Melbourne-born singer-songwriter, Toby Burke returns to his hometown after six years of creative self-exile in Los Angeles and London.

Cavalier Music is proud to release Winsome Lonesome, the solo follow-up to two critically acclaimed albums by Horse Stories, Toby’s US-based band. Winsome Lonesome was released last year in the UK and Europe by Loose Music and earned glowing praise from the British press. The Australian edition features special artwork and will be toured extensively in May 2005.

True to its name, Winsome Lonesome is a more introspective and personal document than the sonic high fidelity of the Horse Stories records. An album of perfectly hushed vocals, a ghostly banjo, gently strummed acoustics and a handful of beautiful songs, Winsome Lonesome has the classic trademarks of a Horse Stories record, and the inward-listening, reflective qualities of a gifted young songwriter freed from the constraints of the band environment.
“I guess it's the most personal work I’ve done,” Toby agrees, “because they're songs from Melbourne, LA and London. So maybe it's my little bag of songs I carried everywhere, and never gave up to a band.”
Armed with a battered Tascam four-track Porta-Studio, Toby made the initial Winsome Lonesome recordings in Los Angeles. The recordings were completed under somewhat haphazard circumstances, during a cold snap in last year’s bleak English winter, when Toby was holed up in his cramped west London flat, with microphones wedged into the books on his shelves.
The songwriting on Winsome Lonesome is evidence of an emerging major talent in the vein of M Ward, Richard Buckner and Jay Farrar: timeless and resonant songs drawn from everyday and momentous experiences, delivered in a voice which hushes everything surrounding it and open up a miniature, intensely emotional and wholly engrossing private world.

Toby Burke: the story so far

Melbourne journo Dan Rule, a fan since stumbling onto one of Toby’s earliest gigs in the hushed front bar of the Corner Hotel, opening for Dan Warner (Toby’s first guitar teacher), writes:

“So the kid was Toby Burke and the band was Horse Stories, and after forming in 2000 they released their beautiful debut record Travelling Mercies (For Troubled Paths). Toby wrote the songs and played guitar and guy called Clinton Stapleton played drums. Horse Stories’ second album One Hundred Waves (Loose, 2003), built from where Travelling Mercies left off, infusing traditional storytelling sensibilities into arrangements that were both minimal and beautifully lush. Timeless guitar arrangements – with sleepy acoustic strums and drifting lap steel – soothed brushed drums and the smoky warmth of Toby’s vocals. A bunch of people called it ‘Americana’, but Toby has always reckoned he sings in an Australian accent.”

When Toby moved to London in 2003, Horse Stories became a trans-Atlantic band. They have toured with Willard Grant Conspiracy, Hayden, Paul Kelly, Joanna Newsom, Richard Buckner, Ken Stringfellow, Clem Snide and Califone. Collaborators include Eric Heywood (Son Volt, Richard Buckner, Alejandro Escovedo) and Pall Jenkins (Black Heart Procession), who produced the forthcoming Horse Stories album, tentatively titled Everyone's A Photographer.

Looking towards his move back to Melbourne, Toby says: “I have built a career in other parts of the world, and in a sense I'm turning my back on that to see how all that experience will affect me, in the place that I'm from. It's kind of nice to be presenting these songs to my home, right as I return to it.”

“Burke’s voice remains his crowning glory, wringing nuance from the simplest of melodies”
> Uncut ****
“An off-kilter delight. Strangely addictive.”
> Daily Mirror (London)

“A fantastic record. (Toby Burke has a) real talent for plaintive songwriting” >Q

“A jaw-dropping piece of music. No home should be without this album”
> BBC