RHYTHMS MAGAZINE - MAY-JUNE 2019

NEW ALBUMS FROM THE EARLES - STEVE AND JUSTIN TOWNES A refuge for real music!

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HISTORY: Eel Pie Island & The British Blues Boom The Wilsey Sound JJ Cale Uncovered

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Volume N0. No. 292 March/April 2019 2019 Volume 293 May/June

The Word

The latest issue. By Brian Wise

Rhythms CD Sampler

The latest sampler is only available to subscribers!

The PBS Radio Festival

Jan Dale is a long-serving bluegrass presenter at Melbourne’s favourite specialist music station.

Nashville Skyline

Anne McCue meets Bill Chambers.

All That Jazz

Jen Anderson on how Wynton Marsalis is opening new musical windows.

ON TOUR

18 Cedric Burnside The new generation of Mississippi Hill Country bluesman. By Brian Wise.

19 Deb Conway & Willy Zigier

There is more than meets the eye in this precision turntable.

Everything from the USdeveloped tone arm to the vibration-absorbing feet acts in synergy so all you hear is what is in the grooves.

Eric Bibb

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Chris Cain

The CXN (V2) network streamer with its faster processor improves on the original which won What Hi-Fi? awards three years running. Chromecast is built-in. Just tap the cast button in your favourite app to stream music from your smartphone, tablet or laptop in stunning high definition sound.

Jeff Jenkins on the duo’s new album The Words of Men.

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Brian Wise talks to the world’s happiest griot.

This Cain is able to play the blues. By Steve Bell

The National Celtic Festival Andrew Swift

With awards in hand he’s heading for Groundwater.

By Megan Gnad.

24 Tammi Savoy

Cambridge Audio CXA60 Amp plus CXN V2 Streamer $2,348. SAVE $650

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Charles Jenkins

The celebrated singer-songwriter takes a trip to the moon and back. By Jeff Jenkins.

JEFF TWEEDY

Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy steps out on his own with a memoir, solo album and acoustic tour.

It’s into the spotlight for the Stones’ long-time backing vocalist.

By Andra Jackson.

Bill Frisell

The acclaimed and revered master guitarist visits us with his latest trio. By Andra Jackson.

Lonnie Holley

Sculptor and visual artist turns singer and creates a great album. By Andra Jackson.

FEATURES 38

Showroom: 84 Tudor St Hamilton

Susan Tedeschi

The new Tedeschi Trucks album Signs offers even more diversity than before. By Iain Patience.

Ian Felice talks about line-up changes, personal matters and a batch of political songs. By Chris Familton.

45 Glenn Cardier

The veteran musician finds fresh inspiration. By Steve Bell.

HISTORY

46 JJ Cale Stays Around

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Brian Wise talks to Christine Lakeland Cale about the release of previously unheard JJ material.

The Wilsey Sound: The Rise & Fall of James Calvin Wilsey

By Michael Goldberg. The story of an influential but under-recognised guitarist.

Eel Pie Island & The British Blues Boom

Tony Hillier enjoyed a ringside seat during this historical epoch in the evolution of modern music.

COLUMNS 58 59 60 61

Classic Band – CLASSIC HEAT

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Underwater Is Where The Action Is

63 64 65 66

You Won’t Hear This On Radio

67

Musician: John Rooney

By Steve Bell

Musician: Daniel Champagne

By Steve Bell

Classic Album – CROSBY, STILLS & NASH Billy Pinnell

The iconic blues outfit retains a close affinity with Australia

By Steve Bell

By Christopher Hollow

By Trevor Leeden

Waitin’ Around To Die

By Chris Familton

Technology – Steel Wheels

By John Cornell

33 1/3 Revelations

By Martin Jones

Classic Album – Crosby, Stills & Nash

By Billy Pinnell

MORE REVIEWS 67

Feature Albums

Stuart Coupe reviews The Soul Movers and Brian Wise listens to The Black Sorrows and Bill Chambers.

70 Albums

Rhythms writers’ reviews.

74 World Music & Folk

By Tony Hillier 75 Classic Album – THE BAND

By Geoff King 76 Blues

By Al Hensley 76 Jazz

By Tony Hillier

40 Neil Murray

Stuart Coupe talks to one of Australia’s finest songwriters.

41 Mick Thomas

77 Vinyl

By Steve Bell 81 Book

42

83 84

Phone (02) 4962 1490

He has a new anthology so is he really going to retire?

By Jeff Jenkins

THE MELBOURNE INTERNATIONAL JAZZ FESTIVAL 33 Lisa Fischer

.com.au

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Stephen Cummings

COVER STORY

*Buy online and receive

Bringing retro to Bello. By Megan Gnad.

44 The Felice Brothers

With a fine new album Mick Thomas doesn’t intend to look back. By Jeff Jenkins.

Justin Townes Earle

Earle The Younger hits his stride as The Saint of Lost Causes.

By Martin Jones.

Des Cowley reviews a biography of the eclectic Keith Rowe and Geoff King reads Jorma Kaukonen’s autobiography.

Festival Calendar Hell & Goodbye

By Sue Barrett

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JOHN LEE HOOKER AUGUST 22, 1917 - JUNE 21, 2001 PATRON SAINT OF RHYTHMS MAGAZINE

Big Daddy Wilson Deep In My Soul RUF 1259

The BB King Blues Band The Soul Of The King RUF 1268

Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram Kingfish ALCD 4990

Manx Marriner Mainline Hell Bound For Heaven SPCD1404

The Duke Robillard Band Ear Worms SPCD1403

The Lachy Doley Group Make Or Break ATS007

Colin Linden & Luther Dickinson &The Tennessee Valentines

Amour SPCD 1405 + LP

Hat Fitz & Cara Hand It Over HFAC 005

Blues Arcadia Carnival Of Fools BA 003

Reese Wynams Sweet Release JRA61072 + LP

Pete Cornelius Doing Me Good PCM 2018 + LP

Steve Poltz Shine On RHRCD 310 + LP

Dale Watson Call Me Lucky RHRCD 308 + LP

Tommy Castro + The Painkillers Killin’ It - Live ALCD 4989

The Cash Box Kings Hail To The Kings!

ALCD 4991

CD + VINYL

CREDITS Managing Editor: Brian Wise Senior Contributor: Martin Jones Senior Contributors: Michael Goldberg / Stuart Coupe Design & Layout: Sally Syle “Graphics By Sally” Website/Online Management: Robert Wise Proofreading: Gerald McNamara

CONTRIBUTORS Jen Anderson Sue Barrett Steve Bell Nick Charles Des Cowley Stuart Coupe Meg Crawford Brett Leigh Dicks Chris Familton Keith Glass Megan Gnad Michael Goldberg Al Hensley

Tony Hillier Christopher Hollow Jeff Jenkins David Johnston Martin Jones Chris Lambie Trevor J. Leeden Anne McCue Ian McFarlane Chase Mantel Billy Pinnell

Michael Smith Brian Wise

Julian James Silver Spade JJCD002

CONTACTS Advertising: bookings@rhythms.com.au Rates/Specs/Deadlines: admin@rhythms.com.au Subscription Enquiries: subscriber@rhythms.com.au General Enquiries: admin@rhythms.com.au Editorial Enquiries: admin@rhythms.com.au Website: rhythms.com.au

SOCIALS Facebook: facebook.com/rhythms.magazine Twitter: twitter.com/rhythmsmag Instagram: instagram.com/rhythmsmagazine

CD + VINYL

2CD / 2DVD / BluRay / 3 LP

CD or DOUBLE RED VINYL

Joe Bonamassa Redemption CD-JRA61069 LP-JRA61070

Joe Bonamassa British Blues Explosion - Live JRA58241, 58242, 58243, 58244

Joe Bonamassa & Beth Hart Black Coffee

PUBLISHER RHYTHMS MAGAZINE PTY LTD PO BOX 5060 HUGHEDALE VIC 3166 Printing: Spotpress Pty Ltd Distribution: Fairfax Media Publication Solutions/Newsagents

Appleseed’s 21st Anniversary Roots And Branches APRCD 1142

NEW WEBSITE

www.onlybluesmusic.com

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Support local- Music Bizarre 02 66223262 musicbzarre@outlook.com 60 Mangellan St, Lismore NSW

THE WORD E

HAND IT OVER ALBUM OUT NOW! ‘HAND IT OVER IS A VISUALLY EVOCATIVE GEM. BOTH MUSICIANS ARE SOUL MATES WHO JOIN EACH OTHER’S CHANGING MOODS AND SHARE JOYS AND SORROWS.”

HAT FITZ & CARA AVAILABLE AT: JB-HIFI STORES ONLYBLUESMUSIC.COM I I-TUNES HATFITZANDCARA.COM 8

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of the show, and all the subsequent shows, community radio network and presenting everyone was going wild. This was only the Off The Record live to Melbourne from the first of many Australian visits we will see Bay-FM studios. If you live anywhere near from this amazing duo. the range of Bay-FM then I suggest you should support them by joining or donating – I’m With Her is somewhat of a bluegrass as you should to PBS if you are in Melbourne supergroup and each of the trio enjoy (in the same way I know you support this separate careers: Aoife O’Donovan is the magazine). The station does a sensational lead singer with Crooked Still. Sara Watkins job. sings and plays fiddle in Nickel Creek with At the end of my Bluesfest weekend I needed her brother Sean and Chris Thile (who will be to get away to New Orleans and Jazz Fest for here soon with The Punch Brothers). Sarah Jarosz has been singing and playing guitar, a holiday! (I am writing this as I am readying banjo and mandolin on the Austin scene for to leave so that I can sneak a comment into this issue before it heads to the printer). Next well over a decade - and she is still only 27!

That was a huge amount of talent in one year we are hoping to reinstate the Rhythms trio. Let’s hope the Americana contingent stall at Bluesfest, something that wasn’t possible this year due to logistics (mine). continues to swell in coming years.

Thanks to those of you who took the time to find me and share your enthusiasm Kasey Chambers and Ben Harper at Bluesfest 2019 for the magazine.

Photo by Steve Ford There were quite a few Bluesfest highlights for me this year, yet I only got to see a fraction of what I wanted to catch. (Next issue we will have a full round up and photographic essay from others). I thought Little Steven & The Disciples of Soul were sensational.

Not only did the 15-piece band sound amazing but they looked every bit as good as they sounded.

Steven Van Zandt’s music is firmly planted in ‘60s’ rock, soul and blues and this guaranteed a powerhouse performance. Steven’s comments about life and

Ben Harper. On the Saturday evening Kasey revisited her landmark album The Captain in a special performance that exemplified why she is currently our greatest Americana export. Not only was The Captain a landmark album for Chambers but it was also one for Australian music and launched her into Nashville like no-one else since Keith Urban.

They love her there and rightly so. I think she has also made them take our version of Americana seriously. It was lovely to see guests Ben Harper, The Veronicas and The War & Treaty join Kasey on stage. I suggested to her at a Q&A that she could let her dad, Bill, do one of his songs but he is too reticent to take away the spotlight and preferred to stand on stage playing guitar impeccably as usual.

(His latest album, 1952, is superb). Ben Harper also very kindly allowed us to use one of his songs on our latest sampler and we certainly appreciate his help immensely. More on Bluesfest next issue.

By the way, you might have noticed a slight change to the magazine this month in terms of the cover stock and the fact that it is stapled.

This is just temporary for the quieter months, so don’t panic!.

Time to hit the airways.

Until next issue……enjoy the music.

Until next issue…..

Brian Wise Editor 9

MAY/JUNE 2019 THE RHYTHMS SAMPLER CELEBRATE OUR 27th BIRTHDAY WITH THE THIRD RHYTHMS CD SAMPLER!

RHYTHMS MARCH/APRIL 2019

2. ALEJANDRO ESCOVEDO with DON ANTONIO Something Blue From The Crossing. A Texas songwriting legend with an Italian band! The ‘concept’ album addresses current issues in USA politics, including, as the title suggests, immigration - and it rocks.

From the late and great John Power of Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, the Rock Doctors, The Hippos and more. This is the b-side of ‘Rocket 88’ which was released on Joe Camilleri’s Mighty Records label. A blues ballad featuring John’s amazing voice. We thank Joe for allowing us9 to use this. Look out for L 201 A P R I John, the new Black Sorrows H /Citizen C appy R H .

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4. OH PEP! Up Against The World

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Courtesy of Bloodlines. From Prisoner of Love, the 20th and latest album from one of our most acclaimed songwriters (soon to give up touring, he says). Look out also for his brand new double-disc solo career spanning retrospective.

7. THE BACKSLIDERS You Are Not Alone

3. HIGH RISE HILTON & THE SKYSCRAPERS Just To Be With You

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6. STEPHEN CUMMINGS The Wind Blew Hard

From the brilliant album I Wasn’t Only Thinking About You, one of our favourite albums of last year. Pepita Emmerichs and Olivia Hally are two of the hardest working young musicians in Australia and have achieved acclaim in the USA. It’s time for you to discover their talent.

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From the album Heathen Songbook.

They were at Bluesfest from its second year so we are delighted to have them along here. One of Australia’s finest blues outfits ever, lead by Dom Turner and propelled by the incredible drumming of Rob Hirst.

8. OPELOUSAS Sugar Baby

From Opelousas Baby, an album by some ‘veteran’ musicians with Kerri Simpson’s ‘rough, raw vocals’ and Alison Ferrier on ‘down and dirty stripped-back guitar’ and fiddle, with Anthony Shortte’s ‘swamp-soaked percussion.’ Straight from the Melbourne delta to you.

9. MARTIN CILIA December Sun

From Surfersaurus. Courtesy of Bombora.

Australia’s premier surf rock guitarist joined The Atlantics back in 1998 and the band have since gone on to record many of his tunes that have also appeared in surf movies. He has also recently played with Mental As Anything.

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RHYTHMS SAMPLER #3 MARCH/APRIL 2019 1. Thank Me In The Morning - Ben Harper (3.38) 2. Something Blue - Alejandro Escovedo with Don Antonio (4.110 3. Just To Be With You - High Rise Hilton (John Power ) & The Skyscrapers (5.06) 4. Up Against The World - Oh Pep! (3.06) 5. Not My Lucky Day - Russell Morris (3.43) 6. The Wind Blew Hard - Stephen Cummings (3.35) 7. You Are Not Alone - The Backsliders (3.43) 8. Sugar Baby - Opelousas (5.46)

SIDE B

1. COLD IRONS BOUND I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine (Dylan) Cold Irons Bound is a Melbourne four-piece influenced by a mix of classic Indie (The Church, R.E.M., The Replacements, Teenage Fanclub) and Americana (Dylan, Young, Petty, The Jayhawks). Here they tackle Bob’s song that first appeared on John Wesley Harding (1967). It wouldn’t be Rhythms if we didn’t mention Dylan!

2. LINDA BULL I Got The Blues (Jagger-Richards) From Stoned: Celebrating The Music of the Rolling Stones. Available through Rhythms Magazine (www.rhythms.com. au). Originally recorded by the Stones for Sticky Fingers (1971). Here, one half of the famous local duo - who you can see singing with Paul Kelly - provides a stand-out rendition. The album also features many other incredible local talents including Chris Wilson, Raised

By Eagles and more.

3. NICK CRAFT No Silver Lining

From Minerva, his first solo record.

Produced by his brother and friend Martin (MCraft). They used to play in a psychedelic rock band called Sidewinder. Recorded by multiple Aria winner Wayne Connolly in Sydney.

4. ANDY BAYLOR Good Rockin’ Guitar

From Blues from The Irene Building.

Multi-instrumentalist Andy is a legend on the Melbourne music scene and has released more than a dozen albums since 1992. This is a collection of original songs with a strong blues feel. “This is blues as good as any you’ll hear in the world,” wrote Samuel J Fell in the SMH.

5. BLUES ARCADIA Seven Days A Week

From Carnival of Fools. Australian Blues Music Award winners Blues Arcadia deliver an uninhibited old-fashioned soul stomp revival, combining the legendary soul of Stax and Motown with the heat and power of the Chicago and Memphis blues.

h ppy 30t 6. YOLANDA INGLEY II Woman Got To Cry From Woman Got To Cry. Produced

by Sam Teskey and recorded direct to analogue tape at Half Mile Harvest Studio in January 2018. It features Ingley’s original songs and the brilliant musicality of her own band - an all star cast that includes Monica Weightman, indigenous singer and guitarist, Steve Dagg on sax and both of The Teskey Brothers.

7. MARK LUCAS & THE DEADSETTERS Shopping Town From The Continental Drift. Lucas is a resident of inner-western Sydney and with over 20 years experience playing in and fronting bands- from the late ’70’s London pub scene, to a diverse range of bands in Sydney from the mid ’80’s to the present. Lucas wears an awful lot of hats. Venue manager. Band booker.

Activist. Singer.

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From the musician who helped make Bluesfest what it is today. Ben tells us that this song appeared on a limited compilation record in France. That’s the only daylight it’s seen other than a raw live backstage YouTube recording.

Virtually unknown. Thanks Ben!

From Howlin’ Back. Having lived in New Zealand, England, Canada and Austria, Henry brings experience delivered in his characteristic baritone.

The album features guest spots from popular Melbourne acts The Weeping Willows and Gretta Ziller.

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1. BEN HARPER Thank Me In The Morning

From the forthcoming album Black & Blue Heart. Courtesy of Bloodlines.

One of the local legends appearing at Bluesfest this year. After a trilogy of historical albums it’s time for something new. This is definitely the real thing from one of our finest.

10. D HENRY FENTON Wang Dang Doodle

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SIDE A

5. RUSSELL MORRIS Not My Lucky Day

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Go in the draw to WIN A 5-Day PASS to Bluesfest

GET SOME OF THE BEST MUSIC YOU WILL HEAR THIS YEAR FROM:

2020! We have three to give

Ben Harper, Alejandro Escovedo, Oh Pep!, Russell Morris, Stephen Cummings, Linda Bull, The Backsliders, Opelousas, Martin Cilia, D Henry Fenton, Cold Irons Bound, Andy Baylor, Nick Craft, Blues Arcadia, Yolanda Ingley II, John Rooney, Mark Lukas, Con Brio, Peter Howe &Tim Gaze and a special track from High Rise Hilton (John Power).

Subscribe to Rhythms Print

away (courtesy of Bluesfest).

or Print & Digital today and we'll also send you our EXCLUSIVE SAMPLER FULL OF GREAT MUSIC....

AVAILABLE ONLY UNTIL

RHYTHMS SAMPLER #3 MARCH/APRIL 2019 1. Thank Me In The Morning - Ben Harper (3.38) 2. Something Blue - Alejandro Escovedo with Don Antonio (4.110 3. Just To Be With You - High Rise Hilton (John Power ) & The Skyscrapers (5.06) 4. Up Against The World - Oh Pep! (3.06) 5. Not My Lucky Day - Russell Morris (3.43) 6. The Wind Blew Hard - Stephen Cummings (3.35) 7. You Are Not Alone - The Backsliders (3.43) 8. Sugar Baby - Opelousas (5.46) 9. December Sun - Martin Cilia (2.55) 10. Wang Dang Doodle - D Henry Fenton (4.33) 11. I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine - Cold Irons Bound (3.55) 12. I Got The Blues - Linda Bull (4.09) 13. No Silver Lining - Nick Craft (3.39) 14. Good Rockin’ Guitar - Andy Baylor (3.30) 15. Seven Days A Week - Blues Arcadia (4.02) 16. Woman Got To Cry - Yolanda Ingley II (4.04) 17. Shoppingtown - Mark Lukas & The Deadsetters (4.35) 18. Don’t Give Up Now - John Rooney (3.21) 19. United States of Mind - Con Brio (4.36) 20. Wattamolla - Peter Howe &Tim Gaze (2.36)

JUNE 30, 2019. GO TO:

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T H E R H Y T H M S R E CO R D CO M PA N Y L I M I T E D , M e l b o u r n e , A u s t ra l i a P r o d u ce r : R h y t h m s M a g a z i n e O r i g i n a l C o v e r C o n ce p t : R o b e r t B r o w n j o h n O r i g i n a l S l e e v e C o n ce p t : V i c t o r K a h n Available only to subscribers.

F o r m o r e i n f o r m a t i o n c h e c k : w w w. r h y t h m s . co m . a u Thank you to all the artists for their support.

P 2 0 1 9 R H Y T H M S M A G A Z I N E P T Y LT D

T H I S R E CO R D S H O U L D B E P L A Y E D LO U D STEREO

8. JOHN ROONEY Don’t Give Up Now From Joy. Recorded at Studio 606 in LA, home of Sound City Neve desk.

A gathering of legends worked on this: producer Don Dixon, mixer Mitch Easter, Heartbreaker Benmont Tench, drummer Jim Keltner, Don Was on bass and Spooner Oldham on keyboards!

9. CON BRIO United States of Mind From Explorer. Named for an Italian musical direction meaning with spirit, Con Brio is a San Francisco Bay Area seven-piece that plays energetic soul, psych-rock and R&B that’s as fresh and freethinking as the place they call home.

10. PETER HOWE & TIM GAZE Wattamolla From Following Tom Thumb. Courtesy of Bombora. Two of Australia’s most respected surf guitarists and song writers have created a unique and engaging musical re-enactment of the 1796 Matthew Flinders and George Bass voyage south from Sydney Harbour to the unchartered coast of Illawarra.

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PBS RADIO FESTIVAL 2019 M elbourne’s much-loved PBS-FM (106.7FM) is about to undertake its biggest membership drive of the year – as it approaches its 40th anniversary on air. Commencing Monday May 13 through to Sunday May 26, the community station – one of Australia’s most musically diverse radio destinations - is asking its many supporters to clear out the spare change from behind their ears and gaze upon the array of benefits of an annual membership.

Major prizes include: a Primavera 125 i-GET Vespa courtesy of Peter Stevens Motorcycles, a Golden Plains luxury package including festival double pass, luxury powered caravan, chartered transportation, food, beverage and gift shop pack; a Clingan Guitar Tone handmade electric guitar with road case; Gett by Funk turntable with AT cartridge courtesy of Audiophile; A year’s worth of PBS feature albums; plus exclusive prizes up for grabs for all performer, business, pet and junior members, as well as our Friends for a Decade and Friends for Life.

All new and renewing members who join during Radio festival fun will receive an exclusive Sounds of Studio 5 Live recording featuring enchanting live performances from the likes of The Teskey Brothers, Mojo Juju & REMI. Passionate members also get a limited-edition Festival t-shirt.

You can become a member of PBS or make a donation by phoning (03) 8415 1067 or going online to pbsfm.org.au.

But supporters of community radio are there for more than just the prize incentives. They know that to keep this amazingly diverse station on air requires tangible support for the many volunteers presenting programs which range from R&B, soul and gospel to blues, heavy rock, reggae and all points in between.

Jane Dale is one of the hundreds of volunteer announcers at PBS who lend their expertise to the programs. Jan presents the bluegrass show Southern Style every Tuesday afternoon between 1.00 and 3.00pm and we asked her about her program.

How did you first get interested in bluegrass?

As a teenager I loved American roots music but my first introduction to Bluegrass was in early 1980 when I was on a business trip to U.S. I was taken to a little school hall somewhere in Virginia to hear The Johnson Mountain Boys and immediately fell in love with the music. Such fast playing, such wonderful harmony singing and all acoustic. I still have the vinyl I bought that night and which they all signed although I had no idea at the time that they were amongst the most important of the second generation of tradition Bluegrass musicians. After that I regularly went to see Rank Strangers playing in Melbourne. Then I spent several years in the l990s driving myself around the U.S. and discovered the Bluegrass festivals and got to meet musicians such as Doc Watson, Jimmy Martin, Melvin Goins, Rhona Vincent and many more. I’ve been hooked on it ever since!

When did you first get involved in PBS? Why do you love the station?

I’ve been presenting Southern Style on PBS since 2001 and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. The staff are professional and supportive and the listeners generous generous and give plenty of feed back.

It’s great to be part of such a well-respected radio station which is serious about its music. Also, I am given free rein to play whatever I choose!

Tell us about the bluegrass events do you attend each year?

There are three Bluegrass festivals in Victoria which I go to every year. Currently they are all in Beechworth and are The Great Alpine Pick in March, The Kelly Country Pick in August, and MountainGrass in November. These three festivals usually host overseas musicians as well as our best locals in both Bluegrass and Old Time music. They also offer workshops and plenty of jamming opportunities.

There are too many to name in the U.S. but I think any at Bean Blossom in Indiana are worthwhile. This festival was originally started by ‘The father of Bluegrass music’ Bill Monroe and always has top bands.

PBS volunteers prepare for the annual radio festival

Jan Dale & The Western Flyers I usually try to go to The International Bluegrass Music Association’s ‘World of Bluegrass’ in Raleigh, North Carolina. This is partly a convention for professionals involved in various aspects of the music.

It showcases new bands as well as running a large weekend street festival. It’s where I often have the chance to interview top musicians and meet other radio presenters from all over the world. I was a compere at both events which was pretty exciting.

What are some of the highlights?

The California Bluegrass Association always hosts after hour concerts in their conference hotel suite. These are quite small and totally acoustic. No microphones at all. I’ve seen some wonderful bands there including The Lilly Brothers and Jerry Douglas. At one festival I met a band called Sand Mountain. They invited me to travel with them for two weeks on their band bus which was a l950s ex Greyhound bus! So, I was able to understand a bit about life in the road for musicians who travel extensively. I wrote an article about this experience for Bluegrass Unlimited magazine.

Who are some of your interview highlights?

This is tough because I’ve interviewed many wonderful musicians over the past twenty or so years. It’s difficult to pick out anyone in particular. Mac Wiseman was a wonderful to speak to - very friendly and humble and a good sense of humour. Jerry Douglas gave me a potted history of the resophonic guitar (Dobro), Claire Lynch was fun - dancing around and so excited about just winning a top award. April Verch from Canada gave some impromptu demonstrations of fiddle styles from different parts of Canada. Missie Raines talked about the difficulties often faced by women in music. Melvin Goins was a great raconteur, with stories of his early years in the music Tell us about some of the newer bluegrass acts to look out for.

There are a lot of young musicians coming out of the U.S. and Australia which are bringing their own take on Bluegrass. One is Molly Tuttle who was the first woman in 27 years of International Bluegrass Association Awards to win Guitar Player of the Year. She also won Emerging artist of the year in 2018.

Sharps & Flats are considered by many to be the best Bluegrass band in Britain. We also have some fine young Australian musicians. It’s hard to single people out but just some are vocalist Kristy Cox (now based in U.S.), guitarist Daniel Watkins, The Weeping Willows and Knott Family Band.

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His first recorded outing away from the family was a duets album with Tasmanian singer-songwriter Audrey Auld. Sadly, Audrey passed away a few years ago.

“Audrey was a great friend of mine and we did a lot of touring together in Australia, years ago. When I was young, around six or seven, my dad took me to a country music concert in South Australia and it was Chad Morgan, Rick & Thel and Kevin King and he had a hit record at the time called ‘Ruba-dub’ and it was on the radio. Rick & Thel were a husband and wife duo. So when Audrey and I made the record we were determined we had to make a record a little bit similar to them. And the first track on the album is ‘Lookin’ Back to See’ and it’s one of their old songs.”

The album is the delightful Bill & Audrey.

NASHVILLE SKYLINE Anne McCue reports in from the home of country music.

Sometimes necessity creates the best art. A low budget can produce the most raw recording and the soul of the artist is revealed in a way not possible in a big production. Bill Chambers’ latest solo album, 1952, is such a record and reveals him to be one of Australia’s most compelling songwriters.

Chambers was in Nashville recently, playing with his daughter Kasey. I saw the show - Kasey Chambers & The Fireside Disciples - at 3rd & Lindsley. It was a really entertaining night and included old family slides with Kasey delivering a kind of live memoir of her life from earliest childhood when the family lived in the outback. It was lovely to see Alan Pigram of The Pigram Brothers playing mandolin in the band.

Nothing looks new through a cracked rear-view But I still miss your crazy ways How can we mend these broken things between us?

I don’t know.

We twist and bend till we meet again On this highway through the snow. ~ Highway Through The Snow, 1952 Bill Chambers has driven many a long highway in both Australia and America. In fact, when I spoke to him he had just got back to Nashville from some solo touring.

“We did a few shows in Texas, half a dozen shows... Then we drove up to Atlanta then Greenville then across to Nashville. It’s a 14

big run but we’re used to it. I like driving and the roads in America are fantastic, you can make some miles.”

That is some crazy routing with a lot of kilometers (about 4,000) between shows.

The Chambers are known for their rather nomadic, gypsy-like lifestyle and spent many years living in the outback as a family. When Kasey was three weeks old, Bill took the family to the Nullarbor Plain, so he could pursue a career as a fox hunter.

They lived without a roof over their heads nor the four walls which would hold such a roof up.

“I’ve done a lot of camping in my life,” Bill says. “As a matter of fact, when I was younger, I lived in the outback of Australia for about ten years, working. We did a lot of sleeping under the stars on a bedroll.

Just lookin’ up at the stars. I woke up one night and there was a dingo staring right in my face, about 18 inches off my face.

Just looking, you know...? I guess he was inquisitive. I didn’t feel like he wanted to eat me but... You never know…” (Laughs).

“It was in the middle of the ‘70s when fox furs were fashionable and worth money.

Foxes are more of a pest, they’re not native to Australia. They were introduced by the English years ago. So, they’ve become a real plague and so back in the 70s you could hunt foxes, dry the pelts, send them to Europe, make a lot of money. I thought it was a great idea ‘cause I come from a hunting family and we headed out into the bush. I convinced my wife we were just

going for four or five weeks and we stayed for ten years. It was a good life and Kasey and Nash, my kids, grew up just singin’ around a camp fire. They thought there was only two types of music - country and western.”

Chambers started playing music when he was in high school. “I was in a rock ‘n’ roll band, you know, very typical in that. Had a bit of fun with that, never made any money or much of an impact.

“After I had kids I decided to go bush. And when we came back we started a family band for a while called The Dead Ringer Band. We had a little bit of success with that. And we done a lot of travelling. Still sleeping under the stars half the time. And we come over here to Nashville in 1996, actually. To find out what it’s all about and then we went home and my wife and I split up and Kasey went solo. So the rest is sort of ‘herstory.’”

Of course, Kasey Chambers went on to have several hit records and is now an internationally acclaimed artist. What’s it like having such a famous daughter?

“She still gives me a job which is nice.” He laughs. Between his own solo touring and Kasey’s, Bill Chambers keeps very busy.

This new album is his seventh as a solo artist.

You were still out on the road like Woody Guthrie Knowin’ you were nearly at the end… ~ Time, 1952

“Recorded pretty much mostly live in a very small studio on the Central Coast,” Bill says. “In fact, the reason I made that record - I was on tour with my daughter and she got pregnant. Which was all cool.

Their son is 16 now so that’s a few years back. Anyway, so while she was pregnant of course she wasn’t doing the tour so I decided to make a record.

“We started a jam session in Sydney called the Hillbilly Jam, Audrey and I. It was only gonna go for a few weeks and it went for 2 and a half years. Great days.”

got back to Sydney I got a friend of mine [James Van Cooper] to help me write the song and that became the title track of the new album… It’s always magic to me, where a song can come from.”

the road. And that’s still a big part of our income, so I had to make a new album and I thought, I’ve got no money so I sat in front of a microphone - I’ve got a home studio - and just did it. So it cost nothing.

Chambers recorded the new album himself and says it was pretty much budget-free.

“I still love to play with a band and I often do at festivals... There’s nothing better than gettin’ an electric guitar and rockin’ out with a band but it’s hard to survive now. If you have a band you’ve got to house them somewhere, somehow. You need a bigger car. It’s getting harder.

And there’s something challenging about walking on a stage with a guitar and a vocal and just trying to keep the audience happy.

I enjoy that challenge.

“The new album I’ve done totally solo.

Never done that before but I was broke and I needed another album and I’d always loved albums that were real stripped back.

In fact, my favourite Bob Dylan albums are the real early ones where it’s just him and a guitar. You know, it’s just powerful stuff.

Not that I want to compare myself to Dylan but I always wanted to make an album that’s just myself and a guitar. I did add a little bit of dobro and a couple of electric guitar licks but mostly it’s just acoustic and vocal. Pretty rough.”

The result is honest and really impressive.

Chambers’ song writing is up there with the so-called best of the genre as is well-evidenced on this album. Solo performance can be revealing - both on record and in the live setting.

“It’s a struggle these days as a singing songwriter to survive,” Bill says. You’ve gotta just do what you can. Part of the way we survive is selling albums out on

“One of my favourite albums of all time is ‘Living With Ghosts’ by Patty Griffin.

It’s so good. I think sometimes we rely on production too much. It’s great to hear a beautifully produced album and we all love that. But sometimes... look at Johnny Cash - some of the best stuff he ever done was just him and his guitar.”

You can hear the person’s soul that way.

“That’s the real stuff. It sorts the men out from the boys I think, if you can pull it off on your own.”

1952 is available now at billchambers.com

Somebody said they saw me runnin’ I was always runnin’ out of town ~ 1952 The new album is inspired by Hank Williams who died in 1952. Chambers was driving through Alabama just over a year ago and decided to visit the grave of one his biggest heroes.

“When we got to Montgomery, Alabama, I remembered that Hank Williams was buried there… Hank was a huge influence when I was a kid. I was seven years old and my mum and dad thought I was asleep and they’d be playing these Hank Williams records late into the night. Tragic drinkin’ songs and cheatin’ songs. Hard core country music - which is the real stuff. To me, that’s the stuff that really counts. And I’d be layin’ in bed listening to these songs late into the night. So it had a huge impact.

“I believe Hank wrote the book on simple song writing. Very straight to the point.

Anyway, I visited Hank’s grave and as I stood there I thought about his life and how he died in the back seat of a Cadillac on New Year’s Eve of 1952. He was heading for a show and passed away in the back seat. It had a huge impression so when I 15

I

t’s not often that I find myself at a jazz gig. It just isn’t my preferred choice of genre for live performance. Our musically blessed city of Melbourne offers a myriad of gigs ranging from classical to punk to good ol’ rock and roll on any given night of the week, but I usually find myself sticking to a narrow diet of Americana, indie pop or Country Folk, sprinkled with the occasional contemporary dance or theatre show.

Over the years however, I’ve garnered a bit of background knowledge about the jazz genre. My father performed as a jazz pianist in his younger days, and my childhood memories are peppered with the recorded sounds of his favourite jazz artists, ranging from the likes of Billy Holiday and Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker and Art Blakey.

I’ve inherited dad’s rather large jazz record collection, and treasure the memories that playing these recordings evoke. But to be honest I’ve always been a bit scared of jazz – as a musician the many different forms of this genre all require great technical skill, which I admit to not possessing, and I often think there’s something I’m not ‘getting’ about some styles of the form – for instance I find most contemporary jazz requires mental effort to appreciate, rather than just speaking directly to me.

