ABOUT
Deborah always loved to sing...
opera, blues, jazz, gospel, country, hymns, musical theatre, rock, whatever! She grew up listening to Fats Waller, Elvis Presley, Ray Charles, Judy Garland, Doris Day, Dean Martin, The Beatles, Bette Midler, Boz Scaggs, Elton John, Split Enz, Janis Joplin. Kris Kristofferson and Ella Fitzgerald. Later, she became hooked on Frank Sinatra, Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington and Julie London. Lately, it's been Maria Callas. She's always loved musicals. ALL the old ones.
Neil Finn's songwriting has HAUNTED her. She loves a great arrangement and thinks Billie Holiday's "Comes Love Nothing Can Be Done" is smokin'. But what really confounds her are the old hymns - their depth, complexity, simplicity, ingenuity, taste and power! When she sings them it truly makes her feel like the "Kingdom of Heaven is at hand".
She sang in plays...
and acted for companies such as MTC and QTC as well as in musicals but then began to really focus on singing when someone saw her in a play in Melbourne. They put a four-piece band around her called "Swing Aloha". She then became the lead guest singer of "The Cotton Club Orchestra" and made the album "Nice Work If You Can Get It" with them. A little later she recorded the album "Have I Got News for You" (Newmarket Music) which has recently been included on the Virgin Airlines playlist. She disappeared for a few years to enjoy motherhood and then wrote and performed in "Songs from the Silver Screen" which she performed at Hamer Hall, The Victorian Arts Centre. She then began writing and recording her own songs which were pretty dark and, no doubt, reflected where her life was at at the time.
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In 2008 she began going to Church...
​and her gratitude to God for breaking the power of addiction in her life and mending her heart after miscarriages has inspired her to write songs and psalms of praise for Him.
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