Biography   In Canada most people know him as one of the country's leading cultural journalists, senior arts columnist at the Toronto Star. In Australia, a few will remember another Greg Quill, the award-winning singer-songwriter and leader of the seminal Australian roots band Country Radio, which scored hits with "Gypsy Queen", "Wintersong", "Fleetwood Plain" and "She Do It To Me", toured the country endlessly, headlined at the Sydney Opera House, and shared stages with many musical icons of the era, including Fairport Convention, Elton John, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Santana, J.J. Cale and Stephen Stills, among others. With his solo album, The Outlaw's Reply, released to critical acclaim in Australia, Greg took advantage of an Australian Arts Council travel grant to come to in Canada in the late 1970s, determined to carve out a career as a musician in North America, first as a solo artist on the prestigious Elektra label, and heading up the formidable Toronto-based country-rock outfit, Southern Cross, with Chris Stockley from The Dingoes and Sam See from Fraternity and The Flying Circus. As tastes and trends in music changed, Greg - who had gained a solid grounding in Sydney's newspaper business after graduating with an Arts degree - was frequently called on to write about music for Canadian papers and magazines, and was appointed in the early 1980s editor of the national music/lifestyle magazines Music Express and Graffiti. After a final farewell tour of Australia, he returned to Canada, packed away his guitars, and started on a new path as a writer and critic at the Star, Canada's largest daily. Music, particularly folk and traditional acoustic music, has remained an enduring passion, and a couple of years ago, prompted by a call from his Country Radio songwriting partner, steel and mandolin wizard Kerryn Tolhurst - now a producer, session player and songwriter in New York, with albums by New York songwriters Jimmy Norman, Bruce Henderson, and Australia's Cyndi Boste, Jeff Lang, Paul Kelly, The Black Sorrows, Russell Crowe and The Pigram Brothers to his credit - Greg dusted off his instruments, worked the calluses back into his chording fingers, and started writing songs again. Greg and Kerryn have just finished recording more than a dozen new pieces for a CD, so rudely interrupted, released in Australia and Canada in 2003. They toured Australia in March and April 2003, performing together - for the first time in Australia since 1975 - at the Port Fairy Folk Festival , The Brunswick Music Festival, the Mordialloc Festival in Victoria, and at concert venues in several cities. The measure of a good song is that it demands to be played. And these new songs have urged Greg back to performing. He has shared stages recently in Toronto with American songwriter Todd Snider, American country blues artist Guy Davis, Scots-Australian songwriter Colin Hay, and American folk legend Ramblin' Jack Elliott at Hugh's Room, with John Allan Cameron at the Flying Cloud Folk Club, and with Australian songwriter Paul Kelly at Lee’s Palace. Greg was a featured performer at the Songwriters Association of Canada Bluebird North songwriter's showcase at The Rivoli, at Toronto’s Winterfolk Festival three years running, at the city’s oldest folk club, The Free Times Café, and many times at the famed Kensington Market honky tonk, Graffiti’s. With The Usual Suspects — veteran bass player Dennis Pinhorn (Southern Cross, Bebop Cowboys, Downchild Blues Band, Danny Brooks) and pianist, accordion master and mandolin player Denis Keldie (The Extras, Prairie Oyster, Natalie MacMaster, The Rankins) — Greg Quill has been performing regularly around Southern Ontario, occasionally with star fiddler Anne Lindsay, guitarists Mitchell Lewis and Steve Briggs, and drummer Bucky Berger. Greg Quill & The Usual Suspects appeared at Summerfolk 2004 Music And Crafts Festival in Owen Sound, and recently headlined at 4&20 Bakery in London, Ont., at Hamilton’s Staircase Theatre Café and with Kerryn Tolhurst at The Cadillac Lounge in Toronto. Greg and Kerryn celebrated the Canadian release of so rudely interrupted with a concert in October 2003 at C’est What? in Toronto, performing with a full band featuring The Band’s legendary keyboardist Garth Hudson on accordion and piano. The show was aired nationally several times on Bravo! Canada’s Arts & Minds program and on CP24.   