Broken Creek Press Kit

‘Small Town Anthropologies’

Tour Press Release

“I love traditional folk songs but I’m sick of singing songs about murdered women” said vocalist and fiddle player Erin Heycox to banjo player Lachlan Heycox.

Drawing on Old Time Americana and Celtic traditions, Broken Creek creates intricate chamber folk arrangements for banjo, guitar, violin and voice that reimagines songs, stories and musical traditions from the past to connect them to our present moment.

Lachlan Heycox (guitar/banjo/mandolin/percussion) and Erin Heycox (vocals/fiddle) grew up in rural Victoria steeped in bushbands and balladeers before moving to Melbourne. Named for the creek Erin grew up near, the name Broken Creek signals a love of traditional folk music with an adventurous musical bent to “break” with the same old ways of playing folk music. “I love traditional folk songs but I’m sick of singing about murdered women” says frontwoman Erin.

2022 sees them releasing their debut album ‘Small Town Anthropologies’ (finalist for Australian Folk Music Award’s ‘Traditional Album of the Year) and launching a national Small Town Tour that includes pop-up choirs, church halls, folk festivals and recording tunes in gorgeous locations.

Broken Creek create compelling virtuosic folk music that only an obsessive guitarist and classically-trained-gone-folk-rogue fiddle player who have been married for nine years can make.

The Making of ‘Small Town Anthroplogies’

Broken Creek recorded ten songs for their debut album ‘Small Town Anthropologies’ in their home studio in Footscray during the long lockdowns of 2020-2021. Their album includes original songs connected to their hometowns including a lapsteel version of ‘Picola’, a song that Erin wrote the first time she visited home after moving away and ‘Here is my Home’, a song Broken Creek wrote after evacuating from the Black Summer fires with Lachlan’s family in Corryong.

Alongside these original songs they have recorded their arrangements of folk songs from England, Scotland, Ireland and America which they rework with new lyrics and melodies. These songs include ‘Cutty Wren’, a protest song from the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt, ‘Darlin Kora’ from the Appalachian mountains and the Richard Thompson favourite ‘Black Leg Miner’.

‘Small Town Anthropologies’ is mixed by Mischa Herman (Lucy Wise, The String Contingent) and mastered by Myles Mumford (Xani Kolac, Trouble in the Kitchen, Georgia Fields).

On their album and in their performances you will hear a variety of instruments including a fretless banjo, octave mandolin from England, kanjira drum from India, Bodhran from Ireland and a shruti drone box.

‘Small Town Tour’

Broken Creek will be taking their chamber-folk old-time-Australiana sound from coast to outback to wine regions and back around to their Victorian hometowns for Christmas.

In this 13 concert tour they will be organising pop-up choir workshops in regional towns and putting on concerts with some of the best Australian folk duos along the way as well as exploring the many variations of Australian landscapes to inspire new songs and tunes..

Broken Creek deliver an engaging live show incorporating foot percussion, energetic fiddle licks, mind-bending guitar, shruti drones and anecdotes from two music nerds who have read too many history books.