Deborah Conway is a significant and eloquent contributor to Australian music, singing songs that chronicle the essential elements of life, love, loss, memory, the mundane and the spiritual. Restless and confounding, her powerful voice and presence has fascinated audiences for more than 40 years.
From the moment her band, Do Re Mi released the iconic Man Overboard, off their debut album Domestic Harmony in 1985, Conway has always followed her own path. The song was radically different to radio playlists, a rant on gender politics and without a chorus, yet it sat at the top of the charts and introduced her as a compelling force.
Concurrently, while Man Overboard was topping the charts, Conway’s voice was all over the ABC’s hit TV show for kids, Sweet & Sour, mimed by Tracy Mann, the star of the show and lead singer of the TV band The Takeaways.
In 1986, Do Re Mi relocated to Europe, wrote & recorded a second album, The Happiest Place in Town. The single Adultery and album were well received but by the end of ’88 the band had split and Conway remained in the UK to work on a variety of projects. These included singing on The Iron Man by Pete Townsend, alongside Nina Simone and John Lee Hooker; and acting and singing in Peter Greenaway’s film Prospero’s Books, scored by Michael Nyman. Throughout this period Conway continued writing and in 1990 returned to Australia with an album’s worth of new material ready to record again.
Conway’s debut solo album String of Pearls, released in 1991, was a radical departure from Do Re Mi. Its themes of youthful reflection and tongue-in-cheek irreverence, embodied in It’s Only The Beginning, Release Me & the bittersweet title track, won her Best Female ARIA award that year. One of Australia’s emblematic female singer-songwriter albums, String Of Pearls found an essential and enduring place.
The album release was accompanied by an extensive national tour with band The Mothers Of Pearl in which Willy Zygier played guitar. This was the start of a still ongoing working and personal collaboration for Conway & Zygier.
Willy’s first recorded appearance was with his band Tootieville on the Cooking With George Mark Too compilation record, released by radio station Triple J in 1985, though he had been spotted haunting Melbourne’s live music venues long before that. Tootieville followed this up with an album entitled Basic in 1990 that was The Age’s Green Guide album of the year.
He first appears in the Deborah Conway story (officially) on the credits of the Release Me single as co-performer of the live version of Will You Miss Me When You’re Sober.
Willy came into the limelight proper with the release of Bitch Epic in 1993. He co-wrote the record with Deborah & co-produced. The notes for the album simply say “thanks especially to Willy for always getting me across the bridge”.
In 1993, Conway & Zygier produced their first album together, Bitch Epic, the title coming from “random words, cut up and pulled from a hat”. From its distinctive cover, which saw Conway smeared with Nutella and little else, to its rich and complex musicality, Bitch Epic pursued a singular path. Once again radio was pushed unknowingly into adding unusual textures and sounds to their programming; the 5/4 beat of Alive and Brilliant and the loping, unique rhythm of Today I Am A Daisy both made their way onto the airwaves. Wanting to take music more respectfully at a time when most Australian acts were playing pubs and beer barns, Conway & Zygier became producers, underwriting The Epic Theatre tour in grand old theatres around the country.
In 1995, inspired by their first child on the way, Conway and Zygier formed Ultrasound, a band with the much missed Paul Hester (Split Enz, Crowded House) and Bill McDonald (Paul Kelly’s band). This eponymous & experimental album featured hypnotic and cinematic instrumental soundscapes as well as strange and otherworldly songs full of levity and menace.
My Third Husband (1997) and Exquisite Stereo (2000) formed a diptych, two sides of the same coin, claustrophobic songs and harrowing tales told with grim humour. The former, written & recorded in London musically explored electronica; the latter, celebrated the full force of distorted electric guitars and drums and was recorded in Melbourne with the rhythm section from Augie March. The title track featured a duet with Neil Finn. These albums capped off Conway & Zygier’s years of working primarily with amplified instruments.
In 2001, Conway was cast in the title role of the theatre piece, Always…Patsy Cline. To accompany the production Conway & Zygier released PC The Songs Of Patsy Cline, an album of idiosyncratic versions of Patsy Cline songs, their theory being if you’re going to record classics you have a duty to make them your own.
During this period but Zygier also enjoyed an extra-curricular career & produced & arranged music for a number of Australian feature films, & documentaries – The Nugget, Horseplay, Ned & Paringa; and for television composed scores for the ABC’s Eagle & Evans, Sounds of Australia, Stuff & The Ball; SBS’s Global Village, Thalassa, Everybody Loves A Wedding & Decadence; & Channel 9’s telemovie Little Oberon. As a producer, other than the Conway albums, Zygier produced Toni Collette’s Beautiful Awkward Pictures & The National Living Treasures’ Wide Music. Composition commissions include scoring the Barrie Kosky curated Voice Jam & Videotape (music for the film “Night” by Lawrence Johnston) for the 1998 Adelaide Festival; The End Of Music a large-scale piece for the Australian Art Orchestra that premiered at the Iwaki Auditorium Melbourne, January 2000 & broadcast by ABC Classics; & a song for the Victorian Government celebration of “Eureka 150”. Zygier composed the score & created the sound design for a production at the Melbourne Planetarium, Tycho To The Stars & composed two pieces Elysium7 & 2DF for installations at the National Museum in Canberra.
