8 Ball Aitken - Odd Ball In

Size: 287 MB
Time: 39:00
File: Flac
Released: 2006
Styles: Blues
Art: Front

1. Cowboy (3:23)
2. Young Girl (3:43)
3. Are You Ashamed? (2:36)
4. Flamin' Thongs (3:36)
5. Sagas & Dramas (3:25)
6. Heaven Is In My Bed (3:23)
7. By The Side Of The Road (3:32)
8. I Believe You Can (3:27)
9. You're Out Of The Game (2:56)
10. Your Poison (3:14)
11. Lucky Charms (2:40)
12. Work Smarter (3:00)

8 Ball Aitken performs uniquely Far North Queenslandic roots, alt. Country & blues-rock anthems, contemporary honk, stomp, Aussie swamp tunes played on a big National steel guitar. This is a big sound from the deep north, straight out of the Mareeba Delta, all steamy and bouncing off the remnants of extinct volcanoes, booming through the canefields. 8 Ball rolls into your personal soundtrack, packing tripped-out wet tropics cowboy music from the roadside, roots music with balls. The past year has seen 8 Ball Aitken receiving national radio airplay on Triple J, ABC Radio Regional, Radio National and other stations around Australia. He's recently toured Japan twice, and gigged around Australia, playing a wide range of festivals, clubs, pubs and special events. Highlights include the Woodford Folk Festival, The Tamworth Country Music Festival, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, the Melbourne Fringe Festival, the Adelaide Fringe Festival, Peats Ridge Festival, and the Gympie Muster to name a few. 8 Ball has released his newest album, ODD BALL IN in 2006. He's got a good team behind him -- this new album of radio friendly roots-pop is backed by support from, Phoenix Movement Records, MGM Distribution and manager Bird Jensen. In the past year 8 Ball has received grants funding from John Butler's JB Seed initiative, as well as Arts Queensland & the Brisbane City Council. 8 Ball Aitken has played on the same line-up and supported musicians including Dr. Hook, Xavier Rudd, Ross Wilson, Diesel, Dave Graney, The Bondi Cigars, Eugene 'Hideaway' Bridges, the Zydecats (featuring Lucky Oceans), Enrico Crivellaro, Finis Tasby, Alice Stuart, the Detonators, Phil Emmanuel & Doug Ford (ex-Master's Apprentices). Do you want all the steamy heat, the intensity, and the wild spontaneity of the real Australia? 8 Ball Aitken is authentic -- a real-deal Aussie outback character who rattles the roof, stomps the planks, and gets your audiences whooping and hollering along in a frenzy of pure exuberance. You can forget your troubles, just for one night -- the thrill is tangible.

Odd Ball In FLAC

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8 Ball Aitken - Heart And Soul

Size: 99.0 MB
Time: 42:00
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2022
Styles: Blues Rock
Art: Front

01. The One Who Loves You (3:53)
02. Better Than You Found Me (4:00)
03. Leave Too Soon (3:55)
04. Never Giving Up On You (3:07)
05. The Woman I Love (3:31)
06. We Are All In This Together (2:38)
07. Righteous Loving (3:37)
08. Make A Change (3:48)
09. Empathy (3:02)
10. Better For It All (2:58)
11. Singing On A Sunny Day (3:26)
12. When Will It End? (4:00)

Swamp-blues-rocker 8 Ball Aitken has toured the world for more than a decade performing across twenty countries to date. He’s earned a loyal fanbase from his live shows and internet videos, while paying his dues as a singer, songwriter, slide-guitarist and producer.

Since relocating to Music City, USA in 2012 from his native Australia, 8 Ball has worked with many of the best in the blues business today. In 2021 8 Ball won second place in the International New Orleans Cigar Box Guitar Festival hosted by blues woman Samantha Fish.

During COVID lockdown 8 Ball self-produced three new albums from his house in Nashville. The musicians on the recording include Buddy Guy’s Grammy Award winning producer Tom Hambridge on drums, George Thorogood and the Destroyers saxophone player Buddy Leach, Sydney soul singer Taya Chani on backing vocals, and his brother Dillion James Aitken on keys. 8 Ball played all of the guitars, bass and harmonica on all of the albums.

