Coogee Bay Road Musicians
Mr. Pineapple is a songwriter, singer, bass player and guitarist based on the NSW south coast. He has played in numerous rock cover bands for over many years in Sydney and on the south coast including ”The CriX", "Dark Beach” and "Coastal Fringe”. He writes, records, co-produces and releases original music with other local musicians as Wasp Island.
Mr. Doughnut is primarily a singer and a drummer, but also dabbles in guitar, bass and keyboards. Like Mr Pineapple, he has been in numerous cover bands along with his wife Mrs. Muskstick over the years primarily in Los Angeles where they lived for 25 years. These included Dangerous Aliens and One Olive Martini. Later Mrs. Muskstick and Mr. Doughnut along with Mr. Beer Bottle formed Cruise Control which started off playing covers but eventually wrote their own material.
Mr. Beer Bottle loves bourbon and makes sure life remains as complicated as possible. He has yet to see a decent electronic hi-hat, loves splash cymbals and humbucker pickups. He was in Dangerous Aliens in Los Angeles and still lives there. He remains active as a singer songwriter ( Apple Music - Spotify), plays the occasional show in Munich with Paul Solecki and has more recently started experimenting with Ambient music. He recorded all his parts at his home and has a similar studio setup as the one in the Blue Room in Sydney.
Mrs. Muskstick is mainly a backing vocalist on this album but features in Ex, a song written by her, Mr. Pineapple and Mr. Doughnut about their previous partners. Mrs. Muskstick has been singing and playing music with Mr Doughnut either as a duo or in bands for all of their married life (Road to Ruin, Dangerous Aliens, Cruise Control and One Olive Martini). Something she holds dear and has brought her great happiness.
Danielle Dalvi
Danni lives and breaths musical theatre and works for one of the companies that produce many of the large musicals in Australia and around Asia Pacific. Consequently she sings well and lent her voice to the backing vocals on several tracks.
Jim Franklin decided at the age of 17 that he wanted to spend his life as a musician. His big problem was that it took him a long time to work out where his musical niche should be. He started on parallel paths as a rock keyboard player, ‘banging on his Rhodes’ (and twiddling on his synthesizer and trilling on his organ) with a bunch of other Fools, frequently rehearsing at Coogee Bay Road and playing at various fairly low-level venues in Sydney. (By the way, the Rhodes on which he banged back then is the very same Rhodes used on this album as is the Roland SH5 synth. The shakuhachi he plays is newer, from about 1991 and his Haken ContiuuMini, used on ‘The Big Blue Dick’, is quite new, from 2019.) In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was also studying classical composition, and eventually decided that he really wanted to head in that direction. So he abandoned the other Fools and went to Europe to continue studying. Later he came back, and worked in Australia as a university lecturer, composer and live-electronics performer. He still wasn’t completely happy with it all, though, feeling that he didn’t belong 100% in that musical world either. Accordingly, somewhere in there he started learning shakuhachi (in Australia and Japan), eventually becoming a certified shakuhachi master, ‘blowing on his tube’. After that, he took off again for Europe and established a long, solid, viable career as shakuhachi performer, teacher and composer. But the composition stuff he’d studied didn’t die quietly, and he started combining shakuhachi and electronics (especially live-electronics) in a series of new compositions, as well as composing for shakuhachi and other instruments, notably piano. This seemed to be the right thing, finally. When COVID19 hit, he moved (in early 2021) to Japan with his (Japanese) wife. They now live not far from Kyoto, and Jim is working primarily on recordings for shakuhachi and live-electronics, spending a lot of time in his recording booth. This seems to be the final roost and musical niche, apart from occasional, amusing excursions into the past, to bang/twiddle/blow etc as requested by the other Fools. Some of the results can be heard on a couple of songs on this album.
Discography - YouTube - Book
Cyril lives in Paris and plays a mean guitar. Mr. Doughnut and Mrs. Muskstick met him at a jam session in bar called L'Imprévu in the 14th district in Paris some years ago and they have been friends ever since. Cyril is a self-taught musician who first discovered music at the age of 11 when he bought his first Yamaha keyboard. Over time, his passion led him to focus mainly on drums and guitar with influences coming mostly from pop, rock and blues. His guitar playing has been shaped by artists such as David Gilmour, Ritchie Blackmore, Jimmy Page, Steve Lukather ,Joe Satriani, Mark Knopfler, Carlos Santana and Gary Moore, among many others.
Over the years he's played in several bands and regularly joined jam sessions in Paris, sharing the stage with passionate musicians, including some who went on to become professional artists and of course also members of Pineapple Doughnut. These encounters have been incredibly formative and inspiring. Cyril did his guitar parts at home in France and used his fiesta red Strat and Line6 Helix pedal.
Mandy Henderson
Mandy lives in northern Los Angeles. Mrs. Muskstick and Mr. Pineapple met her while she was working at a place called Lucky Baldwin’s pub in Pasadena and they’ve been friends ever since. She was a regular at their yearly Soirees and was kind enough to go to Mr. Beer Bottle’s place and lend her remarkable voice to several tunes on this album.
Marty O'Shiel is an Australian multi-instrumentalist, singer-songwriter, and producer based in Rowes Bay, Queensland. Primarily known as a sax player, he has a diverse music career in rock, jazz, blues, and Irish music. He is proficient in the tenor saxophone, vocals, guitar, and keyboards, with early training in accordion.
In his pre-teens, he played gigs in Irish bands in Sydney, before founding the well-known Sydney band Juggernaut (In which Mr. Doughnut occasionally sat in on the drums). He later studied jazz at the Sydney Music Conservatorium and film soundtracks, at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.
O'Shiel is highly prolific, with 25 albums released across major streaming platforms like Apple Music, YouTube and Spotify.
He remains active in the live music scene, frequently gigging and recording in North East Queensland. He recently performed live at venues like The Wine Bar, the Tsv Blues Club and Flynns Irish Bar.