BIG LOVE

"Big Love" is the name  a band  formed in the 1980s. The core of the band is essentially a husband and wife musical team, Ian & Janet Siemonek, but other musicians are bought in to supplement the line up when required.Originally hailing from New Zealand, They moved to Warrnambool in 2012.  Janet is a singer/songwriter and a multi-instrumentalist playing guitar, fiddle, mandolin, keyboards, mouth harp, whistles (and anything else she comes across), and Ian plays acoustic guitar and sings. They specialise in close knit vocal harmonies and have done backing vocals for lots of other performing artists in New Zealand (either singing live or on original recordings). Janet & Ian toured New Zealand extensively throughout the 70's in the heyday of the big University folk festivals, Janet with a Celtic four piece band called "Kilderkin" ,and Ian in a contemporary trio called "Hollis" ,who played only original music. Both bands released several well received albums at the time, which are still being sold by independent distributors in N.Z. Ian went on to spend seven years on the "other side of the music business" doing sales, promotion and product management for CBS Records (now Sony), in New Zealand and Australia, before leaving to pursue another career path. It was important to Ian and Janet to keep some of their Kiwi identity when living and performing in Australia, so the band name "Big Love" wass taken from the Maori word "Arohanui" (which in its literal translation, means, "love-big" ). "BigLove" mainly play covers in the local pubs but are trying to play as much of Janet's original music as they can too, and they have released a c.d. called "The Light House": Some of the inspiration for the songs on "The Light House" came from spending 5 years in New Zealand between 1992-97 looking after Janet's sick Mother who suffered from a severely debilitating dementia. It's often said that in times of great adversity the creative side of a person can be revealed and realised, and this was true in Big Loves case as Janet had never written any original songs before she moved back to New Zealand!