Loene Carmen (born in 1970 Adelaide, Australia) is an Australian singer/songwriter and actress.
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Carmen's father is rock/jazz/blues pianist Peter Head. Head played piano on It Walks Like Love and in several of Carmen's former bands, including acting as musical director for country revue act Honky Tonk Angels, which also featured Justine Clarke and Noah Taylor.
As a teenager, Carmen was discovered working in a Kings Cross pizza bar and cast in John Duigan's The Year My Voice Broke (1987) for which she was nominated for an Australian Film Institute Best Actress award. Other notable roles include Sallie-Anne Huckstepp in the docudrama Blue Murder and Christine in Alkinos Tsilimidos' haunting drama Tom White, for which she also received nominations for Australian Film Institute Best Supporting Actress and IF Best Actress.
After performing in a variety of bands since the early 1990s, Carmen went solo in 2002.
Carmen has released four albums to date (2011), most recently It Walks Like Love (Inertia) on December 5, 2009, hailed as "...a truly outstanding record and, with it, Loene Carmen has not only created her finest piece of work to date, but also one of the albums of the year."
The album was produced by Burke Reid and with guitarist Brock Fitzgerald and drummer Samuel Pearton from The Scare and Sam Worrad from The Holy Soul on bass. Special guests include Jed Kurzel (Mess Hall) on duet "Oh Apollo!", Peter Head on piano with Tex Perkins and Holiday Sidewinder also making an appearance on backing vocals. Her third album Rock'n'Roll Tears, co written and recorded with Jed Kurzel and Sam Worrad, attracted standout reviews. In 2004, Slight Delay was released to minor critical acclaim on Reverberation.[1]
As well as performing with ever evolving bands (including Mess Hall, Warren Ellis and Jim White (Dirty Three) and "X"'s Cathy Green), Carmen has toured solo opening for Gareth Liddiard (The Drones) and Renee Geyer in Australia and Mick Harvey in Europe and showcased solo at SxSW in 2009.
Tracks, Nashville High and Rock n Roll Tears were featured tracks on the Australian series Love My Way. "Born Funky Born Free" was featured in the film Fat Pizza.
She has contributed music writing to anthologies Meanjin on Rock 'n' Roll: All Yesterday's Parties and Your Mother Would be Proud: True Tales of Mayhem and Misadventure (edited by Jenny Valentish & Tamara Sheward). In March 2010 Carmen released mini album Leave It At The Door, a collaboration with "the mysterious Krystina" under the moniker "T: Lo" in 2003.
Carmen has two sons, Chester Van (b. 2011) and Dutch Bon (b. 2007) by her partner, actor Aden Young and a daughter, Holiday Sidewinder (b. 1990).
Young directed the music video for "Nashville High" and 'meticulously edited'[2] Carmen's "Mimic The Rain" clip. Carmen co-composed the score for Young's short film The Rose of Ba Ziz, as well as appearing in it.
Brother, Joshua Beagley, is also a musician, leader of successful 1990s Sydney pop funk band Swoop and currently heads disco house act Confection and Professor Groove and The Booty Affair.