I’d written a bunch of songs around 2013/2014 that I didn’t feel were right for Zeptepi. They were predominantly gentler affairs and I wanted to approach them differently. So I started off The Gathering Tide, initially as a duo with Zeptepi fiddle player Claire Johnstone, and we began doing a few shows, occasionally joined by another Zeptepi member, banjo player CC Thornley. There’s a good video clip of the three of us playing for a University TV show in Ballarat back in 2014.
We did about thirty gigs in various guises, initially with Clare but later with Paul Angas (drums, keys) and Peter O’Shea (fiddle), but it was mainly a recording project. I collaborated with Paul remotely as he’d relocated from Melbourne to South Australia, and we built up most of the tracks together with Paul adding drums/percussion and keyboards to my acoustic guitar and vocal. Clare and Peter contributed violin to 4 or 5 tracks each. It came together quite slowly over a year or two in various home studios. Then I spent a week mixing the album with Phil Trelfall in The Base Studios, Melbourne. I say “with”, but it mostly Phil working his magic as I sat on the couch behind him rolling joints, drinking tea and snoozing.
The self-titled album came out in September 2016. We subsequently did a few gigs to promote it, culminating in a couple of great shows at the National Celtic Festival in Portarlington where we performed as a 4-piece with Peter on fiddle, Paul on drums and Steve Temple on double bass.
I started recording songs for a second album in 2017, but for one reason or another it didn’t happen. A couple of singles did come out – 2018’s This Christmas and then a 3-track EP When The Rain Comes in 2020, but I wasn’t really feeling it and I stepped away from music for a while.
I’ve done a few Gathering Tide shows since relocating to New Zealand in 2020, just as solo shows, but not recorded anything. However I do have a batch of songs lined up to record, and I’m tentatively scheduling this project for 2025!
You can check out all The Gathering Tide releases here.