Rick Price – Heaven Knows tour 1992-93

Rick Price is one of the most talented singer/songwriters this country has seen and I was lucky enough to do a tour with him at a great time. He was having quite a lot of success with his album “Heaven Knows” and was touring with a fantastic band & crew. Make sure you check the videos below, especially “A House Divided” which shows the band as it toured with the exception of Tina Arena who sang on the album. Her place was filled ably by P.J. Becker on the tour.

Massive thanks to my brother Brett for keeping his tour books which supplied all of these details.

*** Update ***
Writing about the Rick Price tour and hearing about the suicide of James Freud this week, twigged a few memories for me that I thought I’d add here.

In all the years I worked & toured in the music business, there was only once that I didn’t make it home for Christmas. You’ll see by the dates below that I was gigging in Melbourne on the day before and the day after Christmas. This was in the days before cheap flights and if we’d have driven home we would have made it just in time to turn around and drive back so we stayed there.

Being in a strange town, away from your family over Christmas was a bit weird and a bit sad as well. On the Rick Price tour with me was a great guy called Andrew Bentley who was working as the lighting designer/operator. He was still fairly young but had some decent names on his resume already. This tour was no exception. Rick Price was “hot property” in 1992/93 & had his pick of personal crew so Andrew was doing okay.

When he realised we were in stuck in Melbourne town, fairly well broke, he organised a day out for us and a Christmas lunch. We were blown away by what this guy had done. He & his girlfriend picked us up from our Hotel and drove us out to a horse farm south-west of Melbourne, I think it was Koo Wee Rup. It was just gorgeous and so green. We had a few drinks, a great lunch and then just bummed around this picturesque farm having a blast. We even had “tractor rides” like little kids! They had a practice track for the horses so we took the tractor out to see how fast it could go.

At the end of what turned out to be a great Christmas Day, they drove us back to the Hotel ready to start the tour again the next day. In the scheme of things he probably didn’t think he’d gone to much trouble but for three homesick Roadies it was just brilliant and certainly helped take our minds off not being home.

I never saw Andrew after that tour finished although my Brother kept in touch a bit. It was only a few short years later that we heard that he’d taken his own life. What a waste. I don’t know the circumstances that lead him to that decision but it affected me more than I thought it would. He was a guy who’d shown me great kindness & I wish I could have repaid it in some way. It was the only time I didn’t make it home for Christmas but in a lot of ways I’m glad it worked out the way it did.

Rest in peace Andrew Bentley.

The Rick Price Band

• Rick Price – Vocals, Guitar
• Davie Porter – Drums
• Chris Bekker – Bass, Vocals
• Paul Gildea – Guitar, Vocals
• Robert Parde – Keyboards, Vocals
• P.J. Becker – Backing Vocals

Management/Crew

• Ralph Carr – Management
• Garry Fox – Tour Manager
• Brian McMahon – F.O.H. Engineer
• Andrew Bentley – Lighting Engineer
• Andrew Jackson – Stage Technician
• Mark Gibson – System Engineer
• Brett Gibson – Monitor Engineer
• Mark Denton – Lighting Rigger

P.A., Lights & Truck from Bandanna Entertainment

Video