Toby Rand
Born December 21, 1977 in Melbourne, Australia – to be exact Sandringham Hospital. His mother resigns from North Wales and speaks it fluently, his father from England. Toby’s mother has been playing & teaching music for most of her life. She’s a very accomplished piano player and a fantastic singer. Toby’s Dad was born in England and grew up in Portsmouth & is a passionate soccer fan and well reknown scientist. His Dad’s greatest claim to fame, amongst other things, is booking Cream (Eric Clapton) to play at his University dance. Toby is the youngest of 3 brothers, and it was these two brothers who played in a well known local band that Toby got the inspiration to play. Both Simon and Tim still play music. A well filtered blend of rock n roll entered the house. Bands that Toby grew up listening to include U2, Hendrix, Guns & Roses, AC DC, Stone Temple Pilots, Faith No More, Paul Kelly, Rose Tattoo, Divinyls, INXS, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Nirvana and Midnight Oil. I suppose it was quite ironic to hear Toby sing “Burning Down the House” because there was definately a Talking Heads period in the Rand household. The young girl in the picture is Toby’s favorite his young neice M.
Growing up Toby became really passionate about sport and is an excellent soccer player. He loves going out for a surf in Australia – well, its kind of what most Aussie’s do is to go out for a lazy surf now and then – some more than others! Toby went to school in Mentone and fully completed his studies. Its funny to read that he dropped out, his Dad would have killed him if he did!! When Toby finished school his brothers were playing in various bands and Toby decided to form his first band with his mate Nathan, can’t remember their first band name, however, that morphed into Tarko. Tarko was a great band to watch. They had various soundguys, guitar techs, drummers, bass player, however Toby, Todd and Dale have remained together. This band is getting big round Melbourne Venues including a nude photo shoot for a calander with other big Melbourne Cover bands …LOL. Throughout this time this was their job, they had their own production people and they made money out of playing the bigger coverband venues. They decided they wanted to record their own music & recorded their “Fallin” EP which got radio play and record company interest.
Not happy enough they decided to change the name and play harder & more rock … Enter, stage right Juke Kartel…. almost overnight things picked up & have supported Nickelback, and played gigs as big as the Taste of Chaos Tour. Check out the Juke Kartel website to listen to some of the tracks.
The fans know Toby is down to earth, never says a bad word about anyone, and definitely loves life. What you see is what you get with Toby … keep watching
