RHYTHMS MAGAZINE - JULY-AUGUST 2021

FREE RHYTHMS DOWNLOAD SAMPLER

Jackson Browne John Hiatt & Jerry Douglas Jason Isbell Tracey Thorn You Am I

“This is who I’ve always been in music and in life.”

$12.95 inc GST JULY/AUGUST 2021 ISSUE: 306

PLUS: Jeb Cardwell Ron Peno Hussy Hicks Mighty Mighty Bosstones Bill Jackson Andy McGarvie

HISTORY: Loud! Tana Douglas Meets AC/DC Alligator Records

Jackson Browne

SE TIC LL KE IN T GF S AS T!

UPFRONT 09 10

Rhythms Sampler #13. Our Download Card!

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Bluesfest Update. Director Peter Noble prepares

The Word. By Brian Wise.

for an Octoberfest!

Bob Dylan Center. Michael Chaiken, the curator, reveals the 15 archives.

By Brian Wise.

16

Nashville Skyline By Anne McCue.

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THE REAL ME

COVER STORY

DEFIANTLY SOLO

A great debut solo album from Jeb Cardwell release after two decades in music. By Samuel J.Fell.

GOIN ABOUT 20 WHAT’S Andy McGarvie’s second album of guitar-driven, blues-tinged rock.

By Michael Smith.

STORIES 21 WAYSIDE Bill Jackson’s new album contains more tales of our history.

By Chris Lambie.

WINNING NEWS 22 Winnie Blues are the Australian couple storming Nashville.

By Meg Crawford.

REVOLUTION PARTY 23 The Mighty Mighty Bosstones new album. By Meg Crawford.

TO THE EDGE 24 CLOSE Hussy Hicks’ new album focuses on connectivity. By Samuel J.Fell.

FEATURES

30 the future on his new album. By Brian Wise.

A SONG FOR EVERYMAN Jackson Browne sings about

THE OUTSIDE 34 ON Allison Russell has an amazing story to tell. By Brett Leigh Dicks.

THE MUSIC IS HOT! 38 Music legends John Hiatt & Jerry Douglas collaborate.

By Brian Wise.

OF THE CITY: LIVES IN THE BALANCE 42 SOUNDS You Am I offer an early contender for Album of The Year.

By Ian McFarlane.

48 FENDER BENDER

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THU

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NOVEMBER

SYDNEY

STATE THEATRE

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GOLD COAST

HOTA

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BRISBANE

QPAC CONCERT HALL

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NOVEMBER

ADELAIDE

THEBARTON THEATRE

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NOVEMBER

MELBOURNE

PAL AIS THEATRE

HISTORY

RECORDS 54 ALLIGATOR

The legendary blues label celebrates 50 years. Samuel J. Fell interviews label founder Bruce Iglauer.

Rock ‘n’ roll’s first female roadie meets AC/DC. 58 ByLOUD! Tana Douglas.

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Yola says her new album really reflects who she is. By Steve Bell.

PROFILES 18

Volume No. 306 July/August 2021

Only available to subscribers!

Brian Wise talks to Jason Isbell about his signature Telecaster.

Geoff King reviews the guitar!

VERY SUPERTITIOUS

Ron Peno has a new album with The Superstitions. By Jo Roberts.

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL FRIENDS

Tracey Thorn tells the story of her friendship with Lindy Morrison of The Go-Betweens. By Bernard Zuel.

COLUMNS

68 69

HiFi: A local loudspeaker story. By John Cornell.

33 1/3 Revelations: Will The Circle Be Unbroken.

By Martin Jones

70 71 72

Classic Album: Spectrum Part One. By Billy Pinnell

73 74

You Won’t Hear This On Radio: By Trevor J. Leeden

Lost In The Shuffle: Marshall Chapman. By Keith Glass Underwater Is Where The Action Is.

By Christopher Hollow

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Waitin’ Around To Die: Twang & Telacasters.

By Chris Familton

Twang! Americana Roundup. By Denise Hylands.

REVIEWS 76

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FEATURE ALBUM REVIEWS: Rodney Crowell, Rhiannon Giddens, Hiss Golden Messenger, Flatlanders, Natalie Bergman, Goldfynch.

GENERAL ALBUMS: Van Morrison, Yola, Low Cut Connie,

Then Jolene and more.

91 Blues: By Al Hensley 92 World Music & Folk: By Tony Hillier 93 Jazz: By Tony Hillier 94 Jazz 2: By Des Cowley 95 Vinyl: Ed Kuepper and more. By Steve Bell.

1. Clinton Heylin on Dylan. Clinton Walker’s Stranded.

95 Books

By Des Cowley.

99 Books Too! Get Tusked. By Stuart Coupe 100 Hello & Goodbye By Sue Barrett.

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11 - 14 MARCH 2022 MORE ARTISTS ANNOUNCED

CREDITS Managing Editor: Brian Wise Senior Contributor: Martin Jones Senior Contributors: Michael Goldberg / Stuart Coupe Design & Layout: Sally Syle - Sally’s Studio Accounts: Alicia Wise Website/Online Management: Robert Wise Proofreading: Gerald McNamara

CONTRIBUTORS Sue Barrett Steve Bell John Cornell Des Cowley Stuart Coupe Meg Crawford Brett Leigh Dicks Chris Familton Samuel J. Fell Keith Glass Megan Gnad Michael Goldberg (San Francisco) Al Hensley

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Tony Hillier Christopher Hollow Denise Hylands Jeff Jenkins Martin Jones Chris Lambie Trevor J. Leeden Ian McFarlane Anne McCue (Nashville) Billy Pinnell Jo Roberts Michael Smith Bernard Zuel

CONTACTS Advertising: admin@rhythms.com.au Festival Coverage Contact: denisetwang@hotmail.com Rates/Specs/Deadlines: bookings@rhythms.com.au Subscription Enquiries: subscriber@rhythms.com.au General Enquiries: admin@rhythms.com.au

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

PUBLISHER RHYTHMS MAGAZINE PTY LTD PO BOX 5060 HUGHESDALE VIC 3166 Printing: Spotpress Pty Ltd Distribution: Fairfax Media 6

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Baby et Lulu Bob Evans Courtney Marie Andrews (USA) Eilen Jewell (USA) Elephant Sessions (SCO) Emily Barker Emma Donovan & The Putbacks Eric Bibb (USA) Ernest Aines Fiona Ross & Shane O’Mara First Nations Voices Gordon Koang Heartbrokers Jon Boden (UK) Jordie Lane Kee’ahn Leah Senior Liz Stringer Maubere Timor (TL) Nadia Reid (NZ) Robyn Hitchcock (UK) Rudely Interrupted The Bushwackers The Thin White Ukes The Weeping Willows Tracy McNeil & The GoodLife Tuck Shop Ladies Van Walker & The Ferriters Watchhouse (USA) Weddings, Parties, Anything

TICKETS ON SALE NOW PORTFAIRYFOLKFESTIVAL.COM

STUART COUPE PRESENTS

THE SOUND OF SEMI YOUNG AND SUPER PASSIONATE INDIE AUSTRALIA

LETICIA MAHER With her feet in folk, blues and alt-country, Leticia Maher’s head is in the dream pop clouds. And that’s where she found herself In the wake of her second album Fallen Angels (2010). The album was well reviewed and sold by the box full, mostly direct to fans at gigs. But Leticia was still looking up, dreaming of making the music that would send her skywards. The following year she was nominated as Victorian Female Vocalist of the Year in the 2011 Victorian & National Country Music Awards, and went on to support artists including Richard Clapton, Joe Camilleri and many others. Working mostly with a trio, Leticia’s deceptively gentle music didn’t really belong in the pubs but nor was she at home in the roots world. And that led her to the Adelaide Fringe Festival, where in 2010, 2011 and 2012, she presented her Sunset Soirée shows in small, intimate performance spaces. And from this, the songs that became Behind Blue Skies began to grow, each with a newly open and candid tone. Inside the bluesy, folk-pop stylings of her old material beat a heart of strong, pop songwriting and a dreamy mood, but always laced with dark undercurrent. https://www.facebook.com/LeticiaMaher

JEB CARDWELL Melbourne based guitarist/ singer/ songwriter Jeb Cardwell has opened for artists such as Tony Joe White and Steve Earle. He also plays guitar for other various artists, among them ‘Aria Hall Of Fame’ inductee Kasey Chambers. ‘Blood Moon’ - Jeb’s third single from his debut studio LP My Friend Defiance - is an infectious toe-tapper reminiscent of J.J. Cale. “It’d be a crime against roots music in general if Cardwell were not to receive recognition for My Friend Defiance,” writes Samuel J Fell.

Written by Jeb Cardwell. Recorded at Union Street Studio, Melbourne. Produced by Jeb Cardwell, Roger Bergodaz and Tim McCormack. Musicians: Jeb Cardwell- guitars, vocals, percussion. Roger Bergodaz -bass, drums, percussion. Tim McCormack - bass synth. Brendan McMahon – Keys.

Available via: jebcardwell.com

WINNIE BLUES The Winnie Blues release their debut album ‘Half Wide Awake, but Dreaming’ July 16th on the duo’s own label Two Hands Records.

Recorded live at Dog House Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, this album is a collection of harmonically-intricate stories capturing a shared essence of middle America mixed with outback and urban Australia. Stories of being apart from the ones you love and an uprising of yourself in a world that wants to hold you back.

In making the record, The Winnie Blues worked with Producer/Mixer Nick Bullock and built a band of world-class musicians to capture their sound. ‘Half Wide Awake, but Dreaming’ is at times lush, uplifting and sprawling, and at other times sparse, intimate, and devastating.To celebrate their album launch, The Winnie Blues are set to tour across the U.S through late-summer/ fall of 2021. Pre-order the album now via www. thewinnieblues.com Website: https://thewinnieblues.com/ Contact link: thewinniebluesofficial@gmail.com

THE ANYWHERES The Anywheres, an alt-country duo from Melbourne, release their 3rd single, ‘Some Folks’ as a 5 track EP in digital & on CD. A flat-out, foot-stomping, bluegrass anthem, ‘Some Folks’ embodies The Anywheres’ penchant for writing diverse, dynamic songs, showcasing their signature dual female/ male vocals that pay tribute to the harmony duos of yesteryear.

Fans of The Civil Wars, Simon & Garfunkel & Nickel Creek will find The Anywheres right up their alley with sweet melodies that disguise the tension & longing for resolution of the lyrics as Rosie Conforto & Dom Italiano present both sides of a story at once.

Delayed by COVID for long enough, The Anywheres will release their debut album later in 2021 with plans to lure you in and take you on an hypnotic journey of love, hurt & heroism for years to come.

Available at www.TheAnywhers.com

DON MORRISON Don Morrison’s latest release (his 16th!) 40X40 is a double CD anthology of forty songs from forty years of making music. Starting with the legendary Adelaide band, The Bodgies, right through to new, previously unreleased songs, this is a compilation of consistently high-quality songs and performances. To quote Stuart Coupe -“I’m convinced that Don really is one of the finest songwriters this country has produced. Why isn’t he a household name like that Kelly fellow, Don Walker, Mark Seymour, Deborah Conway, Shane Howard and so many others we could name?”

Available at www.donmo.com

LYNCHBURG Lynchburg grew out of a songwriting session between songwriting legend Allan Caswell and multi-instrumentalist and record producer Lindsay Waddington. The chemistry was so good, and the songs were coming so quickly and easily that Waddo and Caswell broke the cardinal music industry rule of “Never start a band in the studio” and Lynchburg was born.The album’s first single Just Get Better got Lynchburg off to a great start by going to Number 1 on the Country Music charts the day before the album was released. Lynchburg isn’t trying to make any big statements regarding country music …

Waddo and Cas are just writing and playing stuff they love in a way that answers the question How Country Do You Want It? https://www.facebook.com/lynchburgmusic1/

WHO KNOWS WHERE THE

TIME GOES Shane O’Mara at Yikesville.

A

year or so after Covid-19 first struck us and it looks like life might be getting back to normal soon. We are crossing our fingers for Bluesfest because it features a great local line-up that puts the focus firmly on Australian artists. Rhythms will have a presence at the festival and we look forward to reporting online for you during the event.

This edition is yet another bumper issue as release schedules also get back to normal and we are flooded with a host of great new albums.

We have had the pleasure in the past few months to talk to some legendary musicians and the variety of releases has been remarkable.

As you know, the lockdowns of 2020-21 hit Melbourne harder than most cities in Australia. Somehow Rhythms has managed to keep going thanks to the support of our loyal subscribers and advertisers and it has been really gratifying to see how much you love the magazine. I did think we might have to cut the number of pages or maybe even miss an issue but so far so good.

The other good news is that we have been involved in releasing a fabulous album thanks to Shane O’Mara and his Yikesville Studio.

Shane is a musician/producer accustomed to performing and recording, so he was hardly likely to sit idle during a lockdown. As editor of this mag and presenter of Off The Record on Triple R FM in Melbourne and community stations nationally, it was my privilege to be able to act as one of the conduits for the music that O’Mara conjured up with his colleagues in his restless creativity. The request was simple: perform some of your favourite songs. The album contains some really great interpretations of some classic songs which in some cases, as I mention in the liner notes, coincided with a significant event such as the death of Bill Withers or the 50th anniversary of the release of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass. I am sure you will enjoy it

and you can help the musicians and the magazine by purchasing a copy.

Of course, May 24 was Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday and we do celebrate a little by bringing you an interview with Michael Chaiken, Curator of the new Bob Dylan Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which opens in May next year. (Anyone care to join me there?). The fact that Dylan continues to record and tour must be an inspiration to all of us, musicians or not. While I will never get to talk to Dylan, I have been able to chat to some of my favourite iconic songwriters of all time in the past two months, all of whom have provided their own inspiration for me: Jackson Browne, John Hiatt, Van Dyke Parks, Rickie Lee Jones, Rodney Crowell, Richard Thompson and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. Then there are those of following generations who have made brilliant recordings: Allison Russell, Shannon McNally, MC Taylor and Jason Isbell. All of these will feature in print or online. It has been a real boost to be able to talk to musicians who keep me totally enthused about music.

If you check the Rhythms website (rhythms.com.au) you will find that we are updating it more often and not only that you can hit the audio icon under the front cover and you will find quite a few hours of brandnew releases which we will update as often as possible. It is just like old-fashioned radio with no boundaries between genres. If you click on the arrows you can create a breakout icon on your desktop and continue browsing while the music plays. Very clever! Let me know how you enjoy it.

Until next issue, enjoy the music.

Brian Wise Editor 9

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FREE RHYTHMS DOWNLOAD SAMPLER

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JULY/AUGUST 2021 RHYTHMS SAMPLER #13

IT’S THE PIPING HOT

RHYTHMS MID-WINTER WARMER!

W

If you are not a member of the Rhythms140.5mm family, then you need to join to 140.5mm 5mm get a fabulous sampler each issue. Please go to rhythms.com.au/subscribe 286mm and join us.

DO NOT INCLUDE THE TEMPLATE OR ANY OTHER NON-PRINT INFO IN THE Thank you to all the musicians and record companies that have donated FINAL PRINT READY PDF ART FILE. songs. Thank you also to all the subscribers who have made this possible.

elcome to our Rhythms Sampler #13 full of hearty, chunky bits of goodness to keep you entertained for another two months. It’s our 2021 mid-winter warmer with 18 tracks of brilliant music. (Please do not operate heavy machinery while listening as distraction is a side-effect).

This download is available to all print plus print & digital subscribers ONLY. You can add the songs to your library, or you can also create your own CDs with the tracks (email us if you don’t know how).

1. I’M IN THE MOOD (John Lee Hooker)

Rebecca Barnard with Shane O’Mara.

From Music From Yikesville 202o, a cover of a classic by our patron Saint John Lee Hooker whose birthday is on August 22.

2. SOUTH

Jeff Lang From the download that comes with Jeff’s great memoir Some Memories Never Die (Melbourne Books).

3. EVERY TIME

Georgia State Line From the forthcoming album out later in 2021 by Georgia Delves whose “unique brand of country-infused melancholy yields music that’s equal parts heartsick and hopeful.”

4. THE STRANGEST FEELING

Ron S.Peno & The Superstitions.

From the album Do The Understanding, released on July 26.

(Check Bandcamp). See feature on Page 52.

5. EARLY DAYS

Jeb Cardwell From Jeb’s great new album My Friend Defiance (Blind Date Records).

See feature in this issue.

THIS TEMPLATE IS 1:1 SCALE EMAIL: PRINT@IMPLANT.COM.AU PH: 1300 79 78 78

11. TAKE ME THERE

12. HANDY MAN

Bonnie Kay & The Bona Fides An original blues and roots/soul/jazz country band. Their debut album went to the top ten in the Australian Blues and Roots charts for three months.

8. COCAINE

The Redlands The debut single Hailing from North West Victoria The Redlands Mix their version of Australiana and Country, bringing a unique sound challenging typical genre lines.

9. SAVE YOU NOW

Allison Forbes This folky yet hard-hitting alt-country ballad, produced by ARIA Award-winning Matt Fell. Featuring backing vocals by the incomparable Shane Nicholson, this song is sure to summon some truth for even the hardest of hearts.

10. ALWAYS ON THE RUN

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Angus Gill This new track from Angus is a rollicking homage to hard working women, written with his friend Thomm Jutz.

BLEED

SAFETY

HISTORY: Loud! Tana Douglas Meets AC/DC Alligator Records

$12.95 inc GST JULY/AUGUST 2021 ISSUE: 306

Jackson Browne

GO TO: rhythms.com.au/subscribe

ANOTHER GREAT RHYTHMS SAMPLER! EXCLUSIVELY FOR RHYTHMS SUBSCRIBERS:

Rebecca Barnard & Shane O’Mara, Jeff Lang, Georgia State Line, Then Jolene, Katie Brianna, The Redlands, Allison Forbes, Angus Gill, Leticia Maher, Bonnie Kay & The Bona Fides, Piper Butcher, Campfires, Geoff Gates, Paula Standing, Oscar Litchfield, Pale Ailments, Gareth Leach.

14. CAMPFIRES

Kelly Brouhaha The first single from her new live album, Unplugged, articulates Brouhaha’s life on the road, living in her much-loved 1992 Toyota Hiace affectionately known as ‘Pamela Vanderson.’

15. MINING TOWN

16. THE MORE I GIVE

Katie Brianna From the third album from the Sydney-based songwriter, This Way or The Other (Stanley Records), one of the contenders for Australian album of the year.

FOLD

Piper Butcher A singer, songwriter and guitarist from the Hunter Valley who has supported acts such as Diesel. Check out the great video for this song too.

7. TO THE BOTTOM OF THE DRINK

CUT

13. HAUNTING YOUR THOHGHTS

Then Jolene From the 8-piece melodic raucous folk hard country string band and their second album The Put Down.

PLUS: Jeb Cardwell Ron Peno Hussy Hicks Mighty Mighty Bosstones Bill Jackson Andy McGarvie

“This is who I’ve always been in music and in life.”

Leticia Maher From the album Behind Blue Skies, the third album for Melbourne singer-songwriter who has her feet in folk, blues and country and her head is in the dream pop clouds.

6. AMERICAN WHISKEY

IMPORTANT - IMPORTANT INFO SHOULD MUST BE INSIDE SAFETY MARGINS - FINAL ART MUST HAVE 3MM BLEED ON EACH CUT EDGE - FINAL ART MUST BE CMYK AND 300 DPI - PLEASE OUTLINE ALL FONTS - SAVE ART AS PRINT READY PDF (Acrobat 6.0 (PDF 1.5) or higher)

Jackson Browne John Hiatt & Jerry Douglas Jason Isbell Tracey Thorn You Am I

Subscribe to Rhythms Print or Print & Digital today and we’ll send you our EXCLUSIVE SAMPLER FULL OF GREAT MUSIC....AVAILABLE ONLY TO SUBSCRIBERS

Geoff Gates Singer songwriter Geoff Gates recorded some original tunes throughout the second half of 2020 which were released earlier this year on the album Arriving.

Paula Standing From the album of the same title. Paula Standing produces acoustic folk songs with an old country twist and a sting in the tale.

17. NO PLACE LIKE HOME

.

My checque/money order for $

is enclosed.

Oscar Litchfield Oscar Litchfield is a talented Singer/ Songwriter & Guitarist from the NSW Snowy Mountains. His latest release is the Front & Centre EP.

18. ON OUR OWN

Pale Ailments Pale Ailments (formerly known as The Grim Brothers) is a musical duo from Walcha NSW playing rootsy rock’n’roll meets 70’s country rock, with a touch of Americana and real deal country.

19. THE DRIVE

Gareth Leach Melbourne-based Australian outlaw country singersongwriter, Gareth Leach, who dropped his hard-hitting album Trigger last year and is relaunching it soon.

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BY BRIAN WISE

UPDATE

Postponed at the last minute at Easter, Bluesfest is set for the first weekend in October with even bigger headliners.

By Brian Wise

I

t was the shortest holiday we have had for a long time. Arrival in Byron Bay on Monday afternoon, Bluesfest postponement on Wednesday afternoon, fly back to Melbourne on Wednesday night. All on the basis of one case of Covid-19! Our inconvenience was nothing compared to all the artists who had been scheduled to play, all the stall holders, the local businesses in the region – and, of course, Bluesfest itself.

“Oh, it was terrible, but that’s in the past now.

We all went through awful stuff,” says Bluesfest Director Peter Noble when we catch up for an update on the rescheduled festival adding a musical reference. “Our hopes and dreams were shattered and turned into tombstones, whatever.

That was a good old song, wasn’t it? The Purple Hearts.”

“We love putting events on. I work in show business and without the show there is no business.”

“But something good comes out of everything,” he continues. “As much as you get knocked down, it’s what you do about it that counts. It’s getting back up. Everyone’s got a story to tell.”

When Bluesfest was ‘postponed’ the day before it was due to start, it was all set up and ready to go with reduced stages, thousands of seats arranged and the Covid-safe plan approved and implemented. The first case of COVID in Byron Shire since April 2020 managed to bring it all to a halt!

Noble was remarkably diplomatic in the media in the following days.

“No use attacking the government,” he says. “I mean, they do what they think is right in the area and it’s up to the public and the media to say what they think about it. A lot was said. All we call for is equality in the way that the music industry is treated in respect to other events and that there are real efforts made by government to address the needs of the music industry right now, which I’ve been calling for for a very long time.

“It’s great to see that in New South Wales at least, that there is now, and was announced almost immediately by the New South Wales treasurer, a business interruption fund for the music industry.

What that allowed us to do was to get an interim

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payment from that fund so that we could pay a sizeable amount of our creditors and we could do things such as we had a bit of seed money for October, but even more importantly, we were able to make serious payments to the musicians.”

“It was tough. We were all traumatised but we didn’t get a minute off and we still haven’t got a minute off. Because what we had to do was find a way forward and within that, we had to make sure our staff got paid - and they were. Not a worker on that festival hasn’t been paid. That’s what you got to do.”

Noble says that the rescheduled October weekend is already 80% sold out as we go to press.

“We’re well on our way to a sell out and I’m working on the following year’s festival,” he adds.

“Any discussions regarding capacities and stuff like that are yet to occur as of today. Look, it all depends upon what happens. We could make it work at the last capacity and if we were able to increase it, we’d obviously say yes, but you don’t know those things. You just have to work on what you have in front of you that is approved. But we’re going to be seeing seated events, I should think, into the future. What we have to do is make sure that people are able to stand in front of their seats and should they wish to move around, they can do that.

“What I find amazing is how about 60% of our ticket holders held onto their tickets and are coming to the October event. That’s just amazing. And there’s no holiday in Victoria on that weekend! But in the end, I mean, we love putting events on. That’s what we do. I work in show business and without the show, there is no business.”

“Everyone’s focusing on the Oils because they haven’t played Bluesfest for so long,” says Noble when I mention the line-up for October. “I think Paul Kelly has played it at least six or seven times over the years. That’s what turns it into an event, just those couple of right headliners.

“Somebody was saying to me not long ago there wasn’t enough Aussie acts to put events on and I

said, ‘I don’t know about that.’ I did a list last weekend and I came up with over 80 artists I’d like to book who aren’t playing this Bluesfest! Artists that you just got to scratch the surface and you think of those great artists like Broderick Smith, Kevin Borich. It just goes on. I think if Australia maintains a closed border, I don’t think that’s going to exactly kill the festival industry.

“We might be talking this time next year and it’s still a closed border. We all hope not but you’ve got to deal with the cards you got and still, I’m very happy with the bill that we’ve got this year. People are buying lots of tickets to see Australian artists. They’re paying the kind of ticket prices that allow me to deeply book the bills.

So, I think that that’s a pretty interesting outcome that we’re starting to see now that Australian artists are getting back out on the road again more.”

Noble points out that there are 38 artists on the bill out of 52 who call themselves blues or roots artists and that the festival remains anchored in those genres.

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SOME OF YOUR

FAVOURITE SONGS of all time interpreted brilliantly by some of your favourite musicians

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“I just consistently go, we’re a blues and roots music festival and we put some headliners on as well to make sure the ticket sales are there,” he notes. “I think many blues and roots fans understand by now that by doing that, they actually get to see the others they love and we actually get to make a bit of a profit so we can do it again.”

Who are some of the non-headline artists that he is excited about?

“You’ve got Hussy Hicks and I’m putting them on every year,” he replies, “because I go, at some point, they have to break. They’re too good not to. That is a seriously great band. They’re just a knockout.

Whenever I see them play, I am more impressed all the time, and I’ve seen them play around parts of the world now. It is artists like that. It is artists like Roshani. I mean, my God, if that’s not the best blues artist, young artist out there right now, tell me who is because I want to know. That girl has got it all. She is a great blues artist. She’s a great blues guitarist, she’s a great blues songwriter. Her story is amazing.

“But those are the artists that I get a buzz out of, discovery artists. Very happy to see Nathan Cavaleri starting to really come back in the last year. To me, it’s not all the known artists but I also look at artists like Chain who’ve been around for over 50 years now.

I think that they are criminally under-represented at blues festivals. Let me tell you, when they get on that stage, that combination of Phil and Matt and, of course, Dirk - but that is one of Australia’s great bands. That’s real blues!”

I mention to Noble that everybody I know who had booked for Easter will still be coming up for the October weekend. No-one has cancelled.

“That’s humbling,” he says. “I think the best thing that happened for Bluesfest out of it all, like John Watson that manages Barnes and Midnight Oil said, ‘Look, Peter, you guys went from being a serious great event into being Australia’s legendary event out of what happened.’ Nice stuff when you hear it. Then we get nominated for Pollstar’s Festival of the Decade. It is good to know we’re doing something special and I’m still enjoying doing it. So, you get to realise that you don’t have this wonderful opportunity forever.”

Across the Universe (Lennon/McCartney) 140.5mm Adrian Whitehead

5mm

Spirit In The Sky (N.Greenbaum) Billy Miller 286mm

Grandma’s Hands (B.Withers) Rebecca Barnard

DO NOT INCLUDE THE TEMPLATE OR Lovin’ Cup (Jagger/Richards) Nick Barker ANY OTHER NON-PRINT INFO IN THE

FINAL PRINT READY PDF ART FILE. Rose Tattoo (C.Wilson) Liz Stringer

Faded Valentine (J.T. Earle) Rebecca Barnard THIS TEMPLATE IS 1:1 SCALE

IMPORTANT

EMAIL: PRINT@IMPLANT.COM.AU

- FINAL ART MUST HAVE 3MM BLEED O

Ohio (N.Young) Andrew Tanner

- PLEASE OUTLINE ALL FONTS - SAVE ART AS PRINT READY PDF (Acro

- IMPORTANT INFO SHOULD MUST BE I Beware OF Darkness (G.Harrison) Shane O’Mara

PH:Pity 1300 79 78 78 Isn’t It A (G.Harrison) Billy Miller- FINAL ART MUST BE CMYK AND 300 D

Coming Down Again (Jagger/Richards) Nick Barker Blood In My Eyes (B.Dylan) Liz Stringer Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others) (B.Dylan) Andrew Tanner That’s The Way (R.Plant/J.P.Page) Jaqueline Tonks I’m In The Mood (J.L.Hooker) Rebecca Barnard Who Listens To The Radio (S.Cummings/A.Pendlebury) Rebecca Barnard PRODUCED BY SHANE O’MARA With backing musicians and vocalists including: Shane O’Mara, Billy Miller, Rebecca Barnard, Harry O’Mara, Rick Plant, Howard Cairns, Ash Davies, Adrian Whitehead, Stu Thomas, Leroy Cope and Ben Wiesner.

Available at: www.rhythmsmagazine.com

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THE TIMES THEY ARE DEFINITELY CHANGING

BY BRIAN WISE

Palace of Magnificent Experiences at 267 Swan Street, Richmond is a live music, multi-arts exhibition, performance and arts retail space, with cocktail, wine, beer and food selections. POME presents live music 5 days per week – from blues, jazz, world music and everything in between – burlesque, visual & performing arts and life drawing. With cinematic experiences to come.

POME provides Q&A sessions with all artists during their exhibitions – all explaining the history, meanings and unique processes of their art. Head to the POME webpage for all upcoming events plus online art store.

pome.bernzerk

There is no place like POME!

T

he opening of the new Bob Dylan Center is an event that just about every Rhythms reader would want to attend but whether any of us can do so will, of course, depend on international travel. However, I am fairly certain that many of us will visit the new facility at some stage in the future.

Located in Tulsa’s burgeoning arts district and adjacent to the Woody Guthrie Museum the new Center will house more than 100,000 exclusive cultural treasures created and owned by Dylan over seven decades, including original manuscripts, unreleased recordings, unseen film performances, photos and more.

Apart from the revolving exhibitions and archival films there will also be a re-creation of an authentic studio environment where visitors can experience what it was like to be present at one of Dylan’s historic recording sessions. Some scholars have already had access to the archive and Clinton Heylin credits it in the first volume of his latest biography, The Double Life of Bob Dylan (Vol. 1, 1941-1966, A Restless Hungry Feeling) which clocks in at 520 pages.

Both The Bob Dylan Center and The Woody Guthrie Center operate under auspices of the American Song Archives, a project of the George Kaiser Family Foundation which acquired Dylan’s vast archives in 2016 (for a rumoured US$30) and Guthrie’s in 2010.

Michael Chaiken is the Curator of the Dylan Center and has a background in film programming, writing, and cataloguing.

He has worked with Norman Mailer, D.A. Pennebaker, the Maysles and others and was hired by rare book and archive dealer Glenn Horowitz for the Dylan project.

The Bob Dylan Center is set open in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in May 2022.

Brian Wise spoke to the Michael Chaiken, the curator.

When he started work on the archives Chaiken says he “couldn’t believe the critical mass that accrued over the years.”

“The archive really begins to take shape around the mid-late ‘60s,” he explains.

“The archive goes all the way back to Bob’s childhood and his teenage years. Some of the first bands that he played in, but by the mid-‘60s he was world famous. He had an office. He had people that were able to mind his materials. He also had a home and a fixed address, which is something he didn’t have when he first moved to New York city in 1961.

“Things just began to accrue and pile up. But also, just the Bob Dylan music company as an entity that was looking after his copyrights and his licensing and things like that, that begins to take over in the late sixties. All this stuff was being held onto not necessarily because they were thinking, we’re going to move this someplace or there’s going to be some center dedicated to Bob Dylan. This was just the daily business of taking care and just being smart and responsible stewards of this material.”

“Having Dylan’s archive down there expands the Woody Guthrie narrative in all sorts of different ways,” says Chaiken of the decision to set up the Dylan Center in Tulsa, which is nearly 1500 kms from Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota. “After Woody’s papers came to Tulsa, they also acquired the papers and the recordings of Phil Ochs, another contemporary of Bob’s. They’re building essentially an American Song Archive in Tulsa.

There’s no one bigger than Dylan. It just seemed just a natural next step. Not only does the Kaiser Foundation have the resources to

make this happen and to build out this center to help make the archive essentially, open to the public or parts of the archive opened to the public. They also have Woody’s papers. I think for Bob that was very interesting to him.”

“It’ll be guided in a way,” explains Chaiken about the set-up of the Center. “There’s essentially a couple of things that are happening at once. On one hand, it’s a center that is dedicated to Dylan and his life work, but the overarching theme of the center really is just this notion of restless creativity and Dylan is the north star. He is the perfect artist to work through to just explore ideas of creativity and what that means. Not just for Dylan, but for other artists as well. It’s working on two levels at once. There’ll definitely be some anchor exhibits where people can listen to session tapes and they’ll be able to see film material like the outtakes from Don’t Look Back and things like that. But the space is also being built in such a way where we can have different exhibitions coming in and out in more of a repertory fashion. Things that might seem a little bit tangential to Dylan, but hopefully in the context of the center will make a lot of sense. We’ll be able to explore other artists in Bob Dylan’s circle or artists who influenced Bob Dylan in some way. We’re trying to keep it as open as possible, so it doesn’t get stale for people.”

You can find out more at bobdylancenter.com.

You can also listen to a Rhythms Magazine podcast with Michael Chaiken on Podbean, iTunes or Spotify.

www.bernzerk-pome.com.au 14

15

BY ANNE MCCUE

DIRT REYNOLDS & THE EXIT/IN M

usic City has been under attack the last few years by big property developers who seek to tear down the very fabric of what makes this town unlike any other in the world. Many historically significant buildings have already been erased. This time the fight is for the 50-year-old legendary venue EXIT/IN. Now that many of us are vaccinated, shows are starting to happen again, and people are crawling out of their 14-month lockdown and gathering to hear music.

The first large show for many was held last Sunday outdoors in East Nashville - a fundraiser to save the EXIT/IN. Dirt Reynolds was the backing band for this historic tribute to Uncle Tupelo on the 25th anniversary of UT’s last show. I spoke to Chris Watts about the event.

Firstly, are you Dirt Reynolds or is that the band name?

Ha. It’s both. Intentionally ambiguous. Dirt Reynolds is an idea and a way of life!

Can you give me a quick rundown on what is the current situation with the EXIT/IN? Basically, a hotel development company out of Chicago has purchased the property on Elliston Place. They’ve been quiet about their plans for EXIT/IN, but the venue owners are afraid it will be demolished for hotels or sold to a conglomerate/corporate company (like Live Nation, etc...). As you probably know, EXIT/IN is locally, family, and independently owned and operated.

The owners started a GoFundMe to raise money to buy EXIT/IN back from the developers. They reached their initial goal pretty quickly but the developers declined the offer.

I believe 1100 people turned out for the benefit concert. Great turnout! Nashville

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has been in lockdown for over a year.

How did it feel to be playing to such a large crowd after all that time?

Yes, Nashville showed up! The weather was perfect, the vibe in the air was almost

indescribable. We’ve suffered through tornadoes, a bombing, and lockdown, and I think that concert was exactly what our community needed. For a lot of folks, that was their first taste of live music in 14

plus months. That’s a special and powerful thing, and it’s not lost on me. For a lot, Sunday will be unforgettable. I know I’ll never forget it.

Was there a special feeling in the audience given that Nashville shows have been shut down so long??

Yes, to see people singing and dancing and smiling was such a beautiful and powerful thing. Not gonna lie, I teared up a few times.

What about in the band?

It was a special night for the band for the reasons mentioned above, plus it was such an amazing opportunity for us, considering we formed right before Covid. Sunday was a coming out party for Nashville, but also for Dirt Reynolds as a band. Plus it was an honor and a privilege to share the stage with so many other talented artists and musicians like Steve Poltz, Aaron Lee Tasjan, Lilliy Hiatt, and absolutely surreal to play with Uncle Tupelo’s drummer Ken Coomer!

Why Uncle Tupelo?

Uncle Tupelo was/is a huge influence on a lot of the Americana and Alt-Country music you hear around the community and

Sunday was the 25th anniversary of their final performance.

Coming from a small town in Louisiana, Uncle Tupelo is the first “Indie” band I remember hearing. It was exactly what I was looking for at the time without knowing it, and they turned me on to so many other bands that have become a huge influence on my listening habits and the music I play. Small town punk rock angst with influences of the traditional country and gospel music I grew up with. I didn’t know you could do that at the time and I felt like they were directly speaking to me.

Plus, they turned me on to Wilco and Son Volt and other contemporary “indie” bands of the time, bands like The Replacements, the Stooges, The Ramones, Neil Young, and taught me some things about the country and gospel my parents listened to, which I thought was lame at the time. Gram Parsons was major for me. It was country music, but it was cool. It had a psychedelic rock’n’roll edge to it that I’d never really heard in that style of music. There was also something so vulnerable and endearing about his voice. I could immediately relate to it, and GP was the artist that brought

me back around to the traditional country music I was raised on. I still listen to all this stuff and consider all of them to be musical influences.

Thanks for taking part in the effort to save The EXIT/IN. This kind of attack on our venues has been happening for a few years now…

Culture is important, and the threat of losing independent venues is a direct assault on our culture. I could write a thesis on it but, basically, I’m referring to urban development and gentrification problems. Cultural pockets develop in low-income neighborhoods, those lowincome neighborhoods become desirable, then developers and giant corporations and tech companies roll into town on the backs of tax breaks and kickbacks, and eventually gut the people and institutions who made the real estate so desirable in the first place. It’s the white-washing and homogenization of culture, a national (world-wide?) problem and direct result of late-stage capitalism.

Check out: www.dirtreynolds615.com OR exitin.com 17

DEFYING THE ODDS

Despite a career spanning over two decades, it’s only now that Jeb Cardwell is releasing his solo debut, writes Samuel J. Fell

C

hances are you’ve heard Jeb Cardwell play. His guitar and banjo work, admired and respected by all who come across him, have graced stages and albums for the past twenty or so years, as he’s played with Kasey Chambers, Shane Nicholson, sister Abby Cardwell and countless others. He’s an Australian roots music journeyman, and he has his craft down pat.

And yet, during all this time, Jeb Cardwell has never released an album under his own name – until now. My Friend Defiance stands as his solo debut, an album that carries with it the poise and assuredness that comes from two decades of playing, writing and singing with the best of them. And it’s not, as one could easily assume, the result of a long Covid lockdown.

Cardwell was ready to go with this one before the world stopped in March last year, writing in the album’s liner notes, “I intended to release this record at the beginning of 2020 but then the world pandemic occurred so, I decided to wait until 2021.”

“Yeah, that’s right, not one of these songs was written during Covid, not one of them was written during the [pandemic],” he confirms.

“During the past year [though], I decided to do a bit more postproduction, which I feel brought the songs to their full maturity, which is a bit of a silver lining there.”

The songs are indeed mature. My Friend Defiance is a study in thoughtful songwriting, nothing is overstretched or overplayed, and to be quite honest, you’d expect nothing less from a player of the calibre of Cardwell, despite the fact he’s not entered this realm before.

I venture then, that coming out of the shadow of, say, Kasey Chambers (with whom he played on the 2012 album, Wreck & Ruin) and into the spotlight would have been somewhat of a nerve-wracking experience.

“Yeah, playing with Kasey or Shane Nicholson or my sister, you’re in the studio and you’re conscious of doing your best, and you’re proud and excited to be there, but it’s not your baby though,” he says. “You do become invested in it, you care a lot about it, but you didn’t write the songs. So with me putting myself out there, for me it’s weird because I’m not… me in the spotlight, it’s funny.”

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“People say, you’re in the wrong industry if you don’t want to be in the spotlight,” he goes on with a laugh, “but I’m uncomfortable with a lot of attention. So putting myself forward like this is pretty strange.”

In order to combat this feeling of being out of place, so to speak, Cardwell surrounded himself with a slew of crack players in order to bring these songs to life – bassist Tim McCormack, drummer Roger Bergodaz and keysman Brendan McMahon make up the core band, with additions from Michael Hubbard, Lachlan Mclean and Butch Norton, plus an array of backing vocalists including Chambers, Abby Cardwell, Talei and Eliza Wolfgramm and Zane Lindt. All contribute to the record’s strength and power.

“When I was recording the album, I thought, I’ve got these songs, I feel they’re good songs, and they deserve to be recorded,” he says, when I ask what his MO was for this record, his first. “And I have these great friends who are amazing musicians, and it would be a shame not to have them play and record these songs, that was the short term [MO], it was for me – to be able to look back and say, ‘I did it, I did the album everyone has been asking about… and I’m proud of myself’.

“And at the same time, I’d be stoked if people just listen to it and enjoy it, and it’s a bonus if I get any sort of recognition for it, and that’s it.”

It’d be a crime against roots music in general if Cardwell were not to receive recognition for My Friend Defiance – bluesy riffs abound, there’s a solid groove that underpins the album, it weaves nicely between light and shade, it grows and powers ahead, often with the same song (‘Freedom Feeling’ is a fine example of this, an epic song) – it’s the album people have been asking about for over a decade, and Cardwell has delivered it.

“Yeah, I’m really, really happy about it,” he smiles. “I feel it’s a strong album, and I feel there’s no filler on there, for me.”

My Friend Defiance is available now via Blind Date Records

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WAYSIDE STORIES

By Chris Lambie

WHAT’S GOING ABOUT Andy McGarvie releases his second album and it’s guitar-driven, blues-tinged, rock-soaked singer-songwriter Americana - straight out of Melbourne.

By Michael Smith

W

e almost didn’t get to hear Going About This, the new album from Melbourne singer, songwriter and guitarist Andy McGarvie. He just wasn’t sure about it. Ironically, self-doubt is one of the issues he explores on the album, as he admitted to Michael Smith.

