Rhythms Magazine March/April 2022

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Renee Geyer Fiona Boyes & The Blue Empress Allstars Xavier Rudd Vikki Thorn Ash Grunwald

BLUESFEST IS BACK!

Little Georgia Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram Jeff Lang Felix Riebl Tijuana Cartel War & Treaty

PLUS:

$12.95 inc GST MARCH/APRIL 2022 ISSUE: 310

• Emily Barker • Cedric Burnside • Brent Cobb • William Crighton • Delines • Allison Forbes • Fools • Hurray For The Riff Raff •Robben Ford • Carson McHone • Helen Shanahan • Kym Warner

Tarampa Music, Thrillhill Music & Harbour Agency presenT

Thu 3 Mar Warragul VIC # Fri 4 Mar Hobart TAS # Fri 11 Mar Wyong NSW * Sat 12 Mar Wollongong NSW * Fri 18 Mar Redlands QLD * Sat 19 Mar Maryborough QLD * Wed 30 Mar Dubbo NSW ^ Fri 1 Apr Springwood NSW * Sat 2 Apr Bathurst NSW * Sun 3 Apr Orange NSW * Fri 8 Apr Rockhampton QLD * Sat 9 Apr Mackay QLD * Sun 10 Apr Cairns QLD * Thu 5 May Wagga Wagga NSW # Fri 6 May Albury NSW # Sat 7 May Bendigo VIC # #

with Gretta Ziller

Fri 20 May Melbourne VIC # Sat 21 May Melbourne VIC # Fri 15 July Toowoomba QLD * Sat 16 July Tweed Heads NSW * Sun 17 July Tweed Heads NSW * Wed 20 Jul Geraldton WA # Fri 22 Jul Perth WA # Sat 23 Jul Adelaide SA # Fri 5 August Caloundra QLD * Sat 6 Aug Brisbane QLD * Thu 11 Aug Newcastle NSW * Fri 12 Aug Penrith NSW * Sat 13 Aug Tamworth NSW * FRI 7 Oct Darwin NT * SAT 8 OcT ALICE SPRINGS NT *

* with Melody Moko

^ CHARLIE FITTLER

Full dates and tickets at ianmoss.com.au & troycassardaley.com.au

EPITAPH.COM

OUT NOW

UPFRONT

The Word. By Brian Wise.

09 Volume No. 310 March/April 2022 Rhythms Sampler #17 Our Download Card!

10 Only available to subscribers!

Vale Mick O’Connor 12 BREWING UP A STORM 50 Vale Glenn Wheatley 13 Dave Brewer releases his first new album for eight years.

By Chris Lambie.

Nashville Skyline Anne McCue check s in from Music City USA. 14 ROOM TO MOVE Bluesfest Is Back! Festival Director Peter Noble talks.

51 15 Emily Barker breathes new life into ten Aussie classics.

By Brian Wise

By Meg Crawford.

BLUESFEST FEATURES THE ARC OF A DIVA – RENEE GEYER 16 Long been recognised as Australia’s foremost R&B, funk and blue-

22

eyed soul singer, Renée is still making her mark. By Ian McFarlane.

FULL CIRCLE XAVIER RUDD revisits the stomping ground of his youth.

By Meg Crawford.

THORN BIRD 24 Appearing at Bluesfest with The Waifs VIKKI THORN also has a solo album. By Brett Leigh Dicks.

THE BLUES EMPRESS 26 FIONA BOYES appears at Bluesfest with an all-star cast of women.

By Brian Wise.

SOFTER SIDE Ash Grunwald’s lyrics and music area stark 28 contrast. By Samuel J. Fell.

A COOL CAT 30 Felix Riebl appears with The Cat Empire and the very special

32

Spinifex Gum project. By Brian Wise.

THE KINGFISH Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram brings his award-winning blues to Byron Bay. By James Gaunt.

THE BOY LIGHTS UP 34 Australian music has a new star named Barnes. Casey Barnes is lighting up the country and pop charts. By Jeff Jenkins.

THE CARTEL’S RETURN 36 A new album out, voted Best Live Act at the Gold Coast Music Awards and The Tijuana Cartel are hitting the road.

By James Gaunt.

GEORGIA ON OUR MIND 37 Justin Carter and Ashleigh Mannix are Little Georgia and they deliver great harmonies and crazed out electric jams.

By James Gaunt.

ACES HIGH 38 Jeff Lang and Allison Ferrier’s new project, High Ace, is the tonic for

– Festivals, Touring, New Releases And Profiles

the pandemic blues. By Sam Fell.

FEATURES

THE NATIONAL FOLK FESTIVAL 40 A wrap up of Canberra’s annual folk fest with festival director Katie Noonan and Archie Roach. By James Gaunt.

AGELESS 54 Aoife O’Donovan (last here with I’m With Her) releases her third solo album - and it’s produced by Joe Henry. By Brian Wise.

56

HEAVY WAIT 57 A 13-piece band? Fools errand or Fools paradise? By Jeff Jenkins.

STILL LIFE 58 Austin singer songwriter Carson McHone travelled to Ontario to

FORGING ON

Allison Forbes’ resilience shines on her latest album. By Samuel J Fell.

record her new album. By Brian Wise.

ON THE TRAIL 60 It’s a journey from skate punk back to acoustic basics for Jim Lindberg. By Steve Bell.

BLOOMING GOOD Courtney Marie Andrews is touring with 62 her latest album Old Flowers. By Denise Hylands.

A WORK OF ART 63 Helen Shanahan delivers a dazzling second album. By Jeff Jenkins.

JUST SAY NOE! 64 Kentucky storyteller Ian Noe releases his second album, a lyrically profound portrait of contemporary Appalachia. By Stuart Coupe.

DOWN TO EARTH 66 Hurray For The Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra delivers some potent messages on the new album Life on Earth. By Brian Wise.

COLUMNS 1/3 Revelations: Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Miss America.

69 By33Martin Jones 70 Classic Album: Solid Rock by Goanna. By Billy Pinnell In The Shuffle: Donnie Fritts’ Prone To Lean.

71 ByLost Keith Glass Underwater Is Where The Action Is. 72

By Christopher Hollow You Won’t Hear This On Radio: By Trevor J. Leeden 73 Waitin’ Around To Die: The 1972 explosion of country rock.

74

By Chris Familton

Twang!

Americana Roundup. By Denise Hylands.

75 Musician Brent Cobb records a gospel album. By Brian Wise 76

REVIEWS

MISSISSIPPI BLUES MAN 42 Cedric Burnside brings hill country blues to Australia. By Brian Wise.

FEATURE ALBUM REVIEWS: Cahill Kelly, Hoodoo 77 Gurus, Charm of Finches, Checkerboard Lounge, Grace Cummings,

GUITAR MAN! 44 Warumpi Band, River Dreams, Beth Hart, Eric Gales, Erin Rae. Acclaimed guitarist Robben Ford is touring behind his first allinstrumental album. By Andra Jackson.

GENERAL ALBUMS 88

WEEPING NO MORE 45 Blues: By Al Hensley 91 Laura Coates and Andrew Wrigglesworth. The Weeping Willows, launch a brand new double album in April. By Steve Bell.

World Music & Folk: By Tony Hillier 92 46 HOMECOMING Jazz 1: By Tony Hillier 93 Mandolin maestro Kym Warner returns to Australia after decades in the USA. By Brett Leigh Dicks.

94 Jazz 2: By Des Cowley

DUST TO DUST 47 Vinyl: By Steve Bell.

95 William Crighton’s new album, Water & Dust, deals with some big issues. By Bernard Zuel.

Books 1 Wangaratta Jazz Festival. By Des Cowley.

96

DRIFT AWAY 48

98 Books Too! By Stuart Coupe The Delines, which includes songwriter/novelist Willy Vlautin, explores its sultry side. By Brett Leigh Dicks.

100 Hello & Goodbye By Sue Barrett.

5

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 Nick Charles 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

Tony Hillier Christopher Hollow Denise Hylands Jeff Jenkins Martin Jones Chris Lambie Trevor J. Leeden Warwick McFadyen 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

FREE SUBSCRIBER MUSIC DOWNLOAD CARD

Renee Geyer Fiona Boyes & The Blue Empress Allstars Xavier Rudd Vikki Thorn Ash Grunwald Little Georgia

BLUESFEST IS BACK!

Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram Jeff Lang Felix Reibl Tijuana Cartel War & Treaty

PLUS:

$12.95 inc GST MARCH/APRIL 2022 ISSUE: 310

• Emily Barker • Cedric Burnside • Brent Cobb • William Crighton • Delines • Allison Forbes • Fools • Hurray For The Riff Raff •Robben Ford • Carson McHone • Helen Shanahan • Kym Warner

SUBSCRIBE TO RHYTHMS DURING MARCH AND APRIL AND GO IN THE RUNNING TO WIN A DOUBLE PASS TO BLUESFEST 2023!

PLUS, YOU WILL ALSO RECEIVE THE SPECIAL 30TH ANNIVERSARY RHYTHMS CD WITH THE MAY/JUNE ISSUE If you subscribe or resubscribe to Rhythms before April 30 – as either a print or print/digital subscriber - you will be entered in the draw to win one of the TWO double passes to Bluesfest 2023 courtesy of Bluesfest.

(This should give you plenty of time to plan ahead for next year!).

As well as that you’ll not only get six issues of the magazine but you will also receive our exclusive download card each issue. Plus, the special anniversary CD).

Go to: subscribe.rhythms.com.au

WANGARATTA FESTIVAL OF JAZZ & BLUES 30 YEARS

by Adrian Jackson with Andra Jackson A unique insight into the events that took place onstage and behind the scenes.

Includes rare photos, musician contributions and reads like a who’s who of jazz & blues.

Also a tribute to the town of Wangaratta!

20% OFF FOR RHYTHMS’ READERS Go to www.melbournebooks.com.au enter code WANG20 at checkout.

Also avaiable at leading book stores.

M

MELBOURNE BOOKS

THINGS HAVE

CHANGED! W

elcome to the latest edition of Rhythms which marks not only the magazine’s 310th edition but also brings us nearer to the 30th anniversary of the magazine, which officially occurs in April. I will have a lot more to say about that in our special May/June issue which will celebrate the magazine’s milestone.

If you are a subscriber to the magazine then we thank you for your continued support. Along with our loyal advertisers you have enabled the magazine to continue despite the recent hard times. The pandemic must have struck terror into our accountant as advertising was cut drastically as touring stopped completely but thanks to you we enjoyed an increase in subscriber support. It looked a bit grim for a while but we have survived so far.

If you are a casual reader – perhaps you picked this issue up at a music store, a venue or a festival – then we would love you to consider subscribing. Apart from ensuring that you get the magazine in the post each month, you will receive our regular download card and, next issue, our Special Anniversary CD. Your subscription also ensures that this unique magazine survives into the future.

Last month we looked at the history of Womadelaide and with this issue the focus is on Bluesfest. Rhythms has been associated with both events for all of its 30 years, with both festivals starting just a year or so earlier than the magazine.

Looking back on the early years of Bluesfest it must have taken an incredible amount of determination to establish the festival and then grow it from the Arts Factory to Belongil Fields, Red Devil Park and now Tyagarah.

No doubt everyone thought that the festival was firmly established in Tyagarah – and then Covid hit. The past few years must have been like a nightmare for organisers of all festivals.

Last year I got to spend a couple of days in Byron prior to the event only to have it cancelled just a day before the scheduled start. Given what has happened since, and what is occurring now, that is almost unbelievable. (I remarked at the time that they should have called it a sporting event!).

Hopefully, this year will see a resurgence of festivals and live music events, so that not only can we enjoy the music but also so that musicians and others involved in the industry are able to regain some of their livelihood.

I also hope that those involved in music can somehow convince state and federal governments of the importance of music to the economy, the culture and our mental well-being.

Over the past two years we have had a plethora of online gigs. Musicians would pour their hearts and souls into a song to be greeted with silence. While theses online gigs might have been a good way to support music, there is nothing quite like going to a venue or a festival and sharing the excitement with

Bluesfest is back!

likeminded friends and strangers – socially distanced, of course. (I do think that Bob Dylan got it right with his Shadow Kingdom show and Lucinda Williams produced some brilliant performances with her covers shows).

These days we need to gather in ‘safe’ environments and I am really looking forward to being able to attend Womadelaide and Bluesfest and sharing the live music with you. But I suspect that things have inexorably changed forever.

You will notice that this issue is absolutely packed with features, starting with the entire first part of the magazine devoted to Bluesfest artists. Then, there are international musicians who are actually touring here soon and all the new releases that we are enjoying.

(At least one benefit of the recent situation is the absolute deluge of recordings that have ensued as musicians have retreated to their home studios!).

You will be able to find even more features on Bluesfest artists at our website: rhythms. com.au You can also subscribe to our print or digital issues (or both). I will be reaching out to subscribers as we put together our next edition to share your thoughts on the history of the magazine, so please feel free to email me and share yours.

Until next edition….enjoy the music.

Brian Wise OAM, Editor admin@rhythms.com.au 9

our A l m a n a c !

Welcome to Rhythms Sampler #17 which contains some of the best new tracks of 2022 and some rarities. We have 30 fabulous hand-picked tracks for you to enjoy for the next two months until the next issue rolls around.

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).

SIDE A 1. Passengers

Aoife O’Donovan From the brilliant new album Age of Apathy, produced by Joe Henry.

(Courtesy of Redeye). If you enjoyed her work with I’m With Her you will love this album too.

2. Gotta Serve Somebody (B.Dylan)

Suzannah Espie The opening track on Bob’s 1979 classic Slow Train Coming here performed sensationally by Suzannah Espie at the Caravan Music Club in Archie’s Creek last December, along with Rebecca Barnard, Angie Hart and Charm of Finches with the band led by Shane O’Mara on guitar, with Ben Wiesner on drums, Adrian Whitehead on keyboards and Rick Plant on bass.

3. Where, Where, Where

Jeff Lang & Allison Ferrier From: Snowcap Menace. First song from High Ace, the new collaboration between Jeff Lang and Allison Ferrier. Highly inventive song and sonic excursions.

4. Still Life

Carson McHone (Merge Records) The title track from Austin-based singersongwriter who journeyed to Canada to record with Daniel Romano.

The third album from McHone, whose 2018 album Carousel was named one of Rolling Stone’s Best Country Albums of the year. mergerecords.com

5. Mama Tried

Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed From: Down Every Road Eli Paperboy Reed Sings Merle Haggard (Yep Roc/ Redeye) “Country and soul music have always been two parts of the same stream,” says Eli Paperboy Reed. “The influence flows in both directions.”

6. Drowning In Plain Sight

The Delines From: Sea Drift. (Love Police Records & Tapes). From the long-awaited new album by Willy Vlautin (Richmond Fontaine and acclaimed author) and friends’ dark country soul combo. The album Sea Drift is out now. lovepolice.com.au

10

7. House of Sin

The Weeping Willows From: You Reap What You Sow. The first song from the forthcoming new album from the super talented duo, Laura Coates and Andrew Wrigglesworth.

8. Distant Choir

Nick O’Mara From: Overland. You’ve heard him in Raised By Eagles and with Jacqueline Tonks in Amarillo now O’Mara releases his first solo album (to be launched on March 25).

9. Heavy

Charm of Finches From: Wonderful Oblivion. A gem from their award winning and critically acclaimed album. COF about to tour the UK and Europe.

10. Marrow Gold

Ben Leece From: Marrow Gold (Stanley Records) Newcastle-based singer/songwriter, Leece and his band, Left of The Dial, expand their musical range on the rocking Marrow Gold EP (one of two EPs released simultaneously). The epic title track features Melody Pool on vocals and was produced by Ben’s labelmate, Adam Young. www.stanleyrecords.com.au

11. Resentment

Madi Diaz (ANT- Records) From: History of Feeling - an album that undeniably marks Diaz’s status as a firstrate songwriter, a craft she’s spent years refining.

12. Best Part

Fools Can’t Wait Any Longer. From the debut album from this 12-piece Melbourne soul/R&B/American combo.

13. Stay

Bros. Landreth From: Come Morning. First song from the forthcoming album from the Canadian duo due May 13.

The Bros. Landreth - Dave and Joey Landreth – have a roots rock sound that combines harmony-rich Americana, bluesy R&B, U.S singer/songwriter traditions, and the folk heritage of the northern prairies.

If you are not a member of the Rhythms family, then you need to join to get a fabulous sampler each issue. Please go to rhythms.com.au/ subscribe and join us. (By the way, next issue every subscriber will get a 30th anniversary CD!) Thank you to all the musicians and record companies that have donated songs. Thank you also to all the subscribers who have made this possible.

SIDE B 14. Salt of The Sea

Cahill Kelly From: Classical and Cool Jazz.

(Cheersquad Records & Tapes). Another track from Kelly’s great debut album.

With guest Grace Cummings and others helping to make classic rock/pop with strong roots and classic reference points including Randy Newman and John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band. icheersquadrecordstapes.bandcamp.com

15. Trial By Fire

Jeremy Ivey (ANTI- Records) From: Invisible Pictures (out on March 11) Nashville-based singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Jeremy Ivey first established himself in the early 2010s as a member of the country-soul band Buffalo Clover alongside his wife, singer/ songwriter Margo Price. Invisible Pictures is his third solo album.

16. No Forgetting You

Krishna Jones (Courtesy of Zen Arcade Music) From: The Other Side. One of the most respected guitarist, singer/songwriters and producer in Australia. He made his first impact on the Australian music scene in the mid-’90s with the Aria nominated rock band, Juice.

17. Closing Time

Sam Shinazzi From: Days I Won’t Forget (Stanley Records) According to Sam, “it’s essentially about an ending and not being ready for that ending, yet still recognising it.” Closing time was one of the first songs written for Shinazzi’s sixth album and features Katie Brianna on guest vocals. It’s a perfect example of Sam’s lazy alt-country meets indie pop rock sound. www.stanleyrecords.com.au

18. Time

Delisinki From: City/Country. With a crack band this song is a a duet with Monique Brumby. Melbourne singer/ songwriter Delsinki, the man behind the much-loved ‘Keep The Circle Unbroken’ and ‘Sing A Song Of Sixpence’ touring shows, has released his second solo album City /Country. delsinki.bandcamp. com/album/city-country

19. You Got A Way On You

Checkerboard Lounge From: Sun Sessions. (Cheersquad Records & Tapes). The Melbourne blues/R&B institution – these days featuring Carl Pannuzzo, Shannon Bourne, Tim Neal and Amos Sheehan – journeyed to Memphis for the 2020 International Blues Challenge, and ended up recording an album at Sun! Album launch at the Thornbury Theatre April 1. cheersquadrecordstapes.bandcamp.com

20. I Want More

The Redlands From: Sticks to Stones (Cheatin’ Hearts Records / Spunk! Records) Hailing from North-West Victoria, The Redlands brand of raw Australiana feels both timeless, yet completely contemporary at the same time. Here they give you the heartfelt ‘I Want More’, taken from the band’s newly released debut album ‘Sticks to Stones’.

21. Redemption Is Real

Suz Dorahy Newcastle, NSW/Mulubinba singersongwriter has released the powerful five-track EP Redemption is Real. It is a document of her experiences over the past few years since her 2016 EP, Stolen.

22. Saxophone River Dreams

From the debut album from Sydneybased River Dreams. Emotive and classic song writing and playing.

23. Cleveland

Dave Favours & The Roadside Ashes From: Cheap Motels After Midnight (Stanley Records) The Roadside Ashes are fronted by the head honcho of specialist alt-country label, Stanley Records. Dave’s reckons this one’s his own Ballad of Lucy Jordan, a classic tale of life getting in the way.

This one is from their brand-new, second album, Cheap Motels After Midnight. www.stanleyrecords.com.au

24. I Love This Rodeo

Lynchburg Title track from the second Lynchburg album, a project that combines the talents of Allan Caswell and Lindsay Waddington.

FREE SUBSCRIBER MUSIC DOWNLOAD CARD

MARCH/APRIL 2022 RHYTHMS SAMPLER #17

Renee Geyer

Subscribe to Rhythms Print or Print & Digital today and we’ll send you our EXCLUSIVE SAMPLER FULL OF GREAT MUSIC....AVAILABLE ONLY TO SUBSCRIBERS GO TO: rhythms.com.au/subscribe

Fiona Boyes & The Blue Empress Allstars Xavier Rudd Vikki Thorn Ash Grunwald Little Georgia Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram

BLUESFEST IS BACK!

Jeff Lang Felix Reibl Tijuana Cartel War & Treaty

PLUS:

• Emily Barker • Cedric Burnside • Brent Cobb • William Crighton • Delines • Allison Forbes • Fools • Hurray For The Riff Raff •Robben Ford • Carson McHone • Helen Shanahan • Kym Warner

$12.95 inc GST MARCH/APRIL 2022 ISSUE: 310

ANOTHER GREAT RHYTHMS SAMPLER! EXCLUSIVELY FOR RHYTHMS SUBSCRIBERS:

Aoife O’Donovan, Suzannah Espie, Jeff Lang & Allison Ferrier, Eli ‘Paperboy’ Reed, The Weeping Willows, Ben Leece, Bros.Landreth, Krishna Jones, Madi Diaz, Fools, Charm of Finches, Nick O’Mara, Sam Shinazzi, Suz Dorahy, River Dreams, Dave Favours & The Roadside Attractions, Henry Fenton, Lynchburg, Matt Boylan-Smith, Ray Jones, Beyond The Lake

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Easy ordering options: Shop securely online: www.rhythms.com.au/subscribe Post this order to: Rhythms PO Box 5060, Hughesdale VIC 3166

25. Somewhere In Soho

Matt Boylan-Smith Latest song from the talented singer and songwriter. Album coming mid 2022.

26. Cheap Suit

Ray Jones Sleeping Rough. Produced by Bill Chambers, a superb example of the song writing and singing of this Guy Clarke and Rodney Crowell inspired artist from Western Australia.

27. Ruby (Days Gone By)

Henry Fenton Latest single from the Australian singer and songwriter who is currently resident in New Mexico.

28. Thank God For Rock’n’ Roll Dave Wright & Midnight Electric From: Lost Inside A Dream. Anthemic song from the superb new album from the Melbourne-based band.

29. Messenger (Single)

Resignators The Resignators, from Victoria, Australia, are a seven headed brash and boisterous ska punk monster, featuring blistering guitar, thumping bass, melodious keyboards, driving drums and a military like horn section, ready to attack, putting a bomb under the relatively easy, feel-good vibes that are often spun in the genre, with their punkinflected ska.

“

30. Mountain Peak

Beyond The Lake The second single from Beyond The Lake’s third album entitled Coming Home, due to be released in April 2022.

BYTL use FX and loops to create a spacious, calming sonic landscape to relax to.

11

VALE MICK ‘The Reverend’ O’CONNOR 1948-2022

By Ian McFarlane

I

n January 2022, we got the sad news that Mick ‘The Reverend’ O’Connor had passed away. It still staggers the imagination that one of Australia’s most genuinely talented, well-respected, and truly inspirational musicians was never a household name.

Maybe he wanted it that way, yet as one of the pre-eminent Hammond organ players around he added the magic spice to any band’s sound, always providing the necessary support while remaining in the shadows. He served the songs in a way that any lesser musician would never have been able to achieve. His flair and mastery were never in doubt. If you looked out for him, he was a constant presence on the scene from the late 1970s onwards.

When just about everyone else had switched to synthesizers for their versatility, O’Connor stuck to his chosen instrument, even if it meant lugging a huge Hammond B-3 and attendant rig into any venue around the country. One can place him next to the likes of Lee Neale (Spectrum) and Mal Logan (Healing Force, Carson, The Dingoes, Renee Geyer Band) as an authentic master of the instrument.

He mostly played in a roots rock mode, with one of his first gigs being with the Mark Gillespie Band. He joined Broderick Smith’s Big Combo in 1979, moving on to Goanna, Tinsley Waterhouse Band, The Black Sorrows, Joe Creighton Band, The Giants and Spot the Aussie (with Phil Para) among many others.

He was a revelation when playing with the Big Combo. As well as Broderick Smith’s strident voice and presence up front, the band combined O’Connor’s Hammond with Chris Wilson’s piano, Mal Eastick’s tough guitar work and the sterling rhythms section of John Annas (drums) and Graham Thompson (bass) – well, that was the best line-up. They were a phenomenal band in the live situation, to my mind our version of The Band.

As well as their own songs such as ‘Last Train from Mobiltown’, ‘Iceman’, ‘Faded Roses’, ‘High Rise’ (which O’Connor co-wrote with Smith and Eastick) and ‘My Father’s Hands’, they were an ace covers band. At any given live concert you might have been treated

12

to such rock and R&B gems as Jagger/Richards’ ‘Out Of Time’, Spencer Davis Group’s ‘Gimme Some Loving’, Small Faces’ ‘Tin Soldier’ and ‘Afterglow (Of Your Love)’, Mann / Weil’s ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’, Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Badlands’ and ‘Because The Night’, Al Green’s ‘Take Me To The River’ and Van Morrison’s ‘Into The Mystic’. The self-titled Broderick Smith’s Big Combo album (1981) remains a milestone work.

While he was in the band, O’Connor appeared with Smith, the members of Stars and others such as Richard Clapton, Jimmy Barnes and Renée Geyer on the Andy Durant Memorial Concert and album. His soaring tones can be heard on the likes of ‘Paradise’, ‘Last of The Riverboats’, ‘Ocean Deep’, ‘Iceman’, ‘Mighty Rock’ and ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’.

When he left the Big Combo in 1982, O’Connor joined Goanna and played on their classic album Spirit of Place and single ‘Solid Rock’. He was a member of The Black Sorrows in the late 1980s, appearing on the albums Dear Children (1987) and Hold on To Me (1988). He settled into a pattern of playing with a whole host of bands, so it’s tricky to try and list his every appearance.

Nevertheless, it was for his session work that he excelled. He was clearly the chosen one when it came to his contributions on the organ. Some of his sessions included: Richard Clapton’s The Great Escape (1982); Blue Ruin’s Such Sweet Thunder (1986); Deborah Conway’s String of Pearls (1991); James Reyne’s Electric Digger Dandy (1991); Broderick Smith’s Suitcase (1992); Joe Creighton’s Holywell (1992); Red Rivers’ Hillbilly Heart (1997); and Kerri Simpson’s Confessin’ the Blues (1998).

Mick O’Connor had moved to the Central Victorian township of Maldon many years ago. His passing has elicited many heartfelt words. His daughter Gabby O’Connor posted this on Facebook: “2022 just got a bit harder. My dear dad passed away suddenly last night. Looking forward to hearing all the crazy Mick stories. He was an incredible storyteller, musician, photographer, weird-shit magnet and more. He lived a very full and creative life and is so loved. Vale Michael Julian Francis Xavier O’Connor. 1948-2022.”

F

GLENN WHEATLEY January 23, 1948 – February 1, 2022

ormer bass player for the Masters Apprentices and manager of Little River Band, John Farnham and Delta Goodrem has died, aged 74.

A statement from Wheatley’s family read: “On Tuesday February 1, Australian music industry icon Glenn Wheatley passed away, aged 74. Wheatley was surrounded by his wife of almost 40 years, Gaynor, son Tim and daughters Kara and Samantha. The musician, manager, radio pioneer and entrepreneur died as a result of complications caused by COVID. Wheatley, who was double vaccinated passed away after valiantly fighting for several weeks.

“In spite of having achieved so much, there was a lot more he wanted to give. He had an enthusiasm that was unmatched and believed that anything was possible. He gave everything to support projects he believed in, whether they were ultimately successful or not – his immense passion and enthusiasm was an integral part of Glenn Wheatley.

“He treated roadies, artists and fans with the same love and respect, and had time for everyone. He would leave Rod Laver Arena after a John Farnham concert, just to carry my amp into the Espy,” his son Tim said, “Everything he did was for his family. He regarded his family as his greatest achievement.”

Wheatley began his music career in Brisbane as a member of Bay City Union, a band fronted by Matt Taylor (Chain). In 1968 he joined the Masters Apprentices and was a member for four years, as they enjoyed Top 10 hits with songs such as ‘Turn Up Your Radio’ and ‘Because I Love You’. He was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 1998 along with the other members of the band.

Wheatley decided to go into management after his experience with The Masters Apprentices and in 1975 took over management of the Little River Band’s early career helping them break in the USA and sell over 30 million albums.

Wheatley returned to Australia in the early 1980s, where he started Wheatley Records, releasing acts such as Mark Gillespie, Real Life, and eventually John Farnham. Wheatley famously mortgaged his house to finance Farnham’s 1986 comeback album Whispering Jack, which became one of the biggest-selling albums in Australian music history. Wheatley was behind Farnham’s huge success for the new three decades, as well as helping to launch Delta Goodrem’s career.

In 1980, Wheatley also led a consortium that founded EON-FM in Melbourne, the first commercial FM radio station in Australia. It was sold to Triple M in 1985.

In 2007, Wheatley pleaded guilty to tax evasion after an investigation by the Australian Taxation Office. He spent 10 months in jail and the remainder of his 15-month sentence in home detention. “I’m ashamed of what I have done,” Wheatley said at the time.

John Farnham and his family have led tributes to Wheatley, saying that they were “devastated at the loss of our friend. We also obviously feel for his family as well. With his passing so many people have lost a part of their lives.”

In a statement posted on their Facebook page, The Masters Apprentices said: “We are deeply saddened by the passing of Glenn Wheatley.

Glenn joined Masters Apprentices in 1968. Glenn recorded hits such as ‘Bridgette’, ‘5:10 Man’, ‘Think About Tomorrow Today’, ‘Turn Up Your Radio’ and ‘Because I Love You’. He recognised that the band should be getting much higher fees for drawing huge crowds and fought for a fairer share of concert revenue. After Glenn left The Masters Apprentices in 1972 he went into band management and conquered the world with the likes of Little River Band, Australian Crawl, Moving Pictures, John Farnham and many others. He pioneered FM radio in Australia and organised the Hay Mate fundraiser concert appeals. He has left his mark forever on Australian Music. Glenn would often reunite with The Masters Apprentices, dusting off his bass on special occasions, most recently the Thebarton Theatre 90th Birthday Spectacular in 2018. We will miss him greatly. Our deepest sympathies to his wife Gaynor, son Tim and daughters Samantha and Kara. Always a Masters Apprentice!

With thoughts, memories and love – Brian, Mick, Gavin, Rick, Craig and Bill.”

Delta Goodrem said: “Glenn impacted the lives of so many, including mine. I will always remember him calling my family about my music after hearing a demo CD from when I was just 13 years old. What followed was many treasured memories. I am forever grateful for our time together in my early career. May he Rest In Peace. All my love and prayers are with his family at this time.”

Kate Ceberano wrote: “Glenn the rock n roller, the rascal, the dreamer, the hustler, the optimist, the manager, the visionary.

Deepest condolences to the Wheatley family, Glenn the great!”

13

Jim Hoke: On The Side

BY ANNE MCCUE

T

hey are burning and banning books here in Tennessee and intend to defund the public school system. The legislature - which has Nazi overtones has just pulled off a massive redistricting -otherwise known as gerrymandering - and there seems to be no way to oppose it.

This will make Tennessee even redder than it was before and it feels like we will be the actual hub for the Far Right Movement in America. Scary times for Nashville and surrounding areas!!

I hope Australia does not follow in these totalitarian footsteps. Alert: watch out for fake Christians.

They yell a lot louder than the real ones and have never performed a kind act.

Meanwhile, the musicians are still ploughing on through the debris here in Nashville, making beautiful music. Today I am featuring one of the great sideman, arrangers and studio musicians of this town - Jim Hoke. Jim is quite likely the musician that has played the most different instruments on the most recordings - ever.

He has also released several albums of his own musical endeavours under the names of The Floating Zone and Aqua Velvet.

Despite his incredible oeuvre, Jim remains an affable, approachable and chilled out guy who somehow conveys the aura of those bohemian beat poets of yesteryear. In short, he is a cool Nashville cat!

Jim, how did you find music or how did music find you?

My parents had lots of records; light classics like “Carmen Overture” and swing music like Harry James and Benny Goodman. That got to me before rock ’n roll.

What was the first piece of music that really affected you?

“Rhapsody In Blue” What were your aspirations as a kid as far as music was concerned?

I started learning to play several instruments and my wildest dream was to own an 8-track studio. Now everybody has Pro Tools with unlimited tracks - I wasn’t dreaming very big.

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How did you end up in Nashville?

My wife’s idea. We’d just gotten married and were going to move to Boston. Upon our arrival there we quickly realized the reality wasn’t like our mental picture. Lisa suggested Nashville as a place that “has some sort of music going on, doesn’t it?”

How many instruments do you play and which ones?

Saxes, clarinets, flutes, pedal steel, harmonica, recorder, penny whistle, guitar, bass, drums/percussion, keyboards, autoharp, ukulele, dobro, accordion, jews harp, ocarina, zither, kalimba.

Can you guestimate how many recordings you have played on?

Between two and three thousand.

Can you name some of the artists you have worked with?

Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, NRBQ, Emmylou Harris, James Cotton, Alan Jackson, Dolly Parton, Duane Eddy, Thomas Rhett, Kacey Musgraves, Miranda Lambert, Beach Boys Memorable recording experiences?

McCartney, with the Muscle Shoals Horns on “Egypt Station” for “wow this is really

happening!”, Will Hogwild for “wow this is so bizarre” - he wanted the players to focus on a piece of artwork he hung on the wall, for inspiration. It consisted of a dirty sock nailed onto an old board.

Have you mostly been a studio musician?

Mostly, yes.

Have you toured as a sideman?

And with whom?

Some with NRBQ, Emmylou Harris and the cast of the “Nashville” TV show Can you tell us a bit about playing with NRBQ? They’re the most unique and total musicians I’ve ever been around.

Their following is incredibly loving and ardent, so the gigs are more than performances, they’re celebrations of life.

Have you had a formal music education?

I’m a music school dropout of Oklahoma City University It seems you enjoy arranging music just as much as playing?

Yep - it’s like improvisation, slowed way down.

Has the pandemic affected your workload or changed the way you work?

Very much. I’m staying out of live music venues and many studios till Covid has gone bye-bye. However I hopefully went out on a limb and booked a gig at the 5 Spot with my band The Floating Zone. I’m betting the pandemic will have faded enough by then, plus the 5 Spot is very realistic and responsible about the virus.

What are you working on right now?

Horn arrangements for a Canadian artist produced by Fred Mollin, and an album of pedal steel overdubs for Dobbie, form Of Montreal, as well as a collection of original short, cinematic ukulele-driven instrumentals with colorful instrumentation.

How many of your own albums have you made?

Five or Six with Aqua Velvet, which is mostly me playing all the instruments, plus my first album of me singing original songs, “The Floating Zone”.

People have called it “folk rock” and “sunshine pop”. That’s okay with me I guess.

And do you have another one in the works?

Yes, I have enough new originals for two

By Brian Wise

Peter Noble

A

IS BACK!

year ago, when I spoke to Bluesfest Director Peter Noble he was preparing a festival that was going to be about half its normal audience size, with outdoor stages and COVID-restrictions. Then the day before we were due to go out to the festival it was suddenly cancelled (on the basis of one Covid case in Byron Bay). Then it was rescheduled until October and cancelled again. If you were not one of those involved in the festival – as an employee, musician, ticketholder, volunteer or stall holder – just try to imagine the ensuing chaos. (Just from the perspective of Rhythms, we were left with 6000 copies of the magazine sitting at the site and having to pay the ensuing print bill!)

“I was in shock when the event was canceled the day before last year,” says Peter Noble, “and the same with a lot of my staff, we were definitely suffering from PTSD and - as much as there was just a tsunami of media and that everybody was quite sympathetic - the negotiations with government went on for months to get some sort of an outcome from that, to where people would be paid.”

“That was incredibly stressful,” adds Noble.

“Often the initial enthusiasm to get Bluesfest through, wasn’t followed at that level by the bureaucrats. Yes, we got there and yes, I’m very satisfied with the outcome, but there was not consideration of just how much we were mentally damaged by that cancellation at the last second and the trauma of it, also, the trauma that your family has to deal with as a result. My staff too. I mean, we had psychologists on site to deal with people.

We had stallholders very upset. People were going, ‘Well, how am I going to get paid?’ It was a traumatic situation that I think could have been handled much better.”

This year when I speak to Noble things are looking much better – and, hopefully, they will stay that way. Restrictions have been largely lifted and the Bluesfest audience members should be be able to sing and dance. (Check the Festival Info section at bluesfest.com.au for any developments).

It would be possible to claim that for all intents and purposes Bluesfest 2022 will be a ‘normal’ Bluesfest.

Except that it won’t. The silver lining behind the Covid dark cloud

has been the fact that it will be an almost entirely Australian event in terms of talent.

According to the PR, Bluesfest will be ‘the greatest gathering of Australian artists in the history of Australian music’ and It’s hard to argue with that assertion. (The legendary Sunbury Festival back in the ‘70s had 28 Australian acts at most over just three days.

Bluesfest has nearly 100 Australian acts over 5 days).

“Whether we are the greatest assembly of Aussie musicians with a sprinkling of internationals and a bit more of a sprinkling of Kiwis, I think that arguably that’s true,” says Noble. “I’m yet to hear any other description of talent that’s been presented at that level in this country.”

“There’s been the odd Woodford festival that’s had some amazing bills,” he acknowledges, citing Woodford as another festival with a large Australian contingent.

He also adds that he attended both the Sunbury and the Ourimbah Pilgrimage For Pop festivals back in the day.

“We’ve gone a long way from that,” says Noble when I mention that audiences expect a bit more from festivals these days in terms of facilities. “Now they are really incredibly well-oiled events. Look at Bluesfest. We have the 30-minute set change. Some of those artists are very big setups but we pull it off and that’s the stuff that wasn’t happening back then. And nowadays you can add the quality of sound and lights and all those

things that I’ve learnt over the years by working with some of the best people in the industry in Australia.”

Noble is also proud of the special events that are happening during Bluesfest: Midnight Oil on their final tour, the Cat Empire’s final show with the original lineup, Crowded House back together, Joe Camilleri presenting The Honeydripper’s Dylan Party, Fiona Boyes with the Blue Empress All-Stars, Spinifex Gum, Henry Wagons’ Warren Zevon tribute to name a few.

“There’s also Tamam Shud coming back, Spectrum, Ross Wilson and The Peaceniks and Ellis D. Fogg’s light show,” adds Noble.

“Those liquid light shows, which are exact replications of what people had, that was an experience in the Sixties and Seventies that will be fondly remembered.

“It’s a great coming together of talent and everyone’s looking forward to it so much. It was amazing that George Benson went on our Facebook page and started putting posts up and everyone’s looking forward to the return of music. Lots of Aussies like Russell Morris, Kate Ceberano and Casey Barnes and all those people, they put posts up. I love that about Australian talent - all saying how great it is, rather than the big silence that often occurs from artists. I mean the audience just loves it.”

When I ask Noble what else he is thinking about before this year’s event he immediately replies, “Who can I book next year?”

Midnight Oil: spearheading ’the greatest gathering of Australian artists in the history of Australian music.’ Photo by Matyas Theuer.

