Martyn Wyndham-Read

Although an Englishman, folksinger Martyn Wyndham-Read has nonetheless become one of the greatest ambassadors of Australian folk song, having spent over 30 years playing music absorbed from the musical tradition of drovers, bush workers, and cane cutters. Having spent time employed as a bush worker himself, Wyndham-Read first fell in love with the traditional Aussie folk songs while employed on a South Australian sheep farm in the early '60s. Only 18 years old at the time, Wyndham-Read found himself enraptured by the songs he heard from the local farm hands, and after leaving his job, traveled the Australian countryside, playing in pubs and trading songs with those he chanced to meet. By 1967, he had befriended Australian-born folkie Trevor Lucas and was recruited to join Martin Carthy and Dave Swarbrick to contribute to Bert Lloyd's classic Leviathan. Soon Wyndham-Read would find himself at the center of a Australian folk music revival, recording his own debut with Nic Jones and a cast of friends and playing the country from end to end before returning home to England, where he found a similarly receptive audience. With over 30 albums to his credit, Wyndham-Read remains an active touring act, frequently joined by the like-minded No Man's Band, presenting commentaries on Australian history, reciting bush poetry, and delivering outback anecdotes that have earned him a reputation as a tremendously warm and hypnotic performer.