Ash Grunwald

Melbourne, a classroom, and a grandfather's guitar

Ashley Mark Groenewald was born in Melbourne on 5 September 1976. His grandfather handed him a guitar and then a bass while he was still small, and the two of them recorded a version of Howlin' Wolf's "Going Down Slow" together — which turned out to set the terms for everything that followed. Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters were the reference points, absorbed a very long way from the Mississippi.

He trained as a secondary school teacher and left the profession at 26. His early twenties had already been spent in bands: the Blue Grunwalds, who left behind a record called Groove Cave, and the Groove Catalysts. The solo work started on the Australian blues festival circuit around 2001, and Introducing Ash Grunwald arrived in 2002. It did what first albums rarely manage — in 2003 the Australian Blues Awards, the Chain Awards, handed him both Best Emerging Talent and Male Vocalist of the Year.

Hammers, spanners and pots: the records

I Don't Believe (2004) is where the method became obvious. Grunwald built his own percussion out of hammers, spanners and pots in open imitation of Tom Waits, then set six originals against two Waits songs — "Going Out West" and "Jesus Gonna Be Here" — and a run of blues standards. It brought the first of six ARIA nominations for Best Blues and Roots Album, in 2004; a second followed in 2005 for the live record Live at the Corner, with more in 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2021.

From there the chart positions climbed in a steady line. Give Signs reached 84 in 2006, Fish Out of Water 43 in 2008, Hot Mama Vibes 31 in 2010, and Trouble's Door 29 in 2012, which remains his highest-charting solo album. Gargantua followed in 2013 at 46, made with Scott Owen and Andy Strachan of the Living End and including a cover of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy". Now came in 2015 at 52, Mojo in 2019 at 40.

The songwriting prizes came from APRA rather than ARIA: Blues and Roots Work of the Year in 2010 for "Breakout" and again in 2013 for "Longtime". "Breakout" also placed 50th in the triple j Hottest 100 of 2008 — Grunwald knew that station from the inside, having hosted its Thursday night programme Roots n All from May 2005 until December 2006. In 2014 he picked up an LA Music Critic Award for Best International Act.

The Teskey record, and the ceiling it broke

Mojo in 2019 was the first sign that collaboration suited him better than the one-man-band framing. It drew in the Teskey Brothers, Kasey Chambers, Mahalia Barnes, Joe Bonamassa, the Cat Empire's Harry James Angus, Terry Evans, Eddy "The Chief" Clearwater, Ian Collard and the Fabulous Thunderbirds' Kim Wilson.

The following year he made a duo album with Josh Teskey. Push the Blues Away, released in 2020, went to number 8 on the ARIA albums chart — more than three times higher than anything he had managed alone across eighteen years — and brought an ARIA nomination in 2021. Shout Into the Noise followed in 2022 and Bluesfest Studio Sessions in November 2023, taking the studio count to twelve.

The other strand of the work is prose. In August 2019 he published Surf by Day, Jam by Night, built from interviews with fifteen professional surfer-musicians including Kelly Slater, Stephanie Gilmore and Jack Johnson. The title doubles as a description of how he has organised his life on the north coast of New South Wales.

"In my ideal world, I would write secular gospel"

The current direction was stated plainly in an interview published on 5 September 2025, ahead of a show with the 12-piece Midnight Choir, led by Janet Swain, at Brunswick Picture House on 18 October that year. "The choir is super exciting, and I've got a real gospel influence, like the old spirituals" out of the Mississippi Delta, he said, before going further: "In my ideal world, I would write secular gospel. Some of my songs work like that already, but I'd lean into it even more."

The same conversation registered a shift away from the environmental campaigning that had shaped earlier records, and away from career-driven touring. "The interpersonal interests me more — how do we operate this thing we're given as human beings," he said, and on why he still gets on planes: "My motivation now is that I'm taking my kid and showing her the world — it suddenly has a point again." Scandinavia and Canada were named as family-trip destinations rather than market expansions.

A new album, Saltwater, is in the pipeline. Its first single, "Reborn", is described on his own site as a gospel song of gratitude, optimism and renewal, and it has already taken a place in the live set.

October 2026: six rooms, four choirs

The Ash Grunwald with Full Gospel Choir national tour ran as six shows across four weeks, each with a locally assembled choir rather than a travelling one. The Melbourne Recital Centre on Friday 2 October paired him with the Melbourne Soul and Gospel Choir; the Princess Theatre in Woolloongabba, Brisbane on Sunday 18 October with the Brisbane City Gospel Choir; Woodville Town Hall in Adelaide on Thursday 22 and Friday 23 October with Quoir, directed by Libby O'Donovan OAM, who also ran open auditions for harmony singers to fill it; Big Easy Radio at McLaren Vale on Sunday 25 October with the same Adelaide ensemble; and the Concourse Theatre in Sydney on Friday 30 October with Inner West Voices. Tickets were $75 throughout, Emily Lubitz opened every night, and the tour page listed all six as sold out.

The run was preceded by a working winter and spring: two nights at the Arrowtown Athenaeum Hall in New Zealand on 23 and 24 August 2026, then a far north Queensland stretch through Ellis Beach Bar and Grill in Cairns on 11 September, Mt Uncle Distillery at Walkamin on 12 September and the Port Douglas Yacht Club on 13 September — small rooms, no choir, the old solo configuration.

What is already booked

Two New Zealand dates close out 2026: the Tuning Fork at Spark Arena in Auckland on Friday 6 November and the James Hay Theatre in Christchurch on Friday 27 November. A northern hemisphere run is then logged for spring 2027 — the Grand Social in Dublin on 22 March, Hootananny in Brixton on 24 March, Chante! in Paris on 26 March, Nochtwache in Hamburg on 30 March, Kulturhaus Insel in Berlin on 31 March, Club Lucia in Vienna on 1 April, Milla in Munich on 3 April and Die Wohngemeinschaft in Cologne on 9 April. A return to the Princess Theatre in Brisbane is pencilled for 15 May 2027.

Critical reception of the live work has been consistent rather than spectacular: an aggregate of sixteen critic reviews stretching from 2012 to 2025 sits at 75 per cent, summarising him as an enjoyable performer with notable strengths. The strength everyone lands on is the voice. Reviewing a New Zealand show on 30 May 2025, the 13th Floor wrote that "when he sang it was with such power and soul that no earthly being could muster such a voice." Pointing that instrument at a choir of a dozen or more looks less like a gimmick than an overdue arrangement.