Shorrock finds the time for a warm change

When self-confessed Australian rock “elder statesman” Glenn Shorrock makes his long-awaited Port Douglas debut at Savannah Sounds this Sunday, it will be the closing of one music history chapter and the opening of a whole new one.

Shorrock had been travelling to the picturesque Far North Queensland town across many years with other Oz music royalty such as John Farnham, Michael Gudinski and Glenn Wheatley, when he and now-wife Irene found a charming villa of their own in 2020 to spend up to three months a year while away from Sydney.

But, despite playing many gigs in Cairns across the years, he had never played further north.

“I’ve always wanted to do something in Port Douglas,” Shorrock told Newsport this week.

Then, out of the blue, the phone rang.

“They’ve come to me,” Shorrock says.

After deciding he wanted to start a festival in Port Douglas, Savannah Sounds director James Dein thought immediately of the former Little River Band frontman.

And Shorrock gladly took up the offer to play in his new part-time home.

“We’re well entrenched now,” Shorrock says of Port Douglas.

In true Shire style, visitors and locals might now see him kicking back at the Tin Shed, or many of the other “great restaurants” in the region, at any time throughout the year.

And, as far as Sunday’s show goes, the audience can expect to hear a host of the old favourites from the LRB days, along with a few from Shorrock’s earlier bands The Twilights and Axiom.

Although he says he is no longer pushing the “starmaker machine” button, Shorrock says he will be giving his all this weekend for his new adopted town.

“I’ll let them have it,” he says.