8 Ball Aitken Press

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8 BALL AITKEN PRESS

What the critics say...

Far North Queensland’s best loved banana picker (turned full-time guitar picker) 8 Ball Aitken is touring Australia in 2009 with his award winning third album, ‘REBEL WITH A CAUSE’.

8 Ball Aitken is authentic -- a real-deal character who rattles the roof, stomps the planks, and gets his audiences whooping and hollering along in a frenzy of pure exuberance.  He plays a sizzling hot blend of original blues, roots & country music. Coming from a farming community in Far North Queensland, 8 Ball Aitken is the oldest son of an impoverished family of twelve children. 8 Ball spent his adolescence on a banana plantation, living in a rough tobacco shed with resident rats, bats, snakes, and spiders as his sleeping companions.

He started work as a farm labourer aged fifteen, doing back-breakingly hard work on the mango and banana plantations of the Atherton Tablelands, a man's work for a boy's pay.  A life-changing conversation with an Aboriginal elder, who told him he should pursue a career in music, convinced 8 Ball to pack his bags, grab his guitar, and leave the farm to meet his destiny.

8 Ball won a 2009 Q Song Award for his song ‘OUTBACK BOOTY CALL’. Another song, ‘YELLOW MOON’, has won the EMI Music Blues & Roots Song of the Year at the Q Song Awards. His singles ‘CYCLONE COUNTRY’ & ‘HANDS ON TOP OF THE WHEEL’ have both been top 10 country hits around Australia in 2008 / 2009.

‘CYCLONE COUNTRY’ earned 8 Ball a 2009 Golden Guitar award nomination. The first single ‘COWBOY MOVIE’ (from album ‘REBEL WITH A CAUSE’) was nominated for the 2009 APRA Blues & Roots Song of The Year, and has received radio airplay around in twenty-six countries, including charting in the European Country Music Top 40.

8 Ball has taken his unique blues & roots sound to festivals and clubs across the world, including Australia, Europe, Japan and Canada, including Canadian Music Week 2009 and the Stan Rogers Festival. He’s toured in Japan four times, where he headlined the popular Rokko Sun Music Festival. He has played a string of dates in Singapore, the UK (including a live appearance on the BBC), Poland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.

REBEL WITH A CAUSE is out now through Phoenix Movement Records / MGM Distribution. 8 Ball Aitken is currently available for interviews. Contact Phoenix Movement Records via phone:  0408 075 959  or email: bird@phoenixmovement.com.

8 Ball Rolls Into Your World

8 Ball Aitken is the redneck preacher at the shotgun wedding between country and blues. It doesn’t matter which part of the family you’re from -- what does matter is the funky foot-stomping hullaballoo at the all-night party afterwards. 

Is he country? 8 Ball plays from the heart. This long-haired country boy has a lot of solid twang tucked up under that cowboy hat of his. Growing up in an impoverished family of 12 kids, and spending his formative years living in a primitive tobacco shed, 8 Ball is a former banana picker turned full-time guitar picker from the rural tropics of Far North Queensland, Australia. A graduate of the CMAA College of Country Music, Golden Guitar nominee, winner of the Q Song Country Song of the Year Award, twice Star Maker Grand Finalist, Tamworth Country Music Festival favourite, and with two Australian country Top Ten hit songs from current album under his belt, you could say he’s country.

Is he blues? Even Far North Queensland cowboys get the blues. Bubbling up from the swamps of the Mareeba Delta (‘meeting place of the waters’ in the local Aboriginal dialect), blues is a way of life in FNQ. Brought to the region by African-American troops during Word War II, blues took hold early in Australian Aboriginal and islander communities. 8 Ball grew up in this hard-scrabble world, soaking up the real delta blues riffs handed down during ‘smoko’ from generation to generation of farm-workers in Queensland’s Deep North. He paid his dues early in his career, getting a start playing nightly at the infamous Johno’s Blues Bar in steamy Cairns  -- even clocking up a marathon 44 gigs in one month. He’s won the Q Song Blues Song of the Year Award, been an APRA Australia Blues & Roots Award finalist, and is currently nominated for the Blues Award in the prestigious International Songwriting Competition. 

8 Ball calls it ‘honk, stomp, Aussie swamp’ – roots music with balls. This rich musical gumbo has been steeping and simmering in the Far North melting-pot for over half a century. It’s little wonder that a certain red-neck, red-haired cowboy has got his foot evenly placed in both camps  -- he’s blues and he’s country at the same time, and culturally authentic in both realms. Now, 8 Ball Aitken is bringing this steamy mix to the world stage in the 21^st century, walloping out the good-timey licks on his guitar, and bringing it to the people – sizzling hot.     

8 Ball’s unique blend of swamp-country and blues-rock is charismatic, celebratory, and foot-stomping great fun. Whether performing solo, duo or with his full band, 8 Ball Aitken never fails to get people singing, dancing, stomping the floor and having a great night. 

The flame-haired guitar-slinger has toured across the world -- from Mareeba to Memphis, and Tamworth to Tennessee -- for the past seven years, performing at festivals, clubs, pubs and gigs in all states and territories of Australia.  He’s been busy clocking up the frequent-flyer points, guitar in hand, with gigs spanning fifteen countries throughout North America, Europe and Asia. He continues to tour 10 months a year, delivering edgy slide guitar and barnstorming live lead-breaks on his National steel guitar, Maton acoustic, & hot electric guitars. 8 Ball Aitken is an authentic Australian voice and a ‘Rebel With A Cause’ – and he wants to play for you real soon now!