In memory of Adrian Spelt, 10/01/51 – 08/06/24.
Way before we started the band we would talk music whenever I was at Grind Cafe for coffee.
He lent me his CD of original songs recorded at home in Margaret River.
His voice reminded me of Neil Young. I played the tracks on my radio show at Noosa FM.
He talked about putting a band together and doing a pop-up gig on the river opposite the cafe.
It was 2016 when he started playing solo at the Sandbar Cafe at The Jetty on Gympie Terrace.
I brought along my bass uke and we started jamming once a week. It was mostly instrumental tunes,
sort of ‘surf jazz’. Flossy and I encouraged him to sing more…such a sweet voice.
We needed a name, so I came up with The SandFlys.
Soon we added wheelchair-user Wayno with his one drum and cymbal. Sometimes Brendan ‘Ranga’ joined us on percussion and harp. Then Gerry joined us on lead guitar… sweet!
We started playing gigs in other places too, like on the deck outside the Boathouse. That’s where Dennis Ballard first heard us doing the heartfelt song Aido wrote about his daughter, Blue Blue Jade.
Dennis was the brother of Flossy’s long-time friend Bob Ballard. He asked if we had a CD. We didn’t.
Flossy told him we couldn’t afford to make one. We introduced him to Aido and they began talks about recording an album which he would finance. Dennis was in ill-health and wanted the album to be made as his dying wish.
So Aido booked us into the local 822 studio to begin the process of recording. After months of production, Never Too Late was finally finished, unfortunately too late for Dennis Ballard, who had already passed away.
Now Ado has gone as well, leaving us with our memories, but at least with an album of his amazing original songs.
