Clare bowditch shares a secret

With milky porcelain skin, delicate features and gentle amber curls that sway to their own song, Clare Bowditch is the personification of refined English beauty.

Combined with her signature dark, alternative and insightful music the Australian musician has all the prerequisites for a mesmerising performance -” introducing the Winter Secrets Tour.

After an incredible summer of touring with John Butler and festival highlights including the Blues and Roots and Falls festivals Bowditch’s 2008 tour is stripped back, straight from the heart, confronting and cheeky.

It’s a solo experimental tour full of stories and songs. I’m going to be bringing in my twenty year old Casio as well as include cool drum beats, my loop pedal and my electric guitar, Bowditch told the Sydney Star Observer.

I plan on using a whole heap of other weird instruments, including a teapot. So it’s going to be quite a bit of fun for me.

Another fresh component of the tour is the Winter Secrets competition. Bowditch, in each city, has invited anyone who’s keen and has applied to perform on stage with her. The person who works the best with Bowditch from each state will win a Gibson guitar.

My shows have always had that [interactive element] but I wanted to put in random performance, she said. There is always dialogue between the audience and myself but to actually hear whether or not they can play is really fun for me.

These will be the last Australian shows for Bowditch for a while as she is relocating to Berlin to extend her audiences. She plans to tour extensively while there, as well as start writing new music.

Berlin is a really fascinating city for me -” historically and politically. It is a very creative space, there is always a lot going on, she said.

I’ve realised with my kind of music I have to go out and hunt my audience. My music is not going to get played on [radio] stations and go to the top of the charts. It’s a bit subtler and not as immediate.

The Winter Secrets Tour runs until 1 August. For bookings call (03) 9445 0488 or visit www.clarebowditch.com.