ALEX' BIOGRAPHY

• Electrical Engineer (NSW TAFE 1983)

• Bachelor of Music (Distinction) University of Western Sydney 2009

• Music Production Specialist Certificate 2013 (Producing Music with Cubase, Recording, Producing in the Home Studio and Critical Listening 1) with Berklee College Online.

• General Music Studies Specialist Certificate 2014 (Jazz Composition, Blues Guitar and the Art Of Mixing) with Berklee College Online.

• Achieved "Honorable Mention" in the West Coast 2008 Songwriters competition for the song "Wollondilly Blues," in the Blues category.

• Semi-Finalist in the UK Songwriting Contest 2008 in the Jazz and Blues category for the song "Wollondilly Blues"

• Placed 6th in the Australian Songwriters Association 2014 Competition for the song "My God, my God!"

• Finalist in the 2013 Australian Independent Music Awards for three songs "The Prodigal Pt.1," "My God, my God," "Wollondilly Blues."

• Semi-Finalist in the Tamworth 2013 Songwriters Association National Songwriting Awards with the song "Wollondilly Blues"

• John Lennon Songwriting Competition: won Stage 1 in the Gospel Song Category in 2016 for the song “It’s His Blood”

Question: What do Furry Lewis, Peg Leg Howell and I have in common? We all play the blues and we are all amputees. 

Alex Varlow has spent most of his life involved with music one way or another, in blues/jazz trios, babershop quartets, church choirs and music teams etc. Prior to Dec 2001 he was a qualified Telecommunications Engineer working originally for the PMG Australia, then Telecom Australia and finally Telstra. In 1991 Alex and his family trained as missionaries and moved to Cyprus for a year, then onto London where he worked for British Rail.

In 1994 they returned home to Australia and in 1996 he joined SRA as a Telecommunications Mechanic.

Then in Dec 2001 a life changing event occurred. Whilst working on the train station at Leura a paranoid schitzophrenic pushed him infront of a freight train.

He suffered major injuries losing his right leg among other things. Through extensive prayer and the skill of the doctors Alex survived that first night after the doctors had given up all hope of him pulling through, in those first six months he had 22 operations. After leaving hospital in June 2002 he had extensive physiotherapy (and continues to do so) as well as another 24 operations ranging from plastic surgery, re-amputation and a total hip replacement over the last 19 years.

In Feb 2003 he started studying part time, for a Bachelor of Music at the Universty of Western Sydney, which he finished in 2009.