So, how did I find myself at a Wynton Marsalis gig, or rather, Wynton with his Jazz at the Lincoln Centre Orchestra and our own Melbourne Symphony Orchestra? Well, mainly because it was my husband’s birthday wish. But also, because I was curious about Wynton, whose name I was familiar with, but whose music had not yet graced my speakers. I wanted to see how the jazz and classical influences of the performers combined, and savour the technical brilliance that would undoubtedly unfold. And last but not least I love seeing performances at Hamer Hall – it provides a chance to dress up, the seating is very comfortable, sight lines are good even up the back in the balcony (where we are), and the sound is usually superb - as long as you don’t sit in the stalls underneath the dress circle, which is where we found ourselves for a very disappointing audio experience at a Lucinda Williams concert some years back.

After a pre-show drink at the bar (wine served in proper glasses – how civilised!) we are shown to our seats, savouring that expectant feeling of the impending unknown. As the sold-out house of 2,500 people assemble, I admire the rich ambience of the auditorium, with its suspended tube lighting, offset by the burnt orange seating and warm timber panelling. We sink into our seats and prepare to watch and listen to the evening unfold.

And then, the concert begins.

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WYNTON

OPENING THE DOOR TO A NEW MUSICAL EXPERIENCE

MARSALIS

By Jen Anderson l Photo by Frank Stewart) Wynton comes on to the stage with his Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra – a 15-piece ensemble comprising trumpets, trombones and saxophones, enhanced by upright bass, piano and drums (Wynton’s brother, Jason Marsalis is on the kit). I’m disappointed to see there’s only one woman in the group (Camille Thurman, tenor sax), but I live in hope that these gender discrepancies will equalise across all genres of music performance in my lifetime, as is already apparent in classical performance, and to a growing extent, in contemporary pop/folk music.

Wynton is not a show biz kind of guy. It’s straight down to business as he introduces the first part of the program - three pieces

by Duke Ellington – and he notes that the Jazz at Lincoln Centre Orchestra was founded by original members of Duke Ellington’s band. ‘Braggin’ in Brass’ (composed 1938) is a snappy, rollicking number, showcasing the flawless technique and brilliant improvisational skills of solo trumpeter Marcus Printup. I’m struck by Wynton’s preparedness to give others the limelight, both musically and logistically – he doesn’t feel the need to place himself up front and centre of stage and immediately floor us with his skills. I think I’m really warming to this artist..

Next up are 2 movements from the Duke’s Far East Suite, written in the mid 1960’s – the 8th movement, Amad, (featuring Chris Crenshaw on bass trombone) and the 9th movement, Ad Lib on Nippon, featuring Victor Goines on clarinet. Amad starts with a beautiful shower of tinkling piano notes before launching into a gorgeous unison melody that immediately transports the listener to the imagined world of snake charmers, bazaars, and desert landscapes.

Crenshaw’s trombone slithers like a snake around pitch and notation, always landing with perfection. Ad Lib on Nippon allows Dan Nimmer to really shine on piano and Carlos Henriquez on upright bass. In fact, much of the piece features the rhythm section only.

These guys are hot! When the clarinet finally creeps in it conveys such intense beauty that tears well up in my eyes, as I imagine cherry blossoms falling ever so gently to the ground. It builds up to a bit of a frenzy, and enters the zone that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable i.e. ‘where is the melody?’ but even when emotionally disconnected I

can appreciate other elements of the music – there’s always something interesting going on that grabs the attention.

Half a dozen members of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra come on for Bernstein’s Prelude, Fugue and Riffs with Philip Arkinstal featuring on clarinet. And it’s time to bring on the conductor (Nicholas Buc) to direct traffic, as the number of players increases.

Now it’s really feeling like the intersection between classical and jazz is being explored, but in all honesty this piece of music is beyond me, and I get lost in the relentless intensity, with notes flying everywhere and no melody to hang on to. I’m grateful that an interval provides the opportunity to top up on refreshments and reset my mind for the next half of the show – Wynton’s Jungle Symphony in six movements, performed by the full MSO and Lincoln Jazz Centre Orchestra.

Wynton has described this symphony as a musical interpretation of ‘the jungle of New York’ capturing the energy and wide ranging influences that make up the great city, from the rich to the homeless and dispossessed, and across the melting pot of cultures residing there. He describes the many musical influences (New Orleans, Hispanic, Ragtime, Broadway to name a few) as stopping and starting and intersecting like a subway train. The six movements include titles such as The Big Scream, Lost in Sight, and the quirkily named Struggle in the Digital Market.

I love this musical work - lots of driving rhythms, great string and woodwind parts and a palpable energy pulsing throughout.

Marsalis utilises all the instruments in the orchestra to their fullest potential in particular, the percussion. With a full array set up across the back of the stage, including tympani, vibraphones, xylophones, chimes, tambourines, and wood blocks, it is fascinating to watch the three percussionists jump around from one instrument to another, and all of their parts meshing in beautifully with Jason Marsalis’s jazz style of drumming. Throughout the six movements the music takes you across a whirlwind of imagined landscapes and into a world of seesawing emotion. Ranging from intensely dark, to whimsical, and at times, comical, the music is so evocative, that if you close your eyes, you can create your own world full of vivid imagery.

Wynton Marsalis with ‘Jazz At The Lincoln Centre Orchestra’ and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra - Hamer Hall, 2/3/19 And then there’s Wynton’s playing. Yes, in this work he finally allows his exceptional performance talent to shine, albeit whilst he continues to sit in the midst of the other players, and not up the front. Wynton can make the trumpet talk, and I mean actually talk, not just metaphorically ‘speak’ to you.

No better is this showcased than at the very end of the symphony, where we hear him provoke his instrument to scream in pain, and then, on his own, in a completely silent auditorium, expel air through his trumpet

without uttering a note, conjuring up the image of a huge beast taking its last breaths before expiring. It is mesmerising.

And then it is over. Well, nearly. There’s a richly-deserved encore where various MSO musicians are given the opportunity to showcase their talents, but I would rather sit in silence and absorb the amazing piece of work that was the Jungle Symphony. And as we walk out of the auditorium and back into the real world, I’m thinking of my dad, who loved his jazz in all its various forms,

but passed away before Wynton Marsalis emerged as a tour de force. Somehow I think dad would have loved Wynton. And now I too love Wynton, and the realisation inspires me to keep an open mind in the future about what type of music show I am prepared to go and see. And for all you readers out there – the message of this story is ‘Take a punt on something new. Give it a go and you might just discover a love for something completely different in your music world!’.

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ON TOUR

ON TOUR

S E U L IB

It nearly didn’t happen. The story of one of Australian music’s most remarkable relationships.

P P I S S I S S I M MAN

By Brian Wise

The credentials for playing the blues don’t come any better than those for Cedric Burnside. Grandson of the legendary RL Burnside, the 39-year-old still lives not far from the Holly Springs, Mississippi, home where he was raised by his grandfather.

Living in the Hill Country he grew up under the influence of Junior Kimbrough, Jessie May Hemphill and Otha Turner, as well as T-Model Ford and others.

While we have seen him play with Lightnin’ Malcolm in the past, the Blues Award winner and Grammy-nominated musician has forged his own path: renowned for his powerful drumming, now playing guitar just like his granddaddy (who first brought him to Australia). Cedric has also played and recorded with the North Mississippi Allstars, Widespread Panic, Jimmy Buffett, Bobby Rush, Hubert Sumlin, Black Joe Lewis and the Honeybears and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. You can see him playing drums alongside Samuel L. Jackson in the 2006 feature film, Black Snake Moan.

Cedric’s latest album Benton County Relic, another powerful blues blast, was recorded not in Mississippi but at drummer/slide guitarist Brian Jay’s Brooklyn home studio in just two days. It’s Burnside’s first release for Single Lock Records, the Florence, Alabama label headquartered across the Tennessee River from the legendary Muscle Shoals Sound Studio and co-founded by John Paul White and Ben Tanner.

On the occasion of his fifth visit we caught up with him at his home in Mississippi to talk about the music of Mississippimand his latest album.

Can you tell us about the Mississippi Hill Country sound, which is what you’re associated with, and, of course, your grandfather was associated with?

It’s kind of got its own sound, way different from any other blues that you would listen at. It’s got its own rhythms, it’s very unorthodox. It’s kind of an offbeat rhythm but it’s found around the hills of Mississippi which is parts of Holly Springs which is where I’m from - Senatobia, all those areas. Como, Mississippi.

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FROM BEGIN

By Jeff Jenkins

Cedric Burnside brings his Hill Country Blues back to Australia.

But most blues you hear these days will often have 1-4-5 in them, and Hill Country Blues don’t have a whole lot of that, if any.

So, I think that’s what stands hill country blues out from any other blues you will hear.

It’s an unorthodox rhythm.

It’s quite a big community, isn’t it, despite the fact that Mississippi isn’t a huge State.

Oh yes, man. It’s a very big community and I like to think that blues of Mississippi is kind of like a brother sister feel because it brings people together also - even people that don’t play, they listen to that certain song and it reminds them of a certain situation that they have been in, in their life. So, it kind of brings people together but it’s a very unique community.

Cody and Luther [Dickinson] are some really good friends of mine. They’re like brothers and actually, I went into a studio with them a couple of months ago. They got a new album coming out in July, so I went in the studio and recorded two songs on their new album, or did a collaboration rather.

Now Cedric, even though you live in Mississippi, you recorded the album in Brooklyn. How did that come about?

A friend of mine that I met about four or five years ago invited me up. His name is Brian Jay. He actually played in a band called Pimps Of Joytime and he invited me up to do a little YouTube session that he had at the time called Jammin’ With Jay and it was

totally unexpected. So, I flew up to do that little YouTube session with him and we did that. It took about 15 minutes to do that and afterwards, we just kind of stayed in the studio and I was playing a bunch of new songs and he seemed to get the beat pretty good, which was kind of unusual. Not just anybody can play this music but he kind of got the beat, got the rhythm to it and we just kept on playing. Before I knew it, we recorded 26 tracks in two days.

Now Cedric, we know you best as a drummer and you’ve won a lot of awards as a drummer, particularly Blues Awards.

But on the new album, you’re playing electric guitar. Quite a change. Well, your grandfather played electric guitar, so I guess you’re following in his footsteps in a way.

Yeah, well kind of sort of. You can say that, but I’m hoping I’m making my own mark all at the same time. I always fiddled around on the guitar. Of course, drums is my first instrument but I have been fiddling around on the guitar now for about 14, 15 years. I just really got serious about it maybe about seven years ago. Six, seven years ago I really got serious and started writing more songs and stuff with the guitar, and so as I progress on the guitar, I just keep on writing the music. I came up with some really good tunes.

Cedric Burnside is touring in May and appearing at Blues On Broadbeach. Check the gig guide at rhythms.com.au.

In 1991, with her solo single ‘It’s Only The Beginning’ riding high in the charts, Deborah Conway needed to put together a band to promote her album, String of Pearls. A young guitarist named Willy Zygier was recommended, but when Conway provided him with the tour dates, he said: “Unfortunately, I won’t be able to do it.”

Zygier had a gig booked with his band, Tootieville, which clashed with the first week of Conway’s tour. Conway was intrigued and perplexed. This guy is knocking back a big tour to do one pub gig with an unknown band?

Conway decided to delay the start of her tour to accommodate the guitarist she didn’t know. “I don’t think she’d ever met someone playing hard to get before,” Zygier laughs when reminded of the story. “Clearly it worked.”

The spark was instant, both musically and romantically. Zygier walked into the first rehearsal and as soon as he played the first bar of ‘Release Me’, he knew something special was happening. “There was an energy in the room.”

It was a classic sliding doors moment.

Zygier’s insistence on being blindly loyal to his band led to marriage, three daughters and 10 albums. Ironically, their songwriting relationship started with a rather bitter song called ‘Now That We’re Apart’. “And we’ve done virtually everything together since,” Zygier notes, including their acclaimed new album, The Words of Men. Think about the great partnerships in Australian music: Vanda & Young, John Farnham and Glenn Wheatley, Dave Graney and Clare Moore, Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. And Conway and Zygier. They live together, they work together. They write, record and tour together. And since

NING TO ME

2004’s Summertown, both of their names have appeared on their album covers.

More interested in classical and jazz, Zygier was not overly familiar with Conway’s work before they met. He’d seen Conway’s band, Do-Ré-Mi, only once, at The Jump Club in Collingwood. Having just returned from a year overseas, Zygier spent most of the gig catching up with friends. “I glimpsed Deborah on stage, then I went back to talking to my friends.”

Seven years later, he was wandering through Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens when he stumbled across Conway doing a free gig.

With no friends to distract him, he watched the entire show. “I was very impressed, though I had no idea we’d soon be working together.”

In one of the new songs, ‘There’s A War That’s Coming’, Conway sings, “There’s a battle going on in every street. And a house where there’s no battle is not complete.”

But it’s a case of domestic harmony in the Conway-Zygier home. Zygier is beaming with pride when talking about their daughters: Syd, an actor (who will soon be seen in the ABC drama series Les Norton, alongside David Wenham and Rebel Wilson); Alma, an emerging jazz singer; and Hettie, who’s studying Music Theatre at the Victorian College of the Arts. Zygier looks forward to them being part of their tour, which will see Conway and Zygier play The Words of Men in full, as well as the first album they made together, 1993’s Bitch Epic.

“There’s nothing like family harmonies,”

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Zygier says. “I just stand there and think how beautiful it sounds, and how fantastic our daughters are.”

Post-tour, Conway and Zygier are going on holiday – together. “Deborah and I don’t seem to need to take breaks from each other. We’re a very lucky couple.”

Is the artist different to the wife and mother?

“Not at all. She is the one person. Deborah is a very forthright, honest human being. She’s always happy to express herself, and she doesn’t hide her thoughts and feelings. And I think that’s a very admirable trait.”

Zygier is comfortable that the spotlight is on his wife, that she is first among equals. But they both laugh when recounting the story of a show they did at a winery, where the owner also acted as the MC. Backstage, he was pacing up and down like Basil Fawlty, unsure of how to pronounce “Zygier”. “It rhymes with bigger,” Conway informed him.

He then practised for the next few minutes – Zygier-bigger, bigger-Zygier – before triumphantly declaring, “I’ve got it!”

He strode confidently onto the stage and announced: “Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Willy Zygier and Barbara Conway!”

The Words of Men is available now through Intercorps/MGM. The Words of Men/Bitch Epic 25th Anniversary Tour starts in Perth on May 23.

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GLOBAL GRIOT

Eric Bibb travels the world bringing his messages of hope

By Brian Wise The titles of Eric Bibb’s most recent two albums are almost the perfect descriptions of him. Global Griot, released last year, was recorded in France, Sweden, Jamaica, Ghana, Canada, the UK and the US. It is indeed ‘world music.’ The Happiest Man In The World, a selection of country blues songs, was recorded in the English countryside with famed bass player Danny Thompson. When you talk to Bibb is too difficult to escape the impression that he named the album after his own demeanour; he seems unfalteringly happy.

And so he should be happy, living in Sweden for many years, travelling the world as a troubadour and bringing music fans the knowledge that he has acquired since he was a young child living in New York and learning from his father, the acclaimed singer Leon Bibb and his friends such as Paul Robeson,

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Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan (amongst many others). Now he returns to Australia on his eighth visit.

“It’s a long way away from where I live, but it’s a place that I have been fascinated with for a very long time,” says Bibb on the line from his home, “ever since my uncle used to tour Australia with the Modern Jazz Quartet.

I remember receiving a little kangaroo stuffed toy from him when I was really, very young. Australia has had a big place in my imagination for a long time. It’s really great to have gotten to know it. I have favourite places in favourite cities. It’s wonderful.

Wonderful fans I might add.”

Bibb is touring hot on the heels of his latest album being nominated for the JazzFM awards and for the Blues Awards at Memphis.

“It’s a double album that I’m really just incredibly satisfied with,” he explains, “because it feels like it’s the work of a lifetime actually. It really brings together so many of the things that have been my focus for so many years in a way that really worked out. It’s a statement about what I feel and where I’m at right now, and it’s accurate.

“It’s funny but I’ve lost twice to the Rolling Stones: once a Grammy Award nomination in the States, and the JazzFM Awards in London a couple of years ago. It’s a kind of ironic funny kind of thing. They’ve done well for themselves. I wish them all the best in their continued journey. It’s kind of funny to be mentioned in

the same breath as the Rolling Stones so many times. It’s all good, man. It’s been a great journey so far. I’m amazed myself at how it’s all come together. I’ve lost track of the years that I’ve been on the road, which means that I’m still enjoying it. I feel like I’m truly blessed.”

Some of Bibb’s songs certainly touch on topics that are relevant to politics in America, and in Europe these days. I suggest that it must be interesting for him to be an expatriate American living in Europe and watching what’s going on in his home country.

“Absolutely,” he agrees. “It is, and it’s a great question. For one thing, the whole business of immigration touches my life story in a big way. First of all, I come from a country that is made up of immigrants, whether they were forced to immigrate or wilfully got on a boat and came over. That’s another story. The whole country is just a land of immigrants.

For me, the uproar about immigration in America, and in the world, is puzzling to say the least.

“What I see, being a student of history, is that everybody has a migration story in their family. We’ve all come from somewhere else at some point or our forebears. The hysteria that’s been whipped up in Europe, and there’s a lot going on here in Sweden, is mind boggling to me. It just seems to me a huge swath of populations everywhere are being manipulated in a very conscious way and nefarious way. It’s a dangerous trend.

That’s why I feel compelled to comment on it in my songs.

“I don’t consider myself a political songwriter as such, or protesting, or any of those things. However, I did grow up in an era when commenting on what was going on was de rigueur. I’m a child of the ‘60s, so it’s in my bones. I just can’t help but actually utter certain things. I’m not a divider. I’m somebody who uses music to bring people together. To be silent is just really not in my nature when it comes to issues where I feel I can have a voice to add to some kind of healing. That’s the indication that I have so I do it.

“I’m appalled at what’s going on in America.

I’m appalled. I’m trying to understand it. I read a lot. I keep an eye on it, but I also fly at another altitude. I’m going to continue to just affirm the best in all of us through music and keep going because I don’t know what else to do.”

Eric Bibb is touring in May and appearing at Blues on Broadbeach on May 17 & 18. Check rhythms.com.au for details.

ON TOUR CAIN IS ABLE TO PLAY THE Memphis-style electric blues maestro Chris Cain is no stranger to the road, having toured the world relentlessly since bursting onto the global scene with his acclaimed debut Late Night City Blues in 1987.

When Rhythms catches up with Cain ahead of his impending return Down Under, he’s relaxing with old friends between gigs in the southern Italian city L’Aquila, enjoying the local culture and hospitality in a way that escaped him on earlier European forays.

“I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to enjoy the road even more than I used to,” he smiles. “I was a lot wilder when I was younger, and I raised a lotta heck along the way. But now I’ve learned to do it better, so I don’t really have all the problems I used to have: I just seem to enjoy just taking my camera out and shooting some pictures and meeting people.

“I used to just go to the club, to the bar, to the room, to the club, to the bar, to the room, so I really didn’t enjoy all the stuff on offer or pay close attention to all the wonderful stuff that was happening, I was just kinda in my little bubble.

“But as I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to appreciate all the things that happen and the people I meet, it’s really nice. It just seems like a golden point in my life where things have fallen into my lap that are just beautiful gifts, and I’m really diggin’ it right now. I haven’t had this much fun playing the guitar since I was 12-years-old.”

This career renaissance was sparked in part by the success of his most recent album, Chris Cain (2017), which scored not only wide

BLUES

critical acclaim but also three prestigious nominations in the 2018 Blues Music Awards.

“The funny thing is that it wasn’t going to be a record,” he admits. “It was some tunes I wrote when I was trying to write for my late father and the kind of blues he dug: Guitar Slim, Ray Charles, Muddy Waters, those guys.

“I was just really doing a love letter for my papa – that’s what it was, just from my heart – and then Kid Andersen was a guest at a weekly-do I have in San Francisco and he heard it and goes, ‘What is that?’ I told him it was just a thing I did for my dad, and he said I should go into his studio and record it sometime.

“The fact that it ended up being a record was way beyond what I’d even planned, it wasn’t in my plans at all! But then I got to do it at [Andersen’s San Jose blues studio] Greaseland with [Canned Heat bassist] Larry Taylor and the other great players, it turned into this whole beautiful thing that really blew my mind.

“The first time I heard it played back to me I wept, because I was hoping to get some of these flavours on this record, but when I head them back it was incredible. I’m really happy that people like that record because it was just a thing for my father, and the fact that other people dig it too makes me really proud and happy.”

It’s obviously no coincidence that his father played a huge role in Cain’s lifelong love affair with blues, being hooked at an early age by a combination of great music and rampant enthusiasm.

“He was unbelievable,” the singer remembers. “He was a truck driver not a musician, but he loved this music so much that he got a guitar and basically figured out a set of tunes and his own little set of arrangements. When I think of it now I think, ‘Oh that’s amazing that he dug it that much!’

“He always had the biggest hi-fi, the loudest record player and all the best records – always. My papa had all the good stuff. He’d go to Oakland on certain runs and go pick up things that you couldn’t find anywhere else in early-‘60s at this place called Wolf’s Records.

“My dad was a gas, man. He would know where B.B. King was playing anytime he came around. This was before internet but he never missed him, all of the little bars and places around the Bay Area and he would never miss. I saw him countless times as a child, it was always so exciting, such a beautiful thing. Plus, we never missed Ray Charles when he’d come to town, it was something else. I’m a lucky fellow.”

Chris Cain is touring in May and appearing at Blues On Broadbeach, May 16-17 21

MUSIC NEWS This June the bayside township of Portarlington - an easy 90-minute drive from Melbourne and nestled between the Bellarine Peninsula’s renowned vineyards and the famous mussel farms of Corio Bay - comes to life with the music, laughter and passion of the Celtic spirit. This winter festival is regarded as Australia’s premier Celtic Festival and attracts over 15,000 people to the region over the three day long weekend event each June. The event commences on Friday evening and concludes on Monday afternoon (over 4 days).

The Festival uses a range of venues within the town, including community halls and spaces, the hotel, restaurants, cafes and churches. Marquees are also set up on the foreshore to provide additional venues; these include the Village Stage, Celtic Club, Wine Bar, and Celtic Markets.

The National Celtic Festival program offers a broad and diverse range of arts experiences that capture the Celtic culture in its many interpretations within the Australian setting.

The festival caters for all age groups and for a diversity of cultural and family groups.

The festival has become an annual event for families and friends to gather, offering time to relax and experience the depth of Celtic culture through the festival’s cultural diverse arts program.

Some of the special events include: • May The Road Rise Up by Rosemary Jenkinson, dir. Stephen Kelly (C21 Theatre), and featuring Christine Clare, in a one-woman dark comedy set in contemporary Belfast.

• Kin & The Community. Musicians from the Feis Rois program have spent several months working alongside acclaimed fiddler and composer Duncan Chisholm to research a local story, create a film, and create an original sound track to their short film.

• Air Iomall (Scottish gaelic for “On the Edge”). A film and suite of new music, inspired by now uninhabited islands deep in the North Atlantic- some of Scotland’s most remote, and remarkable places.

• The National Highland Cattle Show.

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THE NATIONAL CELTIC FESTIVAL PORT ARLINGTON FRIDAY 7TH – SUNDAY 9TH JUNE

INYAL (SCOTLAND) With their innovative fusion of mercurial tunes, ethereal songs and intricate electronics, INYAL have crafted a sound that owes as much to their traditional roots as it does to the rhythms of modern Scotland.

With their self-titled debut album now available, the band is established as one of Scotland’s most essential live acts.

Charlie Grey and Joseph Peach make music on the piano and fiddle. They are Scottish folk musicians, interested in making music filled with spontaneity, sensitivity and freedom.

Inspiration comes from their pasts and surroundings, feeding music that’s rooted in tradition, whilst stretching it’s possibilities through improvisation and imagination.

They also provide the music for Air Iomall.

THE YOUNG FOLK (IRELAND) THE LUMBER JILLS (CANADA)

Hailing from Dublin, Ireland, and having spent the last couple of years touring Europe, Australia, Scandinavia, USA, New Zealand, performed at SXSW in Texas, Milwaukee Irish Fest, Eurosonic in The Netherlands, Kansas City Folk Festival, Celtic Connections amongst many others.

Ireland’s President Michael D. Higgins ranks as a notable fan, organising TYF for multiple performances at his official residence on numerous occasions.

CHARLIE GREY & JOSEPH PEACH (UK)

SWIFT RISE TO THE TOP With two Golden Guitars and other awards behind him Andrew Swift reaps the rewards of hard work

By Megan Gnad Taking home two Toyota Golden Guitar Awards was a momentous occasion for Andrew Swift; the realisation of hard graft, determination, and taking control of his career.

The singer-songwriter’s still coming to terms with winning both the Qantas New Talent of The Year and Alt Country Album of The Year, for his hit release, Call Out for The Cavalry.

“It was a huge deal for me,” he tells Rhythms. “I quit my day job last year and said to my manager, I want to work as hard as I can in 2018, and hopefully get myself a Golden Guitar nomination, so, to take two home was very emotional for me.

“The awards are in the lounge room and every now and then I walk past and get a little smile on my face. It means so much to me; I just keep checking to make sure they’re real.”

For an artist who has been performing for years, it’s the recent album, awards, and tour dates with The Wolfe Brothers that have resulted in the latest buzz.

“I’ve noticed a bit of a change,” he says of the newfound recognition. “People are paying a little more attention to what I’m doing in the industry, it’s given me that leg up, and put a bit of a light on me.

“It’s amazing the people who come up to me after The Wolfe Brothers’ shows and say, ‘I didn’t realise that was your song’, and having played Runaway Train at the awards, people say, ‘ah, that’s that guy...’ It’s been great. I’m getting some more opportunities now, and feel it’s stepped up a notch.”

The change that led to this point was Swift’s natural progression into the world of country and Americana. Following the release of his acclaimed 2015 debut, Sound the Alarm, he discovered a whole new motivation five years ago at Tamworth.

“I just saw the community there, heard the stories, and fell in love with the music,” he says. “It was one of those eye-opening moments that I’d been ignorant to what country music was for so many years. I thought, ‘this is where I belong and want to be part of the Australian country music scene.

“During one of my speeches, I thanked everyone in the country music scene for really welcoming me with open arms for someone who has come in so late. There’s such a great network and family that’s out there.”

In July, Swift’s set to perform at the seventhannual Groundwater Country Music Festival, where he will play a full band set and a couple of acoustic spots.

It’s a festival he’s attended in the past as a fan, so can’t wait to return and, also, catch many fellow performers and friends on the line-up, including, The Wolfe Brothers, Fanny Lumsden, Felicity Urquhart, and touring buddy Gretta Ziller.

“It’s such a great festival, and such an honour to be on that second tier of the billing. I’m really looking forward to it.”

The positive response to Call Out for The Cavalry, with strong storytelling at its core, has been especially rewarding for Swift,

who poured his heart and soul into the latest creation.

Working with producer Matt Fell at Sydney’s Love HZ studio, the cherry on top of the whole project saw the record mastered in LA

by Pete Lyman, whose credits include Chris Stapleton and Jason Isbell.

“I wanted to work with Pete because I love the sound of Stapleton and Isbell, two of my very favourites. I worked with him because, one; he does a great job, but also just for me going, ‘I’ve got someone who worked on those albums on mine’. It was for my enjoyment and knowing that. He was great to work with and congratulated me after the awards.”

The journey to this point may have taken various, different roads, but it’s clear Andrew Swift has found his home in country and Americana music, and has been embraced by fans.

With a bunch of regional Victoria shows coming up, and a performance at the firstever C2C Australia later in the year, the award-winner now plans to take time to focus on writing the next album.

But, in the meantime, he’s enjoying the moment, grateful for every new opportunity that comes his way.

“Call Out For The Cavalry has been great, the response has been fantastic. People are now singing songs back to me at the shows, it’s a bit surreal.”

Andrew Swift is appearing at Groundwater Country Music Festival, July 26-28.

All National, youth championship, female fiddlers and dancers; Amélie, Martha, Machaela and Janelle are from Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada and have promoted their culture across Canada, Ireland, Belgium, France and even Scotland’s Isle of Lewis. All under the age of 20 years and with multiple awards for their heritage music and dancing; their Acadian, Scottish and Irish ancestry burns in their fiery traditional tunes from one of Canada’s smallest provinces.

A full range of tickets to the National Celtic Festival are available – covering all festival venues from Friday evening until Monday 3pm – at www.nationalcelticfestival.com 23

ROCKIN’ THE NIGHT AWAY Tammi Savoy and The Chris Casello Combo show celebrates everything retro

By Megan Gnad The Tammi Savoy and The Chris Casello Combo show at this year’s Bello Winter Music Festival will be a celebration of everything retro, Rockabilly, and vintage R&B. Used to wowing crowds individually, and as a duo, the Australian performance brings together two exceptional talents; Savoy, the 2019 Ameripolitan Awards’ Female Rockabilly Artist of the Year and Casello, the Rockabilly Hall of Fame Guitarist, and Ameripolitan Awards’ Musician of the Year.

The show in July will be Chicago-native Savoy’s first time to Australia, and she’s excited about bringing both new and historic material to their set.

“I like to sing a lot of obscure songs from the 50s that people don’t know a lot about, to bring attention to it again,” she says. “It’s mostly rhythm and blues, jump blues, and it’s funny because some people think the covers I do are originals. We do have originals in the show we do, but sometimes the covers are so obscure people don’t even know (about them).”

Recognised for her classic vintage style, Savoy says the variety of genres she grew up listening to had a great influence on her musical taste. She is also the younger sister of the multi-platinum contemporary R&B group, “Next”.

“A lot of the music (I perform) was what I listened to growing up because my parents listened to a lot of it, and those were my fondest memories growing up,” she says.

“We listened to Motown, gospel, funk, jazz, a lot of different genres, R&B... We need to keep it alive, because it’s so good.”

By working with Chris Casello - the secondgeneration inductee to The Rockabilly Hall of Fame, who has worked with Johnny Powers, Jack Scott, Billy Lee Riley, Bo Diddley, Wanda Jackson, Wayne Hancock, and Marty Stuart – Savoy says the set has been sharpened even further.

Since the duo first met at a gig in Chicago, they’ve released a six-song CDEP, a 7” vinyl record on Swelltune Records, and have taken their performance to festivals and shows across the US. “I really like working with Chris, we get along very well,” Savoy says. “We’re like yin and yang, because I’m very calm and chill, and when he plays on stage, he calls his style ‘wild guitar’, that’s what he plays. So, I’m the mellow one on stage and he’s the wild guitarist. It’s like yin and yang, but it’s always fun.”

Currently working on another 45, Savoy and Casello are also developing new songs to add to their repertoire, and look forward to starting work on a new album soon.

Prior to the Bello Winter Music Festival, and six Australian performances, Savoy also has tour dates and appearances planned in Europe, and a Rockabilly celebration weekend booked in Las Vegas.

“There is a revival (for Rockabilly music), I feel like it is getting a little bigger...I’m going to a Rockabilly weekend in Las Vegas soon, and they have a big celebration, a car show, and lot of people come from all over the world. Last year, they had Jerry Lee Lewis, there have been the Stray Cats, and Brenda Lee was there one time, so they bring a lot of big names. It’s very nice, people look forward to this and they plan a year in advance.

“This music brings a lot of joy to people, and that’s the whole reason I like to sing, because I do like to bring joy.”

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The Tammi Savoy And The Chris Casello Combo will be appearing at Bello Winter Music Festival. Check the gig guide at rhythms.com.au.

Australia’s fastest growing country music festival brings Country to the Coast with Lee Kernaghan, Davisson Brothers Band, The Wolfe Brothers, Beccy Cole plus many more artists coming soon!

LIVE & FREE groundwatercmf.com | @groundwatercmf

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A three-disc collection of live recordings between 2012 and 2018 from concerts at Melbourne’s Hamer Hall, Playhouse Theatre and the State Theatre in Sydney.

Includes 24-page booklet with extensive photos and liner notes from Archie Featuring special guest vocalists Tiddas Paul Kelly Emma Donovan Dan Sultan Vika & Linda Radical Son (David Leha) Jack Charles Dhungala Children’s Choir and Short Black Opera Out 17 May

Sydney Con International Jazz 2 June 2019 Festival

Legendary guitarist Bill Frisell appears in just one of 24 concerts and masterclasses at the Festival. www.sydneyconjazzfest.com Sydney Conservatorium of Music

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A LIFE EXPERIENCE The enigmatic Stephen Cummings signals his retirement and salutes his extraordinary career with a solo anthology

By Jeff Jenkins

The brief was reasonably simple: a solo career retrospective – four CDs, 50 songs.

The artist was keen, but happy for someone else to compile the tracklist.

Warren Costello, the boss of Michael Gudinski’s Bloodlines label, gave me the gig.

Fifty tracks. It seems like a lot, especially for an artist who’s had just three solo singles creep into the Top 40. But how do you tell the story of Stephen Cummings’ idiosyncratic musical life in just one compilation?

I suggested calling the anthology “Like A Shadow”. Fortunately, wiser heads at Bloodlines prevailed, noting that “A Life Is A Life” (a track from Cummings’ 1989 masterpiece A New Kind Of Blue was the obvious and best title.

I started with 65 songs. Even one of my favourites, Lovetown’s ‘Push It Up All Fall Down’, failed to make the cut. It’s a brutal process. The easiest part of the project was gathering contributors to the liner notes – fans, friends, fellow musicians and collaborators.

Screenwriter Matt Cameron (Jack Irish, Molly) captures Cummings’ power in just a few beautifully crafted words: “So many Stephen Cummings songs carry the intimacy of a confession. Or a prayer. An urban poet: fragile, fearless, conjuring bittersweet beauty out of dark nights of the soul.”

Shane O’Mara calls Cummings “an erudite fellow with a voice sent from the gods”, with both O’Mara and Rebecca Barnard acknowledging that Cummings provided their music industry education. Bass player and Four Hours Sleep collaborator Bill McDonald writes about “some of the most

exhilarating and transcendental musical experiences of my life … often in the most unlikely of places. On a lazy Sunday afternoon somewhere in the suburbs, audiences were often stunned at the intensity at which Stephen would deliver a set, as if he had a premonition of his own death on the drive home from the show.”

Joe Camilleri calls Cummings “a singing stylist … many famous singers have borrowed a page or two from his song book”.

The noted political journalist Shaun Carney fondly remembers The Sports doing a lunchtime show at Monash University in 1978. “I was hooked.” Carney and Cummings later became friends, though it’s unclear whether Cummings has provided any deeper personal insight into his work beyond “I do what I do”.

Video directors Mark Hartley and Mark Bakaitis reflect on tying Cummings to a chair in a refrigerated meat locker, wheeling him through the abandoned Fairfield Infectious Diseases Hospital, hanging him upside down and hurling paint at his face, and throwing live doves at him. “Still, people told me how Stephen was difficult to work with,” Hartley laughs.

Singer and actor Alyce Platt recounts a memorable backstage encounter at the Palais Theatre, and then doing a gig with Cummings three decades later. Moments before going on stage, Cummings calls her: “Alyce, I’m stuck in the lift and I can’t get out.”

