Maybe the cold water around Cape Town has its advantages to a surfer-songwriter like Myburgh – less time in the water means more time spent writing songs. Most of the tracks on Myburgh’s debut full album, ‘Woestyn’ were written over a two-year period following Myburgh’s move to Cape Town.
Myburgh’s old friend, the vintage South African blues guitarist, Albert Frost, took on the job as producer on “Woestyn” – a first for him – as well as playing all the guitars. The end result is 12 original tracks moving across physical and spiritual landscapes, reflecting the places and spaces where Myburgh has found himself up to the present.
The album production involved a collaboration of some other of Myburgh’s friends that included Bed On Bricks’ drummer Tim Rankin, who also engineered the album; Bed on Bricks’ bassist Schalk van der Merwe; and Steph Nortjé on drums. “Woestyn”, also features other great SA artists such as Ivan Kemp (DNA Strings) on percussion, and Adriaan Brand (Springbok Nude Girls) on trumpet. The album was mastered by Tim Lengfeld.
Myburgh Grobbelaar began his music career in 1992 as vocalist for The Fauves, a Parel Vallei High School band in Somerset West alongside Albert Loubser (Frost) on guitar, Dylan Kemlo on bass, Tim Rankin on drums, and David Poole on sax. After a change of guitarists, The Fauves became the better known Dorp.
In 2005, Myburgh was one of the artists featured in “Nuweling van die Maand” on the SABC 2 program ‘Pitstop.’ Myburgh’s ‘Burnt Bachelor’ EP was released in 2003 and featured some excellent tracks including the emotive ‘Girl’ (later recorded by Gert Bekker on his album “Dis Die Girl”), the blues-groove of “Deurmekaar”, an English song called ‘Spiderslides’, and the trippy, languid “Kuslangs”.
An independent video of the song “Deurmekaar” has been featuring on MK89 since the end of 2005. The upcoming live shows to promote “Woestyn” will also vary between acoustic and full band shows.