Cameron Potts
Encyclopedia
Cameron Potts, born November 10, 1971 in Subiaco, Western Australia
, is a musician based in Melbourne
, Australia
. Since 1999, he has toured regularly to the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Scandinavia and Iceland with both Ninetynine
, playing drums, and Baseball
, playing violin. His band Cuba Is Japan toured the far east in 2009, playing the Music Terminals Festival in Taiwan with Tricky
, Placebo
and a number of Australian acts including Mick Turner
, The Stabs and The Holy Soul. and a 5 date tour of China supporting Angie Hart
. He is not to be confused with Sydney musician Cameron Potts, lead singer and guitarist of Dead Letter Chorus.
, and from a hip hop
background, prior to playing drums in 1988. He played in several bands in Perth, including Thou Gideon and Manic Pizza, before re-locating to Melbourne in 1992. In 1994 Potts joined with Gareth Edwards to form Sandro with Edwards on guitar and vocals and Nick Carroll on bass. Sandro released its first album, Live by Rivers in November 1996, which was followed by tours with Palace Brothers, Dirty Three and Smog later releasingHate Songs in 1997. The album attracted significant national airplay from Triple J
, press in Rolling Stone
and Juice
and national airplay for the "Rainy Season" clip on Rage
, Channel V
and MTV. After a tour of the United States
built around the completion of Sandro's third album, The Flux, Potts left the band playing his last show with them in New York. Returning home, He then went onto to join Ninetynine
, which was initially established as a solo side project by Sleater Kinney drummer Laura Macfarlane
and Rhonda Simmonds. They recorded the band's second album, 767, with Simmonds on bass; Potts and Macfarlane sharing drums, vibraphone, and Casiotone keyboards; and Macfarlane on guitars, vocals, and xylophone. Simmonds left to join Origami and was replaced by Iain McIntyre and Michelle Mansford. An 75 date tour of the USA, Canada and Europe followed, and with this lineup they recorded the album, 180°, in 2000. Mansford left after another long international tour in late 2001 and replaced by Amy Clarke (Formerly of Vivian Girls). The band recorded with Producer Lindsey Gravina (Magic Dirt) releasing The Process in 2002. They also that year released a compilation of rarities and odd 7" B-Sides, Anatomy of Distance. Following this was another long tour of Europe and Japan. Clarke left Ninetynine in 2006 after the issue of 'Worlds Of Space, Worlds Of Population, Worlds Of Robots' and was replaced by Meg Butler, with further touring to the USA, Canada and Mexico, including a recording session at Motown in Detroit.
On his third trip to Egypt in 2001, he acquired his first violin , an event that eventually led to the formation of Baseball
, a Middle East influenced fusion
band. During a stint in Scotland he met Monika Fikerle
(Love of Diagrams
)in November 2002 and with bassist, Steve Begovich, they toured Europe, Scandinavia and Japan. After returning from overseas, the group began recording their first album, Gods and Stars, Priests and Kings, with new bassist and keyboardist, Yoshi Araki in mid 2003. In November of that year, Baseball returned to Europe with Love of Diagrams, playing 28 shows across eleven countries, finishing in Osaka, Japan. Araki was not allowed re-entry into Australia and so Baseball underwent the line up change in early 2005 that would cement the foundings for the rest of their career. Ben Butcher joined to play guitar (ex Jihad Against America) and Evelyn Morris joined on drums (Pikelet/True Radical Miracle) Now a four piece with Monika switching from Piano Accordian to bass, and Potts solely on violin and vocals, they were invited to play at the Hohaiyan Rock Concert in Taiwan with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and released an EP
, Taiwan/Japan Tour EP in 2005. In 2007, the group recorded "Animal Kingdom" at Head Gap in Melbourne and then undertook an extensive self-funded tour of Europe, taking in Finland
, Russia
, Estonia
, Latvia
, Lithuania
, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia, before heading into Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and the UK. 2008 finally saw the release of the band's second album, Animal Kingdom, and three separate national tours followed. One with The Mountain Goats, another with Snowman and their own set of dates to launch the album. Original guitarist Steve Begovich died from MS complications in 2008 and by the start of 2009, the band Began to focus on other projects with Potts forming Cuba is Japan, Fikerle performing with Love of Diagrams and Morris with Pikelet. In 2011 Baseball played their first show in three years, a fundraiser for Japan earthquake victims in Melbourne.