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A DIFFICULT WOMAN’S HAD TO BE TOUGH ALL OF HER LIFE

The much-loved Renée Geyer has long been recognised as Australia’s foremost R&B, funk and blue-eyed soul singer, and she’s still making her mark.

By Ian McFarlane (Thanks to Renée Geyer and Kathy Nolan)

B

y any criteria, Renée Geyer’s career has been phenomenal. From her earliest days with bands such as Sun, Nine Stage Horizon, Mother Earth, Sanctuary and the Renée Geyer Band she’s long been recognised as Australia’s foremost R&B / funk / blue-eyed soul singer. Best known for her rich, sultry and husky vocal delivery, she scored hits with ‘It’s A Man’s Man’s World’, ‘Heading In The Right Direction’, ‘Stares And Whispers’ and ‘Say I Love You’.

She has recorded 20 albums as well as singing back-up vocals on numerous other sessions, ranging from the La De Das, Dragon and Men at Work to Richard Clapton, Paul Kelly and Jimmy Barnes. She lived and worked in the United States for many years, where she also earned accolades for her role as backing vocalist for international artists such as Sting, Joe Cocker and Chaka Khan.

She is now set to take part in the 33rd Byron Bay Bluesfest, alongside Midnight Oil, Paul Kelly, John Butler, Ian Moss, Kate Ceberano, The Waifs, The Black Sorrows, Russell Morris, The Church, Mark Seymour, Vika & Linda and so many more.

“I can’t wait!” enthuses the singer when I catch up with her over the phone. “I think I was on the very first one, way back, so I know them

really well. I’ve got a great band and I’ll be playing all the usual songs everyone knows, plus I always throw a few surprises into the set. We’re on the edge of our seats with the COVID situation but at the moment it’s full steam ahead.”

Even before the advent of the original Bluesfest, Geyer had established a presence on the outdoor stage when she appeared at Sunbury 1975 with Sanctuary. Given that we’re currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of Sunbury ’72, it was a magical time for the young singer.

“Oh, I just loved Sunbury. It was such a great celebration. We were all so happy and excited to be there. I remember I got a suit made for the concert. It was a beautifully tailored garment in lime green satin, a jacket and flared trousers and I also wore platform boots. When the light hit me I couldn’t wait for people to go ‘wow, Renée!’. Rather than just going on stage in jeans and a Miller shirt I made it a spectacle, and it ended up making me sound better too. In those days I’d always hang around too, to see the other bands.”

In her memoir Confessions Of A Difficult Woman (2000) she described her early love for Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles, and then how guitarist Mark Punch (from Mother

Earth) introduced her to the music of Donny Hathaway, B.B. King, Freddie King, Albert King, John Lee Hooker, Bill Withers and Muddy Waters. >>>

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A DIFFICULT >>> With her love for black music entrenched she also embraced Gladys Knight, Merry Clayton and Thelma Houston. These inspirational singers have continued to inform her career to this day. Geyer marked her place alongside the great singers of the 1970s such as Wendy Saddington, Colleen Hewett, Marcia Hines and Kerrie Biddell.

She also made no bones about the challenges she faced, such as drug addiction, throughout her career. She was never one to suffer fools gladly, a stance which might have worked against her on occasion, but her relentless drive and creative spirit have always seen her come through the tough times. It’s easy to admire this remarkable women, not only for her astonishing voice and sheer determination but also her grace and poise under pressure.

Rather than take you on a standard tour of her history, my purpose here is to explore the Renée Geyer experience via a dozen songs.

Some Renée Classics and Deep Cuts ‘Them Changes’ – “Well, my mind is goin’ through them changes / I’m about to commit a crime / Every time you see me goin’ somewhere / I know I’m goin’ outta my mind” – Geyer recorded this stomping Buddy Miles song with Mother Earth, for her self-titled debut album (1973). It had originally appeared on the Jimi Hendrix Band Of Gypsys LP and Miles’ own self titled debut album (both 1970) so was a very unusual song for a white Jewish woman to be covering. Still, it suited her voice and she’s certainly having a wailing good time with it. The album was a set of covers anyway, from ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’ and ‘Moondance’ to Gulliver Smith’s ‘Mascara Blue’ but ‘Them Changes’ showed Mother Earth to be right on the ‘one’ with Punch’s guitar work to the fore. Funk wasn’t an area generally covered by Australian bands at the time (one can think of the likes of Johnny Rocco Band, Skylight, Hot City Bump Band, Stylus and a few others) when good ol’ Aussie pub boogie and glam rock were in the ascendant.

Geyer says, “Them Changes’ was a great song but I don’t remember it as being such an important song at the time, it was just part of our set list. The tempo was perfect for the timing in our live set. Mother Earth was a great band, very funky. Our manager Horst Leopold would always say, in his thick German accent, ‘oh Mother Earth, they’re grooving their asses off!’. Mark and I were together at the time, and we had Jim Kelly on guitar, Russell Dunlop on drums and Harry Brus on bass. It was a cool thing; other musicians were going ‘I hope I can get a gig in Mother Earth’.”

‘It’s A Man’s Man’s World’ – “This is a man’s world / This is a man’s world / But it wouldn’t... it wouldn’t be nothing / Nothing without a

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WOMAN’S HAD TO BE TOUGH ALL OF HER LIFE woman or a girl” – As one of James Brown’s greatest songs, it was a statement of intent.

Geyer’s gorgeous rendition on her It’s A Man’s Man’s World LP really was the one that made people sit up and take notice of this remarkable young woman. Released as a single it reached the Top 30. Backing musicians on the album included Tweed Harris (keyboards), Phil Manning, Tim Gaze and Tony Naylor (guitars), Barry ‘Big Goose’ Sullivan (bass) and Geoff Cox (drums).

“I recorded that in Melbourne with Tweed Harris producing. It was an incredible experience. I always loved that song. It was the time of Women’s Liberation and people thought I was making this grand statement about that. They thought I was being so smart to say that. I just ran with it but it was never planned that way. It was just my answer to the situation and in the end it was good for everybody. And on the album cover you can see the hand written name and title. I just wrote that out in gold lettering, in my fancy hand writing. It really looked good on the black background.”

‘Sweet Love’ – “I just want to populate but you just won’t cooperate / I don’t want to segregate because I just want to stimulate” – Having formed the Renée Geyer Band, with Punch, Sullivan, Mal Logan (keyboards) and Greg Tell (drums), in June 1975 this was one of the first songs they wrote together for their Ready To Deal album. I bought the single as an impressionable 15 year old because it was sexy as all get-out and just so funky, I’d never heard anything like it before. Then the single got banned because it was too much for the staid radio culture of the day; the wowzers thought it would corrupt our tiny little minds.

Well, it had already done that to me so I was well and truly on the way to funk hell.

“Oh my God, it was such a fuss, because people thought I was singing ‘copulate’. They thought I was trying to pull a fast one, it was ridiculous. I’m saying, ‘well, I wrote this song, don’t you think I know what I’m saying’. This whole thing blew up but I have to say the album ended up selling more copies than it might have because of this furore. People had to hear the album because everyone had an opinion about what I was singing. I was just sitting back laughing at it all. I loved that song because it had such a funky rhythm (she hums it). It was very revolutionary at the time, it was very new to most people in Australia because it was such an unusual groove. It was just really natural for us to do, we had a ball playing like that.”

‘Heading In The Right Direction’ – “Since I was a small girl / I’ve always been alone / I’m trying so hard to find someone / I could call my own” – The Ready To Deal album also had another ace up its sleeve is this slinky blue-

eyed soul ballad, written by Punch with lyricist Garry Paige. It remains one of her finest performances and reached the Top 20 singles chart. Fired by the powerful combination of these two songs, plus a brace of other gems such as ‘If Loving You Is Wrong’ and ‘Love’s Got A Hold’, the album also hit the national Top 20. The band was in huge demand, not only for their own concert appearances but also as support act to such overseas visitors as Eric Clapton, Freddie King and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee. “Mark had already been doing ‘Heading In The Right Direction’ with the Johnny Rocco Band; Leo De Castro sang it. It just happened to really take off when we did it. It’s such a great song. I always thought the words were pretty simplistic but I knew that people loved it because the melody was so strong. I enjoyed doing it.”

‘Shakey Ground’ – “Lady luck and a four leaf clover / Wanting this hurt I feel all over / My life was one special occasion / Till your leavin’ ended the situation / I’m standin’ on shakey

ground, yeah / Ever since you put me down” – Legendary Motown act The Temptations had made this a hit in 1975 (co-written by producer Jeffrey Bowen and Funkadelic guitarist Eddie Hazel) and the Renée Geyer Band laid down a spellbinding rendition on their live album Really Really Love You (1976). When recorded at the Dallas Brooks Hall in April 1976, Punch had moved on by that stage with John Pugh taking his place. With the added spice of a three-piece horn section it was another validation of this band’s greatness.

“I remember recording that, the band was so hot live. We did all those concert halls and all the pubs. On those hot nights you could hardly breathe. ‘Shakey Ground’ used to get everyone going. We loved doing that, it was basically just four on the floor but you’d dance to it like crazy.” >>>

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A DIFFICULT >>> ‘Moving Along’ – “With a life that’s sometimes so complicated / You’ve got to keep your spirits up to win the race” – This is a life affirming song that Geyer co-wrote with Logan, Sullivan and Judy Wieder. One of her aspirations had been to work in the US. She first got there in 1977 when she recorded this in Crystal Sound Recording, Hollywood, with Motown singer / songwriter / producer Frank Wilson and a host of American session players, including members of Rufus and Stevie Wonder’s band. She also insisted that Logan and Sullivan be on hand to play on the album as well. Wilson had worked with the likes of Brenda Holloway, Marvin Gaye, The Supremes, The Four Tops, The Temptations and Eddie Kendricks, so it’s safe to say he knew what he was doing in the studio.

The sophisticated R&B ballad ‘Stares And Whispers’ was the big hit from Moving Along, but for mine the elegant title track is one of the best things she ever did.

“Working with Frank Wilson was amazing.

He was such an incredibly talented guy. I was right into black music, all my influences were from Rhythm & Blues and soul. He’d produced all my idols at Motown, I was in heaven.”

In Confessions Of A Difficult Woman she wrote, “Frank Wilson was a Motown stalwart, a beautiful-looking black man, and from the moment he heard my voice he was confounded. ‘You’re going to have a really interesting life,’ he said. ‘Nobody who looks like you sounds like you’.”

‘Be There In The Morning’ (vers. #2) – “Your eyes flashing tells me that you are needing / Someone who will help you make it through the stormy night / Follow your heart and you’ll find that I won’t let those dark clouds gather round” – Another Geyer/Logan/Sullivan cowrite on Moving Along, she’d already recorded a version as a B-side in Australia during 1976.

Wilson worked his magic, adding a swooping string arrangement atop the funky rhythm and stabbing horns.

“We re-recorded ‘Heading In The Right Direction’ and ‘Be There In The Morning’ for the album because Frank liked the songs but wanted to record better versions, in his eyes. We did them in the spirit of his vision as producer so it made it a better album.”

‘Bellhop Blues’ – “You keep me waiting / You keep me waiting / Just to sing my bellhop blues” – The combination of Renée Geyer and ace guitarist Kevin Borich for the Blues License album (1979) was a revelation at the time. This is spirited blues rock with a determined soul blues singer at the top of her game. Tracks on this tribute album included brilliant versions of the likes of B.B. King’s ‘The Thrill Is Gone’, T. Bone Walker’s ‘Stormy Monday’ and Elmore James’ ‘Dust My Blues’ yet this Borich penned tune, with its slow grinding blues shuffle, is very powerful on its own merits.

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WOMAN’S HAD TO BE TOUGH ALL OF HER LIFE “I don’t think Blues License is one of the best albums I’ve done but the spirit and the atmosphere is what I’m proud of. It was probably one of the first tribute to the blues albums. It was all the Kings, B.B., Albert, Freddie; I’m just doing my versions and paying tribute to them. I loved working with Kevin, he’s still one of my best friends. I love him, his kids and his grand kids. He has his own style of guitar playing. Recording that album was just the right time and the right sound.”

‘Hot Minutes’ – “Standing on the corner just-a waiting for you / The look on my face shows what I’m-a going through / Losers all around me saying you got somebody new / Wait and just you see what I’m-a gonna do” – Co-written with keyboardist / producer John Capek this one-off single (1980) saw Geyer temporarily reinvent herself as a tough, leather-clad, mane shaking rocker fronting a blue collar bar band. This song fairly rips it up over a pounding beat and slashing guitar riffs. On top of that, lyrically it’s a song of retribution, with a spurned lover just about to give her ex-beau his come-uppance. At the end Geyer spits out “Hot minutes, oo-OW ooOW oo-OW” in her best wild cat snarl. Whoa, she’s hot indeed.

“Oh, that was just a silly song I wrote. Well, I hate to say ‘wrote’ because when you say that you think of great people writing incredible songs. That’s not one of them but we just really went for it. It rocks for sure.”

‘I Can Feel The Fire’ – “I can feel the fire / I can feel the fire oh yeah / I can feel the fire burnin’ / I can see you by my side / Picture you here by my side” – Another song that lyrically is no great shakes but it doesn’t take much to home in on basic, raw human emotions and this Ron Wood song nails it pretty convincingly.

It’s from her 1981 hit album So Lucky, coproduced by drummer Ricky Fataar (who had worked with The Flames, The Beach Boys, The Rutles) and Rob Fraboni (Bob Dylan, Joe Cocker, The Band, The Beach Boys, Bonnie Raitt etc). The standout track on a work that also includes her biggest hit, the infectious salsa-pop single ‘Say I Love You’, ‘Do You Know What I Mean’ and ‘Baby I’ve Been Missing You’. With former Faces keyboardist Ian McLagan and his Bump Band as the main studio group, there are also appearances from Rolling Stones saxophonist Bobby Keys and backing vocalists Blondie Chaplin, Bobby King, James Ingram and Venetta Fields.

“I loved that Ronnie Wood song. I remember doing a gig in New York before I recorded the album and Ronnie was in the audience. He and his wife invited us back to their place. I was thinking ‘wow, I’m in Ronnie Woods’ house, I can’t believe it’. I had a migraine at the time but it was just so incredible to be there, I was so happy. I just kept saying to myself ‘just enjoy it, you’re in Ronnie Woods’ house’. And

I loved working with Ian McLagan and the Bump Band. I loved the Faces too. Mac was so funny and endearing, he had these great stories and we got on so well.”

‘Difficult Woman’ – “A difficult woman / Sometimes hurts her friends when she don’t mean to / A difficult woman / Makes it hard for the ones she loves / It’s easy to do / She’s had to be tough all of her life” – Songwriter Paul Kelly knew what he was about when he produced Geyer’s 1994 album Difficult Woman. It featured a strong set of R&B, jazz and soul tunes including other Kelly-penned compositions, ‘Foggy Highway’, ‘Careless’ and ‘Sweet Guy’.

“I still work with Paul Kelly, on and off things.

I loved working with him on that album and I toured with him. We locked into a friendship and we’ve never lost that. I just had the best time with him. I love the way he approaches the songs. He’s a very curious person, he’s so observant and he notices things that most people don’t. He’d describe something and you go ‘oh, yeah’ but you don’t remember seeing that at the time. We actually came up with ‘Difficult Woman’ together. It was something he was mucking around with for some time. I remember talking to him on the phone about it and I’d go quiet, and he’d say ‘Renée, are you still there?’. I was thinking ‘I don’t know if I want to sing that song’. It wasn’t the lyrics so much, it was the chords.

He doesn’t come from the blues, he uses major chords that are not blues influenced.

That already puts them in a certain vein which was new to me. He brought me to that side of things and I’m sure with me being Rhythm & Blues oriented, he learnt things from me too.

We did have a good time. ‘Foggy Highway’ is great to sing too, a very dark, moody song that worked.”

In her memoir she wrote of Difficult Woman, “It was a joy to make. It was quite sparse, darkish and unadorned, and I sang in a softer, huskier voice than usual. It’s through that record that I developed a sweeter sound to my voice.

People who had never heard of me before loved this record, but some people who loved me as a belter were a little uncomfortable with it. Overall, thought, it’s a record that’s won a lot of critical acclaim.”

‘Sexual Healing’ – “(Get up, get up, get up, get up / wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up) Ooh baby, now let’s get down tonight / Ooh baby, I’m hot just like an oven / I need some lovin’ / And baby, I can’t hold it much longer / It’s getting stronger and stronger / And when I get that feeling / Sexual healing” – This 1982 Marvin Gaye/Odell Brown classic is one of the horniest songs ever written. It found the onetime Motown titan re-energised for a new generation, like Rick James trying to outdo Prince. Of course, Geyer knew a thing or two about sexual healing (refer back to ‘Sweet

Love’) and her version is full of understated, steamy appeal. From her classy 2003 album Tenderland.

“Of course, I loved Marvin Gaye. We recorded that because it has that bubbling feel, that percolating rhythm. That’s what got me into the song. The lyrics are very ordinary, really, they are what they are. We loved that rhythm but we made it our own.”

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FULL CIRCLE Xavier Rudd comes full circle with his latest album, Jan Juc Moon and visits the stomping ground of his youth in his spiritual sequel to Spirit Bird

By Meg Crawford

R

ecorded at home over a year and named after the town where he grew up, Xavier Rudd returns to his one-man-band vibe with his latest release, Jan Juc Moon. “It’s kind of like a follow up to Spirit Bird”, he says. A bunch of factors make it so, including that it’s the first record he’s made by himself since his 2012 classic.

Of the decision to record by himself, well, it was a matter of one thing leading to another.

First, Rudd presaged the pandemic work wall by deciding to take a sabbatical from his normally back-breaking international touring schedule, even before events overtook him. “I was just ready,” he says. “I wasn’t afraid to take a break, and it wasn’t until I said it that I realised I’d been doing it,

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touring internationally, for 20 years. I didn’t know that.”

“I’ve had an amazing career overseas, to the point where that was where my focus was. I guess, because I was doing well, I’d go on tour and then come back and not do much here.

I’d do the odd festival. With the tour we’ve got coming up in Australia this year – I think it’s the first one I’ve done in five or six years because I’m always busy overseas and I’ve always been grateful, and I just have a hard time saying no. These good opportunities come and I think, ‘oh, wow, this is amazing that I’m even doing this and that I’ve got this career over here’. So, I think I had to stop that train. And that’s when I made the decision that it doesn’t matter what offers

come across the table, I’m going to say no.

And that’s what I did.”

Not only did that decision mean local shores would get to enjoy Rudd more this year, it gave him the gift of time to flex creatively, on his lonesome. “All of a sudden, after seven years of playing with bands, I was back mucking around on my own and little bit bored of doing the same old thing,” Rudd explains. “I think I just wanted to next-level my whole percussion and didge and create a vibe similar to what I would create in the band, but on my own. And I know I always did that. I was always that multi-instrumentalist person, but I guess I just got a chance to really hone skills.”

Then there’s the fact that Rudd had actually recorded the title track when he made Spirit

Bird, but decided that it wasn’t the time or place to let it fly. “It was a very personal song,” Rudd notes. “It marks a time I was going through and it didn’t really make sense until now.”

The song closed another loop for Rudd.

It incorporates a recording of his son’s heartbeat in the womb that he captured on his phone during an ultrasound. Rudd’s son is now one. “You know, when I wrote ‘Jan Juc Moon’ I was in a space of grieving really for my kids. I’d gone through a pretty rough time. To all these years later have him come along and be part of that track when I finally released it is pretty special.”

Plus, at least some of the bird noises Rudd expertly weaves into the album were recorded on Sprit Bird time. “I’m fascinated

by bird sounds,” Rudd enthuses. “Pretty much everything in Spirit Bird that isn’t one of my acoustic instruments is actually bird sound. People think it’s synthesisers and stuff, but it’s actually not. What I discovered, when we recorded that stuff, was that birds have got pitch. I thought, when I came up with the concept, that we would probably have to tune things a lot, but we didn’t.

Often, when we lay them in place, it just worked, which was fascinating. So more of the same here. But I’ve manipulated things a little bit more. Just tripped everything out a little bit more, because that’s kind of the nature of the record.”

Now that the touring hiatus is over, Rudd’s returning to a full-dance card – a big national tour, followed by an even bigger international

tour where shows are selling out. But that’s not the only reason to put your foot down on nabbing a ticket. After ten albums, Rudd’s pondering what comes next.

“I’ve never had this feeling before. You know, I’m just gonna go through this album cycle, hit all the places in the world that we should hit and then I’m gonna have a look at it and see whether I want to do it anymore. I had a thought about how it was pretty cool that Bill Withers just shut it down, after making some amazing music. My Dad was a good surfer, but there was a point where he just went, ‘I’m done, because I want to leave it to the kids. I don’t want to be an old guy getting in the in the water’. Maybe it’s something like that. Who knows. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s the feeling I get.”

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Vikki

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Tho

orn

Appearing at Bluesfest with The Waifs, Vikki Thorn has also released her inner Thorn Bird.

D

By Brett Leigh Dicks

espite pandemic-associated restrictions impacting two years of touring for The Waifs, the band’s three core members - Josh Cunningham, Donna Simpson, and Vikki Thorn – have each found new ways to stay musically engaged.

For Cunningham that came in the form of The Song Club, a collaborative album with Felicity Urquhart, while Simpson has been performing in Perth and surrounds with her rock-drenched quartet, Donna and the Devils Johnson. In addition to playing shows with Albany-based trio, The Red Tails, Thorn is about to launch a debut solo project, aptly titled ThornBird.

Produced over the past two years, the 12song recording is as much a sea change for the Western Australian singer-songwriter as it is an album of her own songs.

“For me to put out an album on my own is a big thing and I was very nervous about it because I’ve never done this before,” Thorn recently told Rhythms Magazine from Albany, Western Australia. “The biggest thing for me doing this was letting go of the expectations people might have. It wasn’t a good thing for me to carry into this record that thing of what would the people who like The Waifs think about it? So this really was really a process of me letting go of that and embracing what I want to do.”

The idea of Thorn exploring a musical endeavour of her own is something that first seeded itself while residing in Utah.

Having relocated to the United States in 2008, she had started toying with the idea of a solo project after settling in a spectacular, but remote part of southcentral Utah. Fast forward to early 2020 and the outbreak of a global pandemic. Thorn and her American family were visiting Western Australia as the world started shutting down, and they collectively decided to ride out the brewing storm in Australia.

“When things shut down, I couldn’t really put a record off any longer,” Thorn mused.

“There wasn’t an excuse not to do an album.

I was in Western Australia, I wasn’t busy, and I had all the songs I needed. I guess I was trying to avoid making an album because I was afraid of not getting it right so I let go of the idea that I needed musicians from America or Melbourne to do it and realised I could just go to Perth to make an album.”

Around that time a friend had told Thorn about a band coming to Albany that she really needed to see. The band in question was fronted by Archer, who many will know through his travels with Australia’s undisputed Queen of Honkytonk, Wanita Blanche. For his swing through Western

Australia, Archer was joined by local musical luminaries Luke and Ryan Dux and their The Kill Devil Hills colleague, Todd Pickett.

“I had known Luke and Todd from around the traps because they had been in different bands that had opened for The Waifs in Perth,” Thorn explained. “I was watching them play that show and they were so fantastically good - so loose, so edgy, and so intuitive. I remember getting this burning desire to do an album with a band like that.

Once I heard what I liked it was much easier to take the next step and make an album. So I took the step with those guys.”

With Dan Carroll helming the production the album was recorded at Rada Studios in West Perth. Christened ThornBird, the self-titled album is a textured journey through Thorn’s musical heart and soul. From the Blues soaked “Bullets and Heartache” through to the soulful delight of “Tempest” and classically countrified “All I Want,” the album throws forth a beautiful mix of tone and temperament. It also sees Thorn consciously exploring some very different vocal terrain.

“Yeah, stylistically the album jumps around a bit,” Thorn said with a laugh. “That wasn’t my intention, but it’s a reflection of the way I write. In the end I decided to go with songs I like, the songs that I thought sounded and felt the best. In The Waifs Donna has the low voice and I’m more often than not singing at the higher end. I’ve been that singer for 30 years so it was very much a conscious decision to write some songs in the lower key and explore that in my voice on this album. I like the sound of my voice down a bit lower.”

Along with newer compositions such as the sultry “Big Girl Pants” and the exquisitely haunting “Rough Patch,” the album also features a handful of songs that pay homage to Thorns time in Utah. Along with the shimmering “Utah Skyline,” the gorgeous Americana lament of “Hell’s Backbone” is one of the highlights of ThornBird.

“That song encapsulates the life I had in Utah,” Thorn explains. “It draws together all the incredible experiences – the symbols and dreams and stuff I had to open my mind and heart to. It was wild and beautiful country.

“Sometimes when you’re in the studio and your heart’s in the right place and you’re not thinking about how you’re singing or what you’re playing, the song just pours out. I feel that’s what happened with that recording.

It’s what happened in that moment that I was very present in. It’s exactly what I wanted to convey in a very true and real way. That doesn’t always happen in the studio very often and it’s very hard to capture, but I hear that in that song.”

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Fiona Boyes appears at Bluesfest with her own band, with the Blues Empress Allstars and as part of Joe Camilleri’s Bob Dylan tribute. By Brian Wise

U

sually around this time of the year, just after Bluesfest, Fiona Boyes would be heading for Mississippi and Tennessee. With the Blues Awards in Memphis as the ultimate destination she would first do a warm-up gig at Stan Street’s Hambone Gallery in Clarksdale in preparation for a series of club jams on Beale Street during the awards week celebrations.

As the only Australian musician ever to be recognised in the American Blues Foundation Blues Music Awards - with 8 nominations, including 2019 Traditional Female Artist of the Year – Boyes stands toe to toe with some of the best blues players from around the world.

It has been strange over the past two years for quite a few of us who make the pilgrimage each year to Jazz Fest and then up to Memphis not to be chatting to Boyes in Clarksdale or watching her on stage at the Blues Awards where you soon come to realise that the accolades she has received from the blues fraternity are indeed well-earned.

“Oh, I love it,” says Boyes of her annual visit to the USA. “It’s one of my favorite things. The two years previous to the pandemic, I was in Clarksdale for the Pinetop Perkins Foundation masterclass experience, which is in June, and teaching guitar there, which is a real honour. It’s a very prestigious gig to get the opportunity to work with these really talented musicians and teach guitar, especially as a woman. You’re pretty outnumbered in the blues guitar stakes as a female, but also as a non-American, to be recognised as being imbued with the tradition.”

In 2020 Boyes not only had her trip to the USA interrupted but also had to cancel two months in Canada and Norway. For a touring musician, reliant on festivals and gigs it was a sudden, unwelcome halt to her livelihood.

“The good will’s been incredible,” says Boyes.

“There is a possibility I will get to America, maybe later in the year, but I’m hoping at least to get to Canada in August. So, we’ll just see how we can manage things. Of course, these days, we have to roll with things as they unfold a bit, as well.”

At Bluesfest Boyes will be appearing in various settings. First, Fiona and her band The Fortune Tellers - which includes Mark Grunden on drums and percussion and Tim Neal on electric bass and Hammond B-3 will be highlighting tracks from her recent albums, including Voodoo In The Shadows (and Blues In My Heart which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2020).

“What’s fabulous about these guys, they’re great musicians,” says Boyes, and we just have so much fun when we get together. It means you can go from swampy, percussionbased cigar box stuff, through to Hammond, drum kit, electric guitar, uptown stuff. So, it gives you a really wonderful palette of musical options, which is great.”

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Boyes will also be appearing as part of Joe Camilleri’s Bob Dylan tribute which she admits “takes me somewhat out of, certainly my usual stylistic zone.” Of course, as I point out, Bob Dylan has written some pretty good blues songs over the years. “I’ll tell you what,” enthuses Boyes, “as soon as I got approached, I chose my song and jumped on it. I was there.”

In an exciting innovation, Boyes will also be a key part of the Blue Empress Allstars, along with Grunden and Neal. This eclectic outfit also includes Kerri Simpson, Cara Robinson, Leesa Gentz, Julz Parker, Alison Penney, and Sweet Felicia. The repertoire will be drawn from the classic era of the great 1920s Blues women. The concept came from some research that Boyes partner The Preacher (Steve Clarke) had been doing into the beginnings of the blues and the influence of women, who played a much greater role prior to the 1930s.

“I guess these days, blues is considered to be very masculine music,” says Boyes, “but the women have had a foundational imprint on blues as a genre, and not just blues, because I think there’s a lot of places, there’s no hard genre boundaries in some of these. There’s some blurring of boundaries, and so many different styles of blues, but the concept of the show was for it to be, not so much a cover show, but we want to have the women participating in the show to be able to play their own material, but more the idea is for it to be a showcase of the influence of women in blues.

“So, I think women performers have really given a lot of stylistic influences, and that will be reflected in the women on stage in the show, where you can have that journey, where you can showcase the impact that women that you’ve admired have brought to bear on your own music. So, we want to have a lot of different styles and influences with that. Because back in the day, particularly I’m thinking of the classic era, people like Bessie Smith, were band leaders, songwriters, musicians and they wielded quite a lot of influence. Certainly, Bessie Smith was earning $2,000 bucks a week at one point. She was earning more than someone like Tom Mix, who was the greatest silent screen film actor of his day.

“The singers were important in the early days but also piano players. There were some very, very influential piano players. I think also, apart from that there are fabulous women like Memphis Minnie, who really was the female guitarist, and she pretty much struck out and did the northern pilgrimage up to Chicago and was a very innovative player. She was one of the first players to take up from acoustic to resonating instruments. Then later on, she had one of the first electric combos. She played electric guitar and started to pioneer that notion of single string solos and what

THE

really was the beginning of the Chicago style of blues, as people kind of recognise it.

“So, we lost the women a bit, around about the time of the depression, but there’s some great influences. So, we want to showcase influences that women have had on blues and roots and jazz, all those kind of allied musical styles from the classic era up to the present. And the idea of this review show is that we contacted quite a large pool of great Australian female musicians. So, it’ll be an ongoing project. There’ll be, obviously we’re putting a show together for Byron, but it won’t necessarily be static. We’ll be drawing from this pool of talent, to present the show as an ongoing thing.”

“What we’re doing really, is saying to people, as I said before, not so much a cover show, but more a tribute to the influences of these women,” adds Boyes. “I know, for example, Sweet Felicia as a bass player has got some wonderful swing and jump material, which is what she does so well. So, an original song of hers, like ‘Big Strong Woman’, would probably, if you asked Felicia, have links to strong women like Koko Taylor, but stylistically may well also have lines to the big band swing singers, like Helen Humes. So, that’s more what we’re looking at.

“At the moment I’m thinking about my own contribution to the show and thinking that I probably would like to have songs, for example, that are influenced maybe by players, like Jessie Mae Hemphill, out of the Mississippi Hills tradition, which some of these women might not be as broadly famous as some of the male players in more mainstream blue genres, like Chicago blues.

So, it will be interesting to see what comes out of that, and it’s exciting.”

When I ask Boyes if the project is likely to record an album at some stage, she admits that she has been in a Melbourne studio with Mark Grunden during a recent trip down there.

“While I was in lockdown I wrote an album’s worth of material,” she adds, “which is the party album that I think the world needs, with a lot of uplifting fun. So, I’m hoping later in the year to actually record something, but it’s the sort of project that will require some organisation, because I hear a big palette, the horns, the horn lines, and I hear the Hammond and a lot of fun.”

“There’s a certain amount of mystery, mystique involved with what will happen,” says Boyes of her festival shows, “but I’m looking forward to all of Bluesfest.

There’s nothing that can replace the energy exchange of live music shared and I think that’s something that blue and roots music does really well. It also engenders a sense of community, and I think that’s an important and healing thing. And it’s been a long time coming.”

BLUES EMPRESS “I’m looking forward to all of Bluesfest.

There’s nothing that can replace the energy exchange of live music shared.”

Photo:

By Debra Novak

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SOFTER

Photo by Glenn Mossop

SIDE A

sh Grunwald sits in his tiny home studio, yellow t-shirt and a pair of shorts, surfboards and various guitars leaning against the black wall behind him. He swings from side to side in his swivel chair, grinning, as he recounts a road-trip he took last year, in between lockdowns, just him and a mate in Grunwald’s car, leaving after a gig in Mackay, enroute to the next – in Fremantle.

“We did it like idiots,” he laughs. “We put [the route] in Google and started driving from Mackay. And you get into central Queensland, and before we knew it, we were out of service, on dirt roads with no fences just going through those giant properties. And we could have been driving to Uluru for all we knew, because we were out of service, and it was like, ‘Shit!

We should have remembered ye olde paper map’, we needed that.”

He laughs again at the memory, at the sheer luck on their side that saw them make the trip, relatively unscathed, from the east coast to the west, in time to play that next gig. It isn’t, for those familiar with Grunwald and his touring and playing ethic, that strange really – what wouldn’t Ash Grunwald do to get to the next show?

Of course, these were strange times. The trip he remembers so fondly (more in hindsight, one would think), was in early 2021, prior to the Delta wave that ripped through most Australian states shutting borders and halting things once more. For Grunwald then, that brief glimpse of sunshine, of ‘normal’ life, saw him jump back on the road, as it were, booking and playing gigs as if his life depended on it.

For the simple reason, as he says, “Because you never know what the future holds, strike while the iron’s hot, and so I basically didn’t have a break at all, I gigged constantly. [And] I didn’t know how right a strategy that was – the rest is history.”

He goes on to say he felt silly at the time, hitting it so hard, but that it was almost as a precaution, because he didn’t know what was ahead. “Yeah, the future did hold a little surprise,” he adds wryly.

When the pandemic first appeared, Grunwald was touring through Spain (“I was one of the last bands playing in Spain [when it happened],” he laughs). He made it home and, along with a slew of other artists, moved his shows online for a while, before the aforementioned sunshine peeked out from behind the cloud in late 2020, early 2021, when he hit the road like a madman.

“Just solo gigs,” he says, “but I gigged all around Australia, and I did it all by car. It was absolutely so amazing, I loved it so much. It was very nostalgic for me, to be just touring around, with one mate who came along and sold merch.”

The music is tough, but the lyrics are tender, showcasing a new chapter in the musical life of Ash Grunwald, writes Samuel J. Fell.

Grunwald is, of course, hoping this year holds more of the same, although as we all know, nothing is certain, and everything is up in the air. What he’s done in the meantime then, is head into the studio and it’s back to working under his own name (mostly), his last record having been a duo effort with Josh Teskey, Push The Blues Away, released in November 2020.

Shout Into The Noise is Grunwald’s latest release, his eleventh studio record, and one which comes twenty years after his debut, 2002’s Introducing Ash Grunwald. I laugh as I tell him I remember the release of that debut, two decades ago, a timeline that makes him laugh too, such is the longevity his career has held, mostly without him even noticing.

“Yeah, there’s a lot that’s happened in that [20 years].” He pauses, laughs again, “That is such a classic little stat.”

“I think the last two years has helped twenty years ago feel like another world!” he says.

“Yeah, I remember when I had that album out, supporting Jeff Lang, and seeing Jeff’s merch table and seeing how many different titles he had and thinking, ‘Wow, that’s so amazing’, to have that body of work. That’s a special achievement… I really respected that so much of Jeff… I always wanted that [too].”

Shout Into The Noise then, adds to Grunwald’s now very well-stocked canon of work, and it sees him making a couple of changes. Firstly, where a great deal of his past work has been inspired by looking back (to the bluesmen and women of old, in particular), this new album sees him looking forward, in that he’s co-written a lot of the record with a slew of younger, up-and-coming songwriters.

“My manager suggested it actually,” he explains, “and I thought, yeah, awesome, bring it on. And [these are people] who write songs every day, and I’ve always wanted to work with people like that, I was all for it.” Grunwald teamed up with Mansionair’s Lachlan Bostock, Sydney-based songwriter Fergus James, as well as Joel Quartermain and Edwin White in order to craft these songs, saying, “We wrote way more than we used, and I’ve never done that either,” Grunwald laughs. “[Back in the day], it was all so DIY,” he goes on, explaining the differences between this new record, and his old way of doing things.

“I’d go into the studio with no songs and record an album. And just write them on the spot. I thought I just needed that pressure, I’d be surrounded by exercise books with random lyrics I’d written over the two years leading up to that or whatever, and I’d have some riffs in my head… that approach really worked well for me.

“So, I’d never had thirty songs that were ready, demoed, and now it’s time to record the album!”

The other difference with Shout Into The Noise, is how deeply personal the lyrics are, in the main as a direct result of working with professional songwriters. “This is actually my most personal songwriting I’ve ever done,” Grunwald is quoted as saying in the album’s bio material. “These amazing songwriters unlocked something for me… We went to a place emotionally that I hadn’t explored in my songwriting before. It’s a much more tender side of me.”

“This is why you collaborate,” he smiles. “[On my own], I can’t write about how much I love my wife or how much I’m missing my kids, I don’t know how to. So that was the irony, that I’d sit down with some young cat in a writing room, and write really personal stuff, like the song ‘I Want You To Know’, that I wrote with Fergus James, that makes my eyes sting when I sing that. It’s about my kids, and this is why I’m on the road, I’m missing you guys. My kids love that song, I’ve had some big burly fellas with beards say, ‘That choked me up, mate’, and I think that’s amazing, I’m so glad I went there.”

One reason why Grunwald hasn’t written like this before, aside from him “not knowing how”, is because he doesn’t regard it as a bluesy thing, as the thing that he does.

Other songs on Shout Into The Noise deal with such issues as the hard times his parents went through when they first moved to Australia in the ‘70s (‘Let Me Go’); lockdowns (‘Madhouse’); pushing limits and feeling free but ultimately not (‘Tell It Like It Is’); family members and addiction (‘Way Too Long’).

It’s a deeply personal record, and the writing definitely shows a new side to Ash Grunwald.

For fans of his early work, there’s no need to be alarmed from a sonic perspective, as with these deeply personal lyrics comes not a change of pace from his bluesy background, but perhaps a more intense love of it – while there is an electronic element to Shout Into The Noise, it is at its heart, very much an Ash Grunwald record. ‘Surrender’ is very much built around his crunchy slide; ‘Madhouse’ is a wailing psych blues stretch; ‘Gone’ is “a four-on-the-floor blues dance, slide dance, crossover track” – there’s no need to worry that Ash Grunwald hasn’t brought the blues.

This is, then, a new chapter for Grunwald – an evolution in his playing, along with a concerted effort at delving deeper in regard to his writing, making Shout Into The Noise perhaps his most accomplished work to date.

And all things willing, he’ll be driving all over the country as soon as possible, just him in his car, along with this new side of himself.

Shout Into The Noise is available March 9 via Bloodlines Records.

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I

t will be a bittersweet Bluesfest for Felix Riebl. As a founding member of The Cat Empire, one of Australia’s most popular live bands, he will be taking part in the farewell shows for its original line-up after twenty years as the band morphs into the future. But he will also share the stage with his latest project, the brilliant and inspirational Spinifex Gum. “The first time I ever played a show with Ollie, Ryan, Harry, Will, and Jumps, something just took off. We were young. It was chaotic and magic. The crowd danced, they lost themselves, and so did we,” wrote Felix recently on the Cat Empire website. “I remember going outside after the set, and the night sky had never looked so alive. I won’t forget the 20-year adventure we’ve been on since. It’s taken us around the world. It’s collided us with hundreds of musicians, festivals, characters, fire-born nights, places to record our songs… and it’s introduced us to you, our most amazing audience.”

