Steve Tyson has been a fixture in the Australian music scene, for close on forty years. His early bands Gentle Art and Spike played Brisbane’s underground blues and r&b clubs whilst he was still at school. Steve’s father was the acclaimed ABC radio broadcaster and author Russ Tyson, and Steve first composed music to accompany his father’s collection of poems, prose and assorted philosophical stories, released as an LP in the mid 1970’s. His two bands, Rough Red and twentysevens, have released nine albums over the past fifteen years, and Steve has been a major contributing songwriter for all of these projects.
Both bands have toured extensively in Europe, with folk-rockers Rough Red having performed at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland, the Skagen Festival in Denmark, the Vikedal Roots Music Festival in Norway, the Brosella Festival in Belgium, the Bardentreffen Festival in Germany, the Skuleberget Festival in Sweden, the Galway Arts Festival in Ireland, the Paide Shanty Festival in Estonia, and Charlety Stadium in France.
Steve’s blues/rock band twentysevens was invited to tour the UK in 2006 as support act to legendary British group Status Quo, playing 31 shows in 42 days throughout England, Scotland and Wales, at venues including Wembley Arena.

Individually, he played in the Australian touring band for Chuck Berry, and in Gentle Art and Spike as the support act in Australia for Billy Joel, Elton John, Black Sabbath, Canned Heat, and The Average White Band. In 2009, Steve spent a couple of months living in Paris, sitting in cafes pretending to be Ernest Hemingway. That sojourn resulted in no novel, but did produce a dozen new songs, which he has recently released as his first solo record TEMPLE DOG. Steve describes the record as a “walk through my musical sub-consciousness”, and a personal reflection of his extensive travels throughout exotic locations such as India, Russia, Japan, Bhutan, and Vietnam. Others have described the album as an eclectic mix of contemporary story-based folk songs, with nods to roots and jazz, interspersed with tales of post 9-11 trauma, family skeletons, caustic political satire, and matters of the heart. He has been performing these songs solo, or with long-time sidekick Dave Parnell, or with his band The Industrious Felons, in recent months, as well as continuing to gig with Rough Red.

Steve lives, these days, in Byron Bay.