Potts has played in a number of other Melbourne bands including: Crank, Peachfuzz, Trippin Phil's All Ska's, Sea Haggs, Manic Pizza, and Perth group Thou Gideon,
His recent group membership includes Cuba is Japan, Montero (Featuring Guy Blackman, Geoff O'Connor and Ben Montero) and High Tea which includes former Baseball
guitarist Ben Butcher, Guitarist Kimb Sills and current Cuba is Japan violinist/keyboardist James Heenan playing bass. He is also a session drummer in Melbourne, playing recently on Regurgitator's 2010 EP 'Distractions' and performing live with Japanese Avant Garde Legends, 'The Boredoms'.
Potts is also a writer and photographer.
Subiaco, Western Australia
Subiaco is an inner western suburb of Perth, Western Australia, situated to the north west of Kings Park. Its Local Government Area is the City of Subiaco.-History:Prior to European settlement the area was home to the Noongar Indigenous people....
, is a musician based in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. Since 1999, he has toured regularly to the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, Japan, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, Scandinavia and Iceland with both Ninetynine
Ninetynine
Ninetynine is an indie band based in Melbourne, Australia. The band was founded by Laura Macfarlane, who played drums in Sleater-Kinney, in 1996 as a solo project. The first album, 99, was recorded with her playing all the instruments. Not long after she assembled a band with Cameron Potts and...
, playing drums, and Baseball
Baseball (band)
Baseball is a self-managed and independent band from Melbourne, Australia.Baseball played at the Hohaiyan Rock Festival in Taipei in 2005, where lead singer Cameron Potts smashed his violin at the end of the set....
, playing violin. His band Cuba Is Japan toured the far east in 2009, playing the Music Terminals Festival in Taiwan with Tricky
Tricky
Tricky is an English musician and actor. As a producer and a musician, he is noted for a dark, rich and layered sound and a whispering sprechgesang lyrical style. Culturally, Tricky encourages an intertwining of societies, particularly in his musical fusion of rock and hip hop, high art and pop...
, Placebo
Placebo (band)
Placebo are a British rock band from London, England, formed in 1994 by singer and guitarist Brian Molko and bass guitarist Stefan Olsdal. The band was joined by drummer Robert Schultzberg, who was later replaced by Steve Hewitt after conflicts with Molko. Hewitt left the band in October 2007 and...
and a number of Australian acts including Mick Turner
Mick Turner
Mick Turner is an Australian musician and painter best known as the guitarist for Dirty Three.Prior to his work with Dirty Three, Turner was a member of several Melbourne-based rock bands: Sick Things , The Moodists , Fungus Brains , and Venom P...
, The Stabs and The Holy Soul. and a 5 date tour of China supporting Angie Hart
Angie Hart
Angie Hart is an Australian pop singer best known for her role as lead vocalist in the band Frente!.Hart was a founding member of Frente! in 1989. She is renowned for her delicate songcraft, lyrics, and her breathy vocals....
. He is not to be confused with Sydney musician Cameron Potts, lead singer and guitarist of Dead Letter Chorus.
Biography
Potts is originally from PerthPerth, Western Australia
Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia and the fourth most populous city in Australia. The Perth metropolitan area has an estimated population of almost 1,700,000....
, and from a hip hop
Hip hop music
Hip hop music, also called hip-hop, rap music or hip-hop music, is a musical genre consisting of a stylized rhythmic music that commonly accompanies rapping, a rhythmic and rhyming speech that is chanted...
background, prior to playing drums in 1988. He played in several bands in Perth, including Thou Gideon and Manic Pizza, before re-locating to Melbourne in 1992. In 1994 Potts joined with Gareth Edwards to form Sandro with Edwards on guitar and vocals and Nick Carroll on bass. Sandro released its first album, Live by Rivers in November 1996, which was followed by tours with Palace Brothers, Dirty Three and Smog later releasingHate Songs in 1997. The album attracted significant national airplay from Triple J
Triple J
triple j is a nationally networked Australian radio station intended to appeal to listeners between the ages of 18 and 30. The government-funded station is a division of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation...
