Dom Turner is best known as guitarist/ vocalist, founding member of the iconic Australian blues group, Backsliders. He has toured the Australian festival circuit since the 1980s and regularly appears at most major blues related music festivals including Bluesfest, Woodford Folk Festival and Blues on Broadbeach to name but a few. Dom’s influences are many and varied – a blend of delta blues, Piedmont blues, rock, dub and sounds of Asia. He is a highly regarded speaker on blues music and has guested on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) radio programs (including a weekly series on ABC Gold Coast entitled 'Blues Tuesdays' and guest presenting Radio National’s ‘Music Deli’) and presented music workshops at festivals and in universities (both nationally and internationally). In 2009, Dom was invited to perform onstage with legendary guitarist Derek Trucks (The Derek Trucks Band) and again in 2024 with The Tedeschi Trucks Band (wiht Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi).
Dom has received multiple awards, including in 2022 and 2024, Traditional Blues Artist of the Year by the Sydney Blues Society, Blues Songwriter of the Year at the Australian Blues Awards, an award that is marked by a sculpture at the Information Centre in Goulburn, NSW, home of the Australian Blues Awards.
As well as over 35 years of recording and performing blues in Australia and internationally with the Backsliders, Dom has embarked on a variety of solo and collaborative musical projects including touring as a solo artist in the USA, playing and teaching blues guitar at Augusta Blues week in West Virginia, performing and recording in the USA and Australia with US blues harmonica legend, Phil Wiggins (Phil Wiggins & Dom Turner), and MIssissippi blues legend RL Boyce (RL Boyce with Dom Turner), US blues greats, Del Ray and Steve James. His trademark ‘slide’ guitar sound can be heard on myriad session recordings and his songs have featured on the ABC TV programme Seachange as well as the soundtrack to Tim Winton’s best-selling novel, Dirt Music and the 2013 Channel 9 TV series Underbelly - Squizzy Taylor’. In 2008 Dom was invited onstage to play with slide guitar legend Derek Trucks at the Adelaide international Guitar Festival.
Dom’s other side projects, include Supro as well as The Angry Tradesmen, a grunge-rock project with fellow Backslider, Rob Hirst, Dom Turner and Ian Collard with Australian Record Industry Award (ARIA) award-winning harmonica player, Ian Collard. Dom has recorded and released a number of cross-cultural music recordings, the first with Vietnamese stringed instrument master, Kim Sinh, entitled “Two Days in Hanoi” as well as with innovative Korean Komongo musician, Jin Hi Kim and Chinese Guqin musician, Tony Wheeler. In 2016 Dom teamed up with Toledo Ohio based lap steel guitarist Nikki D Brown of the Sacred Steel guitar tradition resulting in the formation of The Turner Brown Band, three recorded albums to date as well as regular Australian festival and music venue tours.