PALE RIDERS
Roots / Alt Country / Blues
Facebook Group

Pale Riders fused the soul of blues, the attitude of rock, the story of folk and the landscape of country and were one of Australia's premiere independent acts in the 90's. Scott Bird, Scott Mainwaring and Garry Vandepol began playing together in their early teens and continued experimenting, performing, writing and recording from the late seventies up until 2001 when they disbanded. Pale Riders pre-dated the nu-roots wave which crested in the early 00’s with the likes of Ben Harper, Xavier Rudd and John Butler trio.

Pale Riders formed out of a school band which cut its teeth in West Coast mining towns and statewide beer barns in Tasmania during the late 70’s and early 80’s. Three of these school kids ended up relocating to Sydney in 1988 where they became Pale Riders. They went on to release three albums and two EP’s and found themselves at the forefront of the emerging Australian Roots scene of the 90’s. They shared the stage with many of Australia’s major rock acts. Three guys with a couple of acoustic guitars and harmonica, a washboard and what was most likely one of Australia’s first amplified stomp boxes. During their time together they went to Vancouver Canada as part of the Australia contingent for the North by Northwest music conference, won two categories in the Australian Blues Awards and achieved independent chart success in North America and Europe when their self-produced single Dust Covered Man was added to a Comstock Records radio sampler which was released out of Scottsdale Arizona in the US. They toured the country in 1998 after being personally invited by Midnight Oil to be part of the national Redneck Wonderland tour and then completed demo recordings with Nash Chambers for EMI Records in 1999. New songs written by Scott Bird were recorded by the band however they were not released as the band had reached the end of the road and they disbanded in 2001. 

Pale Riders are remembered for their integrity, great songs, sound and live show and their music lives on, as relevant today as it was over 20 years ago. In recent years the balance of unreleased material has been mastered and added to the major streaming platforms and their entire music catalogue is available to listen to on this page and can be purchased at our online store.