Billy Miller – who produced Cummings’ latest album, Prisoner of Love – writes of a thoughtful friend who arrives unannounced at 9 o’clock one morning with four dining

table chairs, “amazing my wife Lucy and I with his prescience. It was just what we needed.”

A Life Is A Life also celebrates Cummings’ relationship with Michael Gudinski. They had their first US hit together (The Sports’ ‘Who Listens To The Radio’), and despite their differences (Gudinski says Cummings caused him to give up management for 10 years – “he was traumatic to manage”), Gudinski remains a fan, and has called on ARIA to induct him into the Hall of Fame, an honour way overdue.

Who knows whether the anthology and Prisoner of Love will be Cummings’ swansong. “I’ve just had enough of it all,” he said recently.

RocKwiz’s Brian Nankervis declares: “These songs indelibly chart so many moments in my life and hearing them I’m instantly inspired … and grateful.” That’s how I feel, too. I can’t imagine my life without Stephen Cummings.

John O’Donnell, head of EMI, is another long-time fan, though he’s not totally happy with the anthology. “I’m already arguing with the song selection after four songs (no ‘Stuck On Love’ – that’s crazy).” And you know what, he’s right. ‘Stuck On Love’ is now stuck in my head.

Fifty tracks. It’s not enough. But it does highlight the genius of Stephen Cummings and show a creative life well-lived.

As Kate Ceberano notes, “There is no one else like him.”

A life is a life. More or less.

A Life Is A Life and Prisoner of Love are available now through Bloodlines.

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MOON LANDING

The celebrated singer-songwriter takes a trip to the moon and back, re-forms his old band, and explains why songwriters are the luckiest people in town.

By Jeff Jenkins

“Sometimes sadly beautiful.

Sometimes lightly rising beautiful.

Sometimes just straight out beautiful.”

—Bernard Zuel

If Charles Jenkins is at home in Melbourne on a Monday night, chances are you’ll find him in the front bar at The Retreat, a hotel in Brunswick. It’s the never-ending residency.

Jenkins (no relation to this writer) has celebrated the gig with ‘Monday Nights At The Retreat Hotel’, a song on his new album, When I Was On The Moon. “So Mondays are for winners,” he sings, “and very clean folk singers, the saints and the sinners, the barflies and the beginners.”

Jenkins has always enjoyed residencies – his first gig was for $25 at Ginger’s, a coffee shop in North Adelaide, a venue that also hosted Paul Kelly.

For national tour dates and album info head to charlesjenkins.com.au

UPCOMING GIGS 2nd of May - Fred Smith (Launch) 4th of May - Rob Snarski (Launch) 12th & 13th of May - Cedric Burnside 17th of May - Rick Price (Rarities tour) 18th of May - The Little Stevies (Launch) 24th of May - Tex Perkins & Matt Walker 25th of May - Geoff Achison (25th anniversary) 1st of June - Three Kings do Hoodoo Man 2nd of June Charles Jenkins (album Launch) 15th of June - Opelousas (Launch) 21st of June - Black Sorrows Bands - Booze - Bands

It’s an interactive show at the Retreat, with Jenkins asking the patron sitting closest to the world map on the wall to point out the cities and towns he is singing about. Jenkins likes to name places and landmarks in his songs. The new record features Hastings, Fairfield, Casterton, Coleraine, Northcote and Ravenswood, and he also references Van Morrison’s Veedon Fleece album and Glen Campbell’s ‘Gentle On My Mind’.

“It’s called ‘The Naming Process’,” explains Jenkins, who teaches songwriting at the University of Tasmania, as well as mentoring young songwriters in Melbourne.

“It helps you to sound authoritative.

Even though I’ve never been across the Nullarbor, it sounds like I have [citing ‘Across The Nullarbor’, a much-loved song on his 2008 album, Blue Atlas].

“You can literally sing your way across America. I’ve taken it on myself to sing my way across Melbourne and Australia.”

When I Was On The Moon is a true solo album, featuring just Jenkins’ voice and his $150 nylon string guitar. He recorded the album in his spare room, mindful of the passing traffic outside, with his microphone

plugged into his old Mac computer running an “ancient” version of Pro Tools. Jenkins says he’s a terrible sound engineer; he credits mastering engineer Colin Wynne for making the album sound much better.

Jenkins wrote 20 songs for the album, recording 10. “I wanted songs that stood up for two minutes with just a lone voice telling the story.” Only the bones. “The character in the song walks into the room by himself and it makes sense for that person to stay by himself for the entire song.”

Jenkins says he’s always liked “simple, stark records”, highlighting the work of Richard Thompson, Gillian Welch, Randy Newman’s 1971 live album, and Dolly Parton’s The Grass Is Blue. “I’ve always believed in one person and a guitar, or one person and a piano.

If you do it right, you don’t need anything else.”

Jenkins loves songwriting. “It’s such an amazing artform. I love the potential that songs have, the possibilities. Songs can make people dance and cry and rejoice.

You can lose yourself for three minutes – or a lifetime. Then there’s the power of the chorus. Choruses are reserved for songwriters; painters, poets and sculptors don’t get them. Songwriters are the luckiest people in town.”

When I Was On The Moon is representative of Jenkins’ Retreat shows. Back to mono. It’s as if Jenkins is right there in the room, playing just for you. The album’s simplicity belies its power. A standout is a marriage equality anthem, ‘A Wedding Waltz’, which was sparked by Jenkins’ disgust when Australians were forced to vote on the issue. “I’m not pounding my fist, it’s just a love song for everyone.”

He sings: “Girl for girl, boy for boy/ Upon the dancing bay/ Here’s to someone who makes you happy, too/ And clouds can roll away/ Yes! Yes! Yes!” The new album follows the recent reunion for Jenkins’ band, the Icecream Hands. The re-formation went so well, Jenkins is working on a new Icecream Hands album, which will be their first since 2007’s The Good China. He’s also planning to make a “cosmic country record” with producer Shane O’Mara – “drums on the left, bass on the right, with flying saucers in the middle”. O’Mara loves the idea.

As for the cosmic title of the new album, Jenkins has no surreal explanation – it was simply the opening line of one of the songs.

“It just sounded good.” Jenkins also considered a line from the ‘Retreat’ song, “Emotional Baggage Handlers”. “But I’ll save that for the best-of,” he smiles.

When I Was On The Moon is available now via charlesjenkins.com.au

w w w.spot tedmallard.com

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LET’S GO

Jeff Tweedy steps out on his own with a memoir, solo album and acoustic tour

By Martin Jones “I used to feel like the opposite of that – I used to feel like everybody was judging me and that I wasn’t cool enough. Or half the audience was maybe into it, but there are people yawning and looking at their watches and your evolutionary skills to seek out danger are super-attenuated to finding the one person yawning. We’re programmed that way by evolution to look at the grass on the savanna and see the predator or whatever.

But I’m getting over it for the most part. It still can happen – there are still moments on stage that can feel pretty hairy. Just ‘cause you’re blind – you can’t really see everybody most of the time and you’re only hearing voices and reactions to the voices from people that can hear them clearer than you can. And it can get really confusing sometimes. Somebody can yell out, “I love you Jeff,” and you can hear, “I’ve got a gun!” (laughs).”

Thankfully, that’s less likely to happen in Australia… unless One Nation is voted into power by the time you read this. (In which case, please shoot me).

Now people say What drugs did you take And why don’t you start taking them again? – ‘Having Been Is No Way to Be’ Tweedy’s personal life was always relatively private – for a rock star. Uncle Tupelo and Wilco (and every musical project Tweedy has been involved with since) were always focused on the quality of the music over any kind of personality push. Tweedy admits he would be deliberately obscure in his lyrics to try and disguise any easily identifiable detail about his personal life.

L

ook at the poster for the upcoming Australian Jeff Tweedy tour – the hat the glasses. Tweedy has become a brand.

If you’ve read his recent memoir, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back), you’ll appreciate that this idea would have been absurd to Tweedy when he first started playing music. It’s probably absurd to him today. Yet there it is – the hat, the glasses, (the beard), perfectly distilled into a logo, instantly recognisable to Wilco fans.

If there’s one thing that the memoir reinforces, it’s that Jeff Tweedy never sought the limelight. Wracked with self-doubt,

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he was possibly the most reticent front man in recent history. Indeed, no one was more shocked than he when Uncle Tupelo bandmate Jay Farrar told him, “You have no idea what it’s like to stand onstage with somebody every night who loves himself as much as you do.”

As Tweedy writes, “What Jay could have said, if he was paying attention at all, was ‘You have no idea what it’s like to stand onstage with somebody every night who struggles with and sometimes overcompensates for debilitating self-doubt, a guy sadly aware he’s disappointing a bandmate he’s spent his entire adult life trying to please.”

“I think I feel like I’ve always been myself on stage,” says Jeff Tweedy taking a break from a current tour that will see him perform solo in Australia for the first time this month, “and that’s become a part of the act – ‘Oh that guy’s really uncomfortable!’ (laughs) ‘That’s his persona or something.’ And now I’m 51 years old and I’m pretty comfortable being uncomfortable, I don’t know if that makes any sense. I don’t know, I just don’t have to think about it hardly at all anymore.

And I feel pretty at ease with an audience and feel mostly safe, even when I’m up there by myself, that most people are on my side.

He did go public about his addiction to prescription pain killers some years ago, but the recent memoir expands that admission into excruciating detail, detailing the insecurity that caused it and the subsequent dysfunction, sacrificing privacy and inviting public scrutiny. The book also delves deep into his family and band relationships and, of course, the music. If nothing else, his hecklers are armed with plenty more ammunition these days!

“There have been a few instances on stage where someone has shouted out a reference to the book,” Tweedy confirms. “Something in the book that’s not in the front of mind, buried in a book, and I have no idea what they’re yelling or talking about. Like I played

the song ‘Hummingbird’, which I talk about in the book as the only song my dad thought was a good song or something – not really, but it’s in the book – and somebody yelled the other night at a show, ‘You should write another good song,’ or something. And I was like, ‘What are you talking about? Oh yeah, the book. I didn’t realise you guys were actually gonna read it!’”

Indeed, the response to both the memoir and the subsequent deliberately more confessional solo album, Warm, has genuinely surprised their author.

“Well, the solo record’s been received really well and the songs have already kind of found a home in some people’s hearts and that’s amazing. The book, I had pretty realistic and low expectations for putting out a rock memoir and it’s far exceeded my expectations. It seems to have found an audience, too, where people seemed to be moved by it and have gotten something out of it. The feeling I get is that, for people who have been paying attention for a long time, it enhances the music that they’ve enjoyed for a long time. And it hasn’t taken away from it.

That’s the risk I guess, is that you’re going to disillusion people and somehow subtract from the mystery of what you’ve made. And that doesn’t seem to have happened. I don’t know, I kind of believe you could share every single thing about yourself and still be mysterious, ‘cause there’s so much that’s shrouded about the act of creation anyway.”

I break bricks with my heart Only a fool would call it art – ‘Some Birds’ The process of writing the memoir inspired the song writing for Warm. It empowered Tweedy to edit songs he’d been working on in the reverse direction he was accustomed to; instead of deliberately cloaking real experiences, he attempted to be more honest and direct with the songs on Warm. The shift is probably more subtle from the outside looking in, but there are no American aquarium drinkers assassining down avenues (as in the lyrics to Wilco’s ‘I Am Trying To Break Your Heart’).

“Well I think it kind of grew out of me wrapping my mind around writing prose as opposed to writing lyrics and poetry,” Tweedy considers. “And becoming enamoured of the idea that I could tell someone what a song was about without it completely destroying the magic of it. That

it’s okay to be able to say, ‘No, this song’s about… my dad,’ you know, and that doesn’t take away the experience of listening to the song and figuring out what part of my dad is being referred to… or whatever.

“In the past I’ve also felt pretty strongly that it’s okay to not be able to explain exactly what something is about. Because I’ve always felt like songs have a magical quality and poems have a magical quality, language has a magical quality, it can make you feel something, it can have meaning even without being specific sometimes. And I’ve tried to explore that a lot. This is just a different way to be a little bit more precise.”

As our discussion weaves back and forth between the book and the new album, Tweedy reveals that he found the process of writing each more similar than I imagined.

While it’s difficult to visualise such an accomplished songwriter handing over >>> 31

LET’S GO his lyrics for someone else to edit into shape for publication (like a writer to a book editor), that’s not so far from the truth.

“I really enjoyed the process of working with my [book] editor,” he affirms. “I actually – you know they’re not called editors, but I bounce musical ideas and lyrical ideas off people all the time. You know, the engineer, Tom Schick and Mark Greenberg who are with me almost all the time at The Loft, that relationship could be considered similar to the way I worked with my editor on the book. It’s just somebody you trust and you feel like really gets what you’re going for.

"Basically, you’re looking for an idealised audience – that’s the way it felt with my book. Jill Schwartzman was just super awesome. She asked me about things that she wanted to know about that she didn’t feel like I’d cover, that happened more often than things getting changed drastically syntax wise or anything.”

“Plus, it’s a relief not to have to be completely worried about grammar – grammar’s pretty terrifying to me. I’m actually not that bad at it but I actually thought I was way worse at it until I wrote a book and I realised I’m not terrible at it.

But it means a lot, it matters to me.”

I know what it's like To not feel love – ‘I Know What It’s Like’

“I kind of believe you could share every single thing about yourself and still be mysterious.”

Elsewhere, Jeff Tweedy has described the phrase ‘I Know What It’s Like’ as “testing the limits of empathy —nobody really ever knows what somebody else is going through.”

When I ask if he’d thought about the consequences of inviting such empathy prior to writing a memoir and a personal solo album, he nimbly sidesteps the question. The resulting response makes my question look better than it was… and is central to the theme of the book.

“Over a long period of time and being on stage, especially the solo shows, I’ve figured out that I can actually try and get laughs on purpose. And it works out!” he reveals. “And I’ve gotten much more comfortable with the idea that a little bit of stand-up is okay. It’s a part of it and it’s entertaining and it’s fun and it’s probably more in my nature, I have a type of self-loathing that fits the skill set of a stand-up comedian more than a singersongwriter probably.”

“Well, I feel like empathy, oddly enough, the best place to practise it is on yourself. You know, we tend to be a lot crueller to ourselves psychologically than we need to be. And we treat ourselves a lot of times in ways that we would never dream of teaching other people – in terms of how harshly we judge ourselves and our bodies and all of that. So, I would rather err on the side of over-empathising than whatever alternative there would be to that.”

While the patter is not planned out, Tweedy says he’s happy to revisit material that works over a stretch of shows, regardless of the fact that people might attend more than one show.

I think that fame is a misunderstanding How hard is it for a desert to die? – ‘How Hard is it for a Desert to Die?’ Back to Tweedy the reticent front man. This month will see him tour Australia in solo acoustic mode for the very first time.

Obviously, travelling and soundchecks are going to be a breeze in comparison with the full Wilco shows. However, Tweedy asserts that the solo performances are far more mentally taxing than playing with the band.

Occupying the spotlight is still something he’s still growing into.

“Yeah, but again if they come to more than one show, that’s on them.

They’ll hear a bunch of different songs. If I say some of the same things, they should cut me some slack. I guarantee they couldn’t predict exactly what’s going to happen because I have no idea when things are going to happen. The songs get changed a lot more from night to night… I don’t write a setlist for the acoustic shows. I just have a little cheat sheet to remind myself what songs I’ve written,” he laughs.

Six months after Jeff Tweedy released his solo LP Warm, the Wilco singer announced a “sister album” titled Warmer which was delivered on Record Store Day. Warm is available through dbpm. Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back) is available through Faber.

“I have a type of self-loathing that fits the skill set of a stand-up comedian more than a singer-songwriter.”

By Andra Jackson

INTO THE

SPOTLIGHT For nearly fifteen years, Lisa Fischer was the voice behind and, later, alongside, Mick Jagger yet these days, she had no idea that The Rolling Stones had announced a ‘farewell’ tour.

The tour across America was due to kick off about now has drawn much publicity over its postponement for Jagger to have a heart stent procedure. No, she hadn’t heard about the tour. It is a measure of the extent to which Fischer’s own career has taken off that she no longer needs to keep up with what musicians she formerly sang with are up to.

The singer with the powerful, arresting soul voice is speaking by phone from New York before going into the studio to rehearse with her own band Grand Baton. She readily agrees that had it not been for the awardwinning documentary film, Twenty Feet From Stardom made in 2013, she might not have had the opportunity to explore the solo career and win the wider recognition that has followed.

Morgan Neville’s film lifted the veil on the ‘hidden world’ of back-up singers. It put a spotlight on singers such Darlene Love, Judith Hill, Merry Clayton, Jo Lawry and Lisa Fischer –singers known to millions of fans through their compelling vocal back-ups but not necessarily known by name. It traced their stories, their triumphs but also their disappointments.

“After the film came out, I was still touring with the Stones and I got a lot of people just asking, ‘Do you do any shows, do you have management?’

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At that time, she didn’t and met Linda Goldstein who has managed jazz performers such as saxophonist Joe Henderson, pianist Bill Evans, band leader Benny Carter and singer Bobby Ferrin. “She agreed to help me get a band together and start working, so it is all because of the show.”

The legendary artists she went on to back over the decades included singers Tina Turner, Chaka Khan, Teddy Pendergrass, Roberta Flack, jazz pianist Billy Childs, jazzrock guitarist Lee Ritenour, Nine Inch Nails, Sting, and Beyonce . It provided a learning opportunity.

Fischer speaks in a low, warm voice that readily breaks into laughter suggestive of a fun personality. She has now been a ‘regular’ visitor to Australia including in more recent years with American trumpeter Chris Botti, part of her new career trajectory.

“I think so on so many levels because you get to vibrate sound with all these amazing and unique voices. You start to learn how to walk behind their snow prints, how to fit yourself in, and the different colours of the voice. So for me that’s like pretty exciting and I get to switch and change, almost like when you are listening to your record player and you are adjusting the treble and the bass.”

“I’ve been there a few times with the Stones in different cities so my brain at 60 does not remember every time. But I would say at least six times maybe, yeah.” Her appearance in the Melbourne International Jazz Festival is her second with Grand Baton.

Fischer whose foray into singing back-up vocals goes back to singing with R&B legend Luther Vandross, is at pains to stress of her back-up vocals time, ``I was just happy to sing any way.’’

She started off making demonstrations for people in their basements which led to invitations to tour which was “a back and forth thing.” It was a lot of calling afterwards and trying to get people to remember when she was home, she recalls.

Back in 1990-91 she had an abortive move into a solo career after her single ‘How Can I Ease The Pain?’ won her the Grammy for the Best R&B vocal performance. But it fizzled out due to record label difficulties.

These days as well as performing classic tunes with Grand Baton she has successfully transitioned into singing in artistic collaborations with diverse artists such as Chris Botti, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, jazz singer Gregory Porter, and The Silk Road Ensemble.

That is important because “it is so easy to go back into the servant mentality of not thinking of myself, and how do I fit in and just be a back-ground singer. Now it is more how do I blend my spirit with someone which is more interesting in this point in my life.”

There are plans to record with Grand Baton. She is excited that with Billy Childs on the festival bill, there might be room for an artistic sit-in.

Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton perform at Sydney’s Concourse Concert Theatre on June 4, at the Melbourne Recital Centre on June 5 for the MIJF and in the Adelaide Cabaret Festival on June 7 and 8.

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THE QUIET AMERICAN

By Andra Jackson

Voyaging down the Mississippi River by boat may not be in any job description for most musicians but if your bandleader is Bill Frisell, expect the unexpected. The American guitarist says he took his New York based band down the southern stretch of river when he was composing the soundtrack for a film of the great devastating 1927 floods.

In looking for inspiration, “I didn’t want to imitate the old blues guys, ‘’ the acclaimed guitarist/composer says.

“That is so much a part of what I do anyway but I didn’t want to mimic what that was.

So, what we did was more like studying the history of what happened with that flood

Master guitarist Bill Frisell returns to share his latest album and other recent works at the Melbourne International Jazz Festival.

and, actually going and travelling up and down the river with the band as I was writing the music.’’

That flood dislodged 630,000 people and what he sought to convey was “an impression of it, the feeling of it.’’ The way that event historically impacted the music of America. “It’s been the beginning of rock and roll, having forced all these people to move from the country to the city and just electricity was really going to happen and electrifying instruments and all that. Just thinking that’s just a part of where I’m at.’’

That was back in 2013 and a year later the collaboration between filmmaker Bill

Morrison and Frisell won the Smithsonian Ingenuity award for historical scholarship.

Frisell’s approach to composing the sound track is illustrative of his consummate striving musically to capture that elusive something extra. It is evident in last year’s release of his first solo album in some time, Music Is. On it, he revisits and expands on some of his compositions on his earliest recordings in 1982-3 on ECM label.

Frisell who is performing in the Melbourne International Jazz festival in June – his third Australian tour – will perform music from that album which also includes new compositions. He and his trio of bassist

Thomas Morgan and drummer Rudy Royston who featured in his When You Wish Upon a Star project will also feature Frisell’s other release last year, the live recorded Small Town. He is interested to hear Petra Haden, the singer in that project, is also performing in the MIJF. When Frisell speaks, his voice has a dream like quality as he carefully selects words that capture his meaning. The 68-year -old guitarist with 250 recordings behind him has often chosen to investigate the song-writing of other composers such as Burt Bacharach, Elvis Costello, John Lennon and those in the highly successful Roots of American Music series for New York’s Lincoln Centre.

Speaking from New York, he reveals he finds as he gets older, it is interesting to look back on his own music from a long time ago. As with playing standards over the years, the layers are peeled back and you see more in it.

He says he hadn’t realised he could also experience that with his own music, something that he wrote thirty, forty years ago. “I look at it now and I see things that I didn’t realize were there. It reminds me that it is still alive’’ he enthuses. “The songs are not just fixed. You write it down but each time you look at it, there’s more that’s revealed.’’ What drives him even when the trio might play a song they have played many times over, is “my hope is that we will find something that we never knew was there’’ He values drawing an audience that is “willing to go along with that instead of expecting some fixed set being there.’’

Surprisingly, the masterful guitarist who over the years has worked with such

luminaries as avant-garde composer John Zorn; jazz saxophonist Charles Lloyd; folk singer Suzanne Vega; the Los Angeles Philharmonic; and pop singer Elvis Costello, initially found solo recording daunting.

“First, I had to just get over the fear of just being alone and then there’s this sort of space around everything that is terrifying.

You play one note and nothing happens.’’ He says over the years, he took it as a challenge to overcome that fear. “In the end now, ‘’ he, says laughingly, “I feel like I can actually play music by myself. “And then there is this amazing freedom with it too where you can play whatever comes into my mind.”

Freedom for Frisell lies in exploring other genres from country to folk and classical music. Inevitably, sometimes these influences might blend into his music prompting the comment that what he plays is not ‘typical jazz’’. He finds the need to use words to describe what he plays frustrating.

When he first discovered jazz in high school, he intuited “this is the place where anything is possible. The people that I loved listening to, it seemed to me that was the music where they were able to take whatever their life experience was and make it expressive to their own voice. So, in that way, I still feel what I am doing is jazz if you want to call it that. But it is not jazz like ok you cannot be wearing shoes and you will have a cigarette and whatever.’’

Frisell’s last appearance at the MIJF two years ago coincided with the international release of the acclaimed film, Bill Frisell: A Portrait made by Australian director and jazz singer Emma Franz. “One day I was playing in a little club in Texas and she appeared before me and asked me, I think it was a

spontaneous thing for both of us. She had made this Intangible Asset Number 82 film and then she was thinking about what to do next and then she saw me and I guess it came into her mind that this would be something to do.’’

Two years since its release, he is still receiving positive feedback, most recently, just two weeks ago. “It is still getting out there and people are still seeing it,’’ he says.

Asked the impact the film with its screening at film festivals around the world has had on his career and profile, he replies: “Wow, that’s hard for me to assess. It was an incredible experience to spend that much time with her.” Frisell comes across as a gentle soul who prefers to let his guitar talk for him. “As I watch myself try to speak (in the film) it is not always comfortable to look at myself in that way,’’ he says.

“I basically tried to open myself up and welcome her into my life,’’ he says. “I felt she really did something good, showing –in a way maybe it didn’t need to be about me in particular. What I love is that she was just giving a window into the creative process, or part of what an artist or musician does. I felt like it was really an honest picture of what that is. You don’t always really see that. You go to a concert and you know, nobody really knows where all this stuff is coming from,’’ he says with a laugh. “So hopefully people will be able to watch it (the film) any time and they will get something from it.’’ *The Bill Frisell Trio performs in the Sydney Con Jazz Festival in Vebrugghen Hall on June 2; at the Brunswick’s Jazzlab in the MIJF on June 2; at Brisbane’s Powerhouse on June 5; and the Blue Mountains Theatre in Springwood on June 6.

35

CARVING OUT A CAREER Renowned sculptor and visual artist Lonnie Holley is enjoying late-life success as a musician.

By Andra Jackson “Thumbs up for Mother Nature” is the greeting the unconventional improvising American artist and musician, Lonnie Holley sends down the phone. Both Holley’s art works and lyrics and music reflect this passionate concern for the planet and other issues. From a ‘struggle town’ upbringing in Alabama, he carved out a career making sculptures from sandstone and later from found objects. He deconstructs and reimagines them. His singing follows a similar spontaneous creation of new lyrics drawn also from what he sees around him.

Holley who is making his first Australian appearance in next month’s Melbourne International Jazz Festival has been widely recognised within art circles for his sculptures and visual art. During the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, he came to the attention of collectors when he exhibited with fifty artists in the Souls Grown Deep: African-American Vernacular Art of the South exhibition.

His works have now been acquired by America’s major museums including the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Smithsonian. His sculptures are on permanent display at he United Nations and have been displayed in the Rose Garden of the White House. “My works of art climbed the charts,’ he quips.

But while the 69-year-old artist was being embraced by the art world his extraordinary musical talent was only discovered by chance thirteen years ago.

He recounts that Matt Arnett, whose father was a collector of Holley’s art, heard him sing. “He said we have to do something with that.”

One day the Library of Congress was recording some elderly ladies and gents in Alabama, Holley’s hometown, for its Songs of America collection.

“They recorded them and then gave me the opportunity to do my first recording.”

36

Also present was Lance Ledbetter who had the Dust to Disc Label. Holley was signed up and in 2011 his first album Just Before Music was released. The self-taught Holley plays electric keyboard and sings in raw, earthy voice that can also slide into falsetto range, bend notes and stretch phrases. He soon found musicians wanting to record and tour with him starting with punk rock band Deerhunter and Indie singer and guitarist Bill Callahan. “A friend of a friend” of Deerhunter’s lead singer Bradford Cox, organised the hook-up. “He heard my music and I did a song on one of their albums, ‘On The Other Side of the Pulpit’.”

Working with other musicians, “showed me the power of collaboration and how beautiful it is,” Holley says. He felt he had

found musicians who knew that music is a healing tool. “They were trying to do something about the world condition, they were trying to heal the Mothership.”

Other musicians who sought him out for American or European tours included Canadian singer, guitarist, song-writer and Grammy winning producer Daniel Lanois and his band, the Indie folk band Ben Iver, and jazz drummer and composer Brian Blade.

At first, Holley says of playing with Lanois’ band: “their music was stranger for me to listen to. I had to listen and once I listened, I got into their own groove.” Through their example, he came to recognize what they were after. He marvels that, “I never thought that I could be at that level of output. This is what the spirit calls for.”

Holley says of his voice, “I was just blessed.

Since I was a little child of five I was singing.

I grew up in jukebox joints. I was always hearing different types of music, always hearing moaning and groaning.” But he says he never expected his music would “go up the charts the way it did” – a reference to his first records voted among the top records of the year in 2013 in the Washington Post and Chicago Sun. Lonnie Holley is performing in Australia with trombonist Dave Nelson and drummer/ percussionist Marlon Patton. Last year Holley released his first album in five years, MITH, and they are among the musicians playing on it. MITH includes the track ‘I Woke up in a Fucked up America’. He says his lyrics reflect “all of our experience in America, nor just recent occurrences, all the way down the timelessness.’’

Think Gil-Scott Heron, think Sun Ra and you are getting closer to Holley’s narrative.

Lonnie Holley performs at the Sydney Opera House on May 31, at the Melbourne Recital Centre, Southbank on June 1 for the MIJF and at Dark MOFO in Hobart on June 12.

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Brian Wise would like to thank Shane O’Mara, all the musicians involved in this album, Mick, Keith, Brian, Charlie, Bill, Mick T, Ronnie, Chuck, Bobby, Bernard, Lisa, Tim and Stan Rofe.

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ratin g the music

5. YOU GOT THE SILVER - Raised By Eagles (4.31) Luke Sinclair - vocal, guitar / Nick O’Mara - dobro, mandolin, lap steel / Luke Richardson - double bass / Johny Gibson - drums, percussion harmony vocal / RBE - oooohs.

Originally on Let It Bleed

12. STAR STAR - Justin Garner (4.17) Justin Garner - vocal, guitar / Nick Barker - backing vocals / Shane O’Mara - guitar, backing vocals / Grant Cummerford bass / Ash Davies - drums.

Originally on Goat’s Head Soup

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11. LITTLE RED ROOSTER (W. Dixon) - Loretta Miller (4.03) Loretta Miller - vocals / Shane O’Mara – guitars / Rick Plant bass / Ash Davies - drums / Darcy McNulty - baritone sax.

Originally on The Rolling Stones Now!

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3. HIDE YOUR LOVE - Nick Barker (3.52) Nick Barker - vocal / Justin Garner - guitar, backing vocals / Shane O’Mara - guitar, backing vocals / Bruce Haymes - piano / Grant Cummerford - bass / Ash Davies - drums / Rebecca Barnard - backing vocals.

Originally on Goat’s Head Soup

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10. SILVER TRAIN - Nick Barker (4.38) Nick Barker - vocal/ Justin Garner - guitar, backing vocals/ Shane O’Mara - guitar / Chris Wilson - harp / Bruce Haymes - piano / Grant Cummerford - bass /Ash Davies - drums.

Originally on Goats Head Soup

’s Only

Australia

STONED -

tones S g n i l l o R e music of th

2. SHAKE YOUR HIPS (Slim Harpo) Chris Wilson (4.46) Chris Wilson - vocal, harp / Shane O’Mara - guitar / Ash Davies – drums. Originally on Exile On Main Street

g Celebratin

- guitars, bass, percussion backing vocals / Ash Davies drums / Jethro Pickett b.v.’s.

Originally on Beggars Banquet

STONED - Celebrating the music of the

By diversity, Tedeschi goes on to explain how important this is personally to her: “We have true diversity, I don’t just mean that we have men and women - we have different races, religions, a whole range of differences that just come together and give us quite an edge.”

Turning again to the new album, Tedeschi is clearly particularly pleased to have a father and daughter pairing playing on the recording: “We have four string players from the local Jacksonville Orchestra on it. They were great.

They just turned up, could sight read it all; and we even had this father/daughter pair which gives it a nice family element.”

In the past, she says, the band has been tempted to maybe deliver a Live album when they’re sort-of between projects, possibly while they’re all still working on a batch of new songs, planning ahead for another release.

Now, however, she feels that approach and attack may have had its day, believing that the way everybody pulls together, bringing their own takes, touches, inspiration and creativity and writing to the table, means this is no longer needed or necessary. She prefers to work on the basis of less is more and quality over quantity.

sic of

table: “We get together and everybody will be about the challenges touring with such an together. Derek’s mother comes in and helps writing something, so we jam around and pick expansive outfit must inevitably bring, she is with the kids when we’re out on the road, and quick to confirm that it can be: “…..tricky at his brother lives just down the road, so he up the pieces, see where it all leads us. On the times. But we all get on so well, we’re good also helps out. Though we will be taking them new album, Signs, we came together and Tim friends. It’s essential to be like that. We’re on both out with us later this year, during school had a bass-line that we worked on. We had no the road together for most of the year, so there vacation, one’s a freshman and the other is words but Derek put more on it and sent it to will always be moments but overall it works now in high-school, on tour in Japan and the our old friend, Warren Haynes, who put the USA.” real well. It’s important to let everybody have lyric together. At other times, I might have a their own time and moments with the band. song or Derek might have one we can use. This Back in 2010 Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi In effect, we are a three-section band with a is our first release in three years and Derek merged their respective bands and Tedeschi three-piece vocal section, the guitars, drums did the production work on it. He loves to be reckons that could have been a tricky transition and bass, and a three-piece horn section. It all involved in everything. He writes, he plays and and time but as they had both been working comes together and everybody does their part he produces. It’s all great and he enjoys it all.” together in the soul-end of the business, with and must have the space too.” the Soul-Stew Revival, it was surprisingly and One other major benefit, which she confirms refreshingly easy as a process: “In reality, it Often likened to either Janis Joplin or Bonnie features as a result of this process is that with was simple. I had been working with a fiveRaitt, Tedeschi herself agrees that both are such a large band, the creativity is remarkable: piece band and Derek with either a three or huge influences in her own musical evolution “We have such a lot to draw on and from. We four-piece. When we merged, apart from us while husband, Derek, brings his own stamp have the creativity of twelve musicians and both, we only had to bring in three players and input to everything they do together. So, we have the diversity, that all comes into the from other bands. Then in around 2008 we I suggest gently, does the husband and wife recording. With some bands there can be a sort added the horns. I love the horn section. Now, thing create tensions or friction when on the of ‘samey’ feel. I think we avoid that because we are a twelve-piece and have that full sound road so much? we have so much there, we all come together that means we can cross genres easily.

I’m not “Yeah, of course. It’s naturally difficult at times but from different angles. The horn section just a blues player, we can pull in jazz, soul, but I really believe it works best for us both. does its own arrangements, for example, and rock, country, whatever we like.

We all work It means we’re together more than many Cofey, our keyboard genius, does the guitar CREDITS 8.

MISS YOU Simon Bailey (5.36) together, writing, bringing bits of the puzzle others and we always manage to work out any arrangements for us. It just all works so well.”

Simon Bailey - vocals, guitars / Sean Albers - drums, together.

I just think I’m blessed to be able to Recorded & mixed at Yikesville by Shane O’Mara differences! We have our good days and our percussion, backing vocals /Chris Wilson harp / Shane this,&toa be making Produced

by Shane wink frommusic and playing with bad days but generally it feels better,O’Mara much with adonod O’Mara - mxr blue box, percussion / Grant Cummerford great people, this great band.” all protagonists. to sincerely thank better when we’re together more.Shane When would you’re likethese bass. Originally on Some Girls Brian All songs Mick Jagger & Keith Tedeschi adds Richards that the writing process is a a band and apart, wellWise. sometimes that by makes otherwise stated.

9.where SALTeach OF THE EARTH - Dan Lethbridge (6.07) prime example of this approach, things just thatunless much more difficult, it can put Dan Lethbridge - vocals, acoustic guitar / Shane O’Mara band-member can bring something to the a strain on some relationships.

We are happy 1. UNDER MY THUMB - Tracy McNeil (3.53) Tracy McNeil - vocals / Shane O’Mara - guitars, backing vocals / Nick Barker - bass / Bree Hartley - drums, percussion, backing vocals. Originally on Aftermath

38

of The Times

u the m

Tedeschi Trucks is a band from Florida, an outfit big on quality with a huge global fan-base and a tortuous and tiring touring schedule that keeps them on the road for much of the year.