“Bluesfest is going to be the last time the original members of the band are all on stage together,” confirms Riebl when we catch up by Zoom to chat, “and then after that, Ollie, myself, Ross, several other members who’ve been part of the band are going to continue The Cat Empire in a new form and that’s going to be an exciting time when the time’s right. We’re going to put something new together and tour that, and be back at Bluesfest, I hope one day, but this is a very special nostalgic event.”

Riebl could have hardly imagined that when the group started twenty years ago in the cool jazz hangouts of Melbourne that it would have such longevity as well as such success.

“It’s been amazing,” he says. “Really. Starting out as a very much like a late night, more of a cult band, to playing on some of this country’s stages and playing with sort of audiences that we have.

None of us expected it when we started out to go for 20 years but it was probably testament to our audience in a lot of ways that this band managed to make so many albums, play on so many stages, go through so many different life chapters together. It’s been an incredible journey, hands down.”

“The spirit of a real festival is when people are colliding on the street, when it’s spills out of the festival itself into the city,” he continues. “The music of The Cat Empire has always been about that sense of overflowing and about that sense of having a good time. It’s just like there’s music to ponder to, and there’s music to do all sorts of things to. But The Cat Empire is for that time in the day when

Cool Cat! Felix Riebl will be appearing at Bluesfest with The Cat Empire and also the inspirational Spinifex Gum project.

By Brian Wise

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you want to leave your normal life for a bit and have a beer and watch the sun go down and then have some fun.”

How important has it been in terms of longevity for the band for the members to have all their own projects?

“It was probably very important for the longevity aspect,” agrees Riebl, “because The Cat Empire’s a very time and place feeling. You don’t want to spend your whole day in The Cat Empire mode. But other projects have allowed people to flex their creativity in other areas and the band is really made up of very good writers and very good musicians. It’s one of the reasons we’ve been able to go to so many different places musically because of the quality of the players, and so for them to stay halfway sane with the kind of intensity of touring that we did with that band, other projects were super important, I think. For some of the members who are leaving, those other projects are going to become more central for them and I wish them all the fortune in the world with those things.”

“It’s only once you’ve got some kids of your own and you sort of look back that you realize how many changes there were,” explains Riebl when I ask him to reflect on the early years of the Empire. “Even if you listen to the first album, it’s so much about how we were living then.

It’s very, very early twenties. It’s very youthful music and I guess a bit of that youth always follows us around and that’s a good thing, but it’s very different. You go through a lot of changes in twenty years and families make a huge difference to that. The excesses of touring, just the trial of being together with the same people for that long and finding ways to make that possible. All of those are a really significant life of it.

“I remember leaving first year creative arts and saying I was deferring so I could play a season at the Adelaide Fringe Festival and never came back. I remember at that point, I thought, ‘Oh, I’m having a good time here, so I’ll just give it 10 years.’ It turned out that the Cat was able to be a full-time job. Who should be so lucky in a way? We’d play at the Prince of Wales. It was a great gig. Real, real early days of the band combusting before any record deals or anything like that. It was just word of mouth and a really good vibe down at the place. It’s actually where I met Peter Noble. He came to see us at the Prince of Wales. Then you find yourself on tour two months in playing five or six nights a week. We were able to make a living from being a live band and also to support a lot of people.”

“I’m very proud to have gotten to this point in my life and just been able to play music and really feel very blessed because it’s a wonderful place.

It’s like that Dr. John song, it’s off the album, Desitively Bonnaroo, and it goes, ‘You talk of money matters, but my day filled with song, song and more song.’ Anyway, but if you can have music and you can draw on music for in the hard times, you can write about things. You don’t suffer them as much if you can write about them. You can celebrate with music. It’s sort of, I feel like a life in that space is a fortunate one and I count myself very lucky.”

The other side to Riebl’s musical persona is Spinifex Gum, which is ‘part protest, part celebration.’ It features the award-winning all-female ensemble, Marliya which is a Cairns-based ensemble of Aboriginal and Torres Strait teenage singers, conducted by Lyn Williams AM of Gondwana Choirs. The choir sings in both English and Yindjibarndi and addresses some major issues including the social disparity present in The Pilbara, deaths in custody, incarceration and land rights. When I saw their show at Womadelaide several years ago I was moved to describe at as inspirational. The Bluesfest shows will also feature Emma Donovan as a guest vocalist.

“Spinifex Gum has been the project of a lifetime,” explains Riebl, who adds that it was a trip he made to the Pilbara back in 2014 when he was asked to collaborate with the Gondwana Indigenous Children’s Choir that sparked the project. It was there that he met Michael Woodley, the CEO of the in Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation. “He is an extraordinary leader in his own right. He’s currently involved in the biggest land rights claims against Fortescue Metals. He’s a real hero and I was lucky enough to form a great friendship with him. He’s also a great music lover and that’s how we connected at first. So, there’s a lot of Yindjibarndi language in these songs which are contemporary electronic pop inspired songs but they have a real protesting edge. They’re written in a collaboration with an indigenous and non-indigenous creative team involving Lynn Williams who conducts and Deborah Brown, formally of Bangarra Dance Theater as a choreographer, the Marliya Choir who are the heart and soul of that, but also artists like Briggs, Emma Donovan, Peter Garrett, who have all featured in the show and on the album.”

“So, instead of it being a polite background, a serial choir sound, it’s a very, very upfront, potent powerful choir, and we built the project.

We’re working on our third album at the moment. Songs should be ready for the Bluesfest performance and I got to say, in terms of a live performance, it’s just been one of those rare things that comes together and it just knocks people sideways. Whenever they perform, these young women are just immense and the power of their collective voices is just something very beautiful and powerful. You’ve seen it, you probably speak to it. It’s kind of beyond any person’s single vision, that one. It’s just a really great collective that’s taken off.

“There have been who I would classify a hardened, very, very opinionated middle aged men, politicians and people like that, sitting in the audience that are just weeping. When you see this Marliya Choir in front of you, this collection of young, beautiful voices, then all of a sudden, it washes over you in a different way and it’s kind of paradigm shift musical experience. I can’t speak highly enough of those young singers and the way that that project’s come together. It’s been very challenging, but also extremely rewarding and very, very beautiful.”

If you are lucky enough to be at Bluesfest this year then you will hear some of the songs from the forthcoming Spinifex Gum album; otherwise look for its release mid-year at spinifexgum.com.

31

KINGFISHING! Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram

Brings His Delta Blues to Australia.

By James Gaunt

A

t 23 years of age, Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram isn’t just one of the youngest acts at this year’s Bluesfest, but also one of the few international performers. He’s flying in from the USA to perform songs from his second album of original blues, last year’s 662.

Growing up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, Kingfish couldn’t escape the blues. “I was always around it, and at school I was pretty much the only one listening to the blues,” he said.

After watching a documentary about Muddy Waters and visiting the nearby Delta Blues Museum, he found himself drawn to the long legacy of blues music while his classmates listened to the Top 40.

“At school, they didn’t understand it. I would get questioned and I’d explain that this is our culture, and our history,” he said.

Dubbed Kingfish by one of his early mentors, he began using his nickname professionally and was already building a following for his guitar skills at the age of 15.

Working within the downhome blues style long associated with Muddy Waters, Kingfish released some demos online before he brought out his anticipated debut album Kingfish in 2019.

The album gained instant success and went #1 on the Billboard Blues Chart, was nominated for a Grammy, and won five statues at the 2020 Blues Music Awards.

Such success brought interest from outside the blues world, and in recent years Kingfish has opened for rock band Vampire Weekend on tour, performed with hip hop MC Rakim, and collaborated with Bootsy Collins on his 2020 single Creepin’.

“There’s a definite fanbase for blues music in the US, but I would say it’s mostly in certain cities or regions, like the South and the West Coast,” Kingfish said. “Coming from Clarkson, Mississippi I try to keep everything I do rooted in tradition. But I mix other stuff in there for the young folk, and I see no harm in putting other styles in as well.”

Last year Kingfish performed at the BB King Museum, and following a set of his own songs, he paid tribute to King by performing his 1953 single Woke Up This Morning (My Baby She Was Gone) with members of King’s band.

32

“I had many influences growing up and BB King was definitely one of my biggest, but I’d listen to Son House, Robert Johnson, Freddie King, and Albert King too. I’ve played with Buddy Guy’s band, and I’ve got praise from the OG’s, as I like to call them,” he said.

His guitar work and stage presence have earned Kingfish high praise from within the blues community, with some calling him the heir to the Delta Blues crown. But while such acclaim must come with a certain amount of pressure, Kingfish said he does his best to put it aside and just enjoy the music.

“In the past couple of years, I’ll just try to ignore all of the praise and the hoorah,” he said. “But it’s definitely there, and anytime someone tries to put that on you it’s a big thing.”

Now, he’s preparing to bring his live show down under, before making festival appearances in Europe and the UK, which will see him take the blues around the world. So, was he surprised there was a blues festival in Australia?

“Honestly, not at all. I know blues reaches and touches many different people and cultures in the world, and they’re doing blues festivals for themselves. So of course, I wasn’t surprised.”

Following his first album’s release in 2019, Kingfish was invited to perform at Bluesfest in 2020. Unfortunately, that year was upended, and we’ve had to wait a bit longer to see him live. It also means the Kingfish live show has changed, as he now has two albums of originals out and Kingfish said his shows don’t need to rely on cover versions or standards anymore.

“These days we have an all-original set, or most of the time it’s all original, and maybe we’ll close out with one cover that we know the fans want.”

It’s a show that will surely draw in new fans, curious about this young blues guitarist and his authentic Mississippi sound. Because it’s that insistence on authenticity, to the sound he grew up hearing, that attracts so many people to his shows.

“People can hear the downhome and that our blues is definitely authentic in how it sounds,” Kingfish said. “That’s why people are drawn to it. They can hear the authenticity.”

CD + LP

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Duke Joe Bonamassa Robillard They CallTime It Rhythm Clocks& Blues SPCD JRA92072 1446

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Shemekia Copeland Uncivil War CD - ALCD 5001 LP - AL 5001 CD + LP

Joe Bonamassa Time Clocks JRA92072

Joe Bonamassa Time Clocks JRA92071

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Tommy Castro A Bluesman Came To Town CD- ALCD 5006 LP- AL 5006

Steve Marriner Hope Dies Last SPCD 1433

Corey Harris The Insurrection Blues MC - 0089

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First time on VINYL*

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Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers Natural Boogie

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Alligator Records 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music

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20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

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New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers Volume 2

Maria Muldaur Let’s Get Happy Together SPCD 1429

Fiona Boyes Blues In My Heart

Elvin Bishop + Charlie Musselwhite 100 Years Of Blues ALCD 5004

33

THE BOY L

Australian music has He’s lighting up the c

C

asey Barnes smiled when he saw the itinerary for the tour to promote his new album, Light It Up. The run of 26 dates across every state aside from WA – “it made me exhausted just reading the tour poster” – started with a show at the Forth Pub in Forth, a small village in north-west Tasmania. It was, said Barnes, “a full-circle moment”.

It was at the Forth that the aspiring artist first stepped on stage.

Inspired by his mother, young Casey picked up the guitar. “My mum has always been extremely musical and she was doing a music course at one of the local colleges in Devonport,” he explains. “They formed a little band and one of the ladies in the band was doing a show that night and that’s why they got me along.”

Barnes played Eric Clapton’s ‘Tears In Heaven’.

“I had my little electric guitar and pretended I knew what I was doing,” he laughs. “My music teacher was incredible and he used to let me take home CDs from high school to learn how to play along with them. And Eric Clapton’s Unplugged was one of the albums.”

At the time, Barnes and his family were living in a small town called Turners Beach, nestled between Devonport and Ulverstone. By the time of his first “proper gig”, a few years later, his family had returned to Launceston.

Every morning, walking to school, Barnes would note the acts listed on the blackboard outside the Irish Murphy’s pub, thinking: “If I could just get my name on that blackboard, I’ve hit the big time.”

He ended up doing a Tuesday night at Irish Murphy’s; an inauspicious beginning for an artist who’s now one of the hottest stars in Australian country music, but characteristic of a guy who always dared to dream big. It was no accident that his breakthrough album was called Town Of A Million Dreams.

Barnes recalls discussing his music dream with his parents when he had a stable job at Flight Centre. “I was doing gigs on the side and it got to the point where I thought I could do it full-time. I sat down with mum

34

LIGHTS UP

s a new star named Barnes. country and pop charts. By Jeff Jenkins and dad and said, ‘I think I’m going to have a crack at doing music full-time.’ And they backed me.”

Barnes’ recording career started with an independent release called Say What You Feel. And that’s when an Australian sporting legend enters the story.

John Eales, Australia’s most successful rugby captain, was looking for someone to perform at a series of corporate gigs during a Wallabies test series. At the end of the run of shows, Barnes gave Eales a copy of his CD and thanked him for the opportunity.

A week later, Eales phoned him. “I’ve had your album in the car all week and I think it’s fantastic,” the rugby great said. “I want to see if I can help you.”

A few days later, Barnes’ phone rang again. It was a booking agent from the long-running concert event A Day On The Green. “I thought it was a prank call,” Barnes says, “but they wanted me to open for Bryan Adams.”

It was another serendipitous moment.

Barnes’ first album – a Christmas gift –had been Adams’ greatest hits collection. “So that was pretty awesome.”

That makes for a great RocKwiz story, as does Barnes’ first concert – Johnny Cash.

Barnes was just six years old when he saw the legendary American artist, supported

by John Williamson, at the Launceston Showgrounds. He remembers standing on his toes, desperately trying to get a peek at The Man in Black.

A few years later, his next big gig was Dire Straits at the Brisbane Entertainment Centre.

That experience hit home a couple of years ago when Barnes found himself on stage at the same venue. He looked out at the crowd and could remember the exact spot where he sat for Dire Straits.

When asked to explain his musical journey, Barnes says simply: “I’ve always just tried to work really hard. It’s taken me a long time to get to where I am now. And I’m really appreciative.”

While making Town Of A Million Dreams, Barnes’ producers and co-writers MSquared – Michael Paynter and Michael Delorenzis – sat him down for a heart-to-heart chat. “We really think this is your best record,” they said.

“Have you thought about getting the right team behind you? Who would be at the top of your list?”

“Michael Chugg,” Barnes replied immediately.

Chugg – known to all as Chuggi – is a legend of Australian music. He’s managed artists such as The Church, Richard Clapton, Kevin Borich, Billy Thorpe, Sunnyboys, Jimmy and the Boys, Sheppard and Lime Cordiale, and as a promoter he’s toured the world’s biggest acts, including Bob Dylan, Elton John and Frank Sinatra.

“Why don’t you send him a couple of songs?”

Michael Paynter suggested.

A few weeks later, Barnes was at the gym when Chugg’s son, Nick, called. “We love what you’re doing,” he said. “Would you be up for coming to Sydney and chatting some more?”

Barnes and Chugg hit it off – “we’re both from Launceston and we both love our footy” – and Barnes was added to the Chugg Music stable.

Soon after, he was doing a signing after his set at the Groundwater Country Music Festival.

“When people tried to push in, Chuggi came out and put on his big grumpy voice. That was my first taste of him taking charge, it was great.”

Chugg is well known to Australian concertgoers. His autobiography came with the distinctive title: Hey, You In The Black T-Shirt. When he took to the stage to try to calm an out-of-control crowd during Guns N’ Roses’ 1993 Australian tour, Chugg yelled, “Hey, you in the black T-shirt, slow down!”

Hundreds of punters – all wearing black T-shirts – stopped and wondered who this strange man was.

Chugg is Barnes’ biggest fan. “It’s unbelievable how good his live show is,” he says. “We’re proud to be taking his music to the world.”

Barnes – now based on the Gold Coast – has found a happy home in the Australian country scene, with a swag of Golden Guitar nominations. “I’ll never forget my first nomination,” he says. “I was a new kid on the block and obviously I have a different sound to your traditional country. Tamworth is big on hanging on to the traditional sound, which I love. Anyway, I was in the room with a lot of my idols when the nominations were announced and the first bloke who came over to shake my hand was Troy Cassar-Daley who made me feel just totally comfortable and welcome. I’ll never forget that.”

Barnes is also looking internationally – more than two-thirds of his YouTube views are from the US. But no matter where he goes, he will never forget where he came from. Back and Forth. A town of a million dreams.

Light It Up is out now on Chugg Music. Casey Barnes is playing at Bluesfest 2022.

LIGHT SHOW Casey Barnes’ new album, Light It Up, is filled with country-pop gems, including these three standouts: GOD TOOK HIS TIME ON YOU I wrote this in Nashville with Kaci Brown and Sam Gray. They were thinking they might release it, and there was even talk that Blake Shelton might record it, but I was really keen to put it out myself. Initially, I was a little unsure how it would be perceived, that people might be confused about the meaning. But the title is more a metaphor. Whether you’re religious or not, it’s about how you feel about your partner – whoever created that person, however it happened, they obviously took their time because they are damn near perfect.

SMALL TOWN This is one of my absolute faves on the record.

It’s about a small-town romance that doesn’t work out. There’s nothing worse than a breakup in a small town. Everyone knows everyone and there’s no escaping.

LIGHT IT UP Coming up with an album title is very hard, but I felt that ‘Light It Up’ really suited the mood of this record and where we’ve taken our live show. There’s a lot of energy on this record. I’d love to hear this at a sporting event – NRL or AFL, or if I get lucky in the States, NFL or NASCAR. RADIO DAZE “Casey Barnes is the new king of Aussie country radio,” proclaimed industry publication The Music Network when ‘Sparks Fly’ ascended to the top of the airplay charts in 2020. It was the start of a string of charttoppers.

Barnes’ manager, Michael Chugg, had his own career on the radio, though not quite as enduring as Barnes’ run. “It came to an abrupt end when I swore on air,” the music legend confirms.

Legend has it that Chugg’s stint as a radio announcer in his home state of Tasmania met an inglorious end when he called a greyhound race live to air. The story goes that Chugg had backed a dog in the race. It was five lengths in front when it suddenly collapsed, with the commentator remarking, “Well, I’ll be fucked, it’s fallen over.”

“In the years since then, the retelling of the story – not by me – has grown out of all proportion,” Chugg says. “Good story though it is, it never happened.”

The true story? “I said ‘shitgun’ instead of ‘shotgun’ during a cycling commentary.”

35

THE CARTEL’S RETURN

With a new album out now and voted Best Live Act in last year’s Gold Coast Music Awards the Tijuana Cartel are hitting the road for a national tour, including Womadelaide and Bluesfest. By James Gaunt

“We haven’t played Bluesfest for maybe eight or nine years,” says Paul George, one half of Tijuana Cartel. “We thought maybe they didn’t like us anymore so we’re quite excited to be on the bill again.”

Starting back in 2003, Tijuana Cartel’s Paul George and Carey O’Sullivan have gained a strong reputation for their live shows and albums which mix electronica and world music influences into something which is truly their own.

On their latest album Acid Pony, released last year, you’ll hear sitar, flamenco guitar, and club beats, creating a fusion of international sounds, all produced on Australia’s Gold Coast.

“Most of the new album was old recordings that we had,” Paul said. “We worked in India quite a few years ago, playing in a Marriott Hotel for about a year, and while we were there we sampled a lot of the musicians we met.”

“We had this collection of recordings and thought it’d be fun to go back and use what we already had. But we also have our live trumpet and percussionist we use in Australia too. So, it’s sort of a mixture.”

With the album out now, Tijuana Cartel are hitting the road for a national tour, including stops at WOMADelaide in March and Byron Bay’s Bluesfest in April.

“We haven’t played live for so long that we’re itching to do it again, and we’re also pretty happy to be back at Bluesfest because they 36

go to huge efforts to make everything sound great. It’s always a good show for us in that sense,” Paul said.

Currently nominated for Best Live Act in 2021’s Gold Coast Music Awards, Tijuana Cartel previously won the award in both 2018 and 2020 and have earned their live reputation thanks to years performing on the Gold Coast and around the world. Even when recording their albums, they consider how it will translate on stage.

“We used to be fully improvised live, but too much improvisation isn’t as fun in the end,” Paul said. “Somewhere in between the two is what makes sense. So the songs are set, but there’s a lot that we can do with them and sort of screw around with it as we go.”

“The music is always about making people dance, and we’re always thinking how things are going to work when we play them live.”

Not ones to sit still for too long, Paul said the band were already hard at work on their next album, and there’s potential for another live album too.

“I definitely think the set we’re doing at the moment is my favourite,” Paul said. “So, I’m really keen to get it recorded for that reason.

We’re working on a new album now of all new tracks, but I think after that we’ll do a live one.”

Of course, you may also know Paul George from his work as Black Rabbit George, who released his second album of psych-folk songs Warren back in 2020. Since then, Paul has

been touring alongside Felicity Lawless while they’ve teased a possible album together too.

Then last year Paul released new solo music using his full name Paul A. George, with songs going back to his electronica roots.

Tijuana Cartel’s early albums likewise sounded a lot more electronic and sat nicely beside The Chemical Brothers when they first came out.

Over the years though, the instruments have taken over the beats, and Paul said they’ve made an effort to refine their sound with each release.

“I think we’ve always been toying with our inspirations, and electronic music like The Chemical Brothers were a huge one when we started. But then I studied flamenco guitar and the world music elements have come in. So, once we figured out how they marry together they seem to naturally work well.”

It’s been 15 years’ since their first album Frequent Flyers Redeemed was released in 2007, meaning Tijuana Cartel have a lot of material to choose from for their tour, and fans should expect to hear some of their favourites.

“There’s a few tracks that if we didn’t play people might sort of get angry. Which is nice in some ways. We still play a couple of tracks off our first album, although we also play a whole heap of new tracks. So, it’s a good balance now.”

Tijuana Cartel are currently touring across Australia. For details see their website: tijuanacartel.com

Little Georgia On Our Minds The Folk-Rock Duo Reunite At Bluesfest. By James Gaunt

B

ack at the start of 2020, Ashleigh Mannix and Justin Carter were in New Orleans.

The Australian duo who make up Little Georgia had spent a week touring America and had received a great response. As they prepared to fly back home to prepare for that year’s Bluesfest, they began to hear about something called COVID-19.

Two years later, a lot has changed. But Little Georgia are getting ready to hit the road again and are thankful they’ve been invited back to Bluesfest.

“When you look at this year’s lineup,” Ash said. “Just the plethora of Australian artists.

What a showcase of Australian talent and history, and to say that we’re on that lineup is pretty special.”

“We really feel we’ve been accepted into the Bluesfest family,” Justin said. “Last year, when the news came through that Bluesfest was cancelled it really hit us hard. But I think we’re past the negative side of things, and we’re just so excited for the future.”

Living in different states has made rehearsing difficult, with Ash located in Northern New South Wales, and Justin in South-West Victoria. But they’ve kept productive, and both said they’re still writing music regularly.

They just haven’t had a chance to play it for each other yet.

“Even prior to COVID, we’ve never done digital song writing sessions,” Ash said.

“We’ve both been writing separately over these last couple of years, and that’s actually

part of the excitement of getting together for rehearsals before Bluesfest.”

“There’s that magic feeling when you get together,” Justin said. “I can’t get that feeling through the internet.”

Little Georgia’s most recent song is ‘Texas’.

The single was released in 2020, and saw the duo bring in a band to create something much heavier and bigger sounding than before. Now, with so much time passed since they were last together in a studio, there’s a possibility Little Georgia’s sound may have evolved again, as Justin explained. “’Texas’ was a new direction we were heading in, and we don’t know whether that’s where we will be when we start rehearsing. Maybe we’ll continue in that direction or there may be new sounds we want to explore. We’ll know as soon we get in a room together with the band.”

“It sounds really unorganized,” he added.

“But we’ve always rolled that way and it’s part of the excitement. We both like feeding off each other as it brings the best out in us, rather than rehearsing something so much and so precise that when you get up on stage there’s no feeling to it.”

“I just can’t wait, because so much happens in the tour van,” Ash said. “I’ve got so many memories of driving from one gig to another and just building songs acapella. Justin’s driving, I’m in the passenger seat, and we’re singing or talking about different ideas and, as Justin said, you just can’t get that over Zoom.”

Fans should listen out during Little Georgia’s set this year, as there could be some new songs making their live debut alongside those from their previous releases.

“Definitely, the plan is to reveal some new songs,” Justin said. “I mean, how can we go two years without playing on stage and not get up there and to try something new?”

But with so many new songs written in the past two years, both Ash and Justin are worried they might have too much to choose from when they finally get back into the studio.

“We can’t hold on to them for any longer because we’re writing new songs every day,” Justin said. “Maybe we’ll release a little acoustic album, and then the next one might be a crazy rock album. We don’t know, but we’re excited about the possibilities of what we can do with so much music up our sleeves.”

For now, Bluesfest is their main focus, and they’re as excited about being on stage again as they are about being amongst the fans watching everyone else.

“It’s a feeling of celebration at Bluesfest,” Justin said. “I’m so excited to go around and watch other bands and be part of a festival again. But it’s also a celebration of Ash and I getting together with the rest of the band. It’s a new adventure together.”

“There’s a feeling of excitement reuniting for Bluesfest,” Ash said. “And then there’s talk of international borders being open. It’s an exciting thought for sure.”

37

ACES HIGH

With new album, Snowcap Menace, Jeff Lang and Allison Ferrier’s new project, High Ace, is the tonic for your, and their, pandemic blues, writes Samuel J. Fell.

W

e find ourselves in a strange land. One which at first glance seems familiar, but upon further inspection begins to reveal itself as a different beast entirely. A sonic land and yet one that presents as physical, what with its myriad mountain scapes that peak and then trough dramatically; swamp land thick and untamed; wide open space, aural debris littering metaphorical swales reverberating under its own version of Big Sky, sound and its own rendering playing off into audible aberration.

It is, indeed, strange and mysterious.

Don’t be fooled, however. For beneath the enigmatic exterior (as I found in my investigations into the heart of what I suspected to be something savage and wild), there lies an entire world comprised of much mirth, of almost child-like laughter; an abundance of the sort of rosy-cheeked bonhomie one only finds when confronted with two people who obviously know one another to such a degree they are almost of one mind working together.

Such is the case with which we find ourselves presented, Snowcap Menace the landscape, mapped by two we know well, and yet not in this guise. High Ace is the vehicle in which Jeff Lang and Allison Ferrier have explored this acoustic terrain and it’s almost entirely by accident that they found themselves here in the first place, appearing as if from nowhere and ending, after a journey which belied the times in which it was taken, at the destination (as it turned out), an obfuscation of sonic norms, a lovingly twisted version of what you, and they, thought we knew.

“We had this experimental idea,” muses Ferrier, and it turns out this is understatement of the highest order, for what’s resulted (this record that pulses and throbs with a certain joy) has come about in the most unusual fashion, the result of a distinct lack of rules, of boundaries; its sound is one of the almost indescribable elation that comes with the purity of just creating. An experiment which paid dividends.

“For the first long period of lockdown, when everything was cancelled,” Ferrier remembers, explaining where this project was born, “it really did throw me into a funk. I didn’t pick up the guitar for a long time. A bit of a sulk, like, what’s the point?”

Lang, referencing the same period, says he went nine months without playing a gig, “Unheard of,” he laughs, “[It was] enforced.

38

Everyone is in the same position, performingwise; I was doing exactly as many gigs as the Rolling Stones, Lady Gaga and Beyonce, they were doing the same amount of gigs as me.”

We laugh at this almost absurd conception.

Funny though, as it’s true.

However, what is hardship if not fertile ground for growth? As Ferrier then says, “Creativity comes back, and you have to do something, which is when it happened. This album wouldn’t exist without lockdown.”

The experimental idea, then? It sprang from the simplest of sources, one of the most famous tunes in history, ‘Happy Birthday’, but played in reverse. “We’d been making videos with the kids, just messing around,” Ferrier explains, “and one of the videos had an excerpt of us singing the birthday song.”

“The kids were playing around with this reverse app,” Lang expands, before Ferrier cuts in, laughing, “We heard the song backwards, and it sounded really cool. It sounded like some bizarre other language, but the melody had this spooky feel but was a great melody. So, we thought, I wonder what would happen if we made up some stuff, played it backwards, and then… rather than having a blank sheet, we could start with stream of consciousness words over an improvised melody, then when we play it backwards, rather than think of lyrics, we’ll see what these words sound like backwards.”

“When Ali heard the ‘Happy Birthday’ thing backwards,” Lang says, “she said, ‘We should mess around with this’, and you could almost see it spark that creative idea, that lifted us out of that funk, really.”

“Yeah, it was just a bit of fun,” Ferrier adds.

The pair took the idea to their home studio, and it was there that the concept began to grow. In these early stages however, there was never any intention to do anything other than mess around with an interesting idea; it was merely two musicians, who happen to be married, reigniting the creative spark together among the often grey and seemingly endless doldrums with which Melbourne lockdowns were defined.

And it was this freedom, the lack of any defined outcome or deadline, that truly began to fuel what was to become High Ace, releasing Snowcap Menace. “We did one [song], wrote and recorded and mixed it in a weekend,” Ferrier recalls, “then listened back and we’re like, ‘This is good! Shall we do another one?’ And there was no pressure

– to begin with, there was no plan of making a whole album, it was literally just for fun. It got the creativity flowing, it pulled us out of the funk.”

“It was an admirable distraction,” Lang laughs.

The writing process, as mentioned, was to record this stream of consciousness over whatever groove they found, then when played in reverse, trying to pick the lyrics from the garbled incantations flowing through the studio speakers; indeed, a novel way of songwriting.

As Lang describes, “What would invariably happen is, from these sets of sounds playing backwards, there’d be certain lines where we’d both hear something very similar, and then other ones where one of us would hear a line but the other couldn’t, and then certain portions where neither of us could hear anything that made sense but we’d transcribe whatever it kinda sounded like, and some of that would be ludicrous and hilarious, we’d be laughing our heads off.”

“It was just fun!” Ferrier laughs.

And so, it grew. Lang sent a few finished tracks to his long-time manager whose excitement at what they were creating led them to continue, and so the late-night sessions in Lang and Ferrier’s home studio carried on, more often than not ringed with laughter at the silly bits and bobs that flowed about, but mainly bathed in the warm glow of artistic creation, safe in the knowledge that what they were doing wasn’t just fun, but that was also working.

Armed with the lyrics then, created in this oddball fashion, the music that then rode underneath came together in organic fashion, no great surprise given the talent possessed by both these players, but the music too wasn’t under any pressure and so just flowed.

“We’d just indulge whatever was coming out of the song,” Lang concurs. “Oh yeah, this one sounds like we should play fuzz guitar, lets go straight and heavy into fuzz guitar on this song, ride it out and have fun with it.”

The track ‘Leaning On My Sugar’ began when Lang, tapping out a rhythm on his chest, which was initially a shuffle, decided to reverse that too, and so the song begins with an odd backward beat, which inspired them to, “set up a couple of guitar amps and I put that weird backwards sound through speakers at a loud volume, and we just jammed on it for ages.”

“Yeah, ages,” laughs Ferrier. “And luckily our neighbours were OK with it too… we’d bump into them [across the fence] and they’d say, ‘We heard you playing guitar, that was cool, we were almost gonna bring a chair out and listen’.”

“We were going for a good while there,” Lang remembers, “us just jamming away on one chord, playing off each other. And then I’d sit and listen to it and find sections that sounded best and piece together a song out of that.”

The resulting sounds, replete with odd and quirky lyrical phrasings, bring to mind fuzzed out hill country blues and underground stoner rock, muscular guitars bi-cep to bi-cep, Ferrier’s violin at times gloriously dissonant and purposely so, both vocals constantly in harmony, some songs heavy and rough, others delicate and free.

Because that’s how Snowcap Menace was made – freely, delicately, roughly, creatively, coming together as it did via two old hands

at the game enveloped in tough times. But the music set them free. “It was very freeing,” laughs Ferrier again, “it was very fun.

Snowcap Menace is available May 20 via Source Music. High Ace play WOMADelaide (March 11-14) and the National Folk Festival (April 14-18).

Jeff Lang also plays Bluesfest on the Easter weekend.

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The Folki Like many festivals the National Folk Festival in Canberra was hit hard in recent years but it is back with Katie Noon as Director.

By James Gaunt

F

ifty-five years since their first show, and thirty years after making its home in Canberra, the National Folk Festival returns with a massive lineup focusing on Australia’s history of folk music and diverse languages.

This year Katie Noonan has stepped into the role of Artistic Director and has curated a program which includes Archie Roach, Kate Ceberano, Emma Donovan, Josh Pyke, Sammy Butcher, Yothu Yindi and many more.

“I’m grateful to be the caretaker in these times,” Katie Noonan told me. “To help the festival move into a new era that has a broader definition of folk. Because Australia has become a very diverse and rich melting pot of wonderful colours and sounds, so for me that was important to reflect in the program.”

The festival has always proudly featured local musicians, but this year’s took the extra step of celebrating Australian-based musicians without any international guests, as Katie explained.

“This is an 100% Australian artist lineup, and I’m very proud of that.

We made that decision early because I think it’s more important than ever for people to support Australian artists and Australian businesses, and I love that it’s 100% Aussie.”

Archie Roach Will Let Love Rule Following a soft opening on Thursday, the festival opens Friday April 15 with Archie Roach joined on stage by 12-year-old Gubbi Gubbi artist Layla Barnett, Kate Ceberano, Jack Carty, Parvyn, Emma Donovan, Tenzin Choegal, Katie Noonan, The Phoenix Collective String Quartet, and the National Folk Festival Family Choir.

The all-star lineup will be performing Archie’s Let Love Rule, a song with a message just as important as when it was first released in 2016.

“I wanted to write some songs around the theme of love,” Archie tells me. “It’s about what that is and trying to make your main focus in life to love. Just love what you do, love life, love people, love country. That’s what that song is about.”

“We did it once before as part of the Commonwealth Games, with Amy Shark and some other children. So, I think it should be good doing it again with Katie.”

Archie was one of the musicians Katie Noonan thought of first when she began planning this year’s festival, and she said it was important to not just have him on stage but to celebrate his music as he steps away from large tours, making this Archie’s final performance at the National Folk Festival.

“I was thinking about what my definition of folk was,” Katie said.

“And for me, Uncle Archie Roach has defined that for decades.

His album Let Love Rule is a masterpiece, and the song is very

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important because it speaks to living and leading your life with love and forgiveness and the importance of family, which we all realise more than ever in these times.”

A Weekend of Celebrations Each day of the festival will see concerts celebrating music from Australia and around the world, with musicians reinterpreting several folk favourites.

These include a tribute to Don Walker featuring Emma Donovan, Catherine Britt, Jo Davie, Katie Noonan, and The Hauptmann Trio.

Then a celebration of the songs of Joni Mitchel featuring Queenie van de Zandt, Melody Pool, Angela Newcomb, and so many more.

As well as a concert dedicated to the songs of Judy Small as she receives the 2022 NFF Lifetime Achievement Award.

Katie said she wanted the festival to have something unique every day and moments which could only be experienced at the National Folk Festival.

“It’s going to be really fun, especially the things that you’ll never see anywhere else,” Katie said. “I wanted to bookend the festival with a real sense of occasion and ceremony, so we’ll open the festival with Uncle Archie, and then close with Neil Murray and Uncle Sammy Butcher.”

This year’s festival will come to an end on Easter Monday with celebrations of two more classic songs, Warumpi Band’s Blackfella Whitefella and Yothu Yindi’s Treaty.

Both Neil Murray and Sammy Butcher, Warumpi Band’s two remaining founding members, will perform alongside Sammy’s 12-year-old grandson Jack Butcher, and his niece jazz singer Crystal Butcher.

ie Returns Another of their songs, My Island Home, will be performed by young Ngunnawal artist Alinta Barlow, as the festival has made sure to focus on young emerging artists alongside celebrating folk heroes. This was especially important for Katie, who is passionate about young people’s relationship with music.

“Having two legendary elders with us like Uncle Sammy Butcher and Uncle Archie, I know that part of their ethos is working with younger people and essentially passing the baton to the next generation,” Katie said. “That’s a really important part of folk, and for the festival it’s important we engage with young people so that it becomes their festival that they come to with their children in years to come.”

It’s a statement Archie Roach supports, as he has recently engaged with young people through his own YouTube videos.

“Part of what I do now, is talk to young people,” Archie said. “Young up and coming singer-songwriters and musicians, and it’s important that we do what we can to support what they want to do in life.”

Part of what Archie hopes to share with young people at this year’s festival is the feeling he gets on stage and what he thinks about as he looks out at the audience who travel so far to see him play.

“I’ve been blessed to have a lot of people come see us and listen to us sing and tell yarns,” he said. “It’s been a real connection I have with the so-called audience. I feel, not just love, but the energy that they give me in return. So I’m winding things down a bit and not being so full on, and I’ll be thinking about that and those people, and that special relationship that I have with them.”

The National Folk Festival runs over the Easter long weekend, April 14-18 at Exhibition Park in Canberra.

MISSISSIPPI BLUESMAN Cedric Burnside has the blues in his veins.

By Brian Wise

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M

ississippi Hill Country blues guitarist and singer/songwriter Cedric Burnside was born and bred in the blues: his grandfather was the legendary RL Burnside, who toured Australia as part of the Legends of Mississippi back in 1989; and he grew up surrounded by other luminaries such as David ‘Junior’ Kimbrough, Jessie Mae Hemphill and Otha Turner.

It was almost inevitable that Cedric would become a musician and carry the blues torch.

The 42-year-old’s latest album is the Grammynominated I Be Trying which follows two other Grammy nominated projects in the 2015 Descendants of Hill Country and 2018’s Benton County Relic. It is somewhat of a tribute to his heritage with covers of songs by his grandfather and Junior Kimbrough as well as eleven originals.

I Be Trying, recorded in the famous Royal Studios in Memphis, was written in reflection on and off the road in 2018 and it deals with the emotions wrought by a series of deaths in the family and other personal issues. The album opens with ‘The World Can Be So Cold,’ a song

title that evokes the resignation of many of Kimbrough’s songs, while the following songs encapsulate Burnside’s feelings. The title track sees Burnside accompanied on background vocals by his youngest daughter of three, Portrika. RL Burnside’s ‘Bird Without a Feather’ and another of Junior Kimbrough’s ‘Hands Off The Girl’ tether him to his predecessors.

The first time I saw Cedric Burnside play was more than a decade ago at the Shack Up Inn just outside of Clarksdale, MS. A group of dozen or so of us were there on our way to Jazz Fest by way of the blues route. We had requested some music and Guy, who ran the Shack, enlisted Cedric (who in those days played drums) and Lightnin’ Malcolm as the evening’s entertainment. Great choice. For some reason known only to himself, Guy also had the notion that it was a wedding reception and we were unable to persuade him otherwise. So, we appointed two of our party - Ken and Lise as the happy couple and at the start of the gig Lightnin’ Malcolm solemnly declared, ‘By the power invested in me by the blues I pronounce you man and wife.’ (I am happy to report that they are still together). It’s a great memory that will always live with us.