“I released my first album, Not Soon Enough, in 2016 and when I moved to London in 2017 I had some of this material already written, in bits. Two of my siblings got married a couple of months apart at the end of that year so I thought I’d just come back and stay in Australia for a few months and in that time I got the band together and we went into the studio and recorded some stuff.

In 2018, I had to have surgery because I had cysts on my vocal folds. This of course meant that I couldn’t sing in the same way and couldn’t really get across what I’d originally intended with those songs, so to be honest I kind of shelved the record.

“Then Fraser [Montgomery], who mixed and mastered it, he contacted me and asked, ‘Hey, when are you gonna finish this record?’

That was at the end of 2019, and so I thought we probably should. I listened to it and realised we could make it work. So, in the time between going back to the UK again and coming back because of COVID, I spent some time finishing the vocals. But I was very close to not being bothered with it, though listening back to it now I’m very glad I didn’t do that. Like so many artists, you think ‘this is terrible, no one’s going to want to hear this, why do I bother?’ blah blah blah.

“I’ve said to people before, I used to think good songwriting was from a place of pain or a place of anguish, but in fact good

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songwriting is from a place of honesty.

This whole record is very honest about my transformation as a person over the last few years, and the things I actually care about – I’ve always been political, but I’d never written a political song until I wrote ‘Nobody’s Home’. These things are what’s important to me because I can believe what I sing, you know? And that’s kind of new for me as a songwriter.”

McGarvie is quite the wordsmith – in fact, his songs read more like he’s telling little stories, insights into the workings of the heart, rather than doing the conventional “verse/verse/ chorus/middle-eight/chorus” thing – so it’s surprising to learn that when he writes, it’s the music that comes first – but more on that in a moment. At the core of his writing is an exploration of that space between what you think you’re feeling, what you might actually be feeling and what you could eventually be feeling – the tension between past, present and future.

“I think that also comes across in the sense that the songs are written at a point where you might be feeling something, they’re then recorded when you don’t feel that thing anymore and you have to bring that feeling back, and then they may be performed again where you are putting on the character in that song even though you don’t necessarily feel that way anymore. So, it’s a photograph of the moment; it’s just the way the photograph happens over, in my case, a couple of years of writing through recording to performing it. There is this tension, as you say, between past, present and future, but

I try to detach a little bit from the feeling of the story now, and I treat the story as a feeling that happened at one point and while it may not be how I feel right now but it’s an honest representation of that moment.

“I think the idea of hope is an important one, especially when you’re being honest with songwriting. You can come through a moment of real, personal turmoil or tension and you can reflect on it years later, look at it and be able to stand there and internally say, ‘Look at the difference between how you feel now and the words that you’re singing where you are very clearly verbalising what you felt then,’ and to be able to see that difference on a personal level is really cool, a really unique thing that a lot of people might not get the chance to do for themselves.

“I write the music first,” he explains, “and then get a kind of sense of what that music is saying to me, mood-wise. The lyrics for me always come second. I’ve always got a rough idea of maybe where I want to go with something, but a song like ‘Going About This’, for example, that started as being a completely different kind of thematic idea and as I kind of sat through that chorus and realised what it was about, it sort of exposed itself as being about me – it’s not about anything else I was trying to write it about – and that then begins a journey – ‘Well, let’s analyse this self-realisation a little bit more, what this phrase that apparently came out of nowhere has brought me to think about.’”

Going About This is available now at andymcgarvie.bandcamp.com

As His Bob-ness turns 80, we celebrate a life devoted to The Song. Dylan is one of the most covered artists of our time. Melbourne singer-songwriter Bill Jackson, an avid fan, reflects on the crafting of message with melody. “Back in the Middle Ages, the minstrels and the songwriters went from town to town and they were the newspaper, spreading the news. I think, as songwriters, we’re part of that lineage. It’s important that we don’t become too navel-gazing. There’s enough of that as it is.” The third volume in Jackson’s series The Wayside Ballads tells stories of convicts, shearers, immigrants and soldiers. He says, “Not be so arrogant as to say we’re educating people but making them aware of what life was like.”

Over 15 years, Jackson has collaborated with his wordsmith brother Ross, a war historian.

“It’s a great relationship to have.,” Jackson says. “Ross comes from a poetry angle without thinking about choruses and hooks.

My part is to bend these things into songs and meld them into three minutes as well.

I might not change a word, or sometimes just use a line or two or an idea. For the song ‘The Shed’, he sent me a really long poem about our great-great-grandfather who was shearer. It’s almost like trying to put a cracked mosaic or jigsaw puzzle together. To give it some sort of narrative but also make the words attractive and give people a taste of what the life must’ve been like and the hardness of it.”

The album opens with ‘Convict Blood’. “It was Important to start the record by asking a lot of questions about us as Australians. I just love some of Ross’s lines like ‘Where did you get that spirit to fight/ Where did you get that rebel streak? You can feel yourself in it.”

The Wayside Ballads Volumes 1 and 2 have a different feel to this final instalment.

The first was an electric affair produced by Shannon Bourne who also plays on Volume 3. The second represented a string band sound, mostly recorded live in the studio with Thomm Jutz in Nashville. Planned late in 2019, this latest recording saw Jackson and producer/instrumentalist Kerryn Tolhurst (The Dingoes, Country Radio) working together apart – via file sharing and “thousands of phone calls”. ‘That’s Why I’m Here’ represents those who come to our shores from troubled homelands.

“Kerryn did an amazing job on that. I’ve been playing that song for four years but a really fast version of it. He gave the song its own personality. His beautiful guitar tremolo line at the end of ‘The Shed’ really pins that song.” Likewise, Tolhurst’s mandolin on the closing bars of ‘Summer on the Somme’ evokes the location.

Bill Jackson’s latest album continues his tales of our history.

“Kerryn first came to my attention from his work with The Pigram Brothers. I’m really chuffed that he liked my songs enough to work with me. I’ve pretty much had his complete attention for two years.” The pair have all but finished recording another album, quite different again.

Guests on Vol.3 are Stephen Hadley, Mischa Herman, Shannon Bourne, Ruth Hazleton, Paddy Montgomery and Greg Field. As with his partner Hazelton, Jackson laments gig plans going awry. He and Tolhurst did get to briefly air the new songs to an audience or two between lockdowns. Of the tale told in ‘The Ballad of Billy and Rosie’, Jackson laughs, “I had to get permission from the family to put that one out. It’s good to keep the stories alive.”

Jackson grew up hearing his dad’s Country records. “I started playing guitar at 15 Dylan, Joan Baez, Donovan. I’ve always liked writers like Guy Clarke and Townes Van Zandt, all the usual suspects. You gravitate to the lyrics, the stories. Even songs like ‘Harper Valley PTA’. There’s a great message in there. Johnny Cash’s album about the First Americans, Bitter Tears. Those people had a conscience. That’s what I love about it.”

In 3/4 time, ‘Cut & Run’, Ross’s describes an aging songwriter, tied to his art, passionate about it. “I could kind of see there was something in there about me. That drive to leave something behind. Mischa plays high whistle on it. I wrote the last verse, asking ‘How come we’re still talking about dropping

the bomb?’ Since releasing the album, Jackson thought he’d write a song for Dylan’s 80th birthday. “So, I wrote one last night and sent it to Kerryn. There’s a song on Another Side of Bob Dylan called ‘Ballad in Plain D’.

Mine is called ‘Ballad in Plain E’.”

The launch of The Wayside Ballads Vol 3 is scheduled for Tuesday September 14 at The Brunswick Ballroom. The album is available through Laughing Outlaw Records.

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AUSSIE DUO WINNIE BLUES RELEASE A SMOKING DEBUT ALBUM

NEW RELEASES

Meet the Australian couple storming Nashville.

By Meg Crawford

R

emember when smokes cost next to nothing and tucking a packet up your sleeve was a legit option? Well, Aussie-born but Nashvillebased couple Alice and Cam Potts harken back to that time with the golden haze, seventies alt-country glamour vibe of their first album Half Wide Awake, But Dreaming. Serving up some serious Gram Parsons and Emmylou feels, the romance, longing and melancholy of the album belies the fact that the couple are individually and collectively a joy.

Let’s start with how they met. Alice had been in New York City for all of a week when she decided to take herself out for a night on the tiles.

After strolling around town, she found herself at a Ruby Boots gig. By chance, she stood next to Cam, and clocking an Aussie accent, Alice bought a round. Incidentally, Cam still hasn’t repaid that first beer, but it evidently didn’t matter because it’s now a number of years down the track, they’re married and loved up.

What happened next? Well, initially nothing. Alice went home, while Cam went out for dinner with the band. Then, serendipity intervened.

The pair discovered they’d both moved to Nashville. “We hadn’t been in contact at all, except when Alice came to town she posted in this Australians in Nashville Facebook group,” says Cam. “We all know each other here and it’s very small and weird. She was looking for a room, and I was like, ‘Hey, I don’t have a room but I remember meeting you in New York. You want to get a beer?’, and so we went and got a beer at the diviest of dive bars in Nashville and we just talked about music and stuff all night. At some point Alice said, ‘Oh yeah, play a little bit of guitar’. And I was like, ‘Oh cool, we should write’, because everyone else fucking writes in this city.”

So, a plan was set to write some, except that Alice kept canning the meeting. Having never co-written before, she had some initial trepidation. Happily, she bit the bullet. “We eventually got together and I just realised, ‘Oh, he’s such a lovely human’ and made me feel very comfortable,” she recollects. “So, we wrote our first single ‘Settle Down’ in that first sitting, which was great because it just kind of just tumbled out of us. And then we just kept on going.”

Next came the band. With about five songs under the belt, the pair met for lunch outside at Las Maracas for tacos on a busy main street in Nashville whereupon Cam asked Alice what she’d like to do musically and outlined some options. “I wasn’t trying to be a producer or anything, it was just ‘what do you want to do?’,” Cam explains.

Up to that point, Cam had been in the Dead Letter Chorus, whereas Alice – not that anyone would ever know – had never been in a band.

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With that background in mind, Alice was certain about only one thing.

“I knew I loved writing with him,” she notes. “I remember we both cheered and we were like, ‘Oh, I think we’ve got band’.”

And so, the Winnie Blues was born. Which begs a question: do Americans get the providence of the name? “No, Americans don’t know what Winnie Blues are,” Alice says, gleefully. “ It’s our cheeky way of carrying some subtle Australian with us over here.”

Then came their first album, Half Wide Awake, But Dreaming, which was recorded live over three or four days at Neal Cappellino’s fabled studio, The Doghouse. Backed by local players, including fellow ex-pat Ryan Brewer on drums, the recording captures the energy of the band on stage, with a gloriously seventies Americana sway. In getting to that point, they were prompted by producer Nick Bullock to compile what he pegged as a “mountain-top playlist”. “Immediately, the first song that came to mind was ‘Hopelessly Devoted To You’ from the Grease soundtrack,” Cam recalls. “We wanted it to sound like that. It’s a little bit polished, a little bit country. It’s got strings in parts, and it’s very emotive. If we could have just bottled up Sandy from the middle part of Grease, that’s what we were going for.”

That said, don’t expect their songs to be all sweetness and light. For a start, they mostly do trade in story-based sad songs. “You know how singing along to a sad song makes you feel happy and connected and empathetic?” Cam reflects. “We definitely use music as a cathartic exercise. We write about our friends in disguised ways or our own experiences. I like challenging stories.”

It’s an interesting balance. Take their heartrending first single, ‘Coming Home to You’ for example. On one hand, it’s a nu-country anthem with sweeping harmonies, but, in essence, it’s a feminist protest song responding to inequities, like the pay gap. The Winnie Blues aren’t pulling any punches, but they’re doing it such a skilful way that may be you won’t even notice. It’s an iron fist in a velvet glove approach.

Let’s fast forward to now, whereupon the Winnie Blues have just released the album – on their own label, Two Hands, no less. While Half Wide Awake, But Dreaming is the first cab out of the Two Hands rank, more (including from other artists) are set to follow. For Alice, it’s an opportune moment to reflect.

“We’re proud to have been able to put out this album, especially given everything that’s happened in the world. Everybody has had a hard year, but it’ll be nice to look back and have timestamped this period with a record.”

When God Was Great

Even the staunchest atheist will be hard pressed to find fault with the Bosstones’ latest album

By Meg Crawford

A

sk any Mighty Mighty Bosstones fan and they’ll tell you that the band have always made a revolution sound like a party. Their eleventh studio album, When God Was Great, is no exception. However, while tackling everything from George Floyd’s murder to the state of American politics, the album still manages to be uplifting. “I believe in the human race,” says Dicky Barrett, the graveltoned, charismatic frontman of the Boston ska-punk legends. “The message that I’ve always sent is, ‘there is hope and people are good, more good than bad’.”

The album’s weightiest moment is undoubtedly ‘The Killing of Georgie (Part III)’, which references Rod Stewart’s ‘The Killing of Georgie, Part 1 & 2 from 1976.

Barrett started putting pen to paper days after the event. “It just started pouring out of me,” Barrett says. The sad fact is that the band has been tackling the topic of racism for decades. Take their ’97 ska-punk anthem, ‘Let’s Face It’, for example, which starts with the line, “Well it’s so hard to face/ That in this day and age/ Somebody’s race can trigger somebody’s rage”.

“The Mighty Mighty Bosstones is a band of many cultures and many ethnic backgrounds,” Barrett notes. “If you told us that in 2021 things might even be going in reverse, I would have laughed and said, ‘that’s ridiculous, that could not be the case’.”

“As for ‘The Killing of Georgie’, it’s more of commentary on how we as people in the United States handled that versus how, in other situations and times of trouble and tribulation, we used to be a country that would rise to the occasion. I think we failed and I don’t think we had anybody to look to in order to unite us. I kind of took from great speeches – I guess maybe even plagiarised.

It’s crazy to me, as not a young man, to think that when Martin Luther King gave us the great ‘I had a dream’ speech he took the country and put it on the shoulders and said, ‘we can do this. We are better than this’. If he was alive today, he would be shocked to see that we haven’t gotten it all sewn up.”

On the lighter end of the scale, there’s the band’s ska treatment of the Creedence classic, ‘Long As I Can See the Light’. “Oh, did you like our version of that?”, Barrett asks, sounding genuinely excited. It turns out that Creedence as a topic lights him up.

“My biggest problem is that John Fogerty’s vocals were pure perfection,” he continues.

“Everything that needs to be brought to that song, vocally and lyrically, he was doing. And it was a huge hit. In 1968, I think it hit number two here in the United States. The interesting thing about Creedence Clearwater is they had six or seven number two hits. And no number ones in the United States in their history.

“So, instead of leaning into it harder, I kind of sat back a little bit more than he does or more than I normally would, in order to

not step on what he’s already carved out.

I didn’t want to give anyone the idea that I think I was improving on it. Also, I loved the message and felt like it was timely. It really blended nicely with everything else we were trying to say. I often think of all the people listening to the record, and I think, ‘I really hope John Fogerty likes our version of the song’, because it’s a great, great song.

There’s a possibility that he goes, ‘What is this rubbish?’. That would break my heart, because it was meant as nothing but a complete and utter tribute to a guy that made some great music.”

Of course, being written and produced last year, When God Was Great is a pandemic baby. Written in a tumultuous year, Barrett credits the album with seeing the band through.

“We always write together and share ideas, so we’re mostly writing songs at all times.

Then, eventually, we realise we have enough songs to make a record and we make another Mighty Mighty Bosstones’ record. That’s what we were going through with this one.

Then, all of a sudden, we realised that we had more time on our hands because of the lockdown and the pandemic, so we were suddenly writing at a more rapid pace, with a level of fury and intensity. We stepped up the pace, to say the least.”

When God Was Great is available now through Epitaph.

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PEOPLE ON THE EDGE Hussy Hicks will stop at nothing to hit the road in order to showcase their latest release, writes Samuel J. Fell

T

he call comes in from outside a laundromat in Lismore, on the New South Wales north coast. Is this unusual? Not really, Julz Parker and Leesa Gentz of Hussy Hicks are, as Gentz mentions, ‘road pigs’, they’ve been touring almost non-stop since their inception over a decade ago and so a clothes drying stop on the way to the next gig isn’t an odd occurrence at all.

Of course, in these testing times, it’s not as usual as it once was. “We’ve had so many things pulled out from under us over the last fifteen months, we’re getting pretty used to it,” laughs Gentz. “We’ve made it to NSW and one show in Melbourne, we’ve had Western Australian attempts three times… we’ve been pretty NSW and Queensland-centric.”

Parker and Gentz, as we speak, are on their way to Perisher, then Melbourne, before shows in Queensland and then Adelaide for the Guitar Festival in July, their first decent run since the pandemic began. And it has, of course, been tough, the lack of live playing

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taking its toll, but the Hicks aren’t ones to let it get to them. “I think everyone, we’ve all had to reimagine our future, and we try to remain hopeful,” Gentz muses.

“We know that this government doesn’t care about us at all, the industry has been decimated and they don’t even mention it.

But we’re also such a resilient bunch, we live outside of the mainstream most of the time anyway, so I think we’ll all find work-arounds, people are clever, and it is the creative arts, so people are coming up with creative ways to, essentially, not go crazy.”

The pair have built onto their studio, and with bandmates Tracy Bassy (bass) and drummer Ali Foster, have forged an even deeper connection over the past year, having had to quarantine together multiple times, using that time to meld together as players even more so than they had done, pre-pandemic.

One result of this was the release last year of Gather Up The People, the band’s sixth studio album, from which they’re currently pushing single ‘The Edge’, a song which came together, interestingly, across four countries.

“I was engineering and running the desk side of things, so we had time to not push anything,” Parker explains.

“That song… we jammed it so many ways, and had settled on the backbone of it, but there were still bits my producer head wanted to hear. So, we got Mick Albeck, an amazing fiddle player… so he came to our place in Burleigh and added that beautiful fiddle part. Then we were in New York… and we had a recording session in a roof-top studio in Harlem playing industrial chain music with two teenage New Yorkers. Then we took the track over to London… and ended up in basically a converted pigeon

house [in France], and so played that weird, outro jam… and that’s how the songs ends, it’s a multi-continental track.”

I venture, given the wide-ranging and global nature of how Gather Up The People as a whole came together, that it would have been quite odd, and perhaps quite ironic, releasing it last year, mid-pandemic, when no one anywhere was wide-ranging at all.

“Yeah, there was no gathering,” Parker laughs.

“We did um and ah about the name,” Gentz says, “because it was, straight down the line, against everything that was being hammered into us at the time. But it’s what we wanted to call the record, and what we wanted to offer to our people, this message of connectivity and stronger together.”

Parker adds, “And it was very strange to release an album and then not spend six months touring it all around the world. I think a lot of what played into it was, we were all manic and crazy not knowing what was happening at the time, and usually with a new album you try and reach as many new people as possible, but we thought, we’ve got a really loyal and beautiful fanbase around the world who are probably sitting in their homes wondering what to do with their time, so lets just put this album out to the people who already know us, and we can share a moment together, in our houses.”

So even during these tough times, Hussy Hicks attempted to gather up their people, releasing an album that does indeed focus on connectivity and being stronger together – and if all goes well, they’ll be able to spread it from onstage, rather than afar.

Gather Up The People is available now via hussyhicks.bandcamp.com

TAKING A STAND!

After an acclaimed debut, Yola’s new album reflects her true musical personality.

By Steve Bell

“I’m the truest I’ve ever been right now.”

P

owerhouse British vocalist and songwriter Yolanda “Yola” Quartey spent years trying to breakthrough in the cutthroat London music scene, experiencing both heady highs and debilitating lows as she fought to establish a viable career. At her lowest ebb the singer even spent a brief stint living on the streets as she navigated the trials and tribulations inherent in following one’s artistic dreams.

But it wasn’t until much later - and on the other side of the world that Yola’s hard work and resilience would finally start to bear fruit. It would be in Nashville, not London, that her indubitable talents were first recognised and then nurtured, Music City welcoming her into the fold with open arms.

Her acclaimed 2019 solo debut Walk Through Fire was recorded by The Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach in his Nashville studio and released on his Easy Eye Sound label. The collection of country-soul anthems made Yola a breakout star in the Americana realms, scoring her four Grammy nominations (including Best New Artist) as well as a nomination for Artist of the Year at the 2020 Americana Honors & Awards.

She’s played onstage with names like Dolly Parton and Kacey Musgraves, recorded with Brandi Carlile’s The Highwomen outfit, played at the Grand Ole Opry, received praise from celebrity fans such as Elton John and Mavis Staples and was even recently tapped by Bas Luhrmann to star as the ‘Grandmother of Rock’N’Roll’ Sister Rosetta Sharpe in his upcoming musical biopic ‘Elvis’.

Now on her gorgeous new follow-up Stand For Myself Yola has remained true to herself and her own journey, crafting a suite of songs as vulnerable and honest as they are uplifting and inspiring. It was again recorded and released by Auerbach, but this time the music is (for the most part) a more sophisticated take on symphonic soul mixed with elements of classic pop and even disco, resulting in a more accurate representation of Yola’s own personal story.

“I’m coming from a new musical place, which is alone,” she laughs heartily. “On the first record, it’s almost more of a collaboration than it is a solo record, you know, because every song bar ‘It Ain’t Easier’ was written in the room with me and Dan and another co-writer. One of the co-writers would start playing something, I would respond with a melody, and we’d make it in the room at the time.

“This one was made completely differently. If anything, it was the complete antithesis of a way to make the album where I’m taking from my back catalogue of things that I’ve written, things I know I have fire, but I’ve been waiting to have things that go with it that tell the same narrative, that tell the same story.

“And also, the isolation of the pandemic meant that I couldn’t be in the room with a bunch of people, so I had to come up with the idea basically, and then be focused enough to know of the ideas I’ve had in my back catalogue, ‘what is it that’s speaking to me most today, and what do I want to say at this point in time?’

“And I found that there are songs that will just pop up and go, ‘I’m the truest I’ve ever been right now’. And ‘Diamond Studded Shoes’ is one

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of those, I started writing that in 2017 with my friend Aaron Lee Tasjan, who’s a singer-songwriter based here in Nashville. We were just talking about what was happening in the US and UK at the time and it felt really true then, and it’s just got truer.

“And so that’s kind of how it was, I’d take the songs I’d partly made, almost fully made - sometimes just a chorus, sometimes just the verse - and I’d go, ‘Okay, I need help to bring this over the line. Um, this is how I’m feeling’. I’d get people in my headspace. And that was the opposite on the first record, it was just all of us coming into a room and then see what happens. So, I feel that this is the most me I’ve ever been, and so if you like this, you like me!”

Even the new musical direction itself ties directly back to her youth, and early musical connections gleaned from her mother.

“My mother was a disco DJ and she loved disco,” Yola explains. “She loved it - she loved soul music, she loved country music, but she loved disco probably more than anything on planet Earth. And all of the kind of stuff that linked in-between stuff.

So, she loved Minnie Riperton and the space she occupies is kind of like jazz and kind of soul-ish, but not really. It’s something else. It’s so hard to put Minnie Riperton in a spot - she also did a disco hit, she did ‘Ring My Bell’ and so we know that - but she was like just everywhere and no one really felt that obsessed with putting her in a place.

“And I was always enamoured by Minnie for that record - you know, you’ll know her for that really high note and when she’s singing with Rotary Connection and she’s doing all of those whistle tones, she’s like outrageous.

“So, I got really into disco and into Barry White and The Bee Gees through my mother and into Aretha and Dolly through my mother as well. So many of the things that you hear on the album that are a bit soul-y and disco-y, that would be my mother.

“And then me, I was brought up in the era of the 90s. And so, I discovered Smokey Robinson through D’Angelo, because he covered a Smokey song, ‘Cruisin’’, and I thought,’This is a really great song!’. And then I looked it up and I was like, ‘Oh, wait a minute, someone else has done this. Oh, this is the original. Okay’. So that was another kind of discovery.

“But also, being English, Britpop was massive in my life, and I love Blur. So, in the melody of a couple of the songs, especially ‘Whatever You Want’, you can hear the melodies have got a little bit of a Britpop-y energy to it, even though there’s pedal steel in it. There are things and combinations that would never occur to anyone else, unless it was particularly an isolated black British lady.

“Even with songs in the middle of the record like ‘If I Had To Do It All Again’ that’s very of my 90s influence of my love of Aaliyah and Mary J. Blige, but also you can hear maybe a hint of Annie Lennox’s influence on me when I was growing up listening to her as well - and Eurythmics - in the melody.” >>> 27

Stand for Myself is available through Easy Eye Sound.

TAKING A STAND! >>> But it’s in the lyrical messages throughout Stand For Myself that Yola’s life experiences really shine through, songs seeking to empower the marginalised and provoke empathy and connection regardless of circumstance.

“I’ve learned things across my life, about standing in my power without being reduced by it,” Yola offers. “And in black lady life being reduced by your power is almost a specialist subject, like being a trophy, strong black woman can then lead to just endless neglect, like, ‘Great, you can deal with anything so let’s just kick you into this burning house, she’ll be fine!’

And ’Oh, wow, you’ve got a broken leg but you won’t need crutches, you won’t need medication!’

“Like the kind of things that occur for black women almost took Serena Williams out. And you remember the story of her and her giving birth, and them going ‘She’ll be fine!’ And she almost dies, I’m like, it doesn’t matter how much of the archetypal strong black woman you are, like, the ability for people that don’t see themselves as strong to kill you, is amazing, which must mean they’re stronger than you.

“So, I needed to write an album that’s so from my lens that is telling the story of, you know, my life. Like the first song [‘Barely Alive’] is about how I’m really minimising myself to try and fit in. And that’s what kids do anyway. And you do that from your teens into your 20s. You just do that. And then like you realise, at some point, that it’s utterly unsustainable and isn’t going to bring any joy and it’s a complete trick.

“And so, I kind of worked my way through that - through boundaries and through my romantic identity. And I think especially with black women the romantic identity isn’t something that is very much addressed, so to be sentimental and tender and to have nuance in that is almost rebellious.”

Whilst growing up Yola found solace in music, as much from the diversity it represented as its usual escapist properties.

“When I was a kid, I grew up in a little town outside of Bristol that was really super-duper, duper white,” she smiles. “And I was one of, like, five people in the town that were black, and it was one of those things that when I listened to music, I heard people who could be me. And I saw people that look like me when I was watching the videos or they were on the TV chart shows, it was, like, ‘Oh, wow, they look like me! Oh, that person’s built like me!’ you know, with the old junk in the trunk and everything.

“And we’re talking about the heroin chic, ‘90s era, so I couldn’t be swamped with more images of people that don’t look like me at that point, you know? And so yeah, it was really healing to reach out to music and to the story of the diaspora - Africans jettisoned everywhere - and so I could identify with that as well, it was like a comfort.

“Also, and maybe more obviously, one half of my ethnicity is Ghanaian and specifically the Ga tribe, 28

and they for the last few millennia have been the seat of artistic renaissance for a fair amount of humanity, and then were shipped around the world via the slave trade. So, the connection to music in me is something that is literally of antiquity. It’s a literal cultural tradition that goes back millennia.”

One of Stand For Myself’s most poignant moments also ties back directly to Yola’s mother, but in a more tragic way.

“I feel like I’ve been writing the album for a long time,” she tells. “Because one of the songs ‘Break the Bough’ I started writing it and I played it out after writing it at - or least starting the process - in 2013 on the evening of my mother’s funeral. The bassline came into my head and I was, like, ‘That’s a weird bass-line to come into your head after a funeral’, but I kept with it and then the lyrics started arriving, so I was, like, ‘Okay, well, it looks like it’s something’s coming!’

“And I’d had a writing block and so that was the first time that songs were coming back into my head and it felt like now was the time that I was ready to sing it without crying, even though it’s a total party song. There’s loads of songs that have kind of come up and become even the right time, or just truer over the years that I’ve had them in my mind to be finished.”

Now Yola hopes that this truth that she so eloquently expresses throughout Stand For Myself resonates properly with the next generation of people seeking to forge their own place and identity in the world.

“I really want people to feel something emotional,” she smiles. “I want them to go, ‘Do you know what, actually I am going to take up a bit more space, if I’ve been a bit afraid to’. Because I think that people that are closer to selfactualising are less hateful, and I think that’s helpful.

“Also, maybe having the story being that of a nuanced black lady story that they may not have heard before - because I’ll tell you something for nothing, the media ain’t churning them out plentifully - then maybe if they haven’t had that story in their lives before they’ll have it now through the imagery and the sonics and the lyrics, and the media and videos that I put out - everything is going to be telling a nuanced story rather than a trophy story. So, I hope that helps people have more interesting views of women of colour, and for women of colour to feel seen in a more nuanced way than they have been.”

And if Yola needs to pass on these powerful messages by couching them in beguiling music, then so be it.

“It’s a bit like hypnotism,” she laughs.

“With hypnotism the idea is that there’ll be some noise in the room like a clock ticking or some music - maybe some hippy whale song type music - and you try and focus on that.

It’s like when you’re watching TV and someone’s trying to get your attention and you just can’t hear them, because you’re so tuned in.

“So, when you’ve got that full focus whatever is being said to you, that you’re not focusing on, has the ability to program you, if so desired. In a similar way to when you’re driving on a motorway and you see a billboard, anything that just flashes by your peripheral vision has a greater ability to program you - or at least as great if not greater ability to program you - than what you actually observe consciously.

“So, even if people aren’t reading the lyrics and going, ‘Oh my god, okay, so that’s what it’s saying’, I’m hoping that I can dip into their brain in the same way all the marketers do very successfully for the entirety of our lives. I’m forcing you to love yourself and empathise with people so it’s an evil way to do a good thing.”

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THINKING Photo by Nels Israelson.

“I like the idea of stringing images together without trying to hammer a point home trying. It’s there if people hear it.”

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ABOUT EVERYMAN E

veryone is familiar with the trajectory of Jackson Browne’s career over the past half century, from his association with Nico and the The Eagles and the whole Southern California rock scene, a string of great albums to kick off his catalogue, starting with the self-titled album of 1972, For Everyman and Late For The Sky in the two years following and through to his huge Top 5 albums such as The Pretender and Running on Empty in the late ‘70s. It was arguably one of the finest sequences of albums released by any solo artist. Then there was the No. 1 album Hold Out in 1980 and World In Motion and I’m Alive in 1993.

Los Lobos have recorded a version of ‘Jamaica Say You Will’, off Browne’s debut album, for their latest recording Native Sons, a reminder of just how good Browne’s song writing was even in his early twenties.

“I thought it was really beautiful, really nice,” says Browne when we catch up on Zoom. “They’re a great band. They’re great. Such great musicians and so creative.”

A few days before our interview, I found an old Zig Zag magazine from January 1977 with an interview that revealed even more about Browne’s early years: that he started playing the trumpet, he played with the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for six months or so then went to New York where he not only met Nico (who recorded his songs) and took over a bar gig from Tim Buckley. Browne also recorded a demo for Elektra Records (which he says was ‘terrible but which has become a rare collector’s item). Browne also joined a project with two others called Paxton Lodge which Elektra hoped would become something like Crosby, Still and Nash but eventually turned into a group that called itself Baby Browning.

“When I came back from New York, we talked Elektra Records into giving us a remote recording situation in the woods in Northern California,” recalls Browne. “The reason we were able to talk them into it was Big Pink, simply the most groundbreaking, the most sort of powerful roots but progressive and really amazing music. [It was] on the basis of the idea that if you got a house in the woods, you might come up with something great. We talked them into it. But we got into all kinds of mischief. That became a recording facility for Lonnie Mack and for Spider John Koerner and Dave Ray. It didn’t really gel. We were all individual players and everybody played the way they played. In our band there were three songwriters or more and two or three really great guitarist, but we didn’t have the acumen. We didn’t have the record-making experience, and there was just a lot of crazy stuff going on, a lot of getting high. Not just us but the producer was the highest of them all.”

Eventually, Elektra had Ry Cooder try to salvage an unsuccessful recording project that the label admitted was a mistake. By this time, Browne had moved back to Los Angeles and was living in the community in Echo Park that would eventually lead to his success.

I suggest that many songwriters these days don’t have the same extensive apprenticeship in music prior to recording an album. When Browne finally got his first record deal from David Geffen he was famously told to take the entire summer to prepare his songs and just think about making an album!

“I don’t know,” responds Browne. “I think all musicians really struggle They do all kinds of things to develop. My going to New York was combined with my being kind of just a freak like a hippie. Going to New York was part of kind of a pilgrimage. It wasn’t really about going to try to make anything happen. I think something might happen at any time but I didn’t know what. It was total luck that I got the job, accompanying Nico.”

After nearly fifty years, Jackson Browne is still writing songs that touch our hearts and guide our lives.

By Brian Wise

It was a fertile period but when I suggest to Browne that he could write a memoir, as so many of his contemporaries have done, he laughs and say, ‘I can’t write a postcard.’

“I talk my head off,” he adds. “Over time, a number of times, there have been people who made a case for it and have been very persuasive, but I like writing so much that I would have to become a better writer to do it.”

It is surprising that Browne is so self-deprecating about his own writing but while he is not yet prepared to write a memoir he certainly pours himself into his songs, examining the state of his own heart and the world in general.

Even in the past decade, when his output has slowed a little, Browne’s albums had a habit of throwing up memorable moments. However, his latest album is what some might call a return to form, if he had been out of form, and one of his finest of the past 20 years.

As he approaches his 73rd birthday, Browne has not only spent some time thinking about his own mortality but also about the future of the planet and the human race. Even on his early albums he asked the big questions and he was involved in the No Nukes movement, but now the concern has gone from the potential damage of war but the actual damage we are doing to ourselves.

“On the surface, it’s about living in L.A.,” said Browne in a press release about the new album with its intriguing title of Downhill From Everywhere and an ominous inside cover shot. “But it’s really a metaphor for life itself.

“I adore this city, but I’ve been trying to leave since around the time I finished my first album. You can love and appreciate and depend on a life as you know it, but deep down you may also long for something else, even if you don’t know what it is.”

The new album was completed during the pandemic after Browne suffered a health scare when he and his son caught Covid-19 and had to cancel an extensive national tour with James Taylor. (The rescheduled 29-date tour kicks off again in late July and runs through to November).

“What’s happening for everybody, of course, is a huge concern,” he replies when I ask how he is. “My own particular health was not ever so bad. It was not bad. I wasn’t really sick. I could tell I was getting better and not getting worse.”

Browne began recording the new album in his Groove Masters Studio in Los Angeles prior to the pandemic but needed to finish it later in 2020. >>> 31

THINKING ABOUT EVERYMAN >>> “I didn’t have a finished album,” explains Browne. “I needed another couple of months to finish but we had to stop and wait. I think I waited at least four months before I could record the last song and then begin to overdub, finish vocals, and in some cases, I made some changes in what I recorded before the pandemic. I was able to take my time really. In a way, the pandemic was a gift of a kind of calm, that clarity.”

Over the decades Browne has been fortunate to record and tour with some amazing musicians. The studio band that he has assembled for this album is no exception: it is basically your touring band with pedal steel maestro Greg Leisz and guitarist Val McCallum along with bass legend Bob Glaub, Jeff Young on keyboards, Mauricio Lewak on drums and Pete Thomas and Davy Faragher. Other guests include Leslie Mendelson on ‘A Human Touch,’ Mexican singers Los Cenzontles on ‘The Dreamer’ (a song about immigration) and Phoebe Bridgers on the video for ‘My Cleveland Heart.’ The musicians are able to hit that classic groove that imbues so many of the songs and makes them so memorable.

“The band that’s on this record developed over a period of time,” says Browne, “but also I’ve gone out for whole tours with Greg Leisz.

The cool thing about this band is Greg and Val really have a great chemistry. They play off of each other incredibly well and it happens spontaneously all the time. Neither of them play the same solo twice but they listen to each other and support each other to the same degree always. It’s really a great band for me because the songs stay fresh.”

So, nearly fifty years on from his debut album, released in January 2022, how does the song writing process compare these days with when he was younger. Theoretically, it should be easier, isn’t it?

“Sometimes, it’s easy especially if you get a subject or you get something that you haven’t written about before,” explains Browne.

“It gives itself to you to explore. A couple of songs in this album were written in a short amount of time and some of them are written over a long period of time. It varies. I think it’s really hard if you’re trying to express ideas that are developing. There’s no flashpoint for the feeling you have about it. It’s just a gradual understanding of the situation.

In the case of ‘Downhill From Everywhere’, that’s something that I was involved in - ocean conservation and marine-protected areas. I went to the Galapagos and took part in the TED conference. I had a gradual awareness about the health of the ocean. The information about the ocean was dire but that was a long time ago. To try to put into words, what you’re feeling and thinking about something like that is a challenge because songs are not easy to give information through and get a lot of information out.

“There has to be some emotional flashpoint and, in this case, it was hearing this phrase from the oceanographer, Captain Charles Moore, that “the ocean is downhill from everywhere.” A phrase like that gives itself to a song and then writing the song was not so linear. It’s not really a linear exposition about the health of the oceans but rather juxtaposing and contrasting images from a modern life in which everything you do impacts the ocean. Everything we do, everything we consume winds up in the ocean. Everything that’s plastic stays around a lot longer than everything that’s wood. You’ll see that every single thing you do involves some form of consumption of plastic. I like the idea of stringing images together without trying to hammer a point home trying. It’s there if people hear it.”

“The plight of the ocean has been going for a long time and there are organizations and scholars and ocean advocacy groups that had been fighting for the health of the ocean for a long time,” replies Browne when I mention that Americans are starting to think about the wider world after four years of near isolationism and devaluing of science. “It wasn’t about the last four years but those last four years, I think, showed us what can happen if you have somebody in flagrant disregard for every standard and for every impulse to do with preserving the natural world. You can see how much damage can be 32

done in relatively short period of time. I think we have the illusion that as a society, we are moving forward and that we are getting somewhere. That is really a dispute you’d have to really question that now.”

As is the practice these days, some of the songs have been released – as the equivalent of singles - in the months leading up to the album.

One of those songs, ‘A Human Touch’ features the great young singer Leslie Mendelson. The song appeared in the documentary 5B about the San Francisco General Hospital AIDS Ward during the early ‘80s.

The film’s director, Paul Haggis, suggested Mendelson to Browne.

“He heard that as a duet,” says Browne, “and it was one of those great intuitive, cinematic ideas but he guessed really right. Leslie just started writing the song with Steve McEwan. When they had something that they liked, they’d sent it to me to see if I wanted to add anything or if I want to sing it. I was really knocked out with what they had. I thought, ‘Wow!’ because Steve is a great writer; he writes a lot of songs in collaboration with people who then record them. He was set up to work that way. I had never really done it. We became really fast friends. We really became good friends. I love these two dearly and they both live in New York. I got to hang with them in New York. I got to hang with them in New Mexico once.”

“Leslie has really got a wonderful stage presence,” he continues.

“She’s comfortable. What can I say? She’s comfortable opening for The Who with acoustic guitar. This is badass. She is true as a singer and just really charming and funny and just at home. She’s at home on stage.

People adored her.”

“When I write, I cross-examine myself a lot,” says Browne about his writing. “I argue with myself about whether what I’ve said makes sense or whether or not people are going to get what I’m talking about. I really sort of examine it. I did that with some of Steve’s lines then I changed a couple of his lines but really the result was that what he had written just worked.

“That song is not just about an AIDS ward. It’s really about something more universal. It encapsulates the whole argument that the right has with the left about gay rights. If you wanted to change, you could.

You’re gay because you just decided to be gay and you could change.

You could heal yourself, come to Jesus. Whereas where gay people say, ‘I’m the way I am. I’m the way God made me, the same way you’re the way God made you.’ That thing gets laid out so economically in the first couple of lines. I sing the same lines as a heterosexual. It means the same thing. I love this song for the universality of what’s said and especially some of the most moving lines to me like, ‘Everybody wants a holiday. Everybody wants to feel the sun, get outside and run around. Live like they’re forever young.’ I love that. That gives me chills and Steve wrote that.”

To emphasise the scope of the new album’s material, ‘The Dreamer’ features Mexican singers Los Cenzontles, in what has been a constant theme in what’s been a theme in American folk music dating back to even before Woody Guthrie sang about it.

“I’m glad what you said about it being an issue for many years,” responds Browne, who wrote the song with Eugene Rodriguez, “because Woody Guthrie wrote ‘Deportees’ about the migrant workers that were killed in a plane crash in the ‘40s how even then they were just called ‘deportees’. They were being deported for not having the proper papers. People come from Mexico for the same reasons people come from Norway. My grandmother came from Norway. She came for a better life. The farm she grew up in I couldn’t support six children and the oldest brother inherited the farm and everybody else had to go find something else. My grandmother came here when she was 16.

“The girl in the song came here when she was 12 and I actually know her. When I met Eugene, I showed him a song that I had tried to get started quite a few years ago, probably 30 years ago, and it was about vigilantes on the border personally enforcing the immigration laws.

To do that and just say it was to promote law and order, of course, is absurd and ironic. I thought it was a good basis for a song but I could

“Growing up in California, I’ve known MexicanAmerican people my whole life. My earliest friends were Mexican. I always felt a deep connection with Mexican culture.”

never get it going because it really wasn’t about people that I admire.

When I met Eugene and showed him the song he began writing these lines about the girl that was on the session with us, with David Hidalgo, and the two singers in Los Cenzontles.

“I love that Australia has had its waves of immigration,” he continues, bringing the subject closer to home. “I’ve read a couple of really great op eds in Australian papers about the need for immigration and the value that immigrants have brought to your country as well. There’s no doubt about it. It’s really a transfusion of new blood and of new DNA. It’s just so absurd that there’s this xenophobic fear.

