Pat Drummond

Pat Drummond is a multi award-winning Australian singer/songwriter based in the Blue Mountains, New South Wales. He is the parent of Emmy Award Winning Film Director, Matt Drummond and ARIA Hall of Fame Inductee, Pete Drummond.

Beginning with stints as Sydney's 'king of the hill' in the anarchic 'sing-along uni/ bar/ pub' scene of the late '70s and early '80s, Drummond became renowned for writing musical mini-operas that included whole sections scripted for and performed by the crowds.

Although the music was actually 'folk rock', it was a very 'punk' philosophy of performing in which the whole emphasis was on breaking down the' barrier' between the crowd and the stage.

For many in Sydney, his 10-year Friday night residency at Sydney's Rest Hotel was a 'rite of passage' and the pub saw well over three hundred thousand fans pass through its doors during that time. The night before its demolition in the late '80s the whole soundscape was captured by CBS/True Blue on the Double CD, 'Live at The Rest Hotel' in a gig that saw over 2000 people turn up to a pub that only held 350; and traffic brought to a standstill in the surrounding North Sydney streets.

Drummond's next project was the 1986 Rock opera 'Skooldaze'. This show provided his next 'character driven' reinvention and saw Drummond and his six-piece Rock outfit, touring with Cold Chisel and Marcia Hines in 1985 /1986. Drawing heavily on his training as a Primary School teacher in the early 1970s, the album explored the concept of 'hidden curriculum ' (the lessons that children often actually learn from the school experience as opposed to the ones the curriculum claims to teach them.)

With the demise of 'Skooldaze' Pat was invited by his friend, Roger Corbett to join the revived the Bushwackers after which he became a duo partner to John Schumann after having supported Redgum on a national tour.

With the release of his "Tales from the Local Rag' CD in 1990, Drummond adopted the on-stage persona of an 1940s newspaperman. On stage and off he interviewed at every opportunity those people who subsequently became the subjects of his songs.

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