GatCat Productions is an independently owned business located in Sydney providing services for the music industry.

From bringing your guitars and basses back to life and keeping them sounding and playing better than you’d ever dreamed.

To passing on techniques to have you awake’n you’re inner rockstar, including showing you what other guitar teachers don’t want you to know!

Helping you add that little extra mojo to your songwriting, unleashing your own incredible talent.

All in one very personal, covid safe and creative environment.

This page has frustrated the hell out of me! Because of my OCD I can only truly focus on one main thing at a time. I’ve spent nearly a month working on this website and I’ve got three songs milling around in my head that I haven’t been able to concentrate on and it’s really starting to piss me off! This is my seventh draft of this about crap. So I’m doing away with all the self analytical psycho somatic bullshit. The unfavourable part of coming out the other side of depression is you tend to analyse microscopically every single thought you have. So, here’s what I think has shaped me into the musician/person I am today…… My mum was an amazing singer, she and her sister had their own show performing on our local radio station a good 25 years before I was born. I’m convinced she had to chuck it all in when she hooked up with my father (neither of them are alive today to ask) 

Ever since I can remember I’ve heard music in my head and I’ve been able to replicate the pitch vocally. All I’ll say about my family is we are not close at all, I felt like an only child growing up and to this day most of my siblings haven’t even seen or heard me perform.

It was my mums idea for me to learn guitar to accompany my singing my older sister had an acoustic guitar lying around collecting dust. My guitar teacher was shit! He only taught me three chords in the space of a year. Everything else I taught myself. My mum had me play country stuff e.g. Kenny Rogers, Glenn Campbell, Helen Reddy, Suzanne Prentice etc….

As soon as I heard KISS “Dynasty” I was hooked. A kid bought the record in for show and tell the teacher wouldn’t even let him play it so a group of us snuck into class at lunchtime and listen to it…… So cool!!!

At aged seven or eight I was more interested in being an actor, I was obsessed with Star Wars! My mum would have me perform six or seven songs wherever she could, she even wrangled $30 from the budget so I could get an electric guitar. I think one of my brothers chipped in to buy the amp (doing nice things for me wasn’t normal) He normally never wanted to have anything to do with me… I remember the floodgates opened to what I could do on guitar when I discovered “Barchords” then with the aid of a Boss HM-2 pedal I discovered powerchords a couple of years later I was listening to Deep Purple, Van Halen, Queen, The Tubes etc… I would learn their songs by ear and I’ll be playing them at my skill level at the time. At 13 I was asked to join a band of 17-year-old guys. The keyboard player’s old man owned one of the music stores, we could borrow whatever gear we needed. I fell in love with this solid bodied double cutaway arch top Washburn guitar That I ended up buying for next to nothing! We were called “the loose ties” We won a major talent show playing Split Endz “I got you” I played the solo in unison with the keyboard player.

I was teaching Guitar by this stage, more bands came and went. My old man died a few years before all this, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t have been cool with all the music nonsense but hey I’ll never know. 

At around 15 or 16 I discovered Guitar World and Guitar Player magazine’s….. Tablature changed everything! My ear was good but with tab I could now play exactly what Van Halen, Brian May, Satriani, and Vai etc were actually playing. 

The high school I attended would always put on an end of year showcase and I was asked could I put together a rock band for it. The school paid for the higher of a PA and we had the school gymnasium for a Saturday afternoon. We were only playing a few songs so rehearsal didn’t take long. Afterwards I plugged my Walkman into the PA (probably ZZ Top or Van Halen) and turned it up! It was awesome! These were the days way before cell phones, I made my way to a pay phone and made two phone calls “you’ve gotta come check this out” needless to say word got out… “Hawkes is having a party in the school gymnasium!” About 25 to 30 of our mates showed up (with alcohol) the next couple of hours were great… till the cops showed up and shut it all down. The following Monday my mum was called to the school, long story short I was kicked out! I wasn’t much of a scholar anyway so no big deal. The next few years there was lots of teaching guitar and playing in pubs, which I was still too young to legally be in. During this time I began working at Beggs Music Centre, the pay wasn’t that great but I could buy anything at cost price. I remember getting a four track recorder and a drum machine. I recorded guitar, bass, and vocals through a little zoom preamp effects unit. I began demoing my own songs. I discovered REH and hot licks videos (learnt so much from them!) I got right into instrumental guitar music thanks to Satriani, Vai, Kotzen, Malmsteen  and Vinnie Moore (just to name a few)

