Tavern, Friday August 29 - 1.25pm

Crowbar, Friday August 29 - 9.30pm

Winebar, Saturday August 30 - 12.45pm

ROB BLACK

Rob's father used to pick guitar to help him face a day's work in the mines. As he played, his son watched, and soon it was Rob who was picking out tunes. And growing up in the Central Queensland town of Middlemount meant that Rob had little to do but hone his talents on the guitar. He taught himself complicated Chet Atkins solos one note at a time using the pause button on a cassette player. It may not have been an orthodox approach, but it worked. Rob was accepted into the Queensland Conservatorium of Music at the age of 17.

Rob arrived at the Con to do a Diploma of Music in classical guitar - but he almost came without a guitar.
"I was riding in on my pushbike, my $180 classical guitar - in its classy vinyl case - in my right hand," Rob remembers. "I turned a corner and the end of the guitar caught in the spokes, snapping the headstock as I went over the handlebars. Luckily it was a low speed accident, and with a little D.I.Y fix-it job, I was able to get through those first few months."

After the Con, Rob's began his career as a performer, and once again, gaffer tape had a part to play.
"I had set up my guitar as a bit of a stunt guitar so I could throw it around my head," Rob says. "But there was this time at the Tamworth Country Music Festival when I failed to do my routine maintenance check. I threw the guitar and it just kept going, ending up in a tangled mess of wires at the bass player's feet."

Rob played on after taking a short break to tape up his guitar but had to spend the next day - a memorable birthday - searching Tamworth for guitar parts.

But while the years on the road may have been hard on his guitars, Rob also had some big nights, like playing to a packed house in the Crow Bar as part of the Gympie Muster.

"It's the memory of those gigs that help you survive the ones that are... a little less than average, to put it politely," he says. "I recently showed up for one gig to help promote my upcoming album release. The audience turned out to be two sound guys, a roadie, and a small group of 13-year-old girls who left when they realised I wasn't going to cover any Avril Lavigne songs."

Rob's big break came earlier this year when he entered the Toyota Starmaker competition.

"I decided to have a go because it had helped other artists, including Keith Urban," he says. "I didn't win but the head of Compass Bros was one of the judges and he was impressed enough to phone two days later to talk about a deal. It was one of those phone calls that every unsigned artist dreams about. It seemed that all those nights of reading myself Anthony Robbins motivational bed time stories had finally paid off."