Kirk Lorange

Kirk Lorange is the one of the most successful professional guitarist and online guitar tutor in Australia.

Kirk started playing guitar back in 1961. He was a 12 year old Canadian kid living in Belgium. He was already experimenting with home made drum kits, playing along to his dad’s big band LPs, but it was The Shadows’ instrumental Apache that triggered his life long obsession with the guitar.

He moved to Australia and arrived in Sydney on Cyclone Tracy Day, Christmas ’74. Within days he had met Doug Ashdown and they formed Sleeping Dogs. Playing covers and originals, the band became an underground hit in Sydney. Their claim to fame was opening for Supertramp on their Australian tour, busing it from Adelaideto Brisbane via Melbourne and Sydney.

Later, Kirk began a long association with Richard Clapton during his early years in Oz, contributing to two albums — Main Street Jive and Goodbye Tiger — and the soundtrack to surf movie Highway One with Capricorn Dancer. Goodbye Tiger was to become the quintessential sound of Australian Music of that era and was a huge hit for Richard; Capricorn Dancer must still be the most played tune on Australian radio. He toured the length and breadth of Australia with him from ’76 to ’78.

When not on the road, Kirk nurtured his career as a session player. Known mostly for his electric slide playing, he was also hired for his Dobro and acoustic fingerstyle guitar. One of his sessions was for the late Marc Hunter who had struck out on his own after Dragon had folded. Kirk toured with The Marc Hunter Band for several months in the early ’80s. Kevin Johnson, author of ‘RocknRoll I Gave You All The Best Years Of My Life’, is another artist who Kirk has recorded and toured with over many years, contributing to ‘Man of the 20th Century’, ‘Journeys’, ‘Night Rider’ and several national tours. He also toured with the short lived Glenn Shorrock Band after Glenn left LRB, the highlight of the tour being an impromptu Blue Suede Shoes on TV with Ringo Starr. Both Glenn and Ringo were being interviewed on The Michael Parkinson Show.

In 1983, Kirk recorded his solo album No Apostrophe for WEA records. This was an album of his original songs, arranged and produced by Kirk. The album reached the teens on the Adelaide and Perth charts, but never achieved airplay in the major cities. Kirk has made it available again.

Kirk began writing and illustrating his book PlaneTalk- The Truly Totally Different Guitar Instruction Book in the early ’90s. Being a self-taught guitarist, he saw that there was a gap in the market for those players who wanted to learn music and the guitar without having to learn conventional notation. He managed to reveal the simple visualization trick he’d taught himself over the years by delivering the lesson in the form of a comic strip conversation. The book is now selling worldwide via one of his sites, along with the companion DVD which he produced and edited himself on his iMac in 2000.

In 1997 Kirk moved North to be closer to his children. Settling in Tamborine Mountain, just inland from Surfers Paradise, he now markets his book PlaneTalk and music on the Internet, plays locally in various lineups, plays sessions, runs Guitar for Beginners dot Com, a site with over 120,000 members. In 2006 he produced the ‘How to play Slide Guitar in Standard Tuning DVD‘ which he sells online. Check out some of his more recent music at his YouTube channel.