I finally got together with musicians my own age that we’re into exactly the same music and lifestyle. Man we had some great times, on and off the stage!! We were gonna take over the world! We even played tour support for John Farnham on his Whispering Jack tour of New Zealand! Looking back I’m surprised it lasted as long as it did, considering the vocalist slept with the bass player‘s mum! a girl the vocalist was totally into wanted to sleep with me and the bass player kept hitting on every girl I hooked up with!

The next few years I started taking being a musician a lot more seriously I moved away from Invercargill. I wrote and recorded stings and themes for TVNZ. I toured New Zealand with top 10 selling artists, I even put a band together with Pearl Ranga (Bic’s sister) combining dance grooves with rock songs (the birthplace of THEGATCAT) 

I was always buying guitars, amps and recording equipment including my beloved Jem777SK, Peavey 5150, Marshall JMP-1, Steinburger trans-trem guitar, purple EVH music man guitar.

A major thing for me during this period was getting an endorsement deal with Ibanez through the wholesaling import company HBA. I performed all my instrumental songs for them at music trade shows and clinic tours around New Zealand. This is when I received the very first Ibanez seven string universe to come into the country! I was the only guitarist with one for months!! 

Things are going great… then for some reason I decided to sell off most of my gear and move to Australia! Through my Ibanez endorsement I made contacts as soon as I arrived but these are different times now, grunge was it! Nobody was hiring long-haired shred demons that played fluoro coloured guitars. 

Through Drum Media magazine I got a well-paying gig playing covers in a duo 3 to 4 nights each week around Sydney. After purchasing an Ensoniq TS-10 keyboard and a Fostex DMT-8 digital recorder, I started sequencing my own backing tracks.

Every now and then I accepted gigs that took me all around Australia, including touring as Brian May in the Queen tribute show “We are the Champions” and joining Mat Finish for a short period.

I also continued writing and recording my own material. It was around this time an A&R person from a major record company (which I will not name) told me “I love your stuff mate but if you want to make it as a songwriter, grab what’s popular and copy it”….  FUCK THAT was my response!

I cut all ties to do with anything with the recording industry.

I had already built up my home studio, so I decided if I was going to release any of my music I’d be doing it all myself.

Over the years I’ve always modified my own guitars, especially my main live ones. As a singing guitarist I believe eye contact with the audience is essential. You can’t do that if you spend half your set looking at your guitar trying to find the volume knob or the 5 way switch. All my guitar design ideas are practical fixes from issues I’ve experienced performing live.

Back in the day all gigs were fantastic! Heaps of people dancing and singing along with the band having a great time!! Then came the introduction of poker machines into pubs… Over a short period of time most of the venues stopped having live entertainment because poker machines were paying their bills. For the first time in my life performing started to feel like an actual job. In one venue for example, I went from playing to a packed house every time to playing all night to a half empty room with no crowd participation at all. It broke my heart but before I ended up hating it, I stopped performing live for a living.

I went through a string of boring repetitive mindnumbing day jobs which overtime killed my inner flame of optimism. 

Voices in my head went from happy positives to dark negatives! I won’t go into detail with what happened over the next few years but I ended up not wanting to see the next day… A long story short my wife save my life. Eventually I started to clear the fog in my mind. A good friend recommend  I read “the untethered soul” by Michael A Singer and during this period I also watched a DVD of Steve Vai talking about his experience with depression. These all re-ignited the spark to my inner flame, I cannot thank you enough. I’ve got four albums out now that I cannot wait to get out and perform live to all who wish to hear it……this is a new chapter in my life, very exciting, see you all soon.

FOR THOSE WHO ARE INTERESTED...