C.W. Stoneking

Born in 1974 in Katherine, Australia, to American parents whose union dissolved soon after his arrival, C.W. Stoneking—known to intimates as Chris—spent his earliest years traveling with his father, a teacher assigned to remote outback settlements. He lived within the Aboriginal community of Papunya until the age of nine, when he and his father relocated to Sydney.

He first took up guitar at eleven and was performing with local ensembles by thirteen, including a stretch alongside Peter Lucas in the Woodford Cajun-Zydeco Hot Tamale Band. While attending Balmain High School he discovered his father’s stash of country blues recordings and fell under the lasting influence of 1920s and 1930s artists such as Blind Willie McTell, Memphis Minnie, Leroy Carr, and Big Bill Broonzy, whose style and era would anchor his own creative outlook.

In 1997 he moved to Melbourne and began appearing as a solo blues performer; the following year he privately issued a collection of covers titled C.W. Stoneking. That same year he assembled the band C.W. Stoneking & the Blue Tits, which disbanded eighteen months later after the death of mandolin player Charlie Bostock. A bootleg recording drawn from their 1999 live session at Melbourne’s 3CR radio station has circulated unofficially ever since.

Stoneking returned to solo work, writing original material that evoked the blues, ragtime, calypso, jazz, and hillbilly discs he prized. He captured these songs on the 2005 album King Hokum, which received extensive critical acclaim after its Australian release in 2006; the Swiss label Voodoo Rhythm subsequently licensed it for European distribution in 2007.

He soon began touring with a fresh ensemble, the Primitive Horn Orchestra, whose lineup featured additional vocalist Kirsty Fraser together with Ros Jones on tuba, Ed Farlie on trumpet, and Kynan Robinson on trombone.