Led by husband and wife team, Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi, they have picked up numerous accolades and international awards while always rooted in the blues tradition.

Now, with a new album out they will be hitting Europe in April and then return to America to tour all the way through to August.

Susan Tedeschi is that rare thing, a female blues-cum-rock ’n’ roll artist with a life-long history of music performance and involvement.

Speaking to her on the eve of the Tedeschi Trucks Band’s latest release, Signs, she is open, laid-back but positively focused on the coming year ahead, with gigs already booked for around nine-months ahead, and a twin-night London Palladium in late April already sold-out, a gig she is particularly looking forward to: “I’m just so excited to be playing the Palladium in London. And both nights are already sold-out, I believe. It’s great to have multiple nights in London. The band loves a theatre setting, one that’s big enough to hold us but small enough to have a real connection with the audience,” she confirms.

Of course, Tedeschi is part of a greater whole, with her husband Derek Trucks and a full throat, twelve-piece Tedeschi Trucks Band roaring and rolling alongside. When asked

Signs

rating

By Iain Patience

Celeb

TTB’s latest album, Signs

Looking back over her long career, Tedeschi, who started out as a six-year-old, has worked countless musical genres but always comes back to soul and blues. Blues music is always at the heart of everything she does, as she says: “Blues music is always there, it just is. It is always soulful, that gospel-blues music is the corner-stone of it all, all the genres.”

Over the years, Tedeschi has been either nominated or won numerous international music awards, including a Grammy back in 2012 for the Tedeschi Trucks album, Revelator.

In addition, the Americana music awards and Blues awards have also given recognition to a genuinely inspiring career and her dedication to the music she so clearly loves.

With the latest offering, Signs, being a genuine tour-de-force in many ways, it would come as no surprise to find it as either a contender or winner in this year’s awards circus. Tedeschi, laughs at the suggestion but is also evidently pleased with the possibility: “Who knows, who can tell. We’ll just wait and see what happens.

I’m just so glad I get to play music like we do. To travel the world, doing what I love most. I don’t get caught up in the awards thing, worrying about it. At the end of the day it’s always good to have the acknowledgment of our peers but at the end it’s just us doing our job, working, producing great music (I hope) and it’s all been great. It’s a real blessing to do it.”

The Tedeschi Trucks Band have announced 6 nights at New York’s Beacon Theater starting September 27 s part of their forthcoming American tour.

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Luke Sinc ardson - doub l / RBE - oooohs. r 18, 2016 Luke Rich Decembe ony voca lap steel / all the ussion harm ne O’Mara, - drums, perc Let It Bleed n, THANKS thank Sha on ) Keith, Bria ld like to wou Originally m, Mick, bass / a Bull (4.06 Brian Wise ES - Lind rs, organ, in this albu ck, Bobby, Bernard, THE BLU ara - guita s involved nie, Chu 6. I GOT Shane O’M musician Mick T, Ron - vocals / ussion.

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By Sally (3.35) yGraphics Originally Sal Kimber - guitars / Cat Leah Design by Y GIRL e O’Mara 7. FACTOR - vocal / Shan gars Banquet Sal Kimber Beg inally on drums. Orig

Susan Tedeschi talks about the

Featuring unique interpretations of Stones classics by some of Melbourne’s greatest musicians.

Under My Thumb - Tracy McNeil, Hip Shake - Chris Wilson, Hide Your Love Nick Barker, Gimme Shelter - Lisa Miller, You Got The Silver - Raised By Eagles, I Got The Blues - Linda Bull, Factory Girl - Sal Kimber, Miss You - Simon Bailey, Salt Of The Earth - Dan Lethbridge, Silver Train - Nick Barker, Little Red Rooster Loretta Miller, Star Star - Justin Garner. Bonus Track: Midnight Rambler by Nick Barker, recorded live at the Caravan Music Club.

Available now at rhythms.com.au

39

BLOOD BROTHER

Neil Murray has released one of his finest albums to date with Blood & Longing

40

The Weddings Parties Anything frontman releases a fine new solo album and pours cold water on thoughts of putting his old band back together.

By Jeff Jenkins

By Stuart Coupe It isn’t easy being one of the finest songwriters this country has produced when you don’t live in a capital city, have a booking agent, a record label or much at all of the infrastructure that goes with the business of making and promoting your creations.

Neil Murray has been writing songs and making records for a long time now and along the way has created and assembled an extremely important body of work.

On top of albums with the Warumpi Band, Murray has just released his ninth solo album of original material. Along the way there’s been that song called ‘My Island Home’. There’s also been books (most notable being Sing For Me, Countryman), short stories, a spoken word CD, various other bits of writing, and a stage play.

Album number nine, Blood & Longing, is as good as anything Murray has released and contains a potent and powerful collection of songs that are easily the equal of other much better known and more revered songwriters and singers.

But for all that Murray continues pretty much by himself, paying for his own records, booking his own gigs and generally being about as independent as an independent artist can get.

The opening song on this remarkable collection is ‘Hills Of Burra’ which initially I thought was an autobiographical account of Murray’s disengagement from the modern world of smart phones, social media and constant bombardment of information – some of it useful, much of it not.

But even though the character it’s based on may share Murray’s worldview it’s written from the perspective of a character he met, “on the way from Gurindji land heading down to Tennant Creek.”

As Murray explains, many of his songs are vignettes reflecting things he sees and hears on his travels.

“I ran into this cranky old miner guy,” he smiles. “He just told me in no uncertain terms, ‘fuck the city’. He went back to visit his daughter in the city at Christmas and said that everyone was just staring at their phones.

He sort of told them off and then cleared out. That song is sort of an indictment of our world.”

Murray covers a lot of ground – literally and figuratively – on Blood & Longing. There’s historical narratives such as ‘The Footsteps Of Blackfella Bob’, and ‘Who Will Ride With Stuart’, a song about Scottish explorer John McDoull Stuart. There’s a celebration of a post-apocalyptic survivor in ‘Bjantic Man’ which ties in with the cover art for the album.

Then ‘Cry My Darling’ is a plea for the dying river, Australia’s longest.

It is worth noting that this is an album to buy on CD if at all possible with the booklet containing informative notes and commentary about many of the songs.

Put simply Blood & Longing contains some of the finest songs Murray has ever written. And despite Murray’s slight reservations they sound sublime.

“I was happy with the songs,” he says guardedly. “You do the best you can recording wise. The budget’s not unlimited. And I guess with more money to throw at it we could have polished it a bit but you have to work with what you have.

NO DOUBTING THOMAS

“These are the best of the original songs I’ve written since the last album I released which was in 2014. I wish I could say I was writing all the time but I can’t. I admire those people who write every day.

“How I work is that I put all the stuff I write away and when I think I maybe have enough songs I’ll pull them out and demo them and the ones that sound the strongest are the ones we record. And I had a look at these songs and they seemed to hang together pretty well.

“That’s important as I’m still old school in that I see albums like books. I like to listen to an album from start to finish, in the same way that I start a book at the beginning and read through to the end.”

It’s more than just a little sad to see someone as ferociously talented as Murray struggling to find an audience for his songs. Since Blood & Longing was released he’s played a show in Brisbane and one in Maroochydore. Six weeks later, towards the end of May, he’s appearing at the Dancing On The Darling Festival in Menindee, and on June 1 there’s a gig at Lightning Ridge in NSW. Hardly an extensive run of shows.

“It’s just hard,” Murray says. “I do it all myself. I can’t get a booker to save myself. I mean, I have a gig in Manly in Sydney in October.”

Blood & Longing is out now via Island Home Music. For more info and if you’d like to host a house concert by Murray go to www.neilmurray. com.au

Mick Thomas’ new solo album has an intriguing title: Coldwater DFU. The record saw him return to America’s Deep South, where Weddings Parties Anything made their third album, The Big Don’t Argue, with legendary producer Jim Dickinson. Reba Russell, who sings on the new album, was the first person to go to Dickinson’s Zebra Ranch in Coldwater, Mississippi, after he died in 2009. The night before she visited the studio, Dickinson appeared in her dream, with one simple message: Don’t fuck up.

Those words were ringing in Thomas’ ears when he made this album, his first in seven years.

Coldwater is a small town in “hill country”.

Tiny churches dot the landscape. “It’s not far out of the city, but it gets remote quite quickly,” Thomas explains. He says Zebra Ranch is “like driving into the mind of Jim Dickinson”. The producer loved decay, so the site is filled with vehicles in various states of disrepair, and the studio is an old barn behind a cyclone wire fence. “There’s a funny sense of foreboding.”

The best thing about it? There was no phone reception, so Thomas and his band, The Roving Commission – Mark “Squeezebox Wally” Wallace, Ben Franz and Dave Foley – could focus on the album, without any distractions.

The initial plan was that Dickinson’s sons, Luther and Cody, would produce the record, but the brothers were busy with the North Mississippi Allstars. “Don’t worry,” they said, “Kevin Houston will do it.”

Thomas had never met the brothers’ childhood friend, who had been Jim Dickinson’s engineer for 15 years.

But they quickly clicked. “The great engineers are able to rein in aberrant personalities, and Jim was certainly that,” says Thomas, who soon discovered that Houston was “really good at steadying the ship”.

Dickinson was fond of saying, “The misery sticks to the tape”, so Thomas tries to ensure that every recording

experience is enjoyable. Houston had his own favourite sayings. “Come on, Wally,” he would say as he embarked on another take, “make your mamma proud!”

The result is arguably the finest album of Thomas’ solo career, a travelogue of tales that takes the listener to the US, Southeast Asia, Perth, Melbourne, Learmonth and Ballarat.

The working title for the album had been “Hysterical Ballads and Whirled Music”, with Thomas planning a mix of ballads and songs about swimming. A highlight is

Aqua Profunda, a song about the Fitzroy Pool, where Thomas is believed to be the second-longest member. Swimming is his great release from the pressures of the music industry. He also enjoys running the Merri Creek Tavern, a venue in Northcote, where he is exposed to the work of other local songwriters. Recent favourites include Rob Snarski, Lucie Thorne and Van Walker, and he also admires the work of Sydney singersongwriter Perry Keyes.

Thomas still loves touring, “but I’m aware that I have a family (he has a six-year-old daughter) and a home life. At my age (59), I don’t want to do a sleeping-on-the-floor tour.”

He says an artist needs to “cast the net wide, to find a toehold in funny places”. He enjoys a good following in parts of England, Europe and Canada. “I talk to young artists who tell me, ‘The career path that was open to you is not open to us now.’ What bullshit! There was no career path. It was what we found for ourselves.”

As it’s 30 years since The Big Don’t Argue, does Thomas have any plans to put the band back together for an anniversary show?

The short answer is no.

“I don’t begrudge anyone doing anything they want with their back catalogue. It’s a hard industry and it’s up to you to work out how best to exploit your back catalogue. But I think we’ve given that (reunion shows) a pretty good go, which is not to say we mightn’t be up for something down the track if it makes sense.”

To illustrate his point, Thomas tells the old joke where a man asks a woman if she’d sleep with him for $1 million. “Sure,” she replies. “Well, what about $50?” The woman is outraged.

“What do you think I am?” “Well,” says the man, “we’ve already established what you are.”

Thomas laughs. “I just hope they don’t do a tour with another singer when I die. If they do, hopefully it’s not for a while.”

Coldwater DFU is available now through Bloodlines.

41

Earle has made no secret of his checkered past. He’s seen his share of the dangerous and dirty sides of town and these are places he’s remained close to, and comfortable with, as a touring musician.

“That’s one of the great things I think that touring artists need to take advantage of… you know it’s a really good thing to just go and find the dirtiest bar in whatever town you’re in and go hang out with the real people.”

From the opening seconds of title track ‘The Saint Of Lost Causes’, you’re presented a soundscape that frames these places and stories strikingly. The deliberate drive of the bass and snare, the crying pedal steel, the reverb soaked electric guitar ringing into space – it’s a spooky, affecting stage unlike any of Earle’s previous albums.

“Yeah the players that I was able to put together for this record are all guys that I’ve wanted to work with for a long time,” Earle says. “And have worked with in the past, but

REBEL WITH A CAUSE

never worked with them all together. And they’re just good at addressing the song, they play to the lyrics, not what they think they should play.”

Headed by engineer and bass player Adam Bednarik, the band on The Saint Of Lost Causes includes pedal steel guru Paul Niehaus, drummer Jon Radford, guitarist Joe McMahan, and keyboardist Cory Younts (who played on Earle’s first four albums). McMahan’s electric guitar playing, in particular, is a revelation.

“Yeah the guitar player on this record, Joe McMahan, he is a monster,” Earle confirms.

“A soft-spoken monster. He really loves songs.

And all these guys are the kind of guys who wouldn’t work on the record if they didn’t like the songs.

“He’s been connected Adam Bednarik who played bass on this and is my co-producer,” Earle explains how he came across McMahan.

“They’ve worked together for years. I probably met… I think we borrowed gear from Joe,

‘cause Joe has his own studio, we borrowed gear from him for the first record, when we made The Good Life.”

Anyone who has seen JTE perform solo will testify to how much space he can fill with his guitar playing – he sounds like three guitarists.

Without having to concentrate on providing all the accompaniment to this batch of songs, Earle sounds like he has freedom to focus more intently on his vocals.

“Yeah I think it gives me a bit more ability to work with the melody,” he agrees. “It gives me the ability to sing softer. Not have to overpower everything. And it’s something that has definitely grown, you know I feel like I’m a better singer than I was ten years ago. And that’s the thing that I want to be – I want to be a better singer every time I make a record, a better guitar player, a better writer.”

The Saint Of Lost Causes is available on May 24 through New West Records.

By Martin Jones

Justin Townes Earle hits his stride as The Saint of Lost Causes “I’ve had my time of being a strung-out drunken idiot. That time’s over for me, it’s time to get down to work.” That’s what Justin Townes Earle told me on the release of his debut album back in 2008. Ten years and eight albums later, Earle has proven his dedication to his profession.

Justin Townes Earle emerged fully formed as a songwriter and performer a dozen years ago. By the time he emerged with his first recordings, he’d already been writing and performing for over ten years (including a stint in his father’s band The Dukes). He just hadn’t made a complete commitment to becoming a singer-songwriter.

On the phone recently to talk about his latest album, The Saint Of Lost Causes, Justin confirms that he’s surprised himself with his dedication: “Especially the amount of records that I’ve released in that period of time. That 42

I’ve been able to be that productive for that period.”

“I mean, it’s all I ever wanted to do and so I put every day that I had into it – you know I used to buy white cheddar popcorn, a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread. And then a bunch of beer. And that’s what I would live off – peanut butter sandwiches and popcorn, just so I could sit at home and write.”

That dedication has paid off in The Saint Of Lost Causes, his strongest album for some time. A less introspective album in both theme and sound, JTE looking out at the people of America, and the world, and asking what went wrong.

“I just got this idea of I think at this particular time in the world, and not just in America even though we have the loudest idiot in charge, it’s not just us that’s moving right and mistreating the underclasses and the people of colour

and the people of smaller cities. So I wanted to take with this record, basically looking at what Springsteen would do if he took more of a whole country view as opposed to just the New Jersey view. I wanted to take that idea and apply it to Appalachia, Charleston, Flint Michigan, all of it.”

Here Earle is referring to a trio of songs on the new album documenting the mistreatment of small town America – the industrial poisoning of the river in Charleston, West Virginia in ‘Don’t Drink The Water’; the demise of the auto industry in ‘Flint City Shake It’; an all too common cycle of poverty and crime in ‘Appalachian Nightmare’.

“People like to talk bad about cities like Detroit and Memphis and Flint and places like that,” Earle explains, “and there’s a lot of reasons to talk bad about them. They’re dangerous.

They’re dirty. But there’s a lot of good people there.”

43

WILD AT HEART

Veteran songwriter Glenn Cardier brings a Southern noir vibe to his new album.

By Steve Bell

UNDRESSING THE NATION In 2019, The Felice Brothers are back with some changes to their line-up and Undress, a new album that manages to address both personal and political concerns, all with their trademark poetic imagery and organic musicality.

By Chris Familton A year ago, in the aftermath of touring their album Life In The Dark, it was announced that long-term members Greg Farley (fiddle) and Josh Rawson (bass) were leaving the band to pursue their own musical projects and that Jesske Hume would be joining on bass. The brothers Ian and James have always been the core of the group and on a snowy Catskills, NY evening they’re both keen to stress that the changes have had positive outcomes.

“The band feels really great right now,” remarks Ian. “Everyone is singing which is exciting, there’s a bunch of harmonies on every song. Working as a vocal quartet is exciting, thinking about how we used it in the studio and what we can do with it in the future. With less musicians it’s more stripped down and there’s more space which is a good thing.” James is also quick to add that, “I think those guys were a big creative force in the band for many years, it had been the four of us, with a varying roster of drummers, for a long time so when those two guys left last year it definitely was a new chapter for us.”

Ian Felice is the core songwriter in the group and over the years he’s developed a style that incorporates cosmic imagery filled with wild and fascinating characters, like a kind of psychedelic Dylan. On Undress there’s a clear shift to more personal and also unambiguously political subject matter.

44

‘I wouldn’t say that I sat down to write a personal or a political record, these were just the songs that came out,” explains Ian. “I wouldn’t say it isn’t a protest album but I wouldn’t read it as having some kind of political voice. It’s not straight-ahead protest music, there’s abstraction in the perspectives.”

“We demoed 30 songs and then we recorded 15 or so and 12 made the record. That’s a pretty standard amount we have for each record, I write a lot of songs. The other ones didn’t fit thematically or maybe we just didn’t play them right,” Ian says, adding “I spend a lot of time writing daily, It’s just a routine part of my life. I just write and at some point I know I’ll have enough songs to create something.”

Looking back at the recording process and the finished album, James reveals that the band rehearsed the songs more than they ever had before, then headed into the studio and recorded the bulk of the record live to analogue tape.

“We recorded all the songs in a week and then re-recorded about half of them the second week because we realised there were things we’d missed or we could do better.

On the musical side, we liked the idea of wider open spaces. We don’t have the fiddle anymore so we’ve gone away a bit from the folky, jangly acoustic guitar thing that we’d

done before,” says James. “We wanted to let things hang around and focus on the voices because Will and Jess are really great singers and so it was a cool opportunity to add more harmonies.”

Specifically on songs such as ‘Special Announcement’ and ‘Undress’ there are direct references to the current US political climate, via humour and clever wordplay. Ian agrees that writing about such topics makes it easier deal with them. “It’s definitely a way to process it. Thinking about the different issues from different perspectives helps you process what’s happening the world to some extent. I don’t have a tendency to be too optimistic about the broader scope of the way human things are going. There are a lot of great things in the world but the problems seem to be pretty daunting. Hopefully we can finish some stuff off though.”

Recently The Felice Brothers reissued their debut, self-titled album to mark its 10th anniversary and looking back on that album and the ensuing decade, James can identify some core values that have remained at the centre of everything they’ve done.

“No-one has ever told us what to do, we’ve never made any compromises and always throughout every single record and show, the songs are what matters. Everything else is incidental. Even on that first record the songs are central”

Sydney-based singer-songwriter Glenn Cardier has been honing his inimitable songwriting chops for the best part of 50 years, so it’s little wonder that he’s been inching closer and closer to perfection in recent times.

Having been plucked from the obscurity of his Brisbane childhood in the early ‘70s after appearing on a TV talent show and being offered a three-album major label deal, Cardier played at the first two Sunbury Pop Festivals, and has been steadily working on his masterful storytelling – whether in the public eye or squirrelled away in seclusion – ever since.

His brand new album Wild At Heart is in essence the culmination of all that’s come before, the perfectly ramshackle arrangements and instrumentation bringing a Southern noir vibe that – while in a way highlighting the Dylan and Waits inflections inherent in his muse – perfectly augments Cardier’s own distinctive aesthetic.

“I often just follow the songs and that’s usually reflected by where I’m at the time,” the singer reflects. “I wanted this one to be the sound of a bunch of guys on a backporch or in a barn or a bar or something, just playing rock or country-rock.

“There’s a bit of Americana to the sound but it’s not strictly that either: it’s me and it kicks ass in places, but I wanted the lyrics to really shine on this record with characters that are quite reflective of the time. The characters just seem to subtly emerge in

these songs, they’ve got a larrikin view of life just like Australians typically have.

“But my daughter lives in the States so I spent a bit of time recently in Virginia and New York, and I was influenced heavily by my time in the south especially. I’m just fascinated by the cadence in the dialogue when they speak, and I’ve been reading some Southern gothic novels - I think they call it ‘Grit Lit’ – guys like Harry Crews and Daniel Woodrell.

“They’re pretty tough novels, about people in troubled times and difficult circumstances, not real good at relationships but just doing their best and they’ve got regrets and stuff and you can hear that same them coursing through [Wild At Heart]. Just like the guy on the payphone saying, ‘I’m going to make it up to you when I get back’, or the guy in ‘Roxy Baby’ who says, ‘Let’s forget about the past and just go out’: I guess it’s a bit more like a novel.

“The lyrics meant a lot to me on this record, and the more I got into it the more I realised that it was that particular part of the world where it might be either the Deep South in the States or the Deep North in Australia,” he laughs. “I kinda like these characters, they have their dignity but they sure get into a lot of trouble. I think everybody can sort of relate to it.”

Humour has always been an important aspect of Cardier’s creative arsenal, with wry asides still prevalent on this new batch of songs.

“There’s probably less of it on Wild At Heart, although ‘Are You Beatles, Are You Stones’ falls into that category,” Cardier reflects.

“The more I write and the older I get there’s probably more likely to be humour and tragedy in the one line rather than just going for the big laugh.

“When I started out in the folk scene that quirky, black humour was what set me apart – that humour I was able to come up with quite readily – and it’s something I still enjoy. I’ve recently written a whole bunch of songs with that approach all through them, so I may at some stage in the future gravitate back to that.”

And Wild At Heart finds Cardier including a cover for the first time, a perfectly tumbledown rendition of Mickey Newbury’s perennial ‘Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)’.

“I said to the guys in the band, ‘Let’s try this Kenny Rogers song’ and the whole room went quiet’,” Cardier laughs, referring to Rogers’ original hit from 1968. “Then I told them it’s ‘Just Dropped In’ and they went, ‘Oh, that’s okay, that’s from The Big Lebowski!’.

“But Mickey Newbury is a great writer and I thought maybe I could bring something different to the table. I did a bit more of a ‘60s style Kinks-y rock’n’roll version, and the first time we played it it just rocked so much! It’s the first time I’ve ever put a cover song on a record of time, and I’m really happy with it.”

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JJ CALE’S LEGACY STAYS AROUND

(PART 1)

The late great guitarist’s first posthumous release confirms his reputation

...By Brian Wise

Surprisingly, Stay Around is the first posthumous release of music by acclaimed guitarist JJ Cale since he passed on nearly six years ago, on July 26, 2013 at the age of 74. Given his reputation and influence it has hardly been a rush to market project. That is probably because the album has been compiled by some of those closest to Cale: his widow, musician Christine Lakeland Cale, and friend and long-time manager, Mike Kappus. It is also in keeping with Cale’s ‘under the radar’ reputation and his rejection of all the usual trappings of rock star success.

While he was friends with Eric Clapton, on whom he was a huge influence (they made an album together), Cale hardly exploited the association. Apart from Clapton’s huge hits with Cale’s songs ‘After Midnight’ and ‘Cocaine,’ a host of other musicians have covered his work: everyone from Lynyrd Skynrd, Bryan Ferry, Santana, Johnny Cash, Lucinda Williams and The Band to Bobby “Blue” Bland and Dan Auerbach.

JJ Cale, who cut his teeth during the ’50s, playing guitar in bars in Oklahoma alongside fellow natives David Gates of Bread and Leon Russell, is credited as one of the key figures in creating the laid-back ‘Tulsa sound.’ After moving to Los Angeles in the mid-60’s and working on sessions, he released his debut album, Naturally, in 1972 which included the hit single ‘Crazy Mama,’ along with ‘After Midnight,’ and ‘Call Me the Breeze.’ It was to be the first of 14 studio albums for Cale, who started recording in locations such as Bradley’s Barn, Muscle Shoals and others in Tulsa but later also recorded prolifically in his own studio when he moved to the desert in California.

Stay Around uncovers some hidden gems from the past, with all the tracks previously unreleased. The only song not written by JJ is Christine Lakeland Cale’s ‘My Baby Blues,’ the first song she and JJ cut in a four-piece combo in Bradley’s Barn studio in 1977, the year they met.

As always, the music on the album is impeccably played by Cale and whatever small ensemble he put together, including Lakeland Cale, a long-time member of his 46

But when I started finding a couple of things that I had not been aware of, I started thinking, Oh, wow, I wonder if there will be enough here for a whole ... I use the old term, album. I realise with modern times, now it’s streaming and new. I come from the era of albums. So, I started thinking, “Maybe there’s actually enough here for an album.”

People ask me if there’s more, and I always say, “I’m trying not to get ahead of myself. I’m trying to stay enjoying this process.”

Because once this record comes out, there are options for what to do next, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself.

So, there was a lot of stuff to go through. Then I wanted to find music that maybe no one had posted a grainy bad YouTube video with horrible audio from a gig. I wanted to find songs that were really and truly unheard. band, who I caught up with by phone to talk about Stay Around.

You worked with Mike Kappus closely on the new album, didn’t you?

Yes. Well, John worked with Mike. They were together over 30 years. I remember the first night we met Mike. So, it’s just when you know someone that knows all things Cale, as I say, it made it a lot easier to approach him about working on a project, than to start all over with ... in a situation just trying to find who might be interested in a Cale putting something out and so on. It was a no-brainer to work with Mike.

Was there a lot of material in the archives that you had to go through?

Well, people have asked me that, “What else is there? Is there more?” And I keep saying, well, I had certain parameters that developed, that I thought, if I can find music that no one has heard, that is finished and done by Cale - meaning maybe he recorded it, he mixed it, he wrote it, he played it, he sang it and it was, actually, in a finished state. I knew there were a few things. I had heard a few of the cuts in the past.

I know that you lived in California, and relatively in isolation. I’ve got this picture of him in a home studio. Is that where he recorded most of his material?

Yes, he did record a lot of these items at home. There was one cut that was an outtake from sessions and I was trying to figure out where, because some of the songs had documentation, or notes, about what guitar he played, or what mic he sang through. And there were a couple that I just have so far not found any info that tells me where exactly this came from. So, for the most part, yes.

getting hung up with other things, or having to drive to the studio. If you were in the mood, he could just walk in a room and start making music. So, I think the convenience was what he liked.

Well, you played with him for many years.

Were you on many of the tracks here, or are they mainly his own recordings?

I’m on a couple of them. Again, we listed the musicians, not trying to guess who was on what cut, because I didn’t want to be wrong.

So yes, I’m on a couple of the cuts. The nice thing about this collection is there is a lot of John doing what he loved to do, which was make his demos at home, so he would play everything on the demo.

What I first told people as a comment about the project was I was trying to, for lack of a better term, max out the Cale factor. So, find the things that he had done the most with, that I could give people the most of Cale stuff. So, there are players on a couple of the cuts, but it is an awful lot of Cale.

Well, one of the songs is one of your songs, isn’t it? That has, I believe, a very interesting story behind it..

Well, I thank you for saying it’s interesting.

I allowed it on the album. Mike also didn’t know that John hadn’t written it. When we were choosing songs, and I would say, “How about these, how about these?” He liked that cut, and I said, “Oh, well, that’s the only song that’s not written by John.” So, I told Mike that, that was an old song of mine, that John had cut a number of my songs over

“I was trying to, for lack of a better term, max out the Cale factor.” the years, and that one had never been out on record. Mike liked it enough to tell us to go ahead and use it, the song ‘My Baby Blues’. John and I met in 1977, and it was the first song we ever cut in the studio after we met.

Then a couple of years later, he cut his version in 1980, in Columbia ... in Nashville, I believe, and I believe it was Columbia Studios. I knew that he had cut the song. I was not on the session. I knew that he had recorded it. For a couple of different reasons, it was not used at the time. So, when I found in going through his library of stuff, when I found that he had revisited the old song and worked on it, and overdubbed, and added guitars and things, I thought, “Oh, my goodness, he revisited that old song.” And it clicked for me, that it brought everything full circle, which is a corny, overused cliché, but it basically just tied up a bow on the package, you might say. It was just the first song we cut, and then by putting it on this posthumous collection, I thought, “At least it puts an ending note on things.”

Well, not only is it appropriate that it’s there but it must be very poignant for you as well, to have that song included on this album.

It is. It makes me grin, because you write songs all the time, and you have a lot of songs, and you think, “Oh, it only took 40 years for that one to be heard.” So, you could have a philosophical discussion of what is time.

Talking about poignant, it’s interesting to see the video for ‘Chasing You’, which has footage of J.J. on tour and traveling around. It’s interesting to look back and see him there, and that must be poignant for you as well to revisit that.

Yes, and that was all done by the label, Because Music, out of France, out of Paris, they put that whole video together from various things. There was a time when things were harder, but I think I’m in a stronger place now, and time does heal things, so I can enjoy hearing ... I mean, I heard so much stuff over the last couple years. And now, whether it’s going through old photographs and reliving things, or being reminded of things, it’s more good memories than sad memories, so it puts me in a good place rather than a bad place.

NEXT MONTH: Christine Lakeland Cale on JJ’s relationship with Eric Clapton and more.

Stay Around is available now.

I’m sitting right here in the house in Southern California, and this is where John was very comfortable with his own setup. He just recorded, whether it be in the kitchen, whether it be in his home studio, which was setup, basically, in what you would call the living room of the home. He had moved the gear around over the years, from ... it might be in this room for a few years, and then he’d move it to that room for a few years.

And so, he was just comfortable with his own gear because he could turn it on easily and start making music, and there wasn’t a lot of 47

“The Wilsey Sound”: The Rise & Fall of James Calvin Wilsey The man behind the haunting sound of Chris Isaak’s hit, “Wicked Game,” died on Christmas Eve day; he was a friend of mine ... By Michael Goldberg When my son Joe was 14 years old, in 1991, Jimmy Wilsey gave him guitar lessons as a favor to me. The Chris Isaak song “Wicked Game,” featuring Jimmy’s haunting guitar intro, was a recent hit. Each week, the two of us, Joe and I, would drive from our house in the Glen Park district of San Francisco, up and over the hill, down to the funky apartment in the Haight Ashbury Jimmy shared with a few friends.

He was, as his friends agree, a tremendously talented man, an early adopter of digital music software and equipment for recording and live performance who in the early ’90s was a consultant with Apple. For years he shared his knowledge about everything from his music business expertise to specifics on how he got his sound with members of an online musician forum.

For about an hour Jimmy would patiently show my son how to play the killer riffs that drive the Rolling Stones’ “The Last Time” and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” or some other oldie Joe wanted to learn. There was no charge for these lessons. Jimmy was a busy man, he had plenty of other things to do, but he and I were friends, and that was the kind of thing Jimmy Wilsey did for a friend.

He was a pop culture expert, obsessed with music, film and art. “He knew everything culturally,” said one of his friends, musician Todd Eckart. “I mean if you talked about Billy Strange, he would say, ‘Oh yeah, he played on this song by Nancy Sinatra.’ His knowledge was impeccable.” Sadly, Jimmy struggled with drug addiction off and on for over 35 years, and it ultimately destroyed him.

On Christmas day 2018, I visited the Mabuhay Gardens Facebook group and was stunned to read that on the previous afternoon, Christmas Eve day, December 24, my friend James Calvin Wilsey had died of a heart attack. Some weeks later, his niece Aubrey Baca told me his death was actually due to “overall organ failure.” Jimmy, who played on the first four Chris Isaak albums and released one solo album, was only 61.

“Jimmy was a real sweet guy,” Penelope Houston, leader of San Francisco’s greatest punk band, the Avengers, a band Jimmy was an original member of in the late ’70s, told me recently. “He was like my kid brother. His sense of humor was really unusual, he was a wit. He was never unkind. But very, very funny. And very smart.”

Wilsey backstage at Winterland, when the Avengers opened for the Sex Pistols, January 1978. Photo by Marcus Leatherdale 48

The author, Michael Goldberg, and Wilsey, in LA before a Wiltern gig, 1991.

Influenced by such guitarists as Scotty Moore, Duane Eddy, Hank B. Marvin of the Shadows, George Harrison, Keith Richards, Billy Strange and James Burton (to name but a few), Wilsey developed a unique stylized sound. He was master of less-is-more, at times seeming to play as few notes as possible. He was known to his fans as “the King of Slow,” and the dreamy, mysterioso opening riff that defines “Wicked Game,” the riff that made the song a hit, consists of two sustained notes. During ballads like “Funeral in the Rain” and “Western Stars,” and, decades later, an unreleased version of Delaney and Bonnie’s “Superstar” (covered by the Carpenters), Wilsey’s “magical touch,” as Erik Jacobsen, who produced the four Chris Isaak albums Wilsey played on, put it, seemed to materialize into sound an internal sadness that he never overcame.

“The Wilsey Sound” Jimmy Wilsey was a world-class guitar player, and he was also one of the most underrated. He should have been included in Rolling Stone’s list of the top 100 guitarists.

From the stage of the Fillmore Auditorium on January 12, 2019 Patti Smith guitarist/ rock critic Lenny Kaye called Wilsey, “A good guy and a great guitar player.”

It was Wilsey who wrote the mesmerizing introductory riff for Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game,” which reached number two on the Billboard Top 100 in 1991 and charted in the Top Ten in nine countries. “Wicked Game” is on albums and singles that have sold over five million copies; the song has been streamed nearly one hundred million times on Spotify and another twenty million on YouTube. It was used in major 1990s sitcoms including Beverly Hills 90210, Melrose Place and Friends.

In a rave review of Isaak and his band that ran in the San Francisco Chronicle in the ’80s, rock critic Joel Selvin celebrated “the Wilsey Sound,” noting that “the vision may be Isaak’s; the sound is Wilsey’s.”

Wilsey called that sound “nitro twang.”

Collage of the offbeat images Jimmy posted on his Facebook page.

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The Wilsey Sound “The Love of My Life”

Jimmy (right), his brother and two sisters, and one of Jimmy’s school photos.

Claudia Summers became his girlfriend shortly before he graduated in 1975. “He was my high school sweetheart and the love of my life,” said Summers, who was 17 when she started dating the boy she still calls Jim.

Donald Wilsey and his oldest son Donald Jr. James Calvin Wilsey was born in Logansport, Indiana on July 12, 1957, but said he only spent “three days there”; he was preceded by two sisters, Joyce Marie and Linda Ann, and a brother, Donald Patrick Wilsey, Jr. His father, Donald Patrick Wilsey, Sr., had enlisted in the US Army Air Corps. in 1941 when he was 16; he fought in World War ll and eventually achieved the rank of Chief Master Sergeant. He had married Mary Lou Rousseau on April 7, 1947; she was a “stay at home mom,” according to Jimmy’s sister, Joyce Baca. The family moved around, living near Lancaster, CA when Wilsey, Sr. was sent to Edwards Air Force Base, then to Kansas City before settling in Florissant, MO, a town 16 miles north of St. Louis when Chief Master Sergeant Wilsey retired in February 1962; Jimmy was nearly five years old at the time, his sister said.

