I have always enjoyed the folk scene and started off playing only folk music on my guitar. I just loved Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and Gordon Lightfoot and my guitar was with me just about everywhere I went as a young teenager. Once I cycled 20 miles to and from a beach with my guitar strapped across my back, and spent a lot of time sitting on the sand strumming and singing with one of my good friends. These days, my flutes and penny whistles replace my guitar!

I met Brian Brett through neighbours in 1985 and he told me that he was a guitarist. We stayed in touch and in 1992 when I needed a guitar player for a concert I was organising for the Nursing Mothers Association, I asked Brian if he would accompany me while I did a couple of numbers on my flute. He said yes and 16 years on, we are still making beautiful music together! Ahem…….!

In the mid 90’s, Brian called me to ask if I would like to join the Irish band he was currently playing in – Colcannon (Ann and Gerry O’Neil) – and I said that I’d like to, but I didn’t know any Irish music. He told me that I’d probably be okay, just come along and see. So I did and I found out that a lot of the “Canadian” music I had grown up playing and singing was actually Irish!! So Brian and I played regular gigs with Colcannon for about a year until Colcannon folded and then we formed our own band with Ian Evans on bass guitar, (from The Best Music Shop). We originally called ourselves Shades Of Green, but when I got a call from a guy in down south saying HE had the name Shades of Green registered (oops!) and we couldn’t use it anymore, we made a quick change to Silken Thomas and have played under that name for the last 12 years. We now play regular gigs in and around Brisbane as a four-piece, with our drummer Steve Stiller, playing mostly Irish folk music and a few non-Irish covers.

As well as performing as part of Silken Thomas, Brian and I love to play as a duo and have performed at a couple of Folkies Old and New concerts, at Indigiscapes as part of the Folk Redlands scene, at the Upfront Club in Maleny, and as regularly as we can at the Kookaburra Café Blackboard sessions on Wednesday nights. I loved playing alto flute, C flute and penny whistles as a studio musician on a few CD’s, including Anne Infante’s “Love Is A Circle’ and Mark Davidson’s “Laughter In the Clay” – both great musicians and lovely to work with.