April 24, 2014
by Marcus Priaulx
Andrew Beckett went from playing guitar around Woorabinda campfires to courting record companies and playing in front of thousands of music festival fans.
John Brommell, the Warner Bros record label managing director who signed Cold Chisel, Midnight Oil, Troy Casser-Daly and Richard Clapton took particular interest.
He requested a private poolside audience with Andrew’s band Tribal Link at the Iwasaki Resort in Yepoon.
Two busloads of Woorabinda locals came to support the group and provide the energy it needed to play at its best.
A month later a publishing deal was signed and the sound producer for Yothu Yindi’s Freedom album, Ian Faith, was brought in from Los Angeles.
But artistic differences between what the group and record label wanted were never resolved.
“I don’t want to sound bitter and bag them, we just felt the producer couldn’t recreate the energy we had when we played live,” Andrew said.
“We were a great live band and the producer, to us, couldn’t recreate that magic. It was frustrating for us.”
Andrew, 47, now reflects on life today within his Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council office and thinks that while he may have done things differently, he still loves life and has renewed dreams.
Music has always been Andrew’s passion from the first time he picked up a guitar at age 13 while living in Carina, Brisbane.
He would stay with his Woorabinda grandparents, Clive and Venus Beckett, every school holiday and moved there at age 15 to do a mechanical apprenticeship.
Andrew then began to write his own songs and sing them to friends around the campfire.
His mates encouraged him to go further: “They said, ‘make a band bro; you should make a band’.”
So Andrew did.
He recruited Eugene Yoren on bass, Lindsay Jarret on drums, and Les O’Chin on lead guitar.
“We were going to call ourselves Culture Link but thought it sounded a bit Boy Georgish so we changed it to Tribal Link,” Andrew said with a laugh.
“Boy George really wasn’t our thing, our style.”
Tribal Link practised in a garage and entered the Battle of the Bands competition.
It came second in the first round of the fight for musical supremacy at Emerald and won $1000.
“We thought ‘wow, this is good’. A thousand dollars was a lot of money between four blokes,” Andrew said.
“We celebrated with pizza and felt high on the achievement. We were all buzzing and felt ‘wow, we thought we had no chance’”.
But Tribal Link did have a chance and made its way to the Battle of the Bands final round in Brisbane.
It was through this competition that Tribal Link became noticed by music industry high rollers.
Apart from being romanced by record production executives the group toured with Midnight Oil and supported Powder Finger, Spiderbait, Regurgitator and played at festivals such as the Woodford Folk Festival, Brisbane’s Livid and Bondi Beach’s Survival.
Along the way Tribal Link performed on the same bill as Archie Roach (many times), Yothu Yindi, Kev Carmody and Jenny Morris, to name a few.
Backstage, Andrew questioned the other performers’ sound engineers about what they did and learned skills through their tips.
After 15 years with Tribal Link, Andrew decided to rest his effort for true musical fame.
He left the band and did a course at Byron Bay to build on the sound-producing knowledge he had gleaned.
Life then brought him to visit Cherbourg.
“It where my father Andy O’Chin is from and it felt like home as soon as I came here,” Andrew said.
Fate would then have Andrew find work with Cherbourg Aboriginal Shire Council and he moved to the region with his wife Trisha, daughter Tilly and their newborn child Leilani.
That was seven years ago and the Becketts now live in nearby Murgon, 7km away.
One more daughter, Kirri, arrived and Andrew built a state-of-the-art sound studio.
He’s now helping people chase their own musical dreams as they use his studio and equipment to record tracks and demo tapes.
“I love it, absolutely love it,” Andrew said.
“People come with their raw guitar sound or raw songs and by the time they leave you’ve mixed it.
“When they hear the final product … the look of happiness, the wow factor on their faces, they can’t believe it’s them.
“That’s the satisfaction I get; when they hear themselves in a finally produced record.
“It’s what most people want. They practise and play their music and then record an album.
“I can do that for them now and I love it.
“It’s taken me 12 months to build the studio but I’ve fulfilled a 25-year dream.”
Tribal Link is now getting back together in Andrew’s studio to finally record their own material in the way they wish it to be heard.
“It’s the music we played and had recorded by Warner Bros but never got released,” Andrew said.
“We’re going to be independent and do things our way.
“Our Way … that may even be its title.”
PS. Many South Burnett residents will remember Andrew as one-half of “Bruzz” which played at many events around the region for about four years.