“I grew up around music,” Wilsey told me in 1991. “My sisters were always playing the Beatles, the Stones, Herman’s Hermits.”

It was while in junior high school that Wilsey saw “blues people for the first time. Like I saw B.B. King on television. It was on ‘The Midnight Special’ or ‘Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert’ or something like that. I’d never really seen anybody just stand there and play the guitar”; he was inspired to start playing an old Harmony steel-string guitar that was “lying around the house.” Soon he acquired a twelve string acoustic guitar and took some lessons. “I had no real goal – I just liked to play,” he said when I formerly interviewed him for the first time, in 1986. “All my friends were 10 times better than me. I thought I’d never be any good. It was a hobby. I was more interested in painting and art.”

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Though he “played his guitar a ton,” Summers said Wilsey was set on being an artist when they first got together. “He painted Kandinsky type paintings with an airbrush. We used to go to this spot off the Mississippi. There were cornfields and trees and a stream and we would dream. Jim about being an artist and I wanted to be a writer. We would dream big. We couldn’t wait to get out of St. Louis.”

Art brought him to San Francisco in August of 1976 to attend the Academy of Art College. That was the year the first Ramones’ album was released, and right when punk was exploding in London. Summers followed Wilsey to San Francisco, and for a while they lived together. “Our relationship became tumultuous,” she told me.

Trying to explain the kind of generous, caring person Wilsey was, Summers told me that one night – this was a while after their relationship had ended – she was assaulted and badly beaten. When she got back to her apartment, she called her ex-boyfriend. “All I said was his name and he dropped the phone and ran to where I lived and nursed me and cared for me for a solid week. Never left my side.”

Claudia Summers, photographed in 1977, said Jimmy was “the love of my life.” Photo

by Marcus Leatherdale

The Wilsey Sound

In San Francisco Wilsey frequented the punk club Mabuhay Gardens where he saw a new band he liked a lot, the Avengers.

One evening he ran into Avengers’ singer Houston at poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore, just down the street from the Mabuhay. “I asked Penelope Houston if she needed a guitar player,” he told me.

“She said no, but did I play bass? I lied. So I sold my guitar and bought a bass and was in the Avengers the next day.” Wilsey had just turned 20.

According to Avengers’ drummer Danny Furious, the group had two sex symbols: Houston and Wilsey. “He was super cute as a teenager,” Houston recalled. “Adorably cute. He was a good addition. He just fit in perfectly. Girls loved Jimmy. He always had super young girlfriends. He had this one girlfriend who was 15 and her father was a cop. I was like, ‘Jimmy what are you doing.

She’s 15!’ ”

Erik Jacobsen had produced seven Top 10 hits for the Lovin’ Spoonful in the mid-’60s, but by 1981 Jacobsen’s hit-making days seemed to be over. He saw Silvertone that year at a San Francisco Art Institute show and quickly became the band’s co-manager and producer. “I liked Jimmy’s guitar playing a lot from the git,” Jacobsen said. “He did some tremendous work. He added an awful lot to Chris’ stuff, as you well know.”

The Avengers rocking the Mabuhay Gardens, circa 1978. Photo by Hugh Brown Not long after the Winterland gig, Sex Pistols’ guitarist Steve Jones took the Avengers into Different Fur Studios, but the Avengers were unable to get a record deal. They played their final show at San Francisco’s Geary Temple on June 22, 1979.

“We were worn down by the apathy of popular culture,” Penelope Houston said during an interview for the Vindictive Punk website.

“Deadly Funny and Quick Witted”

In the Avengers Jimmy could be quite aggressive on stage. Photo by Chester Simpson After Wilsey and Summers broke up, he became involved with Amy Starks, who had come to the city from Memphis to attend the San Francisco Art Institute and study film and photography. “He was a generous, kind, loving person. We went out together for about a year,” Starks said. “I went to every single Avengers show. Jimmy had this big shock of died blond hair that made him look like a rooster. Him and Penelope looked like sister and brother in a way sometimes. And he was very muscular at the time. He was a very athletic bass player. They were jumping all over the stage.”

When the Sex Pistols came to San Francisco to play to a sell-out crowd of over 5000 people at Winterland on January 14, 1978, it was the Avengers who went on before them. Recalling that night, Wilsey posted on Facebook he was “Scared shitless… I felt like we were the lion food getting ready to be eaten at the coliseum.”

In 1980 an unknown Chris Isaak began commuting between Stockton, where he grew up, and San Francisco. With the help of manager Mark Plummer, Isaak put together a rockabilly trio he named after the brand name of one of his guitars: Silvertone. “I met Jimmy and we hit it off right away,” Isaak wrote in a December 25, 2018 Facebook post, a day after Wilsey’s death. “He was very quiet, soft-spoken but also deadly funny and quick witted. Nobody made me laugh like Jimmy. I remember him sitting in with my band playing ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula’ and him tearing it up on guitar. That moved me from lead guitar to rhythm and he was in the band.”

Wilsey remembered it differently in 1986, telling me that it was he and Isaak who jointly formed a new version of Silvertone after the first one broke up. Wilsey said he and Isaak were “getting together” to jam. “I said we should work on more original stuff which he was all for ’cause he liked to write a lot. [Before the end of 1980] Chris and I put a new band together.”

Critic Joel Selvin wrote: “the vision may be Isaak’s; the sound is Wilsey’s.”

Photo by Hugh Brown

guitar playing and a sampled rhythm track.

As Entertainment Weekly’s Joe Rhodes wrote in March of 1991, that music director, a man named Lee Chesnut, “had heard the song’s otherworldly opening guitar line (played

by Isaak’s longtime sidekick, James Calvin Wilsey)… and been struck by the quivering riff.” In 1990, a year and a half after Heart Shaped World was released, Chesnut added the version with Isaak’s vocal to the Power 99 playlist; four months later “Wicked Game” was in the Top Ten. But success came too late. Wilsey was fed up working with Isaak who, according to Jacobsen, made band members sign nondisclosure agreements. There was also a troubled relationship with an actress that took a heavy emotional toll on the guitarist.

And the drugs.

Silvertone: (Left to right) Isaak, John Silvers, Jamie Ayres and Wilsey, 1982.

Photo by Chester Simpson When Jacobsen took Silvertone into the studio to cut demos, it became clear that the rhythm section “couldn’t cut it,” according to Jacobsen; Wilsey told me that something in 1982 the second version of Silvertone disbanded. Isaak, Wilsey and Jacobsen worked together on songs, demos and recordings for the first album for the next two years. Nineteen eighty-five’s Silvertone, recorded by Isaak, Wilsey and session players, and produced by Jacobsen, initially sold all of 14,000 copies. The second album, 1986’s Chris Isaak, sold over 75,000 copies within the first six months of release, a big improvement over Silvertone but far from a hit; it peaked on what is now called the “Billboard 200” album chart at a lowly #194.

In the early ’80s drugs entered the picture.

“He [Jimmy] started using heroin,” said rock photographer Chester Simpson, who was himself smoking Persian Brown heroin at the time; Simpson subsequently put hard drugs behind him. “There was a dealer who sold Persian Brown, where I would get my heroin from. I was over there getting ready to leave and there was a knock at the door and then Jimmy was coming in the door. We sort of looked at each other. And I knew why he was there.”

During the sessions for Isaak’s third album, Wilsey was key to the recording of “Wicked Game,” included on the 1989 album, Heart Shaped World; it was first released as a single that same year. The single and the album flopped, but then the music director at Power 99 (WAPW), an Atlanta CHR (Top 40) station, saw the 1990 David Lynch film “Wild At Heart” and fell in love with an instrumental version of “Wicked Game” included in the film – essentially Wilsey’s

In May of 1992, according to Wilsey, after “12 years and two months” of working with Isaak, and after playing on “about half” of the fourth album, San Francisco Days, Wilsey and Isaak parted ways. Asked why he left Isaak, Wilsey said during a 2008 interview with the Australian magazine Something Else, “Technically, under contract I’m not even really supposed to talk about Chris.”

“I was very close with Jimmy and it got to the point, he really couldn’t stand Chris’ guts,” Jacobsen said. “That’s what it boiled down to… He couldn’t stand Isaak. It was somewhere around the time when he got into heavy drugs. And then we had some rehearsals where Jimmy couldn’t concentrate. He couldn’t even remember the chords. I don’t know if he was fired or he quit, but it was very very plain that everything between those two as partners was over. And that was that.

It was Jimmy’s brother who helped Jimmy relocate to LA and get clean. “Don went to San Francisco to bring Jim home with him and get him detoxed,” Joyce Baca, Jimmy’s sister, explained in an email. “That was a success for a while.” But as time went on, Wilsey relapsed and “continued to struggle with his drug use,” according to his niece.

“Cocaine, Heroin, Angel Dust, Ecstasy…”

Her name was Winter, and she was a young, strikingly beautiful, self-described punk.

Wilsey met Winter Rosebudd Mullender at Al’s Bar in downtown LA. Al’s was a gathering place for both underground and more established members of LA’s creative community. Mullender, who hung out at Al’s with her friend, artist Liz McGrath, designed custom lingerie for Trashy Lingerie in LA, a store whose customers have included Dolly Parton, Gwyneth Paltrow and Madonna.

Mullender had also used an array of drugs, according to a sarcastic article >>> 51

The Wilsey Sound >>> titled “Parenting 101” she wrote for the January 2018 issue of Punk Globe, including “cocaine, heroin, angel dust, ecstasy, TONS of acid, booze, cigarettes, ding dongs and hoho’s (yes, those are drugs too).”

Wilsey and Mullender at Las Vegas wedding, 2003.

“Winter had a great personality and Jimmy enjoyed her energy,” Punk Globe editor Ginger Coyote, a longtime friend of Mullender, wrote me on Facebook. “They soon became an item.”

Wilsey and Mullender rented this house in LA’s Eagle Rock neighborhood.

“A Chilly Reunion” At some point in the aughts, possibly 2006 or 2007, Chris Isaak and Wilsey, who had not seen each other since parting ways in 1993, had their final meeting. “As memory serves, it was a chilly reunion in the beginning but Winter mediated and helped with the tension,” Punk Globe editor Ginger Coyote explained in a Facebook message. “They had not seen each other since Jimmy left the band so after the air cleared they spent the night jamming and remembering the fun times. But that was the only time they had contact as far as I know.”

In 2007 Jimmy got serious about recording a solo album. He’d turned the dining room in the Eagle Rock house into a recording studio.

He made enormous progress on his album, but relations between Wilsey and Mullender soured. “They were basically the modern George and Tammy meets Sid and Nancy,” Wilsey’s musician friend Todd Eckart said.

El Dorado, Wilsey’s only solo album, a rock tour de force of pre-surf instrumentals with such titles as “Untamed” and “Insomnia,” was released in 2008; “Space-age hillbilly stuff, little-haunted-house-on-the-prairie music,” as Wilsey had previously described his music, perfectly describes El Dorado.

Though loved by Wilsey’s hardcore fans, El Dorado was not a commercial success.

“My favorite review [of El Dorado] came from a friend who’s a police officer here,” Jimmy wrote in an online Telecaster forum he participated in from 2005 into 2015. “He said he likes to drive around with it on in his squad car pretending he’s a cop gone bad.”

Mullender became pregnant (“knocked up,” as she put it in her Punk Globe article) in early 2003; Wilsey married her in Las Vegas that August, and they rented an older house in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of LA. Their son, Waylon James Wilsey, was born in December. Wilsey loved Waylon, who is now 15, and was proud of him, his niece Aubrey Baca said. He posted many photos of Waylon on his Facebook page. One photo shows Wilsey and Waylon gazing lovingly at each other. “He had two true loves,” Baca said.

“His music and his son Waylon.”

The cover of Wilsey’s only solo album, El Dorado.

“He was the world to Jimmy,” said a friend.

Photo courtesy Aubrey Baca.

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Later in 2008, Wilsey and Mullender got a “quick divorce,” according to one of Mullender’s friends, Miguel Jose. “We hated each other,” Wilsey told historian Michael Foley during a mid-2018 interview. “We didn’t speak for years.”

The Wilsey Sound Wilsey was occasionally a guitar for hire. At the Telecaster forum, on August 18, 2013, he wrote, “This evening I worked on a song for a well known pop chanteuse and a Hennessy Cognac commercial that will play in Africa.

It’s a paycheck, jack.”

The “pop chanteuse” was Lana Del Rey. I heard one track for Del Rey’s “Black Beauty” Wilsey recorded in May 2013 that he described as “just practice,” and another recorded in August of 2013 was “new ideas.”

In both cases, his playing was exquisite.

Yet none of Wilsey’s guitar tracks appear to have been used by Del Rey for “Black Beauty,” which appeared on her 2014 album, Ultraviolence.

Winter Rosebudd Mullender and Waylon James Wilsey.

“Hooked Again” Wilsey had contracted Hepatitis C and Cirrhosis of the liver, and in early September 2014 he had a liver transplant. “In 2014 Jimmy was recovering…and was given pain medicine to manage his pain,” Wilsey’s niece told me. “Jimmy was hooked again. He since continued with his use of drugs and it ended up taking a toll on his body. Living with a ‘borrowed’ liver won’t give you a lifetime but having a borrowed liver while continuing drug use is a recipe for disaster.”

The guitarist relocated to the Bay Area in the summer of 2016, but that didn’t work out. He would drop out of sight (“fade away,” as Mark Plummer put it) for long periods of time, according to a number of his friends. “There was a kind of flakiness,” said Erik Jacobsen. Houston said that after Wilsey came north “at some point he just disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“After We Lost The House” Wilsey surfaced back in LA in early 2017, moving into a different place in Eagle Rock where his ex-wife was living with their son

Waylon. Mullender was Punk Globe’s “Punk of the Month” in the October 2017 issue.

Before long things went seriously wrong.

In June of 2018 Michael Foley, Professor of American Civilization at the Université Grenoble Alpes, was in LA researching a book on “the political culture of San Francisco punk.”

In November, Wilsey’s ex-wife dropped out of site. By then Wilsey was “camping out on the front sidewalk of my building,” according to EveAnna Manley, president of Manley Laboratories, producer of highly regarded high-end audio gear. “He [Wilsey] declined right in front of my eyes for the last few months.”

Foley interviewed Wilsey on the evening of June 27 at Mullender’s rented house and was shocked at what he saw. Wilsey was “just rail thin. Sickly looking thin, and had some teeth missing. A few days stubble.

Disheveled.” The house was “just a shithole.

The whole living room was just a mess, full of empty whiskey bottles, beer bottles, beer cans – at least 15 booze bottles and loads of beer bottles and cans – and ash trays that were overflowing… It was kind of extraordinary. [The living room] led into the kitchen that was also a complete mess.

Dishes overflowing out of the sink, every inch of the kitchen counter was covered with clutter. And I thought then, at that moment was the first time I thought, ‘There’s a bunch of junkies living here.’”

On the evening of December 2, 2018, Mullender’s friend Daniel Darko told me he and two friends went to Eagle Rock “looking for Winter.” They visited a homeless encampment. They didn’t find Winter but instead ran into Wilsey, who was wearing his trademark cowboy hat and who, according to Darko, was homeless at the time.

Foley said his interview with Wilsey in the guitarist’s small upstairs bedroom was “the most difficult, least successful interview I’ve done because he just couldn’t keep a thought together. And it was really worrying…. On the one hand, he could start off with something seeming pretty vivid. And then he would just stop or he’d even kind of stutter a little bit. It was like there was a loose wire that was catching in his brain and it would cause it to kind of twitch or something and then it would disappear and that would be that.”

At the end of September 2018 Wilsey spoke to Penelope Houston on the phone and told her that he and Mullender were being evicted. Houston said Wilsey told her the couple were going to move to “Big Bear or move to the desert and ‘I’m going to start a studio.’ He just had all these dreams of continuing life in a normal fashion and being a musician and recording stuff…. Winter had all these dreams too. Both of them were in this deluded state of not seeing what was really in front of them. That they don’t have a place to live.”

Houston also said that later in 2018 “friends of mine told me that they heard that Jimmy had been hospitalized in October because of this problem with his liver.”

Sometime after their eviction, Mullender sent a Facebook message to a friend that reads in part: “…it’s been really rough.

After we lost the house Jimmy got sick again so I’ve been trying to shuffle him around while literally being homeless. He’s getting the Hep C treatment finally, but his body is rejecting the organ. I have some unbelievable stories, too much to type…”

“There’s this overpass under which a lot of homeless people have tents,” Darko said.

“We were asking around, talking to a couple of people. They said Jimmy was around and we looked down the street and there he was.

He came walking up, ‘Hey guys.’”

It was a cold evening but Wilsey was wearing a t-shirt. “We hung out with him,” Darko said. “[We asked him] Are you doing OK? [He said] ‘Yeah. Hangin’ around here.’ Thom [one of Darko’s friends] gave him a shirt and he almost started crying. He was very emotional.”

Wilsey’s’s niece, Aubrey Baca, is heartbroken by what happened to her uncle. “In 2018 Jimmy ended up losing everything he worked his entire life for (music, family, home, son),” she wrote in an email.

On December 19, Wilsey called 911, and an ambulance brought the guitarist to LAC+USC Medical Center in LA; Baca said, “His organs were in distress and were shutting down. He was put on life support to try to help his liver with dialysis but nothing was working.”

Three days before Christmas, Isaak bassist Rowland Salley, who had played in the Isaak band with Wilsey for nine years, headed for LAC+USC Medical Center where Wilsey was hospitalized and found him in a coma. “I’d driven to the LA hospital to see him,” Salley said. “I took my uke, fully expecting to walk into the room, sit down, talk some turkey and catch up. Even play a few songs. Such was not the case.”

“There’s a picture in my mom’s living room of me singing, him picking guitar…,” Isaak posted on his Facebook page Christmas day.

“We were both just kids wanting to make music... We played at crummy bars and clubs for next to nothing, and were thrilled to do it.

We were chasing a dream and I like to think we caught ahold of it… Jimmy had so much heart and a great sound… I used to yell, ‘Sick ’em Cal!’ when he took a guitar solo. I look at his picture now; good looking, cool, young Jimmy and I miss him and I’m so glad I had those times with him. I’m going to put on an old record and listen to my friend. Rest In Peace James Calvin Wilsey.”

Wilsey is survived by two sisters, Joyce Marie Baca and Linda Ann Nilson, a niece, Aubrey Baca and a son, Waylon James Wilsey.

“It’s a shame he died,” producer Jacobsen said. “A shame he left Silvertone, a shame he couldn’t get along with Chris and a shame he went on drugs.”

His niece and friends hope James Calvin Wilsey will be remembered for his beautiful and mesmerizing guitar playing, his generosity, his quick wit and most of all, his love of his son Waylon, and not for his very human imperfections, which we all have. His signature sound, first developed in the early ’80s, lives on, thirty-plus years later. “‘Wicked Game,’” said ex-Avengers drummer Danny Furious, is “in constant rotation around the globe.”

Please consider making a donation to the Gofundme.com fundraiser for Jimmy’s son, Waylon James Wilsey.

Michael Goldberg, a former Rolling Stone Senior Writer and founder of the original Addicted To Noise online magazine, is author of three rock & roll novels including 2016’s “Untitled.”

For James Calvin Wilsey life ended on the afternoon of Christmas Eve day, at 4:20 pm. “Jimmy just got unlucky with a lot of circumstances that happened,” said Silvertone’s original manager Mark Plummer.

“Jimmy was a rock & roll guy. He took a lot of drugs. A lot of us take tons of drugs and end up OK. With Jimmy something went really wrong… In the end somehow it all crashed him. It’s so sad.”

Chris Isaak was at his mother Dorothy’s house in Stockton when he heard the news.

Wilsey 53

A VERITABLE

ISLAND OF DREAMS For some six years in the 1960s, Eel Pie Island — an ait in

the middle of the Thames — was the unlikely epicentre of the British blues boom. TONY HILLIER was fortunate enough to have enjoyed a ringside seat during this historical epoch in the evolution of modern music.

By Tony Hillier

F

or an embryonic bohemian musiclover growing up in the salubrious southwest London suburb of Twickenham, the narrow footbridge that led to the forbidden world known colloquially as “The Island” was the equivalent of entering Dr Who’s Tardis or the back of the wardrobe that revealed Narnia.

Metaphorically and physically, the portal proved to be the gateway to a magical music planet that spawned such British rock leviathans as the Rolling Stones, the Small Faces, The Who and Pink Floyd — not to mention nascent megastars like David Bowie (then a teenage singer/saxophonist operating under the moniker Davy Jones), Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton.

On nights when the Stones strutted their stuff, condensation caused by sweaty bodies packed like sardines on the coil-sprung trampoline-like dance floor occupied by punters as pissed as proverbial newts on Newcastle brown ale (aka “rocket juice”) and cider, would cascade down the whitewashed walls.

The faded and peeling ballroom with its painted cartoon-like frescos and arched stage façade is long gone — burnt to ashes in a suspicious fire, only to be replaced by a boatyard. But memories of Jagger and his then raw, raucous and raunchy R&B band of middle-class white boys pumping out covers of Willie Dixon’s ‘I Just Wanna Make Love to You’, Slim Harpo’s ‘King Bee’, >>>>

If that weren’t enough, The Island also served to introduce a raft of Afro-American blues legends that included Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy, Jesse Fuller, Memphis Slim, Champion Jack Dupree, Jimmy Witherspoon and John Lee Hooker to audiences beyond their own shores for the first time.

The richness of The Island’s legacy was crystallised in June of last year when the Stones returned to “Twickers” to perform to 55,000 fevered fans at the famous rugby stadium, on the final date of a UK tour that might well turn out to be their last.

Back in 1963, Mick Jagger and his men had scored a five-month mid-week residency at nearby Eel Pie Island that set them on the path to world fame and fortune while earning them the then princely sum of 45 quid per gig, rising to 55 smackers!

The last multi-date residency in the Stones’ history has been acknowledged with the relatively recent installation of the ‘Music Legends of Eel Pie Island’ heritage plaque on the riverside overlooking the eyot that had helped forge their reputation and where, in the 1500s, Henry VIII had reputedly occasionally stopped by in the royal barge for an eel pie or ten, en-route from the Tower of London to his Hampton Court residence.

During the Stones’ residency, queues to get into The Island’s rickety-rackety hotel — frequented by Charles Dickens in the 19th century and mentioned in his famous novels, Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist — stretched some 200 yards, back over a winding path, past the doors, gates and front gardens of local residents, and the footbridge.

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55

A VERITABLE ISLAND OF DREAMS >>> Chuck Berry’s ‘Carol’, Rufus Thomas’s ‘Walking the Dog’, ‘Route 66’ and other gutbucket numbers are etched in my memory bank.

Perhaps naively, given the Stones’ growing reputation at the time, their popularity came as a surprise to Arthur Chisnall — the otherwise enlightened and enterprising founder of the Eel Pie Island Club, issuer of Eelpiland passports and collector on gig nights of the half-a-crown cover charge.

The bearded and duffle-coated beatnik actually had reservations about hiring what was to become (and I quote former Stones’ tour manager and Rhythms columnist Sam

Cutler’s prescient utterance) “the world’s greatest rock ‘n’ roll band”.

The affable Chisnall, who ran the entire shebang single-handedly and with amateurish charm (assisted by a couple of elderly ladies who collected the sixpenny bridge toll), simply hadn’t realised just how big the Stones had become following Friday evening gigging at the Crawdaddy Club — another of my stamping grounds — in the neighbouring Thames town of Richmond.

The Island became to the Stones what Liverpool’s Cavern Club was to their great northern rivals, the Beatles: a launchpad to

immortality. It was during their residency that they scored the first of numerous chart hits (with the song ‘Come On’).

Lesser-known but favourite bands that I recall with some clarity from my visits to The Island include the Cyril Davies All Stars (fronted by a blindingly brilliant blues harpist), the Artwoods (led by Ronnie Wood’s eldest brother, Arthur), the Graham Bond Organisation (boasting the dynamic but mad drummer Ginger Baker and bass ace Jack Bruce, who later co-formed Cream with Eric Clapton), and the Downliners Sect.

It’s also where I first saw John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (with Clapton out front), Brian Auger & The Trinity, and the Muleskinners, the outfit in which Ian McLagan served his apprenticeship before joining the Small Faces. The Faces’ first drummer, Nigel Pegrum, who helped me put together a festivals-oriented band called Kamerunga in our home-away-from-home, Cairns, some 40 years later, still whinges about having to lug his kit up the footbridge to The Island’s antiquated stage. Roadies were a luxury bands could ill afford in that bygone era.

One of my fondest memories concerns a fresh-faced young guitar-toting hotshot Jeff Beck (pre-Yardbirds) jumping on stage for a halftime floor-spot which yielded a staggeringly dexterous, ostentatious and elongated jazz-rock solo rendition of Arthur Smith’s 1940s’ classic ‘Guitar Boogie’.

The Steampacket (formerly known as the Hoochie Coochie Men) — an outfit fronted by Long John Baldry, who remains the greatest, and tallest, white male blues singer I’ve heard or seen, and his partner-in-rhyme, the then up-and-coming vocalist and harp player Rod Stewart — memorably merged blues and soul music.

Although bisexuality was in vogue at the time, my sister turned down “Rod The Mod” for a dance after she saw him “snogging”, to coin the vernacular of the era, with the urbane and sartorially elegant Long John, who was openly, and daringly, gay.

The bushes outside the ballroom barely concealed more conventional canoodling.

To quote a memorable line that came from the lips of trad-jazz singer, comedian and raconteur extraordinaire George Melly at the time: “Sex rose into the air like steam from a kettle”.

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Dilapidated and decidedly decadent, The Eel Pie Island Hotel may have deteriorated somewhat since its chic 1930s’ tearooms heyday, but it certainly offered a congenial chat-up “scene” for a testosterone-charged boy looking for “birds”. As Stewart described it in his autobiography Rod: “When you set off for Eel Pie Island, you had that palmtingling sense you were heading somewhere truly exotic … a fantastically exciting destination”. Suffice to say, The Island’s haunting ambience is only partially conveyed by the accompanying sepia images.

The Hotel’s designated green room was situated immediately above the stage, and rumour has it that one unconscionable and inebriated musician once relieved himself there into a broken bucket and then took some delight in seeing the product of his discharge trickle between the floor boards and drip on to the heads of unsuspecting colleagues below.

In the mid-to-late 1950s, before rhythm & blues became genre du jour, rock groups and reprobates ruled the roost, The Island had been the venue for cleaner shaven and better-behaved trad jazz bands led by the likes of Chris Barber, Acker Bilk, Ken Colyer and Terry Lightfoot. After the blues boom subsided and, following a brief closure, The Island re-opened for a short period as Colonel Barefoot’s Rock Garden before it burned down. A June 1970 poster shows Deep Purple and Free among the so-called “prog-rock” bands on the schedule.

In recent years, a new Eel Pie Club has sprung up across the road from Twickenham station, at a pub that once hosted a folk club I used to frequent and, indeed, once performed a floor-spot in. While I’ve been impressed to note that Mud Morganfield — eldest son of the legendary Muddy Waters — has played there three times, the new venue will never come within cooee of the real thing.

Unique might be a much overused and abused word in the lexicon of music journos, but it certainly applies to the Eel Pie Island Hotel. I count my blessings that I was born in the right place, at the right time!

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MUSICIAN

MUSICIAN

When Sydney vocalist John Rooney went to assemble a band of US musicians to play on his latest solo Joy, he aimed high and went for his absolute heroes, figuring ‘what’s the worst that can happen?’

Daniel Champagne is based in Nashville but he returns home each year for a national tour.

MORE CHAMPAGNE

JOYOUS SOUNDS

By Steve Bell

By Steve Bell And such initiative ended up paying ludicrously handsome dividends, his new southern soul-tinged collection featuring not just one but two of the greatest keyboardists of the rock era – Benmont Tench (The Heartbreakers) and Spooner Oldham (Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan) – as well as legendary session drummer Jim Keltner, bass guitar maestro Don Was and acclaimed axe-slingers Rusty Anderson (Paul McCartney) and Mitch Easter.

Easter also lent his prodigious mixing talents to Joy, alongside producer Don Dixon reuniting the team behind classic R.E.M. albums Murmur (1983) and Reckoning (1984), making this a musical dream team of ridiculously epic proportions.

“I’m just ecstatic,” Rooney chuckles. “The idea was to do a couple of songs with some of my heroes, and it ended up that we did two albums worth: Joy is essentially volume one.

“What I wanted to capture was the live feel in the studio of a band, particularly a band with two keyboard players, which was inspired by Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs & Englishmen period with Leon Russell [in 1970].

“I think we achieved that with Spooner Oldham and Benmont Tench playing off each other and just playing a really down, blues-roots kinda feel, anywhere from

Muscle Shoals right over to the west coast.

I was rapt that it sounded like a band and that the songs were very strong and everyone was on their game.”

Tench and Oldham had never played together before and from all accounts loved the experience, how on earth did Rooney – a mainstay of the Sydney scene for decades fronting The Lonely Hearts and Coronet Blue – get this to actually happen?

“First of all, you’ve just got to ask people, that’s the first point,” he smiles. “First, I spoke to Don Dixon – who’d played bass and done the string arrangements on an earlier album of mine – and then contacted my great friend Darryl Mather from The Orange Humble Band, who’d had Spooner play on a couple of their albums.

“So, Daryl introduced me to Spooner and I told him what I wanted to do and who I wanted – Don Dixon and myself had a little shortlist – and he’s great friends with Jim Keltner, who I’d wanted to play drums.

“As far as I’m concerned, it’s really Don’s record: they listened to the demos that I’d given them a couple of times and then we just went in and jammed them, and the first take was often really quite magical which is unsurprising with musicians of that calibre.

“But Don really set the stage, and then there were Benmont and Spooner who are both Southern boys with nearly a century of

combined playing between them. And two guitar players Mitch – another old friend of mine – and Rusty, and the two of them were content to play along with it without being the stars: it’s not a guitar album, it’s a song album.

“And then there was Don Was on bass for about half the tracks, it gets pretty obscene!

It was crazy!”

To make things even more surreal Joy was birthed at Dave Grohl’s 606 Studios in LA, on none other than the Sound City Neve Console that recorded (among countless others) Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours.

“We were very lucky, we were the first people to get into that studio apart from obviously the owner,” Rooney recounts.

“The desk has got all these signatures on it like, ‘Ah, my dear old friend, love Stevie Nicks’ and things like that, and it sounds as good as you hope it would. It really is that great, it’s very true and pays homage to the music that’s being played through it.”

Rooney’s strong song writing throughout Joy even touched seasoned veteran Keltner, who famously played on many of John Lennon’s non-Beatles recordings.

“There’s a certain underlying sense of sadness or melancholy throughout Joy, but it’s kind of like splitting hairs because there’s a positive side to the negativity, like two sides of a coin,” Rooney explains. “As we played the track for All Over the World I said to Keltner ‘I hope you don’t mind this song, it’s about your good friend’ – there’s a strong John Lennon inference to it – and he just said, ‘Wow, who would have thought there could be a positive song about John Lennon’s death?’

“Then he just said, ‘We don’t have enough joy in the world’, and that’s basically where the album’s title comes from.”

Jim Keltner, John ‘Lou’ Lousteau, Mitch Easter, Rusty Anderson, Spooner Oldham, John Rooney, Georgina Johnston, Benmont Tench, Don Was and Don Dixon 58

Australian-born, Nashville-based guitar whiz Daniel Champagne has seemed destined to tour the world with his acoustic music since becoming proficient on the axe while most kids his age were still struggling to talk.

Having finished his schooling, at the age of 18 he took off from his home on the southern-NSW coast to embrace the itinerant musician’s life. From there he took his heartfelt and charismatic solo show around the world on a regular basis, sharing stages along the way with everyone from Lucinda Williams and Judy Collins to INXS and Ani DiFranco.

And while his mail might these days be addressed to a Tennessee abode, Champagne explains that when you’re on the road over 300 nights a year your home essentially becomes wherever you’re hanging your hat that evening.

“I kind of enjoy everywhere, which is good for my job, but I’ve been based in Nashville for five years,” he explains. “Having said that there’s so much travel and I’ve been touring so much that it doesn’t feel like I’m based anywhere a lot of the time, but a lot of the touring is in North America so if I get some time off it’s nice to go back to Nashville.

“And it’s nice coming back to Australia and getting to do an extensive tour, and not just getting to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth but also getting to a lot of smaller places and seeing parts of the country that a lot of people don’t get to see even if they live in Australia their whole life.

“It’s a cool place to go back to and a cool community, and there’s a of creative people there doing what they love which is inspiring and makes you lift your game.”

“There are a lot of people in those communities who really love music and appreciate it, but they don’t get a lot of things coming through town so when it does they really jump on-board and embrace it and want to show their support.”

America can be a hard nut to crack –especially for foreign singersongwriters but Champagne explains that he’s starting to see his hard work pay dividends.

And while being a hardened road warrior is obviously fantastic from a performance perspective, Champagne admits that his gruelling itinerary can be a challenge on the songwriting front.

“It’s certainly picking up really strongly in pockets,” he continues. “I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t hard because it’s been a good six years of really doing a lot of hard groundwork there, and while Canada and the UK are big markets for me and Australia and New Zealand are still going well, the States for me has proved a lot harder.

“I’m most comfortable onstage – as a performer that’s what I feel is my strongest trait – and the creative side is a completely different world,” the singer admits. “To be honest, it’s something where in the last 12 months there’s probably been an imbalance, because I’ve played so many shows that I’ve basically being doing a lot more performing than creating.

“It’s starting to work, but it’s just so big! Luckily, I kind of of enjoy the challenge and the adventure, and it’s a beautiful country to travel and there’s so many cool people and so much amazing musical history, so I find it really exciting to roll into each city.”

Champagne comes back each year for an exhaustive jaunt around Australia, but he’s unsure whether his time abroad has given him a new perspective on his homeland.

“I’ve always just enjoyed life in general and I’ve never had a bad time anywhere, so with Australia it just always feels wonderful landing back home,” he ponders. “I come from the far-south coast of New South Wales near Bega, and the more I travel the more I miss that place and realise how beautiful and special it is.

“And performing is an art-form, but it has more to do with repetition and has more physical aspects to it than creating. Last year I played 293 concerts and a lot of days off were driving days or flying days between shows, so I just have to pull that back and focus on the creative side a little bit.

“Also, they’re two very different headspaces, because performing is almost like a sport – you’ve sometimes got to have this confidence and a bit of ego to do it – but then creating is kind of the opposite, you’ve got to strip yourself back and almost be vulnerable. It’s very hard to swap between the two.”

Daniel Champagne is touring across Australia in May and June.

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David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash - all singer/songwriter/musicians had been members of successful bands prior to recording their eponymous debut album in 1969.