The single ‘Ice Cream Man’ hit #1 on the AMRAP Australian Metro Radio charts and the album hit #1 on the Australian Blues & Roots Charts in April 2021.

Home is where the heart is, 8 Ball Aitken has recently returned to Australia and has been performing at many sold out shows and festivals.

Heart And Soul MP3
Heart And Soul FLAC

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8 Ball Aitken - Ice Cream Man

Size: 89.8 MB
Time: 38:44
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2021
Styles: Swamp Blues, Blues Rock
Art: Front

01. Ice Cream Man (3:29)
02. What Goes Up (2:53)
03. Peace, Love And Understanding (4:14)
04. Boomerang (3:42)
05. Flames Of Love (3:24)
06. Love Me Or Leave Me (3:55)
07. Hard Times And Struggle (3:58)
08. Mother Nature’s Mad (3:11)
09. Solitaire (4:43)
10. Weight Of The World (5:10)

8 Ball Aitken is one in a million (pun intended) and he’s ours (when he is not America’s) and we love him for his uniqueness. He is the man who plays guitars made out of biscuit tins, space shuttle fragments, a few bits from the Eiffel Tower, a jaffle iron, old Ford cars, the old roof from the Pub with no beer, footy boots and cricket bats….well, some of those things and a whole lot more.

It has been a tough year for 8, stuck in the U.S for more time than usual, having to have surgery, and delivering most of his gigs via the Internet and Facebook. He still managed to be productive and find his way home to Australia.

This album had me at the title and 8’s album covers are always great to view. I had heard Hard Times and Struggle, he sang it at last year’s Tamworth and of course his co-writer, Allan Caswell does a version on his latest album which is a bit different.

He did try a few new songs out on us on his online gigs as well. He is back in Queensland now, doing some gigs and things are almost back to normal for him. I do love Peace, Love and Understanding, Boomerang and Weight of the World a lot.

8 delivers a few different types of country. I guess that the blues element is always there, the swamp music and a touch of cajun. The production is always top class, he is a guitar man and that is always front and centre the focus. His husky, bluesy, slightly twangy voice and a strong rhythm section is also a strong feature of 8’s songs. Mother Nature’s Mad has a cool riff, and there is always a cool riff in 8’s songs.

A lot of 8’s music centres now on that bluesy, rocky feel. It is changing direction a bit from some of the more country tones that it used to have and it is getting a bit more towards pure blues. As I wrote in a previous post, there are now about 94 types of country music and they have cousins in other genres. Good music, in the end is good music.

Ending the album with Weight of the World is a good thang. It is an awesome song and rounds the album off well.

8 always delivers and gives us something to treasure. He pushes the envelope when it needs to be pushed and he throws in something familiar for us to hold on to. In a world that is forever changing, it is nice to have that guarantee.

Ice Cream Man MP3
Ice Cream Man FLAC

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8 Ball Aitken - Swamp Blues 2

Size: 114,1 MB
Time: 49:16
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2020
Styles: Swamp Blues
Art: Front

01. Tremolo Rain (4:24)
02. Week Man (3:53)
03. Murderer’s Bar (4:40)
04. Thirty-Nine (3:02)
05. My Sexy Guitar (4:09)
06. Living On The River (2:50)
07. Knocking On Your Door (3:35)
08. The Bed That You Made (3:54)
09. My Darling (3:56)
10. Cherry (3:54)
11. Chocolate, Jack Daniels, And LSD (3:10)
12. L.O.V.E (4:07)
13. Cold Shower (3:35)

8 Ball Aitken grew up in North Queensland, Australia listening to cassettes of the blues masters John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, R.L Burnside, Tony Joe White, JJ Cale.

When 8 Ball Aitken drove his car full of guitars out to Wimberley, Texas in September 2017, he was ready for his rootsiest and most credible legit blues album to date. Swamp Blues is the result.

