Austinmer singer-songwriter Margaret Anne King – who pub goers will know from 70s and 80s covers band Firefly – is set to showcase her first solo effort at Thirroul’s Beaches Hotel on June 19.
Soul Laid Bare is the debut album by Margaret Anne and the Rock It Man (aka the multi-instrumentalist, producer and Mythbusters screenwriter Doug Weaver).
“He is amazing, he is a musical genius,” Margaret Anne says. “We do have a bit of an Americana vibe, but on the album we have a real mix. Some songs have a bit of a country beat, then it ramps right up into some rocky, funky sounds.”
The album’s first single, Don’t Look Back, marked a turning point in Margaret Anne’s life. After 20 years of marriage, she split up with her husband. “Three months after that, I went up to Tamworth to a songwriters retreat and I wrote a song with Shane Nicholson. Don’t Look Back has a really cool video, filmed on Sea Cliff Bridge.
“My daughter actually did the filming, she’s very talented. We had some real laughs.”
The clip opens with sunrise shots of Margaret Anne driving a Mazda sports car, then mixes footage of her sea kayaking, cycling past Headlands and barefoot on the rock platform with poignant scenes from her Austinmer childhood.
“I played classical piano as a child. My mother was a pianist and my dad was a singer. He was born in Austinmer; my grandfather owned Thirroul service station in the 1920s.”
The album includes a duet, The Ones You Love, co-written and sung with 13-time Golden Guitar winner Luke O’Shea. White Haze was written for US skier Dan Egan; The Tree was inspired by a stay at a historic monastery-turned-hotel in Utrecht.
Most of the lyrics draw on Margaret Anne’s travels and experiences, especially the past three years, which have been “a roller-coaster ride”.
She joined her daughter, Tenaya, on a gap year in the US, writing the song Soul Laid Bare on the road, and later using photos from this trip as album artwork. “We got a two-woman tent and an esky – we did three months, 14,000km, we went to all the national and state parks all along the west coast.”
Low times have included a run-in with the law (even that proved inspirational; listen out for Prison Day). The album’s final song is an emotional ballad called My Mumma, dedicated to her late mother. “My brother is a really beautiful guitarist. It’s an acoustic, just two of us.”
The album launch at Beaches on June 19 stars Margaret Anne and the Rock It Man (7.30-8.30pm), then Firefly from 8.45pm (70s, 80s dance gig with Margaret King, Will Tibben, Andrew Jackson, Cohen Brown and Paul Williamson, plus guests Doug Weaver and Mark Allen).
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