Dr David Kirkpatrick Retires From Medicine and Forms A Band

In 2019 Dr David Kirkpatrick retired from medicine at Gosford Private Hospital after nearly 30 years of service and then went on to form a band Two Tone Pony.

David, the son of Australian music royalty Slim Dusty and Joy McKean, and brother of country singer Anne Kirkpatrick, is now the founding member of Country Rock band Two Tone Pony.

David tells Noise11.com, “The nucleus of the band got together in 2018 when my daughter Hannah was getting married and came to me and said ‘I want you to put a band together for me but I want it to be a country rock band’. At that stage I had been playing in various cover bands to keep my musical hobby alive. So the first person I recruited was my brother-in-law Greg Richardson on drums and percussion. Greg is a sound engineer and studio manager and worked at Radio National for over 30 years. He had played in a lot of the ABC bands. Then I had two other mates of mine from the coast, Ian Rhodes, who is the other singer songwriter in the band. He was the man who came up with the name Two Tone Pony. He wrote a song with those lyrics and that’s where we took the name from. Graham Puglisi is on bass. They had been playing in bands for over 20 plus years. Then we were putting some demos down and I thought I needed some keyboards so I contacted my mate Glenn Willey in Sydney. Glenn was the guy who came up to me in Year 11 in school and said ‘I hear you play drums. Do you want to be in a band with me’. I have been playing with Glenn since Year 11 and all through University and always kept in touch. He enjoyed the music and wanted to jump right in, so here we are”.

Watch the Noise11.com interview with David Kirkpatrick.

The first song released by the band is ‘A Life Well Lived’. About the title David says, “It’s a phrase that is well known. I used it in an introductory speech when I had the honour of introducing my mother Joy McKean when she got her Ted Albert Lifetime Achievement Award at the APRA Awards in Sydney. I used that phrase because I couldn’t think of a better person that had lived a life well lived. I had the phrase and chords and made up the imaginary neighbour and thought about talking to someone like that and asking what they reflect on. They’ll tell you about important things, family friends and if they had a good life and did the right thing or had the right thing done by them. That’s what I wanted to show using the phrase and using the example of the neighbour”.

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