ENDORSEMENTS: • “I was only at the Ramblin' Jack show briefly, but was delighted    to see you up on stage. You sounded most excellent.” — Charles W. Hunter,     artist & concert/Roots On The Rails promoter    Bellows Falls, Vermont    http://www.hunter-studio.com    http://www.flyingunderradar.com • “ADs (artistic directors) should consider Greg and his band    (wonderfully named The Usual Suspects), for concerts, clubs,    festivals and (to quote the name of a wonderful Oz band, now    broken up), Weddings, Parties, Anything.” — Folk music promoter Richard Flohil    Toronto, Canada   Press Photographs Available for Download:         Download (100 KB) Download (134 KB)     photo credit: Steve Russell photo credit: Eric Thom         Download (544 KB)   Country Radio, 1972. Photo by Phillip Morris       THE USUAL SUSPECTS A flexible collective comprising many of Canada’s finest roots musicians, The Usual Suspects work with Greg Quill in various formats, from duo to six-piece band, in settings ranging from intimate listening rooms and clubs to full concert venues. They are all veterans of the Canadian music business, and close friends. Most of The Usual Suspects have worked with Greg in former musical incarnations dating back to the 1970s. Individually and together they have embraced his songs and enhanced his performances on stage and in recording studios on countless occasions. DENNIS PINHORN Dennis is a respected bass player in Canada and internationally, with extensive experience with such notables as Ronnie Hawkins, Spencer Davis, Robert Lockwood Jr., Chris Spedding, Georgie Fame, Ellen McIlwaine, James Cotton, The Downchild Blues Band, The Roulettes and Danny Brooks. He has also performed on various film and television productions. In the late 1970s Dennis and fledgling fiddler Anne Lindsay, also one of The Usual Suspects, were members of Greg Quill’s first Canadian band, Hot Knives, which drew a standing ovation after opening for The Little River Band at Massey Hall. Dennis stayed on when Hot Knives evolved into Southern Cross, and often accompanied Greg in solo club concert performances, including opening for J.J. Cale at Convocation Hall. He has been the driving force in Greg’s return to music since 2000. DENIS KELDIE As a studio musician Denis Keldie has over a hundred albums to his credit, as well as numerous film and TV projects, including Celtic Electric and the Rankins’ Christmas Cabaret for CBC and Salter Street Productions. CDs include Lucid Dreaming, and session recordings with Rita Coolidge with Ry Cooder, Natalie McMaster, Jeff Healy, Prairie Oyster, The Boomers, Eddie Shwartz, Jesse Cook, Stompin' Tom Connors, The Lincolns, The Extras, King Biscuit Boy, The Stampeders, Gordie Sampson, and Etta James, among others. Denis has also performed in concert and on TV with The Rankins, Colin James, Jann Arden, Amy Sky, Ashley MacIsaac, Bruce Guthro, Crowbar, The Band’s Garth Hudson, Quill·Tolhurst, Greg Quill & The Usual Suspects, and many others. A master musician with a command of jazz, rhythm ‘n’ blues, country, rock and numerous folk styles, Denis plays Hammond organ, piano, a range of synthesizer and vintage keyboard instruments, accordion, guitar, bass, mandolin and mandola. MITCH LEWIS Mitchell Lewis is one of the hardest working and most respected multi-instrumentalists in Canada. Best known as a guitarist and drummer, he’s also proficient on mandolin, lap steel, bodhran, banjo, harmonica and a range of percussion instruments. As a sideman and session player, he has worked on stage and/or in the studio with John Hammond Jr., Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Sunnyland Slim, Van “Piano Man” Wallis, Kenny Wayne, Peter Noone (Herman’s Hermits), The Mamas & The Papas, Johnny Paycheck, Raffi, Eric Andersen, David Rea, Murray McLauchlan, Sylvia Tyson, Quartette, Colleen Peterson, Hock Walsh, Scott Merritt, Tyler Yarema, The Swing Gang, Chris Whiteley, Rachel Kane, Professor Piano & The Canadian Aces, The Deltoids, Mark Haines and Tom Leighton, Ron Nigrini, and Melody Ranch, among others. Mitch has also written and recorded several radio and TV advertising jingles, and works extensively in Switzerland as a session player and bandleader every winter. Other regular appointments include house drummer for the London Home County Folk Festival and drummer/percussionist at Prince Edward Country’s Minerva Theatre. In Toronto he’s most often seen playing with The Swing Gang, The Roulettes, Danny Brooks, Melody Ranch, Rachel Kane, Quill ·Tolhurst, and Greg Quill & The Usual Suspects. ANNE LINDSAY For most of her life, the Toronto violinist Anne Lindsay has been listening in on other people's musical conversations, absorbing an enormous variety of ideas, idioms, dialects, patterns, rhythms and