“Growing up in California, I’ve known Mexican-American people my whole life. My earliest friends were Mexican. I always felt a deep connection with Mexican culture.”

Browne has obviously spent a lot of time over the last few years thinking about some really big issues which spill out and dominate the songs on Downhill From Everywhere.

“It’s what I read about,” laughs Browne. “I read a lot. I don’t read to try to put stuff in the songs but I’m interested in it. I also listen to radio like public affairs on the radio. One of the great public affairs radio shows in the United States is a former Australian named Ian Masters. I think he’s from a family of journalists in Australia. You guys, your journalism is really strong. We have some strong journalists too, but I asked Peter Garrett one time how he got so political. He said he came from a family of lawyers and he said, ‘In my family, if you spoke up to say anything at the dinner table, for instance, you really had to

back up what you’re talking about. You had to know your stuff.’ I think there’s that seriousness in Australia and in Australian journalism and especially in politics. That might be a big generalisation but I know it from my Australian family too. This is seriousness that I really admire.”

Browne has recently been quoted as saying, ‘I see the writing on the wall’ and ‘I know there’s only so much time left in my life, but I now have an amazing, beautiful grandson, I feel more acutely than ever the responsibility to leave him a world that’s inhabitable.’

“In the opinion of Paul Hawken, the great environmentalist and writer, we’re experiencing one of the greatest mass movements in the history of humanity which is the many-faceted, many-pronged effort to save the planet and to save our world,” says Browne. “My oldest son tells me, “This is what we’re good at. This is what humans are actually good at, at recognising some danger and then finding some way around it. I think it’s getting very late, and we might not have the same world we want or the same world that we have grown up thinking is our ideal planet. Indeed, Hawken says, ‘We’re not just heading for the precipice.

We’ve gone over it and we are in free fall and now, it’s a matter of mitigating the consequences and dealing, managing what’s happening to the planet, and what’s happening to our species’.”

Downhill From Everywhere is available on July 23 on Inside Recordings.

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SOUL SURVIVOR

Allison Russell mines the past to find a brighter future.

By Brett Leigh Dicks

I

t was while huddled into a bunk bed on the Our Native Daughters tour bus that the seeds for Allison Russell’s first solo album – Outside Child - were planted. Russell scribbled down lyrics and song ideas while trying to not wake her sleeping daughter as the bus rolled through the night. When Russell returned home to Nashville, she had a four-day window to turn those ideas into something tangible.

After rounding up a collection of friends and entering the recording studio little did Russell realize just how tangible the results would be. With the recent release of Outside Child on Concord Records, Russell has been thrust into the musical stratosphere. The album’s release has been a whirlwind for the Nashville-based Canadian including appearances on late night television, a New York Times feature, and Variety predicting the record as album of the year.

Having garnered critical acclaim within the North American folk and Americana scene through her bands Po’ Girl and Birds of Chicago, it was the success of Songs of Our Native Daughters - Russell’s 2019 collaboration with Rhiannon Giddens, Amythyst Kiah, and Leyla McCalla - that broadened the awareness of the Nashvillebased Canadian and paved the way for all that was to come. As Russell leads you through the beautifully courageous journey that is Outside Child you quickly realize you’re privy to something very special. While some of the subject matter is harrowing, the album is equally empathetic, consoling, and uplifting.

Brett Leigh Dicks recently caught up with the erstwhile Canadian to talk about following in the footsteps of Our Native Daughters, the catharsis of art, and how to be a good ancestor.

Even for someone who has been privy to your career since the beginning, this album seemed to come out of nowhere. How and when did Outside Child come about?

The songs had been gestating my whole life but I started getting them down while lying in my bunk next to my daughter on the Our Native Daughters tour bus, scribbling things

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down and trying not to wake her. I then had this little window right after AmericanaFest, between the Our Native Daughters tour and a Birds of Chicago tour, where there were four days available at Sound Emporium, my favourite studio here in Nashville. I had just found out I got a Canada Council recording grant and our community of Canadian and American friends were here and available.

None of these songs had been played anywhere before. We got together in the middle of the room to work out the song and then recorded it. Every song was three takes and we usually took the second. I didn’t tell anyone what to play. It was truly an in the moment communion and we just happened to capture that.

You have written songs and made records for Po’ Girl, Birds of Chicago, and Our Native Daughters. What was it like to finally make a record for Allison Russell?

When we started recording the album, I was still in a state of denial about the fact I was even making a solo record because that was such a scary concept to me. To tell my own story in my own words under my own name is something I haven’t felt ready to do before.

I went in and recorded and then was back out on the road with Birds of Chicago again and thought, ‘Oh well, I will do something with that sometime.’ And then COVID happened and I had all this time to reflect and ponder.

I realized I felt strongly about putting this record out into the world for a number of reasons, not the least I’m a mom now and feel a responsibility to use whatever gifts and tools I have at my ready to try and make things a little better, not just for my daughter but for the generations to come. I want to try and be a good ancestor. This record is also about breaking the silence on cycles of abuse so I began to feel quite evangelical about putting this record out.

You had quite a support cast for this album too, everyone from JT Nero through to Erin Rae and Brandi Carlile …

My community of artist friends rallied around it. Brandi Carlile actually championed the record and sent it to Margi Cheske, the president of Fantasy Records. >>> 35

It is a deeply personal album that traverses some very harrowing subject matter, including various abuses. But that’s balanced with a beautiful measure of resilience and optimism. Did you find writing the album a cathartic experience?

As I was writing the songs, I wasn’t thinking about sharing them so it was something of a cathartic experience. It was a laying to rest of some of the past. The album isn’t really about abuse. That’s unfortunately the circumstances of my childhood that I’m choosing to speak about. If we don’t speak about these things then the cycles continue.

What the album is about for me is life on the other side of that. The album is an arc and I hope people can hear that journey. It’s not about being trapped in abuse. It’s about transcending it. It’s about resilience. It’s about community. It’s about the power of art to transcend and heal trauma and forge connections between people. And, for me anyway, it’s a way to find some forgiveness 36

and peace and a way to let the past be the past.

The album is as much about the future as it is the past so I’m wondering how has becoming a mother informed your story?

For me the most triumphant line I have ever written is “I am the mother of the evening star, I am the love that conquers all.” That’s about my daughter – she’s my evening star. Becoming a parent has changed me profoundly - the intensity of the love and the depth of the fear I feel. But it also makes you understand that we’re part of this continuum of humanity and our job is not to fuck things up so badly that our children won’t have a planet left. I feel that very strongly. I need to do whatever is in my power to make the world slightly better than I found it and I know that sounds grandiose but I don’t mean it in a grandiose way. I just mean that we all have our own sphere of influence.

A lot of people are coming to your music through this new album. But your musical evolution has been building for some time now. It must be very reaffirming to have the momentum you are currently experiencing and to be sharing some of that with old friends …

It has been gradual and by degrees. The roots of Our Native Daughters friendship began in 2006 at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival when I was there with my baby band Po’ Girl and Rhiannon was there with her baby band Carolina Chocolate Drops. We all stayed in the same student dorm and shared the same bathroom and got together and jammed late into the night. That started a wonderful friendship. Rhiannon and I have worked together over the years on different projects

but when she invited me to come and record Songs of Our Native Daughters none of us thought it would get much attention or turn into a band. It was actually quite a shock – a wonderful shock. There is a fallacy that in main stream entertainment, and certainly in the music world, that few people want to hear women and even fewer still want to hear black women. So here were four black women – playing banjos no less – and everybody wanted to hear it! Who could have guessed?

Songs of Our Native Daughters is such a beautiful album on so many levels. What does that record mean to you now?

It was such a beautiful experience to commune so closely with my sisters. We have done projects with each other but have never spent ten days together talking and writing and staying up til all hours trading stories about being working moms on the road, or the hilarious times we’ve been mistaken for each other at festivals, or saying things we couldn’t say because we were the tokens in the room. That was a real joy, and aside from our friendship, they are also three artists I admire greatly. I had been experiencing writer’s block since my daughter was born.

We made that record in 2018 when she was four and it was my first time being away from her. We were writing the songs the night before and recording them the next day and that really helped the floodgates open for me. There were all these things I was feeling but between touring and nursing and doing interviews didn’t have time to process. I lost my songwriting voice for a few years, but Our Native Daughters opened the floodgates.

And they haven’t shut since.

SOUL SURVIVOR

>>> Brandi said to me they would get it and they did. I got a call from them the next day.

And JT is a huge part of this record too. The grant came through just as we were back in Nashville and some of our dear musical family were in town – Ruth Moody, Yola, Erin Rae, Jamie Dick, and the McCrary Sisters.

And Dan Knobler is such a beautiful soulful human as well as being a producer and musician. We had reached out to him about producing a Birds record and then this body of work came together and he fell in love with the material. Dan brought in some folks as well like Joe Pisapia who ended up being such an integral part of this record. It’s a solo record but in name only because it was such a community effort to bring these songs to life.

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THE DYNAMIC

Music legends John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas have combined talents for the first time on the new album, Leftover Feelings.

DUO! I

t’s a collaboration that seems so natural and logical it is surprising it has not happened previously. One legendary songwriter and one legendary musician, both residents of Nashville and living within walking distance of each other. Though they first met more than 20 years ago it took a manager’s suggestion for John Hiatt and Jerry Douglas to come together for an album.

The resultant 11-song set, Leftover Feelings, produced by Douglas and recorded at Historic RCA Studio B in Nashville, is a roots music feast with Hiatt’s entrancing writing and Douglas’s equally brilliant Dobro playing in front of his own band.

With more than 20 albums under his belt John Hiatt has every right to be considered an American song writing treasure. His songs have been recorded by an incredible array of other legends including Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris, Aaron Neville, Linda Rondstadt, Buddy Guy and many more. Of course, not only did Eric Clapton and BB King record Hiatt’s ‘Riding With The King’ they named an album after it! Hiatt’s own recordings have been acclaimed and had occasional brushes with success. It took him until his eighth album, the classic Bring The Family in 1987 (with Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner and Nick Lowe) to reach the Billboard Top 200 album chart and, while its follow-up Slow Turning in 1988 cracked the top 100 in Australia, Hiatt achieved much more chart success with other people recording songs from the album! While most of his albums have nudged the upper reaches of the charts that is hardly the measure of a musician who has produced consistently good albums populated by often great songs. His 2018 studio album The Eclipse Sessions, the occasion for our last interview and this latest album proves that, as a songwriter, Hiatt remains a master craftsman.

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Brian Wise caught up with both music icons to talk about their collaboration.

Jerry Douglas, as a 14-time Grammy winner, has established his legend in another area: his playing, especially on the Dobro, for which he has his own signature model created by Beard Guitars. Not only has Douglas played on more than 1600 album sessions he has spent years recording and touring with Allison Krauss and Union Station. He has also fronted his own band and the Earls of Leicester, with whom I saw him give an absolutely stunning display of his prowess at the Country Music Hall of Fame during Nashville’s Americana Festival in 2019.

“We met during the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band sessions for Will the Circle Be Unbroken Part Two, and I’m guessing it was about ‘88 or ‘89, somewhere in there,” recalls Hiatt of his first encounter with Jerry Douglas. “I was singing a song I wrote. It was a duet with the Roseanne Cash and Jerry was in the house band that was playing on all the recordings.”

“The next time was, I saw him at the Newport Folk Festival right after he’d finished the Little Village tour,” recalls Douglas, “and, we sat down and just sat down on a picnic table backstage and talked for about an hour. That was the longest we’d ever spoken until this project was mentioned. It turned out that he had just moved into my neighbourhood. So, that made it easier. We talked about doing the records and using my band, which was really surprising to me that they gave me that latitude but he’s loving it and we’re loving it. It should have happened a long time ago, but I’m glad it’s happening now.”

“He’s pretty scary,” says Hiatt about Douglas’ playing, “he’s really, really, really, really a great musician. Wonderful sound. And he’s a pretty decent human being to boot.”

“In the last year and a half, unbeknownst to myself, I moved into Jerry’s neighbourhood,” he adds. “We can walk to each other’s house.

But, you know, we’d cross paths over the years, but he’s become a really good friend over this process, over this last year and some change. So, that’s kind of nice, actually. Whereas I don’t know if we’d have been tight friends for all these years. We might’ve worn it out by now.”

It was Hiatt’s manager who suggested that he and Douglas team up while they were sitting around kicking around ideas for a new album. “I got all excited about the prospect,” says Hiatt, “and I think the second thing I said was: no drums. Absolutely nothing against drummers. I love them.”

James Taylor once said that Jerry is the Muhammad Ali of the Dobro.

“He did indeed,” agrees Hiatt. “I call him Cassius.”

Originally, they intended to go into the studio in April 2020 but that got delayed due to the pandemic. Then Douglas suggested that they use his group as the studio ensemble: Christian Sedelmyer (fiddle), Daniel Kimbro (bass) and Mike Seal (guitar).

They decided to use the historic RCA Studio B in Nashville, where Elvis, the Everly Brothers and Dolly Parton – amongst many others – recorded numerous hits. In fact, there is a story that while running late for a session one day Parton ran her car into the side of the building leaving a scar that is still visible. Hiatt confesses that he hasn’t heard that story but he certainly recognised the historic nature of the studio.

“You can’t help but feel the ghosts of all the wonderful music that’s been made there over the years,” he says, “and it isn’t a large room,

it’s a good size. The large room is Studio A , of course, where Dave Cobb [currently Nashville’s hottest producer] is currently ensconced.

But Studio B…..it’s a peculiar old American recording studio. The way they used to build them, they weren’t acoustically perfect necessarily, but they offered some sort of character that perhaps you couldn’t get if you were in another room somewhere. That used to kind of be the idea back in the day. So, you’re capturing not only the sounds of the musicians with your microphones, but you’re capturing the character of the room as well.”

Surprisingly, for someone who has recorded on hundreds of albums, Douglas had only ever worked in Studio B before, when he recorded a jam session with Chet Atkins for TV. “I had never really recorded there other than just what I recorded there with Chet,” he says, “which is fitting if you’re going to record in that room. But the room is amazing to play in. It’s got a sound all the time and it’s on so many records. You’re listening to The Everly Brothers with that reverb in it, that’s on their voice. That’s partly the room, just itself, doing that. It’s just, it’s magic. The place is magic and, the ghosts come in and watch over you at night while you’re recording there.”

“It’s like, you can almost smell the cigarette smoke because I imagine every one of those guys is smoking in there, and that room would fill up with smoke,” continues Douglas. “But the floor is a tile floor, and it’s so hard that it’s so reflective and it plays a part in the recording. No matter how far you get the microphone from that floor you’re going to hear it. So, it’s part of it. I loved that sound. So, it was designed to record in, and it was the only studio in Nashville that was designed to just to make records in. >>> 39

“He was a huge, huge influence on me and then I got to know him too and actually record with him a few times,” says Douglas. He was a sweetheart of a fellow and a wonderful musician and a great artist. He was an inspirational guy.”

“The main thing you have to be really careful about is your pitch,” explains Douglas about playing the Dobro which is held flat in front of the standing player. “You have to be in tune, yet you can’t draw attention away from the singer or just be the sour sounding thing in the mix. That’s the main thing with the Dobro guitars is being in tune and your tone and everything. There’s so many things: it’s more like playing the violin. If you have to compare instruments, it’s hard like trying to play a violin. That’s what I would say. There is a definite difficulty factor, and you can really alienate a lot of people if you don’t play well.”

>>> Then Owen Bradley had a place called Bradley’s Barn, and it was just a Quonset hut, a sort of half round building. But that’s where he cut all the Patsy Cline and all of those kinds of things. But Chet’s playroom was RCAB. That’s where we did this record in, and the ghosts do come out at night.”

Hiatt and Douglas had four days in Studio B to record the album, which is a relatively short time, but although it was the first time they had worked together it sounds like they have been collaborating for years.

Leftover Feelings is a great sounding album, thanks to Douglas, his band and his production. It brings John Hiatt back to the classic sound of some of his most revered albums.

“Well, in essence, Jerry and his band, of course, had been playing together for about the last five years,” says Hiatt. “So, they knew each other very well and they’re very song oriented which was great.

The arrangements came together pretty quick once we got the chord structure. I don’t think we ever did more than two, maybe three, takes on the song before we had one that we thought we liked.”

“He gave me the songs that he wanted to record, and we started talking about the instrumentation,” says Douglas of the recording process, “and, he wanted to keep it grounded in that he didn’t want it to be a rock and roll record. He wanted to keep it grounded and keep it kind of acoustic. I’m naturally going to bring this bluegrass element to it. When you start using Dobro then it’s going to take on a different flavour. So, we worked with the songs. But it was much easier than it should have been.”

“He loved my band, and we decided not to use the drums,” continues Douglas, “and it left the band to work. It was the perfect combination for these songs. So, they gave me a lot of latitude with it, and I threw a lot of curve balls to John, but he, for the most part, he loved them.”

Does the absence of a drummer present a different dynamic for Hiatt?

groove and it stayed there. A lot of people that play solo for a while, it’s hard for them to get to play with a band or to fit into a band, but we just surrounded him, and his timing is excellent. So, there was no problem at all of that. The groove happened easily.”

That groove was propelled by Douglas’s dobro which stands out like a beacon on every song. “I had two of them there,” he says when I ask him about the instruments. “My road dog guitar, the war horse, was on most of the tracks but I was switching between two of the exact same guitar. I’m a lover of old Dobros, the ones that were built in the twenties and thirties, but there’s just a sound when you’re playing, especially with a rhythm section, even though we weren’t this time, it just has more, it creates more voices, different voices you can get.”

“I did a record called Crossing Muddy Waters, that had no drummer,” replies Hiatt, “although Davey Faragher, the bass player, put a mic on his foot, which was very effective. But we were joking that most stringed instrument players were all frustrated drummers anyway.

Anyway, there was a tremendous groove.”

Douglas is happy to talk about the history of the Dobro, invented in America by Slovakian immigrants, the Dopyera brothers, and featuring an outward facing resonator cone which creates more volume from the guitar body. (National developed a Tricone version and a metal body which became famous through the blues players who used it).

“John’s got great timing,” says Douglas, “maybe from playing with all those great drummers in the past - Jim Keltner and the like. There was no flailing about or anybody flying out of the groove: we set up a

One of Douglas’s major influences was Mike Auldridge who released the album Dobro back in 1972 on John Fahey’s Takoma label and also recorded the album Three Bells with Douglas and Rob Ickes.

“I liked the swashbuckling John Hiatt,” says Douglas, “where he’s kind of like just really beating his guitar, but he’s got great guitars and he’s a great guitar player, even though he says he’s not a good guitar player. I really disagree. He’s a wonderful guitar player.”

“I’m on acoustic guitar,” says Hiatt when I ask him about his instruments. “I played the same guitar throughout the proceedings one of two little Gibson LG-3s. I’ve got one from 1940s and one from 1954. I played the one from 1947.”

When I ask Douglas about Hiatt’s song writing he is even more complimentary, mentioning the inspiration for the song, ‘All The Lilacs in Ohio,’ as being the 1945 Ray Milland film, The Lost Weekend.

“He just files things away,” says Douglas. “I said, ‘What’s that about?

I’m from Ohio. I don’t remember any lilacs. I don’t remember any of that stuff. He filed that away and he puts that in the song. I went, ‘Man, how do you do that. I don’t even see the file cabinet. I don’t think you have a file cabinet anywhere to keep stuff like that.’ But he just remembers everything much like John Prine. I think the two of them are a lot alike. John wrote about things that happened to him about things that happened to him in a very goofy way. So does John Hiatt. John Prine was a great friend of mine, and God, we miss him, but they remind me of each other. I’m just so glad that we have John Hiatt. We have still have one of these great American guitar playing songwriters around. He just contributes so much to the American psyche with his music.”

“If you’ll remember he’s there in New York city,” says Hiatt in talking about Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend when I ask him about some of the songs on the album. “He’s a drunk who wants to be a writer - not a new story - or a writer who wants to be a drunk. I’m not sure which but he goes to meet her and she, she can’t make a date, the pre-assigned date, but she sends a letter down (on hotel stationery) and he says as he opens it that it smells like all the lilacs in Ohio. And I just started, it’s just beautiful. So, I had to write something with that.”

“Absolutely,” he agrees. “It’s why we keep going, we keep doing what we do. He’s way out of my league - that guy’s untouchable. I can hear ‘Murder Most Foul’ and just go, ‘Oh my! We’ll never catch up and never catch up - he’s that kind of writer. God bless him. I’ll miss him. But I’ve done it since I was 11 and I don’t know what else to do and it’s not really even a job. It’s just what I do. So, I’m hoping I’ll keep doing it.”

So, after all these decades of writing what are the leftover feelings that give the new album its title?

“Well, a life well lived, maybe, I don’t know, just are adventures over the years” replies Hiatt when I ask him about the album’s title and whether they are his leftover feelings. “Who hasn’t had leftover feelings? They do kind of look like a plate full of scraps.”

One of those feelings from years ago must have been about Hiatt’s late brother, the subject of ‘Light Of The Burning Sun.’ “It was just time to write it,” explains Hiatt, who says he wrote in 2019.

“Of course, anyone who’s dealt with a death by suicide of family, close friends, it’s a particular kind of lingering grief and mystery about it and difficult to get over, difficult to know what to do with really, some of the emotions that come up. So, it’s been years and years for me. I was 11 and my oldest brother took his own life. He was 21 and so I’ll be 69 in a couple months. So, it was just time, through all the stuff of talking to people and therapy groups so many years. It just came out and I was relieved and it was kind of cathartic in a way.”

One song that brings Hiatt into the 21st century in terms of hIs imagery is “Long Black Electric Cadilac.’ It arrived just after I was remarking to someone that no-one will ever write a song about an electric car.

“Well, there you go,” laughs Hiatt when I mention my observation.

“It’s wishful thinking. I’m hopeful that GM could make me such a beast in the not-too-distant future. There’s something about that seamless acceleration I could get. I could get very soulful about it. You know, there’s no lag. There’s no gear changing. It’s just pure trust - and if that isn’t what every car manufacturer in the world, wasn’t after at least here in America, I don’t know what it is. So, I’d say it’s pretty, pretty romantic stuff. I’m thinking of ‘Maybelline’, Maybelline, when that Cadillac came over the hill and not the far behind, like it was made out of lead.”

Finally, I mention the many music memoirs I have read over the past year and wonder if Hiatt has been tempted to write one, given his rich history.

“The short answer is no,” he replies, “but someone’s written a book about me that’s coming out. I haven’t read it but people I know have read it and they think it’s okay. So, I don’t know. I get nervous about all that kind of stuff. I don’t mind telling my story. As far as starting a book, I don’t know. I’m a songwriter, not a book writer.”

Leftover Feelings is out now through New West Records.

“You’d be amazed how many places you can look for inspiration,” says Hiatt when I ask where he gets the inspiration from his songs, “the start of the day, a beautiful good looking human or a not so goodlooking human with a broken heart or something you read. It comes from anywhere.”

“I never feel that way,” he replies when I ask if he feels that he is always improving as a writer. “You always have the same sensation when it’s got a hold of you. But I always am overwhelmed by the same feeling when it comes time to write a lyric and the feeling is, ‘You’ve never written a song in your life. How in the hell would you know how to do it?’ It never ceases to amaze me and I’m always so grateful when I get one, get one in the boat, so to speak.”

We are speaking a week after Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday and I wonder if he is an inspiration as Hiatt approaches his 70th year.

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Lives in the balance

Photo by Kaza Black

One of Australia’s longest running bands, ’90s Alternative heroes YOU AM I, have stamped their mark with a contender for Album of The Year, The Lives of Others.

SOUNDS OF THE CITY

By Ian McFarlane

I

s there space in the pages of this here roots music magazine, Rhythms, for one time ’90s Alternative heroes You Am I? Why, of course!

The band’s current album, The Lives of Others, made its debut on the national ARIA Chart at #2, kept off the top spot by Delta Goodrem. This is the band’s highest album chart placement since the glory days when they made Australian music history by scoring three consecutive albums debuting at #1 on the national chart. – Hi Fi Way (1995), Hourly, Daily (1996) and You Am I’s #4 Record (1998).

That bastion of commercial radio programming Triple M has been playing the single ‘The Waterboy’, which is actually a first. I was thinking, surely they had been played on Triple M back in the day. Certainly, on Triple J, 3RRR and 3PBS, but I could have sworn You Am I had some commercial airplay in the past?

Singer-songwriter-guitarist-vocalist Tim Rogers sets me straight, “No, we just got told the other day that Triple M have been playing the band for the first time ever. I love the irony of that. Maybe they might have played ‘Heavy Heart’ once late at night. I say that with no malice at all, it’s absolutely fine. We’re not particularly well known in the way that some of our contemporaries are, or other bands before us who did get a lot of commercial airplay. The little bit has definitely helped and we’re grateful for it but we’re not at a level... we really have to work hard to get heads through the door you know, or to sell records. It’s just a little stroke of luck that it’s worked this time, for no other reason than everyone’s looking for a reason to be happy these days.”

I remember an interview Rogers did with Andrew Denton (Enough Rope) where he was asked “how come you’ve never had a hit single?”, to which he replied, “have you heard my voice?”.

“Yeah well, it’s true. I don’t have a great voice after all. I get bagged all the time; every single show we do someone will barge backstage and say ‘you’re an alcoholic, you’re a drunk, you can’t sing’. It hurts because I try. You Am I are a very powerful band and

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they’re very difficult to sing with and I haven’t got a strong voice but I’m 25% of the band. I do what I can. If that means we don’t get a big stinking hit then it also means that we don’t have to play the same set every night.”

We’ll get to the live component of the band experience below, but for now let’s examine the new album. As much as I enjoyed those early albums – with the guys in all their alternative rock / mod rock glory – for me The Lives of Others as well as 2015’s Porridge & Hot Sauce rate as the band’s most consistent and best releases. On The Lives Of Others, tracks such as ‘The Waterboy’, ‘The Third Level’ and the title cut are archetypal You Am I rockers: bold, tough, tuneful and accessible.

The acoustic ‘Manliness’ examines the age-old conundrum of macho cool. On ‘Rosedale Redux’, ‘DRB Hudson’ and, in particular, ‘Rubbish Day’ they’ve gone all psychedelic. ‘Lookalikes’, as drummer Russell ‘Rusty’ Hopkinson puts it, is “the quiet hero of the record”. (“He’s a very smart man,” Rogers chuckles.)

Those are all Tim Rogers penned tunes. Guitarist/ vocalist Davey Lane – no slouch in the song writing stakes – contributes two sterling numbers in ‘We All Went Deaf Overnight’ and ‘I’m My Whole World Tonight’ which he delivers in his Todd Rundgren / Roy Wood / Raspberries / Cheap Trick mode to perfection. His guitar playing is also pivotal to the overall sound. One only has to listen to his astonishing lead break in ‘Rubbish Day’ – like he’s channelling Jeff Beck circa 1969 – to confirm that he is one of the country’s foremost players.

GETTING THE ALBUM COMPLETED Because the year 2020 was predominantly taken up with Covid-19 lockdowns, it’s commendable that they got to complete the record. How did they get the album done?

“What a trip it’s been,” says Rogers. “Davey and I managed to get together in Melbourne for a couple of afternoons and Rusty and Andy (Kent, bassist) got together in a room for about two days >>> 43

>>> in Sydney. It seems we talked a lot more than actual performance time. Davey reminded me that all my vocal takes and guitar takes were first or second takes. I was in and out of there pretty quick. Rusty and I like to work fast but Davey and Andy like to take a bit of time.

“Andy’s playing incredibly well. His countenance is very assured, he’s methodical in the way that I’m impulsive. I never tell that guy what to play, haven’t since 1996. Russ creatively is a massive part of what we do and his record collection is our education and his intelligence is our education and his drumming, there’s no one who plays like Russ. And, well, everyone’s in love with Davey, as they should be.”

The first thing you notice is the sonic qualities, as if the musicians have unleashed their inner arena rock predilections. There have been hints of it in the past but this one in particular has a huge drum sound.

“I think a large part of that was Russ being in command of his own domain really. When we were making records in the States we were instructed by record companies to straighten up. I think Russ felt he was being brow-beaten because he can be a marvellously contained, straight drummer who is right on top of everything but when we’re in a band we get excited and egg each other on. Russ had his own time and own agenda and could play the uber-Hopkinson. Then when we gave the tapes to Paul McKercher, he’s such an old friend of ours, he just knows us inside and out, he worked his magic. I don’t think it’s an accident that it sounds so great and alive, because that spirit is inside us.

“For ‘Rubbish Day’ I had an idea of how I wanted it to be and I told Russ the way I thought the beat should be. He didn’t tell me but he disagreed and did the inverse of what I suggested. So, him doing that it’s a far better idea by a million percent. And that inspired

“I scored a goal but I missed the point.”

Davey to play the way he did. Davey’s and my original demo for that was nothing like the song came out; maybe there was a hint of it. So, Russ’ musical knowledge is so far beyond mine. We do have an intuition with each other; I guess that’s 3000 shows playing together. After 30 years we’ve worked out what our relationship is in a lot of ways. When we’re playing in the same room, we have conversations but ironically we figured each other out by not seeing each other.”

Hopkinson’s presence is a major force behind the album. When I spoke to him in Sydney, he explained: “Tim and Davey had sent us a bunch of guitar and vocal things, the bare bones of songs. Andy and I went into Forbes Street studios and we played through those for a couple of days. We ended up doing nine rhythms tracks there. I took the drum tracks home and did some editing or whatever, chose the best takes, all that pre-production stuff. Knocked them into shape, sent them down to Davey. Andy did the same with his bass parts. Davey and Tim just jumped on top of them and fleshed them out. Quite a few songs weren’t at all what Tim was expecting, so it ended up being quite a lot of fun.

“Then I had to move to Perth for the summer, for family reasons, so I found Tone City Studios there with Sam Ford, a good engineer. We just sat there for a few days and I did some drums and percussion and finished everything off and Paul McKercher mixed it in Sydney. He had this system set up where he could stream what he was mixing in real time. I was in Perth walking around the streets with headphones on, listening to tracks. I’d pull out my phone and text Paul, ‘can you EQ the kick drum like this’. It was a weird collaborative but not collaborative approach. Not by our design, there was no way to get together. In

the middle of the year we realised that couldn’t happen, so it came together by just passing it around. It’s been really good, a testament to the understanding of how we play that we could do that. I think it does sound like a band.

“When we recorded Porridge & Hot Sauce it was at a place called the House of Soul in New York, owned by Daptone Records, with this little 8-track machine set up in a house. Just like, I imagine, how people would have recorded at Chess in 1957 and we were all elbow to elbow in a room playing. That was a different way of recording. In some ways that was more difficult because you can’t be loud, you have to respect the process and the playing. There were other times where we’ve recorded in a piecemeal fashion.”

Another part of the process that informed the album’s sound was Hopkinson’s listening habits. “Yeah, I don’t listen to much music that was recorded after about 1972,” he reveals. “I said to Paul I want it to sound like ‘Send Me A Postcard’ by Shocking Blue which is arena rock before there was such a thing, 1969. I just wanted to make it like a big rock thing, it’s what some of the songs deserved. I collect a lot of psychedelic records, and when I heard ‘DRB Hudson’ I’d been listening to things like The Moving Sidewalks’ version of The Beatles’ ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ a heavy rock version, so that inspired me.

“I was also inspired by a lot of different drum fills. John’s Children’s ‘Remember Thomas A Beckett’ has those big rolling drum fills, so I wanted to keep things lively and exciting. Other tracks then had a different feel to them, taking on other influences. With ‘Rubbish Day’, I’d been listening to a Mexican band called La Revolución de Emiliano Zapata. They’re like Santana on bad drugs. They have one song called ‘Shit City’ and another called ‘Nasty Sex’ and they’re super wild. I just wanted that wigged-out sense, like why is it all of a sudden going

Latin. I was saying we’ll do that and everyone’s hitting stuff, it was fun. There’s that searing guitar line that Davey does in the percussion breakdown part. He was saying that’s the closest we’re ever gonna come to sounding like Parachute era Pretty Things.”

GOOD ADVICE Obviously, Rogers’ song writing is a big part of the band’s makeup. You just have to think back on the likes of ‘Berlin Chair’, ‘Purple Sneakers’, ‘Mr. Milk’, ‘Good Mornin’’, ‘What I Don’t Know ’Bout You’, ‘Heavy Heart’, ‘Kick A Hole In The Sky’, ‘Good Advice’ etc, to know that his songs are instantly catchy and indelible. Rogers learned his craft via his love of the likes of The Kinks, The Who, The Move, The Pretty Things, Rush, The Replacements etc., and he’s never shied away from acknowledging that. The irony is that on this album you get all that but there’s little in the way of traditional song structures. He keeps the listener guessing.

“I think it’s because my songs all started out as folk songs,” he explains.

“I had the lyrics done and they dictated a lot of the way the structure of the songs came out. I had to do a little bit of shoe-horning but for once I wanted the lyrics to dictate where the songs went. No one’s asked me about that before; we talked about it with the band obviously, but I guess a lot of people don’t notice those things like you have. I kind of enjoy that, it can be a little irritating for the listener. I think again after those years when we were with the American companies, they hammered home the structure to me so much. If it was a dozen times it was 12 hundred times.

“It was just maddening because we’d record songs how we heard them and then we’d go back in next day to the studio and it had been chopped up and rearranged by an engineer because whatever record company of the 600 we’ve been on said, ‘no, this is the way a song should be structured’. That destroyed my confidence for about a decade but now it makes me not want to let traditional song structures be the predictor. If you just feel that this is where the bridge should come in, just do it because no one’s gonna tell us otherwise. There’s no reason to change arrangements just to make it a radio song.”

The Tim Rogers wordplay is alive and well too. He gets to throw out such intriguing lines as: “I scored a goal but I missed the point / Statement made I left the joint” (‘Manliness’); “Geddy Lee on a crutch in a hell of a Rush / I’m goin’ nowhere and he’s got somewhere to be” (‘Lookalikes’); and “Edinburgh, Galway, Nashville, Ulladulla breakin’ my heart in four places” (‘The Waterboy’). >>>

– Tim Rogers

“It’d been the longest I’ve gone without playing gigs since I was about 16, and that was 40 years ago.”

“Someone like Paul or Don and Mickey Thomas would use Australian geography and I thought I want to own this.”

– Tim Rogers

– Rusty Hopkinson

Photo by Kaza Black 44

45

S

I’m anyone other than who I am but being on stage, people looking at you, all that noise, it’s actually an uncomfortable experience. Oddly it’s also the only time in the day when I am comfortable, so I make it my mission to do the best I can. If no one was there it would almost make it easier; I’ve done plenty of those shows believe me.”

For Hopkinson, it was an almost cathartic experience to be on the road again. As Willie Nelson sang, “On the road again / Just can’t wait to get on the road again... with my friends”.

“It’s great! It’d been the longest I’ve gone without playing gigs since I was about 16, and that was 40 years ago. Literally over a year without being in a venue and stepping on a stage. It’s work, it’s a fair bit of effort, especially when you’re getting older. We’re loving it though, finishing the night feeling satisfied that we made a bunch of people happy. The feeling from the crowds has been overwhelming in a way.

I’m going ‘holy shit, this is fun!’.

“You can rehearse as much as you like, but playing a gig is a different beast. It’s driven by a lot of emotion, a lot less calculated thinking. It’s not off the cuff necessarily but we don’t really rehearse. We don’t stick to a template with every song. We’re just building up to that thing where we’re comfortable again and feel like we’re on top of it all. It takes a while, I think I’m playing pretty well but there’s always room to improve. People seem to be digging it.

Because the stage was in the round, the guys had to walk out and back again to the band room through the audience. In their excitement, punters were trying to hi-five the guys and engage them in conversation. Was that confronting because they were intent on just getting to the stage and then backstage again?

“Well, I don’t know what people want. Do they want to be my best friend? No, we’re a fucken rock band and we cling to each other, we’re best friends, we just want to get backstage and have a drink together.

We don’t necessarily play nice on stage, we don’t feel nice on stage, and when we finish we do get a lot of gyp for being impolite and not going out and signing records. I’m so grateful that people are there and I appreciate that they’ve chosen to see us, and three hours after at a pub I’d buy anyone a round of drinks. I’d buy you dinner, talk to you till the sun comes up. We’re there to do a job and despite all appearances we’re actually pretty serious about doing the best show we can.”

They finished the set with a rousing version of ‘Berlin Chair’.

Then to a wail of feedback, they did the arena styled salutation to the audience, a series of four-man bows with Rogers kicking out his right leg, just as Lemmy would do at the end of a Motörhead concert. It was a final way of saying, “We are You Am I. We play rock ’n’ roll!”.

The Lives of Others is available now via Caroline Australia.

AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC® JAZZMASTER® An otherworldly guitar that combines iconic acoustic voicings and big electric tones with one powerful Blend Knob. Unlock an impossible range of sounds – no matter how you spin it.

CRAFTED IN CORONA, CALIFORNIA

46 The AMERICAN ACOUSTASONIC JAZZMASTER shown in Ocean Turquoise. Iconic acoustic voicings. Big electric tones. One powerful Blend Knob.

© 2021 Fender Musical Instruments Corporation. FENDER, FENDER in fanciful script, JAZZMASTER and the distinctive headstock commonly found on Fender guitars and basses are trademarks of FMIC. All rights reserved.

Photo by Kaza Black

ERY TURN. EV

THE SONIC SHAPESHIFTER

T

>>> “Yeah, word play amuses me. It keeps me happy and the black dog away and if I can just scribble down some ideas I’m really happy and ready for a drink. So, again that’s my thing and it just gives an extra edge to the songs. Davey brought a lot of other songs. I brought 10 and Davey brought five. He, as much of a musical wunderkind / maestro he is, knows what’s good for the band and he listens as well, he excoriates.”

So, then who is the “... Scottish man fronting an American band / Now he lives in Dublin tho’ and I’m in Rosedale lookin’ for ghosts” (‘The Waterboy’)?

“It’s Mike Scott from The Waterboys. Yeah, I’d been listening to a record of theirs called Modern Blues. I was down fishing and drinking beer with my mate Nick (Tischler) who my brother and I started the band with. There were a lot of metaphors clashing. I was in a tinny, out in the ocean fishing with my mate and then we’d get back on land and in my hotel room I’d be sitting and listening to this record over and over again. I’m a big fan of Mike Scott’s. From very early on it seemed he was just someone who’s heart’s so big and he just tried big ideas.

Sometimes they don’t work but when they do they’re just beautiful.

That song’s about, not seeking inspiration but getting it at exactly the right time.

“And using Australian place names, I think often Australians got told early on, or warned off in rock and roll anyway, to stay away from place names. The likes of Mississippi, Tennessee and Kansas City, they’re all over the American song book. There are examples, someone like Paul or Don and Mickey Thomas would use Australian geography and I thought I want to own this. It’s taken a long while to get it.

Coincidently, something like Ulladulla is onomatopoeically so beautiful, it’s brilliant. Those kinds of indigenous names have such a swing to them, they’re just gorgeous, using their vernacular and trying to use it in a respectful way. I was just luxuriating in those beautiful words.”

TAKIN’ IT TO THE STAGE As I queued up outside The Nightcat, in the Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy, for the band’s first of two sets that night, the air was palpable with excitement. Not only was it the chance to get out and see a band – before the May lockdown hit – but also it was the mighty You Am I. They’d been interstate, playing two shows in Brisbane, then a sold out, 1,500 capacity show at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre.

The Nightcat is a club about a fifth the size of the Enmore but the band played like they were fronting a whole arena. The stage is in the round, so the audience surrounded the band on all sides. They put in a remarkably assured and commanding performance, one great song after another. For all their wild ’n’ woolly urban bluster, they’re a top notch rock ’n’ roll band with the interaction between band members a joy to behold. Russell Hopkinson, in particular, was an unstoppable force on drums. The audience loved them, spontaneously singing along to the likes of ‘The Waterboy’, ‘Good Mornin’’ and ‘Berlin Chair’. For one band member touring again has been a bittersweet experience.

“Um, it’s been quite confronting actually, yeah,” Rogers reveals. “The plague last year affected my family quite disastrously, overseas and here. My sister’s husband dying from it, my daughter in New York right in the middle of it and my family in Spain being decimated by it. So touring, ah, I’m a little flipped out about being around humans, again.

When we toured last time before the plague I was ready to go, I didn’t want to tour anymore, I didn’t want to get on a plane anymore. I just wasn’t interested in being a musician really. I thought it was time to get a job and drink beer, get a bit of sleep every now and then.

“But I love playing with my friends and I love going through this experience with them. So going out and touring, I love not sleeping and not eating, I love all that shit. It does take a bit of a toll but then about the third day in I start getting very jittery again. I want the whole thing, I want the crap food and the mucking around and the no sleep. I love all that but maybe I’m just not match fit. Yeah, I can’t pretend that

THING NEW A ME O

THE KING OF

AMERICANA

J

ason Isbell is the King of Americana. At least, that is the title I have given him; and I think it is justified. The 42-year-old guitarist began his career in the Drive By Truckers before releasing his first solo album in 2007 and since then has released six more albums with his band the 400 Unit, the latest of which was Reunions which we spoke to him about last year. Since 2009 and his second album, simply titled Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit, he has won nine Americana Awards and four Grammys. This year he has also been nominated as Artist of the Year and for Song of The Year Categories: that’s impressive.

