Equally at home on a folk club stage or singing round the kitchen table, this family of musicians from the Sunshine Coast presents a multi-generational show of award-winning songs and uplifting spirit. Mum Karen has been writing beautifully crafted contemporary folk songs for over 30 years. She started her musical journey in the folk clubs of northern England before moving to Australia in 1995. Here she became known as a travelling musician with songs and stories of her nomadic life on the road, the colourful characters she met and the issues she cares about. Her first album ‘A Point on the Map’ received radio airplay all across Australia. 

Taking a break in 2000 to start a family, Karen stopped performing in public but she never stopped writing and singing at home. Her main audience for a while was her children for whom she made up a constant stream of songs. Still, no-one was more surprised than Karen when all her children turned out to be keen musicians who love folk music. Son Murray joined the band at 14 years of age as lead guitarist, a role he was already quite capable of filling. Fast forward seven years and it is easy to see where thousands of hours of practice and performance have led to so far. Youngest daughter Roanna started singing in the family band at the age of 12, later adding bass guitar to her repertoire. Her smooth playing and large vocal range make her a sought after musician.

With all this quickly evolving talent around her, Karen might have been tempted to sit back and let the kids do all the work. In fact she did the opposite. Inspired by her children, she joined the I Heart Songwriting Club aiming to reach new heights with the backbone of their music – the songs themselves. Over the last three years she has written a total of 133 songs (and counting), releasing her fourth studio album ‘Let the Light back in’ in late 2021. She was awarded the Alistair Hulett Songwriting Tropy in 2020 for her environmental song ‘Wildflower Woman’ and in the last few years has been a winner, runner-up and finalist in multiple songwriting competitions around the world. You can listen to their music here.