2002 saw the release of a Greatest Hits record, Only The Bones, a collection of songs that vividly documented the variety of musical twists and turns they’d executed.
In 2004 Conway and Zygier became independent and released Summertown on their own label. It was a total musical break from their previous collaborations, a sweet, breezy collection of lyrical optimism and irresistibly hummable melody. Summertown garnered enviable reviews and saw them reinventing relationships with audiences in a digital age in a very immediate and visceral way through home performances called Summerware parties. It startled media who were used to the standard barrier between performer and audience and spawned an outbreak of home party concerts.
In 2005, inspired by their adventure of new ways of bringing music to people, Conway and Zygier became producers again and launched the inaugural production of Broad. Broad combined female singer/songwriters from very different genres of music on stage together to contribute to each other’s music and explore, by way of conversation, their approach to their craft. Introducing a number of wonderful emerging artists to Australian audiences, the series of Broad productions continued in ‘06, ‘07 & ‘08 and featured the incomparable talents of Katie Noonan, Ella Hooper, Clare Bowditch, Mia Dyson, Kate Miller Heidke and the late great Ruby Hunter, to name but a few.
In May 2008, Conway, recognised as an innovator and a generator of unique ways of presenting music to people, was offered the role of Artistic Director for the Queensland Music Festival. Conway programmed the 2009 & 2011 QMF Festivals. She was the first woman to direct this biennial state-wide celebration of music which is the largest by land mass music festival in the world.
In 2010 Conway & Zygier launched and toured their 8th studio album Half Man Half Woman, chronicling love in the middle ages, life in the 21st century and the human condition of now, then and what will be; HMHW gives equal weight to an eight-minute rant -Take Pity on The Beast; a ninety second instrumental miniature – Chromatic Jew; and a song sung by their three young daughters – Into The Blue, which played under the closing credits of Dawn, an Australian mystery thriller, released in 2014.
In 2013 another album, Stories of Ghosts marked a watershed moment for them both when the identity of being a Jew & being a musician became something to be expressed simultaneously. Lyrically Stories of Ghosts is an unbeliever’s examination of Old Testament themes from a Jewish perspective, exploring the connections between ancient practice and modern life.
Also in 2013 the Australia Council appointed Conway to a new position as Chair of The Sector Strategy Panel for Music, advising the Executive Director of Music.
In 2014 while in the midst of writing for another album, Conway became the impetus behind a brand new Melbourne festival, The Shir Madness Melbourne Jewish Music Festival, taking on the position of Festival Director on a volunteer basis. The role involved huge learning curves around fundraising, grant writing, administration, technical & production issues, security, council liaison and managing teams of volunteers.
On September 6th 2015, The Shir Madness Melbourne Jewish Music Festival was a sell out event, staging 34 acts on 6 stages acknowledging and celebrating the immense contributions Jews have made to music in all its glorious variety. The festival attracted the religious, the secular & music lovers from all over and was successfully mounted again in 2017 with Conway & Zygier in their volunteer roles of Festival Director & Artistic Director.
In 2016 Conway was named a Living Legend by both the Leaps & Bounds Festival and Rolling Stone Magazine. Also in 2016 Conway & Zygier’s follow up to Stories of Ghosts, Everybody’s Begging, came out & garnered a 5 star review from The Australian. To celebrate the new album’s release and in conjunction with the 25th Anniversary of Conway’s 1991 release String of Pearls, Conway & Zygier booked a tour of national concert halls. This concert series known as The Begging/Beginning Tour, was acknowledged in 2017 with a nomination for a Robert Helpmann Award.
In 2019, Conway & Zygier released their tenth album The Words of Men and toured it alongside their first album together, 1993’s Bitch Epic. In the same year Conway was made a National Living Legend by the National Live Music Awards.
In 2020, Conway was given a Member (AM) of the Order Of Australia and won the Don Banks Award.
In 2022, Music Victoria inducted Conway into the Music Hall of Fame.
In 2023, Conway’s autobiography Book of Life was published by Allen & Unwin. To accompany the memoir’s release Conway & Zygier wrote and staged a theatrical musical distillation of the work that they played in theatres around the country, starting with an “off Broadway” version in regional areas before graduating to a more high tech presentation in the major theatres.
In 2024, Book of Life was shortlisted for the Nib Award & won the Nib People’s Choice Prize.
In 2025, Conway & Zygier released their eleventh album, Right Wing Propaganda and toured it nationally Conway was a finalist for the Melbourne Prize & subsequently won the popularly voted Melbourne Prize Civic Choice Award.
In 2026, Conway is part of a documentary called Cancelled, made by filmmaker Danny Ben Moshe, that details the experiences of 4 Jewish creatives post October 7, 2023.
Conway is currently working alongside a team of young theatre makers to bring Melbourne a brand new Australian musical – After The Flood – in November.