Born Kevin John Shirley on June 29th in Johannesburg, South Africa, the first of four children, Kevin went to school in Johannesburg until he was asked to leave at the age of 13 - which saw him sent to boarding school in Bloemfontein, a radically right wing Godforsaken city in the middle of a most repressive, aggressive and barren farming community. There, in order to avoid the rigors of the Hitler youth type military disciplines, he joined the band as a drummer, switching at a later stage to French Horn, and joining the youth orchestra and choir! It wasn't long before the control freak surfaced, and Kevin found himself conducting the orchestra, probably because it required less practice! After matriculating from high school, once again conscription for the South African Defence Force became an issue, and again Kevin dodged the bullet by enrolling in the University of Cape Town's Music Faculty, supposedly reading for a Bachelor of Music (Composition) - although how he managed that by spending endless evenings over mugs of cheap beer at the Pig 'n Whistle remains a mystery!
Always unable to sit still, the tedium of university life took it's toll, and after 18 months of studying, Kevin dropped out for a job working as a radio sound engineer at the South African Broadcasting Corporation, where it apparently took no time at all for him to beat the system and routines, and have a studio assigned specifically for him in order to do all the music programs - with the only proviso being that all the weeks programs had to be completed and turned in on time!
After
13 months of minimum wage and living at home again, the wanderlust took over and
Europe beckoned the young man, which saw four months of playing guitar in Greek train
stations and on Amsterdam sidewalks - an experience dulled only by a false imprisonment
in The Hague which put an end to the carefree wanderings, and saw Kevin return to
South Africa. This time, however, armed with an ambition - to work for the best record
producer in South Africa at the time, Tully McCully, at his Spaced Out Sound Studios
in Cape Town. McCully was not immediately convinced, but it became apparent that
the young Kevin had no intention of leaving, and so was hired to make coffee, paint
the walls, and tidy the tape locker. It must be said, that in those duties, he was
an abject failure - and between being fired fairly routinely, quickly became a steadfast
second engineer for the studio, which Kevin complemented by beginning to produce
his first albums on no or low budgets, having generously been given studio downtime
by McCully to complete these experiments. The first of these was an album called
"At The Corner" by Robin Auld on WEA Records, and
was the first of four produced for Auld which ultimately yielded some #1 radio songs
and many top 10 hits.
This period saw Kevin working with many of the top local artists, including Juluka, David Kramer, Winston Mankunku, Basil "Mannenburg" Coetzee, The Sweatband and many others, including producing two records for his own heavy rock band, The Council, and garnering the "Caveman" moniker along the way.
After a few years of making local records, and inheriting a family, Kevin and
his adopted clan packed and left the politically troubled landscape of Apartheid-era
South Africa, and headed for Sydney, 
Australia. Life as a freelance producer in
his newly adopted home wasn't always easy, and to support the family, Kevin became
a live sound engineer for a local band, producing local albums from a small 16 track
studio in Newcastle, before things began to click in the big-smoke environment of
Sydney, and after working on demos with a new band called The
Baby Animals, became the engineer on their debut album after they were signed
to a worldwide deal, working with uber-producer Mike Chapman in New York. The album
went multi-platinum, and was #1 in Australia forever, and Kevin went on to move to
New York City and work with Chapman on records by Billy Squier, Material
Issue and others. However, life as an illegal alien in expensive New York City
took it's toll, and as a financially strapped young single father, things started
looking grim, until after bashing away at doors, and borrowing money to mail out
showreels and tapes, Kevin secured a gig in Canada engineering the Rush
album, "Counterparts", for mega producer Peter Collins, who also enlisted
Kevin's services on the Bon Jovi "Greatest Hits"
singles and the Divinyls contribution to the Melrose
Place soundtrack.
At this stage, with enough cash to move back to Australia, the prospect of being a big fish in a small pond was infinitely more attractive than being a guppy in an ocean, and it seemed impossible to get beyond the secretaries of the US labels A & R men. So, it was back to the land Down Under - where an apartment on the beach cost about one fourth of what a mangy Manhattan closet rented out for, and the air and ocean are clean and beautiful! * That is, 'til Silverchair, and there's nothing like having a hit record to make US reps want someone on their team - and the first out of the box was the best of the lot, the A & R guru, the legend, John Kalodner, who signed Kevin up to produce a new prog-rock band called Pod, for his new home label, Sony! And that's where he learned that things were not going to be as they had at Geffen, where he had been given the run of the show, and the benefit of the doubt - always with incredible success. Sony did not want to work the record, shelved it and dropped the band - definitely an auspicious rite of passage for a producer, but when super group Journey had run into a maze of brick walls while looking for a producer for their comeback album, Kalodner suggested they see Kevin who was still working on Pod, and the meeting with Steve Perry and the band in San Francisco was very positive - thus beginning a long and fruitful collaboration with the supergroup! Soon to follow where another supergroup, Aerosmith, then San Diego punkers Rocket From The Crypt, The Black Crowes, Dream Theater and Iron Maiden amongst others, a highlight being producing the song sung at the lighting of the Olympic Flame at the Opening Ceremony by Tina Arena; and there appears to be no slowing down, as records by new artists like SOiL and Finnish rockers, HIM, are topping the charts both here and all over Europe, and a new signing to Kevin's Caveman Productions label, the Healing Sixes, are on the verge of a European release with their debut album. It seems there is still more to be writ................
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