, press in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone Australia
Rolling Stone Australia is an Australian-based magazine devoted to music, politics, and popular culture that is published monthly, it is the Australian edition of the United States' Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone was initially released in Melbourne in May 1970 as a supplement in Revolution, an...
and Juice
Juice (magazine)
Juice is a well known German hip hop magazine and the biggest of its kind in Europe. In every issue readers find interviews with rappers and record reviews...
and national airplay for the "Rainy Season" clip on Rage
Rage (TV program)
Rage is a popular all-night Australian music video program broadcast on ABC1 on Friday nights, Saturday mornings and Saturday nights. It was first screened on the weekend of Friday, 17 April 1987. With Soul Train no longer being produced, it is the oldest music television program currently still...
, Channel V
Channel V
Channel [V] is the brand name for multiple international music television networks owned by STAR TV and Fox International Channels, fully owned subsidiaries of News Corporation.-Channel [V] International:...
and MTV. After a tour of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
built around the completion of Sandro's third album, The Flux, Potts left the band playing his last show with them in New York. Returning home, He then went onto to join Ninetynine
Ninetynine
Ninetynine is an indie band based in Melbourne, Australia. The band was founded by Laura Macfarlane, who played drums in Sleater-Kinney, in 1996 as a solo project. The first album, 99, was recorded with her playing all the instruments. Not long after she assembled a band with Cameron Potts and...
, which was initially established as a solo side project by Sleater Kinney drummer Laura Macfarlane
Laura Macfarlane
Laura Macfarlane, formerly known as Lora Macfarlane, is a Scottish-born rock and roll musician, singer and songwriter based in Australia. Originally from Glasgow, she arrived with her parents in Perth when young, and was involved in a number of bands there from the late 1980s onward...
and Rhonda Simmonds. They recorded the band's second album, 767, with Simmonds on bass; Potts and Macfarlane sharing drums, vibraphone, and Casiotone keyboards; and Macfarlane on guitars, vocals, and xylophone. Simmonds left to join Origami and was replaced by Iain McIntyre and Michelle Mansford. An 75 date tour of the USA, Canada and Europe followed, and with this lineup they recorded the album, 180°, in 2000. Mansford left after another long international tour in late 2001 and replaced by Amy Clarke (Formerly of Vivian Girls). The band recorded with Producer Lindsey Gravina (Magic Dirt) releasing The Process in 2002. They also that year released a compilation of rarities and odd 7" B-Sides, Anatomy of Distance. Following this was another long tour of Europe and Japan. Clarke left Ninetynine in 2006 after the issue of 'Worlds Of Space, Worlds Of Population, Worlds Of Robots' and was replaced by Meg Butler, with further touring to the USA, Canada and Mexico, including a recording session at Motown in Detroit.
On his third trip to Egypt in 2001, he acquired his first violin , an event that eventually led to the formation of Baseball
Baseball (band)
Baseball is a self-managed and independent band from Melbourne, Australia.Baseball played at the Hohaiyan Rock Festival in Taipei in 2005, where lead singer Cameron Potts smashed his violin at the end of the set....
, a Middle East influenced fusion
Jazz fusion
Jazz fusion is a musical fusion genre that developed from mixing funk and R&B rhythms and the amplification and electronic effects of rock, complex time signatures derived from non-Western music and extended, typically instrumental compositions with a jazz approach to lengthy group improvisations,...
band. During a stint in Scotland he met Monika Fikerle
Monika Fikerle
Monika Fikerle is an Australian musician and multi-instrumentalist, most noted for her "energetic, quirky" drumming style.Fikerle began her music career in Hobart in 1995, becoming Sea Scouts' drummer after having taken up the drums 'about a week' earlier. She later played in Surgery and 1001101...
(Love of Diagrams
Love Of Diagrams
Love of Diagrams is an indie rock band from Melbourne, Australia, formed in 2001. Their sound is characterized by a mix of energetic drumming, angular guitar and bass riffs, and call-and-response vocals.- History :...
