Dom Turner & the Rural Blues Project
“Turner is a phenomenal guitarist – slide and otherwise – and brilliant songwriter with trademark vocals”
- Rhythms Magazine 2015
“The man is a phenomenal blues player.”
- BWW Reviews 2015
2022 Sydney Blues Society ‘Traditional Blues Artist of the Year’ award recipient, Dom Turner is best known as guitarist/ vocalist, founding member and key songwriter of the iconic Australian blues group, Backsliders. He has toured the Australian festival circuit since the 1980s and regularly appears at most major blues related music festivals including Bluesfest, Woodford Folk Festival and Blues on Broadbeach to name but a few.
Dom’s influences are many and varied – a blend of Mississippi hill country blues, delta blues, Piedmont blues, rock, dub and sounds of Asia. He is a highly regarded speaker on blues music and has guested on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio programs (including a weekly series on ABC Gold Coast entitled 'Blueday Tuesdays' and guest presenting Radio National’s ‘Music Deli’) and presented music workshops at festivals and in universities (both nationally and internationally).
In 2004 Dom was voted ‘Blues Songwriter of the Year’ at the Australian Blues Awards. As well as over 30 years of recording and performing blues in Australia and internationally with the Backsliders, Dom has embarked on a variety of solo and collaborative musical projects including touring as a solo artist in the USA, playing and teaching blues guitar at Augusta Blues week in West Virginia, touring Mexico with US blues greats, Del Ray and Steve James. His trademark ‘slide’ guitar sound can be heard on myriad session recordings and his songs have featured on the ABC TV programme 'Seachange’, as well as the soundtrack to Tim Winton’s best-selling novel, ‘Dirt Music and the 2013 Channel 9 TV series ‘Underbelly - Squizzy Taylor’. In 2008 Dom was invited onstage to play with slide guitar legend Derek Trucks at the Adelaide international Guitar Festival.
Dom’s other musical projects include international collaborations; The Turner Brown Band with Toledo Ohio based lap steel guitarist Nikki D Brown of the Sacred Steel guitar tradition, Phil Wiggins & Dom Turner with US National Heritage Award recipient and harmonica virtuoso, Phil Wiggins, Kim Sinh & Dom Turner with Vietnamese stringed instrument master, Kim Sinh, as well as Dom Turner & Jin Hi Kim with innovative Korean komongo musician, Jin Hi Kim.
Local projects include The Rural Blues Project, Supro, a mix of dub and blues and features original and reconstructed songs, The Angry Tradesmen, a grunge-rock project with fellow Backslider, Rob Hirst, Dom Turner & Tony Wheeler with Chinese Guqin musician, Tony Wheeler, Dom Turner & Ian Collard with award-winning harmonica player and regular in Backsliders, Ian Collard.