Gary Jeshel Forrester (born 3 July 1946) is a musician, composer, novelist, poet, short-story writer, biographer, memoirist, academic, and historian based in Rotoiti Forest, New Zealand. He was profiled by Random House Australia (Australian Country Music, 1991) as one of the major figures in the Australian music scene during the 1980s and 1990s, and in New Zealand by FishHead: Wellington's Magazine as a "modern Renaissance man." In a 2018 interview with New Zealand's leading newspaper, Forrester was described by the Sunday Star-Times as "a Native American descendant, on his mother's side ... who settled in New Zealand in 2006. [He is] a published author and poet and has released three solo albums in the past three years."
According to Fishhead, in addition to his teaching fellowship lecturing in legal ethics at the Victoria University of Wellington Law School from 2008 to 2016, Forrester had published "three novels and a book of poems, [was] a successful bluegrass composer and musician, an advocate for indigenous rights, and a father of six children." He taught at the University of Melbourne from 1976 to 1980, at the Northwestern School of Law in Oregon from 1983 to 1985, at Deakin University from 1991 to 1992, at the University of Illinois from 2000 to 2003, and (as noted) at Victoria University of Wellington from 2008 to 2016.
Beginning in the 1980s, he represented Indian tribes in securing restoration legislation through the United States Congress; authored a text on American Indian law; and wrote numerous articles on the rights of indigenous peoples, the environment, civil procedure, and other legal topics.
Strangers To Us All: Lawyers and Poetry (featuring biographies and works of poets and writers who have a legal background) declared that "Forrester is a hard man to pigeon-hole. He has practiced law, taught law, and spent time away from the legal profession. He is a singer, musician, poet, and writer."
Bluegrass, Folk, and Americana music
Forrester's musical compositions were recorded (under his "nom de guitar" Eddie Rambeaux) on the albums Dust on the Bible (RCA Records, 1987), Uluru (Larrikin Records, 1988) and Kamara (Troubadour Records, 1990). Between 2015 and 2018, Forrester issued his first three solo albums, Alma Rose, Jeshel, and The Old Churchyard (Te Ahumairangi Records), featuring 30 new compositions.
In 1988, Forrester's single "Uluru" was featured on two national commemorative albums by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC), as "the cream of a very rich mix" of Australian country music. The ABC observed: "Like our landscape, the history of Australia is best told by our poets, and this recording offers a unique slice... of our bushland, our people, our dreams, and our extraordinary sense of humour."
Forrester's music also appeared on the Larrikin Records 1996 composite album, Give Me a Home Among the Gum Trees, along with Australian country-folk icons Eric Bogle, Judy Small, The Bushwackers, and others.
Random House Australia's 1991 profile declared that "the most striking aspect of the albums, apart from their frequency, is the exceptionally high standard of songwriting." Australian Country Music observed that the bluegrass band fronted by Forrester (as lead singer and guitarist), the Rank Strangers, "have a musical immediacy that typifies the best of bluegrass and recalls such players as The Stanley Brothers and Bill Monroe."
According to Country Beat, Australia's country music journal, Dust on the Bible was "one of the best bluegrass-country albums released in Australia" in 1987, and Forrester was "one of the best songwriters living in Australia." In December 1988, Mike Jackson of The Canberra Times wrote that the Rank Strangers' second album, Uluru (the Aboriginal name for Australia's central Ayers Rock), "featured some delightful lead breaks on mandolin (Andrew Hook), banjo (Peter Somerville) and fiddle (Gerry Hale), and some rock-solid accompaniment from guitarist (Forrester) and bass player (Philomena Carroll)." Jackson said that the album was "worth buying for the fiddle playing alone. Hale shows great technique and a flair for appropriate harmony lines while matching the punch of the mandolin and banjo well."