)in November 2002 and with bassist, Steve Begovich, they toured Europe, Scandinavia and Japan. After returning from overseas, the group began recording their first album, Gods and Stars, Priests and Kings, with new bassist and keyboardist, Yoshi Araki in mid 2003. In November of that year, Baseball returned to Europe with Love of Diagrams, playing 28 shows across eleven countries, finishing in Osaka, Japan. Araki was not allowed re-entry into Australia and so Baseball underwent the line up change in early 2005 that would cement the foundings for the rest of their career. Ben Butcher joined to play guitar (ex Jihad Against America) and Evelyn Morris joined on drums (Pikelet/True Radical Miracle) Now a four piece with Monika switching from Piano Accordian to bass, and Potts solely on violin and vocals, they were invited to play at the Hohaiyan Rock Concert in Taiwan with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and released an EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...
, Taiwan/Japan Tour EP in 2005. In 2007, the group recorded "Animal Kingdom" at Head Gap in Melbourne and then undertook an extensive self-funded tour of Europe, taking in Finland
Finland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
, Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...
, Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...
, Lithuania
Lithuania
Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia, before heading into Italy, Spain, France, Ireland and the UK. 2008 finally saw the release of the band's second album, Animal Kingdom, and three separate national tours followed. One with The Mountain Goats, another with Snowman and their own set of dates to launch the album. Original guitarist Steve Begovich died from MS complications in 2008 and by the start of 2009, the band Began to focus on other projects with Potts forming Cuba is Japan, Fikerle performing with Love of Diagrams and Morris with Pikelet. In 2011 Baseball played their first show in three years, a fundraiser for Japan earthquake victims in Melbourne.
Potts has played in a number of other Melbourne bands including: Crank, Peachfuzz, Trippin Phil's All Ska's, Sea Haggs, Manic Pizza, and Perth group Thou Gideon,
His recent group membership includes Cuba is Japan, Montero (Featuring Guy Blackman, Geoff O'Connor and Ben Montero) and High Tea which includes former Baseball
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
guitarist Ben Butcher, Guitarist Kimb Sills and current Cuba is Japan violinist/keyboardist James Heenan playing bass. He is also a session drummer in Melbourne, playing recently on Regurgitator's 2010 EP 'Distractions' and performing live with Japanese Avant Garde Legends, 'The Boredoms'.
Potts is also a writer and photographer.
Other activities
Potts is a graduate of Perth's Claremont School Of Art, majoring in painting. He has exhibited and sold photographs from his world travels. Published works are a children's book "In Fitzroy, The Flowers Grew So High" (1993) and a small collection of poems called "A Headache Of Happiness" (1995).with Peachfuzz
- V8 - Independent (Fuzz1) (1993)
- Watermelon Man -(1994).
- E.Coli - (Ka 001)) (1995)
with Baseball
- Baseball/Ricaine: 7" single 1995
- "The Velvet Robe Of Corrosion' 7" single 1995
- Gods And Stars, Priests And Kings - Independent (2003)
- Taiwan/Japan Tour EP - (2005)
- Animal Kingdom - (STMPCD014) (23 February 2008)
with Sandro
- Live By Rivers - Candle/Choozy (November 1996)
- Work Your Days Away/Afternoon Comes Round 7" Single 1996 (Thirsty Arab Records)
- Hate Songs - Brass Companion/MDS (December 1997)
- The Flux - MGP Recordings/Distribution (1999)
with Ninetynine
- 767 - Patsy (Patsy 002) (1998)
- 180° - Patsy (Patsy 007) (2000)
- Anatomy Of Distance - StickFigure (Stick.9CD) (2001)
- The Process - Unstable ApeUnstable Ape RecordsUnstable Ape Records is an Australian independent record label. Founded in Tasmania, it is now based in Melbourne. Unstable Ape's focus tends primarily towards indie rock and roll, but also expands its interest to contemporary folk , jazz and world music...
(UARR007) (2002) - Worlds of Space, Worlds of Population, Worlds of Robots - (2006)
- Band Magnetique - (Patsy, 2010)
with Cuba is Japan
- "Pigafetta's Dream"/"The Conflict at Mactan" - Alpine Areas (AA-1) (2 April 2011)