Crosby was in The Byrds, Stills was a founder member with Neil Young of Buffalo Springfield, Nash shared lead vocals with Alan Clarke in The Hollies.

Crosby had briefly played with Stills in Buffalo Springfield sitting in for the recently departed Young at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival. Nash had been introduced to Crosby during a Byrd’s UK tour in 1966 when a friendship was forged.

The two musicians renewed acquaintances in 1968 when The Hollies performed in California. In that same year at a party hosted by Cass Elliot in her Laurel Canyon home, during an impromptu singing session Nash witnessed the startling vocal blend and song writing power of the Stills/ Crosby partnership.

After listening to Stills’ ‘You Don’t Have To Cry’ he asked them to perform it again several times. Then, unexpectedly, Nash joined in adding a third high vocal harmony.

The voices jelled and the three immediately realised they shared a unique vocal chemistry.

Creatively frustrated with The Hollies Nash quit to join Crosby and Stills in a new venture that Stills initially described as “not a group but a union of musical friends who would only get together when we chose to and on our terms.”

Calling themselves Crosby, Stills & Nash, their first album fused each musician’s strengths, Stills’ diverse musical skills (he played lead guitar, bass and organ) Crosby’s social commentary and Nash’s pop sensibilities.

While building the songs on a rock foundation, their emphasis on vocal harmonies and semi-acoustic arrangements offered an alternative to the electric guitar dominated blues/rock that prevailed in the late 1960’s.

Stills adapted the album’s ambitious opening track from a note book full of extended verses he’d composed about the imminent breakup of his relationship with singer Judy Collins. The seven and

a half minute ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’ - which may have been a play on words for ‘Sweet Judy Blue Eyes’ has four main sections. It opens with a traditional pop feel, Stills singing lead, followed by a much slower piece featuring a Stills solo vocal. The tempo quickens for the next section which leads directly to the coda sung in Spanish. (Raised in a military family, Stills had spent part of his youth in Costa Rica, Panama and El Salvador.)

Nash, as he so often did, provided the group with a hit single, a song rejected

by The Hollies. ‘Marrakesh Express’ documented a trip from Casablanca to Marrakesh in Morocco that Nash undertook with his wife in 1966.

“Every line in the song is true” he recalled. “We shared a compartment with American ladies five feet tall in blue. At the back of the train there were people lighting fires and they had pigs and ducks and chickens and goats and straw...”

The drummer on this track was LA session musician Jim Gordon who would soon lay claim to have co-written ‘Layla’ while a member of Eric Clapton’s Derek and the Dominos. Former Clear Light drummer Dallas Taylor played on the other tracks.

Nash also provided the lead vocal on his ‘Lady Of The Island’ an intimate love song recorded in one take and ‘PreRoad Downs’ a sketch of life on the road with Stills on organ and what sounds like reversed taped electric guitar. An uncredited Cass Elliot contributed to the vocal harmonies.

Written by Crosby on the eve of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination on June 6, 1968,’Long Time Gone,’ one of the great compositions of counter-culture unrest would later be played over the opening credits of the Woodstock movie. Crosby’s passionate lead vocal was a revelation eclipsing anything he’d recorded with The Byrds.

His lyrics, commenting on the political environment that prevailed in the US in the late 1960’s remain universally relevant. “Turn, turn any corner, hear, you must hear what the people say, you know there’s something that’s goin’ on here that surely, surely won’t stand the light of day”.

After the recording Crosby was ecstatic about the results. “I finally found my voice” he declared. “Five years I’ve been singing and I finally found a voice of my own.”

As a bridge to the following song, Stills’ ‘49 Bye Byes,’ Crosby sings an extract of Robert Johnson’s ‘Come On In My Kitchen’. ‘Guinnevere’ with its Arthurian romance theme and jazzy, complex arrangement added to Crosby’s growing reputation as a songwriter of depth and imagination. The cinematic ‘Wooden Ships’ an apocalyptic tale written by Crosby, Stills and Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner about holocaust survivors and the evolution of a new society with ‘silver people on the shoreline,’ an allusion to radiation suits, suggests a plot for a science fiction movie.

As much as any song on the album, Stills’ ‘Helplessly Hoping’ with its subtle acoustic accompaniment and intricate three part vocal harmonies established an aesthetic for a number of acts that came to define the ‘West Coast Sound’ of the ensuing decade like The Eagles, Jackson Browne,America, mid-1970’s Fleetwood Mac and others.

Predictably, the aforementioned ‘You Don’t Have To Cry,’ another Stills song about his doomed romance with Judy Collins, came together quickly.

The album’s closer, another Stills composition the previously mentioned ‘49 Bye Byes,’ was a combination of two songs, ‘49 Reasons’ and ‘Bye Bye Baby.’

Stills drew on Western movie imagery, a drifter, card games (“I let the man play his hand”) on the first song finishing the track with an exciting instrumental flourish on the ‘Bye Bye Baby’ section.

Crosby,Stills & Nash was a resounding success selling more than five million copies.

Fifty years after their formation and the release of this highly influential album, David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash continue to record and tour on their own terms.

Sixties boogie rock pioneers Canned Heat have toured Down Under countless times over the last 40-odd years – back in the day including some long, exhaustive stints taking in seemingly every blues bar and festival in the country – but, as drummer and band leader ‘Fito’ de la Parra explains, their affinity with Australia runs deeper than just familiarity.

It dates back to 1981 when the band’s mountainous founding frontman Bob ‘The Bear’ Hite died suddenly from a drug overdose – a tragedy that would finish most bands – but when our country’s music lovers still accepted Canned Heat with open arms it gave the surviving members the strength to forge onwards.

“The people have been wonderful to us in Australia,” Fito beams. “Not only that, it is because of Australia that I decided to continue the band when my main frontman passed away.

“We had an Australian tour booked and I contacted the promoter [now longstanding Bluesfest festival director] Peter Noble – it was one of his first tours, he was just starting – and I told him ‘I just lost my main guy, my main singer, I don’t know if we can make the tour.’

“And he says, ‘We’ll back you: find yourself another singer and bring the band and the Australian people will back you, don’t worry about it. We understand your pain and you’re going to be okay.’ So that’s what I did: I found another singer, we rehearsed him – we didn’t have much time, it was a week away – and we came to Australia and they treated us very well.

“Then we did about five or six tours after that, and that helped me make the decision to continue with the band, because of the Australian promoter and the Australian people that backed us.

They understood that we did not have The Bear – our main guy – with us, but we were still giving them a good show and we were trying our best, and we’ve always done that.”

The loss of Hite wasn’t the only misfortune to strike Canned Heat over the years, the notoriously hard-living band having lost numerous members along their tumultuous journey.

“It’s been horrible, it’s been terrible, but it’s part of what Canned Heat are about,” Fito sighs. “We’re a bunch of guys including some of the most brilliant musicians I can think of, and together with that comes this restlessness of the soul.

“And that’s what happened with them: some of them died from excessive lifestyle – drugs, alcohol, cigarettes – and others just died of age or illness or whatever, but we’ve always had a dark cloud above us, and it always has been an uphill battle.

But we enjoy the music, and we still enjoy propagating blues music around the world, so we still do it and why not?

“That was always our main thing, to make blues music accepted and make blues musical palatable – for white audiences especially – all over the world. And I think we did a good job of it. But besides that it has been tragic and it has been painful, but it’s been worth it. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

With this year being the 50th anniversary of Woodstock – where Canned Heat gave a famous performance at sunset on the second day – Fito explains that even at the time he was aware that the happening was beyond the norm from a cultural perspective.

“It was special because it was a statement of a generation – of our generation – about what we were standing for,” the 73-year-old reflects. “We wanted peace and love and equality, we wanted equality for women, we wanted poverty to end: all of those ideals are still strong now, but the world has deteriorated so much, especially this country with this president.

“Now more than ever those ideals that we brought into our generation at Woodstock should be important and be recognised, and people should continue to carry that banner for the young people of our time.

And I think they are doing it.

“Because the old folks – people like me, that Woodstock generation – they betrayed themselves and became even more conservative then their own parents, so there’s really no hope for them, but I have great hope for the young people.

“Even if I don’t relate to the Millennials or their music or their stupid telephones, I think they’re the ones who have to change this world and put people in power who care for this world and the environment and for wildlife, and for peace and love and the legalisation of marijuana. Let’s cut the BS and have a happy world for God’s sake.”

Canned Heat play Blues On Broadbeach and other Australian dates this month.

By Steve Bell

The iconic blues outfit retains a close affinity with Australia.

CROSBY, STILLS & NASH

CL ASSIC BAND

Billy Pinnell

CLASSIC ALBUM 60

HEAT DOWN UNDER – AGAIN

CROSBY, STILLS & NASH

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UNDERWATER IS WHERE THE ACTION IS

By Christopher Hollow

MERCURY REV BOBBIE GENTRY’S THE DELTA SWEETE REVISITED Bella Union

If nothing else, this tribute reminds us how fabulous Bobbie Gentry’s second record is; a countrypolitan concept album based on Gentry’s Mississippi delta days – originally recorded in late 1967. Compared to her debut, Ode to Billie Joe, it was a spectacular commercial failure.

These days, it’s a key artistic moment in the Bobbie canon.

Mercury Rev come at it with due reverence and present an impressive array of singers to deliver the love – distinct voices like Norah Jones, Hope Sandoval, Vashti Bunyan, Victoria Williams, even Game of Thrones actor, Carice Van Houten.

The biggest difference is that while Gentry’s original readings went for intimate moments based around her own guitar playing, Mercury Rev tend for grander gestures – be it timpani punctuating or sirens singing in ‘Penduli Pendulum’, wandering flute on ‘Parchman Farm’ or Beth Orton attacking ‘Courtyard’ like she’s to trying to get the attention of people buying hot dogs in the back reaches of the Myer Music Bowl.

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Phoebe Bridgers does a nice job on the teen gothic drama, ‘Jessye ‘Lisabeth’, which sounds like The Beguiled starring Clint Eastwood in a ballad (with a touch of ‘Lady Jane’, ‘your humble servant, I remain’).

Stereolab’s Lætitia Sadier sounds un-Stereolab-like on ‘Morning Glory’ while Norah Jones sets the scene on Bobbie’s own ‘Sgt. Pepper’, ‘Okolona Bottom River Band’.

– especially if you’re playing it on shuffle. If the record started with, say, ‘Come Get Me’, the narrative wouldn’t fly. So, we know that Malkmus heard the Grateful Dead growing up and this record proves he also took in some Human League too.

STEPHEN MALKMUS

PARIS IN THE SPRING

GROOVE DENIED Matador

Part of the allure with Groove Denied is that it was originally rejected by Stephen Malkmus’s record company for being too wiggy. It’s a good hook but who knows if it’s even true? I mean, the idea of backroom conflict helps the listener buy into the record as something of a sonic middle-finger. Us v. them, whoever ‘they’ are. The opener, ‘Belziger Faceplant’, does bend the ear and announces it’s something different but, really, this is kind of thing you’d expect from an artist like Malkmus 30-years into a well-established career. Truth be told, it’s not that far removed from either of his bands, Pavement or the Jicks

Even in these heady days of the internet, where music past and present is very accessible, it’s still good to have an old-school trusty guide help point you in the right direction – especially when it comes to French music of the late 60s, early 70s. Pete Wiggs and Bob Stanley, from UK band Saint Etienne, have put together an incroyable collection of existential French music that plunges you into a world of strong coffee, Gallic assurance and a whiff of the 1968 Parisian riots. Some of the names you’ll recognise – Serge Gainsbourg, Jane Birkin, Françoise Hardy etc.

Others like Brigitte Fontaine, Léonie and Nino Ferrer are a portal into a myriad of continental délices.

By Trevor J. Leeden

THE GLOAMING

3 (Real World/Planet)

CHATHAM COUNTY LINE

LAU

(Yep Roc/Planet) As the rather clever title suggests, the North Carolina bluegrass quartet sink their teeth into a baker’s dozen contemporary and vintage tunes that show there’s a bit of hillbilly in everyone. The choice of songs by the likes of John Lennon, Jeff Tweedy, James Hunter, Tom Petty and Jagger/Richards is impeccable, and whilst the arrangements don’t stray too far from home the string band renditions bring a different life to each song. The Ventures’ ‘Walk Don’t Run’ may never be heard in the same light ever again!

(Reveal/Planet) The three members of the good ship Lau continue to push the boundaries of folk with considerable panache.

Traditional instrumentation interplays with flourishes of electronica on a song cycle that ranges from meandering cinematic soundscapes to introspective vignettes.

Hypnotically mournful yet ceaselessly exhilarating, the sheer creativity of Kris Drever, Aidan O’Rourke and Martin Green is breathtaking, they are folk’s renaissance men.

SHARING THE COVERS

ROBERT FORSTER INFERNO Tapete

BOB STANLEY & PETE WIGGS PRESENT Ace

YOU WON’T HEAR THIS ON THE RADIO

One time I asked Robert Forster if he’d like to be an actor. He said yes – only if he could play himself. I’d love to cast the ex-Go-Between as an eccentric Presbyterian minister; one who holds court with the CWA ladies over tea and lamingtons talking about life, love and literature.

The beauty is, he could play himself because it’s this kind of character that sings the songs on Inferno. Album opener ‘Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgement’ has a fabulous, lazy groove and must surely take its cues from the W.B. Yeats poem, ‘Crazy Jane Talks with the Bishop’. The title track, ‘Inferno (Brisbane in Summer)’, has a bunch of crafty hooks that show pop smarts in the way lyrics can’t. It only gets annoying when Forster taps into the idea that he’s been overlooked or neglected in his career, like on ‘Remain’. ‘I did my good work,’ he sings, ‘knowing it wasn’t my time. I know what it’s like to be ignored and forgotten/ When yours is the name that doesn’t come up too often.’ Try telling that to a clued-in music fan – the only ones Forster or the Go-Betweens have ever reached out to. Neither have ever been out of fashion for long, which is remarkable in the pop world.

Strange days, indeed, for a Presbyterian.

The trans-Atlantic quintet of virtuosos return with another tour de force of mesmerising Irish jigs and reels. If it sounds not unlike their previous albums then be comforted that it is a work of sonic genius. Quiet moments transcend to a crescendo of duelling fiddles, metronomic guitar and piano, and the dulcet greatness of sean-nos singer Iarla Ó Lináird.

Once heard, The Gloaming are not easily forgotten; folk music for the 21st Century.

JOHN MAYALL

NOBODY TOLD ME (Forty Below Records/Planet)

How does the blues legend replace his long-standing lead guitarist on his latest cracking album? Too easy really, and the ‘Position Vacant’ has been filled by the likes of Joe Bonamassa, Todd Rundgren, Steven Van Zandt and the amazing Carolyn Wonderland. Mayall is left with harmonica, keyboard and vocal duties, and is clearly invigorated by his guests. He’s in great voice, well, as good as he gets, and there’s an abundance of face melting electric solos. He always did have a way with ace guitarists!

LONESOME SHACK

DESERT DREAMS (Alive Natural Sounds/Planet) The London based Seattle trio are, to put it bluntly, red raw. Injecting rough-hewn country blues with a healthy dose of boogie, and sounding like a hybrid Seasick Steve meets early Black Keys with a dash of John Lee Hooker for good measure, Desert Dreams defines grittiness. There’s no studio trickery here, just a bare bones dose of “the truth”, to paraphrase John Lee; this is heady stuff.

MIDNIGHT AND CLOSEDOWN

ROSIE FLORES

SIMPLE CASE OF THE BLUES (Last Music Co/Planet) This is totally brilliant. Never one to rest on her laurels, the Rockabilly Filly turns her hand to the blues with devastating effect. There are a few detours down soul (‘If There Ever Was A Way’) and jump blues (‘I Want To Do More’) roads, and the Chick With A Pick is in rare form on tracks like ‘If You Need Me’ (a ferocious twin guitar assault with Kenny Vaughan) and the relentless ‘Drive Drive Drive’.

From rockabilly queen to soul/ blues shouter in one easy step; effortless for Rosie.

LUKA BLOOM REFUGE

(Big Sky Records/Planet) The Irishman is a national treasure for good reason, marked by the outstanding consistency of his albums.

Stripped back to just Bloom’s voice and his gorgeous finger picking, these simple songs deal with the anger and confusion present in today’s world. Some songs are new, some are old ones revisited, they are blessed with a poignancy borne in the sonorous nakedness of Bloom’s singing. “Birth is in a raindrop, Death is in a leaf, Wisdom is the oak, You sit beneath” – truly majestic.

OVER THE RHINE

LOVE & REVELATION (Great Speckled Dog/Planet)

Long-time producer Joe Henry may not be present but he is in spirit, the title of the long running duo’s latest release bears his salutary signoff, and the sound remains suitably intimate and crisp. From the opening bars of ‘Los Lunas’ the mood is generally sombre and the tempo understated, but these songs of loss shimmer in the hands of Karin Bergquist.

Greg Leisz, Jay Bellerose, Jennifer Condos and Patrick Warren provide a suitably restrained backdrop on a captivating album set for slow burn.

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WAITIN’ AROUND TO DIE

BY CHRIS FAMILTON

By John Cornell

1969: A Watershed Year For Americana Music For this issue, I thought I’d take a look at some of the outstanding releases in the field of tribute albums. Specifically, those that fall under the umbrella of Americana and alt-country, whether it’s in recognition of an artist’s body of work or a fundraiser to assist them in times of need.

Half a century ago, in a single calendar year, an avalanche of albums were released that would go on to have a lasting and monumental impact on what would become known as alt-country and more recently Americana music.

Looking back at 1969 and pursuing the list of albums that were released, it was clearly a watershed moment in the history of popular music as traditional styles of country and folk found common and harmonious ground with soul and rock ’n’ roll. The Byrds, Van Morrison and The Band had all made major statements the previous year but these albums released in final 12 months of the 60s form an undeniably essential part of the DNA of Americana music.

Los Angeles’ The Flying Burrito Brothers released The Gilded Palace Of Sin in February and it still remains one of the key formative recordings in the consolidation of the country-rock sound. Gram Parson’s role in the band was of particular importance given his centrality to the development of the genre. 7,500 miles across the country in Austin, TX the coffee houses were a fertile breeding ground for stark and poetic folk songs. Townes Van Zandt, one of the scene’s most talented and troubled songwriters

January Bert Jansch - Birthday Blues Jim Sullivan - U.F.O. Creedence Clearwater Revival Bayou County - January 20 Neil Young - Neil Young - January 22

february

The Flying Burrito Brothers The Gilded Palace of Sin - February 6 Buffalo Springfield - Retrospective: The Best of Buffalo Springfield February 10

March

The Byrds - Dr. Byrds & Mr. Hyde March 5

released both Our Mother The Mountain and his self-titled album in the same year. The latter providing this column’s name.

Creedence Clearwater Revival released three albums in 1969. Twenty six songs that found a cosmic intersection between swamp pop, rockabilly and country music.

Similarly influential, Neil Young released his debut album at the start of the year but it was Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere that turned the most heads as a seminal touchstone for alt-country.

It wasn’t just the Americans that were making waves. Across the Atlantic the English folk scene was in full flight with Bert Jansch exploring the possibilities of acoustic guitar, Nick Drake creating fragile and intimate folk music on Five Leaves Left and Fairport Convention leaving a similarly indelible mark with Liege & Lief.

Bob Dylan had already made a monumental impact on modern music but 1969 was an important year as it marked his reemergence, after three years out of the public eye, with the countrified Nashville Skyline, an important album in that it played a large part in bringing country-rock into the mainstream.

As 1969 came to a close Jagger sang ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ on the country and blues -infused rock of Let It Bleed. The Altamont festival (headlined

by The Stones) cast bad vibes over the end of the year, an ominous footnote that put a large dent in the aura of peace and love that preceded it, immortalised by the Woodstock Festival in August. Times were

April

Townes Van Zandt Our Mother The Mountain - April 1 Leonard Cohen Songs From A Room - April 7 Bob Dylan - Nashville Skyline - April 9

May

Joni Mitchell - Clouds - May 1 Crosby, Stills & Nash Crosby, Stills & Nash - May 29 Neil Young & Crazy Horse Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere - May 14

June

Elvis Presley - From Memphis With Love - June 1 Johnny Cash - At St Quentin - June 4 Grateful Dead - Aoxomoxoa - June 20

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S

make the turntables are sourced in the US. The wood plinths are from Minnesota, the hardened steel from Michigan, the Hurst Motors from Indiana. All of these parts come to the new factory in Ann Arbor, Michigan to be tested and assembled into the high quality final product they’re proud to offer.

ince the near death of vinyl in the mid 2000’s, the last twelve years have instead seen continued growth, with Artists and Record companies re-issuing remastered and limited editions of many collectable titles.

It’s not surprising then, that with the growth of vinyl we’ve also seen a huge resurgence in the manufacturing of turntables. For example, Rega (a UK based Manufacturer who have been manufacturing since 1977) are currently shipping upwards of 4,000 turntables a month.

A turntable is fundamentally a seismograph.

Isolation from outside vibrations is critical to performance. Any vibration of the stylus that is not created by the grooves in the record is a distortion that will mask detail in the music.

This is why both turntables feature custom isolation footers designed by Michael Latvis of Harmonic Resolution Systems. Mike makes the best isolation devices in the world, and MoFi were lucky enough to have him create unique designs for the isolation systems on the MoFi turntables.

Although there are many vinyl record and turntable manufacturers based around the world, there is only one company that does both - and their story is worth telling.

Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab has been the undisputed leader in Audiophile Vinyl recording since 1977. Better known these days as simply MoFi, their contribution to the world of high end vinyl recording is grounded in the art of the Original Master Recording and Half Speed mastering.

a changing and so too was the music but out of diversity new things emerge and this wealth of seminal albums would prove to be an enduring and vital influence on Americana music for the next 50 years and beyond.

july

Michael Chapman - Rainmaker - July 1 Tim Buckley - Happy Sad - July 10

august

Jim Ford - Harlan County - August 1 Creedence Clearwater Revival Green River - August 5

september

STEEL WHEELS!

Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left September 1 Townes Van Zandt Townes Van Zandt - September 1 Janis Joplin - I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama! - September 11 The Band - The Band - September 22 Laura Nyro - New York Tendaberry September 24

november

Charlie Rich The Fabulous Charlie Rich - November Creedence Clearwater Revival Willy & The Poor Boys - November 10 Grateful Dead - Live/Dead November 10 The Byrds - Ballad of Easy Rider November 10

december

Fairport Convention - Liege & Lief December 1 The Rolling Stones - Let It Bleed December 5 Merle Haggard - Okie From Muskogee - December 29

All Mo-Fi LP’s are mastered from the original master tapes - as opposed to the production copies used for mass production - guaranteeing a more precise transfer of the original musical data. On top of this, their Half Speed Mastering procedure slows down the cutting system involved in mastering vinyl, insuring that the music is transferred from the source tape to lacquer with great precision. MoFi also adds substantial refinements in the vinyl compound itself.

In June 1979, Mobile Fidelity released what was to become the benchmark vinyl recording for years to come. The response to the release of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon was astounding and because all MoFi Recordings are released in limited numbered editions to ensure the integrity of the pressings, has now become a much sought after (and very valuable) collectable.

Now, the independent record label has brought their legendary sonic pedigree to a series of made-in-the-USA turntables, designed to get listeners as close as possible to the sound of those original master tapes.

MoFi have designed three new high output moving magnet cartridge models, also in collaboration with Allen Perkins of Spiral Groove. The MoFi cartridges use a V-Twin Dual Magnet generator that mirrors the design of the record lathe’s stereo cutter head. Two powerful low mass magnets are carefully aligned in parallel with the stereo record grooves to achieve excellent channel separation and detail retrieval - the kind of performance normally attributed to moving coil cartridges but without the requirements of a step-up transformer or an expensive MC phono stage.

The Mobile Fidelity StudioDeck and UltraDeck turntables are the result of two years of R&D and design collaboration with Allen Perkins, the founder and chief engineer of Spiral Groove.

MoFi has a new dedicated facility to build the majority of their products in the USA. While this was an expensive endeavour and an uncommon choice, they felt it was critical to deliver products that met the standards that the Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab name has set for the last 42 years.

The final word must go to Jim Davis, President of MoFi. “We’re building off the decades of experience MoFi has delivering the highest-fidelity editions of music’s most important albums. The same perfectionist approach that goes into a MoFi Original Master Recording is being put into building turntables and electronics that offer high performance and high value.”

“This truly has to be the ultimate match made in heaven for any true Vinyl music lover”

Not only is final assembly happening in the US, but many of the key parts used to

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CD: Feature

By Martin Jones Talk Talk

Laughing Stock

THE BLACK SORROWS

By coincidence, I came across Talk Talk’s final record, Laughing Stock, for the first time the same week Mark Hollis died – just two months ago. It was at once inconceivable and yet thrilling that I could have avoided this music for so long. Bombarded daily with music and information over the past twenty-five years as a music journalist, and no-one had ever said, ‘Oh buddy, you really need to check out Talk Talk’s last album!” Unbelievable.

CITIZEN JOHN

But that’s exactly what keeps music addicts like us hooked – the thrill of a genuinely life-changing new discovery.

Bloodlines

I’d like to think it was just bad luck that Laughing Stock and I didn’t cross paths sooner, but I fear that it might be indicative of just how overlooked this album is. In my interviews with the likes of Radiohead, Wilco, Elbow, Arcade Fire, Bon Iver, The War Against Drugs, I can’t ever recall Talk Talk being raised as an influence.

Recorded in 1991, the studio experimentation, the cut-and-paste structures, the use of space and texture are all ground-breaking elements that such groups have built their canons on (one journalist pointed out that Laughing Stock and previous album Spirit of Eden were Kid A a decade earlier).

Opening with 15 seconds of barely audible hiss, Laughing Stock grasps you close before the opening guitar chord blooms out of and into wide, dark space. You immediately appreciate how much thought was given to the recording and presentation of single chord. It’s so palpable you can almost taste it. For those of us who grew up listening to great jazz and classical records on vinyl, it’s a familiar and compelling sensation. As composer/singer Mark Hollis has attested, if these albums had been made 20 years prior, no record label would have found the approach abnormal. In the more commercially focused environment of the ‘80s, labels, listeners, critics struggled.

Mark Hollis: “The silence is above everything, and I would rather hear one note than I would two, and I would rather hear silence than I would one note.”

“I get on great with silence. I don’t have a problem with it. If you’re going to break into it, try to have a reason for doing it.”

These quotes remind me of great Miles Davis pearls of wisdom like, “It’s not the notes you play, it’s the notes you don’t play.” Or, “Don’t worry about playing a lot of notes. Just find one pretty one.”

To my sensibility, the vinyl medium is particularly suited to music with dynamic variation and Laughing Stock celebrates such. Nothing is close mic-ed. Drums are recorded from the other side of the room, allowed to reverberate in space before reaching your ears.

Hollis’s vocals are likewise hushed, sitting in the space, not artificially on top of it. The sounds and music dance and glide around like ethereal spirits. They leap up in unexpected places and then abruptly vanish before your ears. Conventional popular music structure and 66

arrangement are completely abandoned in favour of the thrill of the improvised, the intimacy of quietude, the shock of the discordant.

The story behind the recording of Laughing Stock is mythical (as is the subsequent disappearance of Hollis) and, these days easily researched on the world-wide webs. In summary, Talk Talk evolved from ‘80s synth pop band to highly ambitious studio visionaries, credited with founding post-punk. By the time they approached Laughing Stock in 1990, they had the money and methodology in place to bunker down at an artificially darkened Wessex Studios for the better part of a year. With Hollis and drummer Lee Harris the last Talk Talk members left standing, a cast of collaborators was invited to improvise over bare ideas and the album was meticulously pieced together out of hundreds of hours of recordings with engineer Phil Brown and Tim Friese-Greene. Brown has claimed around 80% of what was recorded was completely scrapped, bruising a few egos in the process. The remaining six compositions represent the distillation of peak moments, masterfully arranged from an abstract process into a coherent, stirring work designed to seize your undivided attention from beginning to end.

Original vinyl pressings of Laughing Stock go for up to $400 which suggest how few there are. The copy I was fortunate to stumble on is a high-quality reissue from 2015 which you can still track down for $40-$50 – worth every cent. And then there’s previous album, Spirit of Eden, and Hollis’s subsequent eponymous solo album of 1998, both recorded with similar methodology and equally progressive results.

Hollis retired from the music industry in 1998 to live a life of anonymity with his family. He died in late last February, aged 64.

After many years as an independent artist Joe Camilleri is back with a ‘major’ and the dividends have been immediate. The latest album Citizen John roared into the ARIA album charts at number eleven (his highest charting album for nearly 30 years) and Camilleri enjoyed more publicity than he had for years.

His new label mate Russell Morris also enjoyed similar success with his latest offering Black & Blue Heart. Of course, both artists had enjoyed huge commercial success in the past and have also been making vital recordings for years as indie artists but the benefits of having someone else do the work for them and reach their audience are obvious.

Both Camilleri and Morris appeared at Bluesfest recently playing in opening night spots, along with Richard Clapton, in what was a ‘heritage’ evening on a Jambalaya stage that also included Mavis Staples and Arlo Guthrie.

That sounds like some fine heritage right there but Camilleri hates the term. It is anathema to his work ethic.

“I’m not a heritage act,” he said, promoting the new album. “I’ve never been a heritage act. I’ve always been a constant player. The Sorrows continue to thrive and grow not because we’re an ‘80s band, or a ‘90s band, or any other kind of band. We exist because of the now. Just treat me like a new act,” he says. “It’s just that this one’s got a very old face.”

Over the decades, Camilleri has kept working at a feverish pace, touring Australia and, recently overseas, on a catalogue of instantly

recognisable hits from the Sorrows (and Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons). It has allowed him to keep his name out there regardless of the ebbs and flows of the music industry; he’s his own oneman cottage industry.

It also helps to prolong your career when you produce a quality product and Camilleri has been doing that prolifically both with the Black Sorrows and Bakelite Radio (and going back further, The Revelators). Citizen John is his 21st album with the Sorrows and 49th in all – an impressive effort for any artist.

Over recent years the Sorrows have enjoyed a pretty stable line-up of Claude Carranza (guitar), John McAll (keys) Mark Gray (bass) and Angus Burchall (drums). It is a formidable live outfit and equally at home in the studio. (It is reminiscent in that regard to Dylan’s latest band). The other secret to Camilleri’s success has been his song writing collaboration with Nick Smith, as they both seem absolutely steeped in what we have come to know as Americana but, in this case, it also reflects a huge knowledge of musical history.

Here you have a country-rock tinged song ‘Wednesday’s Child’ as the opener, ‘Do I Move You’ and ‘Nothing but The Blues’ as smoky blues ballads. Then there is ‘Month of Sundays’ as the classic Sorrows rocker and ‘Storm the Bastille,’ summoning up Willy DeVille and strangely set during the French Revolution.

Then there is ‘Messiah,’ a ballad about a

drought-stricken town with its own peculiar curse. The album’s title track, ‘Citizen John,’ is a funky story of a corrupt business character that sounds like a song from the Dr John catalogue (and here Camilleri even sounds like the good Doctor).

‘Brother Moses, Sister Mae’ continues the New Orleans connection with a trad-jazz groove and is one of the standout tracks with its jaunty groove and the pumping Horns of Leroy in the background sounding like they just stepped out of Preservation Hall. It also shows the breadth of Camilleri’s musical inspirations.

‘Way Below the Heavens,’ ostensibly about the Civil War, on the other hand is one of the best ballads Camilleri and Smith have penned and could easily overlooked, but shouldn’t.

In time, it should rank alongside ‘The Chosen Ones’ as one of Camilleri’s best songs. The only cover on Citizen John is a straight-ahead rendition of Bob Dylan’s ‘Silvio,’ which might sound out of place but fits in, completes the Americana references and has quickly become a favourite with audiences since the band started performing it.

It’s no secret that I am an unabashed fan of Camilleri’s work but I am certain that if you have enjoyed his albums in the past you will equally enjoy Citizen John. As for Americana, there have been a lot of Australian bands journey to the Americana Festival in Nashville over the past dozen years but if there is one that I would choose immediately to represent us it is the Black Sorrows.

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THE SOUL MOVERS BONA FIDE

CD: General

BY C H R I S L A M B I E , M A R T I N J O N E S , T R E V O R J . L E E D E N , G E O F F K I N G

BLUES ARCADIA

CARNIVAL OF FOOLS Only Blues Music

DEBORAH CONWAY & WILLY ZYGIER THE WORDS OF MEN INTERCORPS/MGM

JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE

THE SAINT OF LOST CAUSES New West

such as ‘Mornings in Memphis’ and ‘Pacific Northwestern Blues’ where JTE bemoans the weather in his current home. But for the most part, he’s looking out the window and is stirred by what he sees.

MARTIN JONES

STEVE EARLE & THE DUKES

By Stuart Coupe

T

The best moments on Bona Fide are when The Soul Movers relax into what they’re doing. You can almost feel when they forget the history of the studio they’re in and the people standing next to them during the recording.

here’s no question that intellectually the principles in The Soul Movers can quote chapter, verse and obscure B-sides by the dozen when it comes to the rich and diverse history of this thing known as soul music. There is also absolutely no doubt that they love – passionately love – soul music.

Now, with the release of their second album, The Soul Movers are increasingly learning how to feel soul music too. And that of course is the key. This is music that is all about passion, emotional, nuance, heartbreak, celebration, hurt and love.

It’s intense, it’s felt and those who play and sing it the best have that other worldly ability to deliver its dictums in a manner that convinces the listener – hell yes, it preaches – that the events sung about happened to the singer maybe 25 seconds ago and are as raw and immediate as possible.

You can’t fake this shit. Well, you can try but, well, you know all the clichés about how much that stands out if you ain’t got that f-e-e-l-i-n-g.

So with Bona Fide it’s clear that The Soul Movers have moved a distinct step forward in what is presumably a quest to be not just a good party band but a band of real deal soul brothers and a sister.

And one way to do this is surround yourself by the best players still around 68

and take in the rarified air of the studios where its greatest moments were conjured up by mere mortals struck by inspirational lightning.

To that end Bona Fide was recorded in seven historic studios in the United States – places like FAME studios, Royal Studios, Muscle Shoals Sound Studios and Sun Studio.

Thrown into the mix were some of the folk who’ve played on many of the greatest ever soul records – bass player David Hood and keyboardist Spooner Oldham.

They’re still guns for hire but far from being as jaded as you could reasonably expect they continue to thrown heart and . . . soul . . .into the projects they’re employed to work on.

And The Soul Movers are no slouches in this caper. Lizzie Mack (vocals), Murray Cook (guitar), bassist Andy Newman, keyboardist Marko Simec, and drummer Stuart Wilson have several lifetimes of playing and absorbing music under their collective bonnets.

Most of what’s on the album is what we know as S-O-U-L but there are moments when they edge comfortably into country pop and rockabilly territory.

The most noticeable downside on an otherwise very very fine album is the inclusion of no less than eight audio snippets of studio chatter from the recording sessions. I’m honestly not sure why The Soul Movers thought this was a good idea. It (only just) works once to set the scene (‘hey, this is real deal studio shit with THE dudes’ type of thing) but I’ve listened to Bona Fide maybe ten times whilst writing this and it’s become increasingly annoying. It comes across as trying too hard to be authentic and therefore erodes some of the intensity of the actual performances.

