Featured Folkie Leigh Birkett

 As an only child born 1966  in Walsall in Staffordshire England, Leigh Birkett had never really thought much about Australia until one night he was drinking with a pal of his who was leaving England to come to Australia and the words ”See you in Bali in three weeks” were uttered. With no more planning than that Leigh sold his car, quit his job and headed for Australia via Bali.

He arrived in Sydney in July 1988 with no money (having spent it all in Bali) and no job but despite that says he woke up one morning to brilliant sunshine and Frank Zappa on the radio and thought he was in heaven.

Leigh & his mate had a great few weeks running amok in Sydney, then reality bit and they realized they needed jobs and all the mundane things in life. Having been told that there were plenty of jobs in Brisbane they hitchhiked their way to Queensland. They had no more luck finding jobs in Brisbane but they stayed on for a while enjoying the sunshine and surviving on food from soup kitchens.

Finally Leigh who had graduated from Canterbury College of Art with a B.A. with honours in Graphic Design, started going through the phone book, calling prospective employers, and when he got to ‘T’ he scored himself a job.

He spent the next 10 years working in the “big end of town” planning and designing ad campaigns for national, international and multi-national corporations.

The pressures of this type of work took their toll, Leigh says that for a long time he spent 80 hours a week working, a few hours sleeping and the rest of the time drinking. A receipe for disaster in anyone’s book. So when the opportunity to buy a printing company came up he took the chance and changed careers. This was not a good move at the time as he was burnt out and spent the next 3 years playing golf instead of working as hard as the business demanded.

  By this time Leigh and his partner Jane Stapleford  who is a fabulously talented wildlife and fantasy artist, and also plays the Flute, were both so tired of the stress and drama of living life in the art and advertising fast lanes that they opted out and moved to the relative quiet of Blackheath. Leigh now works from home as a freelance Creative Director / Designer.

Leigh has always loved music and grew up listening to hippy music, 70’s jazz and all types of cross-over music.He has had his own recording studio, and helped other musicians produce CD’s and soundtracks. He has always played the guitar for fun, but never had the time or the opportunity to be serious about it so moving to Blackheath was just the chance to set himself on the path he truly wants to follow, music.

He played for a short while in a Country and Western covers band called the “Love Rustlers” and had been invited to perform in the ‘Buddy Holly” stage show but despite all this had never felt confident enough in himself or his ability to push himself.

Leigh was fascinated with celtic type guitar music and he didn’t want to play standard tuning styles but wasn’t sure how to develop this style until he saw Tony McManus perform at a National Folk Festival and that gave him an idea of how to go on developing his own style. Then a chance meeting with Craig Batty led to some afternoon sessions at a pub in Blackheath, Lithgow Folk Club sessions and a huge boost in confidence.

More recently Leigh has teamed up with Martin Doherty and they are going from strength to strength in their musical partnership, they performed together at the 2005 National Folk Festival to an audience of 7000 people and for Leigh this finally gave him the feeling that he has arrived at a place where he can be confident that he can hold his own with musicians he only ever dreamed of playing with. Of course this hasn’t come easy and it takes hours of practice and learning of tunes and songs.

Leigh had long been aware of Martin in the music scene in Australia but their paths had never crossed until meeting in Blackheath, so their friendship and musical collaborations are very special to him.

Leigh’s taste in music in very eclectic and his favourites range from ‘The Bothy Band’ and John Renbourne (Pentangle) to Frank Zappa, Larry Correll (11^th House) and poly-rythmic music such as ‘The Gong Band” from the 70’s.

Currently Leigh is  very much enjoying being a member of the Blue Mountains Gypsy band ‘Smoking Gitanes’ (Gitane is french for gypsy) their style of music is Russian / Hungarian / Gypsy, very fast and furious with lots of room for improvisation and fun. He is also very supportive of partner Jane’s art and they spend a lot of time exhibiting her work in various galleries and art shows.

 Using Martin’s ‘Bald Rock’ recording studio Leigh and Martin are helping out with the soundtrack for the local musical “Angelina’s Portrait” and he and Martin are working on a new CD as well continuing to perform together.

 Leigh has also just finished a CD of known and new nursery rhymes with another local musician Boris Hunt who is also helping out with the ‘Angelina’s Portrait’ CD.

The friendships and contacts that Leigh has made through Lithgow Folk Club mean a great deal to him, he is at a point in his life that he never dreamed of achieving. He now only wants to be debt free (he’s not alone in that) and for as far as he can see into the future there will be music, music, music.

“I told you you should have written about Jane”.

Cil VanderVelden

Mark Roebuck

Linda Merhtens

Gary Bucholtz

Glenda Phipps

Fintan aka Craig Batty

Martin Doherty