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| CW Stoneking announces NZ tour and new album Recorded in Castlemaine, Victoria Goin' Boogaloo is the first album from Australian based Stoneking in six years and follows up his hugely successful Jungle Blues – a release that saw him break Europe with a series of sold-out shows and led to appearances at all the major festivals as well as tv and radio spots for the likes of Later With Jools Holland and jazz star Jamie Cullum's BBC radio series and major press coverage that saw the broadsheets, tabloids and major music mags all unite in praise for a man Word magazine described as "The most authentic twenty-first century voodoo-jazz-blues-delta-dixie experience of them all". But who is CW Stoneking? Rumours of his past are rife – he had been a boxer, that he lived in a stolen car on the outskirts of town, that his body is covered in tattoos and he doesn't cook. And then there's the one about him being once seen in a very different incarnation – playing lead guitar with a heavy-rock band called The Berko Boys in a Sydney. Some said he looked more like a hillbilly David Lee Roth than a Delta bluesman, with long blond hair, a black skivvy, balaclava and a stuffed fox perched on his shoulder. His bandmates were dressed as a game-show host and rodeo clown. Or so they said. What we do know is that he was born in the secluded town of Katherine, Australia to American parents (his father, the author – and occasional screenwriter for TV shows such as Mission Impossible – Billy Marshall Stoneking, emigrated in the 70s – "the bumper stickers said, 'America, love it or leave it'. So I left." – and then brought up in the Aboriginal community of Papunya (pop. 299) his love of the blues was nurtured in his teens and his skill as a writer and performer honed in some of the most God-forsaken bars of Australia's outback before travelling the country solo and then with the band The Blue Tits. His Australian debut album from 2006 King Hokum got the ball rolling but it was with the release of Jungle Blues that things got serious and since then he hasn't stopped. NZ Tour – November 2014 5th – Tuning Fork – Auckland 6th – King Street Live -Masterton 7th – Bodega – Wellington 8th – Coronation Hall – Dunedin 9th – Churchills Live – Christchurch write your comments about the article :: © 2014 Jazz News :: home page |