Little Black Dress is a sparkly five piece band featuring sublime vocals and lively music.
We are ready to entertain with songs everybody knows and loves and guarantee to have everyone on the dance floor!
Just see if you can sit still – we dare you!
A little more about Little Black Dress
LBD started as a choir performing at an open mic night at the Vine Inn, in SA’s Barossa Valley around 1995. Over time choir numbers fell away, but Kay, Mel and Annie continued to practice regularly, alongside 4 or 5 acquaintances.
After some line-up changes, four of this group started to sing accapella, often teaming up with other accapella groups in Adelaide. The group sang at The Festival Of 1000 Voices in the Adelaide Hills in 1999 and has never stopped performing since. Inspiration in those days came from Adelaide choir legend, the late Briar Eyres and Sweet Honey In The Rock -a world famous American accapella group.
More personnel changes saw us team up with renowned Barossa Valley drummer, Stu Schutz and long-time jamming partner Tony Craddock on bass, and the concept of a party band just grew legs! Stu and Tony brought extra live performance experience to the band. Mel played in a few Adelaide bands in her past life, bringing sax, clarinet, flute and some pretty exotic choreography to the band!
The newly formed band practiced in the Pickers Quarters at the Primary Industries SA Viticultural Centre in Nuriootpa, gaily tripping over the odd snake or freezing from the close-to-ambient weatherboard (or was it asbestos??)
Babies appeared at regular intervals (how does that happen?) and Annie was writing songs like a woman possessed, which added some funky original music to the band’s repertoire. At this time, the band was performing from one end of SA to the other. Tours took the group from Naracoorte, to Broken Hill to Roxby Downs – and back again!
The band has performed fom SA’s lower North to the Far North. From the verandah of Parachilna’s world famous Prairie Hotel, the forest at Bundaleer, to Wilmington in the Flinders Ranges (well almost….a devastating bushfire turned the oval that the band was headlining at, into a disaster relief centre. The band hightailed it out of town as the wind started to deposit ash and cinders on the campsite where they were staying!).
One year the band packed up all their equipment to perform at the Melbourne Fringe festival. Crowds weren’t overwhelming but the trip was thoroughly invigorating party-wise! New cafes and bars were discovered every night and some of the more “match fit” band members even managing to watch the sunrise through the newly uninhabited Daimaru (now Melbourne Central) store glass dome on more than one occasion! Not satisfied with performing at the iconic Chapel on Chapel St venue, the group serenaded commuters on trams and homeless people in parks. As self appointed tour leader, Annie has never lived down her Melbourne airport arrival…after bossing everyone around, making sure that all the guitars,cymbals, drums and other paraphernalia were accounted for…she realised only 12 hours later that her suitcase was still going around the airport carousel!
After being awarded a Country Arts SA grant the group embarked on their “Bad Mothers” tour of the West Coast of SA in 2003. Trustingly, the group was loaned a government van and a car for the 2 day trip to Ceduna and then perform at several country towns on the drive back. This trip sparked a “love affair” with the Wild West, with the group clocking up 3 tours of the West Coast, 2 Oysterfests and a lot of kms in between!
Stu, the group’s original drummer left to start a family, and become immersed in a succesful wine label and B ‘n’ B operation with his wife and family. Chris Yeend joined the band soon after moving to the the Valley and brought a different focus. With Chris’s guidance, the group created a vehicle for their original material, with the evolution of Black Ruby, the evil (but original) “stepsister” of Little Black Dress, performing at the Adelaide Fringe and other music festivals.
Annie, Mel and Kay still sing accapella..inserting small pockets of it into sets creating a wonderful dynamic!
The band has played alongside Renee Geyer (she popped her head around the corner of the girls’ dressing room as they warmed up remarking “Great sounds, girls”). Glenn Shorrock, Brian Cadd (who should be an honorary Barossan for his love of red), Frenzal Rhomb, The Borderers, Flat On Your Bacharach and Tasso Bouyessis, one of Adelaide’s leading tenors. The band has played 7 Adelaide Fringe Festivals, 2 Barossa Fringe Festivals and most of the entertainment and convention centres in Adelaide including being caught up in the intensity of an Amway Convention motivation session (spooky!) and even a funeral directors convention!
Annie has the honour of being the only band member to have fallen off stage (still clutching the bongos she was playing quite badly)…and once had to exit mid song during a stomach upset. There was no time to let the rest of the band know where she was off to!
The group is a firm believer in celebrating successes …..after a good gig their reward, in the car on the way home, is twisties and beer.
The band has been been lucky enough to “blood” a string of incredibly talented young sound technicians to help with gig set ups and sound engineering…all of them products of sound/stage courses offered at Nuriootpa High School and Faith Lutheran College. the band has been honoured to offer an unofficial apprenticeship as they rise to permanent employment in the industry in SA and beyond.