“We just jammed out,” recalls Cedric when I mention the ‘wedding’ and we both agree that it has been a long journey for him since then. From playing drums at the Shack Up Inn and juke joints in the region, releasing his first albums with Lightnin’ Malcolm to switching to guitar and later signing his own record deal with Single Lock (a label co-founded by Ben Tanner of the Alabama Shales and John Paul White).

“Well, I have to say it’s always good to play music, but it’s really, really good to play music now with the crazy stuff going on today,” admits Burnside, who will be accompanied by a drummer, Artemis Lesur, who he calls “one of my mentors.”

“I’m so happy to have him. we’ve been making a bunch of music together, the last three or four months. And I’m happy to bring him over to Australia with me, man. It’s going to be a really good show, really good energy, some really raw, good hill country blues.”

The title of the latest album, I Be Trying, is not only a mission statement but the very expression is redolent of Mississippi.

“Well, I like to say it is,” agrees Cedric. “I’ve been saying it for a little while myself because that’s all we really can do. We can try our best and even if it don’t work and we have to do it again, at least we’re able to try our best again.

So, that’s kind of where I was going with that, is that we all try. Especially when the pandemic really, really hit, it was devastating for everybody. All we could do is just try to hold it together. So, that kept coming to me.

So, I was like, ‘This album should really be named I Be Trying and as I wrote that song with my daughter, I couldn’t think of nothing else to name the album that would fit it quite perfectly than that song, ‘I Be Trying’.”

Burnside comes from a state that’s probably one of the poorest, if not the poorest, in America. So, in his lifetime, he would’ve seen a lot of people trying in Mississippi. It’s been a tough life for a lot of people in that state.

“Oh wow, man! Yes,” he agrees. “I have seen a lot of people struggle just like I struggle. I saw a lot of people that can relate to the lifestyle that I grew up with, hauling water with no bathtub, no toilets. I grew up that way for a bunch of years. I had friends that grew up that same way, didn’t have running water.

Believe it or not - and I know it’s a struggle all over the world in a lot of places - but there’s people right now that live in Mississippi and they still live that way, not because they want to, because they can’t help it. They’re still hauling water. They still don’t have a bathtub.

They still don’t have toilets. So, there’s people there right now as we speak that live that lifestyle.”

I suggest to Cedric that it wouldn’t be necessarily just the African-American population affected - there would be a lot of other people there struggling as well.

“Oh, man,” he says. “Oh, of course. It’s a lot of poor white people. It’s a lot of poor Hispanic people that’s in Mississippi that’s just poor.

Because they just can’t help it. They just live to make do until they can do better. But yeah, that’s there right now: a lot of poor people, poverty, people that need running water, people that need more food, some people that probably eat one time a day, as opposed to three times a day.”

“I try my best to help as much as I possibly can without putting myself in a bind,” replies Burnside when I mention that he has been one of the people lucky enough to make their living as a musician. “I will continue.

One of the things I am doing is I’m trying to create another juke joint just so folks can come listen to good music. I know that don’t sound like something that poor people would do, but trust me, they love that music, man.

That’s something that really kept me going as a kid, playing that music. I played the music so much, I almost forgot that living poor was a thing. I almost forgot that.”

“It was because the music, it didn’t let me dwell on it,” he continues. “I loved the music so much and it did so much for me. It didn’t let me dwell on it as a kid. It was normal to me.

I didn’t look at it as a bad thing or a poverty thing. I just looked at it as that’s the way life is. That’s what we do. We haul water.”

The juke joints were incredibly important in Mississippi in the past. People would be working six days a week and going to a juke

joint on a Saturday night was their weekly release.

“Yes, it was almost like medicine for a lot of people,” he says, “and special when they had done had a stressful week working all week. I would see people. There was this guy named James Walker, may he rest in peace. I used to love to see Mr. James Walker come in the juke joint, because I know he’s going to dance.

He weighed maybe 180 pounds and, boy, he would stomp the floor and the concrete.

You’d see dust everywhere because he loved to dance. He worked at an auto parts store where they fixed cars and he would come in.

He’d have oil and stuff all over his head and face and hat. But he would leave work and come straight to the juke joint. Once he got his fix of that good hill country blues, he was good to go!”

I Be Trying, to be showcased on Burnside’s Australian tour, was recorded at the legendary Royal Studio, founded by the late Willie Mitchell and now run by his son Boo, who produced the album. The humble studios have been witness to some of the greatest soul, R&B and blues records ever recorded.

“Well, I’ve been knowing Boo for a long time,” explains Burnside. “For the last five or six years, we’ve been talking about collaborating and doing something together. So, the time just came, man. He was available and I was ready to record and so we made it happen.

I have to say, I think it was one of the best choices that I made in a long time, is to go to Royal Studio. Not only did it sound good, it’s just that it had so much mojo in there.

When you walk in there, it’s almost like you can feel Al Green’s spirit and the Hi [Records] rhythm section. It’s just so much energy and mojo in that studio. I really had fun. Boo, he really outdid his self. When it comes down to engineering, he definitely knows what he doing and it was a really, really great experience recording with Boo.” Housed in Royal Studios in a small room just off the main recording area is Al Green’s famous microphone Number Nine, RCA 77DX ribbon microphone which Burnside was privileged to use.

“Well, to be honest with you, man, I didn’t really know what Boo pulled out,” admits Burnside, “because he pulled out about three or four crazy mics but they sounded awesome. But I do remember him telling me that he used Mr. Al Green’s mic. And wow, I didn’t know what to call it, what kind of mic it was. But after he played it back to me and I listened at the vocals, I was like, ‘Wow, man.

What do you do with those vocals?’ He said, ‘I ain’t did nothing to it yet.’ It was really, really great.”

Cedric Burnside is touring in March. I Be Trying is available through Single Lock Records.

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PURE TALENT Guitarist Robben Ford, whose new album is his first totally instrumental album in 25 years, is touring Australia in May.

By Andra Jackson

A

merican guitarist Robben Ford suggests the process that created his latest recording, Pure, is similar to that behind a painting or a film. “The record is unique for me because in the past, when you go into a studio with a full band, you’ve got songs written, we record them and, of course, we overdub and then there is mixing.

But this time the writing was done as recording, a lot of that, and also I built the tracks with my co‐producer Casey Wasner.”

Speaking from Nashville, Ford explains with a painting, “You can take something out, you can change a colour and this is the way we approached making the record. It is like making a movie, that’s an even better analogy, it (a movie) is in motion.’’ With the recording, “the music is in motion, not stagnant. So, for me, it is like you are in one scene and then, all of a sudden, a car comes around the corner.”

Ford describes how he and Wasner would create a rhythm, a drum track using technology. “I would play bass. I’m not that good,” he laughs.

He would add guitar and the track would be sent to a drummer to overdub drums and then to a bass player to add a bass. Only three tracks were cut live in the studio and the rest evolved in this way.

For Ford who played all the guitar parts on the album, the process gave him complete artistic control. “When you go into the studio with other people, they influence what you do. You might be looking for something else but you have to kinda go with it, with their feel, their concert.’’ For what was his 45th recording, “I really wanted it the way I wanted.”

The guitarist proudly considers the recording, released in the United States in August last year on Ear Music, his best album to date. “It is the best representation of how I think as a musician, of how I play and there is a lot of versatility on it.’’ Pure reached number one in the American Blues Charts and stayed there for a while Ford says. But while it has blues inflexions, it is not really a blues album,” he adds.

Pure by Robben Ford is available through Earmusic.

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SOWING THE SEEDS

The Weeping Willows are Laura Coates and Andrew Wrigglesworth and their new album features their beautiful harmonies. By Chris Familton

O

ver the last decade, across a trio of albums, an EP and countless shows around Australia and North America, The Weeping Willows have slowly but surely built a loyal audience and critical acclaim, from their formation as a side project to Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes. There was initially little ambition and certainly no long term plan. As singer Laura Coates remarks “when we put out our first album we had no idea what we were doing. We released it in mid-December, who does that?!”

You Reap What You Sow is the third of Coates and singer/guitarist Andrew Wrigglesworth’s albums and it completes a trilogy of releases that are bound together both by the artwork and the consistently high quality of the music.

“From the album covers you’ll see they’re all pre-Raphaelite artworks by Evelyn De Morgan and though they have a stylistic through line, we don’t go in with a specific sound, it’s more the case of the influence of what we’ve been listening to. If our first album was folk/country and the second was more country/Americana, then this is country/Americana/blues.”

As has been the way for so many, the pandemic had a big impact on the intended release schedule for the album. “It was tough and mentally hard, particularly in 2020 when we didn’t know what was in store for us,” says Coates, looking back at the last two years.

“Our album was due to come out in 2020 and we had an album launch booked. We had to decide if we should put the album out or hold it back. You live on the adrenalin of gigs and we lost inspiration and our identity in a way,” Coates says candidly. “There were some dark times but we decided to put out some singles and then we got a small window to tour and release the Southern Gothic EP of covers in 2021. We really needed that project!” says a grateful Coates.

Aside from the world class songwriting, the production and sound of the new album is quite magnificent. The duo travelled to Stampede Origin Studios, Los Angeles in December 2019, a few months before Covid first entered our lexicon, to again record with Ryan Freeland. “We had such an amazing experience with him on the second album,” Coates enthuses. “We originally chose him as he’d engineered so many of our favourite albums by acts like Milk Carton Kids and Bonnie Raitt and he understood that strippedback sound, how to make two vocals and a guitar sound really lush and bigger than it is.”

A raft of top-shelf session players add colour and atmosphere to the recordings but for the most part the songs are guided and framed by the exquisite playing of Wrigglesworth, surely one of the finest roots music guitarists in this country. His mastery lays not just in his technical ability but in the way he blends folk, country and blues styles into his own seamless sound. ‘Singin’ The Blues’ possesses delicate melodic shards that hang like droplets above drowsily strummed chords. Contrast that with the weightier intonation of ‘Black Crow’ with its steel-string flurries that take the song into an intoxicating western noir world.

Songs on the album run from the personal to the universal in terms of their subject matter, as Coates explains. “Some songs are completely fictional and some are drawing on real life experience. Generally, we draw a lot of inspiration from myths, legends and gothic stories. The single ‘House of Sin’ is harking back to songs of temptation and redemption.

‘Lonesome Now I’m Gone’ is about making that final choice at the end of a relationship, inspired by a couple of our friends and ‘Turning To Stone’ is about mental ill health and friends who have died by suicide in recent years.”

Though You Reap What You Sow is the final chapter in a decade-spanning trilogy it serves to build an even greater anticipation for what the duo will do next.

The Weeping Willows’ You Reap What You Sow is available through /Compass Brothers and at bandcamp.com

Much like the simpatico musical/marital relationship of Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, The Weeping Willows excel in the art of harmonies. Right across the new album their words and melodies intertwine and blend, two voices becoming one. ‘Wheels Won’t Roll’ is a perfect example of that vocal marriage while on the closer ‘North Wind’ (a different version appeared on their first album) everything is stripped back to a raw a cappella, devastating in its emotive weight and impact.

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From Adelaide to Austin and Back Again Kym Warner’s Long Trek Home

By Brett Leigh Dicks

F

or Adelaide born mandolin afficionado, Kym Warner, there’s plenty to celebrate about his recent decision to return to Australia. After spending two decades as one of his instrument’s leading musical lights in the United States, a big point of celebration will be his forthcoming induction into the South Australian Music Hall of Fame.

After establishing a name for himself locally via his work with Kasey Chambers, Lee Kernaghan, Gina Jeffreys, and Tania Kernaghan, in 2001 the four-time Australian National Bluegrass Mandolin Champion relocated to the United States. There he formed The Greencards and with his Australian wife Carol Young and Englishman Eamon McLoughlin, for 13 years the progressive acoustic band toured North America, Europe, and Australia, and recorded six studio albums.

“The induction came as a complete surprise because I really thought we had flown under the radar all this time,” Warner recently told Rhythms Magazine from his home in Austin, Texas. “We had some successes but we never played a really commercial brand of music with The Greencards and it certainly wasn’t top 40 radio stuff. I thought we always just slid through the cracks so when they got in touch, I was pleasantly surprised and touched by it.

It’s a really nice honour.”

The successes with The Greencards Warner alluded to include three GRAMMY Award nominations, a #1 Billboard Bluegrass Album, and an Americana Award for Best New Artist.

It’s an impressive achievement for someone who first ventured to North America simply to assess the lay of the land.

“Carol and I had always really loved American music and back then we loved bluegrass,” Warner recalled. “We were in between things in Australia and didn’t have anything lined

46

up, so we decided to come over here to experience the American scene and see what it’s all about.

“Being around people involved professionally in acoustic music at a really high level, I thought would fast track the progress you could make as a player as well. I think to really progress and challenge yourself, you’ve really got to be around people who are better than you and who are continuously pushing you the whole time. We thought we would come across and see what that’s like and maybe see if we could become part of something.

Somehow that became 21 years.”

Challenge themselves Warner and Young certainly did. Along with the various accolades they garnered, one of the couple’s defining musical moments came in 2005 on the back of The Greencards’ album Weather and Water when the band was invited to join Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson on their 31-date national tour.

“That was our holy shit moment,” Warner said with a laugh. “Up until then we played some great festivals with all these people we love, people like Tim O’Brien and Ricky Skaggs, but when the Dylan thing came along that was certainly a huge thing for us and the band.

We had come over here and put this band

together and we saw that tour as some sort of validation of what we were doing.”

With The Greencards having released its last album, Sweetheart of the Sun in 2013, Warner has since gone on to work with the likes of Robert Earl Keen, Lyle Lovett, and Sam Bush and John Cowan from New Grass Revival and his regular acoustic shows have become a staple of the Austin live scene. Upon their return to Australia, after spending some quality time with family in Adelaide, Warner and Young are looking forward to entrenching themselves within the Melbourne music scene.

“We’ve been here for 21 years, and it feels like a good time for a change,” Warner said.

“I know a few people in Melbourne and after spending a few months in Adelaide we plan to head across there. I really like some of the music that has come out of Melbourne lately so I’m really looking forward to tapping into the local scene and finding some likeminded folks and getting into something new. We don’t really have a plan and that’s exciting.

We didn’t have a plan when we came to America all those years ago and we somehow managed to get going in America. I’m excited about doing the same when we get back to Australia.”

DUST TO DUST William Crighton’s new album Water & Dust deals with some big issues facing us all.

By Bernard Zuel

W

illiam Crighton has delayed fishing in Lake Macquarie with his father and brothers to talk: the bream and flathead can wait, even though it’s been a long while since he got together with family.

That’s no small gesture: family matters for this imposing figure, from the Christian upbringing and church singing with his mother and his father’s love of country music, (both of which still resonate in his songs today even as they stretch deep into guitar-driven rock as well), to his three children and wife/ partner/co-writer, Julianne.

“We are a team, we kinda always have been.

Regardless of whose singing or whose playing it or whatever, everything I do we are a team,” Crighton says of Julianne. “And beyond that, just the strength: she gives me an enormous amount of strength, an enormous amount of licence to be experimental, to try and find myself too. Everything goes through the filter of the two of us.”

Why does that matter? Crighton grew up in a religious family, and while these days that may be a more complex topic ask him what he puts his trust and faith and hope in now, and things start to clear up.

“I have faith in the spirit of the kids, and the spirit in each other, and the land,” he says.

“There is no formal way to present such things; in a lot of ways established religion is the thing that encased spirituality and buried it. I find faith in the country around me. I’m not so much a pantheist as I do believe everything is conscious to different degrees, I do believe that everything is alive.

“And we’re so afraid of death and pretend it doesn’t happen, until we die, but you look at

other cultures that have a greater acceptance of death and they seem to have a happier life.”

What does that mean though? Death is coming so don’t worry? We’re all gonna die soon so get some shit done now? How does that help him?

“When I was five I watched my grandfather die and that was a thing that at the same time was very sad but it made me strong to accept death and understand that death is a natural part of life. And that gives me faith too.”

This is a reminder too that assumptions about Crighton - as he confronts issues like Australia’s treatment of first nation people and the land, or the compromised future we’re creating (as he does throughout his third album, Water And Dust); or because he’s cranked up the guitars progressively since his rootsy debut and now stretches across intense folk, collaborations with Indigenous musicians like didgeridoo master William Barton, almost tropical country music, and full-force rock’n’roll; or because he looks like a scary hairy man - all miss the point.

He isn’t angry or despairing or some similar reductionist line; you have to have faith in people to believe there can be change.

It’s just one more thing he shares with another Australian act drawing on a mix of religious roots, activist politics and righteous action: the clue can be found in that album title that has a certain echo of diesel and dust.

Supporting Midnight Oil as he is doing at the moment on parts of their final national tour – and having Oils guitarist and drummer, Jim

Moginie and Rob Hirst, play on Water & Dust – is not just a coincidence for a man as capable of pointed commentary and demands for a better world as he is presenting an imposing figure at the front of the stage.

Up close with the veteran band members, what has he taken away from these experiences?

“To me, they’ve always been like Neil Young’s been, and that’s a licence to be yourself. They are so glaringly authentic and committed to their endeavour, that it’s undeniable,” Crighton says. “For me they are one of the most unique ever Aussie bands, if not the most. Psychedelic rock, some punk rock in the earlier stuff, and they’ve got a wonderful work ethic.

“From working with Rob and Jim they are both distinctly different characters; their talent is huge; and their work ethic is huge. And that is one thing that seems to be the same amongst all of the people who leave a mark on me.”

And that mark is?

“They have been a big influence in the sense of giving me the courage – before I knew them: I’ve only known Rob and Jim a few years – to be of this place, to do something that hasn’t been before, or put your own touch on it. So, what I’ve taken away from them is be strong and be committed to the cause, whatever the cause may be, and don’t try to be anything else but yourself.

“They are clichéd lessons that we hear a lot, but they live them. ”Water And Dust is out now through ABC Music. You can check William Crighton’s tour dates at: williamcrightonmusic.com.au 47

DRIFT AWAY

The Sea Drift sees The Delines exploring its sultry side.

By Brett Leigh Dicks

P

ortland-based quintet, The Delines, are no strangers to struggle. It’s not only what defines the beautifully pragmatic characters that poignantly populate songwriter Willy Vlautin’s songs, but during the recording of the band’s last album, The Imperial, vocalist Amy Boone was struck by a car, resulting in nine surgeries and three years of recuperation.

Now fully recovered, Boone and The Delines have returned with a new album, The Sea Drift and with it comes a new sense of worldweariness that only a vocalist of Boone’s talent and a songwriter of Vlautin’s stature could muster. In the same vein as Vlautin’s critically acclaimed novels - including his latest, The Night Always Comes - the worlds and characters that define The Sea Drift are as inflicting as they are enchanting. Willy Vlautin recently spoke to Brett Leigh Dicks about his love of the Gulf Coast and John Steinbeck, doing it tough in Reno, and making sure he bolts the door behind him.

The last time we chatted about The Delines, it was around the release of The Imperial and Amy joined us. She had been through a lot. How’s she doing?

Amy is a lot better. She moved up to Portland recently and she’s doing great. It was a really tough time for her. The amount of pain she went through and the amount of rehabilitation she had to do just to walk again was daunting.

Do you think that experience brought a new perspective to your new album, The Sea Drift?

Yeah - you can definitely hear a lot of that pain on the new record. I can hear her struggle in a lot of the songs on the record. The other thing you can hear is just how tough she is. Maybe I hear that because I know her so well, but a lot of her struggle is right there on the record and I hope that comes across and people can feel it like I do.

This album is another evolution. I really love the way the strings and horns play out on this album. You write most of the songs. It must be quite an experience to hand these tales over to the band and watch it weave its magic …

Cory (Gray), Sean (Oldham), and Freddy (Trujillo), they’re real musos and Amy and I always joke that if anyone from the band got fired it would be us. The thing about this record is that Cory, our keyboard player and trumpeter, wrote most of the string

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arrangements and horn parts and it was really fun when he started to get involved with that. I built the songs with a lot of room for him to do his thing and watching them come together was great and getting to write songs for Amy to sing is something I always really love doing.

The album opens with some of the most vividly evocative lyrics I have ever heard – ‘Little Earl is driving down the Gulf Coast, sitting on a pillow so he can see the road.

Next to him is a 12 pack of beer, three frozen pizzas, and two lighters as souvenirs.’

You can’t help but want to know the story behind that imagery. Tell me about Little Earl and his world …

I worked on that song a long time. I was interested in the idea of driving around a really beautiful beat up area and put you into the middle of a really dramatic scene without really explaining it. There are clues in there and like you said, some imagery to hint at where they’re at and what they’re up to. I wanted to put the listener inside the car with those kids. It’s the Gulf Coast so you’re near the water and it’s real sultry and you’re caught in this huge drama where two brothers run into a minimart and steal a 12 pack of beer and some frozen pizzas. The older brother gets shot. It’s a song about kids being delinquents and suddenly getting in over their heads. The little brother has to figure out how to navigate all that.

One of the elements of both your songwriting and your literary work that resonates the deepest for me is your social commentary. Do you see yourself as a political writer?

That’s a good question. I saw Richmond Fontaine that way and I do think of my books as political. So, yeah, I think so. I guess it’s in the fabric of who I am. As a kid I was obsessed with John Steinbeck who was a real worker advocate and I think growing up the way I did played a role too. I grew up with my mom and my brother. My mom never got paid as much as a man and was sexually harassed for a lot of years but was so sacred of quitting her job because she had my brother and me. She was broke all the time and really grinded it out so I think being around that and reading Steinbeck and of course listening to The Jam and The Clash as a kid, it got into my head that you should write about those kinds of issues.

The album has a gorgeous sense of place. It puts us right in the sultry midst of the Gulf Coast. What inspired you to take a trip to the coastal American southeast?

Amy is really fun to talk to so the idea started with us hanging and talking about Texas where she lived for something like 25 years.

We were talking about the Gulf Coast and Galveston and our mutual love for Tony Joe White and in particular his song “Rainy Night in Georgia.” We both love that song and we started kidding around and she told me go home and write her “Rainy Night in Georgia.”

That led to her saying we should do a whole record set in that area. I went home and started thinking about the Gulf Coast and writing that batch of tunes. I brought them in and we started ticking through the songs that we thought would fit that world. Amy’s voice suits that sultry groove so it came together very naturally.

Your songs always feel very authentic. What do you think fuels the connection with a place or region that affords them that?

As a kid, one of the things I loved most about music was escapism and I’ve spent my life chasing that. I didn’t much like being a kid so

what I did like was disappearing. I remember listening to Born to Run and suddenly I’m driving around the east coast with Bruce Springsteen. All of a sudden, I’m not where I live anymore, I’m in a whole different world.

I felt that with Paul Kelly too when I listened to Gossip. A sense of place in music has always been important to me. That escapism has always been important to me so when I started doing my own stuff, I wanted to do it in that too. I have always been obsessed with creating a world and it became pretty natural.

But you’ve got to have strong feelings for the place. The reason I wrote about Reno on a lot of earlier records is because I was really homesick. I was a bum and failure there, but I really loved the place. I don’t know the Gulf Coast very well, I’ve just driven around there, but when I did, I fell in love with it pretty bad.

I think to be authentic you have to be in love with a place. Or you’re gonna really hate it.

Either one, but there has to be passion there.

I’ve been watching a tv series set in eastern Kentucky. The dialogue is great as is the acting, but it sadly projects the same old tired Appalachian cliches. I love your work because it offers me something new, a different perspective on people and place.

We laugh with your characters, not at them.

We feel their hurt and pain like it’s our own.

How important is empathy in your work?

I want to read a novel that feels true and real and where the person, in their own way, is writing it with their own blood. I’m not a brilliant guy and when I started writing I wasn’t brilliant with the English language so it was important for me to at least be honest.

Empathy has always been important to me because I write novels and songs just so I can get through my own life. If I write something like The Motel Life where two brothers are really struggling then that makes my struggles real and maybe a little easier. Same with a song like “This Ain’t No Getaway” off this record. When you’re hanging out with a heroic woman like that who’s just going to go back to get some boxes she left behind, that makes dealing with what’s happening in my life a little easier.

When you and I first met a couple of decades ago, we talked about Reno, Nevada and all the downtrodden souls on the streets there.

You told me how you always imagined yourself ending up there, but here you are ten albums and six novels later. What would

“I started writing songs at eleven and didn’t write a good one until I was 26 or 27.

My big dream was always just to make another record.” the Willy Vlautin back then make of where you are now?

Oh man, I couldn’t even imagine any of this back then. I started writing songs at eleven and didn’t write a good one until I was 26 or 27. My big dream was always just to make another record. Back then I never thought I was smart enough to put out a novel. I didn’t tell anyone for 15 years that I was working on a book. Then the Fontaines started doing better so we really put our nose to the grindstone and tried to write the best records we could and we got lucky. But I always figured that once we got through the door, we had to board it up behind us so they wouldn’t kick us back out. I got lucky again and got a book published because of the band was doing well and it’s same thing - I was grateful, but I thought they would kick me out so I put my head down again. I’ve just been putting my head down for 20 years now.

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BREWING UP A

STORM

Renowned guitarist Dave Brewer releases his first new album for eight years – and it is a great return. By Chris Lambie

W

hile half the country suffers live music withdrawal, some lucky Aussies are back in band rooms. Stalwart of Western Australia’s music scene, Dave Brewer appreciates the freedom to get onstage.

“I’ve got a lot of friends in Sydney and Melbourne and I really feel for them,” he says. While he’s continued to play gigs in his home state, there’s been a halt to touring further afield. Brewer made the most of these different times to make his first album since 2013’s Night Walkin’.

The 11 tracks on Long Road Back Home span his range of influences and experience as one of the Australian roots world’s favourite sons.

As guitarist in ‘70s Rhythm & Blues band The Elks, Dave Brewer played classic covers with distinctive swagger and swing around Perth and the east coast. He went on to study Art in Sydney and joined line-ups including Dynamic Hepnotics, The Mighty Reapers, The Catholics and The DooDaddies. His new album celebrates the gumbo of grooves that inspire him. Two tracks from his back catalogue are enticingly reworked. “I love mixing it up,” Brewer says. ‘Night Walkin’ reappears as a boogaloo type shuffle. “’Lonely Part Of Town’ started off as a slow blues originally done with The Mighty Reapers. Then I did a reggae version with Lucky Oceans on my first album. But the funk really seems to suit it, which we’ve done here.” He laughs, “I’ll probably leave it alone now.”

“I had the intention to do a blues album, which I haven’t done yet on my own,” Brewer says. “But I played a few other songs to a friend and he said, ‘You should do these Dave’. Elliot [Smith] runs Sundown Studios.

The studio decided to become a record label as well. The owners are a sort of patron of the arts, and they asked me to be their first release.

They gave me unlimited studio time [around two years] which was a total luxury. While we were recording, I was writing songs and getting them ready with [drummer and engineer] Elliot.”

Brewer first got into the blues via his father and four brothers. “From my older brother, it was Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee and all that sort of folk blues.” Taking up guitar at 10, Brewer says, “I started on the drums actually. One of my high school bands already had a drummer

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and I was dabbling in guitar so I switched. My earliest heroes, strangely enough, were some of the English players like Peter Green, Jeff Beck and then Duane Allman. When The Elks first started, three of the guys had massive record collections. That’s when I first heard BB King, Howling Wolf and T-Bone… and I quickly switched allegiance.” The baton has now been passed further down the Brewer line. ‘Make Everything Alright’ was co-written with son Riley with some keyboard parts played by nephew Ryan Brewer. “We’ve got a little recording studio at home.

Two of my sons are in there all the time recording and fooling about.

I’ve got a younger son too who’s playing so he’ll eventually be brought into the recording thing. Ryan, who’s based in Nashville, is putting out his own material right now.”

There’s abundant rhythm and joy in the new songs. ‘Hard To Say Goodbye To Your Best Friend’, though, is a poignant heartbreaker.

Brewer reveals, “It’s one of the most tragic songs that I’ve written. It’s about some elderly neighbours of my parents.” An accident led to the husband’s passing. “My brother and I were first responders and couldn’t revive him.” The image of two forlorn cups of warm coffee paints a picture of one woman’s loss of her lifelong love. “My songs are pretty mixed. Some from direct experience but often hypothetical; I just kind of put lyrics together and see how they turn out. It’s funny that when I do write songs that don’t have any specific story behind them, people come up and say, ‘That song really resonates with me. ‘Lonely Part of Town’ was a made-up story about love lost but people say ‘I really associate with those lyrics.” Brewer happily reports on live music in the west. “Fremantle has a mix, still a lot of blues but also alternative-pop happening with the younger crew. The jazz scene is more happening in Mt Lawley and Northbridge with WAPA over that way.” And festivals?

“We still have Blues at Bridgetown, Fairbridge and Nannup happening.

I’m happy I moved back.”

Long Road Back is on Sundown Records and available at davebrewer. bandcamp.com

ROOM TO MOVE Looking for a lockdown idea to keep yourself busy? Try recording an album.

Emily Barker and Lukas Drinkwater managed to spin ten Aussie classics as acoustic fables during hotel quarantine on Room 822. By Meg Crawford

T

he last time we spoke, singer-songwriter and ex-pat Emily Barker was looking over her front yard in Stroud with a clear line of sight to rolling hills, cows and vegetable plots. This time, she’s dialling in from her original home base of WA, approaching the end of a near six-month stint catching up with family and friends. Of course, that sojourn started with a mandatory fortnight in hotel quarantine in the nearly hermetically sealed State. However, while other folks went bonkers in the same boat, Barker and her Cornish producer and multi-instrumentalist husband, Lukas Drinkwater, used the time wisely and recorded an album.

It was Drinkwater’s suggestion, but Barker jumped at it. “It actually made me excited about doing quarantine,” she says. “Before that I was like, ‘oh god’. I knew, in general, I’d just feel relieved that we’d made it that far, because there were so many hurdles to get through in order to get back to WA. But we both did think, ‘oh gosh, we really need to

come up with some ideas on how we can keep ourselves busy and amused’.”

That Drinkwater was already bringing over a small amount of kit to continue doing recording work remotely cinched the deal.

Still, a whole album recorded in a hotel room when you can’t leave is no mean feat.

However, the couple were prepared. “We had a couple of mics and an interfacing computer with us,” Barker explains. “Then we got a friend to drop off a keyboard, some cables and mic stands. We also had a double bass with us – because that’s what Lukas plays – and my acoustic guitar.”

The result is Room 822, a stripped-back, acoustic album of ten tender covers of Aussie artists, spanning long-time favourites including Nick Cave and the Church, through to newer national treasures, like Stella Donnelly.

So, why the love-letter to Australian music?

“I’d been thinking that it’d be great to do an album of Australian covers to accompany an Australian tour at some point and just sort of

ground myself back in the Australian music scene a bit because most of my career has been based over in the UK,” Barker notes. “It was like some sort of homecoming, or dipping the toes in the water of homecoming.”

Of course, it wasn’t without its challenges, starting with how the heck do you whittle down the Australian playbook to the length of a record? “It was really tough,” Barker confirms. It started with a ginormous playlist of her faves, including ‘Will You Miss Me When I’m Sober’, from Deb Conway’s classic String of Pearls, and Donnelly’s ‘Boys Will Be Boys’, both of which feature on the album.

That Drinkwater is from the UK was a boon, because it meant he didn’t have the same sentimental attachment to the tunes when it came to discarding some from the pile.

The issue then became what would work within the confines of the room and equipment they had on hand. “We worked out on our acoustic instruments that some songs just didn’t work,” Barker reflects. “A big part of the exercise was working out what songs were really reliant on production. What was there when you stripped it all back down to the bare bones of the song?”

Next came the challenges that accompanied using a hotel room as a studio. “We had this hum – which is probably not audible, but to us it was a little bit of a concern – of the fridge going the whole time. And so, we piled all these pillows in front of it. Lukas put his big double bass case in front of it to try to drown that it out. Then, there was just the space itself. It’s a hotel room with loads of reflective surfaces, huge windows, mirrors and walls so close. It took some working out to find where in the room sounded the best and certain frequencies were harder to paint and stuff like that. But Lukas knows what he’s doing.”

What the pair recorded is a beautiful, poignant and ingenious retelling of the ten carefully selected tunes, and you’d have to be a trained audiologist to spot the hum. While all are corkers, Barker’s most fond of their rendition of Cave’s ‘Push the Sky Away’. Brace yourself, it’s like a punch to the heart.

“I read afterwards that Nick Cave thought of it like a mantra to keep on going, keep on striving, keep on hoping. I can’t remember what day we recorded that one, but I think we were both feeling pretty flat. As I started singing that, a burden lifted, and felt I like, ‘yeah, everything is gonna be okay’.”

Room 822 is available at emilybarker. bandcamp.com and other digital outlets.

Emily will be appearing at the Port Fairy Folk Festival and also doing other dates in March.

Check emilybarker.com 51

Aoife O’Donovan, here three years ago with ‘supergroup’ I’m With Her, has released her latest album and it is a work of beauty produced

by Joe Henry.

AGELESS

By Brian Wise

Over the last while, sometimes I just want to shut my computer and I can’t think about it anymore.”

“I’m dying to get back to Australia,” says Aoife O’Donovan, from her home in Florida, when we connect on Zoom to talk about her third solo album, the Joe Henry-produced Age of Apathy, a work of extraordinary beauty.

“We had such a special trip to Australia with I’m With Her in April of 2019,” she continues when I mention that I am based in Melbourne and recalls her tour here with that marvellous trio that also included Sarah Jarosz and Sara Watkins. “So, I’m really eager to get back.”

“I love that place that I’m With Her played in Melbourne,” she adds. “That gorgeous room [the Melbourne Recital Centre]. And I was there with my band Crooked Still in 2011 and I saw Joanna Newsom do a concert in that same room and I just fell in love with that room. And I fell in love with Melbourne and I was just like ‘God, I want to be here as often as possible.’ So, I hope I’ll be back soon.”

When I mention the fact that we are now allowing international visitors, O’Donovan says, “I’ve got three shots. Let me in!” While we wait for O’Donovan to make it back out here to either promote her own albums or tour again with I’m With Her (or another project) we can enjoy the superlative new album which will immediately strike a chord with any I’m With Her fans or those who have followed O’Donovan’s solo work or other projects. You might also make a connection with Joni Mitchell, especially on a song such as ‘Phoenix’ which has some of the same musical and vocals progressions as Mitchell.

As her name suggests O’Donovan is of Irish lineage with her father moving to America in 1980 and she was immersed in Celtic folk as well as Mitchell, Suzanne Vega and Joanna Newsom.

Having studied music at the New England Conservatory, Aoife and friends started Crooked Still – sometimes described inadequately as a ‘progressive bluegrass’ group - in 2001 and released five studio albums over the next decade.

She also found time to record three albums with the trio Sometymes Why and, of course, the Grammy Award-winning album See You Around with I’m With Her in 2020.

Since 2013 O’Donovan has now released three solo studio albums (Fossils, 2013, In The Magic Hour, 2016 and Age of Apathy), a live album, several EPs and last year’s lockdown album Aoife Plays Nebraska (a terrific interpretation of the Bruce Springsteen classic available online).

O’Donovan certainly has not wasted a day over the past two years, adding to her new solo album with two song cycles – including America, Come, a group of orchestral songs inspired by the lives, letters and speeches of women’s suffrage crusader Carrie Chapman Catt and Woodrow Wilson. There is also a live album, Live from Black Birch, recorded with her husband, the cellist and conductor Eric Jacobsen.

For Age of Apathy, O’Donovan enlisted producer/ songwriter Joe Henry, whose credits include Bonnie Raitt, Solomon Burke, Joan Baez, Bettye LaVette, Elvis Costello and Allen Toussaint and even Australia’s own Guy Pearce. O’Donovan recorded her voice, guitars and piano in a studio in Florida and Henry (who also write several of the songs) forwarded them to his core studio musicians: bassist David Pilch, drummer Jay Bellerose, Patrick Warren on keyboards. Henry’s

son Levon played woodwinds, as well as a cowrite. Guests include the legendary Tim O’Brien on mandola, Allison Russell and Madison Cunningham on vocals, and guitarist Chris Bruce (who plays in Meshell Ndgeocello’s band).

“I think that Joe’s ability to let songs breathe and to let musicians put their own stamp on the records that he produces,” replies O’Donovan when I ask her why she chose Henry as her producer for this album. “His suggestions of players were so spot on and not in any small part. Joe was also the person who connected me with Allison Russell and Madison Cunningham and got their voices on the record. So, it was a special collaboration and one that I am eager to do more of.”

“All of his solo records I’m a huge fan of,” continues O’Donovan on Henry’s appeal, “and the stuff he’s done with Bonnie Raitt. He did the Birds of Chicago records. I love the Over the Rhine records. There are so many that I could name that I love: The Milk Carton Kids, Amy Helm’s latest record that she did with him. We’ve also spent some time together. He is a human being who I am supremely inspired by. I love his ethos and his outlook. So, I think that when you’re looking for a producer, it’s about the music, of course, but it’s also about the interpersonal connection and with Joe, I felt that he got what I was going for. And he was able to meet me in my emotional head space and turn it into a musical soundscape. I don’t know of anybody else who could have done it in that way.”

Henry’s production is perfect on Age of Apathy, as he is so used to working with small ensembles but here he manages to imbue this ethereal album with a warmth that is quite stunning and a quality that is hard to define.

“I wonder why?” asks O’Donovan when I mention that I think the sound is different to much of Henry’s previous work. “I think that it probably has something to do with the fact that it wasn’t recorded live. Although I do think that there are elements of it that sound very live, but it was a pandemic record. I mean, we weren’t in the same room. Nobody was in the same room.”

Of course, the foundation of the album’s sound are the musicians, who Henry has used a lot in his productions and O’Donovan could hardly get a better cast. (The Milk carton Kids also appear on a single they recorded last year). “I pinched myself,” she agrees.

So, what sound was she trying to get from the album that led her to Joe Henry?

“It’s hard to say,” muses O’Donovan. “I think I tried to come to the table with not a super specific idea of exactly what I wanted to sound like, because I think that when you’re doing that, you’re not really letting the producer actually do their job. I think one of the cool things that I’ve learned, at least in my career, is that when you hire somebody to produce your record you have to let them do their thing as well. Otherwise, why are they there?

“So, I think that in many ways it actually sounds different than what I thought it was going to sound like, and I’m not even sure really how.

We ended up keeping a lot of my demo guitar parts because Joe just felt like they had the right vibe – and I’m really glad that we did because

I think that they give the record a little bit of the rawness that I think we were missing from having a live session.

“We were chatting every day and we were texting and he was sometimes Zooming into the big screen in the studio and watching and listening but we weren’t in the same room until we mastered the record. I think that we all just got so used to the reality that we were living in. So, it was just different. I wouldn’t say it was difficult. We knew it was going be like that going into it. So, it was what it was.

Age of Apathy is a very foreboding title and the title track has some made interesting references including 9/11.