Now, as a tribute to Isbell’s guitar playing, Fender have released the Jason Isbell Custom Telecaster®, marking his first collaboration with the iconic guitar brand as part of its Artist Signature Series. Other names in this year’s series include Chryssie Hynde in the Telecaster range, Joe Strummer’s Campfire acoustic guitar and Dhani Harrison’s ukulele. They join legends such as Jimmy Page and James Burton in the Telecaster range and Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix in the Stratocaster series.

So, the launch of the guitar luckily offered the opportunity to chat to Isbell who, when I caught up with him was in Oklahoma where he is making his movie acting debut in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of The Flower Moon, starring Robert DeNiro, Leonardo DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone as well as Isbell and Sturgill Simpson.

“It is really exciting. I got out here a couple of weeks ago and I’m out here until July. It’s a pretty big project. But I’m enjoying myself a lot so far,” replies Isbell when I ask him how he is going on the movie set. Our conversation picks up from there.

Isbell had a voiceover part in a TV series and was in the HBO movie, Deadwood but technically this is his movie debut.

“It’s a big deal,” he says. “I don’t know how I wound up getting a part, but I’m certainly happy. I just tell everybody, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, so just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.’ And so far, that’s worked out.”

Is sitting around on a movie set more frustrating than being in a recording studio making an album?

“I mean, if I was frustrated to sit around and wait on Martin Scorsese, I would be an asshole,” laughs Isbell. “To tell you the truth, I’m fine, man. If I’m just going to be sitting somewhere, I might as well be sitting around waiting on Martin Scorsese to give me something to do. It’s a long day and it is real work and it’s not easy, but I’ve got no complaints about it at all. I’m really enjoying myself.”

And if you’re going to start your acting career, why not start at the top with Martin Scorsese?

“I know,” replies Isbell. “That’s what I told my agent. I was like, ‘I would like to do the greatest movie of all time please. Call me when they say yes.’ No. I’m very lucky that this is my first role. It’s a short resume, but so far, it’s a pretty good one.”

Isbell’s other recent projects include work on a new album for his partner Amanda Shires, who has also received an Americana nomination as a member of The Highwomen, whose outstanding self-titled album won Album of The Year last year and picked up a Grammy to boot. Isbell has also been finishing work on an album of songs from Georgia.

“What I did was when we were having the election here I said if Biden won the state of Georgia – because it looked like he had a chance - thanks to Stacey Abrams and a lot of other people who organized – then I would make an album of my favourite Georgia songs,” he explains. “So, I’ve been working on that. That’s been a whole lot of fun.

Of course, Isbell has also been involved with Fender in the design and manufacture of his signature model Telecaster.

“I’ve been working with Fender for quite a while and playing a lot of their guitars,” he says. “They’ve treated me well for a long time now. But then when the idea came up to do a signature guitar, they approached me. I was all for it.

I’ve played those guitars since I was a kid. >>>

48

Americana’s favourite son, Jason Isbell, is honoured by a Fender guitar signature model as his star continues to rise.

By Brian Wise

“It’s rock and roll music, and it’s not hard rock and it’s not soft rock, it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s like the Goldilocks and the Three Bears story.”

49

50

“I think it’s pretty hard to become a slide guitar player worth your salt if you haven’t spent some time with Duane Allman’s playing.” music, and it’s not hard rock and it’s not soft rock, it’s somewhere in the middle. It’s like The Three Bears. It’s like the Goldilocks story and the Three Bears. It’s just rock.”

On the recent Bandcamp release Live From Macon Auditorium, 2016, Isbell got to play Duane Allman’s Gold Top Les Paul. What is the difference in the sound between that and something like the Telecaster?

“Oh, well, there’s a huge difference sonically,” he says. “They had that guitar at The Big House, which is the Allman Brothers Museum and Mecca for a long time now. They take really good care of it and bring it out to certain shows and certain musicians and ask if they’d like to play it on stage. It was an honour for me to get to do that because it is a beautiful instrument and obviously carries a lot of history that’s really important to me because a lot of my playing was influenced pretty directly by Duane Allman, especially in slide guitar stuff.

“I think it’s pretty hard to become a slide guitar player worth your salt if you haven’t spent some time with Duane Allman’s playing. So, yeah, it was huge. But a Les Paul sounds really thick and really heavy and it’s not a particularly clean sound but it sustains really well. It’s probably equally expressive to the Telecaster, but the Telecaster is more ringing and, I mean, people say twanging. Sometimes ‘twanging’ is the right word if you’re trying to play something that sounds like country music.”

On the six-track album Live from Welcome to 1979, released in 2017 for Record Store Day and available again on Bandcamp, Isbell does absolutely slashing versions of the Stones’ songs ‘Can’t You Hear Me Knocking’ and ‘Sway.’

“Keith Richards plays a Telecaster,” he says, “and if you go back and listen to the Rolling Stones when Mick Taylor was in the band – Keith playing the Telecaster and Mick Taylor’s playing a Les Paul – you can definitely tell the difference. It’s kind of like the difference between a whiskey and tequila. I mean they wind up with the same effect, but they go down a lot differently.”

Isbell says that he takes a dozen guitars with him on tour because he doesn’t like to tune up between songs.

For details on the Jason Isbell Fender Telecaster go to fender.com/AU

ASON ISBELL FENDER

>>> They were my first electric guitars. Well, I had one that my uncle gave me, a Les Paul copy, but really soon after that I got a Strat and then I got another one a few years later. And really my formative years as an electric guitar player were all spent on Fender guitars. So, it was a no brainer for me.

“I chose to go with the Telecaster just because I’ve had such a good experience with those instruments on the road. I think the design is probably the best electric guitar design of them all.

They’re very reliable and they’re not expensive guitars to make.

So, I wanted to do one that was accessible to a lot of people but also versatile enough to where you could cover most styles of music with. And I think we pulled that off.”

“I have a custom Sunburst Telecaster that is a little bit darker,” says Isbell when I ask him how he was involved in the design. “But we wanted to do something to sort of differentiate from that 1959, 1960 Tele custom Sunburst finish. So, they lightened up the inside of the finish a little bit. I think it looks great.”

For the uninitiated, what’s the difference in playing a Telecaster compared with a Stratocaster?

“Well, a Stratocaster usually, not always, but usually they have a bar, a tremolo bar,” explains Isbell. “It’s kind of a misnomer, it doesn’t really do tremolo, but it’s a pitch [bar]. It’s got springs inside it and then it’s a whammy bar. You can make the pitch of the guitar go up and down. A lot of people prefer a hardtail Stratocaster. But the pickups are really the main difference.

“The body style’s a little different, the Strat is made to be a little bit more comfortable when you’re sitting and playing it. But the real difference is in the pickups, because a Telecaster has this kind of twang that you hear in a lot of country music, a lot of roots-based rock and roll, like the Rolling Stones or Bruce Springsteen or something.

Whereas a Strat is probably traditionally more thought of as a lead instrument or a solo instrument.”

Isbell was an early member of the Drive By Truckers, a band with a heavy and distinctive guitar sound. How did he develop his own style after he left to form his own band?

“Well, I just stopped writing songs for that band and really it happened naturally,” he responds. “I think for me, developing my own style started out with imitating other songwriters and other musicians and then figuring out which of my mistakes I should leave in.

And I think that’s how it happens with a lot of people. I’ve heard that Nirvana was trying to sound like the Beatles, but they missed the mark in the best possible way. I think for me, that was it. I followed a lot of my songwriting influences, and then when I found something that didn’t sound to me like I had hit the mark, I would decide, well, is this better or worse than what I was aiming for? And if you can figure out which of your mistakes work out for the best and follow those, and eventually you’ll sound like yourself.”

Back in the ‘80s there was an expression for the kind of sound Isbell has now. They used to call it a high lonesome sound. How would he describe the sound he gets?

“That’s a good question. I mean, it’s rock and roll music really,” is the reply. “The good news is you don’t have to describe it as much anymore because you can just look it up on your phone pretty quickly and cheaply for better or worse. It’s rock and roll

“Also, I like to play a bunch of different guitars,” he adds. “It’s fun for me to play a bunch of different guitars through the course of the set.

Yeah, it’s tough. I mean, if you’re playing in clubs, you probably don’t have a whole bunch of guitars with you. You don’t have the space in your van for them, and you also probably don’t have stagehands and a guitar tech to take care of that.

“Back when I didn’t have a guitar tech and we were driving ourselves around in a van, I travelled with one guitar. It had to be one that would stay in tune – and very often that was a Telecaster. That’s one of my favourite things about a Telecaster, is that they stay in tune really, really well even in extreme weather conditions. I played a show in Austin, Texas, for Willie Nelson’s 4th of July picnic a few years ago, and my pedal board went out right when I started the set, so I had to play the whole set with just one guitar and I didn’t have to tune the thing. It was a Telecaster and it made it through the entire set and stayed in tune. So, I’ll always be impressed with that.”

While Isbell has been exceptionally productive in recent months, 2020 was a tough year for him given that he lost his good friends Justin Townes Earle and John Prine.

“He loved it over there. He had a lot of friends over there,” says Isbell of Earle. “It was sad. It was really sad. He and I hadn’t been close over the last few years mostly because of his addiction issues. I mean, it’s just tough. It’s tough when you have a friend who struggles with those things. I can’t say that I was surprised when he passed away, but I was very sad. It’s just some people have their demons and sometimes they can’t quite conquer those. I know what happened was not necessarily his fault. I know it was something that he hadn’t planned on, and it was an accidental thing obviously, but he struggled for a long time. And all the years that I knew him, he never got to stay happy for too very long, so at least he’s not having to suffer at this point.”

“I think it would have been harder for me if I was doing a job that I didn’t love,” replies Isbell when I mention that he was able to overcome his own demons and turn his life around. “I think if I’d been roofing or painting houses or teaching school or something, then it would have been harder for me because part of what helped me get sober and stay that way was the fact that I wanted to keep making music and being creative.

“I was in a worse spot than Justin was when we first came over there together. He was doing a good job keeping himself together at that point in time and I was a mess. A lot of it is due to just good luck on my part. I had people around me who cared enough to call me out on my bullshit and also helped me when I needed help. And when I needed to get sober and were supportive of me when I was trying to stay that way. I got lucky in a whole lot of situations there that Justin might not have been afforded. But, at that point in time, we were really close and we had a lot of fun and I have a lot of good memories from that trip.”

“John was a big deal to me and to Amanda, my wife, and our daughter,” says Isbell of John Prine. “We loved John and learned a lot from his music before we ever knew him and then learned even more from him as a person. He was the same onstage as off, and he loved making music. He never looked at it as a chore and he never did it for the money. He was always out there to communicate with people.

And I really think that he made the world around him a lot better just through his art and through the way he treated people. He treated everybody with respect and we loved John. That was a big, big loss.

And we’re still close with the family and they’re all doing a great job and staying busy and picking up the pieces of their life, but it’s left a big hole in Nashville and certainly in our house. I don’t know what else I could say about him. I mean, he was a beautiful man. One of the greatest things that ever happened to me through music was getting to be John Prine’s friend.

As we finish our conversation I suggest that apart from all the other awards he has won he might now be looking at his first Academy Award.

“Ooh, I don’t know. I doubt it,” laughs Isbell. “But I don’t think they’re going to let me screw it up too bad. So, I’m just going to trust them to make me the actor I need to be.”

JASON ISBELL SIGNATURE FENDER TELECASTER

By Geoff King Guitar choices today are mind-bending. There are about sixty Telecaster models alone listed on the Fender Australia website so the style of music you want to play - and how much you can afford- may just as well be mediated by a signature model if you’re a fan of a guitarist whose style of play you want to emulate.

Jason Isbell already has a signature Martin D18 acoustic guitar and, as his star has risen, here’s the Jason Isbell Fender Custom Telecaster.

This model is based on a Fender Custom Shop Tele that has been one of Jason’s workhorses: a late 50s body style with nice weight and a solid mid 60s ‘C’-shaped neck that feels really comfortable in the hand. The guitar has specially wound pickups, however, so it’s not identical. It’s made in Fender’s Mexican plant, and while there are slight differences in quality compared to American custom-shop builds at twice the price, this is a well-made, carefully detailed guitar.

As you’re aware, Isbell is more a rock guitarist with a country influence than a pure country picker. His playing tends to favour big, clear, rounded tones so while the bridge pickup has some spank and grit it might lack a little twang for a straight country player. The neck pickup is a beauty, full and bluesy, like 50s vintage reissues. The combination of the two is nicely ringing with a lot of natural sustain.

The chocolate-sunburst finish with cream double-binding around the edges and a black pick-guard is attractive, but what to make of the ‘distressed’ -aka ‘roadworn’- body, presumably copying the wounds Jason’s original guitar has suffered? From a fandom POV I can dig it but, mostly, I loathe ‘roadworn.’ There are some makers e.g., Nash, who make otherwise excellent guitars but only ‘roadworn’ models meant to simulate years of hard gigging.

Up close they always look like they’ve been abused by some guy at the factory using a stack of sandpaper that would make the Australian cricket team proud. Fortunately, the Isbell model has only lightly suffered at the hands of Mr Stab & Rub. (The custom Isbell Telecaster guitar Pickups, designed by in-house Fender tone guru Tim Shaw).

Isbell worked with Fender on the design, and his signature Telecaster® comes equipped with all of the same modifications – even his known Road Worn® markings – that the Americana guitarist has sought out for touring and recording throughout the years.

It will set you back upward of A$2799 (retail price) which is more expensive than a typical Fender Mexican-made guitar, but this is definitely a Telecaster worthy of Jason Isbell’s endorsement.

51

Health challenges, both global and private, have finally relented to enable the long-awaited release of the fourth album from Ron S. Peno and the Superstitions, ‘Do The Understanding’.

By Jo Roberts

R

on S. Peno is a man on a mission. I’ve spoken to him numerous times over the years – through resurrections of the band that first brought him fame in Died Pretty, to his Louvin Brothers-inspired country evocations with guitar legend Kim Salmon, the Darling Downs, to his most recent reinvention, the Superstitions – but never has he sounded so determined, so focused.

Peno’s purpose in life has been confirmed “a thousandfold” he tells me, over the phone from his Melbourne home during a COVID lockdown. “I’ve just got this whole new outlook on creating and moving people and creating worlds of music and bringing people into the world you’re creating on stage,” he says.

It’s the sort of clear-eyed vision that facing mortality will muster.

In 2018, the Superstitions, led by guitarist composer Cam Butler (Silver Ray), began working on their fourth album. It was seven years since the band’s stirring debut album, ‘Future Universe’, with ‘Anywhere and Everything is Bright’ (2013) and ‘Guiding Light’ (2017) in between.

But later that year, Peno started having trouble swallowing food. “I thought ‘oh I must have a hernia’. My friends are telling me, ‘you really should go to the doctor and find out what it is’. And I’m like ‘it’ll be fine. I can drink vodka and sodas, that’s fine’. I could drink plenty of liquid, and I could get soups and noodles down, something soft, but I was losing weight.”

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THE RENAISSANCE OF RON

Butler says he “just knew” Peno was unwell. “There was a bit of a lead-up to his diagnosis and I had a strange sixth sense that something wasn’t right,” he says. “When he got diagnosed with oesophageal cancer it wasn’t a total surprise to me, but Jesus, it was not good news.”

Peno had already given up cigarettes, knowing all wasn’t well. When his stage 1 cancer diagnosis came, he immediately also gave up alcohol. His condition was serious, no doubt, but could have been worse. “The stupidity of it was not going to do anything about it, just prolonging it,” says Peno. “How silly! If it had gotten to stage 4, I would have been gone. I was sooo lucky, my god!”

The music community rallied around Peno. A GoFundMe, started by Died Pretty bandmate Brett Myers, raised over $34K. Old friends like Kim Salmon and Hoodoo Guru Dave Faulkner checked in often, as did Radio Birdman’s Rob Younger and Deniz Tek. “Deniz was calling from overseas all the time, wanting to know how I was going and what stage I was at,” recalls Peno. “He called the night before the operation and said ‘we’re praying for you, good luck tomorrow’. So you think, WOW, these people.”

Butler says Peno was “very brave”. “He just went with it,” he says.

“He had a lot of help from friends and all of us, we stuck with him, and he just decided – ‘I’m stopping smoking, I’m stopping booze, I’m going to get healthy and clean’ and he just went with it. He had his love of music and performance to keep him going too. But it was very stressful.”

Radiotherapy and chemotherapy were followed by surgery to remove the tumour. Initially Peno feared for his voice – his tool of trade – until the doctor explained to him that the cancer was just in the oesophagus and the vocal cords weren’t involved.

Anyone who has heard Peno sing since the operation now also knows his voice is not only intact, but better than ever.

“I think he’s singing the best he’s ever sung, in my opinion – he sounds fucking incredible,” says Butler. “He’s got an extra half an octave in his range, I think. And the timbre of his voice is really really warm and controlled; it’s incredible.”

His health woes behind him, the Superstitions – also featuring Tim Deane on keys, Mark Dawson on drums and Andy Papadopoulos on bass – again began working towards an album release. In early March 2020, the band played a show at the Merri Creek Tavern in Northcote.

There, they previewed a handful of new songs – the sort of songs that made audience members perk up like meerkats. For a band already renowned for crafting music of elegance, romance and power, the new songs hinted at an even grander vision.

Then came COVID. Thought the pandemic delayed production on the record, the recording was always going to be a longer process anyway, says Butler. Having recorded the three previous albums in a more ‘live’ setting, this time around Butler sought to bring in some of the production values from his own solo work and his former band Silver Ray. “Right from the word go, Ron wanted to do this,” says Butler of the grander production. “And it just happened that the pandemic occurred which allowed us to do this. A strange coincidence I suppose.”

Butler edited fragments of the playing of Dawson and Papadopoulos into drum and bass loops. “There’s a certain emotional feeling with a drum loop,“ says Butler. “It has an emotional feeling of its own that’s different to a live performance. We wanted to experiment with that on this record.

“And I also wanted something that was a little bit ‘hyper’. Ron’s such a fantastic performer, we needed something that really, really showed in a recorded sense how great this music is, rather than kind of like a live band recording; ‘Guiding Light’ was pretty much like that, that was the live band. We wanted to do something different, something with a more intense feeling. Something bigger.”

For the first time, Peno‘s vocals were multi-tracked, bringing a new depth, power and warmth to his already improved voice.

“I wanted to do lots of vocal things on this,” says Peno. “Lots of high vocals, low vocals, in-between vocals, doubling up, quadrupling up, having a choir of Ron voices – I had this brand new vocal now; I hadn’t had any cigarettes and no alcohol, so it was just this pure voice, and I wanted to use it.”

While the previous three albums each stood tall in their own right, ‘Do The Understanding’ heralds an even more opulent world of layered sounds and textures, across seven epic tracks; the album opener, the almost five-minute ‘When Worlds Collide’, which Peno considers the band’s most complex track to date, to the near-whispered vocal and drum loops of ‘Lovelight’ evoking the shadowy trip-hop of Portishead, to the sublime closer ‘I think It’s Gonna Rain’.

Butler calls Peno “a renaissance man”. It’s a moniker that could be applied not just to his ability to survive, but to reinvent himself in new musical collaborations that make the most of his talents.

After introducing himself to Kim Salmon at a Corner Hotel show in 2003, and explaining his concept for a collaboration that would become the Darling Downs – “we’ll sound like the Louvin Brothers, but we’ll look like we just stepped out of GQ Magazine” – Peno turned up at Salmon’s house three days later with his dictaphone full of song ideas, and lyrical musings. That musical union has so far yielded three stunning albums.

Meeting Butler at a gig at Yah Yah’s in 2009 or so (thanks to Penny Ikinger), Peno suggested another collaboration. Within a week, he, his dictaphone and Butler were in a room together.

“I had some demos and went around to his place and started working straight away, and it started working artistically, instantaneously,” says Butler. “He came up with great ideas and we just started collaborating. Ron has an incredible – I don’t know what you’d call it, it’s a talent but it’s more than that – if he responds emotionally to an atmosphere, he will just go and improvise, and take off.

“He’s an incredibly creative person.”

“The reason we’re here is to create,” affirms Peno. “I keep saying to Cam, and other creative friends, ‘this is what we’re here for – to create and collaborate and make wonderful sounds and music and songs, and help people escape, or make them laugh or cry or dance or whatever.

As cliched as it sounds, that’s what we’re here for.”

‘Do The Understanding’ is available July 26 via https://ronspenoandthesuperstitions.bandcamp.com/. Album track ‘The Strangest Feeling’ is already available. The album will be launched at the Brunswick Ballroom on September 4.

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After fifty years, Alligator Records is still all about genuine houserockin’ music, and they ain’t done yet, as label founder and president Bruce Iglauer tells Samuel J. Fell.

I

n late January, 1970, Bruce Iglauer walked into a bar. What happened next wasn’t a punchline but an awakening, as the then 23-year-old longhair from Michigan came face-to-face with Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers whose sets at Florence’s Lounge, a small neighbourhood bar on Chicago’s south side, were the stuff of local legend.

Already a mad blues fan (having moved to the Windy City in search of the music some years prior), Iglauer fell in love with Taylor’s gritty guitar playing, the band’s infectious shuffling grooves. Taylor, well known among local players for having six fingers on each hand, had come to Chicago from Mississippi years before and had been playing guitar since he was about 20, in the mid-1930s – he used slide a lot, in the vein of Elmore James, and his playing was boogie-heavy, sweaty and raw. It struck a chord with Iglauer and also, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, it planted a seed.

Today, half a century later, that seed has grown and is mighty. Back then, when Iglauer realised Taylor and the Houserockers had never recorded, it became his mission to cut them to tape, to push their music as far and wide as he possibly could, and with the band’s blessing he set about doing just that – he scraped together what money he had, reached out for help to Delmark Records (where he was working as a shipping clerk at the time), and receiving only a ‘thanks but no thanks’, rolled the dice and decided to form his own label.

This is when the seed started to sprout, the seed that became Alligator Records, the seed that today, fifty years on, has grown and is indeed mighty, this iconic label still helmed by Bruce Iglauer, still growing and running strong, arguably the most successful blues label in music history. All beginning back on a snowy winter’s afternoon at Florence’s Lounge, listening to the genuine blues of Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers.

“I continue to run this label as a fan of the music,” Iglauer smiles. He’s no longer 23 of course, and perhaps it’s rude of me to mention this, but his ‘longhair’ days are behind him. His thick beard is mostly grey, he’s in his seventies after all, and thanks to the wonders of modern technology this bearded face appears before me on my computer screen, regularly smiling, more than happy to talk about the label and the music that he’s been fostering for five decades.

“I hope so,” he muses when I venture that one reason for the success and longevity of Alligator, is the fact it’s been run by a fan for its entire existence. “And I hope I have good ears and good talent choices too, for the most part I have… the majority of our artists, people have grown to love.”

The history of this now iconic label is well documented – how Iglauer pushed and prodded and publicised the Houserockers’ record, how it

54

Bruce Iglauer: By Christine Monaghan

BLUES BROTHER then sold enough for Iglauer and his fledgling label to release another album, and then another, and then another. They broke new acts, lured established acts across, lost artists to other labels and to the Big Blues Band in the sky but Iglauer kept pushing and prodding and publicising; there have been highs, there have been lows, lean times and times of plenty, but over the course of its tenure, Alligator has released over 350 records, worked with hundreds of artists, and is renowned around the globe as a backer and champion of world-class contemporary blues – genuine houserockin’ music, as is the label’s motto.

“This starts because I go to see the artists live,” Iglauer says on his process, one which has remained unchanged over the years. “And I’m moved by the music, I feel it, and it touches that soul-to-soul communication spot. And so, I figure, if it’s moving me, and I look at the people at the next table or the people who are standing next to me, and it’s moving them, I figure it can move people who hear it on recordings.

“So, I’m always looking for that live communication. You know, being a blues artist, you’re never going to make a living sitting at home… the main way they’re going to make a living, is being on the road and performing live. So that ability to communicate live is so essential to my judgement of an artist, and usually I know right away. It’s just obvious.”

With Hound Dog Taylor, it was obvious. With Big Walter Horton it was obvious. With Son Seals, Fenton Robinson, Koko Taylor and Lonnie Brooks, it was obvious. Early successes (Koko Taylor’s 1976 Alligator debut, I Got What It Takes was nominated for a Grammy) lured established acts like Albert Collins, Johnny Winter and Professor Longhair. Stevie Ray Vaughn helped out on albums here and there.

The music was real, the talent obvious, Alligator was cracking along.

Another reason for the success and longevity of this label, alongside the fact Iglauer is a true fan of the music and that the label has made good choices on good musicians, is the fact there’s a very strong element of family within the label / artist dynamic. Family isn’t a word one would usually associate with a record label, and while Iglauer is quick to point out that not every artist on their roster is interested in this sort of relationship, there are many who are, and who have over the years, become close friends.

“I’m very close to Lil’ Ed (of Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, who have been with Alligator since 1986), and Ed grew up without a father,” Iglauer says. “Ed says I’m the closest thing to a father that he ever had.

And I take that as a huge compliment, he’s a fine human being, I’m very proud to call him my son.” >>>

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Koko Taylor & Bruce Iglauer:

By Marc Norberg

>>> With this sort of dynamic comes sacrifice, and Iglauer has made plenty over the years, putting his artists before himself, thinking only of their wellbeing and their music and the spreading of same. He’s fond of telling one story in particular, which took place on his 60th birthday in 2007, involving one of his artists, from out of town, who the night before Iglauer’s birthday, was arrested in Chicago. “[He was arrested] for a non-violent thing that was stupid and he shouldn’t have been arrested for, but it happened,” he explains. “So on my 60th birthday, at nine o’clock [in the morning], I was at Cook County Jail for his bail hearing… and they said to me it was a thousand dollars, and this is where I learned about posting bail for people, which turned out to be a much more complicated process than I thought – I had to go into jail, through security, call a bail bondsman from inside the jail, go out of the jail, pay the money by credit card, go back and prove I’d paid the money… by the time I did this, they’d put him back in the general population.

“So, then they had to go find him,” he laughs, rolling his eyes. “So, I was there from nine o’clock in the morning, until they released him at eleven o’clock at night. And then I took him for some food… and then I took him to my home, put him to bed in the guest room, and the next day I took him to the airport, bought him a ticket, and he flew home, which is what he needed to do.”

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You’d not find many label heads willing and able to offer this sort of support to an artist, and yet Iglauer did because it’s how he is, and how he cares for his artists – indeed a reason why Alligator is so highly regarded among blues players the world over.

The results of course, speak for themselves – Alligator Record this year celebrates fifty years of genuine houserockin’ music, and despite lean times at the turn of the century with music piracy, and now music streaming, and of course the Covid pandemic, it continues to keep its head above water.

So, how to celebrate such a milestone, then? How does Iglauer and his dedicated team (his longest-serving employee has been with the label since 1981), properly pay tribute to what they’ve done since 1971? The answer, in hindsight, is a no-brainer – release a 3CD set that lays down the label’s history through its artists, which is just what they’ve done.

Alligator Records: 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music is just as it sounds, a fifty-year retrospective of the label, beginning appropriately with Hound Dog Taylor and the Houserockers and covering dozens of artists, clocking in at over 230 minutes of music. The obvious question, to my mind, is how did Iglauer and his dedicated staff, once they’d decided on the idea, come up with the track listing? How long did it take? How many litres of coffee, beer and whisky went into its creation?

Iglauer laughs. “You ask that question in a very appropriate way,” he smiles. “I worked on the choices for about three months. It was fun, because I went back and listened to some of the records we’d made that I hadn’t listened to for twenty years, or longer. And I discovered some tracks I didn’t remember or didn’t know that well. The hardest part was deciding who to leave off.”

Bruce Iglauer & Professor Longhair: By Michael Smith “But there were artists who were obvious,” he goes on, “the artists who are most closely identified with the label, like Hound Dog Taylor and Koko Taylor and Albert Collins and Son Seals and Lonnie Brooks, and more recently Marcia Ball, Coco Montoya, a number of others.

“So, I wanted to include those artists, and I wanted to include the artists we have a current commitment to, so I wanted to include our entire current roster, which is about fourteen or fifteen artists. So, I put them on the third disc, the ‘What’s going on with Alligator today’ disc.

So, the first one was fairly easy, because it was going to be [the old guard], those people were givens. And the third disc was going to be artists who are currently [on the roster].

“The middle disc was the difficult one. Because that was primarily music that was recorded between the mid-1980s and the early 2000s, with artists many of whom are deceased,” or whose work didn’t perhaps hit the heights both they and the label were hoping. “The wonderful Michael Hill’s Blues Mob, from New York,” Iglauer smiles.

“I loved them, we did three albums with them and I’m still in regular touch with Michael, but we just could not sell his records. No matter what we did, I think they were simply too progressive for traditional blues fans; they pushed the envelope too much.”

“So, I knew, [on the second disc], I wanted to include them. I knew I wanted to include Carey Bell. I wanted to include CJ Chenier, another underrated artist who we couldn’t sell – you know, people love to dance to zydeco, but they don’t necessarily want to take it home; it works live. And we included an Australian, Dave Hole, who is not only a wonderful musicians and human being, but he became quite a good friend of mine during his tours of the United States… he’d stay at my house. I have to say, he was probably the nicest house guest I ever had.”

Listening to Iglauer talk about who he wanted on these discs, it’s all you can do not to share the passion he exudes, not only for the artists which ‘made’ the label, but also those who he was so excited about and yet failed to sell records. To him, it’s about the music, it’s about making that music and it’s about sharing that music, and this is what this celebration album is all about – sharing the music that Alligator has been working with, for fifty years.

As we wind up our chat (and indeed, to cover fifty years of history, we need much more time), I ask the man who’s done it all how he feels about it, about what he and the label have achieved over this time.

Typically, he evades the question, because as far as he’s concerned, it’s not about him: “Most of what I’ve done every day, is just get up and do it, I’m constantly inspired by the music and the people who make the music.” Yet another reason Alligator is still houserockin’ after half a century.

And so, where to next? Iglauer mentioned at some point during our interview that he wasn’t ever going to retire – as far as he’s concerned,

Bruce Iglauer & Hound Dog Taylor: By Nicole Fanelli there’s still more to do. “The mission going forward, after the first fifty years, is to find and nurture the artists who will be creating blues that will speak to contemporary audiences for the next fifty years,” he says.

“I’m not going to find another Hound Dog Taylor, because to be him you have to have grown up in Mississippi, you have to have come north after somebody burned a cross in front of your shack, and so you fled and slept in drainage ditches and then worked a labour job and played for tips. That doesn’t happen anymore. You learnt from listening to other musicians, but now you learn from listening to records. Someone like Selwyn Birchwood, he discovered the blues listening to records, then when he was 17, he went and saw Buddy Guy and it changed his life, like Hound Dog changed my life.

“You can’t grow up in the ‘tradition’ anymore, that tradition is history. For someone like Hound Dog Taylor, the blues chose him. For someone like Selwyn Birchwood, he chose the blues.”

We wind up our chat, Iglauer smiling and gracious to the end, a man whose life has been spent in the blues, a life he couldn’t imagine any other way. One would think that there’s not a chance in hell Bruce Iglauer will walk away from this, not voluntarily, anyway.

“You know the Blues Brothers movie, where they say they’re on a mission from god?” he laughs. “I’m not so much a believer in god, but I do believe that I was lucky enough to find what I’m supposed to be doing with my life, so why would you stop doing what you’re supposed to be doing?”

Alligator Records: 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music is available now via www.alligator.com

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SHE’S GOT

BALLS

S? ouglas 1 photo Credit: Photo by Lisa Johnson ouglas at Rockpalast: Photo by Manfred Becker ouglas 2: Photo - Tana Douglas.

In this extract from her book Loud, Tana Douglas recalls meeting the members of AC/DC for the first time.

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I

t was August of ’74 and summer was still a distant promise when I first pulled up outside the unassuming single-storey brick home on a tree-lined street in a quiet middle-class suburb of Melbourne. The house was large with several bedrooms but nothing special, maybe a little scruffier than its neighbours with a couple of rosebushes and a hedge as reminders of a time when its garden was cared for. None of this bothered me. I hadn’t come to see a garden – I’d come to meet the band.

Standing there for that brief moment, scuffing my shoes on the cracked footpath, waiting for Michael Browning to lead the way, I had no inkling of what waited for me beyond that ordinary front door.

In the entryway to the house there was a sense of a more glorious time that had passed. We’d let ourselves in, and Michael led me around a corner to the living room. I held back as he walked up to the group of six men casually standing around a table towards a kitchen area at the back.

As a greeting, Michael placed his hand on the shoulder of a tall blond guy in his late twenties, while shaking the hand of the one who appeared to be the other’s business partner, a shorter guy of similar age with dark hair. These two were Harry Vanda and George Young respectively. I guessed they were in charge, as Michael had gone to them first. He called over his shoulder, ‘Tana, come meet everyone.’

The conversation stopped as they all turned to look in my direction, their smiles so big that I didn’t feel nervous. >>> 59

sucked, and after getting stuck in Perth, we called it quits.’

The two members to survive that line-up were here in front of me looking for a fresh start.

‘It’s time for us to get serious,’ Malcolm said. ‘We need to steer away from a pop image. We want a harder edge. We want to play rock’n’roll.

Bon can bring that.’

Angus added, ‘We’re all close, and we like to work that way.’

I told them, ‘You can count me in!’

The Young clan had a history in the Australian music scene: George had been a founding member of The Easybeats with Harry, and both had tasted international success with that band. But I was too young to know the backstory, or those of Bon’s earlier bands. I was just taking these guys at face value, and I liked what I was seeing. I had no concept of the talent standing right there in that room just chatting and joking. What I saw clearly, though, was their conviction about what was to come.

Later that day the brothers picked up guitars and started working together. Malcolm and Angus played parts with George and Harry talking them through the process for their next studio session, ‘Try this chord here. Yes, that sounds good.’ Bon wandered off with a pen and notepad, disappearing into another room; he would reappear when called to contribute lyrics. That was how ‘Soul Stripper’ and just about every song was written.

I knew I wanted to be a part of this. I liked them right away. I was in!

I learnt that once they’d completed High Voltage, we would start a rigorous schedule of live shows to support the album. Until they found a permanent bass player, George would fill in where possible. They would also need a new drummer. Peter would play drums for shows until they found someone.

***

>>> Brother George, as he was referred to by the inner circle, took the lead. ‘How are you doing? Tana, is it?’

‘Yes!’ ‘Come closer,’ he said. ‘We won’t bite.’

And they all laughed, breaking the ice.

‘You’ve an accent,’ I said as I walked over.

‘Yeah, we’re all Scottish. Well –’ pointing to the tall blond guy ‘– except Harry, he’s Dutch, but he may as well be Scottish, as he’s family.’ Then George introduced me to one of the two guys who were closer to my age.

‘This is Malcolm, he’s my younger brother. He plays guitar and is the one who writes most of our music.’ In those early days, writing was a formula that started with Malcolm coming up with a riff and feel for a song, even an entire song’s rhythm section. Then it would get worked over, moulded with George’s guidance, then Angus would add his lead parts. Finally, Bon would be called in to add the lyrics that defined the feel of the song. (The three brothers would work closely together like this when working on Vanda/Young music also, for the likes of Stevie Wright and Jon Paul Young.)

I looked to Malcolm, who was standing with his hands shoved in his pockets, his shoulders slightly hunched. He did a little shuffle with his feet as he took a step forward. Then he looked up, a big smile spreading across his face. He reached out, shook my hand and said, ‘Hi! Tana,’ tilting his head slightly to one side. The body language before the handshake, I later learnt, had been Malcolm doing a quick evaluation to see if he thought he could trust me. The Youngs always screened people before dropping their guard.

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Then it was the other guy’s turn. ‘Meet Angus, our youngest brother.

He plays lead guitar.’

Angus, who was smoking a cigarette, looked like he’d just woken up – literally. (I would come to know that he always looked that way on a day off.) He followed Malcom’s suit, stepping forward in a more reserved, but still friendly way, after putting down his cup of tea and cigarette. Then with a distinctive, gravelly voice, he said, ‘Yeah, hi, how ya doing?’

Bon Scott reached over between George and Harry. ‘I’m not a Young or young –’ Bon humour ‘– but I am Scottish! I’m the singer, and I write the naughty lyrics,’ he said with a sly grin, slightly raising one eyebrow.

He added that he was ‘the old man of the group’.

Peter Clack was introduced as the drummer, and then Harry Vanda got a more formal introduction as the other half, with George, of the production team for High Voltage.

With these introductions over, they didn’t stand on ceremony; they all started talking and smoking cigarettes at the same time. There was a buzz in the room as though they were on the brink of something big.

So, that was the end of my job interview. I’d recently turned sixteen, and I’d just had my first encounter with the heart, soul and driving force of AC/DC. Of course, I didn’t know much about the band yet – they were only just starting out and hadn’t played any shows in town.

We all moved to take seats in the living room where we kept chatting.

Malcolm told me, ‘We had a version of AC/DC that played gigs in Sydney mostly, and then we did some in Adelaide, where we met Bon!’ nodding in his direction. ‘And even one show in Melbourne, where we met Browning.’ They always called Michael by his surname.

‘It just didn’t work out with those other guys. Our manager and singer

Not long after this meeting, and while still recording, we started rehearsals at Lansdowne Road. We converted one of the front bedrooms into a designated space that was in constant use day and night. Mal would stand in on drums or bass so they could work on the songs as they got more familiar with playing them live. They would all do whatever it took to get the music to where it needed to be. Bon would even jump in on drums if the brothers were working on guitar pieces.

Malcolm and Angus would spend hours huddled together in the living room working on tracks until they were just right; they never settled for near enough. They had a clear plan and weren’t going to let anything distract them from it, and you were either on board or not. I was 110 per cent on board, so I got on with looking after all the stage equipment and instruments; my job didn’t include cooking or cleaning.

At our first meeting, Mal and Angus had asked how I would feel about living in that house on Lansdowne Road, and I’d said it would be great. They had also asked if my mother would be okay with it, and I assured them yes. But it seemed they were still concerned about this, and not because they had any idea about my real age – they wanted my mother’s permission purely because I was a girl. So, when they returned from Sydney, I organised for the band to have a meal at her apartment on the St Kilda Esplanade; she could tell them herself that everything was okay. What struggling band is going to turn down a free meal?

While my mother may have been a lot of things, she also happened to be a good cook and a generous host. She loved being the centre of attention. After a lot of great food and plenty to drink, I was deemed free to move into the house. And after an incident in which the barbecue burst into flames, the band all agreed that this would probably be safest for me.

The funniest thing about that meal was watching Bon flirt with my mother, ostensibly to convince her to let me live with the band. He was definitely a ladies’ man, and I’m sure he was just trying to wind me up that day – he loved to wind me up.

From then on it was official: Lansdowne Road was my new home, and AC/DC my new band. Little did the Boys know that my mother was glad to have me gone. She’d done well for herself since I’d fled her home those years prior, and God forbid I cramped her style or let slip I was the youngest of four children.

*** Those Lansdowne Road days were a very busy time indeed. Creativity was bursting out of every room. There was no time to waste: with High Voltage now finished, the hunt was on for a rhythm section to enable us to start touring in earnest. George played bass on several shows in those early days, but he had other commitments.

We were constantly working on new material. We were either rehearsing or sitting around the stereo playing all the music that each of us loved. The band used it to get to know each other better. As new members joined it was a way to get them on the same page musically for the direction Malcolm wanted to go.

Bon was mad about Alex Harvey, Free and Elvis, while Malcolm and Angus were into old-school blues and rock’n’roll like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis, and we all enjoyed a smattering of Bad Company along with ZZ Top’s Tres Hombres, but the blues was best. I think they let me play stuff that I liked just to make me feel a part of it.

I learnt a lot about music from those early days at Lansdowne Road.

During one of these sessions, Malcolm and Angus played Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, a song Malcolm used to play in one of his earlier bands. I cringed. They asked me why, and I told them, ‘I do not like Elvis, or his songs.’ But my only experiences with Elvis were those hideous movies; I’d never heard his earlier blues/gospel influenced songs. They obviously thought I’d lost my mind and had spent way too long in the rainforest.

Malcolm turned up the next day to set me straight with an album that he wanted me to hear. It was Insane Asylum. The singer was Kathi McDonald and the song was ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. Mal knew I liked Janis Joplin, so he figured this was something I would relate to as Kathi had worked with Janis and they had some stylistic similarities. He sat me down and said, ‘Listen to this and tell me what you think.’ When the track finished, I looked over to him. He didn’t have a smug ‘I told you so’ expression; it was more a ‘Yeah? You get it!’ look.

I learnt two things that day. The first was that a song can have many lives, and the second was that Malcolm truly loved music and cared enough to show me how one song can resonate with different people through different versions. A good song is a good song. The album was mine to keep.

Something changed after that day. We spoke a lot from that time on. I’m not sure if it was just getting to know each other better or if Malcolm was getting homesick and missed the closeness of family.

But I was becoming someone he could talk to, let his guard fall a little around, without affecting the dynamic with the other band members.

These conversations weren’t to do with the songwriting but more to do with the people we were starting to get to know who would come to the house, or what I thought of Browning – we only ever called him Browning – or how the rehearsal had sounded. Never anything about other bands we’d be playing with.

As a crew person I would have closer dealings with other bands and their crews, but that stuff didn’t matter to Mal. He rarely interacted with outsiders.