The upside is that in the digital age those using that medium will be able to program this stuff out. But it’s hard yards for the CD and (presumably) vinyl buyer.

That aside Bona Fide is the sound of a talented, experienced bunch of soul music lovers making a record where the essence of the passion and feeling is coursing through their veins. You can’t really ask for anything more.

GUY New West Australian Blues Music Award winners in 2017, Blues Arcadia channel the soul of the Big Easy from their Brisvegas base.

Carnival Of Fools was recorded, revised and finally released by the five-piece (plus) rhythm-meisters over a protracted time frame. The result is an earnest rendering of 11 slick tracks across many moods of rocking blues and soul with a funky infusion by the King Biscuit Horns.

Alan Boyle’s impassioned vocals are a cut above the average blue-eyed soul, working as well on party time belters like ‘Seven Days A Week’ as footoff-the-pedal declaration of love ‘Remedy’. Co-writer (with Boyle), Chris Harvey puts his guitar into overdrive at the right times and in perfect measure befitting the ensemble brief.

Parmis Rose on piano and keys adds trans-Americana spice. Jen Mize contributes fine backing vocals on ‘Liars And Thieves’.

Bassist Jeremy Klysz drives the rhythms section in tandem with three different drummers across the recording process; the baton-passing between Steve Robin, Casper Hall and Beck Flatt managed well in production.

Robin was original engineer before Jeff Lovejoy took over the controls. While referencing a classic sound, Blues Arcadia let the 21st century in with enough originality to excite listeners across generations.

CHRIS LAMBIE

With a vocal gift as powerful as it has ever been, Deborah Conway modulates the thunder on opening track ‘Fallen Star’.

Soulful crooning weaves between funky instrumentation and gospel vocal backing. She perfectly expresses her enduring career on ‘Imperfect Words’. ‘In my strange chosen profession, I got permission to stay a child’.

Yet sophisticated arrangements and fearless language deliver decidedly adult insights. A long way from band days in Do Re Mi and early solo work, Conway’s partnership with guitarist Willy Zygier has upped the ante on each recording since 1993’s Bitch Epic. Their 10th album as a duo, The Words Of Men is a master class in album construction.

From production to running order, it’s to be relished as a whole. Eloquent introspection and social comment show the interplay of concerns as we grow.

Sometimes a roar, elsewhere a whisper. ‘There’s A War That’s Coming’ features sparse guitar and intimate vocal. ‘I Need To Complain’ is all rock and rage.

Ominous rhythm rumbles on ‘Yours, With Disgust’. ‘Let’s make some heaven in this place that feels like hell’, Conway sings on ‘Don’t You forget Me’. I’m already looking forward to this pair’s next offering.

CHRIS LAMBIE

A few subtle changes in direction for Justin Townes Earle makes for one of his most enjoyable albums yet. Known for his prolificacy and self-sufficiency, Justin could be sat down at any point, placed in front of a microphone without warning, and come up with a solid album of material. The Saint of Lost Causes is better than solid. It benefits from a crack band helping Justin to add some tonal variety, a first class studio – Nashville’s Sound Emporium – and a varied outlook from Justin’s lyrics which weave beyond the personal and into the socio-political.

The potency of the full band, which includes the great pedal steel player Paul Niehaus, becomes quickly apparent on the opening title track. Out of a Calexico-like opening of slow motion snare, bass and reverb drenched electric guitar, JTE’s voice is all the more effective for the spooky space around it and, maybe because he’s not partially distracted by his usual one-manband acoustic guitar technique, Justin is able to lean into his vocals all the more, pointing out that shepherds have killed far more sheep than wolves.

The title is an effective umbrella for these 12 tales of contemporary American life, ranging from the hard times taught jump boogie of ‘Ain’t Got No Money’ and ‘Flint City Shake It’, to the more specific swampy blues of ‘Don’t Drink The Water’, about deliberate chemical waste in the river outside of Charleston, West Virginia.

There are some personal, reflective moments on the album,

I’m sure Steve Earle would tell you these Guy Clark songs are songs he wishes he’d written himself.

The thing is, you listen to Earle sing ‘Desperados Waiting for a Train’ or ‘The Randall Knife’ and you completely believe that he could have written them himself.

He inhabits the stories, their phrasing, their music as though they are his own. Which begs the question, how much Guy Clark is there in Steve Earle? More than a little. Townes Van Zandt and Clark were Earle’s two great mentors, he cherished their company from youth and absorbed as much as he could from them.

And yet Earle’s voice remains unmistakably, uncompromisingly his own throughout this tribute to his dear friend. While there are no surprises (would you want there to be?) in the way Earle and the Dukes blast through the 16 songs (they were recorded live, no overdubs, in working week), the renditions are affecting in their ardour. ‘Out in the Parking Lot’ is a tough gravelly rock workout, ‘Sis Draper’ energetic bluegrass, and then Earle strips down ‘The Last Gunfighter Ballad’ to just voice and guitar to give the lyrics maximum effect.

MARTIN JONES 69

CD: General

CD: General

BY C H R I S L A M B I E , M A R T I N J O N E S , T R E V O R J . L E E D E N , G E O F F K I N G

BY C H R I S L A M B I E , M A R T I N J O N E S , T R E V O R J . L E E D E N , G E O F F K I N G

THE FELICE BROTHERS

UNDRESS Yep Roc Records

At their core, The Felice Brothers have always centred on the songwriting of Ian Felice and the musicality of brother James, plus the influence of Simone Felice in the band’s early days, before he moved on to a solo career. They’ve had a revolving door of drummers but a year ago they experience their biggest lineup upheaval with the departure of their bassist and their fiddle player. Undress is therefore a new chapter for the band and with it comes some shifts in sound and subject matter.

Most importantly the song quality is still of the highest order.

Without fiddle in the band there is a textural shift to a more swirling, cosmic sound and a greater emphasis on vocal harmonies.

‘Holy Weight Champ’ includes Jim Morrison-like spoken word from Ian while the music builds smoky spirals of keyboards, guitars and billowing cymbals.

Closer ‘Socrates’, takes prog elements and builds shimmering psychedelic folk dust-storms amid its more delicate piano lines.

‘Salvation Army Girl’ is a gallop through a folk-rock shakedown complete with horns and 60s backing vocals. Those kinds of contrasts are new and exciting developments in the sound of the band.

Ian often paints abstract and collage-like imagery in his lyrics and those are definitely still employed, particularly on ‘Days Of The Years’, but he also takes a more direct line on some songs, particularly the more politically centred tracks. ‘Undress’ pleads for a stripping of the bullshit, games and posturing that so permeates politics in this day and age, while ‘Special 70

Announcement’ uses humour to address the issue of how money is used to shape and control governments and people.

The band’s roots-music origins haven’t been cast aside by any means. ‘TV Mama’ is a beautifully rich and warm slow-dance with piano and pedal steel dialling into a forlorn honky tonk sound while ‘Hometown Hero’ is the closest thing to their folk origins and ‘Jack Reminiscing’ cuts a sweet and similar path to the Dylan who recorded ‘Absolutely Sweet Marie’.

The Felice Brothers are continue their near faultless decade of music, exploring and expanding cosmic Americana in the 21st century.

CHRIS FAMILTON

ROBERT FORSTER

few could get away with it, but in Forster’s hands its disarming.

‘Life Has Turned a Page’ is a gentle story of a family roaming the coast in search of a gentle life.

Then ‘Remain’, a song about an artist whose best work has slipped through the cracks, Forster admits to being very personal.

Inferno was written and rehearsed in Brisbane with Scott Bromiley and Karin Bãumler and then taken to Berlin to record with Victor Van Vugt with the assistance of drummer Earl Harvin (fresh from touring with The The) and keyboardist Michael Muhlhaus.

The results are lush and unaffected, a perfect framing of Forster’s work.

MARTIN JONES

LAMBCHOP

INFERNO EMI

THIS (IS WHAT I WANTED TO TELL YOU) Merge Records

To his credit, Robert Forster wont release something until he has something to say. By his own admission, that just takes four or five years. After forty years of songwriting, Forster knows what he wants and is not about to rush it. And that shows immediately in the unhurried swing of opening song, ‘Crazy Jane on the Day of Judgement’, the drums and acoustic guitar humming like rain before Forster’s inimitable voice announces “Love is all”, all the melody coming, Velvet Underground like, from instrumental chord changes between verses.

It’s immediately transportive, you’re in Forster’s world of melody and narrative before you know it, sharing his insight, his eye for minutiae that make up the bigger picture of life.

‘I’ll Look After You’ is such pure, well meaning sentiment that

The band Lambchop is a very different beast these days, compared to a decade ago when they numbered up to 12 members with more of a conventional country soul sound.

Now Lambchop is essentially Kurt Wagner with a small coterie of collaborators – a much more intimate proposition yet still possessing the gorgeous and hypnotic Lambchop qualities that have always been at the heart of their deeply soulful, emotive and intellectual music.

With compadres Matt Swanson (bass), Tony Crow (bass) and Matthew McCaughan (of Bon Iver and Hiss Golden Messenger) who co-wrote and produced the album, the band further refine the sound that first took shape on Mr. M (2016) and then blossomed into new eclectic pastures on the synth and auto-tune affected FLOTUS in 2016. Those new explorations

are still embedded in the music on this record but there’s a leanness and a barer framework to these songs. You can hear the trademark melancholy via Wagner’s voice and the generally downbeat tone of the music but the songs are filtered through jazz, hip hop, future soul and the kind of avantpop sounds that people like Scritti Politti, David Sylvian and Mark Hollis of Talk Talk developed.

Wagner’s way with words still shines through these lush textures, his devastating way of making seemingly simple phrases carry additional weight. It’s in his somnambulant delivery, the heavy use of effects on his voice but most importantly it’s the words themselves that carry the greatest weight and air of curiosity. “I’m in a Mexican restaurant bar, watching surfing and it’s amazing” he sings on ‘The Air Is Heavy And I Should Be listening To You’ and on ‘The You Isn’t So New Anymore’ he simply states “Michael Jackson just informed me that Santa Claus is coming to town”.

Wagner is firmly in his postcountry phase, maybe he’s really always been there. Regardless, he’s a relentlessly inventive songwriter who is as devoted to sound, texture and atmosphere as he is to the lyrical possibilities of his poetry.

CHRIS FAMILTON

SEAN MCMAHON

YOU WILL KNOW WHEN YOU’RE THERE Blind Date Records

McMahon’s sound is bucolic and forlorn singer/songwriter altcountry, with a dash of countrified indie rock in the vein of Kevin Morby and Wilco.

The depth and sophistication of McMahon’s songwriting is really what comes to the fore on this record. The single ‘Outsider Blues’ is a plaintive Lennon-esque slow sway over spare drums and strings. “So if you see a ghost, getting around in my shoes, you know I’ve got ‘em bad and I just can’t seem to shake ‘em loose”.

He’s certainly got a way with phrasing and a sharp enough pen to avoid any sniff of cliche in his lyrics.

‘Just To See You Again’ is a duet with acclaimed musician Freya Josephine Hollick and their contrasting voices work a treat as they conjure up a kind of happy melancholia on the track. Early single ‘Spring’ is an exquisite song built on gently undulating melodies, Matt Dixon’s beautiful pedal steel playing and a harmonica that recalls Neil Young’s Harvest Moon, while album closer ‘Show Me The Way’ has vocal melodies that will ghost your memory cells for days.

A looser, back porch vibe permeates the folky ‘Come Around Here’ and this, and indeed most of the album, has a real sense of familiarity about it. That’s down to the excellent musicianship, McMahon’s timeless sound and the relaxed and poignant feel of the whole record, from start to finish. You Will Know When You’re There deserves to be on end of year lists, it’s that good.

CHRIS FAMILTON

ELI ‘PAPERBOY’ REED

99 CENT DREAMS Yep Roc

Melbournian Sean McMahon’s new album is a beguiling affair. It occupies a gently rolling middle ground where songs never explode into wild extremes.

Instead, they nestle into a warm and gently rocking vibe.

After bursting out of the blocks with his 2008 vintage soul opus Roll With You and following it up with the brilliant Come And Get It, Reed lost his way by commercialising his output in search of major label stardom. A decade on, fatherhood has driven a reassessment of his direction and a return to belting out the music of his retro soul upbringing; thank goodness! Decamping to Memphis to record in the iconic Sam Phillips Recording studio, the album bristles with the feel-good exuberance of Mississippi juke joints, the spirit of Chess Records gospel testifier Mitty Collier, and the touchstones of prime-time Motown. Right from the drum roll and horn flourish that introduces ‘News You Can Use’, Eli winds the clock back not just a decade but fifty years to the halcyon days of Motor City soul. Legendary Memphis backing vocal group The Masqueraders provide soaring harmonies throughout, evoking memories of The Miracles on ‘Said She Would’ and the close harmonies of the Temptations and Four Tops on the evocative title track. The horn section purrs and throbs like a fine tuned V8, pumping up the action on ‘Holiday’, an irresistible dancefloor foot stomper, and ‘A New Song’ is carried on a pounding 88. Reed pulls out all the stops on the closing ‘Couldn’t Find A Way’, a down-on-your-knees tearjerker that leaves you craving for more.

The Paperboy has delivered, big time.

TREVOR J. LEEDEN

TOM RUSSELL

OCTOBER IN THE RAILROAD EARTH Proper/Planet

As highly prolific as he is, the release of a new Tom Russell album is always cause for celebration. Like Terry Allen, this wizened Texan troubadour curiously remains a musical force of nature revered more by his peers than the cowboy in the street. For decades he has written and sung about the blue-collar everyman, his literary vignettes delivered in his weathered baritone drawl. He ticks all the country music boxes - drinking, cheating, murder and train wrecks – but his great strength lies in his ability to inject pathos into each and every recollection.

Every song is a highlight; the duet with Eliza Gilkyson on ‘Back Streets Of Love’ is breathtaking, and the ballad ‘Red Oak, Texas’ draws upon the World War 1 writings of Robert Graves in its heart wrenching portrayal of the effects of war. Raymond Chandler inspires several songs and the album title (and track) is derived from a Kerouac prose piece, keeping the literary links to the fore, although it’s difficult to imagine either coming up with the line “my wife’s up there in the trailer house, she’s 46 but keeping her looks” (‘Small Engine Repair’).

Russell has described his music as “Jack Kerouac meets Johnny Cash… in Bakersfield” and throughout, he has titan support from Bill Kirchen’s twanging Telecaster and Marty Muse’s soaring pedal steel.

Covered in the dust of a thousand back roads and neglected cantinas, this is as grittily poignant as country music will get in 2019.

TREVOR J. LEEDEN

MARTHA SCANLAN

THE RIVER AND THE LIGHT Rock Ridge Records/Vinyl on Jealous Butcher)

This is a well chosen title for Martha Scanlan’s new album because the music is distinctly flowing and immersive. It’s a departure from her previous albums which tended to be largely acoustic affairs but this has strong washes of torn electric guitar in which her high, clear voice can play, largely at tempos the Cowboy Junkies wouldn’t balk at. She’s not afraid of a long song either with a number clocking in at over 7 minutes, a feature of her earlier work too, so there’s plenty of scope to really explore an emotional and pictorial landscape.

It could almost be an urban singer/ songwriter record, but folkier instruments like fiddles maintain old-timey roots.

There are a number of women singer/songwriters in the folk/ country field partnering with excellent guitarists who contribute significantly to their art, such as Gillian Welch with David Rawlings, Rosanne Cash and John Leventhal and Joan Shelley with Nathan Salsburg. Martha Scanlan has partnered with Jon Neufeld for many years and it has really paid off.

She’s not exactly over-productive: this is only her third recording since her 2005 debut “The West Was Burning,”which was recorded at Levon Helm’s studio (Levon on drums, Amy Helm on backing vocals) but she does command loyalty as some of the personnel on that record appear on this new one.

Neufeld, like Leventhal with Cash, is also a multi-instrumentalist and Scanlan’s producer. Unlike Leventhal, who tends towards mild-mannered, conservative productions, Neufeld sets Scanlan’s intimate vocals within rich textures and airy layers. There is the feeling that she - and you could well be reflecting on a river winding across the wide plains of Montana, Scanlan’s spiritual home.

The final track, “Revival,’ lyrically and rhythmically mirrors the opener, “Brother Was Dying,” and its slow fade lends a sense of completion and return to an intelligent and beautiful album.

GEOFF KING 71

CD: General

CD: World Music & Folk

BY T O N Y H I L L I E R

BY C H R I S L A M B I E , M A R T I N J O N E S , T R E V O R J . L E E D E N , G E O F F K I N G

NATHAN SEECKTS

THE HEART OF THE CITY Independent GEOFF KING

This is the debut album from Melbourne singer/songwriter Nathan Seeckts. He’s released a string of EPs since 2010 and that slow and steady approach has served him well, going on the impressive and consistent quality of the songwriting and musicianship on The Heart Of The City.

Seeckts deals in alt-country of the heartland kind. The types of stories that could have been penned by names such as Springsteen, with tales transplanted from New Jersey to Geelong. Seeckts unashamedly wears his influences on this sleeve with a tip of the cowboy hat to the songwriting and vocal delivery of Ben Nichols of Lucero and the economical and detailed lyrical style of Jason Isbell. A weaker voice would falter if they followed so closely in the footsteps of their heroes but across these ten tracks Seeckts consistently hits a fine marriage of high emotion, poetry and strong melodies.

Seeckts sets up his songs well, introducing characters and setting the scene before he leads the band into glorious, rousing choruses that are as much rock as they are country. ‘Sirens’ is a perfect example, dealing with the important issue of domestic violence but framing it within a rich musicality that wouldn’t be out of place on albums by his aforementioned influences.

‘Moonlight Creek’ highlights the variety on the album by taking a folkier direction, while ‘Thunder And Rain’ is one of those ‘letting your hair down’ songs, loose and rocking. ‘Three Soldiers’ is an interesting and affecting reflection on childhood friendships and how, with the passing of time, different 72

life paths are taken. ‘Whiskey Drunk’ is a fine addition to the canon of country songs about drinking and devotion. Second single ‘Beast Beneath My Bed’ is another highlight, holding tension and slowly building through the verses via some great guitar playing.

Seeckts voice is the clincher here.

Though it wouldn’t ring true without the strength of the writing behind it, there’s a real heart and soul to the way he delivers his lyrics. 100% commitment to his words and the confidence to stretch for high notes, letting the grit and grain of his voice break into a growl when necessary. It all adds up to a highly accomplished debut Australian alt-country album.

CHRIS FAMILTON

ROB SNARSKI

SPARROW & SWAN Independent

Sticking to an ornithological theme, Blackeyed Susans singer Rob Snarski follows up the Wounded Bird solo debut with a new set of gently unravelling tales ranging from the poignant to the ridiculous (well, come on, thinking of Robert Mitchum at Mitcham Station, a location I was beat up most evenings after school (“mischief, fistfights and petty crime” indeed), is ridiculous, no matter how you present it. Of course, that’s the point.)

Snarski has one of those voices that could sing an algebra textbook and render your lugubrious with sentiment. Here, with the able assistance of Shane O’Mara and a small but perfectly formed cast of contributors, Snarski puts that voice to great effect, gliding through the suburbs, catching trams and trains, talking with taxi drivers, sweltering in a Melbourne summer, chasing Van Morrison, respecting great

footballers, backing horses, all backed by sparse instrumentation slow and shimmering as though underwater.

MARTIN JONES

CHRIS FAMILTON

VARIOUS ARTISTS

STRANGERS IN THE ROOM Cherry Red/Planet

BUSH GOTHIC

OLCAY BAYIR

BEYOND THE PALE Fydle Records

RÜYA (DREAM) ARC Music

Bush Gothic is a folk covers band with a decisive difference. As their moniker — and, indeed, the sardonic title of their third album might suggest — this Melburnian collective’s shtick is to put an arguably more authentically dark spin on iconic Aussie songs that were inappropriately souped up by a thousand lagerphone wielding bush bands in the wake of The Bushwackers. With sterling support from her former Circus Oz bandmates, bassist Dan Witton and drummer Chris Lewis, and a guest strings combo, singer/arranger, fiddler and multi-instrumentalist Jenny M. Thomas begins her latest exercise in revisionism with a reading of the transportation ballad ‘Jim Jones’ that alternates between dreamscape and jauntiness.

Ticking clock-like rhythm emphasises the passing of time in ‘Andy’s Gone With Cattle’. An even more austere set-to-music Henry Lawson poem, ‘Past Carin’, also gets a surprising and relatively upbeat makeover.

A London-based diva of Turkish-Kurdish origin, Olcay (pronounced ‘OL-djai’) Bayır’s ornamentation and range — a legacy of opera training — allows her to combine overlapping Anatolian, Mediterranean and Middle Eastern folk influences and original compositions (for the first time) with impressive elegance and ease. With her malleable vocal cords, Bayır makes light of fusing makam (modality) and taksim (improvisation) with Western tonal harmony. Consummate acoustic music beds embellished by a blend of Middle Eastern and Western percussion, string and woodwind instrumentation fuses the sound of award-winning world musicjazz collective Kefaya with Bayır’s soulful, heart-felt singing. While the poignant title track speaks of Bayır’s dream for a better world, it’s the more expansive and emotional ‘Elif’ that better illustrates the artist’s formidable vocal range.

TOWNES VAN ZANDT

SKY BLUE Fat Possum Records/Inertia

Early in 1973, Townes Van Zandt visited his journalist and musician friend Bill Hedgepeth in Atlanta, Georgia, as he often would through his life, and recorded these stripped down acoustic songs in Hedgepeth’s home studio. Some are instantly recognisable TVZ classics while two are unreleased tracks, others are covers plus some wonderful new takes on lesser known album tracks.

One might expect a lo-fi set of songs given the unofficial nature of the recordings but the quality is surprisingly good, still sounding warm and intimate. Of the better known tracks, ‘Pancho & Lefty’ is given a softer, more lilting treatment, a low-key version of the song that Willie Nelson & Merle Haggard would famously cover in 1983.

‘Sky Blue’ dances on a wonderful guitar melody, almost John Faheylike, and it too addresses the weight of depression and feeling blue.

A strong air of melancholy hangs over these 11 tracks and he was a master at embedding all his songs with the emotion, yet never allowing them to descend into complete and utter despair. Van Zandt was at the tail end of his 20s when he made these recordings yet he already sounded like a much older man, worn by hard living and a heavy heart, but we can be thankful that he managed to channel so much of his life experiences into such compelling music and poetry.

Sub-titled A Journey Through The British Folk Rock Scene 1967-73 and spread over three discs, Strangers is a most welcome reflection on a period of British music that unveiled a generation of ground breaking performers who would provide the foundation folk music to stretch the musical boundaries.

Taking its title from a song by North Country troubadour and open tune guitar whizz Michael Chapman (and featuring a slashing solo by a young Mick Ronson), the 60 performers range from the lauded to the lamented. Rubbing shoulders with the precociously talented Fairport Convention is Lifeblud who recorded no less than three albums and all destined to never see a release.

Stalwarts such as Pentangle, Steeleye Span, Lindisfarne’s Alan Hull, Steve Tilston, Ralph McTell, The Strawbs and the Incredible String Band are all represented, but it’s the cult heroes and pre-fame performances that really shine. The haunting Bill Fay, Horslips’ pioneering Celtic folk-rock, Dando Shaft, Andy Roberts, Bridget St. John and the gorgeous Unicorn still sounds refreshing; Joan Armatrading’s ‘City Girl’ gives a glimpse of what was to unfold three years later, and there’s Matthews Southern Comfort’s muted hit rendition of Joni’s ‘Woodstock’. The set closes with Sandy Denny’s sublime masterpiece ‘Who Knows Where The Time Goes’, a fitting epitaph to reflections on a seminal period of British music.

TREVOR J. LEEDEN

The tension of conflict generated by an historic squatters vs shearers narrative is only occasionally felt in Thomas’s resurrection of ‘The Ballad of 1891’. An equally dramatic old chestnut relating the story of Ben Hall’s demise, ‘Streets Of Forbes’, is also characteristically languid a la Bush Gothic. Were he alive today, Jack O’Hagan wouldn’t recognise the band’s rendition of his 1920s’ anthem ‘Road To Gundagai’. And Slim Dusty would no doubt churn in his urn were he able to hear the radical reworking of ‘Pub With No Beer’ that drags his country ditty into the same paddock as Ted Kotcheff’s psychological thriller Wake In Fright.

bellows-driven like Irish uillean pipes as opposed to the more widely known blow pipe-activated Highland bagpipes. Esoteric as it might well be construed, the debut album of this Skye-born Scot, who already has a BBC Folk Award to her name, is utterly mesmerising, the constancy of sound serving to create what could be described as ancient trance music. Recording The Reeling live in an old Highlands’ kirk has rendered optimum ambience. The rich textural drone of the pipes is further complemented by the addition of wheezy harmonium and concertina, the mellow fiddle playing of Lau’s Aidan O’Rourke, who also produced the set, and the judicious placement on several tracks of vocals from an octogenarian female singing canntaireachd (a phonetic style used to teach pipe tunes). A couple of Bulgarian tunes blend seamlessly with an otherwise alltraditional Scottish selection.

Pronounced “Bree-CHU” (the latter syllable as in “church”) Campbell, Brìghde Chaimbeul is a 20-year-old prodigy of the Scottish small pipes, which are

BELONOGA

THROUGH THE EYES OF THE EARTH Narrator Records

LAS HERMANAS CARONNI

SANTA PLÁSTICA Les Grands Fleuves

BRÌGHDE CHAIMBEUL

THE REELING River Lea

and enchant while nudging into art-house territory. The melange they label “classidoscope” also draws on influences from Ravel and Mozart to Bach and the great Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla. Arrangements range from fundamental drum accompaniment and solo voice to comparatively expansive and upbeat milonga. French trumpeter Erik Truffaz adds jazz chops to a dreamy ballad and a tango-esque piece.

Laura and Gianna Caronni make unique music commensurate with their cosmopolitan heritage. Parisbased Argentinian twin sisters with Italian, Spanish, Swiss and Russian antecedents, they show both their rich lineage and classical music background in highly individualistic compositions that also embrace Buenos Aires salon chic, Argentinian folk and jazz. Playing clarinets and cello/violin in lush lower register as the complement to their high-end lead singing and sublime harmony vocals in Spanish, French and Italian, Las Hermanas Caronni engage

The polyphonous otherworldly choral singing that characterises Bulgaria’s best-known music export and the eminent groups with which Gergana Dimitrova — aka Belonoga — has been associated with, Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares and Eva Quartet, is evident in only two tracks on the artist’s latest solo album. And yet a similarly eerie and echo-saturated ambience pervades Through The Eyes Of The Earth. Dimitrova/ Belonoga’s spine-tingling vocals, spiced with colouring inspired by traditional Australian aboriginal and African pygmy music, float on atmospheric and impressionistic backing tracks created by the compositions and arrangements of sound engineer Alex Noushev and a gun Bulgarian band playing kaval (end-blown flute) and stringed instruments such as the bowed gadulka and strummed tambura.

A Russian jazz horn player, a Greek multi-instrumentalist and an Armenian percussionist add multicultural embellishment.

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Music From Big Pink - 50th Anniversary Edition (Various formats)

AL HENSLEY

GAYE ADEGBALOLA

THE GRIOT VizzTone/Planet Co.

A founding member of celebrated Piedmont blues trio Saffire – The Uppity Blues Women who ended their 25-year musical journey in 2009, guitar and harmonicaplaying singer-songwriter Gaye Adegbalola carries forward the songster/storyteller griot tradition of West Africa in this her fifth solo release. Not only is this university educated Virginia native a recipient of a Blues Music Award, she has been honoured also for her services to teaching and her work as a champion of social justice. Not far removed from the music of Saffire which often espoused feminist themes in a clever, witty, and often bawdy fashion, The Griot is a platform for Adegbalola’s political and racial activism delivering messages of truth and empowerment. Whether performing with a blues band, a stripped-back acoustic combo or in a solo format, Adegbalola’s fullbodied vocals and trademark wit, wisdom and wry humour make each of her songs highly engaging.

the prolific harmonica playing band-leader/singer-songwriter/ keyboardist/guitarist has released an extensive catalogue of albums on a consistent basis right up until 2009’s Tough. This new CD marks Mayall’s fifth release for Forty Below Records since signing with the label in 2014. His core rhythm section of bass guitarist Greg Rzab and drummer Jay Davenport remain at his side, while guitarist Rocky Athas, who was absent on Mayall’s 2018 live album Three For The Road, is replaced by an impressive guest list of six-stringers all of whom are among Mayall’s personal favourites.

They include Joe Bonamassa and Larry McCray, both well known to blues fans everywhere. Also present are rhythm guitarist Billy Watts and a three-piece horn section from Conan O’Brien’s late night TV show. His voice now comfortably warbling in a lower register befitting his advanced years, Mayall’s three self-penned contributions are well-matched against selections from Magic Sam, Albert Collins, Jeff Healy, Little Milton, Gary Moore and others.

For a man in his mid-eighties British electric blues pioneer John Mayall shows no signs of slowing down. Since he burst onto the international blues scene in 1966 with his LP John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton, 74

SWEET RELEASE J&R Adventures/Only Blues Music

HAT FITZ & CARA

Sunshine Coast-based husband and wife duo Hat Fitz & Cara celebrate a decade of recording and touring across Australia, North America, the UK and Europe with the release of Hand It Over, their fifth album together. Their modern blend of old-timey-inspired blues and roots music has made them crowd favourites on festival stages worldwide where they delight fans of diverse genres from blues and soul to folk and Americana.

The multi award-winning act combines Fitz’s weathered vocals and blues-soaked guitar with Cara’s pounding drums and soulful voice.

Co-produced by Govinia Doyle (Angus & Julia Stone), Hand It Over captures the high energy moments

Soulful vocals and musical mastery abound as Wynans and guests reinvigorate the Boz Scaggs-penned title tune and songs by Willie Mitchell, Mike Bloomfield, Tampa Red, The Meters and lots more. A closing solo piano reading of Paul McCartney’s ‘Blackbird’ typifies Wynans’ versatility.

BARRY CHARLES

ON THE EDGE Independent

REESE WYNANS AND FRIENDS

HAND IT OVER Only Blues Music

JOHN MAYALL

NOBODY TOLD ME Forty Below/Planet Co.

and dynamic chemistry of the duo’s live performances best exemplified by their spirited counterpoint vocal arrangement of Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘Trimmed And Burning’, the only cover here among blues and gospel-infused originals.

Between the opener ‘Step Up’, an hypnotic refrain reminiscent of a north Mississippi juke joint holler, and the heartfelt croon of the folksy closer ‘Unbound’, an acoustic ballad accompanied by Fitz’s fretless banjo and Cara’s guitar, the set-list transcends musical boundaries.

‘Harbour Master’ even evokes a late-sixties Grateful Dead summerof-love vibe.

Best known in blues circles as the keyboardist in Stevie Ray Vaughan’s band Double Trouble, Florida-born Reese Wynans began his career playing with guitarist Dickey Betts and bass player Berry Oakley before they joined The Allman Brothers Band. Wymans moved to Nashville in the early nineties after Vaughan’s passing and backed a number of well-known country artists as well as several noted blues performers.

Having been the pianist/organist of choice in guitarist Joe Bonamassa’s band since 2015, Wynans’ noteworthy keyboard talents are spotlighted on Sweet Release.

Producer Bonamassa assembled an all-star cast for the sessions including soul great Sam Moore, blues notable Keb’ Mo’, the Double Trouble rhythm section, guitarists Warren Haynes, Doyle Bramhall II and Kenny Wayne Shepherd, singer Bonnie Bramlett, the Texacali Horns, a vocal choir and a host of others. Predictably, some Vaughan favourites are in the playlist. They include ‘Crossfire’, ‘Hard To Be’, ‘Say What!’ and ‘Riviera Paradise’.

A versatile musician, extraordinary singer and imaginative songwriter, Melbourne-born artist Barry Charles is renowned at venues and festivals across Australia, New Zealand, Europe and the UK for his unique vocal range from the deepest baritone to the highest falsetto punctuated by jazz-inspired scatting and agile voice inflections. The Sunshine Coast-based entertainer’s rhythmic guitar playing, rack-harp blowing and vocal gymnastics have kept him continuously in-demand in a career spanning over four decades. Performing in either solo, duo or ensemble modes, Charles has amassed a vast recorded catalogue of his original blues and soul-influenced material. Placing himself completely in the hands of Chain Award-winning record producer Parris Macleod on this five-song EP, Charles departs from his trademark funky guitar strumming and mercurial vocal excursions and just sings. The result is a compelling soul-blues cerebral experience with Charles backed by Macleod and his top-notch band of musicians and singers alongside Charles’ regular lead guitarist Peter Wells. Complementing his selfpenned blues ballad ‘Broken By The Blues’ and blues rumba ‘What You Need’, Charles pilots into his own universe blistering covers of Ernie Johnson’s ‘I’m In The Mood For The Blues’, Alvin Lee’s soaring ‘The Bluest Blues’ and Duke Robillard’s minor-key ‘You Mean Everything To Me’.

I put on a track from Big Pink for a classical/jazz buff who’d never heard it.

It took me only a few moments to start wondering what was odd about it. Then I realised that I was playing this anniversary remix.

first I can recall was the Grateful Dead’s second album, 1968’s Anthem of the Sun, which was given a remix in 1971 to make it more accessible than the band’s own drugdrenched version which they admitted to mixing for the hallucinations...

So, how do you resell Music From Big Pink, a classic album? The autobiographies are published, the scholarly and popular histories have been written, the docos screened. The re-issues, re-masters, anthologies, compilations and most of the possible out-takes are already out there.

Welcome to the Re-Mix.

Big Pink was somewhat enigmatic on release in 1968— the cover is a Dylan primitif painting with no album title.

There are four singers, often overlapping their voices, no brightly featured solos, not even a band name, but a house. The music is sublime, the ensemble playing extraordinarily and the songs come from all angles of American music without being stylistically pigeon-holed, like, say, The Byrds’ great Sweetheart of the Rodeo released at exactly the same time. A vital ingredient was the production and mix by John Simon, whose track record included the first Leonard Cohen album.

It’s not uncommon in some genres of popular music to play with the original - remixes in electronic dance music are par for the course - but in Rock, up until recently, rare. The Beatles led the way here with Let It Be….Naked in 2003, a legitimate re-hearing by adding and subtracting tracks and losing the Phil Spector treatment. Re-mixes of Sgt Pepper and The Beatles (the white album) on their 50th anniversaries followed. Actually, the

In deference to Robbie Robertson’s brilliance as a songwriter and guitarist with The Band, I’ll just say he’s an eloquent salesman, quite happy to contradict

his own version of events if it plumps the pillows of Big Pink Myth. First rank engineer/mixer Bob Clearmountain is the remixer. In a number of interviews Robertson has said that Clearmountain’s new mix has more sonic depth and lets the listener in more easily by being more open and welcoming, revealing details he hasn’t heard himself.