“It’s a foreboding title for foreboding times,” explains O’Donovan, “but I think that ultimately the message of the album is reflective. I think I was in, and still am really, a very reflective phase that I think many people my age will find themselves in. Forty is just around the corner and youth feels very much in the rear view, against the backdrop of really a crazy cultural shift, socioeconomic shift or climate change shift. There’s just so much shit going on that I think is affecting all of us. And this record, I think I try to just try to dive into myself and try to find out what that meant to me.”

“There’s just so much shit going on that I think is affecting all of us.”

“I definitely feel apathetic,” she replies when I mention that it seems that people are possibly polarised. “I don’t feel particularly polarised.

There are issues where I feel very passionate and I would align myself with one side more than the other, of course, but I think that when I’m dealt with an onslaught, and especially now, it just feels like it keeps on getting crazier and crazier.

“Over the last while, sometimes I just want to shut my computer and I can’t think about it anymore.

I just don’t care anymore. You just don’t want to even deal with these huge, huge issues that I think maybe if it weren’t so polarised, I would be more motivated to, I don’t know. It’s hard to explain, but I think apathy is a common feeling when you’re dealt with the nonstop negativity of the news cycle and of suffering in pain. And it’s a pretty dark world out there.”

“The other final thing I’ll say about that is that at the end, the point of the record is about finding your way out of the apathy. I think that, for me, and for many people, art and music and these essential things like art and music and beauty and natural beauty. We have to remember that it’s not all bad. So, I don’t want you to think I’m sitting here being like everything sucks and I don’t care because I do care and that’s why I chose Joe Henry to produce the record because, gosh, he is somebody who has this very keen awareness of just the beauty that is all around us.”

Age of Apathy is available through Yep Roc Records distributed by Red Eye. 55

Allison Forbes, like many artists, is doing it tough, but her resilience and talent shine through on her latest release, writes Samuel J. Fell.

“My story is just one of hundreds thousands, if not millions at the moment,” says Allison Forbes. Having just arrived in Tamworth prior to speaking with Rhythms, only to learn the iconic country music festival had been postponed until mid-April, Forbes is understandably disconsolate. The shows she was counting on, not to mention looking forward to, once again whipped out from under her – indeed, the story of the lives of countless musicians attempting to operate in these odd and trying times.

Forbes is gutted. Our chat, at least at the beginning, is layered in despair. She’s almost at her wit’s end. “It’s such an intimate and special thing to be able to play music to people,” she says,” and when it’s kind of all you do, [when it stops] it really makes you question a lot of things – your selfworth, your art, the future, you question everything.”

And yet Forbes, like many others, is built of tougher stuff and so, despite all that’s happened to working musicians, there’s still an element of hope bubbling within her that becomes more apparent the longer we speak, particularly as we begin to discuss her new record, her second, Dead Men Tell No Tales, to be released in April.

Forbes’s debut album, Bonedigger, was released just before the pandemic’s first lockdowns came into effect, in early 2020.

She was unable to tour this record to any great degree, and so writing became her main focus, hence the release of her second LP so soon afterward. And despite the fact Dead Men Tell No Tales is essentially an isolation record, it plays out as freely and powerfully as anything Forbes could have made in normal times. “[I’d started] touring Bonedigger at the start of that nation-wide lockdown, and I panicked,” she remembers, “I thought, ‘I need to get something out there’, because I didn’t really know what to do. I’ve said before that this [new] album is one that I probably didn’t realise I needed to make, and I didn’t realise how relevant it would be to myself and so many people. Because a lot of the songs were written at the beginning of this period we call the pandemic… it was, I want to say therapeutic, which sounds cliché, but I had a lot to say at the time.”

Forbes, with a slew of songs written early in 2020 as things kicked off then, and with 56

FORGING ON nowhere to go, knuckled down. Her first album was produced by Shane Nicholson, but this time she touched base with Matt Fell, who she credits with pulling the whole thing together as she second-guessed herself and wondered what to do next. “He was so incredible, he took those basic demos and turned them into something spectacular, which was fantastic,” she smiles.

Dead Men Tell No Tales is a solid body of work from a country-based artist not afraid to write pointedly, nor meld other styles into her twangy staple. The record runs through almost straight country tunes, but then steps across the aisle into cow-punk, rock ‘n’ roll, swathes of blues, an almost Irish traditional sound permeating a number of tracks. And yet it’s never incoherent, always staying true to itself and presenting as an album, as opposed to merely a clutch of songs.

“Look, I’d love to take the credit for that, but you can definitely give all the credit to Matt for that,” she laughs. “He’s the one who loses sleep at night over how he’s gonna make all

these songs bleed together. He’s done such a brilliant job. And I do think there’s a common thread through the songs, whether it be the lyrics or the meaning.”

Forbes shouldn’t sell herself short here or give too much credit away – these songs are portraits of a time and place, wrought from the experience themselves, something she’s very adept at doing, and not overdoing. Dead Men Tell No Tales is, again, a solid body of work highlighting an artist on the rise.

“We pulled tracks from all over this country,” Forbes smiles, on how the actual recording of Dead Men Tell No Tales came together. “I don’t think any two people were in the studio at the same time to record any of these tracks, and I think what stands out as making this record something special, is that people would never know; the music just marries together so brilliantly, all the band could have been in the same room. It’s really magic.”

Dead Men Tell No Tales is available independently via Checked, from April 4.

HEAVY WAIT

A 13-piece band? Fools errand or Fools paradise?

This Melbourne band is rushing in.

By Jeff Jenkins

L

uke O’Connor has played in bands since he was a teenager. He’s done corporate gigs, B&S Balls, VIP weddings on tropical islands and been the resident singer on Hamilton Island and Great Keppel Island.

He’s also worked as a booking agent, so he knows a thing or two about gigs and bands.

A few years ago, he had an idea for a new band. A big idea.

“I wanted it to be a band that had a real impact live, visually as well as musically,” he explains. A band that could bring the songs he was writing to life, with a mix of genres, including rock, soul and blues.

The result is a 13-piece band – yep, 13-piece, with a horn section, backing singers and two drummers. The initial plan was to put just his name out front, but how could O’Connor present a 13-piece act as a solo project?

A name was needed.

They called it Fools.

“It’s a crazy undertaking, so the name seemed appropriate,” he smiles.

“We’re fools to be doing this.”

People are bemused when they hear about the band. “Thirteen people?

Why two drummers? That must be a nightmare to manage … how do you travel?” But when you see them live, it works. When Henry Wagons compared Fools to the Hey Hey It’s Saturday band, O’Connor looked at him quizzically.

“That’s damning us with faint praise, Henry.”

“No,” Wagons replied.

“It’s a total compliment – they were an amazing band.”

“The level of musicianship in Fools is something we do wear as a badge of honour,” O’Connor continues. “We’ve all spent thousands of hours playing professionally and we have the ability to become a jam band on stage.”

The line-up includes drummer Haydn Meggitt, who also plays with Ross Wilson; guitarist Dale Winters, who spent six years in LA with Juke Kartel; and bass player Travis Clarke, who was part of Jason Donovan’s band when he was just 16.

Fools was certainly built for the big stage. And they’re buzzing to be on this year’s Bluesfest bill. O’Connor was just 16 when he went to his first Bluesfest, travelling in his mate’s Kombi from Yeppoon in Central Queensland, where he grew up. The long trip was worth it – O’Connor fondly recalls seeing Roy Rogers and Duke Robillard.

This year, he’s excited to be on the same bill as one of his favourite bands, Crowded House. Only problem is they’re on at the same time as Fools. “Not only will I not get to see them, but they’ll have most of the crowd!”

The Bluesfest gig follows the release of Fools’ debut album, Can’t Wait Any Longer. The title, drawn from the opening track and first single ‘Best Part’, is partly a Covid reference, though ‘Best Part’ had a particularly personal inspiration. “I started writing that song when my wife and I were going through IVF, trying to have our first child,” O’Connor reveals.

“It was pretty stressful and all I kept thinking was, I just want to get past this dark period and get to the best part.” (Which he and his wife did – they’re now the proud parents of two children.)

O’Connor’s wife inspired another standout track, ‘Saviours’.

“When we met, she had a real hang-up about me not writing songs about her when I had written love songs for other girls. I told her, ‘Well, I’m just going into a part of my life where I’m not obsessed with writing love songs anymore.’ But then I wrote ‘Saviours’.”

O’Connor declares, “I may not be the writer that’s remembered when I’m dead, but it’s you that writes the pages of words running through my head.”

Now based in Melbourne, O’Connor and his mate Jimmy Ferguson – the Hammond player in Fools – have come a long way from Yeppoon, a place that didn’t even have Triple J when they were growing up. But despite their success, they can’t claim to be the town’s biggest musical export. They went to school with Tom Busby from the chart-topping duo Busby Marou.

“We have to say we’re the second-most well-known musicians to come out of Yeppoon,” O’Connor laughs.

Maybe so. But in terms of numbers, O’Connor and Ferguson can certainly lay claim to being part of the biggest band to come out of Yeppoon.

Can’t Wait Any Longer is released on March 14. Fools are playing at Bluesfest 2022.

57

Austin musician Carson Still Life, in Canada with

Y

ou might think that Carson McHone had plenty of options in her hometown of Austin, Texas, to record her third album. After all, it is one of the music capitols of America.

Yet, after an EP to kick off her recording career in 2013, albums in 2015 (Goodluck Man) and 2018 (Carousel, recorded in Nashville) and being named as one of the best forty country acts in America by Rolling Stone magazine in 2018, McHone chose to travel north.

McHone apparently wrote the songs of her new album Still Life between tours in her hometown, then recorded in Ontario with prolific Canadian musician and producer, Daniel Romano, calling on just a couple of friends - Mark Lalama on accordion, piano, and organ, and David Nardi on saxophone – to flesh it out. The album is an impressive showcase for McHone’s perceptive songwriting which makes it apparent that her previous recordings were leading up to this. The album kicks off with the guitar-driven ‘Hawks Don’t Share’ and the title track, with their infectious riffs and McHone’s yearning vocals which on the latter song sound way too world-weary for someone still young. Later, the guitars are augmented by an array of instruments that not only flesh out the sound and make it more interesting but make it sound like there were way more than four musicians involved.

When we catch up on Zoom to talk about Still Life, McHone is still in Ontario where it is close to freezing point, spending the required time before being permitted to go out on tour there with Romano and his band.

“I grew up in Austin, Texas but being in Austin I think you just end up being surrounded by live music,” explains McHone when I ask her about her background. “My folks are not musical people, in that they don’t play music. They were both in the beer business, and so had a lot of extended friends and acquaintances in the bar scene in town. So, from the time that I was a young kid, I was going out to these places that ended up being my first home as somebody who plays music, which was cool. I ended up meeting a lot of older musicians, just at either hangs at the house, around the fire, or going to these bars with my parents. When I did start playing music and writing songs, I ended up back in some of these places that I had been to as, I mean, as a toddler even.”

McHone eventually went out on tour with people like Shakey Graves and Gary Clark Jr but started playing clubs such as the Hole in the Wall or The Drag.

58

n McHone decided to record her third album, h Daniel Romano. By Brian Wise “I started just playing as a solo songwriter there and then would have some friends that I grew up with sit in with me,” she recalls.

“From there, there were some other venues that I wanted to play that were, they were more like dance hall, kind of honky-tonk types, and it was not necessarily a place that you could be on stage as a solo acoustic act.

So, almost out of necessity, I ended up going to see other bands play and then asking those people to play with me and getting a bit of an education as far as being a band leader.”

“It’s neat to have people that are from the same town, that go out and find success, and then turn around and reach their hand out and bring other people along,” says McHone of Clark and Shakey Graves who recognised her talent early on. “As far as the Gary Clark tours were concerned, we were in a little minivan and would drive through the night to keep up with the bus. It was a really, really cool experience, and it was my first taste of like, ‘Okay, this is how people live on the road’” McHone says that she first met Daniel Romano when they played a gig together back in 2015 but she had been aware of his music for a couple of years prior to that.

“We made this record together,” she explains.

“It was a feat at the time because the borders were closed. We had plans to see each other in Austin in March for South by Southwest in 2020. I was on a tour in Spain at the time and he and his band were on the road in the states. We were both supposed to be in Austin in March, and then it was that crazy time where things just screeched to a halt. I flew home directly after a gig and then went into quarantine because, of course, I had been in Spain where, to greet people at the door, you kiss them on both cheeks and it was like, ‘Maybe this is not a good idea’. But anyways, it was destined to happened. Daniel was able to get down to Texas and then we both traveled up here [to Ontario] and were set up in the living room and cut a record.”

“I had demoed some of these songs,” explains McHone of the recording process, “but a lot of them hadn’t been played live. I had these demos to show Daniel where I wanted to take some of the things, and the energy I wanted to convey.

“I feel like as a writer, and primarily as a writer and as a developing musician, I had gotten to this place where I was really using this restraint and play of tension in my live performance.

Then recording these songs, I was playing

with some people for the first time that the sets had a different energy to them. I was able to emote on stage in a different way than I had before, and with a couple of these new songs. They were almost aggressive and it was cathartic. “’Still Life’, for example, which is the title track of the record, was a song that I had written more recently. I made a demo of it that was just, it was really stripped down. When I showed it to Daniel, we toyed with keeping it like that, but I had this urge to find a different energy for it, as something that could carry me through a live performance. So, it ended up taking this dramatic turn, and embodying the energy that I needed to release, in writing that song.”

“I’ve reached for a word to describe that, and I think anthemic is not the right word and I’ve said that before,,” continues McHone as she explains the feelings encapsulated in the songs. “So, I probably need to figure out what the right word is but it’s something like a song that can be devastating and dark, but also you can really ride it out.”

“I’ve always admired Daniel’s guitar playing and it’s all over the record and I’m very happy about that,” says McHone of Romano’s contribution and cites John Cale as someone they were both listening to prior to the recording.

“I had a list of tunes that I wanted to be able to reference, when thinking about making this record and specific to songs, and John Cale was definitely - I mean, a number of his albums went back and forth – but he is definitely somebody that I’ve come to later, and didn’t listen to him growing up. I think, my folks listened to Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt being Texans.

I loved that stuff growing up, which I think is rare, to be into the music that your folks listen to, but I loved it and I still do, so those things definitely stay with you.”

“I went to college for a half a second but I was going to study literature and I’ve always been a lover of words,” says McHone when I ask her about literary influences in her lyrics, “and my mom is a writer. She writes poems and short fiction. As a kid books were very important to me and we had a library at the house that I could get lost in. I would say that a lot of these songs started out as poems.

“A song like ‘The End of the World’, for example. I was on the road at the time and

sometimes struggle to write while I’m on the road, at least songs. Otherwise, I try to journal or write letters or postcards. I was playing around with the triolet form of a poem [a stanza of 8 lines] and just using different forms to try to get my brain working. That song started out in that form, and obviously, changed when I turned it into a song. Then there’s a song like ‘Hawks Don’t Share’, which is pulled straight out of Hemingway’s Movable Feast, talking about this artistic sabotage that can happen between people. I love to write and I mean, it’s just a means of trying to figure out what you’re actually feeling, just as saying things out loud and putting words to anything helps you to process.”

Amazingly, a copy of A Moveable Feast is sitting right next to me in a bookshelf as we speak. “No way!” exclaims McHone. (I neglect to tell her that it is even more amazing that I can actually see it in the jumble of my studio!).

“Zelda was very beautiful and was tanned a lovely gold colour and her hair was a beautiful dark gold and she was very friendly. Her hawk’s eyes were clear and calm,” wrote Hemingway. “But hawks do not share. Scott did not write anything any more that was good until after he knew that she was insane.”

“I’d actually had that song in my back pocket for a couple of years and I’m trying to remember when I first read that book,” she continues.

“As an artist you fall in with other creatives, and that can lead to some tumultuous things.

You get involved with other creative types.

Definitely that chapter ‘Hawks Do Not Share’, about Zelda and F. Scott was the crux of that chapter I, unfortunately, related to it.”

McHone also notes that the distinctive pencil crayon artwork on the cover and the package was done in 1957 by her great grandfather, Bonner Bentley, who drew and spent a lot of time in Puerto Vallarta Mexico. “There’s this urgency,” she explains, “and you can get that from his more pastoral landscapes, but those sketches really moved me. I liked the three birds, the off balance of it, because I think that ties into a lot of what I’m dealing with thematically in these songs and really just the overall energy of the tunes.

Still Life is available through Merge Records and can be found at bandcamp.com.

59

ON THE TRAIL

Jim Lindberg has fronted skate-punks Pennywise, but his new solo album returns him to acoustic basics.

By Steve Bell

S

ince the late-‘80s Californian singersongwriter Jim Lindberg has been found out the front of iconic South Bay skate-punks Pennywise, firing off his usually positive and optimistic diatribes - compared to many of his band’s peers at any rate - atop a bed of frantic guitars and pounding, propulsive rhythms.

But on his debut solo album Songs From The Elkhorn Trail he’s flipped the script completely, the collection of acoustic-based songs stripping things back sonically with lyrics ruminating philosophically on love, loss and the rollercoaster of experiences and emotions that life in general so often has in store for us.

It’s still a band affair - in the studio he was abetted by members of bands such as Dropkick Murphys, Social Distortion and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - and while his punk roots still shine through in the vocal melodies and penchant for anthemic choruses, overall it’s a softer and more contemplative batch of songs which ultimately prove just as powerful as the heavier music he concocts for his day job.

“I think a lot of people just expect raging skate-punk from me, but I think this lets you hear an entire another side,” the singer smiles.

“I’ve been playing guitar since I was a kid and writing songs throughout that whole time as well, and there was finally an opportunity for me to get some of this other music out there and people are responding to it so I couldn’t be happier.

“I think everybody starts out on the acoustic guitar, and for the last few years I’ve had two

60

or three acoustic guitars in every room of the house. So, it’s just natural when you’re getting together with friends to be just strumming the guitars, and it became a different way for me to write - writing quieter songs and songs that are a little bit more introspective.

“Definitely when I pick up an electric guitar and plug in an amp and go to write a Pennywise song on the guitar I know what I’m writing for, and it’s usually going to be a fast, distorted skate-punk anthem which is meant to fire people up. But I’ve written so many albums of that type of music, so it felt time for me to put out some of these songs that I’ve had laying around for so long.

“A big part of it was that I really wanted to work with Ted Hutt - I think he’s a great producer and I love stuff he’s done with The Gaslight Anthem and Dropkick Murphys and Old Crow Medicine Show - plus you can tell he’s really good at getting the best out of people, and when I finally convinced him to go into the studio with me I knew I had the right team together to get it done.”

Whilst some of the songs on Lindberg’s solo debut cover intensely personal matters such as the recent loss of his father to Alzheimers, in typical punk fashion there’s also a strong thread running through the album’s lyrics of empathy and compassion for the many outsiders and underdogs marginalised by an oft-unforgiving society.

“At a certain age you become reflective of all you’ve been through, and without sounding overly simple about looking at the world it’s

always very bittersweet,” he muses. “There’s great times you enjoy with your family and friends, and then there’s times when you lose people - in this case it was my father passing away and that was very difficult for my whole family - but also we lost friends along the way and various friendships that go awry.

“Obviously I left the band at a certain point and those types of loyalties get tested things can get hard - and sometimes it’s very cathartic to purge out all those emotions in these songs and detail what it feels like when you’re up against it and feel like an outsider or ostracised to a certain point.

“I think that’s what attracted me to punk rock in the beginning. We came from a very cool place to grow up - the South Bay of Los Angeles is kind of renowned for surfing, skateboarding and punk rock bands all coming to this area - but then you also have all of the pressures of growing up and going to high school and fitting in as a teenager.

That’s what drew me to punk rock, that it’s supposed to be accepting of all the outsiders and weirdos and all the people that don’t fit in, but then you come to find out that kind of thing happens outside punk rock as well.

“But these songs are definitely about the underdog and empathising with people who are experiencing loss or struggles - the world’s a tough place and you have to get through it - and sometimes even the saddest songs can be inspirational and comforting.”

Songs From The Elkhorn Trail is available through Epitaph Records.

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BLOOMING GOOD Courtney Marie Andrews is touring on the back of her acclaimed album Old Flowers.

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rammy nominated, singer songwriter (extraordinaire), writer, poet and artist, Courtney Marie Andrews spends her time in between her home town of Phoenix Arizona and Nashville Tennessee these days, if she’s not out on the road. Lucky for her she’s recently completed a tour of Europe and the UK enjoying the opportunity to sing the songs of her highly acclaimed 2020 album Old Flowers.

You’ve recently been to Europe and the UK and seeing photos on Facebook. It’s like, “oh my God, look, she’s traveling. She’s gone somewhere besides home”. To us, that seems quite foreign at the moment.

I think I might be one of the first international tours into your country, which is pretty wild.

I really lucked out last fall. I got to do all my tours. There’s lots of friends who had to cancel. We kept it really simple and we were able to do all three months, which is kind of a miracle. It was wild. It was a little weird, I kind of wanted to cry most nights, just being able to do it all again.

The UK do love you and awarded you the Best Americana Album at the Americana Music Association UK Awards for Old Flowers.

Yeah. I feel very grateful, honoured to be honoured for my work. So, it’s cool. I definitely make it out there a lot. They’ve been very good to me.

Talking about honours, how does it feel to get a Grammy nod?

Oh man. I mean completely unexpected.

Honestly, I really didn’t expect it to happen at all. I didn’t even think I was on the ballot or anything. It feels really good. I mean it’s such

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funny work we do. You do something for so long and you just mosey along. And then one day somebody’s like, ‘Hey, you’re pretty good and they give an award or nominate you for something’. And you’re like, ‘Wow!’ Old Flowers is the album receiving all this praise. How do you feel about how it’s been received?

It’s a funny one because I released the record in the pandemic. It’s just hard to tell what people think until you’re actually out in the world, at least from my perspective. The most I felt from it was this last fall where I was there and people singing the songs at the shows and I was like, ‘Oh man, it did resonate with some folks”. So, that was really nice really just being able to play those songs live.

It’s a such a beautiful album and I can understand how it resonates with so many people. You’ve described it as an album about heartbreak, that came out of the end of a nine year relationship. Does it get easier or harder to sing those songs?

I don’t know if it gets easier or harder. I think every day, the songs resonate in a different way. And depending on how I’m feeling, I sort of just transmit my amalgamation of feelings into whatever happened. And I think if I were to have to relive the songs all the time, that would get a little tedious. So I just try and do my best to feel it in the ways that feel natural for me in every moment.

Was it like therapy to get those feelings and thoughts out and step back from it?

I actually have this really visceral memory of the moment that I mastered the record and it felt like I was finally able to process and close that chapter. So, in a lot of ways it was my way

of coping with all the changes that come with that big life transformation.

What’s ahead for you? Are you constantly writing songs and are you seeing life in a better light that maybe there are happier moments for you to sing about these days?

I’ve just been so creative, if there’s been any silver lining for this horrible time, it’s that I’ve really been able to tap into my childlike sense of creativity again. When you’re in the cog, when you’re in the machine of the work that comes along with being creative, you can sometimes lose touch of that. Being able to really just completely embrace my creative side again has been so beautiful.

Like releasing a book of poetry called Old Monarch?

I’ve loved poetry since I was a little girl and I always knew that I wanted to write in some capacity. I didn’t know what that would be.

So, when it became songwriting I put any paper style writing to the side, fully focused on that and the pandemic, again, it allowed me to have the time to finally just completely dedicate to writing a book. Writing my first collection of poetry. it came out last April.

And you are also a visual artist.

I love painting. I love painting hotel rooms when I’m traveling, that’s my go to, is painting the hotel rooms. I really didn’t want to give up all the sides of my creativity. So, I started bringing just a small little painting kit and I just do little paintings on paper, like watercolours and that sort of thing. I’m trying to incorporate all of it while I’m traveling.

Courtney Marie Andrews & Erin Raet tour Australia in March and also playing at the Port Fairy Folk Festival.

A WORK OF ART Helen Shanahan delivers a dazzling second album, Canvas.

By Jeff Jenkins “People speak of the fear of the blank canvas as though it is a temporary hesitation, a trembling moment of self-doubt,” noted acclaimed Aussie author Hannah Kent. “For me it was more like being abducted from my bed by a clown, thrust into a circus arena with a wicker chair, and told to tame a pissed-off lion in front of an expectant crowd.”

There was fear in Helen Shanahan’s eyes when I first encountered her.

The Perth singer-songwriter was on stage at Melbourne’s Forum Theatre, in the final of the prestigious talent competition Telstra’s Road to Discovery, which unearthed artists such as Jessica Mauboy, Melody Pool, Gena Rose Bruce, Harry Hookey, Liv Cartledge and Merpire.

Shanahan was trembling as she introduced herself. Her nerves made me nervous. “This,” I thought, “is going to be a disaster.”

And then she started singing. A voice so pure, so beautiful and distinctive.

The lion was tamed.

“Networking and performing in front of strangers doesn’t come easily to me,” Shanahan says when reminded of that gig. She laughs. “Why did I choose this profession?

“I definitely feel exposed on stage,” she adds. “But I put myself in this position because I love music so much.”

Shanahan was 19 when she embarked on her music career. “I was studying film and literature, but my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t really know it was possible to have a career in music ... I was always writing throughout high school but didn’t have much confidence to play in front of people, so I kept most of it to myself.”

After surviving some open mic nights, Shanahan decided to stick at it. Her Telstra prize included a trip to North America, where she wrote with Kim Richey, went to the Harry Potter theme park – “I’m a hardcore Harry Potter fan” – and got engaged to her guitarist Matt Allen.

“Needless to say, it was a trip I will never forget.”

Shanahan forged another American connection – producer Brad Jones, who has worked with many Australian artists, including Missy Higgins, Melody Pool, Bob Evans, Skipping Girl Vinegar and Butterfly Boucher.

Jones produced Shanahan’s 2017 debut, Every Little Sting, as well as her new album, Canvas.

“Brad has this amazing ability to bring out the heart of my songs,” Shanahan says. “I love that I barely have to tell him what I want – he just gets it.

I totally trust him.”

Shanahan is not afraid to share her life with the listener, documenting her struggles. Every Little Sting revealed her battle with anxiety. “I don’t know which voice to hear,” she sang, “the one that’s safe or filled with fear.” One of the new songs, ‘Chemical Help’, picks up on the storyline.

“I want to live without that tiny voice, telling me that I don’t have a choice.”

“Writing these songs was like a therapy session,” Shanahan says. “I’ve tried to do a lot of work on my mental health. It’s something you have to keep working on.”

Much of the record sees Shanahan revisiting some painful relationships.

The title track is a devastating depiction of a toxic relationship and loss of innocence. “I was your blank canvas,” Shanahan sings. “You painted what you wanted on me … Oh, how I learned to be used.”

“In a lot of ways, this album is me taking back some of the power that I lost in those relationships.”

After her first album, Shanahan relocated to the UK, living in London for a year. She and Allen planned to stay longer, but as Covid hit – and with Shanahan four weeks pregnant – they decided to come home, just before Australia’s borders shut.

After giving birth to baby Bonnie, Shanahan returned to the stage, supporting one of her idols, Missy Higgins. “Oh God, that was a highlight of my life! She is such a beautiful human. She stood side of stage and watched our set, which she didn’t have to do.” After the show, Higgins highlighted one of Shanahan’s new songs, ‘Subtlety In The Silence’.

“Missy gave it her seal of approval, so I had to put it on the album,” Shanahan smiles.

Playing with Missy Higgins and Tim Minchin, and seeing them work up close, has helped alleviate Shanahan’s performance anxiety. The title of the first single from the new album recalls some of her early experiences: ‘Deer In Headlights’.

Nowadays, Helen Shanahan is no longer afraid. Instead, she is savouring the spotlight.

Canvas is out now.

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JUST SAY NOE!

Ian Noe, from Bowling Green, Kentucky, talks about his impressive second album and the influence of John Prine. By Stuart Coupe

P

ick any song writing weight you care to, and you can bet that Kentucky’s Ian Noe punches way above it. He really is that good and given that he’s just about to release only his second album, well, the mind boggles at the potential.

It all started a couple of years ago when Noe (it’s pronounced NO) released his debut, Between The Country. Jaws – including mine – dropped. How could a debut be so good? There were mutterings about how was already right up there with best of the new breed of American writers and singers. The album was sparse, but boy did it have songs.

And Noe had a voice to match ‘em. There was talk of a lightning visit to Australia for a few shows with Joe Pug – and then came the global pandemic.

Noe is back with a new album, River Fools & Mountain Saints that – wait for it – is even better than his debut. This one has more instruments, a greater sonic pallet, more attitude. And such fine, fine songs.

As Noe explains via Zoom from his home in Bowling Green, Kentucky where he’s lived for the past five years, this album benefited from the lockdown years. He had more time to work on it and think about the presentation of the songs. And a little more money never goes astray.

“There were definite time constraints with the first one,” he says. “I had a week to work on it and we got it done in that period. The whole album was recorded and mixed in six or seven days. Was there other stuff I would have loved to have some on that one? Of course. And so, I had the time to do all that with this one. This album is a pandemic record.

It’s all I’ve worked on for the past two years.

I’d finished a tour in Europe. Those dates ended in January 2020. I remember watching the news on television – it was the morning we were leaving to come back to the States. The story about COVID was just breaking. I got back and I had a week booked to start recording this album which we did, and then all hell broke loose. From then on it was whenever we could get into the studio, all in separate rooms, masks on and all that. It worked. It was both frustrating and enlivening.

“Like a lot of people, I felt like I had my train on the tracks after that tour of Europe and I had a lot of fire behind me, and then for it to stop just like that, so abruptly, well it took me a year to realise how much everything had changed. But I worked on a lot of songs which kept me sane. But I’d be lying to say it wasn’t incredibly frustrating.

“I got myself vaccinated. I never thought of it as a right, left or moderate kind of thing. I never politicised it. I just tried to stay off social media as much as I could.”

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I pointed out to Noe that he’d put together this album during not only COVID but the most divisive time in American politics that anyone can remember – including the election.

“It was the perfect storm,” he says. “And no-one was prepared for it.

Sometimes I’m a little shocked that everything hasn’t burnt down.”

The songs on River Fools & Mountain Saints are very much drawn from Noe’s personal experiences. He grew up in a musical family. His father played and taught him guitar and his grandfather taught him his first three songs – Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode, Hank Williams’ ‘I Saw The Light’ and The Carter Family classic ‘Wildwood Flower’.

“This is a family type of record,” he says whilst showing me the cover of the album which he’s just received. “This is my Uncle. I was thinking about stories I heard about people I knew growing up, and sometimes trying to put myself in their shoes.

“I had the album title first and then I had to write the songs to fit that. Where I live is just hills and mountains – and rivers. Last year in March my hometown experienced possibly the worst flood, in terms of property damage, that it had ever experienced. A lot of my family members lost possession’s. They say write about what you know – and that’s this record.”

Whenever you read about Noe the chances are the name John Prine will come up – just like I did there. Prine is an unashamed influence on Noe – and during the pre-COVID European tour he had the opportunity to play dates with his hero.

“That was everything to me,” Noe says. “I literally thought about that moment from eve since I was 15 right through to when it finally happened. If nothing else happens in my life I feel kind of complete.

Those were some of the last shows he ever did. He’s never played in Paris and he got to do that. And that was maybe his last show. I opened for those shows and got to spend a few minutes with him that felt like a lifetime. And he asked me to sing with him onstage.

“We did ‘Come Back To Us Barbara Lewis’ and ‘Mexican Home’ together.

His leg was hurting so he had to sit and play which is something he said he hadn’t done in years. But the shows were magical. We got onstage and started ‘Barbara Lewis’ and he turned to me and said, ‘what chord did we decide to do this in’ and that immediately made me feel a hundred times more comfortable.”

Is Ian Noe the next John Prine? Who knows but one thing’s for sure – he’s as good as any new singer and songwriter out there.

River Fools and Mountain Saints is from March 25 Via Thirty Tigers/ Cooking Vinyl Australia.

STUART COUPE PRESENTS COREY LEGGE

Wollongong-based singersongwriter Corey Legge releases his third studio album ‘What Now?’ on Tuesday 1st March 2022, via Good Stem Records (MGM). Recorded at Love Hz Studios in Sydney NSW with award-winning country producer Matt Fell, Corey’s third album is a heartfelt and honest collection of alt-country and rock songs with a common thread of tragedy, hope and resilience.

This concept album aims to document the unprecedented times we are living in and share the stories of those directly affected by the Black Summer Bushfires and COVID. Featuring the singles ‘Cemetery Kids’, ‘Love You & Leave You’ and ‘What Now?’, this 11-track album will appeal to fans of Bernard Fanning, Paul Kelly and Passenger. Corey Legge will be launching ‘What Now?’ with a number of solo and band shows in NSW and VIC in March and April 2022. You can purchase Corey’s new album and album launch tour tickets via www.coreylegge.com.

RESTLESS DREAM

Restless Dream is a collaboration between Brisbane band Halfway and Kamileroi elder Bob Weatherall, with William Barton.

The album tells the story of the Repatriation of Aboriginal Ancestral Remains. Restless Dream is a very personal story, yet it touches all Aboriginal Nations as they grapple with the task of repatriation and reburial, just as it acknowledges those who have taken on the task of uncovering the past and advocating for the Rights of the Dead. The album was recorded at QUT in Brisbane in 2016, by Yanto Browning (Kate Miller-Heidke/ Art of Sleeping) and mixed in South Carolina by Mark Nevers (Yo La Tengo/Bonnie “Prince” Billy/Lambchop/Jason Isbell). It is a blend of songs, stories and instrumentals; like a Halfway album and then some. https://www.halfway.com.au HUSSY HICKS

In a nod to the inspirational female musicians of their youth (Pat Benetar, Chrissy Amphlett, Cyndi Lauper etc), Hussy Hicks latest release ‘Same Boat’ is an 80’s style banger that tells the story of their coming to terms with the world being put on pause and trying to deal with this state of dormancy.

The song is fast, fun and features a killer “shejaculation” guitar solo that would no doubt make Jennifer Batten proud.

And if that’s not enough, the girls have teamed up with some gamer friends and created a video game in which Hussy Hicks must overcome a series of challenges to finally end up at their gig. www.hussyhicks.com JIMMI CARR Jimmi Carr is a singersongwriter and electronic music producer local to the

Blue Mountains. He has released 7 albums, including the just released Flight Cycle.

Jimmi’s music moves through folk, alt-country, rock and funk.

The new album, which forms part of his recently submitted PhD, also incorporates influences from Western Africa and South Africa.

southern New South Wales near Boorowa. By night, she sings, plays guitar and writes songs of love and heartbreak.

As a little girl she loved two things: music and horses. She grew up on the music of Kasey Chambers, Gillian Welch and Bonnie Raitt. Her debut album is produced and co-written

by Melbourne-based artist Matt Joe Gow, a staple of the Australian Country scene for more than a decade, and recent winner of the Music Victoria Award for Best Country Album.

MICK DICK

Jimmi’s catalogue has received extensive airplay, including his recent single “Free Right Now” on Triple J. Here’s what critics have said about Jimmi: “Clever songs, quirky arrangements, Carr’s genius is to is to meld diverse elements into something quite unique.” – Rhythms Magazine (2020). “[Free Right Now] brought a real smile to my face and made my morning as I put this on repeat. The way this song saunters along is fantastic.

Rhythmically so exciting and fun the whole thing comes together so masterfully.

Bravo!” – 4.5 stars. – Nkechi Anele, Triple J’s Roots ‘n’ All (2019) JOSIE LAVER

Rising star Josie Laver is about to burst onto the Australian country music scene and brings with her a rare and undeniable authenticity. She not only loves country music, she lives it.

By day, she runs sheep and cattle on her family’s farm in the broad high plains of

Brunswick Heads Musician/ Producer Mick Dick’s latest dub offering 10 Dubnamic Hits is a refreshing take on seminal/ Classic OZ and NZ rock hits from the I970’s.

Reinterpreting them into reggae rhythms with rockers, steppers, one drops and a little bit of cheese, Mick creates new and innovative grooves inspired by the original riffs.

Driving an analogue mixing console flanked by tape machine delays, and spring reverbs, Mick twists these instrumental tracks live ‘to tape’ into spaced out collages and crucial riddims, leaving the listener in a haze of dub with subtle yet humorous glimpses of the original track.

Dragon, Daddy Cool, The Aztecs, Skyhooks, The La De Da’s, Chain, Madder Lake, Blackfeather, Richard Clapton and Max Merritt all get the treatment with an extra ‘Squeaky’ track on the double LP vinyl . Turn it on and get down with this vital mash –up.

“Awesome vibes”… Prince Fatty mickdick.bandcamp.com

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LIFE ON EARTH

Hurray For The Riff Raff’s Alynda Segarra delivers a powerful statement about the planet. By Brian Wise ‘Nature punk’ is a description that you might not have come across before, but it is one that Alynda Segarra of Hurray For The Riff Raff applies to her latest album, Life On Earth, a challenging recording which addresses the theme of survival in a time of climate change emergency.

For the group’s eighth full-length album, Segarra drew inspiration from The Clash, singer Beverly Glenn-Copeland, Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny and adrienne maree brown’s (sic) 2017 book Emergent Strategy, about sustainable social change. The album was recorded during the pandemic and produced by Brad Cook (Waxahatchee, Bon Iver, Kevin Morby) who has helped Segarra fashion her most musically adventurous album to date.

Born and raised in the Bronx, Segarra left home at the age of seventeen, jumping on freight trains and hitchhiking across the country. Segarra moved to New Orleans and formed several groups, including Hurray for the Riff Raff. You might have seen them playing in the streets in their early days. Segarra moved to Nashville, then back to New York, to make The Navigator (2016), an expression of her Puerto Rican identity.

Australian audiences would have been witness to the compelling performances of Segarra and her group and their appearance at Bluesfest in 2018 was one of the highlights of the festival.

Segarra is back in living in New Orleans when we connect by Zoom and has not only seen the full effects of climate change over the years in Louisiana but has had to deal with the pandemic which at least produced a new recording.

“It’s been so different, obviously,” says Segarra when I ask what life has been like. “New Orleans is such a live music city and that’s really taken a toll. I haven’t been on tour in years now, which is crazy to say, but I’m gearing up to go on tour. So, I’ve just been doing a lot of work for the album: working a lot at home, playing music at home and writing.

That’s been really fun. I’ve definitely learned how to adapt at this point.”

“It really reminded me of Jazz Fest in the way that all different artists are coming together,” says Segarra when reminded of the Bluesfest shows. “There’s like world artists that you can see - like legends at Jazz Fest - and then you go see a gospel group from a small town in Mississippi. It’s so cool.”

“Living in lockdown definitely affected it,” says Segarra when I ask about the recording of the new album. “I had this idea at first of trying to write music that would help me find a way to reconnect or connect really to nature that was around me, but it was during the lockdown that all of that really started to make sense to me. I started to feel the connection. It wasn’t like a thought it was an experience. I couldn’t be intellectual about it ‘cause we were all in a desperate situation and I was cut off from friends and cut off from my normal way of life. Living here in New Orleans, I was lucky that I could go for an hour, two hour long walks and be amongst these trees, these Oak trees that are as old as the city and just experience the nature around me. It just got me through this past couple of years.

