I believe I may be one of the oldest musical debutants.
I am 58 years old and released my first song in 2021.

​

MIK's Reaction is actually just one person, me - MIK.
Mainly because I can't afford to hire a band but I also love playing all the instruments myself
(with a bit of help from Simon Dobson, the producer at Lakehouse Audio).
 

Before I could talk I was singing along to my parents records, luckily they had great taste in music.
They were listening to the likes of Cat Stevens, Wings, JJ Cale, The Moody Blues and Kevin Johnson.

​

At primary school I couldn't wait to join the school band, where I was assigned the instrument...
trombone :-( 
Not what I was hoping for but it gave me a grounding in playing an instrument. Luckily,
my Father had a friend who was a jazz drummer and he agreed to lend me one of his kits
to see if I liked it.

OH BOY! Did I like it!!? You bet I did. I absolutely loved everything about it. Every day after school I would rush home and go straight to the drums. I'd put on a record, listening through headphones, and drum away until I had blisters. By this time I had discovered The Beatles and even though they had broken up years before, I was blown away by their music and they were my favourites to drum away with (pretending I was Ringo, of course).
Later on I realised I'd rather be John or Paul but being Ringo would still be unreal!
 

In year 7 a music teacher gave the class an assignment, to write a song (more of a poem, because the music was only in our heads).
This exercise really struck a chord with me (struck a chord haha) and I started writing more songs, which were truly horrible, but you have to start somewhere don't you.

I realised it was a bit difficult to write a song on drums or Bass, which I had begun playing too,
so my parents agreed to get me an acoustic guitar.

This is the go, I thought. Now I can fulfill my full-on rock and roll dreams by being the singer/guitarist
of an awesome band! I was about 13 years old then.

​

I met some like-minded guys at school and we put together a band, and indeed we were awesome!
I still have some tapes of our practice sessions and it seems that the awesomeness was almost entirely in our own heads. However, we practiced hard and we eventually got some gigs. The problem we had now was that we could never all agree on a name for the band.
We finally all agreed on the name XS Rock, that sounded really cool. Until a few weeks later we found out that there was some new band called INXS. The Ferris brothers actually went to the same high school as us, rumour has it that they stole our name (I may have started that rumour but hey, it's possible).

Anyway, I had a book of Australian slang and in it was a word for a drunken party or orgy,
the word was Jambaroo. Even though none of us had heard of this term before and none of us was overly happy with the name, we had gig's to do and we had to have a name so, Jambaroo it was.

​

We played under that name well into our 20's and we became a truly good little band, until the guys decided it was time for them to get married and have kids. I thought we would have been discovered well before then and so, disillusioned, I hung up my guitar as well.

​

I still enjoyed playing music for myself and occasionally for friends and family but my dream of releasing music had been put away, well and truly. That is until one day I was Googling a guy I used to work with when I was 18 and he was about 25.
He was a musician and he would listen to me and take me seriously about my music. He would also tell me things about the music industry, he had even heard Midnight Oils latest album before it came out and told me how it had great brass sections in it (that album was 10 to 1).

​

As you do, we lost touch after I left that job but it turned out that he had gotten rather busy with his music in the nearly 40 years since. His name is Brendan Gallagher and he had formed a band called Karma County, he is also in The Dead Marines. Check them all out, you won't be disappointed.

​

So now I'm thinking, hang on - I'm nearly 10 years younger than Brendan and he's making good music. Why can't I do that?
So I searched for a studio and found Simon at Lakehouse and he helped me create some songs

which I am really proud of.

​

I hope I can get my songs to as many ears as possible and that everyone loves them but, if not, at least I've fulfilled my childhood dream of releasing my music.