Swamp Blues 2

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8 Ball Aitken - S/T

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 41:38
Size: 95.3 MB
Styles: Rockin blues
Year: 2016
Art: Front

[3:16] 1. She's Going To Mexico I'm Going To Jail
[4:00] 2. Seven Bucks An Hour In A Chicken Suit
[2:37] 3. Shut The Front Door
[3:38] 4. Girl In A Million
[3:28] 5. Sleepy
[3:18] 6. Monkey In A Suit And A Tie
[2:56] 7. Skydive
[3:25] 8. Witness Protection
[3:29] 9. Underneath The Stars
[4:44] 10. Mile In My Shoes
[4:01] 11. Yellow Moon
[2:40] 12. Outback Booty Call

The Aitken family, originally from Scotland, settled in the Atherton Tableland area of Queensland's Deep North and felt no reason to leave for several generations. 8 Ball Aitken inherited the family's distinctive shock of bright red hair, but not that desire to stay in the one place. At the age of 19 he gave up his life picking fruit and living in a tobacco shed, and hitchhiked south to the city of Brisbane with his guitar to make it as a country musician. At an early gig in a rowdy pub a fight broke out over a pool table and the 8 Ball was knocked onto the stage, leading the band to give him his nickname and the title of his first recording, Behind the 8 Ball, released in 2004. Its acoustic mix of country, roots, and distinctively Australian subject matter made Aitken the choice of Brisbane's mayor to head the inaugural Grass Roots Music Festival. Aitken also won a grant in the form of one of musician John Butler's JB Seeds, which he used to travel to Sydney and study pedal steel with legendary session guitarist Michel Rose. His second album, Odd Ball In, was released in 2006, followed by Rebel with a Cause in 2008. ~bio by Jody Macgregor

8 Ball Aitken mc
8 Ball Aitken zippy

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8 Ball Aitken - The New Normal

Bitrate: MP3@320K/s
Time: 40:38
Size: 93.0 MB
Styles: Electric blues
Year: 2015
Art: Front

[2:37] 1. Shut The Front Door
[3:25] 2. Witness Protection
[3:38] 3. Girl In A Million
[3:26] 4. Sleepy
[3:25] 5. Don't Give Up Up Your Night Job
[3:18] 6. Monkey In A Suit And A Tie
[3:12] 7. Used Car Sales Woman
[4:00] 8. Seven Bucks An Hour In A Chicken Suit
[2:56] 9. Skyline
[2:59] 10. You're Not Alone
[3:58] 11. Love You And Stay
[3:37] 12. Broken Hill

NASHVILLE must be doing good things for 8 Ball Aitken. The swamp country star from far north Queensland, talent shrouded in an orange waterfall of hair and beard, has come out with his eighth record, The New Normal, and it’s a doozy. Not only has he packed 12 great songs into one album, he’s also looking a little different. Who knew he was such a handsome man under all that hair? His US managers must be giving him tips, because this 8 Ball Aitken is looking sharper, trimmer and clean-shaven — a sexy image that fits an album full of sexy grooves.

A prodigious talent and brilliant guitarist, Aitken, who grew up working on banana farms, has always been a live favourite in Australia. Now they’re getting to love him in the US too. For the past three years, he has been living in his spiritual home of Nashville, Tennessee. On The New Normal, he’s surrounded himself with stellar musicians, who’ve played with the likes of Lynyrd Skynyrd, George Thorogood and Emmylou Harris’ bands. But it’s Aitken’s songwriting that is the star of the show. The album is engaging from the get go.

The New Normal mc
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8 Ball Aitken - 2 albums: Behind The 8 Ball / Odd Ball In

Coming from a farming community in Far North Queensland, 8 Ball Aitken is the oldest son of an impoverished family of twelve children. 8 Ball spent his adolescence on a banana plantation, living in a rough tobacco shed with resident rats, bats, snakes, and spiders as his sleeping companions. He started work as a farm labourer aged fifteen, doing back-breakingly hard work on the mango and banana plantations of the Atherton Tablelands, a man's work for a boy's pay. He had to help support his family with these wages.

