Paul Fogerty

Singer-songwriter Paul Fogarty is not your regular guitar strumming troubadour.

Before turning full-time to music in 2001 Fogarty worked as an Investigative Journalist in Australia, exposing fraud, corruption, conflicts of interest, and mismanagement at all governmental and corporate levels across multiple industries and portfolios. He rose to national editor of two bi-weekly industry publications.

Paul’s dogged, hard line questioning and natural sense of irreverence made him a formidable force in the ranks of the fourth estate.  But in 2001  at the behest of his girlfriend Paul turned his back on his burgeoning career for a simple, grass-roots life writing songs. He was still writing about  global and local issues but with a freedom he’d not been able to approach as a journalist.

“When you work in investigative journalism,” says Fogarty, “you have gatekeepers who can and do stomp on a lot of your hard work – because it’s too sensitive, too close to home, or creates some kind of conflict within the organisation. What you end up with, as a journalist and writer, is a load of printed hogwash that crushes your soul every time you read it”.

“In songwriting,” he says. “You can work unimpeded and the truth has at least a chance of surviving.”

Fogarty has written more than 1200 songs on topics as diverse as corruption, love, loss, rural life, suicide, family, foreign policy, sexuality, bias, bullying, fast cars, slow boats, madness, contemporary life, social media, mis-used technology and even medical equipment.

Paul’s songs come to him at all hours of the night and day.  “Being asleep is no excuse for not working,” he says. “Most of my song ideas and even complete songs come to me in my dreams.”

Fogarty hammers out new songs every week, some of which have made it into movies and TV shows seen and heard by millions.

“My job in life is to tell the truth,” he says. “And to help people equip themselves for the task of finding their own authenticity.”

He’s been a featured  artist at music festivals in Switzerland, Holland and Germany.

Paul wrote his first songs at age 15. „They just came into my head,“ he says. „I thought that’s what you did when you turned 15…“

He played his first solo songwriter concerts straight out of high school and played 150 gigs his first year. That same year he
started writing jingles for radio commercials and enrolled at University in a journalism degree course.

For the next decade Paul worked in dead-end jobs, took an eight-year hiatus from study, and wrote hundreds of songs.

„The songs wouldn’t leave me alone,“ he says. „They were always tapping me on the shoulder, like, driving me insane.“

Since quitting his job as a national editor for Thomson Legal and Regulatory Group Paul has released four independent albums. Breathe (2001) and Stagefright (2002) met with rave reviews and prompted Paul’s first concert tour in Germany.

Born Naked (2006) was released prior to the birth of Paul’s first daughter, Bonnie in 2007. „Universal Records in New York and also Joe Lamont in Nashville were interested in my music by the time that album came out,“ he says. „I was teaching guitar and playing my songs at small local area gigs on the Sunshine Coast and trying to improve.“

In 2008 Fogarty and his wife and daughter moved back to Germany for good. „I had the feeling the Europeans were more open to listening, to giving new music a chance,“ he says.

By 2010 Fogarty was a regular on the singer-songwriter circuit in Germany, playing up to 100 concerts a year in every city and town that would have him.

In 2014 he released his fourth independent album (Winds of Fortune) and started getting his songs featured in TV crime series and specials as well as film mainly in Germany.

By 2016 Fogarty’s songs had already appeared in a number of TV shows and movies in Germany.

2016-2017:   Paul continues to tour his solo show to rapt audiences in Europe. He’s also working on recording a catalogue of songs for investors and interests in the USA.

„http://www.paulfogarty.com/about.html“