It was a tight circle, and that was how they wanted it. The juggernaut was about to hit high gear with no looking back. No stopping it.

Loud is published by Harper Collins Australia.

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owards the end of 2019, author, musician and columnist, Tracey Thorn, arrived in Sydney for a 10-day trip that was publicly work, and privately an escape.

As she was to write later, home life with her partner of 38 years, fellow musician and author Ben Watt, was in a state of tension and dissatisfaction just as the last of their children prepared to leave home.

And decades of being the “good girl” had started to feel problematic for Thorn.

“I feel myself coming adrift, unsure of what I want, unmoored from where I am,” she wrote: searching for meaning, sure, but also independence, comfort, euphoria, while recognising a coalescing of “unspecified rage”. Taking a kind of comfort in the epigrammatic thoughts of artists such as the novelist Anita Brookner and poet Kim Addonizio, she finds a line from filmmaker Agnes Varda that “In all women there is something in revolt that is not expressed.”

That’s the emotional churn within her as she headed to Sydney to see if there was both weight in, and support for, an ambitious book she has begun, her fourth, after two memoirs and a treatise on singing.

This book is to be a kind of biography of her friend, the iconoclastic Australian musician, activist, academic, social worker and feminist figure rarely thought of as a “good girl”, Lindy Morrison. It will also serve as an examination of the exterior and interior life of a woman going through the music industry – in Morrison’s case as the anchor (in every way), of the beloved if never hugely successful indie pop group, The Go-Betweens - at the same time as Thorn’s own career in Everything But The Girl.

So, a broader story built on the personal one. Or the personal one expanding. Or maybe both. Too many ideas were bubbling up to be left aside, if this book could happen that is.

Although they had not been in each other’s presence for some years, they’d been talking online, some letters had been exchanged, and the idea broached before this trip. All with the knowledge that if Morrison, the tall, vibrant, funny, full-forced character whose drumming was contrastingly subtle and unusual, didn’t want to share her memories, diaries and letters, the project would be off.

So, yes, this trip was vital. But in keeping with the state of flux in Thorn’s life, underneath that was another question, or series of questions, running through her mind as she travelled straight from the airport to Sydney’s eastern suburbs where Morrison lives: “Will I still know her after all this time? Will she still know me? Will I still like her?

What will happen if I find I don’t?”

Rather than beginning My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend with this moment, Thorn saves the reconnection until quite late in the book. The awkwardness and tension as they talk that first day is a reminder that they are quite different people, but also that the Lindy Morrison she has been describing for the preceding 189 pages –- is now vividly present and very real.

THORN BIRDS

In her memoir My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend Tracey Thorn tells the story of her friendship with Lindy Morrison of the Go-Betweens.

By Bernard Zuel

“A large part of the impetus of writing the book, one of the things that I kept coming back to, was I had to make her a three-dimensional character. She has to be real,” says Thorne today, via Skye from the home she shares with Watt – their relationship intact, refurbished and surviving the months of Covid lockdown.

“If it’s going to work and if I can convince people who have never even heard of The Go-Betweens why they want to read a book about their drummer, it’s got to be like a novel … she has to be three-dimensional, which means showing her in all her glory and her faults, and the things about her that I always loved and the things about her that I always found really difficult. It’s got to be as complete a picture as possible.”

And there is the real nub of the book: beyond the biography, beyond the history, My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend serves also as a record of their friendship, begun 38 years earlier though latterly made a bit more tenuous by distance, work, absence, family … you know, life.

In the Everything But The Girl song, Blue Moon Rose, Thorn sang of “a friend and she comes from the high plains/Wise as the hills and fresh

as the rains”, a friend who “taught me daring/Threw back the windows and let the air in”. It’s a song of joy really.

There is what Thorn calls “the weight of this history between us”.

History that was begun in admiration (especially on Thorn’s part, after Morrison breezed into a dressing room where Thorn, then in the band Marine Girls but soon to start Everything But The Girl with Watt, sat and wondered). History that grew on difference (one a self-described small-town girl unsure of her place; the other “a tall, angular woman who seemed to reflect the light”). And history that never really wore away the edges of their contrasting personalities. “[This connection] said something interesting about friendships and how they work, that often you’re not looking for someone who is exactly like you. Especially when you’re young,” says Thorn. “I do think it’s very important the age I was when we met and the age gap between us. I was 20 and she was 31 and I was still at that stage in my life where I felt that I was quite unformed and trying to work out who was I going to be as an adult woman, especially an adult woman maybe working in this music business.

“Was I going to work in this music business? I wasn’t sure. And there was Lindy, she was 31 years old and was working in this music business and also projected this image of being just entirely on top of things, able to deal with things, and confident and loud where I was quiet, and all those things.”

If at first it looked an unlikely start for a friendship, they did have common ground, whether it be working surrounded by men, both being well read and voracious readers, both with an academic background, both feeling that “we were now moving in a world where that wasn’t necessarily what was wanted of us, or no one was going to be interested in it”.

As Thorn observed of Morrison, she was far less “seen” by writers, critics and fans of The Go-Betweens than the two awkward/ charming/guileless/calculating songwriters, Robert Forster and Grant McClennan, who courted and were courted by writers, critics and fans.

“When she did interviews no one was asking her about the books she’d read and the films she’d seen. She had all that inside her and I think she was grateful to find someone else to talk to about all that.”

As might already be clear, Thorn’s book is such a beautiful book about friendship in its shifting phases, and one of the reasons it is such a captivating read is it doesn’t pretend to be presenting a perfect friendship and doling out innate wisdom. Instead, what is described is multifaceted and emotionally complex, a bold thing to do when we might expect some veneration of an older and in her own right iconic figure, or for some claim of a unique bond and special understanding.

“But that’s not how I write about anything really, in an idealised way,” Thorn says. “I think a friendship is just another relationship and what have I always written about relationships? How fucking complicated they are and how difficult they can be and how it’s incredibly hard to fully connect with another human being because we are all partly inside our own heads and obsessed with ourselves.

“And yet, they are brilliant and we take enormous strength and resilience from our relationships, whether they are romantic ones or family ones or friendships.”

With the awkwardness anticipated but the looming book a hovering presence over any interaction, how did Thorn manage the reconnection in Sydney? Was she conscious of not coming across as some kind of – perish the thought! – grubby journalist?

“I was trying not to make her feel like I was there interviewing her; I wasn’t sitting there with a tape recorder or notebook. But literally every time I was out of her presence I was writing everything down,” she laughs. “That chapter of us reconnecting is just a few little snapshots scenes. I don’t do very much analysing of the situation: it’s here we are at a party, here we are in a restaurant, here we are in someone’s house, here we are walking down the street trying to find our way. I tried to do lots of showing, not telling.” >>> 63

>>> What made analysis at that point unnecessary was that everything in the book that has led to this point had done the work for us. By the time we “meet” Morrison we have her history, Thorn’s history, the flesh and bones of their friendship, and a musical and historical context. All we need then is the fullness of Morrison’s company to embody it.

“What’s interesting is it’s the friendship in action but it’s us 30 years on and we are both older and a bit set in our ways, and we have all these

years of life behind us that we’ve lived when we weren’t in touch with each other,” Thorn says of this reunion. “So, there’s all sorts of stuff we don’t know about each other, and yet, within a couple of days we were making private jokes and I was just remembering how much fun she is.

“I do think a lot of the time a lot is made of Lindy’s larger-than-lifeness and that she can be intimidating, and all those things. But I think too often she was painted as this slightly villainous, scary character.

Obviously, a lot of those qualities are incredibly attractive and just fun to be around. You don’t have to be exactly like a person like that to be very drawn to them.”

That force of nature, as the cliché has it, of Morrison is one thing, but Thorn is just as capable of exploring the vulnerability, the tenderness of her. It shows through the descriptions of a childhood in Brisbane and those early years at university and music, a time where confidence

doesn’t come easily, where insecurities erupt over seemingly minor matters. And it extends into the intensity, rewards and failures of Morrison’s relationship with the far less experienced, less intellectually developed Forster (the relationship which sits at the core of his songwriting material) that sometimes seem like a series of small slights building to a bitter climax a decade later.

Really understanding this less obvious side of Morrison is not just important for us as readers, it becomes the true strength of the book.

In searching for why that is so crucial, why it feels different to this male observer, I wonder if it is as simple as saying female friendship are different to male ones.

“Well, yes, because women experience the world in a different way.

Obviously, that doesn’t mean all women experience the world in the same way. We all equally have our own individual perception of things

and our own individual experience of things. But we will have certain shared experiences and obviously I focus on some of those, between me and Lindy, which give you a kind of shorthand,” Thorn says.

“Often what women share is their experiences of being left out, or being patronised by people they are working with. Men’s relationships can often be based more on that power dynamic that’s about competitiveness: who is actually the strongest in this relationship, who is going to win, who is doing best at work?”

Thorn readily offers that this is another generalisation but she’s not really wrong in the notion that for many men the vulnerable stuff can get buried and you just kind of bond on safe ground where weaknesses are hidden, even if you are not actually competing about your strengths.

“But women, perhaps, more often bond by sharing the vulnerabilities because from that we take a strength. Hearing another woman say oh fuck, yes that happened to me as well, reminds you that you’re not going mad and so gives you a strength because it validates your perception of the world,” Thorn says. “You think oh shit, yeah, this isn’t happening because I’ve done something wrong, or because I’m stupid, it’s because this is the society we live in.”

Is it also too simple to say that one reason why female friendships are different is in some ways they are in response to or in separating from men in the way men can impose themselves substantially in a woman’s life?

“Yes. Sometimes within female friendship to almost have the sense of forming a little secret club that’s like the Resistance [she laughs] and if you are heterosexual it’s complicated, because you are sharing stuff about men at the same time as you have relationships with men and you are attracted to men,” says Thorn. “And Lindy and I definitely shared that, a kind of frustration with men we encountered sometimes, especially in that world of music. And yet within the same sentence we would then be joking about ‘well, yes but he is very attractive’.”

Not so much nobody’s perfect as nobody’s pure?

“That was the other thing I liked about Lindy: we shared a lot of feminist take on the world but you know, she’s not pious about these things. At all. Not sanctimonious. She will be contradictory in her opinions, and again I like that in people,” says Thorn. “I think it is completely valid to have a sort of political take on the world and yet still as a human being you will live in a way that will be contradictory to that. And sometimes you will have opinions that don’t quite sit comfortably within that take.

“And I liked that about Lindy and I think we share that, that we were never rigid particularly in those ideas and we could allow ourselves the freedom to be a mixture.”

Given many, if not most of us are somewhat rigid, pious even, in our certainties about life and the way the world should be when we are 20, 21, we probably all could benefit from having a kind of Lindy in our lives to teach us to bend a bit. Not that I’m suggesting, I tell Thorn, that she was necessarily rigid or pious at 21 and needed some bending.

“But I was,” she laughs. “And I did. Often you don’t really do the unbending until you are a bit older. As much as meeting someone can be good for you and kind of shaking you out of that, it just takes experience really to be able to view the world in a slightly more complex way.”

PART 2

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As a lyricist or a memoirist, Tracey Thorn is not afraid of digging, nor of exposing.

Rereading her diaries, and then putting those early and unformed, or indeed later fully formed and frank revelations before us, has been the basis of a number of her books. Excavating herself in effect.

Both Bedsit Disco Queen and Another Planet, among the three books she’s written since the band she formed with partner Ben Watt in the early ‘80s, Everything But The Girl, ended at the turn of the century, bared her fears and stumblings, the recriminations and the regrets, alongside moments of great joy and shared success. >>> 65

>>> She is no less open in her new book, My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend, which while principally a chronicle of the life of the Australian musician and activist Lindy Morrison, lays open Thorn’s own troubles (at home, at work), insecurities, and moments of anger and frustration through the past 40 years.

However, rereading her correspondence with the Australian, whose prominence came in the hugely influential Brisbane band, The GoBetweens, and then going further to trawling Morrison’s diaries, letters and private confidences, is considerably bolder as a book concept for Thorn because she is excavating Morrison – still alive, still a public presence, still a friend.

Did the impudence of this ever have her hesitating?

“Yeah. As you say, I’ve done this about myself before, and exposing yourself is one thing, and is scary. But I felt a real sense of responsibility here that I’m now doing it about our friendship and I’m doing that level of, as you say, excavating about someone else,” says Thorn. “And as we know, Lindy is a great believer in openness and honesty and self-expression, so I knew if anyone was going to be able to live with this, she would be able to. But I also thought that until you’ve kind of seen it on the page, you don’t really know what it feels like.”

Thorn didn’t show Morrison the book in progress. “I said right from the start, I can’t write this book by committee, and it’s not a jointauthored book. I am writing a book from my point of view over here and if you are happy to share the raw material with me, by diaries and letters, then it will be a richer, better book and I can tell your story better.”

After the first draft there were a few things that were taken out at Morrison’s request: however, the bulk of it, and its explorations of the teenage Morrison as much as the adult one, were relatively unscathed.

As uncomfortable as they might have made Morrison feel.

“She said to me ‘no one is going to be interested in this, it’s so boring people reading this stuff about me talking about my glasses’. But I think it’s essential that bit. If I was going to try and convey to people that this two-dimensional version of Lindy – the ‘witch’ of the early days, or this brash force of nature - then I’ve got to be able to show that vulnerability. Then, okay, how might she have transformed into that person; what might be underpinning it?

“To me, those letters that she wrote to herself - that she sent me - I just thought, this is gold. Again, it’s not me having to tell people, I can just literally show you: this is what she was like, this is what she wrote.”

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Morrison will not talk about the book now, refusing all requests for interviews. Not out of any dissatisfaction or resentment though - in fact she facilitated this interview with Thorn - but rather a reluctance to be at the centre of attention and the person who has to explain herself again.

“Her point has always been ‘I’m the subject of the book, not the author’, and she feels that it’s not normal really for the subject of the book to be interviewed. And I think perhaps she wants to let it settle.

It’s only been out a short while. Let it do its thing, be out there, be received by people, be, I don’t know, argued about by people.”

It’s one thing to be asked about yourself and asked to explain yourself, it’s another thing to then talk about somebody else’s interpretation and explanation of you.

“The quote at the front of [My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend], from Margaret Atwood, which says this is not the story she would write - you can’t write the book someone would write about themselves. All you can show is how they look from the outside.”

In the context of this long friendship, and the openness of the book, it’s worth seeing the Atwood quote in full. “She will have her own version. I am not the centre of her story, because she herself is that.

But I could give her something you can never have, except from another person: what you look like from outside. A reflection. This is part of herself I could give back to her.”

While friendship is the book’s raison d’etre, looking beyond it, Thorn’s tale is also a story about two professional artists in an industry that is constructed to destroy you. An industry that for women is almost by design meant to take away all the things about you that are valuable.

And then destroy you.

Having emerged herself in the early ‘80s as part of The Marine Girls, in the wake of female-centric, politically and socially-driven bands like The Raincoats and The Slits – and the close example of Morrison who daily confronted the stubborn refusal of large sections of the music world to accept female musicians as equals - Thorn may surprise some readers by revealing that she and others then were working on the basis that they would be different within this male-centric industry, not with plans to change the industry itself.

When did it become clear to her that she could reformat this business into something that might be more tolerable for artists like her?

“I don’t know. Did I ever? People asked me a lot in these interviews at the moment, ‘you are writing about the music business the way it was, 30 years ago, do you think it’s changed?’. I say I’m partly a bit detached from the music industry now, but I read interviews with younger women now and they describe exactly the same things I was describing happening 30 something years ago,” Thorn says.

“I don’t know if any of us have managed to actually change the shape of things. Young women now were more outspoken, speak out more immediately about things that we tolerated for longer, and then spoke out about after the event. In a way, progress is being made in that

there is a kind of quicker reaction from younger women who will say ‘no, shit, I’m in my workplace, I don’t have to put up with this’.”

As recent research in Australia - Tunesmiths and Toxicity: Workplace Harassment in the Contemporary Music Industries of Australia and New Zealand - by University of Technology Sydney academic, Dr Jeffrey Crabtree, confirms, the music business is a bottomless pit of exploitation and abuse, whether physical, financial or emotional.

That doesn’t appear likely to change any time soon, not when some of the people ostensibly leading the industry are the worst abusers, and some of those monitoring the business are among the most blinkered or compromised.

Maybe the best thing, and it’s no small thing, is that people like Thorn and Morrison had shifted the conversation enough so that the next lot through had a little more reason to say ‘hold on I don’t have to put up with this’, before the generation after them might cut it off at the start and say ‘I’m not gonna go quietly’.

“That’s why it’s so important that the stories get told,” says Thorn.

“We are back to another of my motivations, which became an even stronger motivation as I got going in the book: ‘why are you telling the story?’ Yes, the number one reason is Lindy is an amazing character, and like writing a novel you just want to tell stories about amazing characters.

“But as I was writing I began to think of her more and more as a kind of representative: an amazing woman whose story has slipped. And I began to feel even more this kind of responsibility that every single one of those stories should be told really.”

Was Morrison, a significant figure in many ways for Australian music, but even less known to the wider public than her band, The GoBetweens, the best vehicle for this?

“In its own right it’s kind of a small story: The Go-Betweens were not massive; Lindy was, some people might say, only the drummer; and that’s what happens, nobody interviews the drummer,” Thorn says.

“Well, yeah, I guess, but all these stories on their own are quite small and if they are all left out you read the history of rock and it’s just a history that is 80 per cent the achievements of men and 20 per cent the achievements of women, and it remains hard to change. And remains hard for young women to picture themselves joining this industry.

“We have to tell these stories because every little retelling just shifts the conversation a bit.”

Just as importantly, each time the stories are told, are exposed, it’s a teaching moment for people like me and other men who write about music, who spend their time immersed in the history and the great names, or the lost and revered names, but much of it in the same narrow range of mythology and truth.

Reading My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend as a fan of The Go-Betweens since their early days, and as someone who has written about them since the mid ‘80s, I was forced to examine myself and my responses as a fan and critic. Did I ignore or slide by Morrison? Was I one of those seduced by

the mythology of the sensitive genius upfront in my focus on singer/ songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan?

I tell myself that I used to talk about Lindy’s drumming and its rhythmic presence in the appealing difference of the band - something else Thorn does effectively in her book, showing how Morrison’s musical presence reshaped what might otherwise have been a fairly conventional and simple form, and about how her worldliness dragged the others out of themselves.

But I also know that I spent much more time explaining the meanings and shadings of “the boys”, chasing them for interviews, and working as if they were the band. It’s a good thing to be reminded how easily we just fall into those old tropes.

“I have been interviewed by some other men who have said similar things, and that’s been fantastic because the worst thing when women speak up about anything is if men get really defensive. Because they can hear another man being even gently criticised, they kinda think ‘the criticism’s coming at me, it’s me’ and they leap up in defence and say ‘no, what you are saying here is not what’s happening’,” says Thorn.

“And you kind of go ‘okay, okay’, but that doesn’t get us anywhere really. That gets us so stuck in this place where something happens, women try to speak up about this thing that happened, men get defensive and put their fists up, and everyone retreats to their respective camps of hostility.”

How would this book circumvent that?

“What I’ve tried to do is write this book in such a way that hopefully the things I’m saying can be heard. They are not just heard as this shitty bloke did this shitty thing,” she says. “I’m trying to write in a little more nuanced of a way: I’m talking about unconscious bias and blindspots that we all have, and that sometimes men have about music. And the way even people who think they are quite progressive in many ways can slip into traditional, stereotypical ways of behaving.

“What you want is to move on from these things and I’m saying, look I haven’t written a book to tear down The Go-Betweens, I’m not trying to trash their memory; I’m trying to add to the story and say look I honestly think there’s a danger that you have actually diminished the story of The GoBetweens by turning them into this band but they don’t seem to me to be as interesting as the band they really were.”

Tracey Thorn’s My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend is published by Allen & Unwin 67

Hi Fi

By John Cornell

RICHTER:

The Great Australian Loudspeaker Speaker Story

T

he Richter story started in 1986 with talented speaker designer and founder Ralph Waters and still continues to this day with the current owner Brian Rogers. It is a wonderful Aussie success story.

Ralph started the company with 3 homemade pairs of speakers made in his garage, a lot of enthusiasm and $2,250.00 in the bank.

He was initially met with ridicule and amusement by the then Australian Hi Fi industry cognoscenti dominated by Speakers imported from overseas, mainly from the USA and UK. Undeterred, Ralph battled on and started to get recognition for his Bookshelf model that he named the Merlin which had been taken on by a couple of progressive Sydney retailers. The break for the company came in 1988 with the release of the Richter Wizard, a twin 6” Slim line Floor Standing model. A very revolutionary design for its time, the Wizard went on to become the largest selling Australian Loudspeaker of all time and was awarded ‘one of the ultimate products of the last 30 years’ by Sound And Image Magazine in 2017.

The Richter Wizard is universally acknowledged as the product that single-handedly legitimized the entire Australian Loudspeaker Manufacturing industry, offering as it did some very serious competition to the imported products and embarrassing many highly regarded brands from overseas.

Ralph sold Richter in 1997 and from this time on the senior designer has been Dr Martin Gosnell. Martin has been responsible for the design of all Richter products up to and including the latest series 6 range.

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By Martin Jones

Over the last 35 years the company have won no less than 30 industry awards for their products with the latest being: Richter Harlequin series 6 Floor Standing Speaker RRP $1699.00 “Sound and Image Magazine Floor Standing Speaker of the Year under $2000 “ (2021) Richter Merlin Series 6 Bookshelf Speaker RRP $1,100.00 “Sound and Image Magazine Bookshelf Speaker of the Year $500 $1000 ” (2020 ) Richter Thor 10.6 Subwoofer RRP $1699.00 “Sound and Image Magazine Subwoofer of the Year below $5000 “ (2019 ) One of my favourites in the current line up is the combination of the Merlin Bookshelf Speaker and Thor 10.6 Subwoofer in a Sub Sat Combo.

The Sub Sat Combo is quite often overlooked when shopping for a new set of speakers but it can offer quite a bit of flexibility for both large and small rooms. A well paired Subwoofer and Book Shelf Speaker combination can offer some unique benefits.

One of these benefits is that when you start bumping up the volume you can play music louder without distortion. The woofers on most bookshelf speakers have a lot of difficulty keeping up with the mid speakers and tweeters when the volume is increased and this introduces distortion. Having the addition of an amplified sub will take away this stress and allow you to play music effortlessly loud and distortion free.

Another benefit is revealing the low-end notes of instruments such as Organ, Cello, Kick Drum, Bass and so on. Most bookshelf speakers start dropping off at about 50hz which means you are missing the full depth of the low-end bass tones “the emotional bits“. A good subwoofer will reach down to at least 20hz bringing more feeling and excitement to bear.

Pairing a set of MERLIN S6 Bookshelf Speakers with the THOR 10.6 Subwoofer is a dream bundle because they were designed to work together.

In the design stage of the THOR 10.6, Dr Gosnell created a Merlin Mode DSP setting which sees the SUB roll off around 70hz allowing it, at the flick of a switch (located on the rear of the Thor) to blend perfectly with the Merlin’s tight bass response, delivering a seamless bass extension of another 1.5 octaves. This combination offers some serious competition to much more expensive floor standing speakers, and at a RRP of $2799.00 this combination packs a lot of punch for your money to those who like it loud or soft.

Check out this amazing Australian company @ www.richter.com.au

THE NITTY GRITTY DIRT BAND & FRIENDS

WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN United Artists

T

he O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack was a revelation to my generation. It introduced many of us to the traditional music behind American folk and country; and for many of us it was an introduction to T Bone Walker and Gillian Welch, two of the most influential figures in contemporary American roots music.

Nearly thirty years prior to O Brother, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band set out to do exactly the same thing – introduce audiences to those seminal folk and country music artists and songs. However, they did so by actually involving as many of those original artists as they could. The resulting triple album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken, was successful beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. It not only involved legends like Earl Scruggs, Doc Watson, Roy Acuff, and Mother Maybelle Carter with a new generation of musicians and listeners, it did so with utmost integrity and respect. It was also commercially successful and crucial to the careers of many of the artists involved.

Though undertaken in the early ‘70s, the recordings on Will The Circle sound much older. Jon McEuen and his brother Bill, who produced the album, were determined to make the recordings as authentic and reverential to the original artists as possible. Recordings were made live to two track tape with minimal takes. Studio dialogue was also recorded to tape. Of course, this flew against the trend of more elaborate multi-track recording taking flight in the ‘70s and is still how artists like David Rawlings and Gillian Welch record. Which is relevant because Will The Circle was recorded at the Woodland studios, 1011 Woodland Street East Nashville, the very site now owned by Welch and Rawlings.

The way Nitty Gritty Dirt Band approached the project proved how genuinely reverential they were towards the music and this helped attract contributors. Nitty Gritty banjo and mandolin player John McEuen approached Earl Scruggs about a possible collaboration in 1971. Scruggs turned out to be a fan of McEuen’s playing (Nitty Gritty had recorded Scruggs’ ‘Randy Lynn Ragg’), and his approval not only

got the project started, but certainly helped to attract more of his peers and once the likes of Doc Watson and Maybelle Carter were on board, its credibility was assured. Although Bill Monroe reportedly refused to take part and Roy Acuff, who infamously labelled the band, “a bunch of long-haired West Coast boys,” took some convincing.

McEuen recalled that when Acuff did turn up he was sceptical and asked to listen to what had already been recorded before giving his approval. Acuff ended up recording lead vocals to four of the album’s central songs: ‘The Precious Jewel’, ‘Wreck On The Highway’, ‘Pins and Needles In My Heart’, and Hank Williams’ ‘I Saw The Light’.

Alongside Acuff, Watson, Carter and Scruggs, Jimmy “King Of Bluegrass” Martin is everywhere on Will The Circle.. The originator of the “high lonesome” sound is in clear voice on bluegrass blueprints like ‘Sunny Side Of The Mountain’ and ‘Losin’ You Might Be The Best Thing Yet’. Both of these recordings feature exquisite fiddle playing from Vassar Clements. Both Martin and Clements kick-started their careers with Bill Monroe but Clements struggled throughout the ‘60s and Will The Circle was instrumental in his renaissance, leading to work with the Grateful Dead, Jimmy Buffett and the recording of his first solo album.

Martin’s ‘You Don’t Know My Mind’ is an album highlight, the only track to feature the full Nitty Gritty Dirt Band rhythm section whilst still managing to sound entirely traditional. Indeed, despite the elite company, the Dirt Band players never sound out of their depth in either technique or style.

Will The Circle is also significant for Doc Watson and Merle Travis (after whom Watson had named his son) meeting for the first time, a classic moment of mutual admiration caught on tape. Watson praises Travis’s “coalmining” record as a masterpiece and here Travis’s ‘Dark As A Dungeon’ is deep and spooky and ‘I Am A Pilgrim” reaches back into eternity.

Two later sequels to Will The Circle Be Unbroken were produced, earning Grammy Awards. But really, it’s all here on the original… the songs, the playing, the recording, and the bridging of two generations.

By the time O Brother was recorded, nearly all the original protagonists captured on Will The Circle had passed away.

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and incoherent in lesser hands. The results, achieved within seven days, provided not only a landmark Australian album of its time but a work of such originality and imagination as to render it timeless.

Consisting of only five songs built around extended musical passages, the album, on first listen, didn’t appear to have much commercial appeal, but on further investigation the innovative, challenging and ultimately satisfying combination of Rudd’s surreal lyrics and adventurous arrangements fleshed out by the peerless musicianship of the band resulted in a top five album.

Billy Pinnell

Interestingly, Rudd chose not to include the nation’s number one single ‘I’ll Be Gone’ on the album based on what he considered to be its incompatibility with the remaining material.

SPECTRUM

SPECTRUM PART ONE Aztec

Des Cowley’s excellent review in March/April’s Rhythms of Craig Horne’s book I’ll Be Gone: Mike Rudd, Spectrum and How One Song Captured a Generation inspired me to share with you my thoughts on Spectrum’s first album.

Formed in 1969 by New Zealand born Mike Rudd, Spectrum earned an awesome reputation among fans and fellow musicians on the strength of their remarkable debut Spectrum Part One. Rudd’s growth as a songwriter/arranger/musician began to blossom when, after the break-up of his band The Chants who called it a day six months after crossing the Tasman to try their luck in the big smoke, he was hired in 1967 to play bass in Ross Wilson’s post Pink Finks band The Party Machine and in the experimental The Sons Of The Vegetal Mother in which he reverted to his more familiar rhythm guitar. Wilson’s influence would become apparent on more than one occasion during the recording of Spectrum Part One. When Wilson left for London midway through 1969 to work with Procession, Rudd hand-picked the disparate musicians who would become Spectrum. Bill Putt a guitarist from local R&B band The Lost Souls was hired to play bass, organist Lee Neale arrived via pop band Nineteen 87, 17-year-old newcomer Mark Kennedy who had trained in classical piano for six years was the drummer with Rudd contributing guitar, harmonica, recorder and lead vocals.

After road testing their repertoire for more than a year the four musicians were ready to record. Recording live in the studio each musician provided vital contributions to material that was so unusual it could easily have become rambling 70

Side one of Spectrum Part One consisted of only two songs, ‘Make Your Stash’, written by Wilson during his London sojourn would be recorded a year later by Daddy Cool for inclusion on their second album Sex, Dope, Rock ‘n’ Roll: Teenage Heaven.

The Spectrum arrangement slows the song down allowing Rudd to take centre stage. A distinctive vocalist, his succinct delivery of Wilson’s clever, contemporary lyric is spot on while his guitar playing, heavy chording over Neale’s swirling organ intro, single notes played on the bass strings emphasising the melody, a raunchy solo as the tempo picks up mid song hit the bullseye every time.

The other track on side one is the epic ‘Fiddling Fool’ clocking in at 12 and a half minutes. An atmospheric piece, its gentle introduction featuring melodic bass from Putt, Neale’s hushed organ (he favoured the Hammond M model over the more popular Hammond B3) and Kennedy’s busy drum fills lead to a glorious Rudd guitar solo, his finger style technique creating an ambience and feel that was unique to Spectrum.

The mostly instrumental track is further sustained by a hypnotic organ excursion and exhilarating flourishes from the prodigious Kennedy.

Rather than follow such a long track with a shorter more accessible song, Rudd began side two with the nine minute classically influenced ‘Superbody’.

Its hymn- like quality was inspired by Rudd’s teenage experience as a choir boy in New Zealand though it’s not clear if the song’s out of body lyric had anything to do with the church. The song’s mid-tempo opening leaves plenty of room for Kennedy to once again enhance his reputation as the most gifted drummer of his time,skitting, caressing, tapping, whacking in breathtaking flurries over the rhythm players’ incessant riffing.

Just when it seems like a guitar break is beckoning, Rudd pulls a rabbit out of his hat with a recorder solo.

Remembering a tin whistle played by Wilson in a Party Machine song, Rudd found that instrument difficult to master so he learned how to play a recorder instead. His solos on that instrument (the album’s only overdubs,) added to the incomparable Spectrum sound.

The remaining two tracks ‘Drifting’ written in the studio by Rudd and featuring Crosby, Stills & Nash- like vocal harmonies and ‘Mumbles I Wonder Why’ - a combination of two older songs, one written with Ross Hannaford during Rudd’s Party Machine days - complete the album on an up-beat vibe.

After four subsequent albums Rudd knocked Spectrum on the head in December 1973.

Craig Horne’s book will bring you up to date with Rudd’s sustained career that thankfully includes live performances with the current Spectrum line-up.

BY KEITH GLASS MARSHALL CHAPMAN

ME, I’M FEELIN’ FREE EPIC 34422 released 1977

In the 60’s/70’s/80’s major record labels worldwide maintained a massive album release schedule. Only a comparatively few artists scored a hit, others became ‘cult’ classics. Beyond that exists an underbelly of almost totally ignored work, (much never reissued) that time has been kind to. This is a page for the crate diggers.

For men the maverick singer/songwriter movement in Nashville started to build up speed in the early ‘70s, most notably with Kris Kristofferson but really too many others to list here. The ‘ladies’ had to wait another half decade for the chance of a comparative iconic game changer and here she is. Unfortunately, the game remained much the same but that hasn’t stopped Marshall Chapman - she remains a force to be reckoned with to this day.

She finally hit financial pay dirt in the late 80’s with a ditty called Betty’s Bein’ Bad, a big hit for the otherwise fairly forgettable Sawyer Brown. The song is of course about her. For years she rocked where others rolled but could also turn stone country whenever it took her fancy. This first album sets it all out, playing

the game to some extent but most likely sounding even better today with hindsight of what was and what could have been. As Cowboy Jack Clement, Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser and others - even Canadian folkie/Cowpoke Ian Tyson note on the back cover here was a woman truly worthy of being a Highwayperson.

There’s something about Marshall’s vocals and song themes akin to Bobby Gentry Southern Gothic in work such as Somewhere South Of Macon/Five O’Clock In The Morning/ Between Carolina And Texas. Chapman penned (or co-wrote) all but one of the songs on the album; Allen Reynolds Ready For The Times To Get Better – clearly producer Ben Tallent was hedging bets with a near sure thing ring-in and sure enough the song became a number one hit a year later, alas not for Chapman but Crystal Gayle - whom Reynolds was producing at the time.

From this future viewpoint it is easy to dismiss Chapman’s chances of mainstream acceptance as being a tad less than zero but give thanks for the process that captured a maverick wild child let loose into the heart of ‘the system’ and listen to her bask in the glory of such wonderful musicians as Reggie Young, Pig Robbins, Norbert Putnam and Jerry Carrigan playing her songs the most concise/ultimate way they could have been at the time, most likely forever. The feminine vocal chorus (some future stars involved) are no slouches either – most played on many hits and even more misses but are here sounding like they gave it all to a sister.

It was all on Marshall to carry on from this artistically auspicious beginning and in a fashion she has, flirting with other labels and finally establishing her own ‘Tall Girl’ – often donning an electric guitar, writing and performing largely her own material to audiences large and small, releasing 14 albums and mainly just being herself. With a lack of false airs/graces, just the nitty-gritty no nonsense soul of a ‘true’ badour (just made that one up)! She’s been a lot of places - but she ain’t goin’ nowhere, just where she belongs, out kickin’ ass. There is truly no one to compare her to; she’s a true freak of nature and this album is where it started. I invite you to dive into her catalogue and unlike many of her ilk (if she has any), it’s mostly all out there and mostly all good!

Revisionism often paints a low sales performance first album as tentative or tepid.

The artist herself has mentioned lack of control over her major label work as a factor/ failure to ignite a chart-topping career. I beg to differ on this one. Show me another Nashville based female artist exploring this Blues/Soul/ roots connection as efficiently as Chapman did in the mid-‘70s – there just isn’t one. Her debut remains vibrant because it stayed outside the mainstream – the hat Chapman dons on the cover isn’t being thrown ‘in the ring’ – she was the real deal forging a new way forward.

Perhaps the missing link between Patsy Cline/ Loretta Lynn and Shania Twain!

Hey, go find you some M.C you’ll be glad you did!

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UNDERWATER IS WHERE THE ACTION IS

By Trevor J. Leeden

By Christopher Hollow MICKY DOLENZ

DOLENZ SINGS NESMITH 7A

Fell in love with The Monkees thanks to Saturday morning TV re-runs in the ’80s.

Loved Nesmith’s beanie and adored Micky ever since I saw him strap on roller-skates and lead a bunch of kids like the Pied Piper in The Monkees on Tour (Season 1, Episode 32). He looks other-worldly, rake thin with ironed hair, with a face so angular it’s like it’s been drawn in a Hanna-Barbera cartoon style. Cut to now and this is basically a modern Monkees record and a continuation of The Monkees renaissance since the deaths of Davy Jones and Peter Tork. Micky singing Mike. Produced by the Nez’s son, Christian. Even the record company has a Monkees reference, 7A. One nod elsewhere - the concept and the artwork are inspired by the 1970 album, Nilsson Sings Newman.

In an impressive move, the arrangements all try for something different to the more famous versions of these tracks. For instance, ‘Propinquity (I’ve Just Begun to Care)’ is more power-pop than country rock while ‘Different Drum’ is a rave-up compared to its original incarnation. The album goes heavier than you’d imagine – ‘Little Red Rider’ gets a Lenny Kravitz style workout, and ‘Circle Sky’ is in the vein of a Page-Plant eastern epic.

The most successful takes include ‘Don’t Wait For Me’, a neglected Monkees number from Instant Replay; ‘Only Bound’, an early70s gem which shows off Micky’s voice at its best and ‘Marie’s Theme’, from Nesmith’s 1974 high concept album, The Prison.

great taste – one of the first to recognise the songwriting talents of giants like Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Sandy Denny.

She also wrote great songs, too, like ‘Song for Judith (Open the Door)’ and ‘Since You Asked’. Here the now 82-year-old Grand Dame of Folk revisits/re-records some of her back pages including the Richard Fariña number, ‘Pack Up Your Sorrows’ (better than Judy’s 1964 original) and Joni’s ‘Chelsea Morning’ (not better than Judy’s 1969 original). She also performs an engaging duet with Joan Baez on Joan’s infamous Bob Dylan tryst, ‘Diamonds and Rust’. But the highlight of the set is a ballad that Collins should’ve had a crack at in her prime, ‘White Bird’, originally done by San Francisco’s folkpsych band, It’s a Beautiful Day.

WIDOWSPEAK

HONEYCHURCH Captured Tracks

As Judy Collins has done many times throughout her career, she sings like it was written especially for her. The opening stanza: ‘White bird in a golden cage/On a winter’s day/In the rain’ reminds me of the great Ernest Hemingway joke: ‘Why did the chicken cross the road? To die. In the rain.’

WILLIE NELSON TEXAS WILLIE

Sunset Blvd Records/Planet

on Whispers And Sighs he has introduced a smoky-voiced singer whose star is surely on the rise.

playing second fiddle to a phalanx of high-profile saxophonists; a very enjoyable ride indeed.

PEGGY SEEGER

al themes. A song cycle that explores migration, travel and movement, it is hard to imagine there will be a better folk album this year.

TONY JOE WHITE

Red Grape/Planet

SARAH JAROSZ

Easy Eye Sound/Planet

FIRST FAREWELL

WORLD ON THE GROUND

SMOKE FROM THE CHIMNEY

Rounder/Planet

The sprightly 88yo still churns out records of variable quality on a regular basis, but none of his recent releases scream out “essential” like this fabulous 2-disc package does. The 40 songs bring together obscurities and demos from the late 1950’s, before Willie signed up to future fame and fortune with Liberty and RCA, and their significance cannot be understated. His youthful voice is country purity, and the songs are a three-chord gateway into one of the great songwriting careers.

The thing is, after listening to these early demos of ‘Man With The Blues’, ‘The Storm Has Just Begun’, and many more, it’s patently obvious he was always going to become a legend.

DAVID OLNEY & ANANA KAYE

Should the 24th solo album by the revered octogenarian indeed be her farewell to recording, then it must be said that her parting shot is a triumph. Still blessed with the crystalline voice that has mesmerised legions of folkies on both sides of the Atlantic for seven decades, Seeger’s three children not only provide mellifluous accompaniment but share the writing on a batch of typically uncompromising songs that address womanhood, the social media scourge, depression, and suicide. Peggy Seeger’s music has never shied away from confronting society’s woes, she deserves to be held in similar esteem as her siblings Pete and Mike, and husband Ewan MacColl.

Whilst Jarosz has drawn rave reviews as a member of the all-female trio I’m With Her, it’s the multi-instrumentalist’s solo albums that are the real jewels in her musical crown. Her latest is terrific, rich in melody and storytelling of the highest order. The highlights are the three character observations, ‘Eve’, ‘Johnny’ and the wonderful ‘Maggie’, a poignant reflection on a woman yearning wanderlust (“drive across the desert in a blue Ford Escape, hopefully this car will live up to its name”). This is an evocative, folk-tinged delight.

Schoolkids Records/Planet

TEYR

ESTREN

A LITTLE DRIVING MUSIC Artistry/Planet

WHISPERS AND SIGHS

BRIAN BROMBERG

The music world was poorer when the Swamp Fox passed, but thankfully his son Jody and uber fan Dan Auerbach have taken these unheard voice and guitar demos and produced a fitting career postscript. White was a singular talent who steadfastly followed his own star, and these nine songs beautifully encapsulate the funky, country/soul groove he was renowned for. A project undertaken for all the right reasons, Smoke From The Chimney is a timely footnote that only serves to enhance White’s legacy.

ROBERT FINLEY

SHARECROPPER’S SON Easy Eye Sound/Planet

Sleight Of Hand

THE BUILDING

INDIANOLA PIZZA DOUGH Peppermint

JUDY COLLINS

WHITE BIRD: ANTHOLOGY OF FAVOURITES

Cleopatra My first girlfriend’s mother looked just like Judy Collins off her 1963 album, Judy Collins 3. Same haircut and piercing blue eyes (always asking hard questions). It meant I felt a strange kinship with Judy, which wasn’t hard. She always had an incredible voice and 72

warranted a detailed cheat sheet to read along as the music plays, it’s Indianola Pizza Dough. Stepping back a moment, the band is The Building, which is basically a vehicle for talented Ohio multi-instrumentalist, Anthony LaMarca, who has spent the best part of the last decade as part of The War on Drugs collective. So why do we need a map here? Well, Indianola Pizza Dough is a concept record centred around a farrago of found sound, polkas and waltzes mixed with snatches of chat, dazzling indie pop creations and deep-held memories. It’s all bound by the idea of a pizza shop, Margie’s Place, owned and run by LaMarca’s family in Youngstown, Ohio (in the heart the Rust Belt in the heart of America). Without context, the nostalgic dialogue, and the song choices like ‘Beautiful Ohio’ (based on Stephen Foster’s ‘Beautiful Dreamer’), old-time waltzes like ‘Adio Amico’ and the peppy two-step ‘Happy Times Polka’ come out of nowhere. But mixed with hyperemotional tunes like ‘Trying, Tired’ and ‘The Ballad of Indianola Ave’, it fires the imagination. Tied together, it’s a very good record. It would be a brilliant novel too.

