| About Mabey and Ullsperger | Ross Mabey. Born in rural Australia, Ross has had a lifelong passion for poetry and music. Of himself he says "In our house we bridge three generations and just about every music genre. Son Jono is a university student, who has lived his life in almost equal parts between Australia and England. My wife Linda has strong Irish-American roots and I'm an Aussie country boy. So, we are able to accommodate everyone's musical passions in our home". Most of Ross's working life has been in telecommunications. In Australia, working in Sydney, Perth and Adelaide and for the past 8 years in London, England. He and his family have also traveled in the USA and widely in Europe. Of his interest in music, he says, "I've been a fan of The Beetles, Elvis, Shirley Bassey. Also, country greats like Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers, Glen Campbell and Dolly Parton to name a few. But my move into writing lyrics came via my interest in poetry, which I began dabbling in as a spiritual exercise as far back as the 1970's". For Ross the expansion into song writing in the last couple of years has opened up new horizons and put him into contact with some very new talents. He says, "I noticed that my poetry started to flow like a song, so I began searching the internet for a likeminded soul who I could exchange ideas with and was lucky enough to come across Jeffrey Ullsperger. He became a mentor and co-songwriter and although our styles are different, we complement each other and now we believe that this combination is developing into a winning formula." Songs that they have written together can be heard on the internet at http://www.broadjam.com/lyrics Jeffrey Ullsperger A musician and lyricist for the past 18 years, he learned to play guitar and bass while in high school and played periodically in a “Garage Band” with school friends. His introduction to writing music came a few years later, through worship song creation for his church with the encouragement of a very commercially successful song writing cousin. These songs of Jeffrey's have been played regularly as church and wedding service selections. Jeffrey is a Wisconsin boy, living with wife Sharon and 5 children on the shores of Lake Michigan, in Port Washington, WI, about 25 miles north of Milwaukee. As a lyricist who also writes melody, Jeffrey is acutely aware that the lyrics he and Ross write need to be "melody ready" when they're sent to the individuals they have engaged to write the music for them, believing that to be an all important ingredient in the successful lyric writing recipe. Jeffrey's working experiences provide quite a stark contrast to Ross's. He says, "I started out as a Firefighter and Emergency Medical Technician for my hometown Fire Department and later worked in the Emergency Room as and EMT for a large Milwaukee area hospital." These days, Jeffrey has dedicated his working life to turning the lyrics that he and Ross have written into commercially viable and appealing songs. He says of their collaboration, "Since I've been in the song writing partnership with Ross, I feel that we have successfully infused our talents as poet and lyricist and have created a unique style to our song writing. You might say that we're modern day Lennon and McCartney's." Whatever the case may be, their combination of spiritual lyrics and poetic phrasing is getting them noticed amongst their peers. Jeffrey says, "The peer critiques that we are getting on our songs are extremely favorable, with people saying they can literally 'feel the song', or 'can picture themselves in the place of the story's character', and we hope that you will feel this as well." http://www.isound.com/jeffrey_ullsperger |
Return to profile |