Beer, BBQ's and a Couple of Tunes
As with many good Australian stories it all started with a couple of lads, beer and a BBQ, a few tunes then bingo… Bob's your uncle…. SIMPLY BUSHED….
Our first gig reared its ugly head when Tim gow (a folk song singing bloke from Australiana Pioneer Village in Wilbeforce) got offered a gig for New Year's Eve and needed a bush band. Tim had a mate called Stephen Stuut who he had played in bands and shows with and who was a bloody good drummer. A wise man once said "a drummer and an acoustic guitarist maketh not a bush band". You at least need a fiddle player. Enter Stunno’s (as Stephen came to be known) mate Garry Baldry, a legend fiddler who played with a mob called Handpicked. Garry had just that week had a jam at a barby with a red head bloke who knew at least three chords, owned a distortion pedal and was mad as a cut snake: Paul Grierson …..and that’s the way they all became Simply Bushed.
Next thing you know (we had two rehearsals before the gig) someone took a phone number and booked us for a fund raising event a couple of weeks later ... we got paid, again... had a bloody ball again and so on and so on… I could not believe I was getting a quid for playing tunes. I did not want to mention it but I probably would have done it for free.
The main thing was that as we kept playing together, people kept enjoying whatever the hell we were doing and we kept enjoying whatever it was that we were doing and so it was relatively easy to keep going and here we are 13 or so years later.
Things developed at a steady pace and after a while we threw together our first CD "Best Drunk At Room Temperature". A couple of years later we recorded "Spinifex" at around about which time Charlie Lee started doing some gigs with us and played all the bass lines on Spinifex.
The next major thing that happened was that Tim Gow, our singer with the big voice parted company with his voice after thirteen or fourteen gigs at Tamworth in 2004 and at the same time fell in love with a blonde girlie with an equally big voice. To cut a long story short Tim had to have a long rest on his voice and so formed a duo in which he mainly played guitar and the girl (Annie) sang the hell out of rock covers and they are married and powering on today with their duo. ANYWAY….
Enter Dan Miranda. Paul got a call from a mate who knew a bloke who had a mate (etc etc) who had just finished a seven year stint with a bush band that shall remain unnamed. Two hours of rehearsing together and Paul and Dan were doing a gig. Big Smilin Dan has been a great addition to the band and the mad red head stepped up, pulled his finger out, had a bit of a go and that is as much as I can remember…
At Tamworth in 2005 we release a new E.P. "Thru The Roof" with three brand new songs and a couple of our older originals and featuring the singing and guitar playing of Dan.
There you have it, the entire story in a couple of paragraphs… and the fairy tale continues. We've made a heap of friends, travelled around the country playing tunes, had a heap of amazing experiences and it all started with a couple of good Aussie lads, some beer and a BBQ.
The Red Head