gate
last year) so thank you for your support over the years.
I have two GB's spots this year at Tamworth and one in Greg Williams arcade.
Both are early in the piece so after that I'll be a CM listener at Tamworth
this year.

I grew up in Whyalla and was sent off to learn piano at St. Teresa's Convent at the age of five. (No I'm not a Catholic so it was a bit of a shock to all concerned.) I was seven when I got up with a band at the Central Whyalla Football club and sang first in public.
Being from a mining family we moved to Western Australia where I picked up guitar, mandolin and banjo and studied at the University of Western Australia, played music, produced the major folk concert in the state for two years in a row and involved myself in student theatre. I'm reluctant to say "acted" but I do recall being in a production of "Oh what a lovely war" because they needed someone to sing a couple of the songs. I moved back to Adelaide and completed a degree in Theatre, Film and Visual Arts while being involved with Jug and swing bands making a few attempts to write songs.
I then moved to Melbourne working at Crawford Productions on shows such as Skyways, The Sullivans and Cop Shop, worked on independent films and directed and co-produced a documentary on Dave Warner from the Suburbs touring Western Australia called "Warner in the Wild". Dave was one of the first modern Australian singer/songwriters to sing in his natural Australian accent and the film was the first Independent Australian production to be brought and shown nationally by the ABC.

    I decided to return to South Australia for personal reasons and while travelling back broke down in Wilcannia and co-wrote the childrens gospel song "God in Wilcannia" which signaled the breaking of the drought in terms of my songwriting and found a place on my first CD "Good ways to break the drought"
    I then wrote "George Whites Children" about child abuse which made me the overall winner of the South Australian Country Music Festival in 1998 and lead me into the recording studio to record my first CD. Later that year, at the Mildura Festival I met the poet Lindsay Laurie and decided to devote my second CD to songs made from his poems. The "Songs of Lindsay Laurie" was released in 2000 at the Tamworth Festival and an enduring creative partnership was formed. We are in the process of recording "This Bush Balladeer" for the Tamworth festival 2001.
    Since then I have been an invited guest at the Mildura Festival for two years as well as the Wollombi Festival in 2000.
    I won the Henry Lawson Busking Championships at Grenfell in June 2000 "Where priority is given to original Australian material," and have been selected to appear in the emerging talent section of the Woodford Folk Festival in 2001. (After 40 years of playing music I figure it's about time I emerged!)