“I would just spend hours in City Park,” continues Segarra. “It’s really an amazing place. You could see alligators out there. You could see all sorts of migratory birds and you can get lost in there. That’s what I really needed to do because we still are here living in quite a bit of chaos. Suddenly I felt like I don’t really want to hear what a human has to say about all this. I want to sit down with some of these other life forms around me and try to just take in some of their wisdom and their energy.”

The album’s front cover is a shot that looks like it might have been taken in a swamp. It’s a reminder that nature is always there, ready to take over when we are gone.

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“Oh yeah,” agrees Segarra. “You’ll feel that energy here in Louisiana and in New Orleans specifically. That shot is actually at Lake Pontchartrain, which is such a beautiful place. And yeah, I felt like that it’s kind of where this idea of nature punk comes together. It’s this like rebellious feeling this resistance that is also infused with this healing energy that there’s so much nature around us that is offering that to us if we’re willing to accept it and listen to it.

“You are around some creatures and some plant life that you’re like, ‘Man, you survived the last hurricane!’ Also, it is such a place that we deal with a lot of environmental disaster. We deal with oil spills. There’s so many people here who are fighting for some kind of change and who are trying to talk some sense into the world about this stuff. So, New Orleans and Louisiana in general really inspired me.”

But Segarra didn’t record the latest album in New Orleans. For that, it took a journey to producer Brad Cook’s studio in North Carolina.

“He was the guy,” says Segarra. “Sometimes I feel like it’s not good to record where you live because you’re so stuck in your patterns. When I talked to Brad on the phone, I just had a feeling that he was the guy. I’m pretty sensitive to the energy of the producer and I just had a feeling that that was him. So, when I drove out to Durham multiple times because I didn’t want to fly and it just really changed my life. He has a bit of a coach energy, and I was really looking for someone who was going to push me, but also support me. It’s a very delicate balance. I want to be the best I can be. I don’t want to be lazy but also I need some love and support too, because it’s very vulnerable to try to grow.”

Life On Earth has quite a different sound on many of the tracks to previous Hurray For The Riff Raff albums. Initially Segarra spoke to Brad about maybe not using guitar or banjo to break from the past, but that didn’t necessarily happen all the time.

“No, it didn’t,” agrees Segarra. “It’s good because sometimes when you’re the head person of a band and you’re doing interviews and you’re on the internet, you’re doing all this public stuff and being pigeonholed, it can just feel so suffocating. Especially, I feel like that a lot cause I have so many different influences and I just want to be an artist who’s allowed to make my art, wherever it grows to. He was really good to get my mind right. Nobody owns the sound of an acoustic guitar. An acoustic guitar can be any genre can lead you anywhere. And it helped me just focus on the songs again.”

Nominated multiple times for Americana Awards, Segarra says that these days the label sits uncomfortably on the music of Hurray For The Riff Raff.

“With The Navigator, I definitely felt like that label wasn’t really fitting for me anymore. Especially with political division that’s been happening here and just feeling like my nervous system was shut after four years of insanity that the insanity continues. But I really felt like I wanted to get out of this genre that I feel can be pretty suffocating for me: especially when it feels like I would go to shows and people would be coming to see an Americana artist and suddenly they don’t like the music that I’m making. They want it to be the music I made in 2014. As an artist, I don’t want people to feel unhappy. I’m going to keep changing.

“Even though I started playing new and writing songs on the banjo, I was always writing about queer feminist trauma. I don’t feel like I was ever really what maybe the mainstream idea of Americana is here. I feel like I always kind of pushed the boundaries. So, it’s been an interesting growing period. I’d love to just be an artist and be allowed to make whatever I wanted.”

The musical growth that Segarra refers to was inspired by a variety of sources – including The Clash - and there seems to be a number of divergent influences working on the creative process.

“I really go by energy,” explains Segarra. “I feel like I could listen to any type of music and if I am moved by it, then I just think it’s incredible.

We’re so desensitized at this point. It’s so important to put some kind of fire in people or some kind of healing message or something. The Clash always meant so much to me. I grew up listening to punk rock and the only reason I didn’t make punk rock music was because I lived in a really small apartment with my aunt, and I couldn’t possibly like jam on loud music sharing a room with her. So, I just decided to create my own path of taking all that I learned from listening to punk rock and growing up, going to punk shows and making these songs that I make now.”

Segarra has coined the term ‘nature punk’ – her own genre - and is happy to explain its meaning.

Pic by Kasha Rabut

“I’ve been noticing that there are artists all over that are getting these kind of what I call downloads from nature. They’re getting these bursts of inspiration and I felt like it was a cool, fun idea to try to create my own genre of this music, that it can sound like anything as long as it’s informed by other life forms and the nature around you. It also has this feeling of urgency and resistance and resilience in it. Then I think it’s nature punk.”

Life On Earth is available via Nonesuch Records through Warner Music.

125mm

CHRISTOPHER COLEMAN & THE GREAT ESCAPE

SOME OF YOUR

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

0mm

125mm

NEW

Across the Universe (Lennon/McCartney) 140.5mm Adrian Whitehead Spirit In The Sky (N.Greenbaum) Billy Miller

ALBUM

OUT

140.5mm 5mm

Grandma’s Hands (B.Withers) Rebecca Barnard286mm Lovin’ Cup (Jagger/Richards) Nick Barker DO NOT INCLUDE THE TEMPLATE OR ANY OTHER NON-PRINT INFO IN THE

Rose Tattoo (C.Wilson) Liz Stringer FINAL PRINT READY PDF ART FILE. Faded Valentine (J.T. Earle) Rebecca Barnard THIS TEMPLATE IS 1:1 SCALE

IMPORTANT

EMAIL: PRINT@IMPLANT.COM.AU PH: 1300 79 78 78

- 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)

Beware OF Darkness (G.Harrison) Shane O’Mara - IMPORTANT INFO SHOULD MUST BE INSIDE SAFETY MARGINS Isn’t It A Pity (G.Harrison) Billy Miller Ohio (N.Young) Andrew Tanner

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

CUT FOLD BLEED SAFETY

Available now at christophercolemanmusic.com ‘Paloona’, which serves as a stellar example of not only homegrown storytelling, but how to make a song that allows the listener to feel emotions they’d never before anticipated.

Tyler Jenke, Rolling Stone Australia

By Martin Jones

MARY MARGARET O’HARA MISS AMERICA Virgin ow often are you enthralled by the first listen of an album within the opening few seconds? As soon Mary Margaret O’Hara’s voice alighted over a few delay-treated guitar chords on ‘To Cry About’ I was riveted. Disarmed by the just slightly unhinged vocals. Intrigued by the ‘80s guitar tone against the old-timey chord progression. And what’s she singing in that Piaf-esque tremor?

H

You take a walk I’m by your side Take my life I’ll give you mine You, you give me something To cry about Esteemed drummer and musicologist Jim White suggested Miss America to me and it’s proven one of my greatest recent musical discoveries. And it seems I’m not alone in having never heard of O’Hara before! Though luminaries like the Dirty Three, Michael Stipe, and Morrissey have done their best to introduce her to a wider audience, O’Hara remains dumbfoundingly overlooked. Is it her musical unconventionality? She was no more experimental than Joni Mitchell or Kate Bush or Vashti Bunyan, for example, peers who have been venerated for their bravery.

Though O’Hara’s debut album did receive critical praise on its release in 1988, it seems just not enough people got to hear it for it to be widely appreciated. It wasn’t promoted by the label (who wound up delaying the release of the record for some four years after its completion) or O’Hara, who was exhausted and dismayed by the whole experience.

Canadian born O’Hara, sister of actor Catherine O’Hara, was signed to Virgin on the strength of a batch of 1983 demo recordings – recordings long lost. The next two years were spent with a series of producers, including XTC’s Andy Partridge, Joe Boyd (Pink Floyd, Nick Drake, Vashti Bunyan, etc, etc), and Michael Brook. While it seems only those involved know exactly who was responsible for what (Boyd’s name doesn’t even appear on the Miss America credits), O’Hara’s original visions for the songs became increasingly diluted as more producers and label staff involved themselves.

While you’d kill to hear the original Miss America demos, O’Hara herself did not hold back on the final recordings. And the juxtaposition of the slightly too slick ‘80s arrangements with O’Hara’s unique vocals is a huge part of the album’s startling character. You’re NEVER completely comfortable listening to the record, the combination of curious lyrics, radical and passionate vocal approaches, and ‘80s prog instrumentation offering you little that is familiar.

‘Year In Song’ and ‘Body’s In Trouble’ see O’Hara attack her lyrics with David Byrne-esque mania, spitting out stutters and repetitions like slam poetry. The first time you hear ‘Year In Song’ you can’t help feeling you might be listening to someone having an in-studio breakdown.

Repeated listens, especially in context with the album’s other material, suggests that O’Hara was in complete control.

Because she’s also capable of singing like a bird. Jesus, try to get through ‘Dear Darling’ without tearing up. It’s like listening to some lost Appalachian voice broadcast from the distant past over modern guitar.

Miss America ranges widely, touching on reggae, country, funk, new age, prog jazz, whilst never committing to any established template or convention. In that sense, the album forecast the ‘90s indie rock scene that was to follow. The tenacious guitar, driving rhythm and unflinching vocals of ‘My Friends Have’ point the way for the likes of the Throwing Muses, Belly and PJ Harvey. While the more classic jazz feel of ‘Keeping You In Mind’ is more Rickie Lee Jones territory (though substantially weirder). And ‘Not Be Alright’… well it’s just from another (more advanced) planet, like Sly and Robbie teaming up with Talking Heads with O’Hara purring, barking and yelping verses of fear and paranoia.

It’s O’Hara at her most obtuse but unforgettable.

There’s so much territory, emotional and musical, covered in Miss America, it proves a fathomless well for the listener. Some new reward is inevitable with each encounter. But even at its most harrowing and cryptic, it’s something you can’t imagine not being in your life.

As O’Hara sighs like a restless ghost on ‘Help Me Lift You Up’: I have a dream It’s very clear You’re all around But never near O’Hara didn’t completely vanish after Miss America, but she chose her future projects carefully, including contributing to Morrissey’s ‘November Spawned a Monster’, and working with Tom Waits and William S Burroughs in the theatrical production The Black Rider. The Dirty Three convinced her to perform at 2007’s All Tomorrow’s Parties and Perfume Genius did the same for 2017’s Le Guess Who? Festival.

O’Hara has only released one further LP, a soundtrack to the 2001 film, Apartment Hunting, though she admits to sitting on dozens of unreleased songs….

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CLASSIC ALBUM

By Billy Pinnell 70

GOANNA

SPIRIT OF PLACE WARNER MUSIC

F

or songwriter /musician Shane Howard, a visit in 1980 to Uluru where he spent time with local aborigines and attended a corroboree not only impacted on his life, but it also provided inspiration for the writing of ‘Solid Rock’ a damning indictment of the European invasion of Australia. Recorded by Howard’s band Goanna in 1982 it topped singles charts around the country and is considered today to be among the most powerful political statements ever put to a rock and roll beat.

On the 40th anniversary and the remastering and re-release of this timeless recording and Spirit Of Place the album that gave it birth, it’s appropriate to reflect on the beginnings of Howard’s ascendancy to the ranks of international songwriters and the emergence of Goanna, one of the great Australian bands.

Hailing from the West Coast Victorian town of Warrnambool, Howard put together the earliest line-up of the constantly changing Goanna in the summer of 1976. By 1981 the line-up consisted of Howard (lead vocals/acoustic & electric guitars), Rose Bygrave (vocals, keyboard), Warrick Harwood (electric guitar), Peter ‘Brolga’ Coughlan (bass guitar), Marcia Howard (vocals), Robert Ross (drums, percussion) and Graham Davidge (electric guitar).

On the strength of consistent live performances and a positive reaction to an independent Broderick Smith produced four track EP Livin’ On The Edge released on their own label in 1979, Warner Music was keen to sign Goanna, arranging for them to support James Taylor, one of their major acts, on his 1981 Australian tour.

The overwhelming response from audiences around the country convinced Warner to commit to an album and an international producer, ex-patriot Trevor Lucas, a four-year member of British folk-rock pioneers Fairport Convention.

Spirit of Place consisting of ten road tested songs written with one exception by Shane Howard and released in November of 1982, became only the second Australian debut album after Men At Work’s Business As Usual to reach number one in its first week of release. The album’s success was kick-started by the immediate acceptance of its first single ‘Solid Rock’.

The excitement generated on stage whenever Goanna performed their best-known song was expertly captured by Lucas in the studio. As guest musician Billy Inda’s didgeridoo intro merges with the bass, drums and three electric guitars, Howard’s impassioned vocals join forces in harmony with his sister Marcia and Bygrave, the song’s dynamic arrangement reaching its highest point when Ross delivers a chilling rim-shot after ‘White Man-White Law-White Gun’.

Of course, one outstanding single doesn’t necessarily guarantee a great album. Spirit Of Place, however, is full of memorable songs that constantly offer fresh ideas and contrasting arrangements.

‘Razor’s Edge’ the second single features guest appearances from guitarist Ross Hannaford and his Daddy Cool band mate

Ross Wilson who provided harmony vocals. ‘Cheatin’ Man’ with its pulsating rhythm, twin lead guitars and vocal harmonies is another example of a rock band with something to say musically and thematically. ‘Children Of The Southern Land’ finds Shane Howard drawing from the same well of inspiration that moved him to write the enduring lyrics for ‘Solid Rock’, ‘people of the western world, they’ll take your land then take your soul and leave you with despair’. On ‘Factory Man’ his song of frustration at having to be ‘part of someone’s plan, just chained to the machine,’ he’s joined on the chorus by The Nestles Canteen Gentlemen’s Choir, a pseudonym for cousins, uncles, aunts, and family friends that included former AFL football legends Simon and Justin Madden who at the time was Minister for Planning and Development in Victoria.

The depth of talent within Goanna was emphasised on ‘Stand Yr’ Ground’ and ‘On The Platform’ two songs enhanced by the lead vocals of Rose Bygrave. The former with Joe Camilleri guesting on saxophone and harmony vocals and the latter written by Rose and featuring the album’s most adventurous arrangement, Rose on piano, a string section and Davidge’s slide guitar solo embellish a brilliant vocal performance while announcing the arrival of an exceptional singer. Both Rose and Marcia Howard would go on to record outstanding albums of their own.

To celebrate its 20th birthday in 2002, Spirit Of Place invited a few old friends to its re-release. Bonus tracks included the top 10 single ‘Let The Franklin Flow’ released in 1983 in support of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society’s campaign against proposed damming of Tasmania’s Franklin River. Originally recorded live in-concert, Goanna called themselves Gordon Franklin And The Wilderness Ensemble (the ensemble referring to the track’s dozen or so back-up singers.) Other rarities included previously un-released tracks: ‘Undertow’ with Ross Hannaford and Company Caine’s Russell Smith on guitars and ‘Underfoot, Underground’ written by Kerryn Tolhurst and recorded live in 1982. To complete the cycle is an eight minute in-concert performance of ‘Solid Rock’ highlighted by a rousing didgeridoo section featuring Bart Willoughby, Selwyn Burns and Tony Lovett from the band Coloured Stone.

Forty years after its initial release, Spirit Of Place remains at the forefront of Australian albums that not only entertained us but also gave us a sense of our history and hopefully a longing to contribute to its positive future.

BY KEITH GLASS DONNIE FRITTS

Prone To Lean Atlantic SD 18117

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.

When Kris Kristofferson hit the big time in the early 70’s seems like he went on a campaign to mingle with, record and generally pay homage to some of his grass root heroes. He had the legendary ‘Alabama leaning man’ aka ‘Funky’ Donnie Fritts already in his road band (I saw them in ’73 and Fritts seemed to be playing from almost under the keyboard) so a logical step was to go into the studio and put down a bunch of Donnie’s songs.

Where else but Muscle Shoals? Fritts was a local and naturally the roll call of helpers impressive. Eddie Hinton played and contributed a few co-writes (Three Hundred Pounds Of Hongry and I’ve Got To Feel It), Tony Joe White co-wrote a song (Sumpin’ Funky Goin On), some lead guitar and duet vocal, Billy Swann (also part of the KK roadshow)

was in the mix, Kristofferson wrote the title song tribute and rounded up his beau Rita Coolidge plus John Prine, Dan Penn and more for some backing vocals the latter also with two co-writes with Donnie Winner Take All and Rainbow Road.

Of course, the Muscle Shoals crew were there in force. Apart from Eddie Hinton on guitar was oft-overlooked Pete Carr – (his lead work on Millie Jackson and Bob Seeger records alone enough for a Hall Of Fame entry) plus rhythm king Jimmy Johnson, the top team of David Hood and Roger Hawkins on bass/ drums plus the uniformly talented Barry Beckett (keys), Spooner Oldham (also with a song credit) plus a few ‘stragglers’ such as the ‘Bama Jerry McGee (not to be confused with The Ventures member) on various guitars (12 string/acoustic/slide etc) with wandering gypsy & perennial Willie Nelson sideman Mickey Raphael harmonica.

With all that talent the sound could have congealed into a typical free for all party mess.

Producers Kristofferson and Jerry Wexler were there to make it not so. The album is surprisingly spare - especially considering Donnie was no ‘great’ singer – then again neither is Kristofferson however both could be considered ‘stylists’. Two of a kind makes for (here at least) near perfect synthesis of intent and execution whilst having so many great players bending to the state of the play makes this a very special album. Fritts made a few more but your first is always ‘special’

and here a very talented team bending to the downhome roots intent make for repeated fine listening.

Of course, most of the world wasn’t paying attention but undeterred Donnie carried on, passing away around about the time of release of his 5th solo album June (A Tribute To Arthur Alexander) another Muscle Shoals stalwart who affected most everyone who heard his very direct plaintive countrified soul songs. They were also two of a kind – mainly behind the scenes legends with a raw sincerity that cuts through the crap.

Seeing first hand how Donnie was respected in the Shoals was enlightening for me – (he turned up at a little songwriters event I attended) and many of the reasons why are here to hear on this album. While it isn’t exactly bare bones (whilst also not a cast of thousands) it is as downhome as it gets. As Kristofferson says on the brief liner notes ‘a smoking piece of Southern cooking, honest, funky and undeniably Donnie Fritts. Living proof there’s still a few around for whom it ain’t.’

The cover shot of Donnie on the ‘set’ of the Sam Peckinpah directed movie Pat Garret And Billy The Kid is great but Western isn’t Southern. This album is as Southern as grits n’ gravy and the inhabitants can be rather special. Donnie went on to work on two more Peckinpah movies so he must have been leaning just right.

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By Christopher Hollow DAVE GRANEY & CLARE MOORE

EVERYTHING WAS FUNNY Cockaigne

a life to burn’). And the things that don’t. Eg. Wilco are in the crosshairs in ‘Wilco Got No Wilco’ (‘Festival favourites, out of shape guys in denim’), while he also concedes he’s not a leader, not someone to follow in ‘I’m No Captain’. But this song fits into one of the constant themes throughout Graney’s career – whatever you think I am, I’m not.

I’m gone.

this is ‘All Things’ where van Vliet promises to ‘say all the things, do all the things, for as long as I can.’

CAT POWER

COVERS Matador

VARIOUS ARTISTS

OCEAN CHILD: SONGS OF YOKO ONO Canvasback

LEWSBERG

IN YOUR HANDS 12XU Lockdowns have stopped people from being out and about but, if anything, these limitations have made Dave Graney even more accessible – there’s a spicy Twitter account to follow (he’s no fan of the Morrison government #ChuckThisMobOut), there’s also been twice weekly streamed live shows on Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings (early for us, prime time for the UK). There’s also this record, Everything Was Funny. The title track is an essay, a treatise, a rom com put to music. It goes to the heart of being Australian and our need for humour. ‘If there was something funny going on,’ sings Graney.

‘That’s what I tuned into.’ But is it funny? ‘Everything was funny … except the stuff people laughed at’, ‘you’re funny’, ‘don’t get funny’. Other highlights include the gentle ‘Albatross’ thrum of ‘I Knew the Wild Angels’ and the rich groove, ‘Every Day I’ve Got the Blues, Period’, with Clare Moore’s vibraphone higher in the mix than Dave’s voice and it’s a brilliant 7-plus minutes.

‘Every day it’s a test of what you believe,’ he says, reflecting his Twitter voice. ‘What you are who you’ve been.’ Then a line that ties into the Funny framework: ‘Every day it’s a joke, I have to get it.’ Coming out of nowhere is a pair of instrumentals, ‘Diaghelev and Nijinsky’ and ‘Beckett and Tubbs’, which have no relation to the rest of the record but are a delight. It solidifies the idea that Funny is wilfully all over the map with the things that light Dave’s fire - F. Troop, Brian Jones, his early years spent smoking (‘I had 72

Lewsberg are a Dutch band singing in English and it’s an important element to consider.

There’s something about artists singing/talking in English as a second language. My theory is they have a purer grasp of the language. They’re not taught our short-cuts, cliches or tropes.

In Your Hands, the band’s third album, is full of Lou Reed-y talk-singing with a distinctly Dutch lilt. And it works. In ‘The Corner’, singer Arie van Vliet intones a short story, no rhymes, with random lines like this: ‘First the Monday, then the fantastic.

First the game, then the score.’

And ‘One can perform a job with varying degrees of dedication and accomplishment, he says.

He’s carrying a child,’ which is the kinda meter I’ve never heard in a song before. On another song, ‘Getting Closer’, there’s a great stanza: ‘Proposal 1: give me what I want. Proposal 2: you should have it too. Be prepared, take your share’. And I think you’ll agree there’s something in that for all of us. Previous Lewsberg albums have lent toward punky and disruptive, but In Your Hands is much quieter, more circumspect. A good example of

Is there a more divisive figure in rock n roll than Yoko Ono? I’ve gone on my own journey of acceptance and understanding.

Or unlearning, as it might have been. The first record I ever bought as an 8-year-old was Yoko Ono/John Lennon’s Double Fantasy, in the wake of Lennon’s murder. I remember playing it for my neighbour, who recoiled at the Ono tracks and made me skip them. It coloured my view for a long time – as did reading copious Beatles hot takes that sought to minimise her life and art. But I got there, in the end. Where?

Understanding that Yoko is ok, an incredible artist in her own right.

What’s interesting about Ocean Child, curated by Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie, is the concentration on Yoko as a songwriter rather than as a freaky provocateur. Yo La Tengo teams up with David Byrne on ‘Who Has Seen the Wind?’ and it sounds like a doo wop number in the vein of Nolan Strong and the Diablos. The Flaming Lips take on ‘Mrs. Lennon’, the song that detailed Ono’s frustration with being seen solely as the wife of an ex-Beatle and the loss of her identity (which Alex Chilton used as the inspiration for Big Star’s ‘Holocaust’). Japanese Breakfast do a brilliant version of ‘Nobody Sees Me Like You Do,’ originally from Yoko’s 1981 album Season of Glass. This ocean child calls me.

Any long-time reader of this column (est. 2014) would know that I love a covers album. Not only does it reveal an artist’s taste but also gives a very good idea about how they see and hear the world. Chan Marshall aka Cat Power has already done two, 2000s The Covers Record and Jukebox in 2008. The former was earlyish in her career and gave a real insight into her sagacity. It also let us know her songwriting wasn’t too far apart from her heroes – as in, the way Marshall was able to reshape Moby Grape’s ‘Naked, If I Want To’ or the Velvets ‘I Found a Reason’ or a chestnut like ‘Sea of Love’ in her own image was impressive.

This time around, I was first drawn to the songs I know like Iggy Pop’s ‘The Endless Sea’ or Keith Richards’ ‘You Got the Silver’ (off the Japanese version of the album) or the number that made Kitty Wells famous, ‘It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels’. But the highlights are the ones I should know better like Lana Del Rey’s ‘White Mustang’, Hollywood actor Ryan Gosling’s ‘Pa Pa Power’ or Marshall’s take on Frank Ocean’s 2012 ballad, ‘Bad Religion’, which she embodies like it’s her own and it feels like you’re riding in the taxi with her. She also gives it a full Cat Power deconstruction -- rejigged melody and chords, a fresh outlook and new lyrics including: ‘We’re all just stuck in the mud/Praying to the invisible above.’ Praise be.

BILLY THORPE & THE AZTECS LOCK UP YOUR MOTHERS LIVE VOL. 2

By Trevor J. Leeden CLAUDIA THOMPSON VARIOUS ARTISTS

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Modern Harmonic/Planet

(Studio One/Planet)

GOODBYE TO LOVE

HURDY GURDY SONGS

She has a voice that reeks of sultry sophistication, and lovers of jazz vocalists will rejoice at the official release of the chanteuse’s ultra-rare 1959 album. With the legendary guitarist Barney Kessel providing suitably empathetic support, Thompson’s delivers delicately nuanced renditions of 14 late-night jazz standards. The release also marks the first time Thompson appears on the cover, correcting a racially fuelled wrong that saw her replaced by a white woman on the original artwork. Shrouded in mystery, Claudia Thompson should have been a superstar.

Sub-titled “Words & Music By Donovan 1965–1971”, this is a fascinating deep dive into the kaleidoscopic world of the Scottish minstrel’s peak period, heard through a diverse range of performers from all corners of the musical world. Whether it’s the husky jazz tones of Eartha Kitt, the folk inflections of Julie Felix and Judy Collins, or hard rock interpretations from the likes of Deep Purple and Vanilla Fudge, all are imbued with the spirituality and poetic imagery that is the hallmark of prime-time Donovan. Great stuff, never less than interesting, although nothing surpasses the originals.

Ace

MORE SOUL

Aztec

When the Aztecs played, it was akin to aural assault and battery. Loud, brash, louder, viscerally pugnacious rock’n’roll that pulverised the senses of those in attendance into delirious submission. Surprisingly, these 12 previously unreleased recordings from the fabled 1994 reunion tour of the ‘Sunbury Aztecs’ outshine the original release, and by some margin. Drawing from shows in Gladstone, Melbourne, Sawtell (!!) and Dee Why, Vol. 2 is an unqualified celebration of a band that gave it everything, regardless of where they performed – and didn’t we love it!

BUCK OWENS & SUSAN RAYE TOGETHER AGAIN

Omnivore Recordings

Based on this exceptional collection drawn from their early seventies recordings, the Bakersfield legend and his protégé could more than hold their own with other renowned country duos like Tammy and George, and Merle and Dolly.

Across 22 songs (12 duets and 10 Raye solo spots) mostly from the pen of Owens, they exemplify the sound of Classic Country. Their voices blending seamlessly on words that go straight to the heart of country, and melodies that compel one to feel the mood. They don’t make them like this anymore, more’s the pity.

SAM MOSS

VARIOUS ARTISTS

From the bottomless vaults of Studio One, the Motown of Jamaica, comes another 16 reggae rare grooves; Studio One is the reggae label that keeps on giving.

Included amongst the choice cuts are Monty Alexander’s outrageous organ drenched version of George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”, deep cuts from Jackie Mittoo, Cedric Brooks and Sound Dimension, and several tracks featuring the ground-breaking guitarist Ernest Ranglin. Dennis Alcapone & The Muscle Souls’ “Sunshine Version” alone is worth the price of entry, whilst Cecile Campbell and Marlene Webber bring an all-too-rare feminine touch to proceedings.

BLUES APPROVED

THE CRAIG CHARLES TRUNK OF FUNK VOL. 2

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Global stardom may have eluded him, but in North Carolina Sam Moss is justly revered. Blues afficionados familiar with the electric blues styling of Mike Bloomfield will be drawn to Moss’s fine playing. There’s a healthy Muscle Shoals/Stax footprint on several of these recordings that date back to 1977 and a brace of left-of-centre covers from 1993 round out the album. Produced by ace guitarist Chris Stamey from the original four track tapes, Blues Approved is deserving of official “lost album” status.

Renowned UK DJ Craig Charles strikes whilst the iron is hot with his second volume of fantastic funk. All 9 tracks go straight to the hips, whether it’s Luther Ingram belting out his 60’s soul stomper “If It’s All the Same To You Babe”, the irrepressible Mardi Gras Indian second line funk of Cha Wa, the propulsive 70’s psychedelia of The Crow’s “Your Autumn Of Tomorrow”, or the punchy horns of the mighty Antipodean soul/funk combo The Bamboos. Drawing on the famous and the obscure, Vol. 2 is yet another global funkfest of the highest order. Bring on volume three.

Time to dust off the lycra leggings, satin shirts, high-heeled sneakers and mirror ball. Australia more than held its own in the glam stakes, but this rip-snorting 4-disc cornucopia containing “80 tracks from Rockers, Shockers and Teenyboppers from the 70’s” is predominantly British, and each category is well represented. The vintage sounds of T-Rex, Slade, Glitter Band, Alvin Stardust, Mungo Jerry, Mud and our own JPY effortlessly rub shoulders with those destined for musical oblivion (e.g. Streakers, Crunch, and Ritz).

Sing and dance at your own risk!

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Schoolkids Records/Planet

Soul Bank Music

CAN THE GLAM!

Cherry Red

By Chris Familton

1972

An Explosion of Country Rock and Folk Rock, 50 Years Ago.

A

s the new decade of the 1970s slowly revealed itself, the optimism and cultural groundswell of change that occurred in the 1960s began to fade in the rearview mirror. Country and folk music were still core elements of popular music but the hybridisation and consolidation of genres such as folk-rock and country-rock began to take place.

In the early ‘70s, musicians who had established themselves in the late ‘60s, often as part of other groups, began to explore and establish their own solo careers. For some it was a chance to experiment stylistically, outside of their musical day job, for others it was the result of band breakups or internal friction requiring some time apart. As part of their deal with Warner Bros. members of the Grateful Dead were allowed to release solo albums on the label, starting with Jerry Garcia’s wellreceived first album Garcia in January of 1972. It was followed later in the year by Bob Weir’s Ace and Mickey Hart’s Rolling Thunder before the band rounded out the year with the iconic live album Europe ’72.

Following CSNY’s golden run in 1969-71, the members all began releasing solo albums with 1972 being another strong 12 months for them all. Neil Young of course released his landmark chart-topping Harvest, while Stephen Stills expanded his country/rock aesthetic with Chris Hillman (The Byrds) and others on Manassas. Across town in the Hollywood hills, Crosby & Nash released their duo record Graham Nash David Crosby, with in-demand session musicians and players from the Grateful Dead.

Some of the biggest names in rock and folk music released new albums.

Linda Ronstadt, Paul Simon, Eagles and Jackson Browne released important eponymous records, in the process setting themselves up to become iconic artists across the next decade and beyond.

Out of the nexus of the country and psychedelic scenes, personified by the likes of the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, the Grateful Dead and Buffalo Springfield, came the heyday of country rock in the early 70s. The New Riders Of The Purple Sage released Powerglide and Gypsy Cowboy in 1972, Pure Prairie League released Bustin’ Out, Poco released A Good Feeling To Know and America released the more mainstream Homecoming, which peaked at #9 on the US charts.

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The outlaws and established country artists weren’t falling by the wayside in the wake of these new and more musically adventurous acts. Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson released their honky tonk album Pancho and Lefty, a #1 US country album, Johnny Cash released Sunday Morning Coming Down, the author of the song of the same name, Kris Kristofferson, released his excellent Jesus Was A Capricorn and Waylon Jennings released Ladies Love Outlaws – the album credited with supplying the name for these non-conformist country artists.

Other musical outliers, working in smaller niches of folk music at the time, were making waves on both sides of the Atlantic. 1972 gave us such revered albums as Nick Drake’s Pink Moon, Sandy Denny released her definitive solo statement Sandy, Leo Kottke released his fifth album Greenhouse and John Fahey added a full band and explored jazz-folk for his first major label album, Of Rivers and Religion - of which music critic Robert Christgau said “[it’s] not for everyone, but I think this is his best”.

Some heavy hitters of blues rock also released albums in 1972 that would come to be lauded as some of their finest achievements. The Allman Brothers addressed the death of Duane Allman on their double LP Eat A Peach and over in Texas, ZZ Top dropped anchor in the riffs and rhythms of Rio Grande Mud. Not to be outdone by the male-centric recording industry, the aforementioned Linda Ronstadt released her self-titled third album, which wasn’t a success on its release but is now considered a frontrunner in the country rock genre. Relative newcomer Bonnie Raitt impressed critics with her blend of blues and folk on Give It Up in 1972 and Joni Mitchell in part dissected her relationship with James Taylor on For The Roses.

While the history books more often than not focus on the mythical status and circumstances surrounding The Rolling Stones’ exceptional May album Exile On Main St., the depth and quality of country/folk rock in 1972 is evident with the release of two essential and equally influential Townes Van Zandt albums in the same year - The Late Great Townes Van Zandt and High Low and In Between.

By Denise Hylands

I

t’s been a great start to the year with some brilliant releases, the return of international artists touring, and festivals. Yep, I know there are so many of us still a little reluctant to get out there but there is some normality peeping through on the horizon.

Let’s hope you can get out to some of the festivals that are finally happening including Bluesfest, Womadelaide, Port Fairy Folk Festival and, Boogie’s back too. All of which will be bringing international artists to our shores for the first time in what seems like forever. And with international acts coming in there are solo shows too. Look out for the brilliant Courtney Marie Andrews & Erin Rae shows travelling around most major cities as well as the captivating Cedric Burnside.

It just wouldn’t be right to not mention Willie Nelson in this column. And of course, he has a new release coming out. On his 89th birthday, on April 29, Nelson will be releasing A Beautiful Time. It’ll include five new Willie Nelson/Buddy Cannon tunes, as well as contributions from some of his good friends like Shawn Camp, Chris Stapleton and Rodney Crowell. And covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Tower of Song and The Beatles ‘With A Little Help From My Friends’. He’s unstoppable.

The start of the year has seen some great releases. The Cactus Blossoms latest release is their 3rd album, One Day featuring eleven songs written and produced by brothers Jack Torrey and Page Burkum. Bringing their signature blood harmonies. This one does not disappoint.

Del McCoury Band have released Almost Proud, an album born from Del spending much of his down time of late discovering new music and finishing up songs that were long forgotten. After 6 decades of playing bluegrass, it really doesn’t get much better than this.

The Delines new release The Sea Drift is already a favourite of mine for the year. Willy Vlautin’s words and Amy Boone’s voice are a perfect match. Boone asked Vlautin if he could write her a ‘Rainy Night In Georgia’ a la Tony Joe White and this is the result. Southern country soul goodness.

Joshua Hedley has recently signed up with New West Records and is getting set to release his new album Neon Blue, 4 years on from his debut album “Mr Jukebox”. Some may be surprised in his new country music direction.

Hedley says, “I didn’t want to hang my typical brand of sad-sack country on everybody, I want you to crank this record on the boat this summer and have a party.” This is upbeat twang reminiscent of the country radio hits of

Happy birthday Willie!

the early to mid ‘90s. If the single’s anything to go by, I think he’s on to something. Out April 22.

Old Crow Medicine Show will be releasing their 7th studio album late April, Paint This Town, with a blast of good times. As they say, “we feel a great obligation to talk about the more difficult things happening out there in the world, but we also feel obligated to make sure everyone’s having a great time while we do it. Out April 22.

One of our new discoveries of last year was the incredibly talented Melissa Carper. Along with friends and artists in their own right, Brian Martin, Joe Sundell and Rebecca Patel they are Sad Daddy. Formed in 2010, they came together over a couple of bottles of chocolate milk and a few jugs of whiskey to record their new album Way Up In The Hills.

Full of down home, good time, out on the back porch, old time country fun brought to you with incredible picking and top shelf harmonies.

Winners of the Best Country Act at the Music Victoria Awards last year The Weeping Willows have released their brand new album You Reap What You Sow, highlighting

the incredible of this talented duo Andrew Wrigglesworth and Laura Coats. You can get it now.

Since Eli Paperboy Reed moved to Clarksdale, Mississippi in 2002 he has immersed himself in the juke joint culture of the Deep South and has been giving us that soul too. On his new album Down Every Road he pays homage to country legend Merle Haggard by putting his soulful spin on country classics.

Out April 29th,2022.

Other new releases to look out for and wait for: Ian Noe - Rivers Fools & Mountain Saints The Redlands - Sticks To Stones Greensky Bluegrass - Stress Dreams Andy Golledge - Strength Of A Queen Carson McHone - Still Life Steve Poltz - Stardust & Satellites Sophie & The Broken Things Delusions of Grandeur Sarah Shook & The Disarmers Nightroamer Corb Lund - Songs My Friends Wrote It’s always reassuring to know that the good stuff keeps coming. Enjoy the Twang. Until next time.

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By Brian Wise

BRENT COBB Photo by Andrew Hutto

B

orn and raised in Georgia, the cousin of Dave Cobb, Nashville’s hottest producer, Brent Cobb lived in Los Angeles for a while but returned to the South. Brent’s songs have been recorded by artists such as Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney and Miranda Lambert but he has also pursued his own career and just released his fifth studio album, And Now, Let’s Turn To Page…..,produced by his cousin. But it’s an album with a difference: country soul and gospel influenced.

“It’s only taken me 16 years to get to the bottom and I’m just glad to be here,” says Cobb when I ask about his early years. “I’ve been grateful. It’s been a pretty neat life even before I made it. I grew up in a musical family. My dad played on the weekends as a secondary source of income. So, I just grew up around music. My uncles on my mom’s side of the family also all played. And I started writing pretty real songs when I was twelve, and it just always came natural. I didn’t really know how to pursue it professionally.”

“Dave and I met but we didn’t grow up together,” explains Cobb of his producer cousin. “We didn’t know each other until I was 17 or 18.

He wasn’t quite a star at that time. But we met at a funeral. Word got around that he was this big time LA record producer and so I asked him after the funeral what had he produced and he named a few things, and he said the Shooter Jennings’ Put the ‘O’ Back In Country album.

That was all we were listening to at that time. So, my grandma, I think, gave him a copy of this little six-song acoustic demo of songs I had been writing. I mean, he was real reluctant to listen to it. Then, he called a couple days later and that’s really where it all started. He and Shooter invited me to come out to LA and start making an album. That album led to a lot of things.”

“My albums, they’ve been rich in, I don’t know, critical acclaim,” laughs Cobb, “but they don’t pay bills. But some of the songs that I’ve written have been on pretty big albums.”

The great thing about Dave Cobb’s production – to my ears at least - is that, generally, he doesn’t stamp his own imprint on the music he is working with.

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The Georgia-born and raised musician talks about releasing a ‘gospel’ album.

“Dave is an artist,” says Brent. “He can play every instrument in the studio, and great instincts when it comes to just writing a song, and I don’t know, crafting a chord structure or something. And he does that with everybody. He’s not just somebody that’s got a lot of money and he can buy a lot of gear. He actually knows how to use all the gear and come up with the sounds. He produces similarly to the way I write - like he’ll already know an album in its entirety before he starts working on it. He’ll know how he hopes it’ll end with this artist. I’m that way when I write songs, they come out whole a little bit.”

Cobb says that his new album has been a long-time dream but was prompted by a near-death experience that gave him a new outlook on life.

“Me and my son we were T-boned at a little rural intersection in Georgia, in July of 2020,” explains Cobb, “at an intersection I’ve been going through my whole life. I broke my collarbone and I thought I had broken my back but I had only torn a ligament in my back. My son was okay. He was one. It definitely influenced the timing of releasing this album. I already knew I wanted to make a gospel album someday, a Southern gospel album. I didn’t know that I would do it so soon, until that accident.”

