Yo! I'm Calvin and he's Tim, we created ihearmusic.com. We aim to promote Australian music that reflects the ethnic and cultural diversity of this wide brown land right now.

I'm originally from the Motown state of Michigan and by age 16 in the early 70's I had already been touring the mid-west for about 5 years, it was around about this time that I started playing drums and percussion with saxophone legend Sonny Stitt and keyboardist Eddie Russ. I was soon touring Europe while most of my friends were still at school – now I wish I'd paid more attention at school! Bitten by the travel bug, I moved to LA in 1980 and became involved in the Funk scene playing, recording and writing with Rodney Trotter, Kevin Dorsey, Dee Dee Taylor, Walter Corley, Greg Williams, Nate Thomas, Jim Mackey and Alan Lindgren.

A chance meeting with some Australians in LA led me to visit Sydney in 1988 and I now call Australia home. Within a year of arriving I was touring with the Party Boys and then followed years on the road gigging in every beer barn and beyond in Australia and New Zealand with the likes of Kevin Borich, Renee Geyer, Marc Hunter, Marcia Hines, Christine Anu, Jackie Orszaczky, Tina Harrod, Swoop, Professor Groove & The Booty Affair and Coloured Stone to name a few. Soon after arriving in Australia, I also met Philippe Lincy from Guadeloupe and Yaw Glymin from Ghana. Together we started performing traditional African music and formed Doudoumba. This led me to exploring my African musical roots and soon I found myself leading parallel lives playing rock and roll or Blues and roots one night and traditional African music or Jazz the next.

I was also asked by legendary didge players Mark Atkins and Janawirri Yiparrka to join their world music band Ankala. Ankala's most recent multi-instrumentalist is violinist and keyboardist Tim Huang. Tim is a music virtuoso and we had an immediate connection first and foremost as pure players. In 2010, we both decided that there was more to Australian music than what is played on commercial radio. We set about creating an opportunity to bring together all the diverse styles of music that we hear around Australia that do not get mainstream airplay. So if you're interested in listening to some true blue Aussie music, tune in to ihearmusic.com!

Calvin Welch 2010