Australian singer-songwriter, guitarist, author, producer, actor and founding member of the 1980s rock band Do Re Mi, Deborah Conway has enjoyed an eclectic career in the arts for over 40 years. Innovator, motivator, role model, facilitator and entrepreneur, Conway is fearless in her risk taking, has pushed and pulled existing boundaries and has always argued her cause with integrity and intelligence to pursue the highest standards of whatever is in her sights. For the last 3 decades Willy Zygier, musician, songwriter & composer, has been her primary collaborator.
Now at 64 years old, Conway has gathered some of her life thoughts and documented them brilliantly in ‘Book of Life’, a no-holds-barred memoir that charts the rise and fall – and rise – of one of Australia’s most iconic music performers.
As well as appearing in bookstores and small venues in conversation mode, Conway and her partner Willy Zygier have also been on tour together performing a theatrical show based around her memoir Book of Life. (See remaining In Conversation dates below)
As Allen & Unwin, Deborah’s proud publishing company espouses:
If you have listened to any of Deborah’s iconic songs and were curious about their origins; if you ever wondered what happened to that chick who covered herself in Nutella and was photographed shovelling cream cakes into her mouth; if you gave a nanosecond’s thought to whose bare arse adorned the giant billboard ads for jeans in the 1980s and how much someone got paid to do that; if you liked Tracy Mann’s vocals in Sweet and Sour but asked yourself, ‘did she really sing them?’; if you thought Running On Empty was a classic before it became a cult phenomenon and need behind-the-scenes gossip, now’s your chance to find out all this and so much more.
Conway pulls back the curtain on the fevered world of 1980s post-punk and the spectacular rise and fall and rise of one of the more obstreperous women in Australia’s music industry, a woman who has straddled the high arts and the low without losing her footing or her mind. A woman who said no to the system and whose fierce independence has seen her produce her best work.
Welcome to the good, the bad and the ugly of an extraordinary life from the vantage point of a music insider (and outsider) with a deep need to tell the truth about it all.
Book of Life Tour. In Conversation dates
Nov 2 6pm
Ink Bookshop Mansfield VIC
Nov 9, 7pm
Ocean Grove Surf Club, VIC
Nov 10 7pm
The Taproom, Shedshaker Brewery, Castlemaine, VIC
More info about the book HERE