The onset of streaming has made liner notes a dead artform. But if ever an album

This Honeychurch EP is of great interest to me. It feels like therapy. A couple bands covered on here, Dire Straits and R.E.M., are two that I haven’t made my peace with from my youth. I still definitely have unresolved issues. Dire Straits, even now I feel I’m trapped in my folks Holden Commodore on a very long drive and the dog’s just been sick in the back after finding and eating leftover roadside quiche. R.E.M.? I haven’t even begun to get to the bottom of my feelings there. Anyway, New York’s Widowspeak have covered Dire Straits (‘Romeo & Juliet’) and R.E.M. (‘The One I Love’) - two of the biggest songs of their respective eras/ careers. And it doesn’t sound so bad. Maybe I’m maturing. Maybe I’m ready to accept my younger self.

Within hours of completing the final mix of this fine record, the world lost David Olney. The sense of loss permeates the fabric of each song on this collaboration between the grizzled Americana songwriter and the Nashville based Georgian songbird. Kaye’s Eastern European folk leanings seamlessly mesh with the Olney’s wizened Americana fuelled observations on friendship, love, and mortality. Whilst David Olney’s star may have finally dimmed,

The new breed of British folk and acoustic music purveyors bring a sense of heightened energy and dexterity to their recordings, and this fabulous trio (TEYR is Cornish for “three”) are no exception. An astonishing fusion of accordian, fiddle, uillean pipes, whistles and guitar, Estren is an explosion of jigs and reels, of lilting ballads and instrumental exhortations that breathtakingly intertwines contemporary and tradition-

Set the cruise control to the legal limit and enjoy the ride. This is no pyrotechnic pedal to the metal road trip from the ace of bass, instead Bromberg and his stellar cast of guests – all recorded in lockdown isolation from one another – push the radio pre-set for a dose of cool running “jazz/ blues/funk”. Propelled by Bromberg’s trademark rubber bass lines, the brass section steers each tune through an ever-changing soundscape that finds Bromberg’s bass predominantly

He may have waited until his mid-sixties before becoming an overnight sensation in his native Louisiana, but the blind blues/ soul journeyman is making up for lost time. Finley’s autobiographical third album is tinged in gospel, informed by New Orleans R&B, all adding gravitas to his hard luck stories on the road to ultimate redemption. Like other latecomers such as Charles Bradley and Sharon Jones, it’s Finley’s gritty vocals, channelling Al Green and Curtis Mayfield, that carry the day on an outstanding record.

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WAITIN’ AROUND TO DIE

By Chris Familton

Twang & Telecasters: Country Music and the Electric Guitar C

ountry music has been associated with the acoustic guitar since it’s distant origins in the early 1900s but when players began to pick up the electric guitar and incorporate its louder and more versatile sound into their live performances and recordings from the 1930s, it became an integral instrument in the genre’s sound and evolution as it diversified and then reassembled into what many now call Americana music.

Though there were traces of electric guitar in use as far back as the late 1920s, a pivotal moment came when Gibson officially introduced its ES-150 six-string model in 1936 and Western swing acts in particular began to use the instrument, creating an even more distinctive sound for groups such as Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. Once Les Paul pioneered the first solid-body guitar in 1940, which solved the issues of feedback and sustain, the future and unlimited potential of the electric guitar was revealed.

In the early 1950s Fender began producing what would become their iconic Telecaster, the world’s most commercially successful guitar. For country music it became a mainstay of the twang sound by way of its bright, rich cutting tone – a crucial feature which allowed players to cut through the noise of a roadhouse or honky-tonk bar or as part of a larger ensemble.

Across the last eight decades the electric guitar player as often become a deified figure, placed on a pedestal due to the speed and dexterity of their playing. While that reached its ridiculous peak of spotlit solos in rock and blues, country music and its evolution through folk-rock and onto the more diverse musical plains of Americana more often than not placed the electric guitar within the song, serving the music. Jimmy Bryant and Joe Maphis, Albert Lee and Link Wray, Sonny Landreth, Richard Thompson and more recently Jason Isbell – those players and a multitude of others have added nuance, craft and imagination to the world of electric guitar playing.

Two of the early trailblazers in country music were undoubtedly Chet Atkins and Les Paul, both of them incorporating elements of country, blues, jazz and rock ’n’ roll in their playing styles, making them household names in the process. But as the commercial recording industry changed in the 60s, a new generation of guitarists began to establish themselves, their versatility making them in-demand players across styles and genres.

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James Burton made his names as sidekick to Rick Nelson, Elvis Presley and John Denver and also playing on albums by artists such as J.J. Cale, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt, Joni Mitchell and Gillian Welch. Over in Los Angeles, Ry Cooder was another guitarist who everyone wanted on their albums. With a range that ran from Tex-Mex to the blues, folk and country, his versatility was his calling card and took him from Bill Monroe and Doc Watson to Captain Beefheart, The Rolling Stones, a rich foray into Cuban music and a long string of his own successful solo albums.

Up through the 1970s, standout guitar players mostly built their reputations as session players. As a member of the Wrecking Crew, Glen Campbell played on an estimated 60 studio albums including those by Merle Haggard, The Everly Brothers, Gene Clark and Elvis Presley, before embarking on what became an illustrious solo career through the 1970s.

Though his early influences came from country music, Steve Cropper made his name as part of the Stax Records house band, playing on iconic R&B, soul and electric blues releases (Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, the Blues Brothers) – many of which would become key building blocks of the contemporary Americana sound.

Likewise, from the 70s through to the 90s, Bonnie Raitt was leading the way for female electric blues players in what had been a maledominated musical world.

Here in Australia we’re are lucky to have some incredible modern guitarists playing country, blues, rockabilly and Americana music.

Players such as Dr Zane Banks (Cruisin’ Deuces), Jeff Lang, Tommy Emmanuel, Pat Capocci and Emily A. Smith provide just some of the many highlights in a rich and versatile scene that both honours the past and takes those classic sounds and recasts them in new and exciting ways for contemporary audiences.

By Denise Hylands

T

ributes and reviving old sounds seems to be the theme this issue. As well as so much great new music coming our way.

The loss of John Prine was one that hit a lot of people hard. He was one of the greatest songwriters and storytellers had many artists paying tribute to a man who was a huge influence. Broken Hearts & Dirty Windows: Songs of John Prine - Vol. 2 is due to be released on October 8 and it will feature many of our favourite artists interpreting their favourite John Prine songs. Already released are songs by Sturgill Simpson (‘Paradise’) and Brandi Carlile (‘I Remember Everything’).

Following on from Vol. 1 released in 2010 which featured Justin Townes Earle, Old Crow Medicine Show, Drive By Truckers, and many more. Vol. 2’s release will coincide with a series of concerts to pay tribute to Prine - You Got Gold: Celebrating The Life & Songs Of John Prine - which will happen across multiple Nashville venues on numerous nights in the second week of October, also incorporating JP’s birthday on the October 10.

Talking of tributes, another great recent release comes from Shannon McNally. In a career spanning some 20 years, McNally has just released her tribute or should I say a readaption of a collection of Waylon Jennings songs called The Waylon Sessions (songs from one of the most authentic Country music outlaws performed from the perspective of a woman). It works so well that you almost hear these classic country songs in a different way. McNally: “There’s a feminine perspective hidden somewhere inside each of these songs, though. My job was to find a way to tap into that and draw it out.” Recorded with an all-star band and featuring special guests

Jessi Colter (Jennings wife of 30 years), Buddy Miller, Rodney Crowell and Lukas Nelson. This could easily be one of my favs of the year.

Teddy Thompson, son of folk-rock legends Richard and Linda Thompson and Jenni Muldaur, daughter of folk icons Geoff & Maria Muldaur, team up to pay their respect to some of the classic country duos of our time.

The first of this series of four song EP’s is Teddy & Jenni Do Porter & Dolly: A Tribute to the Duets of Porter Wagoner & Dolly Parton.

Recorded live during their appearance on David Mansfield’s Fallout Shelter Streaming concert series. Available as digital download and later to be released on vinyl. Yet to come is a tribute to George Jones & Tammy Wynette and Conway Twitty & Loretta Lynn.

Out on Fallout Shelter Records.

Reviving old time sounds is something artists have been doing forever, and continue to do. With the likes of Gillian Welch & David Rawlings and the recent release by Jimbo Mathus and Andrew Bird, old time country, folk and blues with a modern twist is reminiscent and refreshing. JP Harris, known for his honky tonk flavoured sounds, takes a step back in time to revive 10 traditional Appalachian tunes. With good friend, Chance McCoy (Old Crow Medicine Show) on fiddle and Harris on one of his own handmade fretless banjos, this project is called JP Harris’ Dreadful Wind & Rain. Aptly titled they offer a stripped back authentic dark old-time sound. Recorded in McCoy’s West Virginia barn studio. Harris says: “This is old time music; it’s not polished or pitch-perfect, it’s not tailored for radio airplay … this is me at my truest and rawest, singing songs of death, deceit, and the devil from the 18th and 19th centuries … but it’s honest.”

Another new discovery is multiinstrumentalists Grace van’t Hof and Conner Vlietstra who are Sinner Friends, committed to preserving and progressing country music, not just replicating it. Drawing on their collective backgrounds in bluegrass and oldtime, ragtime, vintage country, and gospel they share a special kinship that captures the essence of blood harmonies offering interpretations of forgotten classics and classic original songs. Their latest release is an EP titled Miss You. This is really something.

Exceptional musicianship and harmony vocals evocative of the great singing duos of another time. Old time in sound and contemporary in attitude is the one and only real deal artist Sierra Ferrell. Having released three songs from her highly anticipated debut for Rounder Records, Long Time

Coming, will be released on 20th August.

Really looking forward to this one and it’s definitely time for her talent to shine bright.

Some releases that I’d like to highly recommend are: 29 year old Texan, Vincent Neil Emerson who has just released his second album. He channels the straightforward truth-telling and resonance of his songwriting heroes in Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, and Steve Earle into something fresh and distinctly his own.

Catching the attention of Rodney Crowell who signed up to record and produce his second, self-titled, album. Charlie Marie, a native of Rhode Island has just released her debut full length album, Ramble On. Beginning her country music quest at the age of 10, when her vocal sound was compared to that of Patsy Cline. This is an album full of classic and modern country.

Hiss Golden Messenger, took the time of 2020 to go in search of peace. What it got him was a new album of songs reflecting on the past 5 years of his life. Quietly Blowing It, is country Americana with loads of soul groove.

Guests include Buddy Miller, the Goldsmith brothers (Dawes) and his oldest musical buddy Scott Hirsch amongst others.

I couldn’t go without mentioning one of my all time favs. A brand new album out from one of the leaders of the alt-country movement, Son Volt. The new album, Electro Melodies, guarantees what you would expect from the great Jay Farrar. That voice, greatly written songs and a look at the world through Farrar’s eyes. Out late July.

Other recommendations of new and forthcoming releases: Rodney Crowell - Triage Son Volt - Electro Melodier Jenny Don’t & The Spurs - Fire On The Ridge Jamestown Revival Fireside With Louis L’Amour Bill & The Belles - Happy Again K. C. Jones - Queen Of The In Between Ric Robertson - Getting Over Our Love The Flatlanders - Treasure Of Love Leah Blevins - First Time Feeling Aaron D’Arcy - Good To See The Girls Yola - Stand For Myself The Deep Dark Woods - Changing Faces Watchhouse (FKA Mandolin Orange) – Watchhouse 75

ALBUM FEATURE

CHANGES

Rodney Crowell makes his most ominous and musically adventurous album to date.

By Brian Wise RODNEY CROWELL

TRIAGE RC1 Records

T

o get a sense of where Rodney Crowell fits into the Nashville songwriting Pantheon you only have to watch the recent documentary on Guy Clark, Without Getting Killed or Caught. He is in there as an important element along with Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle. So, it is hardly surprising that he might come up with a great batch of new songs, partly spurred on by the pandemic.

However, those songs find themselves on a new album that is probably Crowell’s most musically adventurous to date.

The new album had its genesis a couple of years ago after he recorded the album Texas in which the Lone Star state was the main character. Over the past year Crowell has put together Song From Quarantine featuring a brilliant cast to raise money for the Music Health Alliance which assists the members of the music community. He has also appeared on the great new Shannon McNally album The Waylon Sessions (they have worked together before). Now he gets to concentrate on his own new album.

Crowell enlisted producer Dan Knobler, who has worked with Bela Fleck & Abigail Washburn, Feist, Kelsey Waldon, Chris Thile and others, and now lives and works in Nashville at his own studio Goosehead Palace. Knobler brings a new perspective to Crowell’s songs.

“I started writing the songs before the pandemic,” explains Crowell.

“The upside of the pandemic, for me, was that it slowed the process down to where I pulled some songs off the album and replaced them and was recording one particular tune as late as October 2020, after I wrote it. So, the upside of the pandemic was that I had more time to consider which songs really were the best combinations. Four or five songs I just booted out altogether.”

“Our first session started with Larry Klein and Steuart Smith and Jerry Roe,” says Crowell. “John Jarvis, lovely piano player. It’s a combination of superb musicians with really fine sensibilities. Dedicated musicians and also funny, funny people. So, it’s a riot. It’s a riot but, at the same time, it’s very serious musicianship.” Two Australian guitarists Jed Hughes and Joe Robinson were involved in the arranging while John Paul White and Ruth Moody also added backing vocals on some songs.

“We actually co-produced it,” he adds of Knobler’s role. “So, Dan came up through New York City, through the Clive Davis School of Record Production at New York University. But he was the kind of kid that had built his own studio in his upper West Side apartment, or his parents’ apartment. He made his bedroom into a recording studio at age 13 or 14. So, it’s always been forefront for him to record music

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and to make music. And he’s a really good guitar player. But he’s a techie, a gear hound. We have a lot of vintage equipment and he knows that; he uses it really well. Very talented, very creative, very well-schooled musicologist. Knows music from the ‘30s, folk music and blues from the ‘30s and ‘40s and forties. He knows his stuff and he’s a great collaborator.”

If the title of Crowell’s new album Triage was not enough indication of what is within then the brooding and ominous first single ‘Something Has To Change’ certainly is. Crowell says that the song is the result of two years constant revision, spurred on by songs on the subject already written by the likes of Sam Cooke, Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Hank Williams. Crowell sings ‘we can’t live in fear like this’ before a trombone solo sounds an alarm.

“The directions I gave to the very talented lad who played it, I said, “Look. Get a stopper and imagine Louis Armstrong trumpet solo, and play the blues Louis Armstrong style on your trombone, with a plunger muting the bell. And this kid, man, I so admire him. He really delivered exactly what I asked him to do.”

The album begins with, ‘Don’t Leave Me Now,’ which starts as a quiet confession, then moves into more uptempo declaration. It’s an interesting juxtaposition and if the album title suggests some sort of urgency in dealing with casualties, then Crowell begins with his own treatment.

“Well, as a prayer, it’s like, Hey, don’t leave me now,” he explains. “ As like, I definitely buggered this. I’ve told a lie and I know I’m going to get busted for it. So, I’ve got to get to work on trying to calm the storm before it blows me away.”

“There was a song by Bright Eyes some time ago called ‘The President Talks to God’ and for a moment there, I was tempted to call the song ‘The President Talks to God Again.’ But it wasn’t about the president. It was about me and hey, I told a lie, but I confess before I got busted and it turned out okay. I’d have to say that it was born out of when I said, ‘I’m not really going to go on with this like this. I’ve been a liar. It’s like, ‘Hang on - I opened it up and blammo, it turned into something else.”

The most unusual song on the album – and one of the most unusual he has ever recorded - is ‘Transient Global Amnesia Blues’ with Crowell talking in the lyrics about a ‘random freak of nature’ and ruminating on life. It was spurred by Crowell himself suffering a bout of amnesia.

“One of the most unusual circumstances in my life gave birth to that song,” he recalls. “Typical October 9 and what would have been John Lennon’s 80th birthday, I was out for a walk. I have hiking trails where I live. And I came in and puttered around in the back and then went in to make some tea, to have an arranging session with my two Aussie

guitar players, Jed Hughes and Joe Robinson. They were on their way over and we were going to arrange a song that we were going to record the next day.

“I was making tea and then the next thing I know, I wake up in an MRI in the local hospital, in the emergency MRI, and was diagnosed with this thing called transient global amnesia. Basically, I lost three plus hours where I was not on the planet and I have no memory of it. I knew nothing about this situation. I learned, after the diagnosis, 98% of the time it never happens again. We don’t know why it happens. But they kept me overnight and the next morning my daughter sent me a text message with a photograph of a sunflower growing on a raft on the Thames River, from the mid -1950s. And I’ll admit that my brain was particularly scrambled after that situation, but I found it to be very cooperative for making this song. I had the song finished by the next day and we recorded it two days later, right here where I’m sitting.”

Crowell says that Triage is his most personal album to date but songs such as ‘Transient Global Amnesia’ also have a wider meaning.

“I think so,” he agrees, “and it’s a very personal experience but it’s a global narrative: all the way from the ice caps down to Borneo and down in your neck of the woods. To me, the song is just encapsulating something that’s very hard to articulate, which is this experience we’re having and these lives we’re having. It can be quite mundane but it also can be magnificent. That’s what I was swinging for; the real magnificent from bridges that collapse where people die and to a Roman soldier running alongside Jesus Christ. I must admit it was a very joyful experience writing the song, although it could be perceived as quite dark.

“Just the way it was composed and the overall mood that I was in post MRI, it was just I had access to emotion that was a bit foreign to me. I wasn’t quite sure who I was for a couple of days and I was keen to use that to my own advantage. Which may be sort of what you’re getting around, is this is not typical Rodney. And I can tell you that it wasn’t typical. In no way were those couple of three or four days at all typical.”

Another song that shows the musical variety on Triage is the gently rocking ‘I’m All About Love’ which features a distorted guitar effect behind some intriguing lyrics.

“Well, that would be your countryman, Joe Robinson,” says Crowell about the guitar playing. “We recorded that right here where I’m sitting and we put the amp down the hallway. Joe is just so gifted on the instrument. There’s nothing he can’t play. He plays guitar the way people breathe. It was him. I can claim no credit for that, other than I was smart enough to know that he was a man that needed to be on the session.”

Do we hear in that song the following lyrics correctly, ‘I love Vladimir Putin and Benedict Arnold and I’m happy to say I even love Donald’ amongst a catalogue of affections?

“You heard right,” he laughs. “And you may ask, Now, why would I say that? I’m not a religious person and I don’t claim any religion but I am interested in Buddhism and I’m interested in religion from the perspective of how has it become so distorted from the original spirituality behind articulating this monotheism? So, there is study that if you see the divinity, you should train yourself to see the divinity in another human being. My thought about that is, ‘Wow, if we could do that, we wouldn’t be so divided on culture, on politics and whatever. Religion, race, all of it. So, I set about to write a song in which I claim to love everybody.

“And to some degree I do. I mean, there’s a part of me somewhere that’s wise enough to know that Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, in the same paragraph or the same verse with Greta Thunberg and Jessica Biel and the devil, and to claim that I love them all, is taking the high road. And that’s what my intention was with humor, with that song, to put forward that on my best days I know how to take the high road. On my worst days, I don’t like anybody. But I can’t say that I hate anyone. I don’t hate anyone. On my best days, I love almost everybody.

Triage is released in RC 1 Records on July 23.

“On my worst days, I don’t like anybody. But I can’t say that I hate anyone. I don’t hate anyone.

On my best days, I love almost everybody.”

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ALBUM FEATURE

Home’s Where The Heart Is

Dynamic duo takes comfort in old-time songs

By Tony Hillier RHIANNON GIDDENS WITH FRANCESCO TURRISI

THEY’RE CALLING ME HOME Nonesuch

New Album

Out August 20 Touring August - October For more information visit shanenicholson.com

If pandemic prompted albums recorded during lockdown are ten-a-dime, They’re Calling Me Home must be worth a fistful of dollars.

Recorded in Ireland, where Rhiannon Giddens and her Italian partner-in-rhyme and life, multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, have been domiciled since COVID-19 reared its ugly head, it’s an outstanding set that references the folk music of their respective homelands as well as their host country while invoking the spectre of death that the plague has unleashed on the world at large.

Giddens’ fifth long-player since leaving the celebrated Carolina Chocolate Drops and her sophomore duo album with Turrisi consolidates the artist’s status as a worthy successor to America’s long-reigning ‘Queen of Folk’ Joan Baez, who has announced her retirement.

Any doubts about Giddens being the commanding female voice on the contemporary roots music scene are blown away by her blinding brilliance on They’re Calling Me Home.

Lent added resonance by the Black Lives Matter movement, the diva’s rich tone, impressive range and passionate singing even succeeds in pumping fresh life into some done-to-death spirituals.

At medium tempo, Giddens delivers Civil Rights anthem ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’ — recorded by the likes of Ella Fitzgerald (1967), Mavis Staples (2007) and the aforementioned Joan Baez — with the requisite gravitas, backed only by basic banjo strum, minimal fiddle and accordion wash.

With admirable audacity, she hums rather than sings the well-thumbed verses of ‘Amazing Grace’, which has been covered more conventionally by female luminaries like Mahalia Jackson (1948), Sister Rosetta Tharpe (1951) and Aretha Franklin (1972), and Baez (1976), of course. Simpatico backing from Turrisi’s frame drum and Emer Mayock’s wailing Irish uillean pipes helps puts a wonderfully fresh perspective on the hoary the gospel chestnut.

Frame drum also accompanies Giddens’ soaring reading of another staple of the American spiritual songbook, the gospel blues ‘O Death’. It even outstrips bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley’s revival of the emotive ballad in the Coen brothers’ hit 2000 movie O Brother, Where Art Thou.

Giddens’ singing is similarly impressive in her cover of ‘When I Was in My Prime’ — a folk song associated with the influential English band Pentangle — in which she supports herself on fiddle and banjo with Turrisi backing up on cello. Her operatic training surfaces in the impeccable enunciation, phrasing and sustain of her lovely reading of Monteverdi’s 17th century lament ‘Si Dolce l Tormento’ (Sweet Torment), sung entirely in Italian accompanied by her partner on cello banjo. Turrisi shares a delightful a cappella harmony duet in his native tongue with Giddens in close harmony on ‘Nenna Nenna’, a nursery rhyme that he composed for his daughter.

The singer sets the tone for the classics that follow with an outstanding rendition of folk music pioneer Alice Gerrard’s austere ballad ‘Calling Me Home’ that’s perfectly underpinned by her fiddle in lower register. Following the opening title track, and suitably contrasting, is a jaunty original song, ‘Avalon’, that incorporates African and Appalachian elements.

Enhanced by the titular Niwel Tsumbu’s Congo-styled acoustic guitar riff, ‘Niwel Goes To Town’ allows Turrisi to show his multi-instrumental skill. In the set’s other instrumental, the Celtic flavoured ‘Bully For You’, Emer Mayock’s flute leads the way. The Irish musician’s flute also plays a prominent role in ‘Black As Crow’.

Rhiannon Giddens has been thrust into the limelight over the past couple of years.

She stole the show at WOMADelaide 2020, shortly before the pandemic put paid to festivals, was profiled in the erudite New Yorker magazine, appeared on a Rhythms cover, and featured in Ken Burns’ brilliant Country Music series on PBS TV. She also received the inaugural Legacy of Americana Award at the Americana Awards & Honors, won a prestigious Macarthur Fellowship, composed her first opera and was named Artistic Director of the eminent Silk Road Ensemble, a collective previously led by the great Yo-Yo Ma. She truly is a roots musician for all seasons.

We await the announcement of this high achiever’s next venture with considerable interest.

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ALBUM FEATURE

ALBUM FEATURE

O’Rourke Has Truly Arrived

HAVE MERCY

Irish troubadour’s finest release

Natalie Bergman releases an album inspired by her response to a tragic event.

By Tony Hillier DECLAN O’ROURKE

ARRIVALS eastwest

Declan O’Rourke has been lauded by legends like the late John Prine and James Taylor and compatriots of the calibre of Christy Moore and Paul Brady and yet until relatively recently he’s been something of a well-kept secret.

The Irish singer-songwriter belatedly came to this reviewer’s attention with a stunning rendition of the traditional Aussie ballad ‘Moreton Bay’ on the ABC’s 2018 compilation album Exile, which comprised songs and tales of Irish Australia.

O’Rourke returns to Oz’s dark history with a song on his latest waxing. Prompted by the 150th anniversary of the arrival of the final transportation vessel, ‘Convict Ways’ is among ten outstanding new originals on his seventh album in as many years.

Having resided in rural Victoria from his mid-teens to his early-20s, yer man is well qualified to comment on said theme. It was during his time in the bush that he first picked up acoustic guitar, an instrument with which he now accompanies himself with considerable aplomb, whether playing cascading chords or fingerpicking fluent figures.

O’Rourke, it would appear, is a bona fide all-round gifted artist. Via Arrivals opening track (‘In Painters Light’), he conveys, in characteristically poetic terms, his lifelong love of another branch of the arts, one that has seemingly played second fiddle to his pursuit of music. As he laments, “My childhood dreams of exhibitions somehow stayed a secret plan”.

In a verse of the track that follows (‘The Harbour’), he’s trying to find “balance between one great dream and another” as he sings, “For now I think I’m somewhere in the middle of the sea/ I’m sailing on a suitcase filled of dreams of what might be”, over the ringing of his 12-string guitar.

According to the author, it’s also partly a tribute to one of the world’s finest singersongwriters and painters Joni Mitchell, who’s unsurprisingly among his musical heroes.

Arrivals closes in improbable fashion with a piece that pertains to Greek mythology and an imagined conversation between Zeus and his teenage son Apollo, and then a croon worthy of Chet Baker in a “ghost of a jazz song” about death, which he terms “the ultimate arrival”.

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In between there’s plenty to relish, such as ‘Olympian’, a timely song with the Tokyo Games looming. It honours what O’Rourke describes as “one of the most inspiring, heroic and little known stories of our time” — the story of Yusra Mardini, a young swimmer who undertook a perilous journey across the Aegean Sea to escape the Syrian conflict before competing a year later at the 2016 Rio Olympics for her adopted country, Germany.

The title track may centre on O’Rourke’s own family history — “people moving and coming back, the missing, the reconnecting” — but it’s also a theme that resonates with poignancy in current times.

‘The Stars Over Kinvara’, a title that references the Irish artist’s home village on the Galway coast, offers some solace and cause for optimism. As O’Rourke says: “Possibly the sweetest moment ever in your life is the one in which you can stand back and look at the beautiful chain of human beings before, and in front of you ... and to sense your place among them.”

While ‘Have You Not Heard The War Is Over’ might be “a modern protest song”, as O’Rourke claims, it has echoes of Bob Dylan’s 1960s’ masterpieces ‘Masters Of War’ and ‘With God On Our Side’. “War has become a soft word in our vocabulary … it’s all around us but we don’t believe it’s significant anymore, because the news tells us it’s okay,” he has commented.

The album’s British producer Paul Weller, a fine singer-songwriter himself, has observed that O’Rourke “writes the sort of classic songs that people don’t write anymore”. Oscar-winning singersongwriter Glen Hansard concurs: ”He’s a timeless troubadour with a voice that breaks through all your defences and gets to the heart of the matter”.

To be sure, O’Rourke possesses a richly soulful and sonorous baritone voice that demands undivided attention. That’s why he’s best heard in a stripped back setting, such as the one Weller has helped create on Arrivals, in which the artist’s accomplished acoustic guitar work is supported by only sparse strings and the occasional keyboard wash. As O’Rourke observes: “I have found that being an artist is a process of stripping away layers in order to get to the core, to get to something that is pure and honest”.

Arrivals, which deftly balances personal and political issues, is regarded by those that are familiar with Declan O’Rourke’s back catalogue as his finest and most intimate work to date.

By Brian Wise just incredibly grateful to have spent 30 years with a wonderful father who supported my music.”

Third Man Records “I definitely have a large repertoire of songs and I have large sonic palette,” “I am thankful for the gift of music that she continues. “I like early music, I could help me get through like early rock and roll. I’m not really t is difficult to even imagine the pain listening to that much contemporary that time in my life.” that Natalie Bergman went through music. I grew up in Chicago, so I’ve got prior to the recording of her debut solo the blues and I’ve got soul music. I also album Mercy. As one-half of brotherlove folk music, Joni Mitchell and Neil sister duo Wild Belle, she had spent Young. I just have many musical tastes the better part of this past decade and I think that naturally they worked on tour. Things were looking good in their way into my songs.”

2019 when they arrived in New York “The whole album is really a dedication to play Radio City Music Hall. But to him,” says Bergman when I mention just before they went on stage they that ‘Your Love Is My Shelter’ is received news that their father and dedicated to her father. “It is one of the stepmother had been killed by a drunk earlier songs I wrote on the record and driver. The duo immediately returned it talks about the last day I saw him and to their hometown of Chicago and Bergman completely reassessed her the last moments I spent with him.” life, spending time at a monastery in Bergman refers to her parents as being the Chama Valley in California before ‘Home At Last’ – an image that recurs in deciding to return to recording. gospel songs and also later on the song “I wanted to spend some time in solitude and in silence because I had ‘I’m Going Home.’ “My dad and my parents and my grandparents have a lot of questions about death and about what happens after death,” used that expression and I’ve tried to grapple with the concept that my explains Bergman. “I found some comfort in the desert. It was a really home is not in this world, my whole life, really. I think that this idea or challenging experience to spend seven days a week in silence. It was this belief that I have, the faith that I have in a heavenly home, a home really a harrowing experience for me and then once you surrender, in a heavenly realm that has been my greatest consolation during this you get the benefits of taking those steps and I found that a lot of my time. You don’t get over death. It might become more tolerable, but it questions were answered by listening.” lives with you, it’s with you until the end.”

Mercy was inspired by traditional gospel music but Bergman doesn’t Don’t get the idea that all of the songs on Mercy are downbeat. ‘Paint refer to it as a gospel album. She sings about faith in her own personal The Rain,’ which is up tempo, sports the line, “I heard from your way, unafraid to mention Jesus but also bringing her own perspective. lawyer, he said, our love is dead.”

While the religious influences are obvious the songs are also “Well, I like to give a little bit of an upbeat approach to some of these inspirational and beautifully constructed. songs, because it doesn’t all need to be sad, low, slow tempo music.

“I did grow up in a religious house,” admits Bergman. “My parents You can write about sadness and sometimes in ‘I Will Praise You’ or both had very religious upbringings. There’s some twisted behavior in ‘Home At Last’, there’s almost High-Life guitars in those songs and religion and there are some crazy acts that have gone on historically some of the early 1970s, like Nigerian High-Life songs that I love. in the name of God. There’s a lot of weird shit that exists in religion They’re singing about sadness and sorrow, but they’re the most but that’s not what I grew up in. My parents facilitated a very loving uplifting dance worthy songs, so I think that I tried to balance the environment to grow up in and it was encouraging of all people and sadness with some hopefulness and some danceable songs.” we had very basic moral rules in the house and it was to love each other, to be kind to our neighbours.

Perhaps surprisingly, Mercy is released on Jack White’s Third Man “We were a non-denominational family. I grew up in the church and record label which is based in Nashville and has helped to revitalise then for some time I stopped going to church and then after I lost my the vinyl industry there. Bergman admits that she has a friend, Warren father, that’s when I really went back to my roots and I had to reach Defever, who works for the label and who supported her signing. out to God because there was no other place for me to go.”

“He was a mentor for me on this record,” she explains. “He was my “I am thankful for the gift of music that could help me get through that one point person to check in with really and just go over the musical time in my life,” responds Bergman when we talk about the event that content with him. I called him and I said, ‘Look, I’m going to write a changed her life. gospel record. What do you think about that?’ He was like, “I think it’s Bergman says that her father was her biggest fan and her biggest critic a brilliant idea.’ The label’s response was, ‘We aren’t afraid of Jesus, but also a huge influence on her musical influences. we aren’t afraid of gospel music’. They fell in love with the record and “He was such a supportive character in my life and I’m thankful for it was just an immediate fit. To me, it’s the best home I could possibly the lovingness that he showed me and gave me in this life,” she says. have asked for on this album. I think they’re the best label out there “Some people don’t have a relationship with their parents and I’m and it’s a group of extremely intelligent, loving and creative people.”

NATALIE BERGMAN

MERCY

I

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ALBUM FEATURE

BLOW UP

The prolific MC Taylor looks back on the last five years of his life.

By Brian Wise HISS GOLDEN MESSENGER

QUIETLY BLOWING IT Merge Records

M

.C.Taylor, aka Hiss Golden Messenger, was all set to tour Australia early last year when he was forced to cancel. It wasn’t the pandemic that was the problem, although that was soon to strike, but the touring schedule that Taylor had been undertaking for years.

“I’ve actually never done that before but that particular one,” explains Taylor on a Zoom connection from the USA. “I was just so exhausted.

It’s hard to convey to people that are not musicians for a living, just how grueling it can be, I mean, physically and mentally to be on the road that much. So, that was one where I had to prioritise my sanity.”

Apart from his touring schedule, since 2008 Taylor has released a dozen studio albums, three EPs and seven live albums (the latest one for charity). By any standards that is a prolific output. However, the subsequent break enabled Taylor to write and arrange a bunch of songs in his home studio - his 8’ × 10’ sanctuary packed floor to ceiling with books, records, and old guitars in Durham, North Carolina. Written between March and June the more than two dozen songs were whittled down to eleven selections for the new album Quietly Blowing It. In July, Taylor assumed the production role and took the songs to his band - and a trusted group of guest musicians - into Overdub Lane in Durham for a week of recording. Taylor’s cast of collaborators includes Miller, songwriter Gregory Alan Isakov, songwriter and Tony Award–winning playwright Anaïs Mitchell, multi-instrumentalist Josh Kaufman, Dawes’ brothers Taylor and Griffin Goldsmith, and his oldest musical confidant Scott Hirsch.

As the follow-up to the Grammy-nominated Terms of Surrender, 2019, the new album has the same warm, often languid sound, like moving through a warm Southern haze. It’s a fabulous sounding recording and you’ll even hear traces of Duane Allman-like guitar licks and other references on some of the up tempo songs which lope along gracefully.

When I catch up via Zoom with Taylor, who tells me to call him Mike, he is ensconced in that home studio in Durham and quickly fills me in on some of the legendary names that come from around the area: Elizabeth Cotton, Blind Boy Fuller and Reverend Gary Davis, amongst many others. He is obviously steeped in the history and his music reflects another side of Southern culture.

“What’s funny is that this past year for all of the mental chaos, the lack of a daily routine, I have created a lot of work and it doesn’t feel

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like I’ve been particularly busy,” says Taylor. “When I look back on this time I’m not sure that I’ll look back on it as a time where I was joyfully creating new work every day but the fact is I made many records during this time of quarantine. Quietly Blowing It is just one of several records that I made. So, somehow in the midst of the chaos I had the good fortune to be able to make a bunch of records that I think really kind of were my emotional anchors during a really tough year.”

Taylor says that he went into the studio with his band to record and they added the guest appearances later. “The sort of gift of the way that we as musicians can use technology is that we can make an extremely high fidelity, collaborative recording, even when we’re not in the same place together,” says Taylor, “although I actually prefer to be in the same place if possible, which is why we went into the studio in the middle of a pandemic to make this record. We were as safe as we could be: everybody was tested and nobody got sick. But it was important to me to be able to at least record the basic tracks and then whatever else we put on top of it with this group of people in a room together.”

Taylor has said that the new album is not exactly a record about the state of the world in 2020, but more a retrospective of the past five years of his life.

“I wasn’t trying to write an autobiographical album or I wasn’t trying to have it feel like it was a memoir or anything,” says Taylor, “but I know that I was drawing on feelings and experiences that certainly predated the world that we found ourselves in, in 2020. While the anxieties of 2020 are part of the fabric of Quietly Blowing It - there’s no way they couldn’t be - there’s also a lot more there as well. I didn’t want this record to be set apart from my other records because I think it really is working thematically in a lot of similar places that I continually go back to.”

“I think that I’m very proud of the record,” he continues. “It feels very close to the bone for me. There’s something very natural about the record when I hear it, it feels genuine to me. I think that’s always been my goal. I want the art that I make to feel compelling because it’s believable, however you might define that. It’s important to me to have that quality on my records and I can personally hear it when it’s there and I feel like I can hear it when other things are steering the vessel. So, I really like how this record turned out. I think it turned out very close to what my earliest conception of it was.”

“Oh yeah, he’s one of the greats,” responds Taylor when I mention that Buddy Miller plays guitar on the title track. “There are some instrumentalists who are so good, have such a deft touch and signature sound that you know it’s them immediately. It’s a hard place to get to but it’s almost like the way they speak is with their

instrument and I definitely consider Buddy in those ranks. He’s someone who I feel like I know it’s him immediately or somebody trying to play like him. I was very honoured that he was up for playing on that and he’s actually played on something else for me too since then that will come out later.”

A line in the song refers to ‘a big pink sun over Hollywood’ and I wonder if it refers to The Band’s Music From Big Pink and the fact that Taylor got to interview Robbie Robertson last year for a podcast. By coincidence we are talking on Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday.

“While the anxieties of 2020 are part of the fabric of Quietly Blowing It - there’s no way they couldn’t be - there’s also a lot more there as well.”

“It’s funny, I’d never connected to that until just this moment,” he admits, “which might seem unbelievable to you. But if I was connecting it to another musical reference, I was thinking of the Nick Drake album, Pink Moon.”

“It’s rare that I am nervous around celebrities or people that I’ve looked up to,” he continues when I say that it must have been a thrill to talk to Robertson. My general feeling is that, usually if I’m in the same room as someone that I consider an inspiration, there’s a reason that I’m there; so, I need to remember that I’m there because I make music too.

“Robbie Robertson’s work with The Band has been so hugely influential to me for so long that I couldn’t help but have a few butterflies just because I feel like there’s a certain aesthetic to the early Band records that has really guided a lot of how I think about and value music from that particular world. There’s a certain democracy to those first few Band records, there’s a certain efficiency to the way that they play that really still continues to inform the way I think about music. So, I found Robbie to be just a gentleman and he was very kind and I was glad to talk to him.”

“They really created their own type of language, it seems to me at a time when it would’ve been easier to go in the direction that so many other musicians were going,” he adds about The Band. “As it turns out, the music that they were creating was very valuable and healing and just aesthetically beautiful - and really timeless. I think that’s the thing about their music is that I hear those records now and they just sound perfect to me still in ways that maybe a Blue Cheer record or Quicksilver Messenger Service record, that stuff doesn’t stay with me the way that the music that those guys made does.”

While Taylor’s musical references range widely so do his lyrical inspirations. ‘Glory Strums (Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner)’ references Alan Sillitoe’s famous novel.

“Just an incredible book by an incredible writer,” says Taylor. “All of his work is great but there’s something really effecting about that particular book, which is about a sort of delinquent boy that is sent to a reform school in England and it turns out that he’s a very gifted longdistance runner and he becomes the sort of pride of the school for his ability to win long-distance running races.” [Eventually, the main character rebels against expectations].

“I’m not sure how much of that actual narrative snuck into the song, ‘Glory Strums’- I think maybe not much at all - but there’s a certain tone thematically to that book that I felt like was a kindred spirit to that song. I really love how that song turned out and it almost was left off the record. I made many different versions of the track list of the record that did not have ‘Glory Strums’ on it and at the last moment I decided to put it on and took something else off and I think I made the right decision.”

On the other hand, ‘Mighty Dollar’ has an entirely different influence and includes the clavinet as a prominent instrument.

“A big part of it is the drum groove and I was wanting it to feel straight and kind of swinging at the same time……to give it this sort of lurching rhythmic tension,” explains Taylor. “That’s something that I take from some hip hop that I love, there’s a way that certain hip hop works rhythmically. Then I had Devonne Harris playing clavinet and we were talking a lot about the way that Sly Stone on his record, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, is playing clavinet directly into the board, so not running it through an amp, which is its own very specific sound. I think that generally we think of clavinet as running through an amplifier - I think Stevie Wonder played it like that and The Meters - but there’s

something about the clavinet running directly into the board that is very creepy and sort of claustrophobic feeling that I really love. I love that Sly Stone record.”

“I think that the whole record carries these little sort of strands of hope,” responds Taylor when I suggest that the closing song ‘Sanctuary’ – perhaps the album’s standout - has somewhat of a hopeful note. “If the record is a tapestry, many, not all, but many of the threads are threads of hope, at least that’s what I intended. It wasn’t meant to be a record that is cynical or depressing but I do agree that ‘Sanctuary’ is the most overtly hopeful song on the record, yes.”

Finally, given the fact that he had to cancel last year’s Australian tour because of exhaustion, has he learned anything from that in the way that he will approach touring now?

