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The Tully McCully Project - meticulous, manicured

NOT FOR PUBLICATION before 26/6/26  It is a real surprise that Tully McCully, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter and record producer of countless artists has never released a Tully solo album - until now! The new record is titled Comedy Tragedy. Tully is the frontman and bass player of McCully Workshop, the producer of Lesley Rae Dowling and Crocodile Harris, (and many others) who have topped the charts in his homeland over the last thirty years. He is known for his entertaining (even theatrical) live presence on stage. He is a talented mimic and possesses wonderful comedic timing.  On this collection he plays all but one instrument and does all the male vocals, besides his work behind the desk of his famous Spaced Out Sound Studios in Cape Town, South Africa. Recently he has been recording introspective music, notably his progrock collaboration with keyboard wizard Gordon Mackay, and his folk pop releases under the name of Jaspers's Acolytes. Anyone who is a serious contempora...
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Lesley Rae Dowling and Tully McCully - a new single

South African songstress Lesley Rae Dowling sent shock waves through the local pop music business with her stunningly individual style of vocal delivery when she came on the scene in the early 1980s.  Her producer Tully McCully wrote Grips of Emotion for her and it hit the charts in January 1982. The follow-up release, her debut album revealed that she was also a serious songwriter. Her song Spaniard was the second single to garner heavy rotation leading to the first album going gold not long afterwards. Visual for the new release featuring Lesley from the time of her debut releases .   Since then Lesley has released about a dozen albums mostly in her home country but she also has releases in Australia and the Benelux. Last month Tully was going through his archive and stumbled on a multi-track tape containing a song she recorded that never made it onto any of Lesley's main album releases and never released digitally, so not available for streaming or download. The track, als...
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Padkos - Guitarist Tony Cox revisits popular South African songs

Hamburg, March 2026   Tony Cox is not only a very talented guitar player, he also shines as an arranger. In this collection he looks for inspiration from some of the iconic South African popular songs from recent years. Essentially an instrumental album though Tony does add a little vocal accompaniment to three of the songs. The album title, is an Afrikaans word that refers to food one might take with you on the road for a journey - this is indeed the case with this collection. Always tongue in cheek, Tony Cox with his picnic basket (c) Songwrights Publishers Here is a review from the time of the original album release. Review: Richard Haslop 7 April 2014 The music of South Africa’s consistently brilliant fingerstyle guitarist Tony Cox has always been influenced by his geographical roots, full of mainly instrumental statements about where he’s from and who he is. But quite a lot of what he has played – as well, it must be said, as anybody anywhere – is South Afr...
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Cape Town classical voices - from the Donald Graham Archive

In the 1980s and '90s Cape Town classical music recording engineer and sound system enthusiast, the late Donald Graham, released several dozen records on vinyl and cassette tape, on his GSE Claremont Records label. One of his most popular releases was titled, Beautiful Cape Town - Fine Music, "Voices". The compilation set out to showcase Cape Town orchestras and artists from live recordings Donald had made as well as some he acquired the rights to from the 1970's. He was a specialist in live recordings and doing the editing on his analogue tapes and later his digital recordings.  The artist performances on this compilation are as he heard and captured on his microphones and are not enhanced, in other words completely analog acoustic recordings allowing for some wonderful dynamics. (c) SONGWRIGHTS PUBLISHERS There were fourteen tracks in all, featuring such performers by,  Joseph Gabriels,   Lynn Julius,  Aviva Pelham,  Andrea Catzel,  Sally Presa...
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McCully/Mackay trilogy of new Progrock songs

Seasoned musicians Tully McCully and Gordon Mackay, have come up with a powerful package of three new songs for release shortly. These they add to their very creative musical story as a duo on the 14th of November 2025. Artwork Laura McCullagh (c) Songwrights Publishers Going under the title - The Quest, they offer a trilogy of yet again instrumentally complex tracks still featuring Tully's esoteric "stream of consciousness, fantasy" vocal text. As before Gordon's virtuoso electric keyboard playing is up front. This is not programmed playing, this is performance recording! Tully and Gordon were part of the McCully Workshop live line-up and Gordon also played on the band's Infinity  release and contributed two of his compositions to the album.  Since then the duo have workshopped and released two albums and a handful of single releases. The last release was a single in April this year.  The duo again followed their usual creative process, with Tully sending Gordon ...
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Cape Town Opera Voices - Donald Graham Archive

Draft 2/4/2026 - NOT FOR PUBLIC USE BEFORE -  10/4/2026 In the 1980s and '90s Cape Town music and recording engineer and sound system enthusiast, the late Donald Graham, released several dozen records on vinyl and cassette tape, on his GSE Claremont Records label. One of his most popular releases was titled, Beautiful Cape Town - Fine Music, "Voices". The compilation set out to showcase Cape Town orchestras and artists from live recordings Donald had made as well as some he acquired the rights to from the 1970's. He was a specialist in live recordings and doing the editing on his analogue tapes and later his digital recordings.  The artist performances on this compilation are as he heard and captured on his microphones and are not enhanced, in other words completely analog acoustic allowing for some wonderful dynamics. (c) SONGWRIGHTS PUBLISHERS There were fourteen tracks in all, featuring such performers by,  Joseph Gabriels,   Lynn Julius,  Aviva Pelham, ...
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New Robin Auld single - Alternative Adult Contemporary Rock

Robin Auld is pretty much the king of South African AAC Rock, with numerous chart hits under his belt.  On November the 7th he releases a new single, the radio version of a track from his latest album, Love Kills - The Collection.  We are perhaps naively calling it a radio mix because it is different to the original - we cut it down to 3:05, this in a time when radio has all but been replaced by streaming playlists.  Pic Jillian Edelstein (c) Songwtights Publishers  The song is Waiting for you , written a few years back and produced by Murray Anderson, now with the edits and re-mastering by Robin himself. It's a Rocker, heavy on electric guitars, a departure from the last acoustic guitar led album title song Love Kills . Robin comments - "The inspiration for Waiting for you comes from my affection for the songs of Lionel Bart, who wrote the music for Oliver. There's a song that Oliver sings which has the line "where is she, who I close my eyes to see, will I e...
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