Back to The 90s
In the earlie 90s............. I started writing again more seriously.
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| The Joe Creighton Band |
| L to R: Steve Hadley, Tony Floyde, Joe Creieghton, Paul Gildea |
I felt I had neglected my own composition and was spending too much time enhancing the careers of others. I had become a sidetracked session sideman (alliteration!) I guess it was the easier option and less confronting and it paid the rent. It is a hard unforgiving industry and many of those people I have backed are long gone and I am still here battling away.
I formed my own band 'The Joe Creighton Band' with Steve Hadley, Tony Floyde, and Paul Gildea. We worked around town thwarting the then current paradigm of using big PAs and mega production we used small amps, vocal PAs and played sometimes 6 nights a week around all the small venues in Melbourne. It was a great run and we had fun doing it. We did a lot of 50s stuff, a bit of R&B, gospel, blues and a few of my originals and survived well.
At this time I did some demos of my original songs, shopped them around the industry expecting I would get a positive response considering my reputation and my success as a musician. Well....... it was time to wake up and smell the coffee!
One A&R 'person' (for want of a more appropriate word) virtually came right out and said 'Why don't you just keep playing bass, you're good at that, and stop bothering us'?
When people see you in a certain light it is hard to change that. So I found a private investor who believed in me and my music and I went ahead and made 'Holywell' which I thought and still think is a great album. I had help from many great musicians and everyone involved put in a great deal of love and care. The album is still listenable 12 years later; in fact it was recently reviewed by Noel Mengel in the Brisbane Courier Mail (see reviews page).
It was during the recording of this album I met Gus Til (who co-produced Holywell with me) and Simon Polinski (bassist, Engineer, producer, composer).
I remember when we had finished the album Simon, who had enginneered it, said to me, 'Well I suppose I'll never see you again will I?' He can be such a cynical bastard sometimes. I said, 'You obviously don't know me very well' Well, we have gone on to do so many projects and I would probably count him as one of my closest friends.
Simon co-produced my second album 'Falling Again' and we recently released the fruits of our co-writing efforts 'Ornament' Bleu through Cyan (Psy-Harmonics). Ornament is Deep Ambient music and is enjoying some success in Japan in sales and play in the club circuit. To date the music has been instrumental but we are experimenting with vocals for the next album.
