Clare Moore and Dave Graney honoured for 40 years fun creativity by South Australian Music Hall of Fame in 2019

The 40-year musical journey for Clare Moore and Dave Graney began in Adelaide in the 1970s.

Dave Graney and Clare Moore were inducted into the South Australian Music Hall of Fame in 2019, after 40 years of rich and varied creativity with a sense of fun. Graney grew up Mount Gambier before moving to Adelaide in 1978 where he met future wife Moore, who’d started playing drums for Adelaide’s singing nun Janet Mead.

With Graney as lead vocalist, they formed the Sputniks with Liz Dealey (later of Adelaide band Lizard Train) on bass guitar, Phillip Costello on guitar and Steve Miller on guitar. Sputniks released one single, “Second Glance”, before moving to Melbourne in 1979 where they disbanded. Graney, Miller and Moore formed post-punk group The Moodists that went in 1983 to the UK where they released a studio album Thirsty's Calling. 

Graney and Moore morphed into Dave Graney ‘n’ the Coral Snakes in 1987 and played in London pubs and clubs.  Back in Melbourne, the couple formed Dave Graney with The White Buffaloes With Graney adopted a cowboy image, the band released My Life on the Plains in 1989.  

For its 1993 album, Night of the Wolverine, the band signed with Polygram and Graney adopted a new persona. The album was described as “a certified Australian rock classic. It captured Graney at the peak of his songwriting ... [tracks were] full of elegant and eccentric detail”. It earned an ARIA ward nomination for best alternative release.

The albums and the band’s different guises kept coming.  Meanwhile, appeared with Melbourne band The Sand Pebbles and contributed strings and keyboards to albums by Kim Salmon as well as the Wagons. She played on Robert Forster's covers CD I Had a New York Girlfriend. She appears with Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes, her own band the Dames and with jazz combination Henry Manetta and the Trip.

Graney and Moore engineered and mixed the debut albums by the Darling Downs (Salmon and Ron Peno) and the Muddy Spurs. They both played in Salmon, the seven guitar, two drummer heavy rock orchestra devised and led by Kim Salmon.