Performance Time - Friday 5th June @ 4pm • Saturday 6th June @ 12pm • Sunday 7th June @ 2pm 

Victorian based award winning duo Kate Meehan & Skip Landy are a dynamic vocal & piano act that meld good rocking old school rhythm & blues with heartfelt original ballads. Come along & find out why Kate is regarded as one of Australia's top blues singers & winner of MBAS female blues artist of 2007

Kate Meehan

Kate was born in Hobart, the daughter of jazz trumpeter and vocalist Clem Meehan. She was raised in a household infused with music, hearing Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald one day, and listening to Carole King and Shirley Bassey the next. It was in this environment that Clem started giving Kate her first singing lessons.Kate’s formal music education commenced at the Sacred Heart College where she received piano lessons as well singing in the choir, and by the time she commenced High School, Kate had added guitar to her arsenal. At sixteen Kate left High School and moved to the mainland where she busked with her guitar around Adelaide for a few years learning the art of performing as a soloist in public. By the time she was twenty Kate had returned to Hobart where she fronted various covers and originals bands, before returning to the mainland, this time Melbourne, for a brief sojourn in front of another covers band. At twenty four Kate found herself back in Tasmania where she was approached by the Fabulous Blues Cats, a Chicago jump-blues styled band. This is where Kate found her groove. Koko Taylor was discovered, and there was no turning back. Kate learnt her craft as a raunchy blues belter in front of this band playing the midnight to four shift every Friday and Saturday night at the Round Midnight nightclub in Salamanca. In 1998 she recorded her first album as the Kate Meehan Blues Band “Let the Good Times Roll, a CD covering her favourite electric Chicago blues songs. This album opened doors back on the mainland on the blues festival circuit. It was also at this time that Kate heeded advice that she would have to write her own material to get anywhere as a blues singer, and over the next four years Kate released two more albums including her own songs as well as originals by her Texan pen friend, Kathy Murray.

Kate was living in Canberra in 2003 when she met rhythm and blues pianist Skip Landy, a former Blind Freddy alumnus. They have since released two albums of unadorned piano and vocals, one comprising jazz standards, the other recapping Kate’s original blues repertoire. As Kate Meehan and Skip Landy, they are now constantly performing around Australia and New Zealand. In 2007 Kate teamed up with Peter Gelling in order to collaborate on a forthcoming album, My Sister’s Shoes.

Skip Landy

Skip Landy first publicly played the blues in 1972 when he entered a piano led trio into the Australian National Eisteddfod in Canberra. Over the next thirty years he played in many local bands culminating in receiving the Canberra Blues Society's inaugural Instrumentalist of the Year "Bluey" award in 2003. This was the same year that Skip and Kate Meehan first met, and after playing a couple of hurriedly rehearsed gigs with Kate, Skip knew that "it was going to be now or never, leave everything behind and go for broke with Kate."

Since then Skip and Kate have melded their talents into the stripped back duo format that has earned them acclaim from their peers and the public. Skip cites all of the rhythm and blues piano players from New Orleans as his biggest influence, and when he fires up behind Kate in a fast boogie you are sure to hear strains of Champion Jack Dupree or Eddie Bo, and occasionally James Booker. 

"NOMINATED 2009 Australian Blues Music Awards Female Vocalist of the year Band of the year Song of the year Album of the year" -Kate, Nominations 2009