Keeping North - Demons & Dreamers (2025)

Songs can come from anywhere. From adventures, from history, from matters of the heart. Most of the songs on Keeping North’s album ‘Demons & Dreamers’ come from the imagination of songwriter Steve Tyson. Little pieces of fiction, other peoples’ made-up stories. But perhaps inspired by the real world and lives well-lived.

Tyson was listening to The Delines and the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss collaboration when the songs from ‘Demons & Dreamers’ started to evolve. Also on high rotation on his car’s CD player was early Joe Tex, and Albert King.
Together with guitarist Ian Shawsmith and drummer Stu Hoffman, Tyson grew up in the Australian city Brisbane at the time of the notorious Fitzgerald Inquiry into corruption, playing gigs in clubs run by petty gangsters and bent cops. The characters that frequented those venues provided plenty of lyrical fodder for these songs written many years later. Pedal steel player Jeff Spencer heard those stories and wanted in. But the need for sweetness, to balance out the grit in the tales, comes from bassist and singer Jodi Murtha. The end result is a set of alt country tunes laced with the blues, tinged with soul, and informed by folk music.

Tyson has long been regarded as an important songwriter in the Australian landscape, critically acclaimed for his solo work. Said respected critic Noel Mengel (former chief music writer for the Courier Mail), ’these are songs that are built to last. Powerful, passionate songcraft that is worthy of your time.’

Keeping North will be playing a series of album launch dates in South-East Queensland and northern New South Wales, kicking off on March 30th, before taking their show on the road further south later in the year.