When 8 Ball was nineteen years old, a radical conversation altered his life path. "I used to work on a farm all week, then party all weekend," he explains. "An Aboriginal elder from Townsville was visiting my town, and we were talking on Sunday morning after he had been watching me play guitar all weekend. He sat me down and told me off sternly ˜I will be really disappointed if I visit next year and see you still here drinking and smoking, just wasting your talent and your life away," explains the ex-farm worker, recalling his labouring in the Atherton Tablelands fruit plantations as a young teenager. "This was a ˜time stands still', life-changing experience", adds 8 Ball. "From that point on, I have stayed true, and followed my dream of making music and taking it out to the people". He packed his bags, grabbed his guitar, and hitch-hiked south to the Big Smoke of Brisbane to seek his fortune.

The 27 year old former banana picker from Mareeba, Far North Queensland has created a uniquely Australian contemporary sound -- original roots music which reflects his origins in the steamy heat of the Far North Queensland tropics. This hot musical mix is striking the right note with audiences around the world.

Album: Behind The 8 Ball
Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 45:17
Size: 103.7 MB
Styles: Roots, Electric blues
Year: 2004
Art: Front

[3:05] 1. Refugee
[3:09] 2. All Alone
[3:20] 3. Yes, I'm Worried Baby
[2:41] 4. I'm A Man
[4:05] 5. Walls Have Ears
[3:07] 6. All The Money
[4:28] 7. Crossroad Child
[2:36] 8. Shoot You Down
[3:42] 9. Gypsy Man
[3:44] 10. Burning Up Inside
[4:29] 11. Sun Go Down
[3:27] 12. That Feeling
[3:19] 13. Cheetah

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Album: Odd Ball In
Bitrate: 320K/s
Time: 38:43
Size: 88.6 MB
Styles: Roots, Electric blues
Year: 2006
Art: Front

[3:22] 1. Cowboy
[3:23] 2. Sagas & Dramas
[3:23] 3. Heaven Is In My Bed
[3:31] 4. By The Side Of The Road
[3:26] 5. I Believe You Can
[2:55] 6. You're Out Of The Game
[3:12] 7. Your Poison
[2:38] 8. Lucky Charms
[2:58] 9. Work Smarter
[3:41] 10. Young Girl
[2:34] 11. Are You Ashamed
[3:35] 12. Flamin' Thongs

Odd Ball In mc
Odd Ball In zippy

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8 Ball Aitken - Southern Hemisphere

Size: 95,7 MB
Time: 40:53
File: MP3 @ 320K/s
Released: 2013
Styles: Blues Country, Blues Rock
Art: Front

01. I'm Going To Jail (3:16)
02. Love The Way She Rolls (3:05)
03. My Tank's On Empty (3:17)
04. Hillbilly Disco (3:25)
05. Underneath The Stars (3:29)
06. Mile In My Shoes (4:44)
07. Destroying The World (2:47)
08. A Gig Is A Gig (3:19)
09. Catfish Wish (3:27)
10. Politics Of A One Man Band (3:49)
11. Hobo Millionaire (3:10)
12. Old Hickory (3:00)

8 Ball Aitken is the redneck preacher at the shotgun wedding between country and blues. It doesn’t matter which part of the family you’re from — what does matter is the funky foot-stomping hullaballoo at the all-night party afterwards.Hailing from Far North Queensland, Australia (now Nashville based), he grew up as a teenager in a run-down tobacco shed, making a living picking tropical fruits by day and picking guitars by night. 8 Ball’s first break came when he was hired to play nightly at the infamous Johno’s Blues Bar in Cairns.

8 Ball’s had several award wins for both country and blues music including a Southern Star Award and two Queensland Song Awards (for ‘Outback Booty Call’ & ‘Yellow Moon’). His singles ‘Rogue Pony’, ‘Cyclone Country’ & ‘Hands On Top Of The Wheel’ have all been top 10 country chart hits around Australia. 8 Ball has also had Golden Guitar and APRA award nominations for songs he has written. His fourth album ‘The Tamworth Tapes’ went to number 2 for a month on the Australian blues & roots national chart.

Southern Hemisphere

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