“That’s a good question, I’m not sure yet,” he replies. “I really am trying to keep a close eye on what’s going on the calendar, what gets confirmed, how much time I’m away from home. I have two kids and this past year is the most that they’ve ever seen me in their lives and something feels a little off about that, I must say. So, I would like to find a happy medium. I love to travel, I love to play music for people in different cities and I love to be with my family, they’re a big part of why I do what I do, the way that I write and make records. So yes, I’m hoping that as we step back into it, I can kind of steer the boat ever so slightly towards waters that feel a little more peaceful.”

Quietly Blowing It is available on Merge Records from June 25.

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ALBUM FEATURE

ALBUM FEATURE

BRIGHTER DAYS

UPSTARTS

A new collaboration of multi-award winning Guitarist/Composer Gavin Libotte and multilingual Singer/Songwriter Niyati Libotte mixes genres.

By Chris Lambie GOLDFYNCH

GOLDFYNCH Independent

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n these times of separation and restricted movement, music safely transports us across land and sea.

Seasoned travellers Gavin Libotte (Urban Gypsies) and Niyati Libotte take us on an alluring trip to faraway places on their self-titled debut album. The duo celebrates their joie de vivre, capturing smooth continental salon ambience and global flavours to lift us from armchair to the wide blue yonder.

In their decade together, the couple have forged a unique blend of multicultural influences. With an Indian heritage, singer-songwriter Niyati is a self-confessed Francophile.

She studied French at university, spending a requisite year in Lyon where she fell in love with the region. “I call it my ‘soul time’,” she says. “It’s funny, Gavin is part Belgian, part British, part Scandinavian ... but [also] resonates strongly with Indian. He’s like an inside-out Indian person and we’ve met in the middle. When we got married, we went on a world trip (referenced in second single ‘Ballooning Over Paris’) including Africa where some of Gavin’s extended family are. I introduced him to my friends and old haunts in France. We have a little dream, that one day we could have a part-time base there. A retreat space to make music and perform at European festivals.”

The pair met during Niyati’s time as presenter of a book show on Eastside Radio. One day, a colleague had guest Joseph Tawadros AM at the station. Although they never exchanged words, Niyati was captivated by the Oud virtuoso’s guitarist, Gavin. The spark felt was mutual. Gavin tracked Niyati down and contacted her. Preparing a Valentine’s Day show, she asked the guitarist to read some sonnets on air in his “soft British accent”. The rest is history. “Gavin studied jazz guitar at The Con in Perth, then moved into Latin styles and went to Brazil. He loves the sound of acoustic guitar. On his YouTube channel, he helps other people to fall in love with it make it sing.” Niyati says.

“He’s developed his own sound over the years. It began with his band Urban Gypsies which isn’t gypsy music really but Latin guitar music, then developed into more jazz fusion. So he’s rebranded to Gavin Libotte Guitar. It’s his love affair with this original, elevated, gorgeous, voluptuous acoustic sound. When we joined, it was the first time he’d worked with a singer. It’s been an interesting journey.”

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The multi-lingual vocalist has a long background in performance and music with family. “My mum comes from a very strong Indian community background. She was always the person jumping up on stage.” (Her mother appears on ABC’s ‘The Nannas and The Poppas’). Niyati’s double degree included Media Production.

“Whilst Gavin’s pulled me into music, I’ve pulled him into film.

Our [self-produced] video for ‘Opus’ won Silver in the Global Music Awards (Album and Art Pop categories) and features our kids.” The album offers accessible crafted pop with a sophisticated edge. Visual and sensual imagery glides from upbeat and whimsical to contemplative. Guests include ARIA winning bassist Jonathan Zwartz, James Hauptmann (drums) and Thomas Avgenicos (trumpet).

Single ‘Ballooning Over Paris’ is currently #2 on the AMRAP Metro Charts.

“We approached this as a creative project without any commercial end in mind. We gave our guests the opportunity to improvise, starting the mix with Damian de Boos-Smith. Unable to finish because of the Covid situation, we then went to [Emmy winner] Sean Carey (exThirsty Merc). It was mastered by [Grammy winner] Helik Hadar. It’s been such a joy with friends and colleagues helping to make this on a shoestring budget.”

Songs span the mysteries of love, adventure, grief and the gifts of nature. Both artists practice yoga. With current challenges added to climate change and social turmoil, Niyati says, “We often reference The Vedas. What is temporary, illusory but also things that are eternal.

Finding ways through that are healthy and functional, keeping us from falling apart.” While the music is ideal for an intimate club setting, there’s danceable joy to lift a big stage audience to its feet. Niyati describes the album launch as ‘bigger than Ben Hur’. “We managed to wrangle everyone who performed on our album! Plus extras. We’ll perform all the songs from this album, some new ones and some covers. We might even throw in something in Hindi. I dedicated [first single] ‘Brighter Day’ to India as a message of hope and support. Most of my extended family live there.” Set to take listeners on a romantic aural tour, Niyati adds, “The album had a long gestation period but we have our next album ready to be recorded.”

(Launch - Friday 23 July. Foundry 616.)

Two veteran musicians return to their roots.

By Michael Smith

BOB DAISLEY & ROB GROSSER ARE THE UPSTARTS

to join them in their new band Kahvas Jute. So Gaze was there for the sole Kahvas Jute album, Wide Open. Gaze returned to Tamam Shud before the others decided to try their luck in London, but two year on, Kahvas Jute was no more and while Wilson and Davidson returned to Australia, Daisley got lucky and, as I say, was soon playing with some of the biggest names in the world of hard bluesrock and heavy metal.

Independent

I

t’s funny how, in so many ways, you can spend your whole life making all kinds of music and yet eventually you can find yourself right back where you started. That might not exactly be true for the now multiinstrumentalist Rob Grosser, whose name regular Rhythms readers will fondly remember forever associated with blues-rock guitarist Tim Gaze, but for internationally renowned Sydney-born bass player Bob Daisley, whose stellar CV includes stints with Richie Blackmore’s Rainbow, Gary Moore, Uriah Heap and, most notoriously, Ozzy Osbourne, the surf-guitar sounds of the eponymous debut release by Grosser and himself as The Upstarts are very much a return to his roots.

On his return to Australia, Daisley inevitably reconnected with Gaze, who by now had established himself as one of Australia’s most influential guitar guns, most notably with Ariel and then his own band. When Gaze put together The Blues Doctors, Grosser, who’d broken out of Adelaide with pop group The Aliens back in 1980, was there on drums, Gaze and Grosser eventually going on to record several critically acclaimed blues-rock albums as a duo. Daisley joined Gaze’s Blues Doctors in their last incarnation, which, in 2002, morphed into The Hoochie Coochie Men, which saw them recording a couple of albums with the late, great Jon Lord, the founding keyboards player in Deep Purple.

“I loved all of that, the original guitar hero stuff.”

– Bob Daisley

“The reason I got into playing guitar is The Shadows, The Ventures, the surfing bands like The Shantays, Pipeline,” Daisley, back living in Sydney since 1997, though still recording albums for international release, recalled for me. “I loved all of that, the original guitar hero stuff.”

Of course, The Upstarts isn’t purely just surf guitars. There are touches of “symphonic” rock for instance in ‘Key of Sea’, all swirly chords and exploratory bass lines before the main melody kicks in. ‘Bhaji at the Beach’ on the other hand sports a certain percussive “World Music” feel, while it’s Daisley’s sweepingly majestic bass lines that own ‘Ghost of a Siren’. At a pinch ‘Sierra Tango Delta’ has just enough synth to perhaps qualify for inclusion in The Break’s repertoire! Well, perhaps it’s more Atlantics really…

“I had an accident with my motorbike a few years back,” Grosser explains the genesis of The Upstarts album, “and my arm wasn’t working properly so I couldn’t play drums, so I just started playing guitar and as I got into it I started playing melodies and it built from there. I still play drums but I couldn’t play live gigs ‘cause of my arm, mainly from the lugging side of things. Anyway, Bob heard a couple of songs and got involved.”

It was through Tim Gaze that Grosser and Daisley first met. Gaze and Daisley had first worked together back in 1970 when drummer Dannie Davidson, who’d recently quit Tamam Shud, suggested his new bandmates, guitarist Dennis Wilson and bass player Bob Daisley, invite the fresh-faced 17-year old Gaze, who was also playing in the Shud,

Returning to The Upstarts, “I wrote about ninety per cent of the album,” Grosser explains, “but I’ve got to be honest, Bob’s playing made my guitar playing a bit more sensible,” he suggests with a selfdeprecating chuckle. “To me, the stuff I’m playing was child-like in a way, melody-wise, but his playing made it a bit more serious, if that makes sense. He comes up with some brilliant ideas, some fantastic lines. And he also knows when not to play, which is really good. I’m also playing keyboards as well as drums. At the moment we’ve got another two albums already recorded that we haven’t mixed yet. I’m hopeless with titles! All the titles, when I do something, are, like, ‘New idea, 27th May, 12.30’. So Bob came up with the names – he’s great like that. And there’s a bit of Monty Python coming in, like ‘Sea Bird Flavour’ and ‘Life of Brien’,” he laughs.

The Upstarts is released on SSK, the record label run by Steven Machet, who’s probably best known for producing the award-winning documentary film, Bird on a Wire, based on Leonard Cohen’s troubled 1972 tour of Europe and Israel.

“Bob’s known Steven for a while” Grosser explains. “His father was a music lawyer for Don Arden, which is how Bob connected with him because Bob was signed to Don Arden through Ozzy Osbourne.

Steven’s also worked with Phil Collins, ELO, bands like that.”

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FLAT OUT

Genuine Texas legends produce a new album of classic songs.

By Brian Wise THE FLATLANDERS

TREASURE OF LOVE

When I catch up with Jimmie Dale Gilmore on Zoom it is just a few weeks after his birthday.

Congratulations are in order.

Rack’em Records / Thirty Tigers / Cooking Vinyl Australia

“Well, thank you. I’m a hundred now,” he laughs. (He’s actually 75).

I

“It only seems as though you’ve been around that long,” I reply, asking if the new album was prompted by the lockdown during the pandemic.

t is not an idle boast to claim that the members of the famous Texas trio The Flatlanders are genuine legends – certainly in their home state and to anyone interested in Americana. Joe Ely, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore – friends for more than 50 years and all raised in Lubbock, Texas – comprise one of the most abiding partnerships in music.

Each member of the trio also has their own successful solo career, and they have all established formidable reputations for their song writing skills. It is an awesomely talented trio, embodying the best of Texas music, so it is good to hear them back together on record – with help of another legend in producer Lloyd Maines - after an absence of more than a decade. Maines - who has worked with the Chicks, Kris Kristofferson, Loretta Lynn, Jerry Jeff Walker, Wilco, Terry Allen, and countless others - has also worked with the trio individually and collectively over the decades and was an obvious choice to produce the new album.

While they didn’t achieve huge success in their early incarnation, Rounder Records reissued the group’s original recordings under the particularly fitting title More A Legend Than A Band in 1990 and everyone quickly caught on. The trio have been collaborating and touring on and off again ever since.

The three musicians , who now live within driving distance of one another in Austin, have dug deep to uncover material for Treasure of Love – some of the songs here are never-before-heard originals, the remainder are vintage tunes recorded during a 50-year career, with some stretching as far back as the group’s earliest performances.

The selection of songs covers the whole gamut of The Flatlanders repertoire: ‘Long Time Gone’, first made famous by The Everly Brothers, Leon Russell’s ‘She Smiles Like A River,’ Mickey Newbury’s ‘Mobile Blues’ and Townes Van Zandt’s ‘Snowin’ On Raton.’ Then there is the title track, originally written by George Jones as well as the classic ‘Sittin’ On Top Of The World’, a butch Hancock original in ‘Moanin’ Of The Midnight Train’ and a glorious version of Bob Dylan’s ‘She Belongs To Me.’ It is a superb encapsulation of The Flatlanders talents.

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“It was stuff that we already had,” explains Gilmore. “We did most of it in Joe’s studio, in his little studio that’s outside of his house, and it was stuff that was like things that maybe didn’t quite make it onto one of the other albums. A lot of it we just did just for fun. Of course, most of it is old stuff and it’s just songs that we used to love to do. We would record things that we did when we very first were hanging out together. In the process of it we would go, Let’s just throw down this old George Jones song or a Leon Russell song.”

“So, they were there in rough form,” he continues. “Joe had them there. Joe is just somebody that can’t sit still. He can’t keep from working. He’s a lot more that way than I am. He had to have a project.

So, he had all these available and then he showed them to Lloyd. Of course, Lloyd is actually one of the Flatlanders really, he’s been there in the background with us. He was a fan of ours before we ever made any recordings. He’s one of the few people that knew about us in Lubbock back in those really early days. The real work on it all was Joe. Joe did a little bit of touching up stuff and then Lloyd was the one that just really shaped up all the tracks and added things.”

“There was a lot of good stuff already there,” he adds. “In fact, Lloyd told me when he first started, he said, ‘Jimmie,’ he said. ‘The vocals on all these are really good. I can really do something with this.’ I keep saying they were like diamonds in the rough. I don’t even know if they were diamonds but they were in the rough. I’m really happy with it. I’m really happy with the way it sounded, the music of it and everything is just real, real much to my taste.”

“The amalgamation that we had was because of the three of us coming from slightly different directions and really learning a lot from each other, and we were also just such different personalities besides having a little bit different musical background.”

As an example of the diversity of the musical influences on Treasure of Love is the first single from the album, ‘Sittin’ on Top of the World,’ a song originally recorded by the Mississippi Sheiks back in the 1930s and also later recorded by Bob Wills and many others.

“Every Western Swing band did it even though it’s an old,” says Gilmore. “I was completely astonished to see how many versions of it there were, recorded versions. There are hundreds of them. It’s like just about everybody you can think of has done a version of it somewhere.”

An outstanding version of Bob Dylan’s, ‘She Belongs to Me’ features Gilmores’ plaintive vocals and was released as the second single.

“I still love that song very much,” says Gilmore. “First time I heard that song, I loved it and I started performing it. I did it in those early days with the Flatlanders before we ever did any recordings or anything,

notes Gilmore. “We all loved Bob Dylan and, of course, we were at the exact right age to catch him right at the outset. Bob Dylan……..To me, he remains just the spectacular giant of American music. He never gets the kind of credit for his later stuff that he did for the early stuff because the timing was so right. But I think he’s still just as brilliant now as he was then.”

Of course, Dylan recently celebrated his 80th birthday and I suggest that would be an inspiration to a lot of performers.

“It’s very inspiring,” agrees Gilmore and mentions that his nephew in-law is Dylan’s front of house sound man. “I toured with Bob Dylan one season back in the ‘90s, opened shows for him for one summer season. Bob Dylan has no plans to quit at all. I’m glad of that.”

How did they whittle the songs down to fifteen for the new album from such a huge repertoire that would have been available to them?

“There was no plan for it,” says Gilmore. “I think that probably as Joe went through them, I think he pulled out ones with an eye to having us sort of evenly represented from the stuff that we already had.”

“You know, like I said, we all were different, but we were fans of each other and that’s been a thing that just has continued,” he adds. “From the very beginning, each of us kind of separately liked the other two.

Butch and I had been friends from before we ever learned how to play music. Matter of fact, strangely enough, Butch and I both became musicians without knowing that the other one was doing that. But the different angles of different things that we brought to each other, we always were just, well, we were open to each other. I think that’s the way to say it.”

The Flatlanders bring something new to the song and, although it is hard to reinvent Bob Dylan songs, they invest it with a definite Texan twang.

After more than 50 years they have managed to stay friends, which is why they decided to call the album Treasure of Love. “We decided that that expressed something about the Flatlanders,” says Gilmore.

“I was saying about our backgrounds being divergent - Butch and Joe and I - but that was one place that we all were in total agreement,”

The Flatlanders –Treasure of Love via Rack’em Records / Thirty Tigers / Cooking Vinyl Australia

Photo Credit: By Jay Blakesburg

ALBUM FEATURE

discussing their musical influences. “Butch and I were fans of rock and roll, but it wasn’t what we played when we first were learning to play.

I came more from a pure, you know, Hank Williams, Marty Robbins, that real honky-tonk music, and Bob Wills back before that. Joe was a little more influenced by Buddy Holly and what happened after that, and Butch, he started out on the banjo playing bluegrass music, so he was way into the folk thing. Then when we came together we basically all just kind of absorbed each other’s knowledge and background and all the repertoire and styles, everything, and it just kind of what added up to us being the way we were.

“Joe produced the first one,” adds Gilmore about the Flatlanders debut album, All American Music, released back in 1976, “and then Lloyd produced the second one and we did that in Nashville. I’m fairly certain that that was the first one he did that was on a national label, and then he catapulted into the stratosphere because everybody discovered how great he was.

“But Joe was a couple of years younger than Butch and I, and he had a lot more of the rock and roll in his background,” outlines Gilmore 87

ALBUMS: General DARYL ABERHART SHAKE THESE BLUES AWAY Independent

When listening to blues music there is always a sense of having heard it before; the secret is taking influences and moulding them into something that personifies one’s own sound, something that jazz/blues icon Daryl Aberhart accomplishes with aplomb. The Newcastle singer, keyboardist and composer boasts a formidable reputation both locally and internationally, and he has enlisted some of Australia’s very finest blues/jazz guitarists to put their individual stamp on the album.

The eight originals are uniformly excellent songs, drawing upon seminal influences and traversing a lot of ground, from New Orleans flavoured R&B to country, jazz, blues and soul. There are fireworks right from the outset on ‘We’re Gonna Have A Party’, Aberhart’s pounding boogie-woogie piano duelling with blues ace Ray Beadle’s blistering guitar breaks; Beadle is front and centre again on the New Orleans second line strut ‘All On My Own’. Jim Kelly provides tasty countrified flourishes on honkytonkin’ ‘One Glass At A Time’, and is all tear-stained elegance on the standout soulful heartbreaker ‘Without You’. Cal Morgan’s mellifluous flourishes light up ‘Bad Luck Blues’, and Carl Dewhurst lays down a funky jazz groove on the swinging title track. With the powerhouse Antipodean rhythm section of Nic Cecire and Brett Hirst holding it all together, Aberhart is free to showcase his stunning keyboard wizardry and croon with abandon. The touchstones don’t really matter, this is the sound of Daryl Aberhart with arguably the year’s finest blues recording.

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KATIE BRIANNA THIS WAY OR SOME OTHER. Stanley Records

There’s something of The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde in Katie’s vocal tone, with its attendant quality of longing, of quiet ache – there’s so much feeling in that bittersweet voice.

She might be categorised as “alt. country”, but there’s plenty of indie pop in Katie Brianna, which is why it makes sense for her to call on musicians from some of Sydney’s best known indie pop and rock bands of the ‘90s and ‘00s rather than the usual cohort of Australian country musicians, though some of them are still in the mix, and why former Daisygrinders/Big Heavy Stuff guitarist Adam Young proved the perfect producer for This Way Or Some Other. Subtle and spacious, Young ensures there’s plenty of air around that remarkable voice, while the musicians, always tasteful, similarly display a real understanding of the moods and emotions being explored in Katie’s simple observations of loves coming together and falling apart, open or secret, desired or lost, with sounds brooding or boppy, ominous or evocative, understated or driving as the intent of her lyrics dictate. The record is all the more impressive when you discover it was recorded live in the studio for the most part, the musicians involved keeping things fresh by minimal rehearsing of their parts.

MICHAEL SMITH CAMARANO WHERE AM I NOW? Footstomp Music While Perth singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer Mat Camarano presents his work

under a nominal band name, Where Am I Now? is very much a singer-songwriter album, each of its ten songs presented within its own musical context and genre, which not only keeps things interesting but perfectly showcases Camarano’s subtle versatility. The title track and ‘Did It Cross Your Mind’ have something of that dreamy quality once purveyed by fellow Perthsiders The Triffids, even though his avowed influences are far more contemporary and American in the likes of The War on Drugs and The Shins, while the next song, ‘Give It To Me Straight’ kicks in as a straightforward, plaintive indie rock song, sparse verses, big instrumental bridges. Actually, there’s a lot of the “plaintive” across the album, as Camarano ponders the meaning of life and his own part in it. Is he overthinking things he wonders in ‘Wish I Was Here’?

Probably, but then don’t we all at some point in our lives? Like a lot of artists and musicians, this collection of songs was written and recorded “in isolation” in his spare bedroom, the perfect formula for mentally chasing your tail.

Thankfully, Camarano is too good a songwriter and a subtle enough lyricist for the album to ever tie itself in introspective knots. That musical adventurousness keeps Where Am I Now? open and surprisingly light. The a cappella ‘Bored’ might seem self-indulgent but it comes across likeably quirky, bathed as his voice is in heavily manipulated harmonies. Camarano strips all the studio “treatment” from his voice for the quietly pleading ‘Pleasure/Pain’, on which he accompanies himself with a simple piano line, the soft thump of its pedals the only incidental percussion. Fellow WA indie “dark

ALBUMS: General folk” – whatever that is – singersongwriter Leah Grant joins Camarano for the duet ‘Fool for You’, which would fit comfortably on an Emmylou Harris or Lucinda Williams album.

MICHAEL SMITH LOW CUT CONNIE TOUGH COOKIES: THE BEST OF THE QUARANTINE BROADCASTS Contender Records

noisy, unpolished, energetic, lo-fi, warts’n’all, often unfinished collection that, more than anything, is a party mix-tape for joyous drunken post-COVID party sing-alongs. Even the traditional Jewish Kaddish and Morricone’s ‘Theme from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly’ get a bit of a quirky run, but really Tough Cookies is all about jumping about and singing along to songs like ‘It’s Raining Men’ and Donna Summers’ ‘Bad Girls’ at the top of your voice – if that’s your thing – and you’re okay with a lot of pretty unnecessary expletives. No wonder The New Yorker dubbed Weiner “Pandemic Person of the Year” for his contribution to cheering people up.

MICHAEL SMITH

transforming.”

Produced by Josh Schuberth, and backed by Lara Goodridge and Susie Bishop (members of the Miriam Lieberman Trio), the result is uplifting. “Let us fly higher than our own imaginations,” the album starts. “In our imaginations, the answers will be found.”

And in the exquisite final track, Lieberman concludes, “It’s the music that will set us free.”

JEFF JENKINS MARTHA MARLOW MEDICINE MAN MGM/Planet

crystalline phrasing on several tracks, most notably on the soaring title song, and of Carole King’s jaunty pop sensibilities. An emotive tour-de-force, Medicine Man matches the intoxicating originality of debut albums by other singersongwriters such as Diane Birch and Laura Marling, and marks the arrival of a major talent.

TREVOR J. LEEDEN

blatantly America-referencing tune – ‘American Whiskey’ – has flourishes of the kind of stop-start riff-percussion passages that gave Britain’s Steeleye Span so powerful a sound. Twanging guitars, poppin’ banjos, swirlin’ fiddlin’, truth is there’s puttin’ down Then Jolene.

Just take yer pardners and kick up some dust.

MICHAEL SMITH

THEN JOLENE THE PUTDOWN Bandcamp

VARIOUS ARTISTS GOLDEN AGE: 25 YEARS OF SIGNATURE SOUNDS Signature Sounds/Planet

Whether delivering (unstated) reflections “on the reconnection and healing of lost generations following the massacre of the Wiradjuri in 1824” all ‘Copperhead Road’ meets ‘Come Together’ in an Southern American accent in ‘3 Rivers’, the first single lifted off The Putdown late last year is quite the right way to go about raising awareness of the event is perhaps a moot point. After all, Then Jolene are all about having fun with their love affair with the entire gamut of the Americana oeuvre, so to sing it otherwise sort of defeats the purpose. It’s just one of those mixed-message situations, like Axiom railing against our involvement in the Vietnam War in the guise of the American Civil War in ‘Arkansas Grass’, another important statement whose point was missed at the time. The bottom line is that in The Putdown, Woolgoolga’s finest, the eight-piece Then Jolene have gifted the world a powerful and diverse collection of songs that aurally wouldn’t be anywhere near as convincing in Australian accents, so there you go.

The accent is decidedly Australian on ‘Smiling Assassin’ and works just fine in this darkly jaunty ditty of dirty deeds – “Come what may/ The Karma train will come your way”! On the other hand, the most

For those with a penchant for singer-songwriters steeped in the traditions of roots music, the artists linked to the Signature Sounds imprint have become old friends.

This fabulous 2-disc celebration of the label’s 25th anniversary weaves together performances from 37 different performers who span the entire realm of Americana. Whether taking a punt on unknowns or signing established artists, the roster has come to stand for creative excellence, particularly through live performances. Idaho born Josh Ritter kicks off the playlist with ‘Me & Jiggs’ from his 2002 debut album, followed by another Idaho native who today needs no introduction, the Queen Of The Minor Key herself – Eilen Jewell. There’s an offering from the legendary troubadour Chris Smither, as well as ‘La Petite Mort’ from the gifted Erin McKeown’s 2000 debut. It’s by no means an all-acoustic affair; ‘Dancing With Joey Ramone’ is a slashing slice of cowpunk from Amy Rigby, and Boston’s ‘newgrass’ purveyors Joy Kills Sorrow deliver the pulsating ‘Was It You?’. Barnstar! sticks to more traditional bluegrass tropes on ‘Darling’, and the Sweetback Sisters’ ‘Looking For A Fight’ is a rollicking honky-tonk/rockabilly hybrid. >>> 89

MIRIAM LIEBERMAN JUST TRANSFORMING Independent

As the title suggests, the 23 songs featured on Tough Cookies are drawn from the 500 or so South Philadelphia singer, songwriter, pianist and guitarist Adam Weiner performed over 2020 on his twiceweekly live-stream hour-long variety show broadcast from his home, accompanied by his Low Cut Connie band-mate, guitarist and collaborator Will Donnelly. While the show was usually a mix of his own songs alongside his favourites by other artists, Tough Cookies, the album, sticks to the covers – and you couldn’t ask for a more diverse and eclectic collection. There’s everything here, from Prince’s ‘Little Red Corvette’ to Vera Lynn’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s ‘Helpless’ to INXS’s ‘Need You Tonight’, no subtlety, just that declamatory vocal style delivering it all with, as Rolling Stone described it, “zero self-doubt”. His takes on ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’, Springsteen’s ‘American Skin’, Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, Lana Del Ray’s ‘Video Games’ and Dylan’s ‘I Shall Be Released’ are about as close to restrained as he gets. As he explains in an accompanying note, “There was no script, no plan, just a couple schmucks trying every form of entertainment to try to lift people’s spirits.” And so with this record, a clattering,

During Melbourne’s fourth Lockdown, I discovered this album

by Sydney singer-songwriter Miriam Lieberman. It proved to be the perfect iso companion, a hypnotic collection of New Age folk pop.

Lullabies for troubled times.

“All we have known now disappears,” Lieberman sings in a soothing tone that reminds of Janis Ian. And throughout the eight tracks, she’ll also have you thinking of Carole King, Carly Simon and Toni Childs, while the playful ‘Last Night’ ventures into Paul Simon territory.

As she notes, “I love the way music can take us back.” But Lieberman has also crafted her own sound, with her kora – a West African harp – at the forefront.

With its gentle power, Just Transforming is aptly titled. It is a transformative experience, filled with grace and gratitude during a time of tumult and change. “And I’m grateful for the air that I breathe,” Lieberman sings. “Grateful for this life of mine. We’re just

From the moment the 17-piece string orchestra whirls around Martha Marlow as she sings “I’ll be singing all my days, I’ll sing of sorrow and joy”, you are immediately seduced into the vortex of a swirling eddy of creative beauty.

Indeed, creativity lies at the heart of the gifted Sydneysider, a lauded landscape painter and writer/ illustrator of children’s books.

Marlow’s stunning debut album has gestated over five years due to debilitating illness, however she has drawn inspiration from the chronic pain she has endured. Like the great songs of Billie Holiday she grew up listening to, pain and anguish can be heard in her voice, but it is the overriding sense of purpose that leaves a lasting impression. There is no self-pity, instead a sense of lingering vulnerability, a curiously uplifting melancholia redolent of Nick Drake’s great works. Marlow is superbly backed by her father, renowned jazz bassist Jonathan Zwartz, and a hand-picked group of A-list musicians in drummer Hamish Stuart, guitarist Ben Hauptmann, violinist Veronique Serret and pianist Barney McAll; Zwartz co-produces and his musical arrangements are quite exquisite.

There are hints of Joni Mitchell’s

ALBUMS: Blues

ALBUMS: General

BY AL HENSLEY >>> And they keep on coming…

Zoe Muth, Lake Street Dive, Lori McKenna, Crooked Still, Richard Shindell, Twisted Pine, one great song after another. In an era of instant convenience, Golden Age is a readymade Americana playlist of the highest order.

TREVOR J. LEEDEN YOLA STAND FOR MYSELF Easy Eye Sound

Like the singers featured in documentary Twenty Feet From Stardom, British-born Yola has an impressive CV accompanying big name stars. She’s paid her dues as backing singer for Massive Attack and the Chemical Brothers and performed with Dolly Parton, Mavis Staples and Brandi Carlile. Now Nashville-based, she’s claiming the spotlight as a solo artist with a knockout second album. The title track illustrates her defiance of the expectation to stay in the shadows.

Yola (along with co-writers including producer Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys), urges others to do likewise “by challenging biases that fuel bigotry, inequality and tokenism”.

Yola has appointed a crack team of musicians and co-writers. The

album opens with tracks that sway and soar with lush accompaniment.

First single, ‘Diamond Studded Shoes’ instantly grabs you by the ears. It’s an upbeat smackdown to assumed entitlement of the privileged few, featuring the catchiest hook aired on Australian radio in a long while. The rhythmrich soul anthem showcases Yola’s arresting and versatile vocals, with a tasty side-order of Auerbach’s guitar (with an almost imperceptible Country blush), strutting sticks and backing vocals. ‘Be My Friend’ (feat.

Brandi Carlile) is both poignant and powerful. Yola’s 2019 debut Walk Through Fire earned four Grammy nominations. This collection sees a broadening of tonal influences.

Lyrically, she declares her new personal and professional outlook.

And then there’s the voice. Yola is gifted with a four-octave range honoured with nuanced phrasing and a passion to shine and inspire.

Despite darkness behind some of the songs, the music lifts the mood with pop/rock RnB dance-inducing optimism. ‘Break The Bough’, written following her mother’s passing, repeats the theme of freedom with righteous vocals.

Bringing a fresh voice to classic soul (and its pan-Atlantic cousins), Yola has found her optimal spark and sass. She’s now set to take her place as one of the great vocalists of our time.

CHRIS LAMBIE VAN MORRISON LATEST RECORD PROJECT VOL.1 EXILE/BMG On his Australian tour of 2000, Lou Reed insisted on playing only recent songs. You can imagine

how well this went over with the audience. The biggest reception by far arrived in the encore when Reed played the ‘hits’ ‘Sweet Jane’ and ‘Vicious.’ Reed wanted to showcase his current writing while the fans, who were paying, wanted to hear what they knew. I think Lou got the message and he didn’t like it.

Of course, this is a dilemma faced by many veteran artists, including Van Morrison who sings, “Have you got my latest record project? Not something that I used to do, not something that you’re used to,’ on the title track of his imaginatively named latest record project, a double album of 28-songs.

The problem for Morrison and no doubt for many of his contemporaries is that all of the best songs on the new album sound exactly like almost everything he has done in the past few decades.

(And who wants to hear new songs by the Rolling Stones when the best thing they released in 30 years was an album of blues covers?)

The major question is not why we won’t accept Morrison going in a new direction but why, if he is so concerned about it, he doesn’t actually just do it instead of complaining about it and creating songs that sound like they have come straight from his back catalogue. Not that this is a problem most of the time on the new album: his singing is still great, his sax playing is better than ever and the ensemble for the recording is terrific. The few covers such as ‘It Hurts Me Too’ and ‘My Time After A While’ fit in nicely with a mixed batch of originals. Personally, I am quite happy to hear Van Morrison sounding exactly like himself.

Yet while the components are all there for a relatively enjoyable listen, the double album becomes a vehicle for Van to moan about the state of the world and how he has been treated. (Something that goes way back in his career).

It’s like having your grumpy old uncle turn up at Christmas dinner wanting to start a fight. Perhaps the song ‘Psychoanalysts’ Ball’ is a cry for help? In some cases, we must certainly disagree severely with Morrison’s opinion. A song such as ‘Jealousy’ sounds like a Morrison classic apart from the whining about what people are saying about him. Someone should send him the message: Van, no one cares! Similarly, many songs which otherwise fit beautifully into the Morrison oeuvre just allow him to vent, like Melbourne supporters complaining they haven’t won a Premiership since 1964. ‘Who’s getting grumpy?’ sings Van. You, mate!

Still, if you don’t like the lyrics, you can ignore them. This is probably a great album to listen to from another room.

BRIAN WISE

BOB CORRITORE & FRIENDS SPIDER IN MY STEW VizzTone/Planet Co.

NORA JEAN WALLACE BLUES WOMAN Severn Records

SMOKEY HOGG WHO’S HEAH! Jasmine Records

In his recording career blues harmonica player Bob Corritore has released a total of 19 albums as an artist in his own right during the last two decades, five of them over the past year. As the Chicagoborn/Phoenix, Arizona-based musician, record producer, radio presenter and nightclub owner doesn’t sing, his CDs are mostly collaborative efforts with vocals performed by visiting major-league blues artists from Chicago, New Orleans, the Mississippi Delta or the West Coast. Corritore may not be in the top echelon of blues harpists like Kim Wilson or Charlie Musselwhite, but his experience is extensive with a CV boasting guest appearances on releases by a multitude of big name performers. There’s no shortage of instrumental and vocal talent on this latest outing, a series of guest singers linked together by the boundless energy of Corritore’s reed work. The robust female voices of Diunna Greenleaf, Shy Perry and Francine Reed complement the machismo tones of Oscar Wilson, Sugaray Rayford, Alabama Mike, Johnny Rawls, John Primer and Willie Buck on a selection of original material and titles by Fenton Robinson, Willie Dixon, Chuck Willis, Pops Staples, J.B. Lenoir and Jimmy Oden.

The most likely candidate to fill the shoes of late Chicago blues queen Koko Taylor would have to be Nora Jean Wallace. Born in Greenwood, Mississippi in 1956, the powerhouse singer formerly known as Nora Jean Bruso was raised in a family of blues and gospel musicians.

Wallace surfaced in the Windy City in 1976, eventually becoming a staple of the local blues club and recording scene mentored by West Side guitar great Jimmy Dawkins. Soon after her 2004 Severn debut CD Going Back To Mississippi, Wallace took a break from performing for family reasons.

But after a 16 year hiatus she renews her career with this dynamic new release backed by an A-list studio band on keys, harmonica, bass and drums led by guitarist Johnny Moeller. Wallace penned four of the songs, four more written by pianist Stanley Banks including ‘Rag And Bucket’ which features guest harmonica virtuoso Kim Wilson.

Southern-fried soul blues items Syl Johnson’s ‘I can’t Stop’ and George Jackson’s ‘Evidence’ give way to bracing shuffles, funky R&B, steamy slow blues and the minor-key groove of ‘I’ve Been Watching You’, attesting to Wallace’s commanding vocal presence across the broad church of the blues.

Having met an early demise, major early post-war blues artists like Elmore James, Robert Nighthawk, Slim Harpo and Texas singer/guitarist Andrew ‘Smokey’ Hogg were among those who missed out on basking in the popularity of the music’s late ‘60s resurgence.

Hogg passed away aged 46 in 1960 leaving a vast catalogue of material recorded after he was rediscovered performing in the streets and clubs of Dallas’ Deep Ellum district after his WW2 military service discharge. This 30-song body of work follows Hogg’s career chronologically from 1947 to 1954, a period during which he was among the most prolific and best-selling blues artists. These selected singles were recorded back and forth between studios in Dallas and Houston, Texas and Los Angeles, California for numerous labels. In the pre-war years Hogg travelled around East Texas playing country blues in lumber camps and juke joints. Like his contemporaries Lightnin’ Hopkins and John lee Hooker, Hogg’s transition to urban blues was problematic for accompanists due to his undisciplined timing and unpredictable phrasing. Still, these time-honoured recordings of Hogg’s idiosyncratic guitar vocabulary and sturdy vocal prowess backed by polished combos will connect with serious blues collectors.

SUGAR RAY & THE BLUETONES FT. LITTLE CHARLIE TOO FAR FROM THE BAR Severn Records

Since their formation in 1979, New England-based quintet Sugar Ray And The Bluetones have only released 10 albums prior to this one, their longawaited follow-up to 2016’s Seeing Is Believing. The band’s career was on hold during the 1990s when lead singer, harmonica player Sugar Ray Norcia, had a long stint with Roomful Of Blues. For the last two decades though, they’ve been steadily playing their unique gumbo of Chicago, Kansas City, Texas and Louisiana style blues, the core line-up of pianist Anthony Geraci, bassist Michael ‘Mudcat’ Ward and drummer Neil Gouvin remaining unchanged. The guitar chair, occupied in the past by noted axemen like Kid Bangham and Monster Mike Welch respectively, is inhabited here by the beloved, supremelytalented Charlie Baty who sadly passed away before the album’s release. Making an extraordinary session even more compelling, producer/guitarist Duke Robillard sits in on four of the 15 cuts. Originals by the band, particularly Ward’s instant classic ‘The Night I Got Pulled Over’, support impeccable readings of material from Lowman Pauling, Sonny Boy Williamson I, Otis Spann, Cab Calloway and others, displaying a consummate mastery of the blues.

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ALBUMS: World Music Folk

ALBUMS: Jazz 1

BY TONY HILLIER

BY TONY HILLIER

DOBET GNAHORE COULEUR Cumbancha

Ivory Coast/ Côte d’Ivoire-born songstress Dobet Gnahore may well have helped put the land of her birth and upbringing on the world map but pan-Africanism and social issues are what drives her music. With her sixth album, the Grammy Award-winning diva consolidates a spot beside feisty, funky and free-ranging fellow France-domiciled West African comrades Benin-born Angelique Kidjo and Mali-raised Fatoumata Diawara and Oumou Sangare, by combining slick Western-style production with heritage and humanitarian values. Whether singing in her native tongue (Bete), French or English (on one track), this charismatic artist conveys her sentiments over beds of electronica and indigenous rhythms, to create a hip blend of 2020s’ Afropop. On Couleur, her voice is warmest and most expressive in the set stealing slower numbers ‘Jalouse’ and ‘Rédemption’. In the pumped-up glossier pop pieces, Gnahore’s singing, while still commanding, competes with over-done modern studio production. While her new songs — recorded in Africa during the pandemic — celebrate women’s rights, creativity and positivity, her messages would arguably have carried more potency in an acoustic setting.

CANZONIERE GRECANICO SALENTINO MERIDIANA Ponderosa Records

Veteran collective Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino has done much to popularise tarantella in Australia and around the globe while simultaneously helping to drag the frenzied folk-dance music of Italy’s deep south kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The trance-like ancestral 6/8 and 12/8 pizzica tarantata rhythms that, anecdotally, constitute the antidote to tarantula bites, lends itself extremely well to modernisation, as ‘Vulia’ — the coruscating cornerstone track of CGS’s 20th album — underlines with its synthesis of standard tarantella instrumentation of tambourines, tamburello frame drums, violin and accordion with electric guitars and programming. Elsewhere, this powerhouse of Italian world music adds to its reputation of bold global collaboration by jamming with the brilliant Brooklyn bhangra brass band Red Baraat on ‘Pizzica Bhangra’.

Bringing in British rock guitarist Justin Adams and electronic whiz Giacomo Grec as coproducers has ensured CGS remain on the cutting edge of global music 46 years after their inception.

AJAK KWAI LET ME GROW MY WINGS 100 Pianos For Australia On her fifth studio album, Australia’s renowned song woman of contemporary South Sudanese music honours the

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tradition of her homeland while reflecting on her experiences over the past couple of decades in her adopted home of Melbourne, and her quest to assist fellow immigrants. Ajak Kwai opens with a positive message in an irresistibly catchy song, predominantly in English, that urges love not bitterness and follows up with the equally funky title track, delivered partly in her native tongue.

album. Their songs of nature, spirituality and universal love are brightly coloured yet an ethereal concoction that blends elements of folk, jazz, classical and pop, with Indian, Latin, Jewish and French influences and a freespirited sense of adventure.

The slinky Brazilian strut of ‘Nova Bossa’, embellished by Tom Avgenicos’s subtle trumpet work, and ‘Maya’, featuring the shimmering Indian inflection of Venkhatesh Sritharan’s soulful bansuri (wood flute), are highlights of an impeccably arranged and recorded set that also benefits from the top level double bass playing of Jonathan Zwartz.

AGENT STARLING EUROPEAN HOWL DHM Record Label

What follows is something of a mixed bag that includes several sweet ballads (one with a choir) and tracks that exhibit rock edge, including a piece in English and Dinka advising younger male immigrants that they “don’t need to act the fool to be cool”.

GOLDFYNCH GOLDFYNCH Independent

Memories of long disbanded Brisbane duo Stringmansassy surface in the classy genre gliding music of singersongwriter Niyati Libotte and guitarist/composer Gavin Libotte, whose combined talents drive Sydney outfit Goldfynch’s eponymous debut

Those who delight in the sound of hurdy-gurdy, in particular, and experimental instrumental and spoken word music, in general, will howl with pleasure listening to the unique soundscapes manufactured by UK outfit Agent Starling. Sandwiched between an opening paean to the aforementioned barrel organ (‘Helicopter Arms’) and a raucous sign-off revamping of Scottish traditional chestnut ‘The Parting Glass’ are more driving drones, beats and bass grooves offset by bucolic fiddle and cello. Combining a gamut of traditional folk and global influences while mixing antiquity with an avant-garde approach, European Howl reaches a cataclysmic cacophony of sounds in the nigh 9-minutes of the title track itself.