The church and its music played an important part in Cobb’s early life (his father led a gospel group) and the accident was the culmination of things that had been building up over the years.

“I grew up in a Southern Baptist Church in the American South,” agrees Cobb, and on this album are all of those Southern Gospel Greatest Hits.

All of that music has influenced me wholly as a songwriter. So, it’s sort of one and the same. You won’t have country music without gospel music. I’m continually trying to reach for what the core of what I do is.

And so far, that’s led to each album that I’ve made, and this album’s no different.”

And Now, Let’s Turn To Page……is out on Ol’ Buddy Records through Thirty Tigers. Check out the review in our Album reviews section.

By Chris Lambie tone was a clear winner. Once we were able to have guests over, the album really started to take shape. Oskar Herbig (guitar) and Andrew Braidner (drums) joined us to track three songs. Grace Cummings and Harmony Byrne contribute some vocals. I feel privileged to have such a talented community around me.”

From life in FNQ (Alligator Creek) to island time in Hobart, Kelly is now part of Melbourne’s indie community. “All those places are full of talented and interesting characters if you know where to look.

People make the place, otherwise it’s just another city with a different aesthetic and weather system. Exposure to a wide variety of people is good for your perspective. It’s helped me be a more malleable artist and open person. Playing in bands…can be the most rewarding, soul cup filling experience. The sort of shit that gets you out of bed in the morning. Other times, it’s like a weird 5-way relationship and you’re all trying to build the same IKEA bed. Each one is unique. I’m constantly learning. If a band doesn’t work out or reaches its natural conclusion, I’ll carry what I’ve learnt over to the next one. Playing different roles helps you see how the machine really works too. I played bass for The Broken Needles, sung and played guitar in Willow Darling and played keys for Skyscraper Stan (at a handful of shows). For someone who’s never had formal music lessons, I get a lot from playing with other people; especially other songwriters. You get to peer behind the curtain of how they approach writing.”

CAHILL KELLY

CLASSICAL AND COOL JAZZ Cheersquad Records & Tapes

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t the start of the decade, Cahill Kelly tweaked his alt-folk repertoire, planning to release an EP with psych-punk group Pam Salmon (with Jack Davies) before ‘something’ shut the planet down. On Kelly’s own brilliant new album Classical And Cool Jazz, he addresses the elephant in the galaxy on song ‘Bluesday Chews’.

“At first, I [actually] enjoyed the freedom that the lockdowns provided,” he admits. “Time to stop, recharge, reflect. Now I think we can universally agree that the galaxy elephant fucken sucks and has long overstayed its welcome. It’s no way to live.” He made good use of the time out, however, to record with housemates Stive Collins (sound engineer/drummer) and longtime collaborator and bass player Lain Pocock. “We had a simple home studio setup with some beautiful gear that Stive’s father built. We had to be pretty resourceful because we couldn’t leave the house. No buying new guitar strings, headphone connectors, borrowing mics... The plastic guitar featured a bit! I’d bought this weird 90’s Lucite Fender Jaguar rip-off that is completely see-through. I played a solo on it through a plastic amp - like a weird little fax machine-looking thing I found on the side of the road. That

Between emotionally charged songs on the new album, there’s a refreshing flourish of whimsy and humour. Some titles suggest a theme of having a view from above: ‘Rooftop Rambling’, ‘Mountainous Gaze’, ‘World Upon A Shelf’. He’s up a tree, tripping on ‘Turner Reserve’.

“I actually hadn’t noticed,” he says. “I had a pretty intense terror/ interest in Space as a kid and I’m not great with heights. Maybe there’s some sort of self-therapy going on there?” Kelly describes his musical evolution. “I have a pretty eclectic and inconsistent taste in music.

Some of my earliest influences [were] what my parents played me. Dire Straits, 80’s era Stones, Neil Young, The Cure... I’m listening to a lot of Roy Smeck, My Morning Jacket, Blake Scott and Jordan Ireland’s new album.” ‘Beyond The Weathered Pale’ sees Kelly nail a macro-micro balance; a Radiohead / Wall of Sound arrangement but also intimate and stripped back. “We focused on the sort of anti-chorus idea and tried to make it dynamic as possible. Shout out to Harmony Byrne for coming in to sing on the track. Her vocals really elevated the whole thing.” Kelly’s heritage shows on Celtic flavoured ‘Salt Of The Sea’.

“I grew up in an Irish household so I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Celtic, folk and bluegrass orientated sounds. The chords and mood were inspired by Stephen Stills. The lyrics and melody [from] a trip to Taranaki (New Zealand).” The album title is a bold and quirky choice.

Cool And Classical Jazz sits in neither genre. “Most people have found it pretty amusing without knowing the story behind it. It was a joke about our neighbour that hung around the sessions. It just sorta stuck over time. It’s good to be able to take the piss every now and then.”

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By Ian McFarlane

“Look up into the sky, is it a bird or a plane?”

WE’VE BEEN HOODOOD In their 41st year the Hoodoo Gurus release their 10th studio album Chariot Of The Gods and they’re playing at the top of their game.

HOODOO GURUS

CHARIOT OF THE GODS Big Time Records

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oodoo Gurus’ new album Chariot Of The Gods is a 14-track CD and, in the old rock parlance, a 17-track double LP. The Gurus are traditionalist if anything. And this record sees the old stagers playing at the top of their game.

It’s essentially made up of four previously released singles, ‘Answered Prayers’ (2019), ‘Get Out Of Dodge’, ‘World Of Pain’ and the current one ‘Carry On’, filled out by additional quality material. You’re not gonna get short changed, and let’s not forget that the Gurus always were an ace singles band – after all, this is the band that gave us ‘I Want You Back’, ‘What’s My Scene’, ‘Good Times’, ‘Bittersweet’, ‘1000 Miles Away’, ‘The Right Time’ and dozens more.

It’s been 11 years since their excellent last album, Purity Of Essence, so I asked singer / songwriter / guitarist Dave Faulkner what’s been the inspiration to keep playing at this stage of their career? “I reckon the six years we broke up in the middle gave us a new lease on life to keep going,” he says. “We realised what Hoodoo Gurus were all about, we’d had a chance to think about our own lives and we’d put our priorities straight. Then when Mark Kingsmill officially retired in 2018 and we’d

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got Nik Rieth back in on drums we had to figure out how we wanted to proceed. We knew he could play well live, he’s a very physical drummer, but would it work with him in the studio? It was a suck it and see situation.

“Then he played on ‘Answered Prayers’ and that worked for us. We put that out as a single. As a songwriter that song recharged my batteries. I was a bit shocked when I wrote it actually. The lyrics are a bit strong, very dark. People can mistake a catchy melody and infectious grooves as always being about bright things. The songs are real, not throwaways, they never were. They’re reflections of how I’d been feeling. Plus, Nik added a lot of swing to the songs which we’d never had before. That was a good change for us.”

As per usual Faulkner has written the bulk of the material, with guitarist Brad Shepherd weighing in with ‘Equinox’ and ‘I Come From Your Future’ (Faulkner says, “I think they’re probably the best songs he’s ever written, they’re crackers!”). It’s everything you want in a Gurus’ record; they rock hard all the way, from searing garage rockers and pummelling glam stompers, on to reflective moody pieces and possible projections of the future. All the way through the tasty yet dynamic guitar tones, warm and forceful bass lines, captivating melodies and smart lyrics are there to grab you by the ears and hold your head in a vice like grip.

And, as Faulkner has mentioned there are some thought provoking and confrontational lyrics to get your heart around too.

After the one-minute prelude of ‘Early Opener’, it’s smack bang into the riff-tastic ‘World Of Pain’. “Your fist smashes my face, chairs fly all over the place / What a sorry sight / Fucked up, losing my shit / Your fist fattens my lip / Another Friday night I got a bit tight / I’m in a world of pain”. Whoa, that’s not a nice scenario.

“Musically it’s just our teenage years revisited,” Faulkner reveals. “It’s everything close to our hearts, from Suzi Quatro and T.Rex, garage rock and punk rock and you put all those things together and it tells you a lot about our development. That was our crucible. And we added a bit of Rose Tattoo in there with the slide guitar, and AC/DC, so it’s never going to be something completely pure. We take on all flavours, but it’s never just slavishly one genre.”

Next, it’s onto the brighter sounding ‘Get Out Of Dodge’ but even that has a sting in the tail. “That was one of the most power pop things I’ve ever written. I thought it was very Beach Boys. We got Vicki Petersen from the Bangles to do backing vocals and she just happens to be married to John Cowsill who coincidentally played drums and sings in the Beach Boys, so that was a real buzz. We’ve had a long acquaintance with Vicki, she’s been on things like ‘Good Times’ and ‘1000 Miles Away’.

I just heard her voice in my head. I recorded the parts I wanted them to sing so they did those and then they gave us a little bit extra. In the final chorus they do a gorgeous little step up in the harmonies. It really hit me over the rainbow, as they say.”

Then what can you say about darker songs such as ‘My Imaginary Friend’, ‘Hung Out To Dry’ and ‘Got To Get You Out Of My Life’? “Well, aside from COVID, I’ve been through a few emotional upheavals over the last couple of years, so all those songs betray the hard times. ‘Answered Prayers’ and ‘My Imaginary Friend’ are about being disappointed in someone and being let down, which was the end of a long friendship. As a songwriter the things that affect you the most just come out in the lyrics.”

The epic title track sees the band straying into Sci-Fi territory but with a basis in fact. Musically, it’s the most unusual track, starting with washes of pulsating synths, pounding toms (“Nik plays a lot of tom toms on

this album,” Faulkner quips), booming bass and a slippery guitar figure. Then the lyrics lay it on the line: “Look up into the sky, is it a bird or a plane? / Nothing you or I can quite explain / Gods from up on high are they divine or profane? / Everywhere we cry was all in vain”.

Faulkner expands: “Yes, the song talks about an invasion of Earth but it’s a parable, a metaphor for the colonialisation of Australia.

We’re playing with the notion that the Chariot of the Gods is the Hoodoo Gurus, that’s the

chariot that these Gods are arriving in, that’s our little play on words, for our own selfcongratulations. But the song itself is trying to provide a way for people to see how it would have been to stand on the shores of Sydney Cove over 200 years ago, to be confronted by people with superior technology who had grand designs on supplanting your culture.

Without preaching I want people to realise how fucked that is. The invader comes and hunts down the race, how would you feel about that?”

There are also two covers, on the vinyl album only, Lennon/McCartney’s ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘Obviously 5 Believers’.

“We thought of ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ as a caveman stomp, the lyrics are very primal.

That basic thumping drumming and chanting vocals is very glam rock. With ‘Obviously 5 Believers’ we wanted one of his songs we could put our own stamp on. You can’t record a better version of ‘Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat’, so with ‘Obviously 5 Believers’ we could just do a souped up 60s R&B version.”

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By Michael Smith

CHARM OF FINCHES

WONDERFUL OBLIVION Antifragile Music

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isters Mabel and Ivy Windred-Wornes, who perform and record as Charm of Finches, have gone from busking, aged 11 and eight respectively, outside a local grocer in Northcote, to seeing the 14-yearold Mabel’s Year 8 music project become their 2014 debut EP, Home, to signing an international record deal with New York-based label AntiFragile Music for their third album, Wonderful Oblivion. By the time you read this, Charm of Finches will be packing their back in preparation for their first UK and European tour through April, May and June. Michael Smith investigates.

“Tom (Sarig), who runs the label, actually discovered us on Spotify,” Mabel explains. “Our song ‘Fish in the Sea’ (from their second album, 2019’s Your Company) just came up with the algorithm and he liked the song and started checking us out and then contacted us. Basically, they focus on streaming, at getting us on playlists and generating income through streaming. It’s an independent label so they signed us for an album rather than us as artists.” “They’re very artist friendly,” Ivy interjects with a laugh. “So, we signed with them for this album,” Mabel finishes. “It’s been really great to have people on board helping out while we focus on the creative stuff and other people focus on getting the music out there.”

The core of the Charm of Finches gentle, folk sound is the achingly beautiful harmonies of the sisters, which saw Your Company pick up the 2020 Independent Music Folk/Singer-Songwriter and Music Victoria’s Best Folk Act Awards. Their debut EP, produced by Michael Johnson, had won the Darebin Music Feast Songwriters’ Award back in 2015.

Early in 2020, the sisters were invited to present a showcase at the Folk Alliance International Conference in New Orleans, and it was there they met Halifax, Nova Scotia-based multi-instrumentalist and producer Daniel Ledwell.

At the Conference “there were mini showcases in tiny hotel rooms in the middle of the night!” Mabel remembers with a laugh. “And someone told us there’s this awesome producer called Dan and he lives in Canada and he produced one of the bands we love from Australia, Oh Pep!, their album Stadium Cake, which is one that we love. We had a

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convo with him, got on pretty well, listened to a lot of the stuff that he’s done – it’s all so beautiful and the production is just amazing – so we felt very lucky to be able to work with him.

“Originally, we wanted to go over in person to his beautiful studio but because of the pandemic – and we were supposed to be touring our last album but then we couldn’t – so we thought, why don’t we just record at home and send all the files over to Dan and do it long distance?” “We had many Zoom calls,” chuckles Ivy. Considering the fact that, as well as a couple of Oh Pep! albums, Ledwell has produced records for fellow Australians The Maes and Liv Cartledge as well as Canadians Rachel Beck and Madison Violet, it’s no surprise to hear just how subtle and understated he is as a producer.

“We actually coproduced it. It was really good to work with someone who could deliver, was serving the art and understands it really well.

That was really important.”

The sisters feel that, with Wonderful Oblivion, “we were in a place of new possibilities and adventure, both with sounds, as well as the stories we wanted to tell,” as they put on their press release. “The last album,” Ivy explains, “was a bit of a grief album because we had an experience of losing one of our friends when she was very young, and we use songwriting to process grief. We did it with a producer called Nick Huggins, who lives in Point Lonsdale, and it’s sort of a live-style album, less produced. So, this album we feel has a little more hope; it’s got a new sense of looking forward to the future and discovery and playfulness about it in comparison to the last one. It’s got a bit more of an uplifting feel, and while there are songs on there about death and about grief, there’s a little bit more hope in there. We also branched out a lot with instrumentation and production. We recorded it all in Mabel’s bedroom during lockdown in 2021. We made a little vocal booth out of blankets and mic stands and had a bit of fun.”

“On this album I play guitar and cello,” adds Mabel, “and Ivy plays violin and we both play a bit of piano as well, and so we did all the string arrangements and Dan added his horn player and a bit of percussion and bass and some piano as well. We started with ‘Pocket of Stones’, which is more of an indie-folk direction, more so than our other stuff, I think. We made it song by song rather than an album as a whole. With our other albums, we had the songs already written and we’d been performing them for years and gone into the studio and recorded them in one stint. With this one we were writing and recording at the same time. We went into this album not really having most of the songs, which was actually quite fun. It was a real leap of faith, this one. We’re so proud of it.”

By Chris Lambie

CHECKERBOARD LOUNGE

THE SUN SESSIONS Cheersquad Records & Tapes

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or almost 30 years, Checkerboard Lounge gigs have left punters stomping and hollering for more. Smouldering soul grooves build to a fiery improv frenzy of rocking rhythm-soaked blues. A seven-year residency at Richmond’s Great Britain Hotel cemented their status as mainstays of the Melbourne music scene. Big names and young guns have featured in the line-up. Founding member Carl Pannuzzo (singing frontman behind the drum kit) delights in the current quartet’s chemistry, with guitarist Shannon Bourne (Chris Wilson et al), Hammond master Tim Neal and boss of the bass Amos Sheehan. And the highlights keep coming.

As winners of the Melbourne Blues Appreciation Society’s 2019 Blues Challenge, Checkerboard Lounge took part in the International Blues Challenge, in Memphis Tennessee. They arrived just in the nick of time, pre-pandemic border closures. “I can’t believe our luck”, says Pannuzzo.

Unexpectedly, in the belly of the Blues, they wound up recording at the iconic Sun Studios. Pannuzzo explains, “After Tim and Shannon did a studio tour, Tim sat down and played Jerry Lee Lewis’s piano. He said, ‘Imagine recording here.’ The studio engineer said, ‘You know it’s not just a museum. It’s still a functioning studio. You sound like you know what you’re doing. We’ve got five hours left next Monday night.’ We didn’t pass up the chance!” Their reverence for the spirit of the venue shows in their resulting Sun Sessions recording.

“Its yellowing walls, all the original stuff in there. Shannon’s playing guitar in front of a photo of John Lee Hooker,” Pannuzzo recalls.

“It’s a pretty holy place in so many ways. We started jamming, trying out covers like ‘It Hurts Me Too’.” An eerie moment is captured on the recording with the mysterious sound of a door closing. “You’re supposed to seal a recording room…and there was no one there. You imagine those porous holes in the walls being filled with the sweat, grime and attitude of everyone who played there.” [Howlin’ Wolf, BB King, Elvis…] “I was playing Larry Mullins Jnr’s (U2) drum kit. He just left it there. You look at this shit mic that’s been there forever. A crappy old amp with its face coming half off, but it still sounds great. Even the

roads in those southern states are shitty and cracked. Those places wear scars like crackles on a record.”

The band recorded blues and soul originals, rare covers and favourites from their repertoire. The choice of opening track ‘Amazing Grace’ was inspired by a visit to Rev. Al Green’s church. “It’s no tourist attraction. Just a hokey little brick building in the suburbs with [Al] being a preacher,” Pannuzzo says. “It was glorious. He preached and he sang. The musicians were the best we saw over there. There were great musos from around the world at the Blues Challenge. But at a competition, you’re trying to do your best, to show off. At the church, the percussionist was checking his phone between songs! But when Al started to sing, they were ready. When he said something meaningful, they really rumbled. Like [applause]. Shannon made the ‘Amazing Grace’ arrangement his own. We respond so beautifully to each other, because we love each other and the music that comes out of everyone.

Shannon doing something important to him like this, it makes me want to sing. ‘I’d Rather Go Blind’ is a cover we love and people love us doing.

You get some jazzy elements even though it’s a very major two chord soul tune. We treated it with a blues feel but the guys played some jazz harmonies within their solos. The music was able to stretch out. Tim can play even the simplest little blues riff and make it count. Or expansive jazz-informed movements from one chord to another, but still in the pocket of soul. I get to play with these guys FFS! I’m totally a pig in shit.

We made an honest account of what was happening at that time. In the flow, responding to one another.”

“Sun Sessions isn’t so much the psychedelia and tangenting that we do live. We can all respond and follow each other. Us whiteys cultivated [blues music] into 12-bars. Son House and Leadbelly, would do 13 and ½ bar blues. Not because they decided to, but that’s when they felt like changing the chord. That’s the spirit to take. Or rehearse the shit off and get so tight you have to build electricity on top of that. We don’t rehearse. Someone has an idea and we build on it. And over a few gigs it develops into its natural shape.”

Cracking single ‘Money Man’ captures the band’s energising appeal.

Pannuzzo is a 2-for-1 force of nature on drums and vocals. “You don’t really think about the clutch and gear shift [once you know it]. Every muso uses their whole body to play. How a sax player moves or a bass player. If you don’t have your whole body available to you, you cut off half your energy and spirit. Like Kylie Auldist, with her hand up in the air. That’s part of her body saying, ‘This is where the singing goes’.

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By Ian McFarlane

STORM ON THE HORIZON Melbourne singer / songwriter Grace Cummings makes a grand statement with her powerful new album, Storm Queen GRACE CUMMINGS

STORM QUEEN Sugar Mountain Records

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or Melbourne singer songwriter Grace Cummings it’s all about the performance, the delivery. Her new album Storm Queen picks up where her 2019 debut, Refuge Cove, left off and then ups the ante. With her husky, dramatic vocal tones she can wrap you up in immediacy and reality as much as mystery and inscrutability. Not surprisingly she has a theatrical background, having appeared in recent Melbourne Theatre Company productions such as Berlin from playwright Joanna MurraySmith.

“I think I’m just a dramatic person,” Cummings explains when I ask her if that informs her music. “I know I am. My music isn’t informed by my theatrical performances; they’re both influenced by me and how dramatic I am. I like big and grand... I guess if you have the platform to be dramatic, why not make it something that’s not so much about real life all the time.”

As with the performance, the songs are important too. Like a mythical warrior queen with the strength of her convictions, she can be fierce and powerful. Right out of the gate with opening track ‘Heaven’ she delivers a kick to the guts for anyone who might still ponder the existential issues of faith and subsistence with the lines “There is no God / there is no king”. Nope, nothing left to interpretation there. I ask her, is that you or the character in the song?

“Hah! Um, I think they’re both the same person, yeah it’s me. Even though there might not be a God, there are things that are heavenly and god-like around us. Sometimes they’re there for us, or we pray for them to be there. It can mean different things for different people. In

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the world around us, at the moment, I think to myself ‘how the fuck could there be a God?’. And if there is, we’ve definitely pissed him off.”

Cummings has eclectic tastes. She grew up listening to Bob Dylan, Neil Young, traditional Irish folk music, Lucinda Williams. She was obsessed with The Rolling Stones and The Beatles (“I painted Beatles lyrics all over my bedroom wall when I was eight years old.”). Later on, she got into Radiohead, Spiritualized, White Stripes, Alice In Chains, Wu-Tang Clan, Allman Brothers, AC/DC (“I used to play drums in an AC/DC covers band; ‘Jailbreak’ was my favourite song.”)

Backing her on the album are Jesse Williams (organ, guitar, piano, banjo) who engineered the recording in his home studio, Leah Senior (backing vocals), Alex Hamilton (guitar), Cahill Kelly (guitar), Lain Pocock (bass), Pete Convery (bass), Kat Mear (fiddle), Harry Cooper (saxophone) and Miles Brown (Theramin). Cummings sings and plays acoustic guitar, piano and percussion.

While her vocal delivery is immensely forceful, the song arrangements are often pared back to simple folky acoustic guitar strumming or minimal piano chords, as much as fuller band backings as on ‘Heaven’.

She’s obviously thought a lot about the album’s flow and pacing because the next two songs, ‘Always New Days Always’ and ‘Dreams’, bring you back to basics with autumnal contemporary folk mode.

‘Up In Flames’ is the longest song, five and a half harrowing minutes of emotional upheavals while the arrangement shimmers in the manner of a particularly vibrant Tim Buckley tune. With her voice wracked by emotional pain, there are literal mentions of the Victorian bush aflame and the Notre-Dame cathedral incinerated before our eyes on the television, as much as references and allusions to a personal relationship disintegrating in a puff of smoke.

‘Freak’ starts acoustically and builds with piano and fiddle. ‘Two Little Birds’ is another acoustic song with tinkling piano echoing the sound of fledglings in the nest. ‘This Day In May’ is likewise soft (well, as soft as Cummings can be) with playful acoustic strumming. It’s not all dramatic tension here.

For me there are three highlights: ‘Raglan’ features acoustic guitar, warm bass, banjo and fiddle which lends a bluegrass element to proceedings. The spell is broken with a swelling, full band arrangement but she still sings playfully, “Way over the hill”. “I’d go and visit Leah and Jesse in their house on Raglan Street, which was just over the hill and around the corner from my place. And Leah and I would end up singing ‘Over The Hill’

by John Martyn.”

‘Storm Queen’, naturally, is a tour-de-force. The opening melody is redolent of ‘Some Velvet Morning’ before electric guitar, pounding piano and squalling sax match her resounding voice. It’s Grace Cummings in full-on Art Rock mode, and she makes the form her own.

The album ends with the elegiac ‘Go Fly A Kite’, a gentle, folky reverie on the joys of life. “Go fly a kite / tie your troubles to the tail”... “With eagles up in the clouds / I am flying just like the eagles / nothing can stop me now”... “I would lie my head on a pillow / and dream of flying my kite again”. It’s at times sad yet uplifting, with weeping Theramin in the background adding a gorgeous touch, sounding not unlike an Ennio Morricone soundtrack cue.

“I spent a bit of time in one of my favourite places in East Gippsland, with my friend and her daughter. Everything was regrowing after the bushfires, so there was

G N OU Y NEIL BE denied WON’T

black around but also fresh green. We had these new kites and as we were flying them in a paddock, this eagle came down and was literally hovering next to the kites. It just made us so happy, all these shitty problems around us didn’t mean a thing. This pure and innocent, childlike>> thing flying it was so uplifting, fuckingup terrific.”

Theof lyrics tellaakite, version of Young’s story.soGrowing in Canada, leaving when he was alets young up at school, Then ashis thefather music fades, Cummings outboy, an beat exhausted sigh.

“Yeah, I dreams didn’t intend that to be there butfor it Hollywood, was like finishing of stardom, leaving Canada courtedthe by album with a littlemen” reminder, a little just to saysound.”

I was singing “business who came tomarker hear “the golden The key these songs be listening.” versetoiswhoever the fifth might one, especially coming as it did after the success By the time you read this, Cummings have been touring locally of Harvest. Neil Young writing towill himself, writing to his dead friend, with herwriting band. She’s alsowannabe got gigsrock booked to every star.in the UK and the USA for March 2022. “With the shows I do with the band, I think people will realise there’s more me than hear on the album.

With “Well, all thattoglitters isn’twhat gold/they I guess you’ve heard the story the bandtold/ it’s aBut lot louder, fuller, heavier, which is why I can’t wait to do a I’m a pauper in a naked disguise/ A millionaire through more shows.”

I think Cummings’ time to well and truly here. business man’s eyes/ Oh friend ofshine mine/isDon’t be denied.”

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And the chorus, which at times during the tour he would scream: “Don’t be denied/ Don’t be denied/ Don’t be denied /No no, don’t be denied.”

On this version however, he reprieves the fourth verse, the one about business men coming to hear the “golden sound.”

On a tour where Young was challenging his audience with an album’s worth of new material, perhaps with this song he was insisting one has to follow their vision, no matter the cost.

Certainly, he was saying there’s more to life than money – something he certainly knew by then. “‘Don’t Be Denied’ has a lot to do with Danny, I think,” Young told McDonough. “…I think that’s the first major life-and-death event that really affected me in what I was trying to do… you kinda reassess yourself as to what you’re doing – because you realize that life is so impermanent. So, you wanna do the best you can while you’re here, to say whatever the fuck it is you wanna say. Express yourself.”

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

The brand new limited edition Rhythms Americana style t-shirt is available now for a special price of

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By Chris Lambie

THE BEGINNNINGS Neil Murray reflects on the early days of the legendary Warumpi Band captured on a new release.

WARUMPI BAND

WARUMPI ROCK: PAPUNYA SESSIONS 1982 Love Police Records

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apunya, west of Mparntwe (Alice Springs), is known as the birthplace of the legendary Warumpi Band. Their 1983 debut single ‘Jailanguru Pakarnu’ (‘Out From Jail’) was the first commercially released rock single in an Indigenous language. Band co-founder Neil Murray reveals that he and guitarist Sammy Butcher wrote the song at the remote settlement during their first recording session in ‘82. The tracks laid down that day comprised 17 covers and one instrumental original. The release of those recordings is an unexpected 2021 delight. It’s even taken Murray by surprise.

“It wasn’t my idea, I can tell you that,” he says with amusement.

“It was mainly driven by Brian and Dave at Love Police Records. I haven’t listened to it in about 40 years. But the tracks I’ve heard like [The Eagles] ‘Already Gone’, I can hear the energy there. The youthful enthusiasm.” Together less that two years at the time playing local gigs, the band sound tight and tenacious. “It was recorded in the NT education department house in Papunya where I was living,” says the former teacher. “Phillip Batty (CAAMA radio pioneer), who used to work there, came out with a two- track Revox reel-to-reel recorder and little 8-channel desk. We set up in the living room. Phillip worked from

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a mixer into the tape machine. We had cheap Japanese copy guitars, a couple of amps and a drum kit. During a break for lunch, I said to Sammy, ‘These are alright but we want something sung in language to play on radio. So…I came up with a riff and he came up with the words [in Luritja]. From then on, we were looking for more originals. Not long after, we made the 8-track recording in Alice with B-side ‘Kintorelakutu’ (Towards Kintore). There was a shift in the way people viewed us once we started playing originals. Something different, not just about playing music to dance to. Something that could have a story. Bring a message. That was a kind of quiet revolution too. Eventually, all community bands started doing originals.”

For a long time, visiting artists like Slim Dusty and radio stars like Charlie Pride made Country music king of the Red Centre. Murray says, “It was still a very big influence…but rock’n’roll was coming in. Chuck Berry and Little Richard then The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I brought more influences too and we started playing Acca Dacca and Status Quo songs and JJ Cale. Reggae hadn’t really hit but, in a few years, it was going to be a momentous change giving rise to a lot of desert reggae bands.” A number of Country covers feature Murray on vocals and rhythm guitar with Butcher on lead guitar and his brother Gordon Butcher on drums.

“We were kind of floundering because I had to sing up front. The only singers the local people had seen – the local blokes - kept their back to the audience.” Then along came the ultimate frontman, (the late) George Rrurrambu. “GR was a coup. He had a bit more confidence, coming from somewhere else, from the Top End. A bit bolder. He was inspired by Little Richard, James Brown, Blues artists he’d seen on old films or telly.” I suggest he had the moves (and freestyle enunciations) like Jagger. “More like a Bon Scott type character. A bit of a larrikin. He couldn’t resist a party too,” Murray recalls with a chuckle. Six Stones covers are among the most exciting revelations in the collection, some uniquely infused with a red dirt rhythm and twang, like ‘It’s All Over Now’. ‘Carol’ and ‘The Last Time’ capture the retro ‘60s sound.

“Probably a reflection of the location and communities of the time; We were 10 years behind the rest of the country, kids singing ‘Get Back’ that’d come out in 1970!” The Papunya Sessions includes the Beatles classic with a killer guitar outro by Butcher.” It was a sign of great Aussie classics to come - Blackfella/Whitefella, Breadline, Gotta Be Strong, Stompin’ Ground…

‘Wild Side Of Life’ is a deadly meeting of Hank Williams with AC/DC via Status Quo. Murray laughs. “They’re pretty cornball covers really but we were playing what we knew at the time. The New Wave thing was happening in Sydney. On our east coast tour in ’83, I think it was a shock to people that we weren’t sort of hip to what was current. But we had a fresh quality about us that created a bit of interest.” Their 1985 debut album, Big Name, No Blankets wasn’t an immediate hit amid the popularity of synths and big drum sounds. Murray recalls, “People thought it was a bit raw. But, of course, that kind of sound quality is revered nowadays with roots music, Americana etc” The newly unearthed recording was a DIY punk-style scenario. GR sang most of the rock tunes and provided harmonies where Murray was lead vocalist on others, such as Dylan’s ‘Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door’. “Remembering that English wasn’t George’s first language, so he was doing pretty good. I’m not sure he had all the words for ‘Promised Land’ but he knew the song and was just going for it. Even on ‘Route 66’, he was singing ‘Get your ticket’ (instead of ‘kicks’),” Murray laughs. “But that was alright. The vibe was there.”

One highlight of the recording is lone original ‘Warumpi Rock’. “Ah, just a little instrumental we had at the time. I wrote a few songs myself but they didn’t really suit the band. But that little riff was something we could jam on.”

WARUMPI BAND’S WARUMPI ROCK: PAPUNYA SESSIONS 1982 is on LP, CD, cassette and digital formats from Love Police Records & Tapes. www.lovepolice.com.au/

By Chris Familton

CREATIVE FLOW For River Dreams’ debut album Small Paintings, the pandemic served as the impetus, rather than a deterrent, for recording sessions to take place.

RIVER DREAMS

SMALL PAINTINGS Evening Records

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ydney musician and songwriter Carl Manwarring had been playing around the city’s Inner West bars, pubs and bowling clubs under his own name for a number of years, following an initial foray into the post-high school world of rock ’n’ roll with the band The Darkened Seas.

More recently, River Dreams has become the moniker under which Manwarring writes, records and performs his songs of literate indie rock, peppered with strains of Americana and folk rock.

Though Covid has scuppered many of their live opportunities, River Dreams does exist as a band, formed as the vehicle for Manwarring’s songwriting and creative vision. When it came to the recording of

his debut album Small Paintings, he called upon friends and fellow musicians to add to the songs and bring them vividly to life in the studio of producer and bandmate Joseph Ireland (The Middle East, Joseph Liddy & The Skeleton Horse).

“If it wasn’t for the pandemic we wouldn’t have actually gone into the studio to record,” Manwarring reveals. “We started going into Joe’s home studio once a week and did a session and the album grew from that. The frustrating thing has been not being able to play live. We’re a new band and we’ve only played four gigs. We love to play live and perform so it’s been great to have the time and resource to record but not great in the sense of being able to play live. Hopefully that will change though and getting this record out will help that.”

From songs that were primarily written on guitar and piano, the studio process was a revelation of sorts for Manwarring as it allowed him and Ireland to build sonic layers around his rich and evocative lyrics. “When we started he said we were going to make the songs weird which in a sense meant having fun with them. It started with me and guitar and then we layered the instruments on. We brought in Josh Piltz (Andy Golledge Band) to lay down the drums and then Billy Ward to do the sax. Joe and I did most of the other instruments and we’d do it bit by bit each week,” explains Manwarring. “We never overworked it and spent just the right amount of time each session without getting the shits with it,” he laughs.

While many of Manwarring’s label mates on Evening Records work in different corners of country and folk music, he’s found his natural songwriting and singing style resides more in areas established and explored by the likes of Lou Reed, Silver Jews and more recently Kevin Morby. “I love country music and Americana but I’ve always been more of a rock ’n’ roll guy, growing up listening to the Velvet Underground and lots of blues. I’ve just always been more inclined that way. It suits my songwriting more and it’s naturally more my kind of music,” agrees Manwarring.

The slow build to his debut album meant that Manwarring had a decade-long pool of songs to draw from for Small Paintings. “At least two of these songs on the record I’ve been singing for at least ten years and a lot of the other ones are pretty fresh and new, written specifically for the record. I liked that though, it made it feel like a fresh thing, I didn’t want it to just be older songs.”

As he looks ahead to the prospect of more live shows and a second album, he reveals that the next one may be not be as long in the making. “Hopefully the next one will be soon, all the songs are there.

I think I’d approach it being more aware of the song and the process of recording them and what we can do with them. I also want to be playing more shows… 100%!”

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By Warwick McFadyen Though few fans could quibble with the selections, it is a surprise that there is nothing from III (admittedly one of this writer’s favourite albums). No room for Immigrant Song, Since I’ve Been Loving You or Tangerine? Maybe Tribute II. The opener Whole Lotta Love explodes into life, and sets the stage for what is to come. Its power undiminished and with Hart, introducing herself with “You need cooling/baby I’m not fooling”, you can feel both the rock and the roll that is the essence of Zeppelin and the singer.

The interregnum in Whole Lotta Love is faithful to the original, though shaded slightly differently, and when the drums re-enter pounding their presence, and the lead break splits the air, it’s as spine-tingling as the original.

Hart isn’t new to the song. She performed it on stage 18 years ago, and since then it has been on her setlist. She is also no stranger to playing with guitar heroes, having performed and recorded with Jeff Beck and Joe Bonamassa.

A TRIBUTE TO LED ZEPPELIN BETH HART Provogue/Mascot Why a tribute when you’ve got the real thing? Because in the universe there is a voice. The owner of that voice is Beth Hart. If ever there is a singer to cover Led Zeppelin, it is Hart.

The American has the power, depth and grace to reach into the Zeppelin repertoire and raise the songs into the light anew, sparked with her fire, and touched with her breath.

This is not a question of bringing new life to the songs, for they are not tired, they are not dried, sere and withered on the branch, this is of remaining faithful to the core, but adding your own soul. Yes, the songs remain the same, but they burn with a different personality. And it’s good.

The album’s songs are curated from Led Zeppelin’s golden years, that is, from 1969 to 1975. Those six years produced Led Zeppelin I, II, III, IV, Houses of the Holy and Physical Graffiti.

The track listing is: Whole Lotta Love Kashmir Stairway to Heaven The Crunge Dancing Days/When the Levee Breaks Black Dog No Quarter/Babe I’m Gonna Leave You Good Times Bad Times The Rain Song

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The musicians here are no slouches either: producer Rob Cavallo (Green Day, Linkin Park) and engineer Doug McKean (Goo Goo Dolls, Adam Lambert), Tim Pierce (Bruce Springsteen), bass Chris Chaney (Rob Zombie, Slash); keyboards Jamie Muhoberac (Bob Dylan); drums Dorian Crozier (Miley Cyrus, Joe Cocker), with Matt Laug drums on Stairway To Heaven. The strings were arranged by David Campbell (Muse).

Cavallo had produced Hart’s 2019 album War in My Mind. During those sessions in the studio she sang a bit of Whole Lotta Love, to which Cavallo said, well why not a whole Zeppelin album, to which Hart replied: “To do Zeppelin, you’ve got to be pissed off to hit that right. I can’t go there; I’ve worked years to put my rage away.”

Thank you COVID. On her website she recalls, “Then the pandemic and all the things around it hit. So now I’m pissed off. I called my manager and said, have Rob and Doug send me all the music because I am ready to do this.”

After the cathartic War in My Mind (the title spells out the album’s general theme) diving into the Zeppelin catalogue must have been sheer joy, albeit with a raised level of pissedoffedness. “This Zeppelin album allowed me to get all my rage out, and for that, I’m really grateful.”

This is not to say there isn’t a delicate touch mixed in here as well. After the monumental buildup of Kashmir she enters the lamplit woods that is the beginning of Stairway to Heaven, and she sings it with wonder in her voice.

From there the album jumps to The Crunge, a metal/funk treatment from Houses of the Holy, which leads into an innovative exercise of combining what at first glance might seem non-complementary songs: Dancing Days flowing into When the Levee Breaks, and later No Quarter flowing into Babe I’m Gonna Leave You. It works a treat.

The album ends with The Rain Song, one of Led Zeppelin’s most gorgeous songs. Hart does it more than justice.

As she has said of their music, “It’s so beautifully done, it’s timeless.

It will go on forever. Sometimes people come along, and they’re from another planet, and they make these pieces of art which will forever be.”

In the tribute to the band is a tribute to Hart.

STUART COUPE PRESENTS THE RESIGNATORS

digital streaming platforms.“You can shoot the messenger, but the message won’t go away”.

Pick it up at https://theresignators. bandcamp.com

Monroe. But you know what you hear more than all of that? You hear Suz Dorahy.

THE MACHINE THE FOOL AND US

SUZ DORAHY

The Resignators latest release “Messenger” tells the story of the attempted political assassination attempt of Bob Marley in 1976 in the form of a reggae song.

Based on extensive research from first-hand accounts, it paints an accurate picture of what could have been a fateful day for Bob. Special guests Nicky Bomba (percussion) and Pete Mitchell (saxes) of Melbourne Ska Orchestra, and Wil Wagner of Smith Street Band (backing vocals) beef up the already big horn driven 7-piece sound of The Resignators. Featuring a B Side dub remix by Mad Professor (London), “Messenger” is adorned with a painting of Marley portrayed as Hermes, the messenger god, by acclaimed artist Danny Rebel (Montreal). It is available on limited edition collectable translucent green 7” vinyl and all

Newcastle singer songwriter – suz dorahy releases new ep – Redemption Is Real via Beverley Hillbilly records. Suz Dorahy is the real deal. An authentic and nuanced singer and songwriter that you need to hear. Suz Dorahy has emerged as a singer and songwriter of remarkable strength and presence.

