User:Jeff BROWNRIGG

BROWNRIGG (Jeff Brownrigg) is an Australian musician, songwriter, artist and photographer. He was born in Kalgoorlie Western Australia. At thirteen, Jeff started playing drums, bass drum, trumpet and bugle in his school band before becoming the Band Major for several years.

At 16 he was presented with his first guitar by his parents for his academic achievements. Ostensively he became self taught with help from his younger sister who was a classically trained pianist. His first paying gig was at the Girl Guides coffee shop in Perth.

His artistic skills were also developing rapidly and his portrait work was outstanding. Working mostly in pencil and carbon he was selling these when he was 16 years old.

At the end of his high school life, he went into teachers college to train as an English, Art and Music teacher while working playing solo and in duos in the evenings. He graduated and went to teach at CBC Leederville but his heart was in performance. He quit teaching and became a professional musician.

In 1976, he left for London and teamed up with another Perth musician Keith Mc Donald where they played the pub circuit including the famous Nashville Rooms in Kensington. During this time they wrote and recorded many demos and scored a publishing contract with Champagne Music, in London.

Through Champagne Music he met actor Jack Wilde (the child star of HR Puffinstuff and the Artful Dodger character in the film version of Oliver Twist fame). "I Can See It In Your Eyes" (Wild and Carpenter) was a song that caught Jeff’s attention. After his return to Perth he recorded the song in 1978 and it went into the Australian top 100 charts, peaking in the Perth charts at No 37. Jeff then recorded songs he had written and co-written namely Big Brown Cat Gibbs/Brownrigg/McDonald), Got to be Someone (Brownrigg/McDonald), A song for you (Brownrigg), and Movie Star (Brownrigg).

At this time he also toured Western Australia as support for John Paul Young (Love is in the Air fame) He went on to record more tracks and released his first solo album “Self Portrait” in 1979.

In 1983 he formed Woomera Records, and as the General Manager and Executive Producer, was involved in the recording of the first ever re-arrangement of Gustov Holtz “The Planet Suites” featuring Jeff Wayne, Rick Wakeman and Kevin Peek as well as the first albums by Suzie DeMarchi and Boyd Wilson.

In 1987 Jeff stepped back from the music industry concentrating on his art and also developing his business acumen. He slowly became frustrated not playing and performing and began a prolific era of writing which culminated in two albums and enough strong material for several more.

In 1993, while watching the US news on television he was inspired by a comment uttered by Jessie Jackson during Bill Clinton’s campaign that year. KEEP HOPE ALIVE.

In 2011 he finally signed an international distribution deal through Mindseed Distribution a part of the Sony/IODA digital distribution network. He signed a world-wide distribution deal with Mindseed Records through the Sony/IODA/Orchard network on 13th March 2011.