Ignoring this last bit of nonsense Robertson co-mixed the original with Simon - one aspect of Big Pink’s beauty and mystery is that the listener has to make a commitment to find their way into the almost hermetic atmosphere, in part created by the mix but also due to the nature of the recording itself, the group sitting in a circle with a consequent slight bleeding of instruments into each other.

Much is made of the constraints of the original recordings that Clearmountain had to work with: that it was mainly recorded on a 4-track in New York. But actually, over half the recording was done on 8-track in the Capitol studios in Los Angeles. A venture to PhiI Spector’s old haunting-ground at Goldstar Studios only resulted in non-album songs, most subsequently released as outtakes.

By GEOFF KING

CD: Blues

CLASSIC ALBUM

THE BAND

To compare the new mix on the first disc I listened to the original vinyl and the year 2000 CD Re-Master. Clearmountain has accentuated instruments and played with timbres. Acoustic guitars sound more contemporary. Everything sounds brighter and with more bass, but to what end?

There are horn arrangements on the original that do indeed sound like a Salvation Army brass band wandering by an open window, but here they sound more like a studio effect. The vocals are made more distinct, but foregrounding them also accentuates the reverb setting, again making them seem a bit more ‘studio’ than organic.

Robertson claims that Clearmountain has been faithful to the music. Maybe, but he hasn’t been faithful to the album. To my mind, Clearmountain’s mix diminishes Big Pink’s unique sonic character by reducing its mystery.

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CD: JAZZ

VINYL: TONY HILLIER

THE BRANFORD MARSALIS QUARTET

THE SECRET BETWEEN THE SHADOW AND THE SOUL OKeh/Sony

Like younger bro Wynton, Branford Marsalis alternates between the worlds of classical and jazz these days. The sax supremo might also draw on a rich jazz heritage, but unlike his sibling he’s not only renowned for his virtuosity and musicality, but also for his boldness. That’s amplified and exemplified by the quartet the triple Grammy Award winner has sustained over three decades as his primary means of expression. Renowned for the telepathic communication among its members and its cutting edge originals, the Branford Marsalis Quartet has established a benchmark against which other combos of its kind measure themselves.

Despite three band members having solo compositional credits on it, The Secret Between the Shadow and the Soul — recorded in Melbourne midway through last year’s Australian tour — is a bona fide ensemble album, and one of the Quartet’s best at that. Joey Calderazzo has written a particularly elegant head in ‘Cianna’, which Marsalis’s horn hugs before passing the baton back to the pianist to weave his own magic. True to its title, Calderazzo’s ballad ‘Conversation Among The Ruins’ is equally melodic and evocative. The album starts edgily via bassist Eric Revis’s angular ‘Dance of the Evil Toys’, with Marsalis in full-on bebop mode, and ends with the Quartet’s racy cover of Keith Jarrett’s ‘The Windup’. Marsalis and Calderazzo in tandem behind Justin Faulkner’s 76

rat-a-tat-tat drumming sets up the animated 12:30 curtain closer, which enters bebop and free form sections before returning to its original shape. Revis’s ‘Nilaste’ builds impressive momentum and tension from a quiet start before repeating the structure.

Marsalis’s sole composition, ‘Life Filtering From The Water Flowers’, takes time to blossom, but sprouts following a dazzling piano solo that leads to some wild extemporisation from the bandleader on tenor sax before returning to its original contemplative state.

SNARKY PUPPY

IMMIGRANCE GroundUP

with baritone guitar and oud lute tones. While maintaining a strong ethnic vibe, the latter morphs into cool jazz with flugelhorn soloing majestically over violin riffs. The former features a scintillating piano break.

Elsewhere, Snarky Puppy’s stockin-trade funk-fuelled jazz-rock sound largely rules the roost.

Heavy guitar riffing, culminating in a stinging lead solo, characterises the blues-infused opening salvo, ‘Chonks’. ‘Bad Kids To The Back’ presents a compellingly fat chunk of busy 21st century funk.

Brass plays a bigger part in ‘Bigly Strictness’ over a bed of Moog and Rhodes keyboard washes and mallet-hit drums. ‘Coven’ is more closely-knit and dream-like, with lush Mellotron lines. The multitracked trumpet solo on ‘While We’re Young’ evokes Miles Davis circa the 1980s.

STEVE BELL 11-minute 50th anniversary revival of Sanders’ keynote composition ‘The Creator Has A Master Plan’, the Pennsylvanian takes a support role, along with the track’s original drummer, Billy Hart, and virtuoso percussionist Sammy Figueroa.

DeFrancesco’s cascading and soulful signature organ is better assessed on some of his other self-compositions, behind Tony Roberts’ soprano and tenor sax, especially on ‘Awake And Blissed’ and the swinging title track.

RON JACKSON

STANDARDS AND OTHER SONGS Roni Music

JOEY DEFRANCESCO

Only the great Hammond B-3 pioneer Jimmy Smith has surpassed Joey DeFrancesco’s stature and achievements as a jazz organist. His protégé, described by the New York Times as the “master of rhythmic pocket and stomping bass lines”, has continued to elevate the profile and range of the B-3 alongside the diverse likes of Smith himself, Illinois Jacquet, John Scofield, Randy Brecker, Van Morrison and Australia’s Joseph Tawadros. On his latest album, DeFrancesco supports the legendary veteran tenor saxophonist and John Coltrane disciple Pharoah Sanders on three tracks — on his own composition ‘And So It Is’ on trumpet as well as organ. Over an

ORVILLE PECK

PONY Sub Pop/Inertia CROONING OUTLAW COUNTRY

IN THE KEY OF THE UNIVERSE Mack Avenue Records

Showcased at this year’s Bluesfest, Snarky Puppy’s eagerly awaited thirteenth album is a multifaceted and eclectic beast — much like the electric triple Grammy Awardwinning collective itself, which comprises up to 40 members from all parts of the USA, as well as Argentina, Canada and Japan.

This mega-combo’s visionary leader and versatile rhythm guitarist /bassist, Michael Leader, is also the mastermind behind another brilliant contemporary band in Bokanté. Having made the latter’s 2018 release What Heat my album-of-the-year, this reviewer was delighted to discover that Bokanté’s influence has infiltrated Immigrance — a set of kinetic and mercurial soundscapes reportedly prompted by global mass migration. Leader’s most interesting compositions/ arrangements sport cosmopolitan tans. Three alternating drummers lay down mesmerising Middle Eastern-accented grooves in ‘Xavi’ and ‘Even Us’, tracks that the MD respectively enhances

SON VOLT

UNION Thirty Tigers/Cooling Vinyl POLITICAL ALT-COUNTRY

Seven-string guitar whiz Ron Jackson sets new standards of excellence on his first trio album in seven years — from an opening cover that recasts Van Mo’s classic ‘Moon Dance’ as an instrumental, to a similarly hard swinging rendition of 1940s’ song ‘Somewhere in The Night’ that ends the set. In between, this tasteful and inventive New York-based string-bender, who was weaned on the likes of Pat Metheny and George Benson, strips back Art Blakey’s 1964 Jazz Messengers’ arrangement of ‘Pensitiva’ while keeping the original’s bossa nova lilt. Drummer Darrell Green and bassist Nathan Brown lend impeccable support throughout, excelling on racy renditions of Irving Berlin’s ‘The Best Thing For You Is Me’, Cole Porter’s ‘From This Moment On’ and Bill Withers’ ‘Lovely Day’. While mostly faithful to familiar melodies and structure, Jackson deviates for a jazz cover of ‘Passionfruit’ that bears little resemblance to Drake’s original 2017 rap.

Outlaw country has never been so mysterious. Armed with a Stetson, strange leather-fringed fetish masks concealing his identity and a rich, expressive baritone to die for, new kid on the block Orville Peck (a self-confessed pseudonym) evokes and sounds and spirit of classic country artists and drags them firmly into the now. Peck’s debut album Pony contains a dozen gripping vignettes concerning a disparate array of characters getting up to all manners of no good, favouring perfectly-constructed mournful torch songs (‘Turn To Hate’, ‘Hope To Die’, ‘Big Sky’, ‘Nothing Fades Like The Light’) augmented by some upbeat, shuffling country rockers (‘Buffalo Run’, ‘Queen Of The Rodeo’) and elements of dusty Morricone vistas. It may hark back lyrically and structurally to artists of yore like Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Roy Orbison – tracks like ‘Roses Are Falling’ and Take You Back (The Iron Hoof Cattle Call)’ even reminding of Elvis, although that’s most likely die to the deep, redolent vocals – but there’s a modern production sheen and an intangible recent sensibility which brings to mind more contemporary artists like Sturgill Simpson. The lyrics are deeply personal and heartfelt which only adds to the gravitas, the enigmatic nature of Peck and his identity not preventing us from getting a decent feel for his true character. Initial pressings on gold and yellow/orange vinyl variants.

The last two albums from alt-country veterans Son Volt have been centred around sonic motifs – 2013’s Honky Tonk explored the Bakersfield sound with plenty of pedal steel, while Notes Of Blue (2017) delved into blues traditions and tunings – but their new ninth effort Union is better defined by its lyrical content, namely frontman Jay Farrar’s obvious dismay and outrage at the current political climate. A true pioneer of his genre – he and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy basically mapped out the alt-country template with their formative band Uncle Tupelo – here Farrar even went as far as recording eight of the songs at places associated with two historical figures the singer looks up to: community organiser Mary Harris (aka ‘Mother Jones’) and protest song icon Woody Guthrie. Reminiscent contextually of 2005’s Okemah And The Melody Of Riot (which also found Farrar using Guthrie as a muse), given the content the album’s tone is unsurprisingly sombre – even mournful – for the most part and while songs like ‘Lady Liberty’, ‘The 99’ and ‘While Rome Burns’ are all clearly and specifically rooted in American politics there’s a universality to both the songs and the shared circumstances which makes them readily resonate on even far-flung shores. Initial pressings come on opaque maroon vinyl and include a screenprint signed by Farrar himself.

THE LEMONHEADS

VARSHONS 2 Fire Records CHARMING SLACKER COVERS

All throughout the career of Boston-bred alt-rockers The Lemonheads, frontman Evan Dando – for whom The Lemonheads has essentially been a solo vehicle for the last couple of decades – has loved throwing cover versions into the mix, always acquitting himself well (even in the band’s early punk days his cover of Suzanne Vega’s ‘Luka’ was a standout, and his version of Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Mrs Robinson’ scored his first hit). Dando possesses a wide music knowledge and his honeyed voice brings character to his selections, each recast in his own laconic image. Whether he’s battling writer’s block or not, this love of covers has now culminated in two consecutive full albums of other people’s songs, Varshons (2009) and now Varshons 2. The latter is a far more eclectic collection, covering a couple of well-known bands like The Eagles (‘Take It Easy’) and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds (‘Straight To You’) but favouring time in the lesser-known country realms with strong versions of tunes by The Jayhawks (’Settled Down Like Rain’), John Prine (‘Speed Of The Sound Of Loneliness’), Lucinda Williams (‘Abandoned’) and even Florida Georgia Line (‘Round Here’). He retains indie cred with renditions of obscure songs by Yo La Tengo, Paul Westerberg, Natural Child and even little-known Sydney outfit The Givegoods and it all stands up surprisingly well as a cohesive collection, with an added (albeit slightly weird) bonus of initial vinyl pressings coming on green or yellow wax in bananascented scratch-and-sniff sleeves.

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FILM AND DVD

FILM AND DVD BRIAN WISE

WAITING: THE VAN DUREN STORY

BRIAN WISE batch of songs that illustrate why Big Star fans have been so thrilled at Van Duren’s re-appearance.

“It’s a beautiful thing, all the way around, you know,” says Van Duren when I catch up with him by phone at his Memphis home just prior to his Australian tour and mention the documentary. “It kind of came out of the blue, but after going on almost three years of the project from its inception, I think maybe I might be getting used to it a little bit!”?

Have you heard the story of the musician who had a brief brush with fame in the ‘70s only to sink into obscurity before being re-discovered decades later by obsessive fans whose documentary reignites their career?

Perhaps Searching For Sugarman – the story of Sexto Rodriguez - springs to mind. This, perhaps, was the template for Waiting: The Van Duren Story, a documentary by Australians Wade Jackson and Greg Carey, who tracked down Memphis musician Van Duren after becoming entranced by his 1978 debut album Are You Serious?, which had him being likened by some critics to Paul McCartney. Like Rodriguez, he also made a second album but this one didn’t see the light of day until 1999 – too late to capitalise on his early reputation.

Unlike Rodriguez, who enjoyed substantial sales with his recordings in Australia and South Africa, Van Duren had no such success and remained a cult figure because of his association with the members of the enormously influential Big Star and producer – and former manager of the Rolling Stones - Andrew Loog Oldham.

While Rodriguez seldom toured after his initial success Van Duren has been playing on the Memphis music scene all this time, either in bands or solo; and, while Rodriguez was forced to cancel an Australian tour earlier this year because of ill health, Van Duren was here in April for a few select dates and for the Australian premiere of the film.

To coincide with the release of the documentary Omnivore Recordings have issued the documentary soundtrack with a 78

“ I don’t know if surprise is the right way to put it,” responds Van Duren when I ask his response to two Australian music fanatics approaching him about making a documentary on his life. “I was extremely wary, you know? And I kind of just about brushed ‘em off. But they convinced me over a period of time….By just badgering the hell out of me. We had an ongoing conversation and, as the weeks went by, and I did a little research of my own on the two guys, it seemed to me they were about as legit as it gets in these circumstances. So, finally one day - I think about two or three months into the conversations back and forth - we started talking on the phone and so on. Finally, they emailed me the receipt for their plane tickets to the United States, and then I realised they were serious.”

Van Duren became friends with Big Star’s Jody Stephens and the late Chris Bell when they were still teenagers. In fact, Van actually auditioned for the band at one stage but that didn’t quite work out.

“It was really not a great idea in the first place,” he explains. “Alex [Chilton] wanted a second guitar player, a lead guitar player.

At the time, I had been playing bass for a few years. I wasn’t a great guitar player. And they had a bass player. So, it was Jody’s idea for me to audition and I know where he was coming from, because he thought my voice and my song writing would help steer the band in the direction that he kind of wanted to go in - which was to elaborate on the first two albums. But Alex – and by that time they were working on the third - he would have nothing to do with that. So, you know, Alex and I were like oil and water. It just didn’t work. It didn’t hurt my feelings. I was just like, ‘Okay well I’ll go do this and then we’ll all move on’.”

Like the members of Big Star – and so many other young musicians of the era - Van Duren’s initial inspiration to pick up a guitar was seeing The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show.

“Oh, there are millions and millions of kids at that time who were moved in one direction or another by that event and everything that snowballed after that,” he recalls. “One of the things I keep telling my sons - I have two grown sons - and I’ve told them far too many times I’m sure, that no one today understands the depth and the experience of living when The Beatles were recording and playing. Two or three times a year there was a new Beatles album and each one blew everybody’s minds. Like, you just can’t even describe it. It was just a cultural phenomenon. But yeah, that was my initial inspiration. And then the groups that came immediately after that, you know, The Stones and The Animals and Zombies and The Who and all that stuff.” “ You know, the truth is that there’s so much,” when I ask him about the richness of the Memphis music scene over the decades. “I mean, everything’s relative, but you know, a hundred years plus of Memphis music from W.C. Handy all the way through Big Star and the Stax stuff and Hi Records and Al Green, and Justin Timberlake. I mean, it’s quite a rich history. So, I guess it’s not too surprising that some good things get lost along the way, because it’s like the old saying goes, you can’t have everything, where would you put it?”

The soundtrack to Waiting: The Van Duren Story is available via Omnivore Records.

JONI 75: A BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION Decca

felt doesn’t necessarily translate into film.

There is also the tension that the concert organisers must feel in choosing a line-up that does justice to the artist and which will also sell tickets to the event.

In this case, there are those who were friends of Mitchell (sometimes intimately) such as Graham Nash and James Taylor and those who are contemporaries such as Chaka Khan, Emmylou Harris and Kris Kristofferson. Then there were those who might be sympathetic to the music such as Diana Krall, Brandi Carlile, Rufus Wainwright, Glen Hansard, Norah Jones, Seal, and Los Lobos with La Marisoul, Cesar Castro & Xochi Flores. Then there are those who might be obvious choices and are notable by their absence: any from David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Jackson Browne, to name a few. But all in all, it is a worthwhile selection, with a few exceptions.

Some could well argue that Joni Mitchell is a superior songwriter than Bob Dylan.

Instead of buying into that argument I would certainly suggest that, musically, she has been far more inventive, interesting and complex. If you have trouble with that concept then you should watch this film when it makes it to Netflix or other networks because it offers a powerful argument for Mitchell’s abilities.

Held to celebrate Mitchell’s 75th birthday and to raise money for charity, the event was held at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles and featured an eclectic array of artists paying tribute to her music.

The film chronicles the concert, adding archival clips and photos as well as selfportraits and brief soundbites of the singers and others talking about Mitchell and the importance of her music. Joni can be seen in occasional cutaways sitting in the audience (presumably) enjoying the show; she also joins the cast on stage at the conclusion to blow out birthday candles and sing along as the cast and audience sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ in tribute to her. Joni 75 was premiered in cinemas internationally in late March and is now available on DVD (the soundtrack is also on CD), was shown on public television in America as it will probably do so here as well soon.

Of course, these events can be a mixed bag for those of us who didn’t attend. The excitement that the audience might have

However, the undoubted stars of this show are the members of the band who provide an astonishingly good musical backdrop for the singers. Percussionist Brian Blade, who made three studio albums and toured with Mitchell, was the evening’s co-musical director alongside producer and arranger Jon Cowherd. Guitarists Greg Leisz and Marvin Sewell are joined by Jeff Haynes on percussion, Chris Thomas on bass and Bob Sheppard on woodwinds. Ambrose Akinmusire plays trumpet and it is great to see the marvellous Scarlet Rivera on violin.

They sound magnificent.

As Mitchell’s music progressed beyond the folk scene it became increasingly more complex with albums such as the classic Court & Spark, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Mingus et al as she turned to jazz musicians to assist her (notably Jaco Pastorius). So, this was music that demanded the very best players – which you get here. This ensemble is so good, in fact, that in some cases the singers have a hard time keeping up.

I cannot quite get to grips with Chaka Khan’s ‘energetic’ version of ‘Help Me’. Where Mitchell sounded gorgeously fragile on the original, Chaka Khan is scary and hardly in need of help as she scats over the music. I am not quite sure what Khan was actually doing there. The same goes for Seal, who gives such an overdramatic reading to ‘Both Sides Now’ that it is as if he was a contestant

for The Voice, not one of the judges. Rufus Wainwright sounds even more overwrought on ‘Blue’ but redeems himself on a rollicking ‘All I Really Want.’ Glen Hansard sounds great on ‘Coyote’ but could have wound it back a notch. James Taylor completely misses the original rhythm of ‘River’ but makes a reasonable attempt at ‘Woodstock’. In both cases the band outshines him. Graham Nash, one of Joni’s former lovers, turns ‘Our House’ into a singalong (which it probably was in the first place) and the crowd enthusiastically responds. As I was watching, I understood why Dylan hates people singing along so much that he changes the songs’ arrangements to prevent it.

Yet there are plenty of highlights which must have pleased Ms Mitchell. Emmylou Harris offers a beautiful ‘Magdalene Laundries,’ Diana Krall’s terrific ‘Amelia’ suggests that she has closely studied Mitchell’s song, Norah Jones’ ‘Court and Spark’ is suitably restrained reverential, as is Brandi Carlile’s delightful ‘Down to You’ (in which she even manages to capture some of Mitchell’s vocal stylings).

If you have the album then just go straight to ‘Nothing Can Be Done’ which features La Marisoul singing with members of Los Lobos. It is fabulous. Here is a singer we need to investigate more teamed with some legends who manage to capture the complete essence of the original and invest it with new energy. It is brilliant.

The other highlight, for me, may not resonate as well with others but I think it is a standout. Kris Kristofferson sounding every but as crusty as an octogenarian should, is teamed with Brandi Carlile for ‘A Case of You.’ In theory, this should never work and no doubt some people will hate it. The contrast between the two singers could not be greater but somehow this manages to give the song an indefinable and stunning quality.

It is heartening to see Joni Mitchell celebrated but as this shows only a very few singers will ever manage to come close to the original.

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RHYTHMS BOOK REVIEW: MAY 2019

RHYTHMS BOOK REVIEW: MAY 2019

Keith Rowe: The Room Extended

Been So Long, My Life and Music

By Brian Olewnick, hb, Powerhouse Books There are those artists and musicians whose reach and influence far outweighs their contemporary fame, popularity, or audience. When Marcel Duchamp signed his name to an everyday porcelain urinal in 1917 and submitted it as a work of art entitled ‘Fountain’, he changed our understanding of art. Likewise, when John Cage first performed his composition 4.33, or when the Velvet Underground fronted Andy Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Guitarist Keith Rowe stands firmly in this lineage, a musician perhaps more revered than listened to, certainly outside hard-core avant-garde circles. Despite this, he has been labelled by fellow guitarist Henry Kaiser – no slouch himself – as one of the three guitarists of the 20th century who “made unprecedented and giant leaps in technique, personal expression, improvisation, and musical conception” (for the record: the other two are Derek Bailey and Sonny Sharrock).

Brian Olewnick’s book, some 12-years in the making, has benefited from unfettered access to Keith Rowe, as well as to many of the musicians he’s collaborated with. Raised working-class in Plymouth, Rowe initially trained as a painter; and it would be the visual and plastic arts, more than music, that inspired his radical guitar innovations. Studying Jackson Pollock’s painting technique encouraged him to place his guitar flat on a table, where he could treat it more as a blank canvas than as a musical instrument; while Robert Rauschenberg’s Combines provided a radical grounding in the ways that collage and mixed media might be shaped to modern music.

Rowe’s formative musical career began in the early 1960s playing with the Mike Westbrook band, which featured the cream of young British jazz players, such as saxophonists John Surman, Mike Osborne and Lou Gare. Working with Westbrook gave Rowe the opportunity to hone his guitar chops, emulating the style of his early heroes Charlie Christian and Jim Hall; but he soon found himself frustrated, increasingly looking to push boundaries. His first foray into boundarypushing was to stop tuning his guitar, a practice that resulted in him playing completely out of tune with the rest of the band, creating confusion with the rest of the band. It soon became clear he needed to find a new direction for himself, beyond the free jazz scene in England at the time.

That direction was AMM, formed in 1965, originally comprising Rowe, drummer Eddie Prévost and saxophonist Lou Gare; and later pianist Cornelius Cardew. It’s fair to say that their experiments in electroacoustic music sounded like nothing that had gone before – or since.

Early on, the Beatles stopped by to check them out; while Syd Barrett began to incorporate some of Rowe’s techniques into his own playing – “rolling a ball bearing down the amplified guitar strings or sliding a plastic ruler along the instrument’s neck”. With hindsight, it seems outlandish that their first album Ammmusic was recorded for the Elecktra label, home to the Doors; but as Olewnick reminds us, big labels in 1966 had no clue as to who the next big thing would be: Pink Floyd, Cream, or AMM. Of course, within a few years they’d worked it out, and no major label went near AMM’s music again.

Despite Rowe’s solid body of solo work in the first decade of the 21st century, Owelnick’s book is very much focused on AMM, the longstanding free-floating improvisatory unit with whom Rowe is most associated. While the band never managed to harness more than a tiny following, their underground performances and recordings (almost all for Prévost’s Matchless label) can now be perceived as a precursor to a range of present-day sounds: ambient, noise, industrial, avant-garde jazz, and minimalism. Such intense musical focus led to 80

fractious relationships, resulting in inevitable line-up changes – too numerous to detail – that eventually firmed up with a trio made up of Rowe, Prévost and pianist John Tilbury (Cardew was mysteriously killed in a hit and run accident in 1981). While Rowe dropped out onceand-for-all in 2005, he returned for a series of concerts in 2015 to mark AMM’s half-century.

Rowe states he does not consider himself an iconoclast – though I don’t know what term I’d use if not that. There is something inexplicable and ritualistic about an AMM performance (even the band’s name remains an enigma). They never rehearse, their music is improvised live in real time. Rowe does not even bother to practice, preferring to try out new ideas in performance. Drawing inspiration from Samuel Beckett’s line “Try again. Fail again. Fail better”, AMM build ‘failure’ into their modus operandi. While of an entirely different order, their amorphous approach could be likened to Australian trio The Necks.

Brian Olwenick’s dense book pays scant attention to Rowe’s personal life, instead setting its sights squarely on the music. It is not a book for the faint-hearted – Owelnick devotes pages to analysis of unreleased recordings and concert tapes – but it will hopefully find its way into libraries, where a future generation, curious as to who or what made these other-worldly sounds, might seek it out. Olwenick argues that the music of AMM fell between the cracks, “too cerebral and ‘unemotional’ to appeal to most fans of European free improvisation… too rough-hewn and improv-centred for the modern classical audience”. When asked in 1991, after years in the shadows, whether he felt overlooked, Keith Rowe replied: “Maybe I’ve had just the right amount of attention:”.

By lows Kaukonen St Martin’s Press 2018 In the liner notes to the excellent 1992 triple CD set “Jefferson Airplane Loves You,” former manager Bill Thompson claims, “The most important bands of the 60s were The Beatles and the Jefferson Airplane.” This reads as a fairly hilarious assertion, but back in the late 60s, before the likes of Joplin, Santana, The Dead and Steve Miller became international

By Geoff King stars, it had a certain credibility. After all, the first book about the San Francisco scene, authored by long-time music critic and Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph J Gleason, was 1969’s The Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco Sound, which placed the JA at the apex of the 400-odd Bay Area bands Gleason had identified from the mid-60s onwards.

Jorma Kaukonen’s lead guitar was always the first thing I listened for in the Airplane’s recordings. His was a truly original electric style in a scene that produced great players. Then, with the Airplane’s equally brilliant bassist, Jack Casady, Hot Tuna emerged from their late-night jamming and revealed Jorma to be a firstrank acoustic finger-picker with a powerful right hand. Hot Tuna sporadically continues, alongside Jorma’s solo career and his teaching business at his Fur Peace Ranch in Ohio. I’ve followed his career, bought his records, enjoyed his interviews and even viewed some of his teaching tapes so I was eager to read this book.

You won’t find Jorma pumping up the tyres of the legend, though.

This is a totally personal story that begins by asking, “What is it that makes us who and what we are? If I truly knew, l wouldn’t have to write this book.”

So, we learn about the family background (Finns, Russian Jews), living overseas when his father was on State Department business, learning guitar, more playing than study at college, but eventually a sociology degree, Greenwich Village, moving to California where he accompanies Janis Joplin, the start of a twodecade toxic marriage, etc. We want to know about his musical education as a finger-picker because he’s so bloody good. Jorma has always credited an older student at Antioch college in Ohio, Ian Buchanan, for teaching him the Rev. Gary Davis style and a repertoire that became the bulk of Hot Tuna’s initially, and says he should have dedicated the first Tuna album to him. Buchanan mentored John Hammond Jnr when he was there for a year at the same time.

But here is where I started to become uneasy. Who was Buchanan and where did he get his skills from? There’s only one commercial recording by him available, a track on an Elektra’s The Blues Project, a 1964 compendium of young, white blues guys, and an early ‘70s tape on YouTube (strong guitarist, lousy singer.) According to Jeff Tamarkin, biographer of the Airplane, Buchanan committed suicide - but you won’t find that in Jorma’s book, or anything about him as a person. That’s symptomatic of Kaukonen’s writing approach: no portraits of the characters that populated his world. He’s played with Casady on and off since High School, but what do I know of Casady as a guy through Jorma? That he threw up on his first acid trip and was forgiving when Jorma blew out Hot Tuna. That’s it! Janis in 1962? Nothing ….

In fact, I started to wonder if the hoary adage, “If you can remember the 60s you weren’t there” perfectly suits Jorma. The Airplane had strong-minded members (from other accounts I might add) but any of the artistic disagreements and personality conflicts that dogged the band, Jorma doesn’t recount. Major events, like Monterey Pop? A paragraph. Woodstock and Altamont? Get in, play, get out, wonder what happened, and leave it to others to dissect. Absolutely nothing that adds to our knowledge of those key events.

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GIG GUIDE

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Limited-Edition Super Deluxe box set includes: • • • •

A handmade wood case built at the Fender Custom Shop in California from the same materials as Keith’s iconic Telecaster, Micawber 2 LPs and CDs with the original album plus 6 unreleased songs from the sessions An 80-page, hardcover book with never-before-seen photos & a new essay by Anthony DeCurtis Meticulously reproduced memorabilia, including 2 7-inch singles, posters, and other promotional materials

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25-28 July 2019

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N E W F R O M AU S T R A L I A’ S K I N G O F T H E S U R F G U I TA R

Joan Lowe

Jodi Martin

Kofi Burbridge

Marlon Williams

Our Native Daughters

Reggie Young

COMPILED BY SUE BARRETT

HELLO...

The International Day of Living Together in Peace (Thurs 16 May) has enhanced meaning for our New Zealand friends and relatives.

These songs from New Zealand musicians might help the healing process: Kerryn Fields, ‘Lovely’; Ora Barlow (Pacific Curls), ‘It’s Time’; Neil (& Sharon) Finn, ‘Widow’s Peak’; Brooke Fraser, ‘Flags’; Jess Hawk Oakenstar, ‘Holy Week’; Marlon Williams, ‘Come to Me’; Elena Higgins, ‘The Storm’; Charlotte Yates, ‘Long Winter’; Kath Tait, ‘Strangers & Foreigners’; Don McGlashan, ‘No Telling When’; Jenny Morris, ‘Land of the Long White Cloud / Aotearoa’; Jo Jo Smith, ‘Peace, Won’t You Come On In’; Kimbra (& Brian Jacobs & David Tobias), ‘Home’; Dave Dobbyn, ‘Nau Mai Rā (Welcome Home)’; Jen Cloher, ‘Hold My Hand’; Shona Laing, ‘Banned’; Anika Moa, ‘In the Air’; Al Park, ‘Blue Afternoon’; Elena Higgins (& Tash Terry – of Indigie Femme), ‘Shining Star’; Mahinarangi Tocker, ‘Forever’; Jenny Morris (& Andrew Farriss), ‘Humanity’; Don McGlashan, ‘Miracle Sun’; Jess Hawk Oakenstar, ‘Beautiful to Me’; Charlotte Yates, ‘Lullaby’; Marlon Williams, ‘Make Way for Love’; Mel Parsons, ‘On Your Grave’; Pacific Curls (Ora Barlow, Kim Halliday, Sarah Beattie) & Huey Matetu Butler, ‘Whakamahana’; Neil Finn, ‘The Climber’; Elena Higgins (& Tash Terry – of Indigie Femme), ‘Touch the Earth’; Shona Laing, ‘Waitakere Rain’.

To celebrate New Zealand Music Month, Levity Beet (www. levitybeet.com) has an online web series showing him making musical instruments and playing them in new songs.

Australian singer-songwriter Jodi Martin is launching a Pozible crowdfunding campaign for her new album – to be recorded in Nashville by Australian producer Nash Chambers. Many of Martin’s songs are inspired by her hometown of Ceduna, SA, where the ocean and the desert speak to her heart.

Pioneering American recording engineer / record producer Joan Lowe died recently, aged 90 years. Her album credits include: Margie Adam, Meg Christian, Holly Near, Nancy Raven, Malvina Reynolds, Cris Williamson. Joan was also production consultant / recordist for Virgo Rising: The Once and Future Woman (Thunderbird Records, 1973) – one of the 1st albums produced, engineered and performed solely by women. In addition to music, Joan was passionate about politics, special interest motor vehicles, sport, nature, gardening, the weather, dogs, family and friends. In Dec 1997 & Jan 1998, Rhythms magazine published a two-part article on women producers and engineers, featuring Joan Lowe, Tret Fure, Leslie Ann Jones, Susan Rogers, Darleen Wilson, Karen Kane, Siiri Metsar, Jen Anderson. The article was later updated for Femmusic (www.femmusic.com/wp/).

American singer-songwriter Joyce Luna’s Every Road We Take is her 1st album after an extended break from music due to a mysterious orthopaedic medical condition. She told Rhythms that major music industry changes in that time include, “the prevalence of social media and digital music”. Among her earliest music memories are, “Hearing my mother sing. I also have a recording of me at age three singing her original song, ‘Pledge for Peace’ – I sang it as ‘Pledge for Peas’.” Of her new album, she says, “the title song is the first one I wrote after returning to music, so it’s special to me. The album

version of ‘Sip of Water’ has a sexy cool vibe that I love. And ‘Heaven (The Weather Channel Song)’ has become an audience favorite, which I would never have expected when I wrote it!”.

Other new albums include: Our Native Daughters (Rhiannon Giddens, Leyla McCalla, Allison Russell, Amythyst Kiah), Songs of Our Native Daughters; Laura Imbruglia, Scared of You; David Graff, Supposed to Fly; Rachael Sage, Pseudomyopia; Emilyn Stam & Filippo Gambetta, Shorelines; Reid Jamieson, Me Daza; Yola, Walk Through Fire; Eamon Friel, Atlantic Light; Jess Ribeiro, Love Hate.

…AND GOODBYE

Zimbabwean musician Oliver Mtukudzi (66), died Zimbabwe (Jan) Reggie Young (82), guitarist on recordings by Elvis Presley, Guy Clark, John Prine, Tom Jans, Eric Clapton, Rosanne Cash, Johnny Cash, Dolly Parton, Buffy Sainte-Marie, died Tennessee, USA (Jan) Scottish drummer Ted McKenna (68), of The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and Rory Gallagher, died in January French composer, conductor, pianist, producer and multi-Grammy and Oscar winner, Michel Legrand (86), died France (Jan) Bonnie Guitar (95), singer, guitarist, producer and record label owner, died Washington state, USA (Jan) Pioneering American recording engineer and record producer Joan Lowe (90), died Oregon, USA (Feb) Izzy Young (90), Greenwich Village Folklore Center, died Sweden (Feb) Grammy-winner James Ingram (66), died California, USA (Feb) Peter Tork (77), of The Monkees, died Connecticut, USA (Feb) Bluegrass musician Mac Wiseman (93), died Tennessee, USA (Feb) The Who drummer Doug Sandom (89), died England (Feb) Andy Anderson (68), drummer for The Cure, died in February English band Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis (64), died in February Kofi Burbridge (57), of Tedeschi Trucks Band, died Georgia, USA (Feb) New Zealand musician Peter Posa (77), who recorded 20+ instrumental albums, including White Rabbit, died New Zealand (Feb) Andre Previn (89), German-born pianist, composer, arranger, conductor, died New York City, USA (Feb) Fred Foster (87), founder of Monument Records, died in February Lyricist Earl Shuman (95), died New York City, USA (Feb) Hal Blaine (90), drummer for Elvis Presley, Petula Clark, Simon & Garfunkel, John Denver, Carpenters, Leonard Cohen, Laura Nyro, Neil Young, Phil Spector, Albert Hammond, died California, USA (March)

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