melodies. Her debut solo CD, Eavesdropping, contains 13 original tunes that showcase Anne's hybrid style -- neither violin nor fiddle, but a confident blend of both disciplines. The funky, fiddle-driven tracks combine strong melodies and complex rhythms with a rootsy approach to stretching musical boundaries. Anne has performed on concert, club and festival stages and in countless studio sessions with artists including John McDermott, Jim Cuddy, Blue Rodeo, Natalie McMaster, The Chieftains, Led Zeppelin, Oliver Schroer, Oh Susanna, Beyond The Pale, Heartwood, The Calore Trio, David Woodhead, Garth Hudson, Greg Quill & The Usual Suspects, Quill ·Tolhurst, and in the hit stage musical, Stan Rogers: A Matter Of Heart. She also leads her own ensemble, The Anne Lindsay Band, and also regularly plays (fiddle!) for the Toronto Maple Leafs. Beginning her musical studies at the age of five, Anne specialized in violin, voice and piano. A graduate of York University and the Royal Conservatory Of Music in Toronto, she received many scholarships and awards over the course of her training. Music took over her life early on. With days split between high school, the Conservatory, church choir and her first folk/rock experiments, she listened to many violinists in many contexts and bands: Zappa, Menuhin, Vassar Clements, Jean Luc Ponty, Stéphane Grappelli, Joe Venuti, The Grateful Dead, even Jimi Hendrix. Inspired by these great performers who expanded the possibilities of the violin in their time, Anne has established herself as one of the most engaging and versatile instrumentalists in Canada, adapting her unique violin/fiddle style to the eclectic sounds and musical languages of the country's rich cultural texture. Her musical conversations have allowed her to become fluent in many languages — jazz, Eastern European, country, Celtic and Canadian traditional music, Middle and Far Eastern forms, rock and classical. She's comfortable — and amazing to hear and watch — in any setting, with a sedate chamber ensemble, with a sentimental balladeer, with a full-tilt rock 'n' roll band, with a hot jazz outfit, ripping into country and folk fiddle riffs, or swapping modal licks in a raging Klezmer band. BUCKY BERGER Born in Montreal in 1951, Bucky began playing at the age of 11 in blues and rhythm ‘n’ blues bands, and with various local rock ‘n’ roll outfits. In 1970, after one year in college, he decided on music as a full time career. Over the years Bucky has become fluent in numerous musical styles, including country, reggae, soca, calypso, Latin, jazz, blues, R&B, rock, folk, swing and Klezmer. In 1974, having lived for a time in the U.S., he moved to Toronto, working first with local rock legend David Wilcox in the original Teddy Bears, then with Jackson Hawke, scoring a couple of Top Ten singles. Bucky also did a stint for a year with Chilliwack, which gave him large venue experience all over North America. Next came seven years with Rough Trade, including four albums (two platinum) and several European tours, followed by an extensive and illustrious career as a freelance drummer, working on stage and/or in the studio with Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Son Seals, Freddie Roulette, Sunnyland Slim, Blind John Davis, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Katie Webster, Lowell Fulson, Sylvia Tyson, The Barrett Sisters, Charmaine Neville, Maria Muldaur, Otis Blackwell, David Amram, The Original Sloth Band, Ferron, Roy Forbes, The Shuffle Demons, Jay McShann, Jackie Washington, Ian Thomas, Marc Jordan, Eddie Schwartz, Nona Hendryx, Amos Garrett, Murray McLauchlan, Dr. John, John Hammond, Ellen McIlwaine, Roy Buchanan, Elvin Bishop, Eric Andersen, Colleen Peterson, Shari Ulrich, Mendelson Joe, The Downchild Blues Band, Danny Marks, Willie P. Bennett, Tom Paxton, Lord Nelson, Howie Mandel, Colin Linden, Peter Noone, Prairie Oyster, George Fox, Peter Pringle, Jodie Drake, Ken Whiteley, Micah Barnes, The Canadian Aces, Quartette, Mary Lynn Wren, Tabarouk, Piano Man Wahl, Robert Ward, Chris Whiteley, Melwood Cutlery, The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band, Curly Bridges, Danny Brooks & The Rockin’ Revelators, The Roulettes, Quill ·Tolhurst, Greg Quill & The Usual Suspects, as well as with children’s performers Raffi, Mr. Dressup, Fred Penner, Rosenchantz, Bob McGrath, Sandra Beech, Al Simmonds, Eric Nagler, and Kim & Jerry Brody.   For more information visit: http://www.quilltolhurst.com.   | home | biography | news | discography | contact |                 Copyright ©2003-2008. Greg Quill. All Rights Reserved.