JOY HARJO I PRAY FOR MY ENEMIES Sunyata Records

In the hands of past masters such as Gil Scott-Heron, modern jazz and politically motivated poetry have been productive bedfellows. Arguably, though, none has combined the art forms quite like Joy Harjo. This native of the Muscogee (Creek) nation, who’s currently serving her second term as the USA’s Poet Laureate, is not only an eloquent voice for her own people but also an excellent jazz saxophonist and flautist. Her first album for a decade, was masterminded by Latin Jazz Grammy Award winner Barrett Martin, who as well as production work played drums, bass and keyboards and roped in cameos from American rock guitar gods, Krist Novoselic (Nirvana), Mike McCready (Pearl Jam), Rich Robinson (Black Crowe) and Peter Buck (R.E.M.). They helped inject fresh edge into a selection of emotionally hard-hitting songs of a tribal, national and personal nature that make Harjo a unique figure in jazz and poetry. Pieces such as ‘An American Sunrise’, ‘Fear’, ‘Remember’ and, most notably, ‘Running’ that refract her own sad experiences as a Native American woman. Harjo’s funkified spoken word music not only has inner city reservation grit, but doubles as a unique jazz experience suffused with soulful horn playing on ‘Midnight is a Horn Player’ and the playful ‘Rabbit Invents the Saxophone’.

BIRGIT MINICHMAYR AS AN UNPERFECT ACTOR ACT/Planet There’s irony in the album title because Austrian artist Birgit Minichmayr is not only a consummate stage and screen actor — as those in the Germanspeaking world will attest — but she also shows herself to be a

classy jazz singer and interpreter of Shakespeare’s sonnets. German pianist, composer and arranger Bernd Lhotzky, in conjunction with the impressive Quadro Nuevo quartet, create an array of contrasting settings for the singer to deliver nine of the Bard’s 154 iambic poems. The set starts with a magnificent tango reading of ‘Mistress Eyes’, in which Minichmayr struts her stuff as sultrily as Marlene Dietrich.

Bandoneon, in cahoots with bass clarinet, helps generate a more menacing lower register mood in ‘When Most I Wink’. A more upbeat rhythm featuring jaunty guitar and saxophone imbues ‘Mine Eye Hath Played The Painter’ with a sunnier facade. Stripped back with doleful daubs of clarinet, ‘Sin Of Self-Love’ provides a more suitably reflective canvas for the singer.

work Masnavi. The album converts mesmerising imagery that’s reflective of the Sufi mystic’s masterpiece into lyrical, layered jazz soundscapes. Iranian-born bandleader Hamed Sadeghi’s long-necked, waisted tar lute works wonderfully well with Michael Avgenico’s saxophone, Pedram Layegh’s guitar and, most poignantly, with guest Marcello Maio’s accordion, backed by a simpatico rhythm section. The blending of ancient with modern is the key to the ensemble’s modus operandi. It creates a distinctive musical identity based on the leader’s Persian Radif (traditional songs) and Western jazz influences.

CALVAIRE, FRANCESCHINI, HAYS & LE FLEMING WHOLE LOTTA LOVE Chesky Records

sessions Steve Gadd’s latest live release as a band leader, alternating between piano and Fender Rhodes throughout the set and singing soulful vocals on his funky co-composition ‘Walk With Me’ and on a shuffle blues version of Bob Dylan’s ‘Watching The River Flow’. Gadd’s signature organic groove is exemplary throughout a well-balanced set.

David Spinozza, standing in for the drummer’s usual guitarist Michael Landau, excels in the Landau-penned opener ‘Where’s Earth’, the blues study ‘Hidden Drive’ and the funky ‘Rat Race’.

LUNAR OCTET CONVERGENCE Summit Records

Minichmayr’s theatre work as Lady Macbeth and Ophelia informs her impressive phrasing of Shakespeare’s poems on what is, astonishingly, her first complete album as a vocalist — one on which she also displays an uncanny instinct to shape jazz phrases around sonnets expressing sadness, love and world-weariness.

EISHAN ENSEMBLE PROJECT MASNAVI Earshift Music

Although they play instrumentals, the inspiration for Sydney-based Persian-Australian led Eishan Ensemble’s third release is the poet Rumi’s epic 13th century

Drummer Obed Calvaire, saxophonist Bob Franceschini, pianist Kevin Hays and bassist Orlando Le Fleming present songs from the back catalogue of one of the world’s most influential rock bands through the prism of instrumental modern jazz, and the approach works surprisingly well for the most part. The mind-blowing intensity of Led Zeppelin’s original is retained in the quartet’s inspired arrangement of the title track and re-imagining of ‘For Your Life’, albeit both with greatly reduced volume. Equally impressive is a seriously funky version of the lesser-known ‘Custard Pie’.

Somewhat less inspired are the band’s renditions of Led Zep classics ‘Immigrant Song’ and ‘Kashmir’.

STEVE GADD BAND AT BLUE NOTE TOKYO BFM Jazz Kevin Hays is also prominent on drummer for all seasons and

A half-century has passed since the last album release from one of Michigan’s best-loved jazz ensembles. Re-united after their lengthy hiatus, Lunar Octet makes up for lost time with an electrifyingly eclectic selection of original compositions that blends various strands of Latin jazz, Afrobeat, funk and swing into an amorphous but classy convergence of rhythms and styles that’s both feel-good and dance-inducing — from the compelling salsa groove of opening romp ‘Norm’s Nambo’ to the closing 7/4 of ‘Samba Over Easy’ that builds impressive intensity into a full-blooded batucada percussion jam.

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ALBUMS: Jazz 2

ALBUMS: Vinyl

BY DES COWLEY

BY STEVE BELL

STU HUNTER THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS CD, Habitat 2101

Stu Hunter’s performance of his album The Gathering at the 2010 Wangaratta Jazz Festival was one of those revelatory musical moments seared into the collective memory of anyone fortunate to have been there.

Yet, despite having contributed to countless recordings here and overseas, his own recordings have been relatively few and far between. The Beautiful Things is only his fourth outing since 2007’s The Muse. And while his first three albums – two of which earned him major awards – comprised large-scale compositions for ensembles, this new album represents his first venture into solo performance.

When considering the art of solo piano, it is impossible to ignore the lofty achievements of Keith Jarrett, who over a half-century has single-handedly re-written the rule book. Yet Hunter manages to avoid the obvious comparison. Hunter emphasises slow, resounding notes in the lower register, fashioning a bedrock over which his right hand can freely fashion storylike narratives. The album’s opener ‘Ash’ being a case in point, its minimal rhythmic pattern – repeated with variations throughout – opening the terrain for a series of delicate pianistic statements and incursions. Despite its aching, melancholic quality, the album’s twelve tracks – which unfolds like an hour-long suite – are filled with an unexpected 94and wondrous beauty. Alone in his studio, Hunter went in search of beauty in a time of adversity.

With The Beautiful Things, he has delivered a solo album of astonishing artistry.

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ANDREA KELLER & TIM WILSON DUO OUTSIDE IN Independent, digital release

Andrea Keller and Tim Wilson first began playing together as a duo as far back as 2007. For this, their third release, they have opted to vary the template a little, expanding their musical palette with the addition of trombonist James Macaulay.

Recorded live at Melbourne’s Jazzlab in 2019, Outside In comprises seven original compositions highlighting the unique strengths of this collaborative venture.

‘Separation Anxiety’, the album’s opening track, is reflective and ruminative, with Wilson’s alto sax and Keller’s piano, meanwhile, sparingly inserts itself into the surrounding gaps and silences, veering between cloistered single notes and gentle wave-like eddies.

The fourteen-minute ‘Missed Opportunities’ unspools in similar leisurely fashion, all-thewhile heightened by Macaulay’s exquisite solo, and Keller’s extended coda. Throughout, finely etched themes and melodies are conjured, as if out of air, before being developed and intricately explored. It comes across as a high-wire act, engendered by close listening and genuine musical trust. In the absence of a customary rhythm section, instrumental voices are encouraged to float freely, untethered to any mooring.

Keller, for her part, appears able to plumb emotive depths from just a few spare notes. While something of a side project, the exquisite music found on Outside In is reason enough to hope that Wilson and Keller continue to make time to further evolve their ongoing partnership.

NICK TSIAVOS MAPS FOR LOSING ONESELF Independent, CD

I don’t doubt that, for some, the idea of a solo bass recording might seem a daunting prospect.

I remember my own surprise, years back, when I purchased Dave Holland’s Emerald Tears, only to discover it was a solo recording. Since then, however, I find I’ve collected a surprising array by the likes of William Parker, Peter Kowald, Barre Phillips, Joëlle Léandre. Like those torchbearers, Melbourne double-bassist Nick Tsiavos is best described as a fearless explorer on his instrument. Maps for Losing Oneself comprises two lengthy works, each around the thirty-minute mark. Throughout, Tsiavos steers clear of plucking his contrabass strings, preferring to explore deep and rumbling textures via his finely-honed bowing technique. The pieces, simply titled Side A and Side B, essentially form a unit, drawing upon Tsiavos’s abiding passion for marrying modernity with the ancient sounds of Greek and Byzantine music. There is a deep resonance to this music, emerging as it does out of silence, out of a deep cavernous past. Gently tapping his bow to the strings, Tsiavos sets up reverberating patterns, over which he ever-so-slowly improvises. This is minimalist, slow music, demanding deep concentration, best played late at night, lights out. While secular in intent, there is a profound religiosity at heart, a gentle plea for a shared humanity, a map to guide us in these complex times.

KOI KINGDOM PINK MILK Earshift Music, digital release

Melbourne-based alto saxophonist Cheryl Durongpisitkul is a rising star on the Australian jazz scene. Aside from co-leading the Jazzlab Orchestra, and fronting her own Octet, she makes up one-third of Koi Kingdom, a trio with guitarist Marcos Villalta, and double-bassist Stephen Hornby.

For the band’s second outing, they have served up eight new compositions further displaying their commitment to collective music-making. The trio’s uncommon instrumentation – sax, guitar, bass – encourages a pronounced fluidity. Rather than rely on a percussive timekeeper, the trio’s music instead accentuates a nimble and dance-like approach, striving for crystal clarity. At times I was reminded of the telepathic three-way conversations pioneered by Jimmy Giuffre’s sixties trio. Throughout Pink Milk, the instruments skittishly chase one another, conjuring the same lightness of touch heard on Chick Corea’s duets with Gary Burton.

The album’s opener ‘French Tips’ provides a telling example.

Starting off with gentle bass and prodding sax, the path is opened for Villalta’s delicate guitar phrasing, which in turn teases out Durongpisitkul’s sax. The two instruments slowly mirror and entwine, before joining in unison to explore a gossamerlike melody, underpinned by Hornby’s resounding arco bass.

There is nothing flashy about this music, nothing heroic, it is gentle and nuanced, almost playful.

Accentuating small group sound and a collective approach to improvisation, Pink Milk shows itself steeped in jazz history, while at the same time casting an eye to the future.

MIKE COOLEY, PATTERSON HOOD & JASON ISBELL LIVE AT THE SHOALS THEATRE Southeastern Records

These days one of the most admired musicians in the alt-country realms, between 2001 and 2007 young Jason Isbell was a member of raucous Southern rockers DriveBy Truckers, playing third wheel behind founding co-frontmen Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley. His departure - while mired in personal issues - never seemed particularly acrimonious, a suspicion confirmed when the trio reunited at a benefit for an Alabaman industry figure in 2014, the gathering now released as the 4-LP boxset Live At The Shoals Theatre. The easy rapport between them is warm and genuine - indeed some of their inbetween song banter is worth the admission price alone - but fans will revel in the crystalclear recording of the trio using just acoustic guitars and their sterling voices to revisit a stream of Truckers’ gems from the era. Each get to take their turn in the spotlight, and together the best songs from Cooley (‘Marry Me’, ‘Carl Perkins’ Cadillac’, ‘Space City’), Hood (‘Tornadoes’, ‘Daddy Needs A Drink’, ‘The Living Bubba’) and Isbell (‘Outfits’, ‘Goddamn Lonely Love’, ‘Alabama Pines’) represent some of not just the band’s but the genre’s finest moments. They throw in Isbell solo classic ‘Cover Me Up’ (and an unlisted encore cover of Wet Willie’s ‘Keep On Smilin’) but what makes this set so special isn’t just the amazing songs and killer performances but the fact that these former comrades are back together and clearly loving the experience.

ED KUEPPER SINGLES ’86 - ‘96 Prince Melon Records This first ever singles collection by the great Ed Kuepper focuses on the fertile solo career that kicked off in the mid-‘80s following his stints in the two excellent outfits he’d already founded by then, Oz rock pioneers The Saints in the late-‘70s and the more avant-garde Laughing Clowns in the early-‘80s. Sadly no singles were released from Kuepper’s excellent solo debut Electrical Storm (1985) so the chronological collection kicks off with the horn-laden spaghetti western romp of ‘Also Sprach The King Of Eurodisco’ - which scored plenty of radio airplay, even in the commercial realms - as well as the more laidback ‘Sea Air’, both from 1986’s Rooms Of The Magnificent. His 1988 major label dalliance Everybody’s Got To spawned a lazy five singles - all of excellent quality - and from here we’re treated to a song or two from the procession of consistently great albums spawned during this ultra-productive period. A revolving cast of accomplished musicians backed him over the era (drummer Mark Dawson the sole constant) but this collation of 20 great tracks - taken from nine different albums - really highlights Kuepper’s incredible depth of songwriting acumen and determination to forge his own path irrespective of prevailing fads and trends.

Picking highlights seems pointless, but kudos to the reimagining of AC/DC’s ‘Highway To Hell’, as well as world-class originals ‘Not A Soul Around’, ‘The Way I Made You Feel’, ‘Black Ticket Day’, ‘Sleepy Head’ and ‘All Of These Things’ (2-LP vinyl on either black or hot pink wax).

THE WEDDING PRESENT LOCKED DOWN AND STRIPPED BACK Scopitones/HHBTM

Not much good has emanated from the global COVID pandemic, except for the odd instance where the cessation of society as we know it caused an artist to think and act outside the box due to logistical necessity.

Such is the case with new album Locked Down And Stripped Back by veteran English indie rock outfit The Wedding Present: when their annual Brighton weekend festival At The Edge Of The Sea was cancelled they decided to hold an online version of the event instead, working up 12 songs in a semiacoustic style to send virtually to their fans all over the globe. With frontman and chief songwriter David Gedge at the helm they tackle a heap of faves from a career which stretches back to the mid-‘80s, including ‘A Million Miles’, ‘California’, ‘My Favourite Dress’, ‘Sports Car’ (sung by bassist Melanie Howard) and the oldest track here ‘You Should Always Keep In Touch With Your Friends’ (which dates back to 1986). Bassist John Stewart of London rockers Sleeper has been moonlighting in The Wedding Present for a couple of years now which explains the inclusion of previously-unreleased Sleeper tune ‘We Should Be Together’ - sung here by that band’s vocalist Louise Wener - as well as a new Gedge-Stewart co-write ‘You’re Just A Habit That I’m Trying To Break’. The refined sonic setting puts more focus on Gedge’s adroit, oft-melancholic wordplay, a satisfying new way to appreciate his catchy, hyperliterate brand of jangle.

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Books 1

By Des Cowley

THE DOUBLE LIFE OF BOB DYLAN: VOLUME 1, 1941-1966

STRANDED: AUSTRALIAN INDEPENDENT MUSIC, 1976-1992

By Clinton Heylin (Penguin Random House Australia, h/b)

By Clinton Walker (Visible Spectrum, p/b)

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I

t is somehow fitting that I’m writing this on the day of Bob Dylan’s 80th birthday. Like many, his music has formed a soundtrack to my life, from childhood onwards. Chances are I first heard his music via the then popular Peter, Paul & Mary; though I distinctly recall the six-minutes plus shock and awe of ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, with its enigmatic and convoluted lyrics, blasting from my family radio in 1965.

How many artists have achieved such longevity, continuing to deliver high points in every decade of a sixty-year career? Who else could drop a seventeen-minute opus like ‘Murder Most Foul’ so late in the day?

Neil, Joni, Van? As Clinton Heylin might say: I think not.

Heylin is no neophyte when it comes to Dylan, having penned some ten books to date, including his monumental Behind the Shades. It’s surely a testament to Dylan’s inexhaustibility that Heylin felt the need to return to the well. His Double Life, though, is not some last-minute footnote, but instead the first of a projected three volumes that sees him returning to basics, re-building his story from the ground up. The original impetus came from the newly founded Bob Dylan archive in Tulsa, a trove of some 6,000 (or 100,000, depending on your source) largely unseen notebooks, manuscripts, and correspondence. Dylan supposedly picked up a cool $15-20 million for the material, loose change in comparison to the more recent sale of his songbook.

Heylin comes out of his corner fighting at the get-go, castigating other Dylan biographers for their failings. This has already engendered a very public spat with Howard Sounes, who responded by dubbing Heylin’s books ‘long and baggy’. Coming across all ornery, Heylin is intent on establishing his credentials from the outset, perhaps understandable given he’s about to invest a decade of his life delivering what he hopes will be the final word on all things Bob. So, what do we get? We get nearly five hundred pages devoted to the first six years of Dylan’s career (with brief side-visits to Duluth and Hibbing, Minnesota), from the time he arrived in Greenwich Village, through to his landing back on home soil, exhausted, after the controversial 1966 European tour. Few careers could stand up to that level of scrutiny, but when it comes to Dylan, the well truly does feel bottomless.

Heylin argues the importance of returning to the sources, the archive.

Almost everyone who had anything to do with Dylan has already published their version, often years after the fact. Many are now dead.

Others have wildly embellished their roles, seeking centre-stage.

When Dylan first got off the bus in New York, he had already begun the process of obfuscation, inventing an entire fictional past for himself, including his name. His later Chronicles, while a stunning literary work, plays fast and loose with the truth. One of the strengths of Heylin’s book is that he endeavours to separate the wheat from the chaff, laying conflicting accounts side by side, and making the call based on available evidence.

The Dylan that emerges from Heylin’s book is indisputably possessed by genius. At barely twenty, he was composing songs so rapidly they were forgotten before he’d written them down. And let’s face it, the songs Dylan left off his early albums would have carved out a successful career for any other artist. Steve Wilson remembers: “His ability to both remember complex lyrics of great length, and to scan words so they fit the meter of the line, was highly unusual. He had little need to practice or work up his material, because it arrived in his head largely formed”. Several refer to him as a ‘sponge’, able to absorb everything around him, turning it into song. Sitting at his typewriter,

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he could knock out long, complex lyrical poems, while around him friends chatted and drank. Of course, not everyone twigged to it immediately, but the switched-on ones did. Victor Maymudes: “He was like an electrical condenser, a capacitor filling up with information and ultimately exploding on paper with songs.”

One can’t help but feel a certain excitement reading about this period of Dylan’s life. The change and momentum are so great it’s like watching a film speeded up. Just four short years separate the release of Bob Dylan, a derivative if promising folk-inspired album, from Blonde on Blonde, one of the seminal recordings of the 20th century. Heylin has to work hard to keep up: Gerdes Folk City, Suzie Rotolo, John Hammond, Columbia, Joan Baez, Carnegie Hall, trips to London, DA Pennebaker, Sara Lownds, Newport. And that’s just for starters. Sure, much of this story is familiar, but it is the detail that keeps us reading. Throughout, it’s as if Dylan is trying on personalities, like others might try on a new suit: Woody Guthrie folkie, ‘voice of a generation’, leather-clad sneering rock n’ roller. If they were all Dylan, we can equally say none of them were. While Heylin circles him, studying him from all sides, the genuine Dylan – if there is such a thing – remains fixed behind his shades.

Heylin’s books ends with Dylan’s 1966 tour, exhaustively documented on the 36-CD box set issued in 2016. To this day, the hostility shown to Dylan’s electric music remains perplexing, especially given the UK was in the grip of Beatlemania (clearly there is no greater fury than a folkie scorned). The animosity, Heylin makes clear, was by and large a beat up by the British press, but the reality is Dylan was running on empty (or at least amphetamines). Heylin’s initial volume recounts an oft told tale, and while we already know what he has in store for us in the next one – a motorcycle accident, seclusion, the Basement Tapes – it doesn’t prevent my looking forward to it. If, as Dylan tells us (echoing Walt Whitman), he contains multitudes, then we can expect writers to be telling his tale for as long as stories are told.

ard to believe it’s been twenty-five years since Clinton Walker first released Stranded, his classic account of the rise of Australian independent music from the mid-seventies to the early nineties.

Back then, Walker was not so much writing history as reporting from the trenches. The music scene, such as it was, was very much an amorphous jumble, spread across several states and cities, and the jury was still out as to which artists or bands were destined for immortality. Now, with a quarter-century’s hindsight, it’s far easier to delineate the era’s peaks and troughs. Reading Stranded today, it’s easy to see that Walker mostly got things right. And if he stumbled now and again, it’s still the case he was streaks ahead of the pack when it came to grasping the magnitude of the moment.

This new-look Stranded, sporting a malevolent Nick Cave on the cover, is billed as a revised and expanded edition. But rather than mess with the original book – which, after all, retains its own historical and artefactual validity – Walker has opted instead to incorporate new reflections by way of extended footnotes. This has enabled him to fill in gaps, update stories, correct errors, even confess the odd mea culpa (he concedes he never ‘got’ David Bridie’s Not Drowning, Waving; still, better late than never).

Walker’s modus operandi for Stranded was influenced by the oral history approach adopted by books such as Jean Stein’s biography of Edie Sedgwick (1982), and Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming (1991).

Having long been part of the independent music scene as a journalist, Walker was well placed to write about this music from the ‘inside’.

Musicians, many of whom counted as friends, opened up freely, often with surprising candour, furnishing him with a rich chorus of voices from which to weave his narrative: Chris Bailey, Ed Kuepper, Robert Younger, Mick Harvey, Robert Forster, Lindy Morrison, Rowland Howard, Nick Cave, Dave Graney, Clare Moore, David McComb, Kim Salmon, and many others.

Be warned: Walker name-checks innumerable bands throughout, many of whom have since fallen from grace. For some, their achievements mounted to little more than the odd single release; for others, like the Primitive Calculators, they just never seemed to get their due. But out of this bustling, hectic, over-crowded tale materialises the larger-than-life heroes of Walker’s story: The Saints, Radio Birdman, Laughing Clowns, The Go-Betweens, the Birthday Party, the Triffids, the Scientists, the Moodists, Beasts of Bourbon. It’s an enviable roster that reads like an alternative history of Australian music.

Walker structures his narrative year by year, taking as ground zero The Saint’s debut single ‘I’m Stranded’, released on their own Fatal label in September 1976. When it comes to Australian independent music, ‘I’m Stranded’ was the equivalent of the shot heard around the world.

The following year saw both the Saints and Radio Birdman plying their trade in London, an all-too familiar pattern repeated by the next wave of indie bands. Despite being treated as colonials, The Go-Betweens, the Birthday Party, the Moodists gradually built sizeable followings in Europe, even if they rarely saw a penny for their effort.

When Stranded was first released, Walker found himself on the receiving end of criticism for writing himself into the narrative. Such criticism seems outdated even then, given the so-called ‘new journalists’ like Hunter S Thompson, Joan Didion, Norman Mailer, Robert Christgau had been doing it for years. Walker’s proximity to his subjects is a fundamental strength of his book, feeding and nurturing his own musical vision. And while his book is mostly about the music, Stranded harbours an element of autobiography, he’s chasing down his own demons. By allowing himself a walk-on role, Walker openly declares his allegiances, planting his opinionated flag for all to see.

It is a truism that no independent music scene operates in a vacuum.

Aside from the artists, there are any number of small record labels, distributors, record shops, venues, radio stations, promoters, music press, fanzines, most of them galvanized more by enthusiasm than financial sense. In recognising these complex forces at work, Walker intentionally casts his net widely, detailing the critical role, among others, of labels like Missing Link, Au Go Go, Shock, Hot, Red Eye, and rooArt. Sticking to his strict definition of Independent, Walker steers clear of the major label activity that dominated Australian music during the period, much of it at the expense of the music he champions. Bands like Midnight Oil, Cold Chisel, INXS, all of whom benefited from major label support, have no place in his story. It is arguable that the vitality of the independent music scene, which flourished well away from the corporate glare, found itself galvanized by this very rejection. With nothing left to lose, artists manifested a fierce creativity when it came to making music.

By the early nineties, the landscape was in transition. The onslaught of international grunge finally made the power brokers sit up and take notice. It was clear there was money to be made from the independent music scene and big record labels soon came courting. Today Nick Cave is an international icon; Tex Perkins graces our lounge-room guest hosting RocKwiz; and everybody belatedly loves the Go-Betweens. The music Walker writes about, once marginal, is now centre stage. At the same time, many of the artists featured in his book have since departed: David McComb, Grant McLennan, Rowland Howard, Ian Rilen, Anita Lane for starters. His book is as much a paean to their spirited lives as anything else.

Most books about music tell a single story. Rarer are the ones that attempt to sum up an era. With Stranded, Walker set his sights squarely on the latter, for the most part achieving his goal. Reading it is like watching a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle coming slowly into focus.

A quarter-century on, it remains an essential touchstone charting Australia’s adventurous passage from punk to grunge 97

Books 2

First time on VINYL

By Stuart Coupe

A Kingfish 662 ALCD5005

Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers Natural Boogie AL4704

3 CD

2 LP

Alligator Records 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music ALCD 5000

Alligator Records 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music AL 5000

Chris Cain Raisin’ Cain ALCD 5003

Curtis Salgado Damage Control ALCD 5002

Joe Bonamassa Royal Tea Live from the Ryman

CD: JRA91732 DVD: JRA91736 BluRay:JRA91736

Double Vinyl VOL 1 + VOL 2

Rambal Hold Your Fire

New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers Volume 2 SPCD 1417

Selwyn Birchwood Living In A Burning House ALCD 4999

BB Factory Live At The Wallaby Hotel BBF003

CD + VINYL

Joe Bonamassa Royal Tea CD - JRA90712 LP - JRA90711

Maria Muldaur Let’s Get Happy Together SPCD 1429

CD + VINYL

Duke Robillard Blues Bash SPCD 1423

Blues Arcadia Live at The Royal Mail

Lachy Doley Double Figures

20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Fiona Boyes Blues In My Heart

Elvin Bishop + Charlie Musselwhite 100 Years Of Blues ALCD 5004

Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters Rise Up SPCD 1418

www.onlybluesmusic.com *in over 25 years

Lloyd Spiegel Cut And Run LS0891

few years ago, a couple of folks who were much younger than me were talking about an approaching Fleetwood Mac tour. They were in their twenties and, hell, they were excited to be seeing the Mac. I pointed out to them that those of us with a few more years on the clock and who were about their age when Rumours and Tusk came out were inclined at their age to not think that Fleetwood Mac were all that groovy.

One of the young Mac Heads looked at me and said, “I can’t imagine Fleetwood Mac ever not being cool.”

And to that I replied that there was most definitely a time and place when, if you listened to Fleetwood Mac you certainly didn’t tell any of your hipster friends. It was considered very acceptable to hold the viewpoint that early, blues-based, Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac was mighty fine and a superb example of the British blues boom. And who didn’t love ‘Albatross’?

But Rumours? For starters it came out in early 1977. That was ground zero for punk rock. And Fleetwood Mac were most definitely not punk rock. They were, as far as many were concerned, the epitome of mainstream, bland pop rock’n’roll. That there was much, much more lurking beneath the MOR radio friendly sheen would be recognised much later. For a whole generation of spiky, attitude-ridden youth Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac were the enemy.

And then a few years later came that sprawling double album Tusk.

What was with that mish mash of seeming indulgence? If Rumours was shimmering LA pop hits then Tusk was a lumbering beast that was too sprawling and seemingly confused for anyone to want to spend time with.

Time has been kind to Fleetwood Mac – both pre- and post-Rumours.

The Peter Green blues era is still looked upon reverentially, it’s OK to love Rumours in a post-modernist kinda way – or if you’re less intellectual it’s OK to say how much you loved it back then but you – well – you just didn’t tell anyone in the late 1970s in case your Cred Card was torn up.

Tusk has been the most generously revisited album in Fleetwood Mac’s cannon. The jury’s still struggling with albums like Tango In The Night but Tusk is now revered as a complex work of confused genius, an experimental almost avant-garde exploration of pop meets massive indulgence meets too many drugs meets total innovation. In other words, it’s cool.

Get Tusked: The Inside Story Of Fleetwood Mac’s Most Anticipated Album

by Ken Caillat and Hernan Rojas is a wonderful, much more engrossing than I ever expected it to be, examination of the recording of this album.

This is an insider’s look at the world of the Mac – and one that will appeal equally to fans of the band and anyone interested in studio and recording technology and processes.

Caillat was producer and engineer for Rumours, Tusk and a number of other Fleetwood Mac albums. Rojas’ story is fascinating on so many levels. He left Chile after General Pinochet’s coup and was intent on working in the music industry. He gained a job in a much in demand Los Angeles studio, which just happens to be where Fleetwood Mac decide to record Tusk. Along the way he falls in love with Stevie Nicks.

Get Tusked is told in tandem by Caillat and Rojas which works well as they both clearly have differing perspectives and can comment on each other’s interaction with the band members and their entourages.

Over 350 pages on Tusk might seem a stretch but it’s not. OK, for me I skipped a bunch of the technical stuff as it means little to me

– whereas for many it may be the main reason to read Get Tusked. I was more intrigued by the sagas of the five band members and the creative process – plus of course the indulgence and excesses of the era.

I delighted in reading about Christine McVie’s involvement with Dennis Wilson and the impact that relationship had on her songs on Tusk.

Equally fascinating was Lindsay Buckingham’s obsession with Brian Wilson, the decision by the Mac to record the BB’s song ‘Farmer’s Daughter’, and other factors that fed into the recording of the album.

Central to Get Tusked is the complicated relationship between all the band members, the vying to get songs on the album, the power players, the frequent demeaning of Stevie Nicks and her resulting feelings of insecurity. Buckingham emerges as a controlling, erratic, unpredictable maverick and the one member of the band who’s most not content to recreate another version of Rumours. In fact, he’s wilfully trying to do anything other than that throughout the seemingly endless recording process.

Ultimately Get Tusked is a fascinating study in creativity – and also a terrific primer on studio and recording techniques in that era. If you’re into either then you’ve love more than half of this book, and if your interests extend to both then you’ll find it impossible to put down.

And another thing’s for certain – you’ll spend a real lot of time once again listening to Tusk, frequently with new and enhanced perspectives.

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Adelaide Songs

Bill Jackson

Jim Steinman

Joan Armatrading

Miiesha

Nick Weaver

COMPILED BY SUE BARRETT

HELLO

Adelaide is the focus of the Director’s Cut album by Adelaide Songs (Alan Hartley, Keith Preston, Paul Roberts, Paula Standing, Satomi Ohnishi, Ashley Turner). Recently Keith Preston told Rhythms, “It began as part of a song writing workshop for 2015 History Week in South Australia run by the Adelaide City Library. Twelve songwriters worked with a historian to look at a variety of historical stories and themes to create a few songs about Adelaide’s history. We created 20 songs and decided to mount a concert in historic Ayers House. Following this, some of us stayed together to work as a team to write more songs and this evolved into four main songwriters working as an ensemble and bringing in extra musicians to create an Adelaide Songs performance and recording band. The songs on the album have been written in the last five years and are part of a collection of around 40+ songs on a variety of topics. We are especially keen to focus on what is unique to Adelaide and to explore the many contrasting aspects of Adelaide’s identity (city of churches, city of pubs, festival city, Mediterranean city, big country town, backwater, political ground breaker, most liveable city, migrant city, Place of the Kangaroo Dreaming). We are adding about 5-6 new songs each year and we also created a set of new songs about the Mid North region of SA for a short country tour in 2019.” According to Keith Preston, “Our songs are different from those written by most other songwriters, who tend to mainly explore their personal feelings. Our songs look at the essence of people, places, stories, identity, evolution of the city, burning issues, contentious topics etc. One thing about our concerts is that audiences seem to listen to what we are saying, to the storytelling, and to enjoy hearing material that is about THEIR city and which addresses contemporary issues as well as bringing in history.”

Director’s Cut is available on CD at: www.adelaidesongs.com NAIDOC Week 2021 runs from Sun 4 July to Sun 11 July, with the theme, Heal Country!

National Indigenous Music Awards take place in Darwin on Sat 7 August 2021. The event is being broadcast on NITV, with live performances from Baker Boy, Miiesha, Electric Fields, King Stingray, Dallas Woods and Kee’Ahn, Alice Skye.

CAAMA Music (www.caamamusic.com.au) has released a 4-CD set, 40 Years of CAAMA Music. Among the artists are: Bob Randall, Titjikala Desert Oaks Band, Wairuk, Deadheart, Warren H. Williams, Dark Seed, Apakatjah, Catherine Satour, Desert Mulga.

The Sydney Folk Festival (hosted by Folk Federation of NSW) is scheduled for 13-15 August 2021. At Trinity Sessions in Adelaide (318 Goodwood Road, Clarence Park), upcoming gigs include: Dave Graney / Clare Moore; Felicity Urquhart / Josh Cunningham; Shane Nicholson.

Some new releases: Bill Jackson, Wayside Ballads: Vol. 3; David Lafleche, Everyday Son; Hayley Mary (The Jezabels), Young & Stupid; Louisa Wise, All of These Things; Adelaide Songs, Director’s Cut; Susan Quirke, Into the Sea; The Altered Hours, All Amnesia; Allison Russell, Outside Child; Emily Hatton, Emily Hatton; Muireann Nic Amhlaoibh, Neadú More new releases: Kristy Apps, Take Heed; Karnage N Darknis, My People; Kate Taylor, Why Wait?; Lachlan Bryan and The Wildes, Nearest Misses Live; Louise Gaffney, Until; Joan Armatrading, Consequences; Sloan Wainwright, Red Maple Tree; Emily Sheppard, MoonMilk; Sly & Robbie, Red Hills Road; Maria Doyle Kennedy, Fire on the Roof of Eden; Martha Wainwright, Love Will Be Reborn; Rag’n’Bone Man, Life by Misadventure; Liz Phair, Soberish 100

...AND GOODBYE

Ari Gold (47), American pop and dance musician, died USA (Feb) Senegalese musician Thione Seck (66), died Senegal (March) Ray Campi (86), American rockabilly musician, died California, USA (March) English jazz double-bassist Len Skeat (84), died in March Reggie Warren (52), of R&B group TROOP, died California, USA (March) American jazz saxophonist and clarinettist Mark Whitecage (83), died in March Paul Jackson, American funk and jazz bassist (73), died Japan (March) Jazz musician Josky Kiambukuta (72), died Democratic Republic of the Congo (March) Anita Lane (61), Australian singer/songwriter, died in April Scottish musician Les McKeown (65), of Bay City Rollers, died in April Jim Steinman (73), American songwriter and producer, died Connecticut, USA (April) Australian musician Nick Weaver (37), of Deep Sea Arcade, died in April John Dee Holeman (92), American blues musician, died North Carolina, USA (April) American singer/songwriter Rusty Young (75), of Poco, died Missouri, USA (April) Bill Owens (85), American songwriter and uncle of Dolly Parton, died in April American singer/songwriter Alix Dobkin (80), who with Kay Gardner and Patches Attom released the album Lavender Jane Loves Women in 1973 and whose songs included ‘View from Gay Head’, ‘Lesbian Code’, ‘Amazon ABC’, ‘Talking Lesbian’ and ‘Yahoo Australia’, died New York State, USA (May) Seán Corcoran (74), Irish musician and traditional music collector, died England (May) Australian singer and actor Lorrae Desmond (91), died QLD, Australia (May) Norman Simmons (91), American jazz pianist, died Arizona, USA (May) Indian sitar player Pandit Devbrata Chaudhuri (85), and his sitar playing son Professor Prateek Chaudhuri (49), died India (May) Pervis Staples (85), of The Staple Singers, died Illinois, USA (May) Australian singer/songwriter Johnny Ashcroft (94), died NSW, Australia (May) Patrick Sky, American singer-songwriter, died North Carolina, USA (May) American singer B J Thomas (78), died Texas, USA (May) Curtis Fuller (88), jazz trombonist, died Michigan, USA (May)

STUART COUPE PRESENTS

THE SOUND OF SEMI YOUNG AND SUPER PASSIONATE INDIE AUSTRALIA

GEORGIA STATE LINE The stage moniker of Australian singer/songwriter Georgia Delves, Georgia State Line’s unique brand of country-infused melancholy yields music that’s equal parts heartsick and hopeful.

Recorded with James Cecil (Architecture In Helsinki) at Super Melody World in Macedon, Victoria, “Every Time” is the first single lifted from their highly anticipated new album due out later this year.

Paired with stunning visuals set in the Wimmera region (Wotjobaluk County) “it’s a song about making friends with the consistency of change; acknowledging what isn’t meant for you and celebrating the courage it takes to let it go. It highlights the quiet strength found in choosing to feel joy for what once was, and the power that comes with putting yourself first”.

“Of course, good music knows no boundaries, but not many capture that outsider Americana sound as well as Georgia State Line” – AMERICANA UK http://www.georgiastateline.com

ANDTY MCGARVIE There’s no question that Andy McGarvie is a guitar player of advanced ability. The Melbourne musician has spent countless hours absorbing the influence of Led Zeppelin and John Mayer as well jazz guru Wes Montgomery and prog-punk outfit The Mars Volta.

As a lyricist, McGarvie’s words are carefully chosen, observations of himself and of the world that surrounds him, though sometimes finds it easier to let his guitar do the talking for him. When it comes to his technical ability on guitar, he stands alone. If on occasion he is accused of being overly indulgent it’s only because he can. McGarvie has spent equal parts of his musical life as both a songwriter and bandleader, as well as a gun-for-hire session musician both in his home of Melbourne and in his adopted home of London. He has been nominated as a finalist in both the Vanda and Young Songwriting Prize, as well as the Melbourne Blues Society’s performer of the year. It is under his own moniker, however, that McGarvie really honed his craft, finding the liberty to truly express himself. https://www.andymcgarvie.com

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PAULA STANDING The new album “The More I Give” from Paula Standing, has been described by Jon Wolfe (Capital News) as the “the heartfelt delivery of 10 songs which would be the envy of many who call themselves singers”. Produced by the renowned Rod McCormack, the songs were written in collaboration between Paula, Rod, Lou Bradley and Gina Jeffreys. The album combines flawless musicianship with deeply personal lyrics, delivered by what McCormack describes as a “unique voice that really transports you!” Essentially Americana in feel, the combination of voice and music effortlessly draws the listener in. Wolfe suggests “this album should be listened to as a whole because there is a collectiveness that forces you to be there and take it all in, maybe on a porch under the stars…a unique experience” Available from www.paulastanding.com

WEEPING WILLOWS The Weeping Willows have long revelled in the darker musical traditions of the American South, populating their songs with figures desolate, desperate and doomed. It’s a penchant given its clearest outing yet with the pair’s glorious Southern Gothic EP which features most recent single, Black Crow, five of their favourite covers and brandnew instrumental, Southern Gothic. Ranking among Australia’s foremost songwriters, The Weeping Willows have netted eight CMAA Golden Guitar nominations and supported Americana greats from Iris Dement (USA) to Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real (USA). Equal parts ornate and austere, Southern Gothic finds The Weeping Willows delving ever deeper into the Gothic grandeur of critically acclaimed second album, Before Darkness Comes A-Callin’ (2016). http://www.theweepingwillows.com.au

KELLY BROUHAHA Kelly Brouhaha, South Australian award-winning songwriter, is one of those artists whose unique style simply cannot be put into a box. From big blues to soulful country, it is music that is real and raw and vulnerable. Her new live album “Unplugged”, articulates Brouhaha’s life on the road, living in her much-loved 1992 Toyota Hiace affectionately known as “Pamela Anderson”. The album came to be after Brouhaha was forced into a seaside shack on South Australia’s Yorke Peninsula while Covid 19 swiftly shut down the music industry overnight. Campfires, a live acoustic album that captures the show that Brouhaha is currently touring whilst she works on her next studio album which is due for release in the first half of 2022. Unplugged captures the essence of Brouhaha’s impressively emotional vocal is a perfect snapshot of an artist on the rise. https://www.kellybrouhaha.com.au

PIPER BUTCHER Ready to take the world by storm, Piper Butcher releases her debut single ‘Haunting Your Thoughts’, and it comes with the assurance and confidence that marks her as an impressive new artist with a long career in front of her. With Americana meets rock’n’roll influences from the likes of Lukas Nelson, Chris Stapleton and Stevie Nicks, this song gives an insight into Piper’s unique sound and fresh style. The song stemmed from an idea between both Piper and Toyota Starmaker 2020-21 winner Sammy White; when a troublemaker doesn’t clean up their mess. Listening to the lyrics, you can notice this common theme. From a full band sound to an exhilarating and heart felt solo performance, Piper showcases her passion for song, and “Haunting Your Thoughts” is no exception. In fact, it’s a perfect illustration of where she’s coming from - and where she’s heading. https://www.facebook.com/piperbutchermusic