User:Kirk Lorange/sandbox

Kirk Lorange (born 18 April 1949) is a Canadian born guitarist and singer-songwriter. He moved to Sydney, Australia in 1974 and quickly became one of its most sought after session musicians, playing on scores of albums, several movie soundtracks and countless TV and Radio commercials, most notably the 'Sky Surfer' ad for Coca Cola. He is best known as a slide guitarist and his early sessions include Richard Clapton, Mark Hunter, Keith Urban, Swanee and Renée Geyer.

In 1984, he released his own solo album Kirk Lorange - No Apostrophe on WEA Records. Also in 1984 he self published his guitar instruction book PlaneTalk.

Early Years

Kirk was born to a Canadian father and English mother in Mexico City, 18 months after his brother Gerry. His dad worked for a US multinational tire company. The family then moved to Caracas, Venezuela (1950-1956), Havana, Cuba (1956-1957), Spa, Belgium (1957-1963) where he bought his first guitar at age 11, and moved to Montreal, Canada in 1963. He finished High School in Canada and started travelling back and forth to Europe. His earliest influences were The Shadows but he soon became interested in Flamenco and classical guitar, learning pieces by ear. Charlie Byrd's playing on [Getz's Jazz Samba] made a deep impression on him, and it was James Taylor's fingerstyle that prompted him to buy his first steel string guitar.

His first paid gig was at The Sir Winston Churchill Pub in Montreal in 1969, and he has been working as a professional guitarist ever since.

In the early 1970s, Kirk travelled back to Europe, this time with a fellow Canadian singer songwriter Dwight Druick. They spent a winter writing songs in Mykonos, Greece, and in 1973 recorded an album in London, England, 'Druick and Lorange' for ill-fated record company, EAR Records.

Australia

On Christmas Day 1974, after a short time in Vancouver Canada and Nashville Kirk moved to Sydney, Australia. He quickly met up Doug Ashdown a well known artist who was recording at the time. He quickly became part of the Sydney session scene. Not long after, he met Richard Clapton and played on three of his albums and toured with him in the Richard Clapton Band on and off for three years. His career as a session guitarist continued with his playing heard on many Sydney based recording artists: Mark Hunter (front man from Dragon, who he later toured with), Kevin Johnson, Swanee, Mike McClelland, Renée Geyer, Keith Urban, Graeme Connors and many more. Full discography here. Kirk also played on countless radio and TV commercials and several film soundtracks, including Young Einstein and The Shiralee.

Kirk Lorange - No Apostrophe

After years of playing on other people's recordings, in 1984 Kirk took the plunge and signed with WEA Records to record his own album of his own songs. He hired newcomer to Australia Michael Stavrou to engineer and co-produce. Recorded at Studios 301 in Sydney it is a mixture of blues, country, jazz and country. It received critical acclaim and reached top 15 in Perth and Adelaide but was not a commercial success.

PlaneTalk

After staging several guitar workshops in Sydney, Kirk decided to put down on paper his own way of understanding the workings of music and how to navigate the fretboard. He wrote and illustrated 'PlaneTalk - The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book', which he has self-published ever since. It's an unusual comic-strip approach to teaching a complex subject, taking the form of a conversation on a plane between a pro and an amateur, hence the title.

Bands

Kirk has played in many Sydney bands. Shortly after arriving in Australia he and Doug Ashdown formed 'Sleeping Dogs' who opened around Australia for Supertramp on their Crime of the Century tour. He toured extensively with Richard Clapton and Mark Hunter. In the early 80s, Glenn Shorrock formed a band after leaving Little River Band and asked Kirk to join. It was a short lived band but one of their highlights was having an impromptu jam with Ringo Starr on the Michael Parkinson Show, and Australian interview show when both Glenn and Ringo were guests. The jam can be seen here. Another of Kirk's homegrown bands, The Six Amigos, had the pleasure of opening for The Highwaymen on their 1991 tour of Australia.

Chasin the Train

In 1985, Kirk was asked by three members of Moving Pictures to put a band together. That band had just broken up and it was to be a temporary line up, something to do for a few months. That band is still a working band in 2019. The members are Kirk on guitar and vocals, Kevin Bennett on guitar and vocals, Mark Myer on drums and Ian Lees on bass. Their longevity may be owed to the fact that they have always kept the project low key, never signed a record contract and has never been their sole source of income. They play for the pleasure of it and (mostly) Sydney fan base has been enthusiastically loyal for over 35 years.

Kirk and the Internet

Kirk was one of the first of his peers to embrace the Internet. As a self publisher of a guitar instruction book, he quickly saw the potential of having a website so he could market to the world, not just Australia. He taught himself web design and quickly had a site up and running and delivering results. He also bought the domain name guitarforbeginners.com and turned that site into a free guitar instruction sites with a discussion forum with over 120,000 members. His YouTube channel, where he posts his fingerstyle and slide guitar lessons, has had over 17 million views as of late 2019. He continues to play, teach and perform.