Shortfuse Blues - Dave Hole

Austrailia got the blues!!

Dave Hole (born David Robert Hole, 30 March 1948, Heswall, Cheshire, England) is an Australian slide guitarist known for his style of playing rock and roll and blues music.Hole was born in England, but his family moved to Perth, Western Australia when he was four years old. He became interested in blues music after hearing a school friend's Muddy Waters album when he was around six years of age. Receiving his first guitar at age twelve he started to teach himself due to lack of guitar teachers being available in Perth at the time, using the albums of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Blind Willie Johnson, Skip James, Blind Lemon Jefferson. He later continued teaching himself with the albums of Robert Johnson, Elmore James, and Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Hole is left-handed and, after breaking a finger in a football accident, he played the guitar right-handed by putting the slide on his index finger and hanging his hand over the top of the guitar neck. After healing he had gotten so used to the 'wrong' way of playing that he never changed back. He became a professional in 1972 when working with a band in London and returned to Perth in 1974. He toured the Western Australian pub circuit for twenty years playing in Perth and remote towns. To keep his fans happy he released Short Fuse Blues a tape he financed, produced, and recorded with his band Short Fuse in three days in 1990, and which he sold during pub performances. On a whim he sent a copy to Guitar Player magazine in the U.S. Editor Jas Obrecht was so impressed with the tape he wrote an article hailing him as the newest guitar wizard and comparing him to such greats as Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King. Soon a copy was in the hands of Alligator Records president Bruce Iglauer who signed him up as the first non-U.S.-based artist of their 26-year history.

Critics praised him all over the U.S., and new fans were exposed to him through radio play on more than 1000 stations. Reviews appeared in Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician, Billboard, Audio, Spin, The Chicago Tribune, The Denver Post plus other major publications, including The Associated Press. Hole signed a deal for Europe with Provogue Records, with the albums and tours of the U.S. and Europe helping him to increase his popularity worldwide. Later tours of Europe have seen him headlining festival shows in Germany, Denmark, Holland, France and Switzerland with the Leverkusen Blues Festival in Germany televised nationally. He has also performed in Brazil, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Austria, Italy, Spain, Belgium and the UK.

Under the Spell won an ARIA Music Awards (Australian Recording Industry Association) in the Blues/Roots category in 1999. After releasing ten albums, he continues to tour worldwide, returning to his home in the Darling Scarp of Western Australia for the other six months of the year.