Who Are The Eight Guitars On Amanda Brown’s ‘Eight Guitars’?

Amanda Brown roped in an eclectic array of guest guitarists to add an extra point of difference to the songs on Eight Guitars - as she explains “I played all of the acoustic guitars that you hear except for one, and some of the electric guitars too, as well as some of the keyboards and percussion. All of the stuff that basically isn’t the featured guitars or the drums and bass” - and here’s what she has to say about the guests on each song:

Freedom Song

That song features the amazing skills of Kirin J Callinan, who I met by chance at an airport and was taken with immediately. He’s such an amazing character and he used his pedals to bring an otherworldly charm to this track, it was great working with him.

Light Lingers On

That’s Damien Lane, again he’s a beautiful guitar player and really underrated, and also a film composer which is how I know him - we’ve collaborated on a couple of films together.

Lost In The Wilderness

That features pedal steel and Gretsch played by the beautiful Danny Widdicombe. I met Danny when we did the 16 Lovers Lane shows and I just loved what he did there and he’s such an awesome individual. It’s absolutely beautiful what he did and we didn’t have to edit a thing.

Trouble You’re In

That’s Brendan Gallagher from Karma County, and also a singer-songwriter in his own right. He’s just a very old friend and also has a lovely style of playing, I’d say he’s very influenced by guitarists such as Marc Ribot and Ry Cooder and I can hear that in his playing.

1973

That’s Bruce Reid who currently plays with Dragon. He’s also an old friend and has played on quite a few of my soundtracks, he’s a Canadian originally but he’s been a resident here for a long time and played with all sorts of different people, and he plays lap steel - and regular guitar as well - but he plays lap steel on that song.

The Deal

That’s Shane O’Mara, a lovely person and just a standout guitarist who’s played with Tim Rogers and he’s a producer as well. Again I’d worked with him on quite a few soundtrack things and just really like him personally and I knew that he’d bring something unexpected to that song, and he did. He’s doing all of those kind of strange backward solos on that song, while I’m playing those sort of cowboy licks, and the two parts ended up meshing really well together.

The Unguarded Moment (The Church cover)

That’s me playing all the guitar parts except for the sort of strange, drone-y solo that was actually played by Richard Andrew, the drummer for The Underground Lovers. I was actually asked to record that song for a podcast called Almost A Mirror which is like a deep-dive into particular songs and it came up really well. 

Richard was MD (Musical Director) of the podcast project and he ended up playing the drums as well on that project, and I just decided to include it on the album because there’s a certain sense of completion there as the song Light Lingers On I actually co-wrote with Steve Kilbey a long time ago. That was also for a film and it never ended up getting used, so I’m very pleased that it’s finally seeing the light of day.

Where It All Began

The guitarist Daniel Champagne plays acoustic guitar, he’s a really undiscovered gem in this country. He’s from the south coast of NSW and he’s spent years developing a really unique style of playing the acoustic guitar, which is very rhythmic and uses the body of the guitar through amplification as almost like a rhythm box or a loop device. He’s a gorgeous singer-songwriter and he can just sound like a one-man band in the live scenario, but he’s mainly known as an acoustic guitar virtuoso.

Amanda Brown's debut album 'Eight Guitars' is out now. Click here to purchase.