Nancy Davis 83, BLUES FANATIC!!! - Recently Updated Pages

8 Ball Aitken's Toowoomba Fan Club

Anonymous — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:38:35 CST

Welcome to 8 Ball Aitken's Toowoomba Fan Club!

8 Ball loves to play in Toowoomba, Queensland. He has previously played at the Bon Amici Cafe, and has a big show coming up on
FRIDAY, APRIL 18th, 2008
at the
ICON THEATRE in Toowoomba.

This is an ALL-AGES show, with three acts playing, and the doors open at 8 pm.
with three acts playing.

8 Ball plays at 9:30 pm.

PLEASE TELL YOUR FRIENDS!!!

Jimmy Watts

hillbilljim — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 02:10:31 CST

Jimmy Watts has been playing guitar for around 10years, and has been writing songs for most of that time as well. He gigged solidly around Toowoomba, his home town for several years before offering his musical talents to Melbourne, then later Sydney, Adelaide, far north Queensland, and he now resides in Brisbane. Over his professional career Jimmy Watts has collaborated with fiddle players, conga players, singer/songwriters and a wide variety of other musicians. He has also lended his hand as lead guitarist and lead harmonica player in numerous original and cover projects, he even played dununba's for a traditional west African drumming group. Jimmy's sound differs vastly from track to track, with some songs taking on a Bob Dylan style approach, others utilising frantic hillbilly blues style finger picking or slapping the guitar like a bass. His live shows have evolved over the years, and are now almost a one band affair, with Jimmy playing the guitar, harmonica, singing, and also stomping away on a kick drum and high hats. A recording of this one man band arrangement will be available soon, and is eagerly awaited. www.myspace.com/jimmywattsoz

April 18th @ Icon Theatre

hillbilljim — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 23:37:46 CST

visit Pacha Mamma's websitevisit Jimmy Watts' website

The true story of 8 Ball Aitken's life & loves

Tspoura — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 07:09:10 CST

This is his official life story. I like it!!!

You’re part of the story now…

Seven generations ago, the Aitken clan left the Scottish Highlands on their leaky wooden ships, shivering and churning through the rough Atlantic seas as they headed for their beautiful dreams of a better life in the sun of the far Antipodes. What they got was the brutal tropical heat of Far North Queensland, and harsh lives built on relentless hard work and copious quantities of rough Aussie rum. Among the first European settlers to open up the far north in the 1800s, the red-headed Scotsmen battled it out in the fever and the heat, hacking out corrugated mud roads and rough bush camps in the wilderness. Amid the searing droughts and the torrential floods of the Burdekin region, the clan clung together, as Scotsmen far from the rainy Highland moors tend to do. Eventually, in the bone-dry, snake-bitten lands west of Townsville, their labours bore some bitter fruit – but not without years of tears and struggle – and in two generations they created a settlement, where they could find some sense of home. They called it Aitkenvale. The Aitken men became known for their bushmen’s skills, rounding up cattle, cutting the cane, and fussin’ and a fightin’ when they weren’t otherwise engaged. They eked out an empire fuelled by kangaroo meat, home-brew, and the law of the fist. Nobody messed with them – no-one dared. They conquered all they saw, particularly the women. And so it was that the Aitken name carried far and wide, as the march of the feral red-heads spread ever further North with every generation, Celtic super-hybrids inexorably drawn towards the source of the sun that burned their toughened, sinewy backs as red as redback spiders.

None of the Aitkens has ever returned to bonny Scotland. They‘ve never even left Queensland. They’ve seen no reason to leave. They’re part of the landscape now, Australian internauts of the hillbilly realm, part of the very red dirt they roam. And so it is that young 8 Ball Aitken has come to be here today. There has been some mellowing over the generations, with the workingman’s rule of ‘might is right’ replaced by an inner struggle of a more idealistic sort, the desire to make a difference. He’s dropped the axe and the shovel, and picked up the guitar. He comes from good stock, generations of men bred tough. Coming from the farming community of Mareeba, Far North Queensland (Australia’s answer to Mississippi) 8 Ball Aitken is the oldest son of an impoverished family of eleven 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. He had to help support his family with these wages.

When 8 Ball was nineteen years old, a radical conversation altered his life path. “I used to work on a farm all week, then party all weekend,” he explains. “An Aboriginal elder from Townsville was visiting my town, and we were talking on Sunday morning after he had been watching me play guitar all weekend. He sat me down and told me off sternly – ‘I will be really disappointed if I visit next year and see you still here drinking and smoking, just wasting your talent and your life away,” explains the ex-farm worker, recalling his labouring in the Atherton Tablelands fruit plantations as a young teenager. He packed his bags, grabbed his guitar, and hitch-hiked south to the Big Smoke of Brisbane. “This was a ‘time stands still’, life-changing experience”, adds 8 Ball. “From that point on, I have stayed true, and followed my dream of making music and taking it out to the people”.

8 Ball Aitken photos -- check out these great photographers, too!

Anonymous — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 06:54:52 CST

With fans!!!	Kyoto has a rare beauty...	In a castle courtyard.
Etsuko, Dave, Bird, & 8 Ball	A beautiful shrine in Kyoto	Having a ball in Osaka
Gotta get to the gig in a hurry...	8 Ball on tour in Japan... Coming back to the Kobe area for ROKKO SUN MUSIC '08!	On the way to the hot springs

8 Ball Aitken in Toowoomba

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 22:00:27 CST

8 Ball is coming to Toowoomba!!!

8 Ball Aitken International Fan Club

Anonymous — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:55:11 CST

Hi! I'm Nancy. I'm 24, and I love music... especially 8 Ball Aitken.

I'm gonzo for 8 Ball Aitken, an Australian red-headed icon with a bunch of hot guitars and some awesome suits.

Have you checked him out on You Tube yet???

What do you do for fun and creativity

Anonymous — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 02:07:16 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Nancy's Blog

nancydavis83 — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 06:42:18 CDT

Matt asked me for some more info, so here it is. My life isn't all that exciting, but I hope it will be one day! My big news right now is that I am getting ready to go to the Blues Festival in Byron Bay, which will be my first time there.

About me: I'm a Virgo. I love horses! I also totally love music and am basically glued to my iPod. I like to read, mainly novels and especially science fiction. I went to uni for a year, but am taking a year off. I am interested in theatre, film, and reviewing books, plays, & movies. I enjoy performing, especially in musicals, but wish I was better at it.

I have done a bit of travel, especially around Australia in my Dad's caravan with my family. I went to Canada last Christmas, which was freezing!

I started this fan site because of my love for music. My Dad is an old-style blues nut, but I prefer to hear something more Australian and aimed more at my own generation, which is why I like 8 Ball. I love the Roots & All show on Triple J, it's awesome!!!

8 Ball Aitken links and fan homepage links

nancydavis83 — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 19:04:46 CDT

This is the place to add any kind of link.

Here's a good one:

www.utheguru.com

What do you do for fun and creativity? Tell us about yourself!!!

nancydavis83 — Wed, 04 Apr 2007 18:28:34 CDT

I would like to know more about 8 Ball's other fans. Please add a full new page about yourself, and link to your MySpace & website & whatever else. It will be very interesting!!!