Kavyen Temperley Profile

Name: Satyam Kavyen Temperley (born Finlay Beaton)
Known As: Kav
Birthdate: 3rd of July 1978
Birthplace: Mosman Park, Western Australia
Resides: Fremantle, Western Australia

Kavyen is the lead singer, song writer, bassist and occasionally the keys of the Australian band Eskimo Joe. He changed his name at age 7 to Satyam Kavyen Temperley, Temperley being his mother's maiden name and the rest meaning "Poet of Truth".

At the age of 12, after visiting India with his mother, he attended the alternative Ko Hsuan school in Devon, England, but returned back home to attend John Curtin High School. As a child he changed schools quite often and travelled the world, gaining valuable life experiences

Originally wanted to be an actor, but when he started wagging school to write music, realised that his calling lay in music. He always had a love for writing music and recording it and through this met up with band member Joel. Best friends with another band member, Stuart MacLeod.

And, as a special bonus, Kav, in his own words!

I was born on 3rd of July 1978. A home birth in a weatherboard house in Mosman Park, a suburb just out of Fremantle. I attended state school in Fremantle for the first two years of my formal education. When I turned seven, I changed my name to Kavyen (which means poet), and spent a year at a school called Karri Valley, in Pemberton, which is situated just south of Perth. That all fell apart and I returned to finish my primary schooling at an alternative school in Fremantle called Lance Holt. This constant changing of schools affected my hand writing, spelling, speech, general grammar, which I think has been a major advantage in all my art and song writing. I auditioned for a special theatre course and got in at John Curtin Senior High School. The end of my first year I travelled to India with my mum and met a whole lot of kids from a Sanyassan school in England called Ko Hsuan and was accepted to join them in the next school term. Up to this point I had been extremely unimpressed with the method of learning in the Australian state school system. I don’t believe in the myth of the stupid person. When I arrived at Ko Hsuan I rediscovered music in a new way. We had an amazing music room at the school which had no constraint on when or how we could use it, so for instance during a double period of maths, we would run off to the music room for the 5 minute break we had and jam, strangely enough I was good at maths for the first time in my life. In the school breaks, I went to Tuscany in Italy and worked in a kitchen at a Sanyassan centre. But I had left to go to India on a 2 month holiday and ended up at school in England for a year so I was home sick and returned to Australia and John Curtin Senior High School.

My improvement in maths didn’t last and neither did my school attendances, although I did return back to theatre arts. After a brief stint at trying out for the jazz conservatorium which I thankfully didn’t get into. I spent most of my days wagging school and going home and writing songs and recording them on my tape deck. After a while, I had built up a repertoire of material and after a gig we put on at school, I met a couple of guys from a band called Carpet who I invited back to my house to hear my songs. They were brothers Simon and Stuart Leach and guitarist Joel Quartermain. We formed a band called Freuds Pillow. We played around Perth to mediocre success and eventually, not satisfied with what we were doing, I wrote a whole new set of songs with one of my childhood and still best friends Stuart Macleod (one of these songs, Mr Hoek, ended up on an E.P we released with Freuds Pillow. I returned to India and England for a couple of months and came up with revelation that what me and Stuart were doing was hinting that there was a little bit more going on below the surface.

We worked with the idea in mind to do something really simple and I wrote a letter to Stu telling of my new found idea. Me and Joel we also had very similar views on music so Joel took on the role as drummer (which sounded like a good idea to us considering he was a guitarist), and with myself on bass and Stu on guitar, we entered the Campus Band Competition and won nationally, that ended Freuds Pillow, and we embarked on what is now Eskimo Joe. I live now in Fremantle with a cat called Skivvy, two friends and a sweet jam room. I’m still crap at maths and have messy handwriting. courtesy: eskimojoe.net (archived)