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Angus and Julia Stone
From
Newport, on the northern beaches of New South Wales, acoustic brother and
sister duo Angus and Julia Stone were destined to fall in love with music.
One grandmother plays piano, the other trained at the conservatorium in
opera, one grandfather sang in war-time musicals and the other is a
self-taught piano player. Their own parents father John and mother Kim sang
together as a folk duo before three children came along, sisters Catharine,
Julia and younger brother Angus. Their father then concentrated on a covers
band, Backbeat, who rehearsed in the family garage. In more recent times
Dad has become a music teacher.
The
Stone children grew up listening to Backbeat, in rehearsals and doing
shows, and were taken to concerts. One day they were taken to see an orchestra
play and were told to choose instruments to learn to play. They were all
attracted to brass instruments and Angus and Julia still add trumpet and trombone to their performances on
stage today. Julia now plays guitar,
piano, harmonica as well as the trumpet. Angus plays trombone, harmonica,
piano and lap slide.
Angus
was first to take music seriously. He injured his back snowboarding and,
finding himself bedridden, took the time to learn the guitar. Then Julia
was travelling through South America with her then boyfriend and for no
apparent reason bought a guitar in Bolivia. When Angus joined them he
taught her how to play and went back home, leaving Julia to pick up more
songs during the rest of her travels before she too returned to Australia.
Back
home Angus had become passionate about his guitar playing and he was also
writing songs Julia felt other people should hear too. She encouraged her
brother to start performing and after he asked an initially reluctant Julia
to join him on stage at an open mic night at the Coogee Bay Hotel in 2005
she started singing harmony for him. Angus also sang harmony for Julia when
she started performing solo. Their career together evolved from there. They
kept their songwriting very separate, writing in their own rooms and only
sharing the songs with each other when they were happy to do so. That’s how
they’ve kept things, on stage and on record, swapping the spotlight, Julia
with her highly romantic confessional relationship songs, Angus with his
more guarded lyrically, more directly pop oriented songs. They bring the
two extremes together with the blend of their voices, but stepping back of
each other’s moment to shine.
The
duo’s debut EP ‘Chocolates And Cigarettes’ brought radio airplay in
Australia and an offer to perform in England. While in London they were
invited to record what became their second EP, ‘Heart Full Of Wine’, partly
recorded in the home of Travis’ Fran Healey, who’d become a fan. Julia also
ended up providing backing vocals on a track Travis's 2007 album, ‘The Boy
with No Name’ and Fran helped them make a start on what became the duo’s
debut album ‘A Book Like This’. The rest of the album was recorded in their
mother’s lounge room back in Newport.
Released
in September 2007, ‘A Book Like This’ ended up achieving platinum sales in
Australia and sent Angus and Julia around the world, eventually finding
time to spend six months writing songs towards a second album, this time
not just writing in separate rooms, but in separate countries, Julia in New
York, Angus back in Australia while he also found time to write and record
a ‘solo’ album ‘Smoking Gun’ under the name Lady Of The Sunshine.
Angus
and Julia then took themselves and their new songs back on the road around
the world, writing more songs during
their travels and recording them on the way. As a result, the second album
‘Down The Way’ finds songs recorded in an old sawmill on the river banks of
Fowey in Cornwell, a studio in Brooklyn, a water tank in Coolangatta, in
London and New York.
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