In her music you’ll hear the influences of those artists and styles that have inspired her. Think Sheryl Crow, Lucinda Williams, Lori McKenna, Allison Krauss, Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac, old school country and western, Loretta Lynn, Jimmy Rogers, Hank Williams, Bill

back to the raw and vulnerable!

Some days you just simply want to hear someone’s heart on their sleeve and a guitar - on those days you need to listen to this.” - Nkechi Anele, Roots N All, Triple J. WESLEY DEAN

Multi-Instrumentalist, songwriter and poet, Steve Robinson’s songs have been heard on Triple J, I98, Wave FM, FBi, Eastside Radio, ABC local radio, community stations throughout NSW, Queensland, Victoria and South Australia and college radio in the US. He has performed live on WIN TV and TVS with one of his videos collecting a bunch of plays on Rage. The Machine the Fool and Us celebrates the essence of just simply living.

From the ironic feedback loop of being profound by claiming you’re not profound or even allowed to say what you really think, to the addiction of always wanting something more and the loss of humanity in progress. “Taking it

Wesley Dean examines a lifetime of departures and arrivals in his new album, unknown. The album chronicles Wesley packing up his family from The Sunshine Coast and moving to the music mecca, Nashville, Tennessee and planting his Aussie flag in the US. Produced and mixed by Justin Cortelyou (Alice Cooper, Andrea Bocelli), Wesley openly shares his journey with the experience that only a seasoned veteran can allow with such transparency and vulnerability, revealed in anger, disappointment, joy, love and forgiveness. https://wesleydeanmusic.com

ALBUMS: General DAVE BREWER

LONG ROAD BACK HOME

and producer Elliot Smith on drums. Original songs include hip-shakers and moody midnight reveries. So, if it’s Friday night and you still can’t go out to see a band, hit play on this welcome set list of sunshine.

CHRIS LAMBIE BRENT COBB

AND NOW LET’S TURN TO PAGE Thirty Tigers In late 70s Perth, bands played nightly in pubs and clubs across the city. Supper tickets were obligatory. (Watered-down chop suey anyone?) For relocated east coast punters, ‘Sunday Sessions’ were a delicious bonus. Acts like Dave Warner, Matt Taylor and Midget & The Farrellys gigged tirelessly. Rhythm & Blues outfit The Elks was my favourite. Dave Brewer’s guitar work was already exceptionally artful but never overtly flashy. Just brimming with ‘feel’ no matter the variety. Long Road Back Home showcases his feel for the blues a la BB King, tasty southern swing and strolling grooves spiced with electrified funk. Kicking off with a soulful message of support, ‘All You Gotta Do (Is Call)’ is both warm as a bear hug and cool as the Freo ‘doctor’. Brewer brings his guitar talents out to play with acoustic, slide, baritone electric and Stratocaster whammy bar.

Instrumental solos are shared while never overtaking the flow of the tunes. Ex-Reapers Clayton Doley (Hammond Organ) and Fabian Hevia (congas) join Brewer with Jonathan Zwartz on double bass for ‘Many A Fool Will Understand’. The latter generates the kind of slinky rhythms you might hear at Preservation Hall. Brewer describes ‘Here Comes That Hurt Again’ as an imagined musical meeting of Ray Charles and George Jones. Solidifying the sound are Ben Franz (double bass), Jeremy Trezona (tenor sax), Alex Borthwick (electric bass) and Harry Mitchell (piano) 88

The separation between church and (e)state, god and the devil, sin and redemption, guilt & regret is as nebulous to the point of non-existence in country music as it is in soul. Which is part of what makes country and soul great, of course and makes those two genres closer than chauvinist haters of either want to accept.

(Of course that’s a different matter from the many, many records of fatuousness and fraud ostensibly built on those “holy” foundations, as anyone who’s been near a bible-thumping hypocrite in a big hat and thank you Jesus boots, a sharp pair of drop-to-your-knees trousers or a prosperity gospel hype band, at any time can attest. But I digress.)

Brent Cobb exists at these two intersections on this clearly personal, and short, album of old, re-worked and new.

Songs of his youth, songs of his heritage and songs of his family come from the Sunday service and the weekday spirituals, along with a new song he’s written with his wife, Layne Cobb.

In the main they don’t get reworked for the 21st century, they don’t get retooled for a new message either. Its protagonists are sometimes forlorn, sometimes surviving on nothing more than hope, but always the cross is rugged, the blood cleansing and the ties binding.

And Cobb sings them with hint of a crack in the perfection that must always accompany the humble seeker, climaxing with the unison work of his wife, parents, cousin and sister in the intimate a capella. Blessed Be The Tie That Binds.

The musical foundation is built on the aforementioned intersection, sculptured by his cousin, the Grammy-winning producer Dave Cobb. The slow guide of mountains gospel meets the church organ of soul, the guitar cry of country meets the chug of southern rock, and maybe you can hear a honky tonk out the back of the revival hall.

In We Shall Rise, the nod to the Rolling Stones (who knew how to steal southern American music’s melange better than most Americans) is as enthusiastic as the turn to some state’s fair choogling in the mould of Drive-By Truckers, while Old Country Church borrows from the Black gospel quartets as easily as it picks up from a Robbie Robertson and Levon Helm earthy groove. Just A Closer Walk With Thee merges both sides of town on a blend of organ and guitar, while Are You Washed In The Blood has the most radical adjustment with its bar band bustle leaning into the up-tempo blues and a hint of Duane Allman in the guitar playout.

Though Cobb, born and raised in Georgia, had a near-death experience of his own in 2019 to spark a re-evaluation of his priorities and values, it wouldn’t be too much to speculate if the past couple of years hasn’t focused the minds, the faith and

the history of a few Southerners.

After all, last year, Alabama’s Shelby Lynne did something similar to Cobb with her album, The Servant.

Lynne was more raw, more vibrant than Cobb, who can be more sweet than compelling, but And Now Let’s Turn To Page has the kick in its caboose alongside the smooth earnestness, and that has its own appeal.

BERNARD ZUEL THE DELINES

THE SEA DRIFT

Love Police Records + Tapes

Once considered a side project of Richmond Fontaine songwriter and frontman Willy Vlautin, on album #3 The Delines have comprehensively proven themselves as their own bittersweet and soulful microsystem, where damaged souls battle on against life’s twists and turns. Little beacons of hope amid the disarray.

Though there’s a through-line in Vlautin’s vignettes of the downtrodden, from the gritty realism that permeated his previous band’s songs to his own established literary career, it’s the exquisite voice of Amy Boone that really makes The Delines such a special band. She brings Vlautin’s characters to life, imbues them with tragedy and compassion. She pulls equally on the heartstrings with heartache and heartwarming gravitas.

‘Kid Codeine’ is a horn-laden and lively rhythmic excursion par excellence, the band adding a new string to their slow soul 88

ALBUMS: General sound. They still of course revel in the late-night lament, with horns mournfully tumbling like tears on ‘Drowning In Plain Sight’ and minor piano notes hanging in reverb-bathed moonlight on ‘All Along The Ride’. Elsewhere, ‘Past The Shadows’ is one of their finest songs to date – the perfect marriage of music, melody and the art of immersing the listener in a song. The Sea Drift is yet another utterly compelling chapter in The Delines’ evergrowing songbook.

CHRIS FAMILTON IAIN MATTHEWS

I CAN’T FADE AWAY: THE ROCKBURGH YEARS Cherry Red/Planet

of live performances (including his 1978 BBC In Concert special) and studio demos. The studio albums – Stealin’ Home, Siamese Friends, Spot The Difference, Shook – belie his UK folk grounding, instead all are more closely aligned with American roots music, veering into soft rock and power pop terrain, and for such an accomplished songwriter, it is mildly surprising that he regularly turns to others for material. Stealin’ Home is the pick of the albums, ironically recorded in the UK long-time producer Sandy Roberton, and utilising the services of crack British sidemen (Phil Palmer, Bryn Haworth, Rick Kemp, Duffy Power, Jim Russell, Pete Wingfield, Mel Collins); it would yield two sizeable US hits (both covers) for Matthews. Having finally found traction in the US, Matthews would subsequently return to his country-folk origins; Matthews Southern Comfort continues to perform today.

TREVOR J. LEEDEN JOHN MAYALL

THE SUN IS SHINING DOWN

Forty Below Records/The Planet Company By rights, ‘singer-songwriter Iain (Ian) Matthews’ resumé should speak for itself. As a founding member of legendary UK folkrockers Fairport Convention, he featured on their first three albums singing alongside both Judy Dyble and Sandy Denny. From those auspicious beginnings he formed country/ folk-rock outfit Matthews Southern Comfort (MSC), who notably had a UK #1 hit with their interpretation of Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” (a feat neither Mitchell nor CS&N achieved). Later followed the critically acclaimed folk-rock supergroup Plainsong before embarking on a US-based solo career. This fine 6-disc box set compiles Matthews’ four studio albums from 1978-1984 complemented with two discs

As seems to be the norm among veteran artists these days, Carlos Santana most prominent among them, the 88 years young John Mayall has opted to invite a handful of guests to join himself and the rhythm section he’s been recording and touring with since 2009 – bass player Greg Rzab and drummer Jay Davenport – and guitarist Carolyn Wonderland (Carolyn Bradford), who joined the team

in 2018 and sizzles sultrily on the album’s title track for this fifth album for Forty Below Records. Along with guitarists Mike Campbell from Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, veterans Buddy Miller and Melvin Taylor and rising star Marcus King are Dylan’s violinist Scarlett Rivera (Donna Shea), who features on two Mayall two originals – Got to Find a Better Way with its yearning, surprisingly affecting violin lines from, and one of his older tunes, Deep Sea Blue – and Hawaiian ukulele wizard Jake Shimabukuro, who joined Mayall, his harmonica, piano and organ, a horn section and label owner producer Eric Corne in Doors guitarist Robby Krieger’s Horse Latitudes Studios in Glendale, LA County California for the sessions. This might be his 37th studio album – and there are 34 live albums out there as well – and he may have retired from touring, but Mayall approaches it with the same vim and vigour as he did back in the late 1950s when he discovered the blues in all its robust manifestations as a teenager back in Cheshire, and it’s that same that same fizzy enthusiasm he’s sought out in his collaborators and has been captured so superbly on The Sun is Shining Down. Alongside his original tunes, the wealth of material he chooses to cover seems as rich and inexhaustible as ever. While The Sun is Shining Down was never going to reach anywhere near the heights of his seminal Bluesbreakers albums of the ‘60s, it’s a more than creditable addition to an extraordinary canon and admirably keeps the flame – and the “crusade” Mayall announced to the world back in 1967 – alive.

MICHAEL SMITH ERIN RAE

LIGHTEN UP Cooking Vinyl

Gracefully does it, the day in half light and the glass half full. It’s quite lovely, oh yes, but quite unexpected.

Erina Rae has leant towards the sombre, the bleak even, previously. Attractive and evocative, letting the space around the voice and spare instrumentation do as much work as the lyrics, those songs weren’t really country gothic, but they certainly did their best work in the shadows, if not late at night, and were made to be heard alone.

Lighten Up does indeed lighten up, sonically, tonally and emotionally. Without changing her singing dramatically – poised as much as languid, this is a voice that still eases its way through – Rae feels more inclined to see shards of hope these days, in a record made to be heard in company, to be shared.

Such an outcome is made possible by the plan she and producer Jonathan Wilson had to relocate Rae in a cosmic country world that is anything but repetitive. That means midtempo grooves from a rhythm section driving with the low impact of a barely humming electric car, glistening sounds of guitars and piano lightly burnished, quietly elegant strings more Capitol studio’s elegant pop than RCA Studio B’s countrypolitan, and something of a light haze around the voice.

It’s all about balance. The limpid guitar towards the end of Drift Away, the half-hidden electric piano within California Belongs To You, the way Rae’s voice feels cushioned in Lighten Up And Try, all feel as vital to the result as the glam keyboards of Can’t See Stars, the almost funky two-step bass in Modern Woman or the beach sunset feel of the singing in Undone. >>> 89

ALBUMS: General >>> Likewise, balance is found in the relationships – both with partners and with a broader, trickier world – which Rae explores. The end of things doesn’t have to mean a brutal crushing, being alone isn’t always lonely, and strength comes in more forms than muscle and sharp tongues. That, as much as the gracefulness with which she sings, puts Rae exactly where she wanted to be, somewhere between past and present.

Speaking of which, while they both headed from Nashville to Los Angeles for their albums and looked to the ‘70s for inspiration, rather than the West Coast rock tones that her friend, Margo Price, touched on in 2020’s That’s How Rumors Get Started, a better reference point for Rae is Pearl Charles’ desert trippy Magic Mirror. Like Charles’ record, Lighten Up feels more tethered to than rooted in its environment, capable of a shimmering presence that

moves around you.

The ideas and the songs and the production work and work well, but the real success of Lighten Up is that while we might not have predicted this after hearing 2018 Putting On Airs, with this record now experienced, the path feels natural, maybe even inevitable.

BERNARD ZUEL VARIOUS ARTISTS

GUS DUDGEON: PRODUCTION GEMS Ace

During the 1970’s in particular, Dudgeon would mastermind the sound of a phalanx of UK artists, all of whom feature in the 21 tracks. Performers such as the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Ralph McTell, John Kongos, Kiki Dee, David Bowie (“Space

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Renee Geyer Fiona Boyes & The Blue Empress Allstars Xavier Rudd Vikki Thorn Ash Grunwald Little Georgia

BLUESFEST IS BACK!

There can be few, if any, series that surpass the Ace Records Producer Series, music documents that plot the course of music through the great producers. Legendary names such as Jerry Ragavoy, Phil Spector, Norman Whitfield, Mickie Most, Brian Wilson, Bert Berns and Jack Nitzsche (both on three separate volumes each), and Shadow Morton have shaped contemporary music. Enter Gus Dudgeon, the UK producer who began his career by engineering and then producing The Zombies great run of chart successes, and who captured the essence of Eric Clapton on The Bluesbreakers’ “Beano” album.

Music Bible Rhythms magazine is in print (as well as in a digital edition) but the only way you can guarantee you will get it every two months is to ...

Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram Jeff Lang Felix Reibl Tijuana Cartel

PLUS:

• Emily Barker • Cedric Burnside • Brent Cobb • William Crighton • Delines • Allison Forbes • Fools • Hurray For The Riff Raff •Robben Ford • Carson McHone • Helen Shanahan • Kym Warner

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(or print + digital) now and you will receive our special 30th anniversary edition with a CD (and download card).

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Joan Armatrading, The Strawbs, and XTC all benefited from the man who “crafted the best sounding records of the 70s” (Bernie Taupin).

Gus Dudgeon will, of course, remain umbilically linked to the career of Elton John, who is featured on three occasions.

From the eponymous second album in1970, Dudgeon would produce John’s next 10 albums that included a string of seven consecutive US #1 albums and affirm him as the most successful singles artists of the 70s. An outstanding collection, the final words rest with his most famous client: “If it wasn’t for Gus, there wouldn’t have been Elton John”. ‘Nuff said!

TREVOR J. LEEDEN

Australia’s National Roots

War & Treaty

$12.95 inc GST MARCH/APRIL 2022 ISSUE: 310

Oddity”) and Chris Rea all owe their initial chart success to Dudgeon, so too Lindisfarne’s first successful foray into the US charts was courtesy of a Dudgeon production.

ALBUMS: Blues

BY AL HENSLEY CAROLYN WONDERLAND

HANNA PK

TEMPTING FATE

BLUES ALL OVER MY SHOES

Alligator/Only Blues Music

Dubbed the Texas queen of blues guitar since she was a teenager in Houston where her exceptional vocal and playing skills got her deeply entrenched in the city’s blues scene, Carolyn Wonderland was mentored by such greats as guitarist Clarence Hollimon and singer Lavelle White. Although Wonderland has been recording since 1993, it wasn’t until 2018 when she landed a three-year stint as the first female lead guitarist in British blues icon John Mayall’s band that her career took off.

Like many of her predecessors in that role it opened new doors for her as a solo artist.

One such opportunity was signing with Alligator Records for this label debut release.

Recorded in Austin where Wonderland has been based for around two decades, it was produced by West Coast musician Dave Alvin. Testifying to Wonderland’s substantial talents as a songwriter, six of the album’s 10 cuts are her own compositions. Five of these and one by Mayall firmly validate Wonderland’s blues cred once you get past the honky-tonk opener. Wonderland is primarily a blues artist, but, after all, she’s from Texas, renowned as much for country music as it is for blues and R&B.

LINDSAY BEAVER & BRAD STIVERS

VizzTone/Planet Co.

LINDSAY BEAVER & BRAD STIVERS

From barrelhouse to boogiewoogie, from stride to ragtime, Hanna PK’s glorious piano pumping and commanding vocals show her abiding love for the blues. Born and raised as Han Na Park in South Korea, the Rochester, New York-based artist has only been a blues devotee since arriving in the US 15 years ago, but you’d swear she hailed from Kansas City after listening to this, her first VizzTone Records release.

Widely acclaimed bluesman Kenny Neal discovered PK in 2018 at the International Blues Challenge in Memphis, Tennessee and produced this album at his studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Showcasing PK’s dynamic songwriting style and ferociously energetic keyboard work over 10 original songs and a reading of Memphis Slim’s ‘I’m Lost Without You’, Neal also performs on a few sides. PK works from deep within the blues tradition while bringing her own stamp of creativity to the music. Her funky ‘Mirror Mirror’ and ‘It’s Alright Baby’ give way to the lyrical blues ballad ‘Love Keeps Walking In’, the shuffling ‘Bad Woman’ and swinging ‘Two And Four’, while ‘Insomnia Blues’ is an object lesson in how to embellish a slow burner with piquant fills and cascading solos.

Singing drummer Lindsay Beaver from Nova Scotia and Colorado singer/guitarist Brad Stivers were both drawn to Austin, Texas where their remarkable musical chemistry came together. Stivers made his VizzTone Records debut in 2017 with Took You Long Enough, while Beaver’s previous release was 2018’s Tough As Love on Alligator Records on which Stivers played guitar. Their song-writing collaboration is outstanding, their vocal harmonies jubilant, and musicianship electrifying here as they deliver 11 powerful original songs, a swinging instrumental jam and a stripped-back cover of The Falcons’ ‘You’re So Fine’.

Taking turns on lead vocals, the duo is anchored by Barry Cooke doubling on bass and organ, guitarists Kirk Fletcher and Zach Zuris and harmonica player Joe Murphy among the session guests. Their music evokes the spirit of ‘50s/’60s-era blues a la Jimmy Reed, R&B and rockabilly. Holding residencies in Austin clubs, Stivers played with Jimmie Vaughan, Marcia Ball and Kid Ramos. Fans of the original Fabulous Thunderbirds will take to this album like a duck to water. Also, worth checking out is his VizzTone 2020 EP ‘Six’, a musical crossroads where South West blues meets New Orleans R&B.

JOANNE SHAW TAYLOR

THE BLUES ALBUM KTBA Records

VizzTone/Planet Co.

On the strength of her 2009 debut CD White Sugar UK guitarist/singer/songwriter Joanne Shaw Taylor won Best Female Vocalist at the 2010 and 2011 British Blues Awards.

Since then, however, you’d be hard pressed to find much in her catalogue recognisable as real deal blues. Until now, that is.

Introduced to the blues through the music of Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Ray Vaughan, Shaw Taylor’s strong-points have been blues-inspired rock guitar bluster and a husky alto voice skewed towards a pub audience in a power trio configuration.

On this new blues covers album, Shaw Taylor’s explosive energy finds a seasoned level of intensity that ignites a set of old-school blues and R&B. From plaintive whispers to cat like bellows, her vocals are the primary focus here.

Backed by a top-notch band that includes horns and backup chorus, there’s still plenty of high-octane fretwork, but with greasier blues-inflected tones.

Material is drawn from the songbooks of Peter Green, Kim Wilson, Little Milton, Otis Rush, Aretha Franklin and Don Covay.

Long-time Shaw Taylor fans will enjoy her masterful guitar pyrotechnics on her blistering take of Albert King’s ‘Can’t You See What You’re Doing To Me’.

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ALBUMS: World Music Folk

BY TONY HILLIER LES GRANDS HURLEURS ELLIPSE La Compagnie du Nord

band’s sixth album is sufficient to confirm that its reputation is well founded. Divanhana play a widely accessible urbanised style of Balkan folk music based on sevdah (colloquially known as ‘Bosnian blues’) but infused with pop/rock panache. Their musical melange also reflects the traditions and rhythms of Kosovo, Serbia, North Macedonia and Turkey.

singer Kočko might feature folk instrumentation — guitar, mandolin, violin, dulcimer and recorders — but his latest waxing crackles with ancient pagan energy. The band also boasts an impressive female lead singer, who’s as dynamic in a ballad, such as the lovely ‘Lavecka’, as she is in an irresistible up-tempo knees-up like ‘Hopaj Hop’.

ÅSMUND REISTAD 89% FOLKEMUSIKK Lydpressa

While they might not be as well known internationally as their longer-running French-Canadian compatriots La Bottine Souriante and Le Vent du Nord, Les Grands Hurleurs have accumulated a solid following over their dozen years — as three Felix Awards for best album in Francophone Canada’s Grammy equivalent readily attests. Ellipse will no doubt maintain the momentum, even though it’s more organic than its immediate predecessors. On their fifth release — their first as a quartet — Les Hurleurs happily intertwine elements of classical, bluegrass, Celtic and Cajun with the folk traditions of their home province, employing the accord de pied foot percussion that’s an integral part of French-Canadian folk, with fiddles, mandolin, guitar, and double bass.

As their name suggests, Les Grands Hurleurs (The Great Howlers) are excellent harmony singers, which is confirmed in the opening song ‘Fille Au Bal’. The excellence of their musicianship and tightness of their arrangements and rapport is perfectly illustrated in the tune ‘Pogne Pas Les Kettles’, a hot bluegrass-tinged instrumental that would do justice to American aces the Punch Brothers.

DIVANHANA ZAVRZLAMA CPL-Music They might not be widely known internationally but in their home country of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the centre of the former Yugoslavia, Divanhana has been lionised for more than a decade. A cursory listen to the 92

Backed by a full-blooded band, earthed by pumping bass and brass, the quintet’s charismatic singer Šejla Grgić generates impressive passion and power whether in ballad mode, as in the beautiful trumpet-infused ballad ‘Zoza’, or on accordion-driven romps like ‘Voce Rodilo’. There’s nary a dull moment on Zavrzlama, Divanhana’s first full album of selfcompositions.

TOMÁŠ KOČKO & ORCHESTR ONA Tomáš Kočko

Multiple award winners in their native Czechoslovakia, Tomáš Kočko & Orchestr’s style might be rooted in the Moravian folk tradition of the country’s east, but their sound comes wrapped in rock riffs, world music inflections and jazzy interludes. The tracks on ONA, which follows in the footsteps of an album that lodged in the top 20 of the European World Music Charts for a couple of months, offer considerable variety and vitality. Composer/

Guitarist and composer Åsmund Reistad has been an integral part of the Norwegian folk scene for more than two decades, during which time he has played alongside many of the country’s best-known acts, contributed to countless recordings and chalked up an equally impressive number of concerts. Reistad’s declared mission is to revive traditional Norse folk music by combining it with elements from other genres and arranging it in new ways. His long overdue solo debut album, which contains self-compositions based on Norwegian folk dances, achieves that goal with aplomb.

The perky ‘Rykkinnbussen’ and ‘Plunder’ are particularly good examples of his fingerpicking artistry.

KEES VAN DER POEL DREAM GUITAR Pan Records

Dutchman Kees van der Poel is another highly accomplished fingerpicking acoustic guitarist who deserves a higher international profile. Like Åsmund Reistad, his tone is crystal clear and pure yet decidedly warm. Dream Guitar features traditional folk music, not only from the artist’s native land, but also from Sweden and Ireland.

The undoubted highlight is a spectacularly good mandolinenhanced reading of the Celtic standard ‘Shi Bheag, Si Mhor’, one of four pieces attributed to the legendary blind Irish harpist O’Carolan. A couple of Swedish polskas and classically inclined Dutch tunes benefit from cello and fiddle accompaniment. Covers of Paul Brady’s ‘The island’ and Randy Newman’s ‘Dexter’s Tune’ are somewhat less absorbing.

ANO NOBO QUARTET THE STRINGS OF SÃO DOMINGOS Ostinato Records

A charmingly down-home album from an acoustic guitar band based in the small town of São Domingos on Santiago Island, which is part of the Cape Verde archipelago in the central Atlantic Ocean. Santiago Island’s unique geographic location makes it a creole music melting pot influenced by four continents. Thus, the indigenous local Coladeira style played by the Ano Nobo Quartet — named after Cape Verde’s most legendary composer — is spiced with soupçons of Cuban salsa, Spanish flamenco, Argentine tango, Brazilian samba and Mozambican marrabenta. Recorded in remote non-studio set-ups, The Strings of São Domingos is stronger instrumentally than it is vocally.

The fundamental simplicity of the album is part of its appeal.

ALBUMS: Jazz 1

BY TONY HILLIER DANILO PÉREZ CRISÁLIDA Mack Avenue

With Crisálida, the intrepid awardwinning Panamanian pianist, composer, educator, philanthropist and social activist Danilo Pérez takes listeners on an evocative and musically sophisticated journey that straddles the boundaries between jazz, blues, classical and world genres. For a groundbreaking work that’s arguably his magnum opus Pérez, who has worked with jazz giants such as Wayne Shorter, Wynton Marsalis and Gary Burton, adroitly draws on the respective cultural leanings and personal stories of his Global Messengers — a collective comprising Berklee College of Music alumni from Palestine, Greece, Iraq and Jordan — and their expertise on instruments not commonly associated with jazz.

Repeat spins are required to fully absorb the context and subtleties of Pérez’s humanitarian-driven holistic odyssey, which takes the form of two four-part suites: ‘La Muralla (Glass Walls)’ and ‘Fronteras (Borders)’. It’s the latter, which encapsulates the emotional plight of immigration, that particularly engrossed this reviewer, who’s been a fan of the pianist-composer since catching him live (in a seat behind the entire Marsalis clan, I hasten to add) at a New Orleans Jazzfest concert in the late-1990s.

The suite starts softly and sadly with the sombre ‘Adrift’, in which American songstress Farayi Malek relates the story of a mother seeking to reunite with her daughter after 20 years separation. It’s a perfect lead-in to ‘Al-Musafir Blues’, which at nearly 12-minutes is not only by far the longest track on the album but also the standout work.

Combining Arabic modes and

blues feel, it conveys the problems a Palestinian experiences in America, with Naseem Alatrash’s compelling cello rhythm conveying a sense of frustration and worldweariness in conjunction with Pérez’s expressive piano, and the violin playing of Layth Sidiq, who guested on Aussie Joseph Tawadros’s latest ARIA-award winning album Hope In An Empty City. Palestinian Tareq Rantisi’s percussion rhythms lend dynamic edge in the latter stages. In the energetic ‘Unknown Destination’, which concludes ‘The Fronteras Suite’, Pérez’s improvisational piano passages bounce off the Messengers’ strings and vocals, underneath Rantisi’s percolating drum rhythms. The composition coalesces into a collective improvisation that’s equally volatile.

The ‘La Muralla (Glass Walls) Suite’, which occupies the first half of Crisálida, opens with a track (‘Rise From Love’) that elicits more stunning singing from Farayi Malek, augmented by a Greek children’s choir and Pérez’s suspenseful piano improvisation in conjunction with a Cuban batá drums groove. It concludes with the suite’s strongest piece, ‘Muropatía’, in which the strings players animate a coruscating rhythm based on a folkloric Panamanian dance. Pérez’s hypnotic piano accompaniment anchors the polyrhythms prior to an impressive solo, after which his wife, Patricia Zárate, delivers an incisive rap in Spanish. Zárate also adds a spoken word element to the earlier companion piece ‘Monopatia’, along with some haunting singing from Greece’s Eirini Tornesaki.

composer, who was born in Cuba and raised in Moscow. His fourth album as a band leader was recorded in Spain with a coterie of top flight Cuban guest players.

Trumpeter Carlos Sarduy, who has worked with Chucho and Bebo Valdés, the Chucho Valdés Quartet drummers Georvis Pio Milian and Pedro Pablo Rodríguez and pianist Caramelo de Cuba (Arturo Sandoval et al) help León generate the kind of energy and execute the super tight arrangements for which Cuban jazz is renowned. León’s tribute to the Afro-Cuban jazz tradition, in particular, and to the pioneers of Latin Jazz, in general, was inspired by classic albums by Chucho Valdés, Chano Pozo, Dizzy Gillespie and Paquito D’Rivera. The outstanding title track genuflects to Valdés, preserving the structure of the maestro’s original minor blues on ‘Mambo Influenciado’ while incorporating some more dissonant harmonic changes. León crosses New Orleans second line rhythms with Cuban timba in the dynamic ‘Guarachando’. In ‘La Ceiba’, another of the set’s eight originals, 6/8 African rhythms permeate. Elsewhere, Jerome Kern’s ‘The Way You Look Tonight’, one of only two covers on the set, is masterfully clothed in a vivacious Cuban vibe.

LIBÉRICA ARRELS Segell Microscopi

ALEXEY LEÓN INFLUENCIADO One World Records

Alexey León is a talented young saxophonist, flautist and

Libérica is a genuinely unique Spanish band that seeks common ground between traditional Catalan song and Andalusian flamenco using original jazz as a conducting agent. It’s the brainchild of Catalonian double bass ace Manel Fortià, hatched after he returned from a threeyear stint in New York playing jazz with the likes of Dave Liebman,

Arturo O’Farrill and Scott Hamilton. Libérica’s debut album works best in ‘Els Tres Tambors’ and ‘La Calma de la Mar’ — totally captivating tracks in which some genuinely exciting and inventive jazz, earthed by Fortià’s inspiring bass lines, links the emotive singing of Catalan and flamenco cantaors, Pere Martínez and Antonio Lizana. The latter also contributes dynamic saxophone solos and fills, which, along with Max Villavecchia’s piano prowess, Raphael Pannier’s drumming skill and Fortià’s melodic sense, rhythmic precision and creativity, apply the jazz glue to Arrels.

PHILIPPE EL HAGE TRIO SOUND OF HOPE Independent

Balm for these coronavirus-riven times, Sound Of Hope teams Lebanon-born, French-educated and currently Dubai-based pianist-composer Philippe El Hage with the exuberant Palestinian percussionist Youssef Hbeisch and French saxophonist Damien Hennicker. The trio produce a predominantly deft and elegant fusion of Middle Eastern, Oriental, Brazilian and classical informed jazz that engenders energy and positivity. The more Arabic slanted pieces, informed by El Hage’s playing with the lauded likes of Trio Joubran and the Khoury Project, stand out. Inspired by his wife, the set’s highlight and original spark for the album, ‘Oughnya Ila Rania’, is an arrestingly melodic Arabesque inflected work. The title of the slow-burning opening cut, ‘From Brazil To Byblos’, betrays its contents. ‘Ma Fi Metlik’ has more of manic feel with El Hage’s piano and Hennicker’s soprano sax creating mayhem. A cool solo from Hennicker highlights ‘From Shadow To Light’.

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ALBUMS: Jazz 2

BY DES COWLEY LUKE HOWARD ALL THAT IS NOT SOLID Mercury KX, digital release

There was a time, a few years back, when I attended so many Luke Howard performances, I began to question whether I’d, in fact, turned into a stalker. Did Luke need a restraining order? I found myself fascinated by how his brand of pianistic minimalism could wield such power over my emotions, how just a few scattered notes could literally break my heart. In the end, I never found an answer: after all, that’s one of the enigmas of music, one of the reasons we listen to it. Aside from his work with his long-running trio, Howard has recently demonstrated his bona fide jazz chops with quartet Spirograph Studies. At the same time, he’s forged a path down the ‘new’ classical route, aligned with composers like Max Richter and Olafur Arnalds. There is a visual and filmic element to his music, and it’s no surprise he’s been picked up by filmmakers, choreographers, and visual artists alike. All that is Not Solid presents fifty-four minutes of solo piano, recorded live at Tempo Rubato in Melbourne in January 2020.

Rather than drawing upon his vast back catalogue, Howard presents nine new compositions that unfold, seamlessly, like a flawless suite. From its gentle opening notes, Howard displays a deep exploratory approach, reminiscent of the way Keith Jarrett chased down lyrical moments during his Köln concert. At heart, this is introspective, ruminative music, born of silence. For me, it touches upon unfathomable mysteries. Is it jazz? Who cares?

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ANTON DELECCA THE OFFERING Earshift Music EAR 57, CD & digital release

The Offering is saxophonist Anton Delecca’s long-awaited followup to his superb 2013 outing The Healer. Recorded in the dead of winter in New York in 2019, it features pianist Calli O’Doherty and drummer Cory Cox, along with ex-pat Australian bassist Matt Clohesy. As bonus, American altoist Immanuel Wilkins, who shot to fame in 2020 with his debut Blue Note album Omega, guests on several tracks. For the bulk of the album, though, Delecca’s line-up mirrors the classic Coltrane quartet of the early sixties – and it speaks volumes to say his tenor playing stands comparison with Trane’s searching and spiritual sound. The title track is a case in point, an eight-and-a-half-minute epic that kicks off with a glorious bass motif, providing a launch-pad for Delecca’s sustained flights. His tenor sound is remarkably fluent, full of twists and turns, spurred on

by O’Doherty’s thundering piano chords. There’s an intense groove to the track, with its unfettered forward momentum, as Delecca ratchets up the intensity, mining the upper register. On ‘Invisible Forces’, pianist O’Doherty meshes in tightly with Delecca, her propulsive playing building to a series of hypnotic runs, tinged with urgency. ‘The Fight’ is a steaming riposte to the inevitability of ageing, announcing Delecca’s intention not to go quietly. In an otherwise all-original affair, Delecca finds room for two covers, including a soulful reading of Horace Silver’s ‘Barbara’. Overall, The Offering is a remarkably consistent album, full of insistent grooves and stellar playing, that grows with each listen.

MIKE NOCK HAMISH STUART JULIEN WILSON JONATHAN ZWARTZ ANOTHER DANCE Lionshare Records, CD & digital release

This album feels like a small miracle.

In November 2019, just months before the onset of the pandemic, this quartet – comprising some of our finest players – released their triumphant debut album This World.

With players hailing from both Sydney and Melbourne, the stakes proved high when Covid hit. Yet, somehow, despite five cancelled launch gigs in Melbourne alone, the quartet managed to perform some thirty shows across four states, and enter the studio, just before 2021’s extended lockdown, to record Another Dance, an album that is – and this feels like the miracle – every bit as good, if not better, than This World. There are times when adversity steps in to crank things up a notch. The album’s opener ‘Deception’ begins with Mike Nock’s lyrical piano, laying down a deceptively simple theme, taken up by Wilson’s tenor, light as a summer’s day. The ten-minute ‘Headlands’ is an explorative mood piece, highlighted by Nock’s gentle and cascading notes played in the upper register. ‘Little Stars’ rests on an aching melody, sparingly played by Wilson. Ultimately, what comes across most forcefully on Another Dance is that there are no wasted notes, each one feels considered and carefully positioned in such a way as to heighten the emotional impact of this music.

These compositions hinge on a less is more aesthetic, unhurried, their seamless melodies blessed with clarity, insight, and near-telepathic communication. This gentle, reflective music, forever in search of beauty, feels like a tonic in these troubled times.

JEREMY ROSE FACE TO FACE Earshift Music, CD & digital release

Saxophonist Jeremy Rose is best known for his work with Sydney band The Vampires. On the side, he’s recorded four solo projects, and contributed to others, such as the recent album Vazesh, a Persian-inspired outing with Iranian tar player Hamed Sadeghi.

On top of that, he founded the Earshift music label (which, to date, has notched up over 50 albums), and he co-ordinates the annual Earshift Music Festival, the last of which – streamed digitally in October 2021 – championed a new generation of talent like Reuben Lewis, Hilary Geddes, and Chloe Kim. That’s one busy guy.

Face to Face, recorded in Sydney in December 2020, represents his latest venture, with pianist Steve Barry, bassist Noel Mason and drummer Alex Hirlian. The quartet has been playing together for a few years now, and it shows, both in their close-knit musical interplay and in the delicate synergy heard throughout. While Rose, in his liner notes, makes clear this is not an ‘iso album or reaction to the pandemic’, he equally acknowledges he couldn’t have created it pre-COVID. In a world saturated with digital technology, he’s advocating simple, human face-to-face connections. Comprising nine original compositions, the album is spacious in feel, full of subtle grooves, keening sounds, and buoyant bass riffs. As leader, Rose switches between tenor, soprano, and bass saxophones, adding occasional effects, but in the main this is state-of-the-art acoustic jazz, impeccably performed, sanguine in nature, brimming with hope.

ALBUMS: Vinyl

BY STEVE BELL BILLY BRAGG

THE MILLION THINGS THAT NEVER HAPPENED

PIP BLOM

THE LUCKSMITHS

Heavenly Recordings

Lost & Lonesome

Young Amsterdam indie-rock four-piece Pip Blom have followed their ebullient 2019 debut Boat with a new collection equally as catchy, and while their charming naiveté is still intact it’s slightly more restrained in delivery but still a delightfully captivating listen. The brainchild of eponymous frontwoman Pip Blom - who growing up devoured her hip parents’ record collection, internalising everything from The Breeders to Kylie - it finds her wrestling with typical 20-something conundrums like love and identity, but with her inherent melodicism continually steamrolling any angsty undertones. Opener ‘You Don’t Want This’ makes it clear that the band are staying true to their early roots - all soaring guitars and hook-laden vocals - while summery single ‘Keep It Together’ is a model of pop perfection, with guitar and vocal melodies wrestling for ascendancy and the punchiest of choruses. Indeed the guitar interplay between Pip and her brother Tender Blom is imperative throughout - especially when ‘Easy’ ramps up the guitar tones to borderline acerbic and ‘I Know I’m Not Easy To Like’ doles out its fuzzy riffs and gang choruses but it’s the combination of the avalanche of hooks and Pip’s sugary, softy-accented vocals which provide the bulk of the appeal. Even when ‘It Should Have Been Fun’ starts off sounding more foreboding and desultory it too can’t help bursting into a wall of fizzy pop guitar. Elements of both jangle-pop and the ‘90s slacker aesthetic peer through in places but Pip Blom have already carved their own distinctive garage-pop sound, this laidback and easy-going voyage demanding repeated spins as you’re pulled in by their trademark innocent charm.

Back in the day the 2001 fifth studio effort by beloved Melbourne indie-pop icons The Lucksmiths was the only album of their initial tenure to be released on vinyl - albeit a limited run which has been near impossible to track down for years - and as the sadlydefunct band’s catalogue is slowly but surely reissued on vinyl it too has been ushered back into the world for fans old and new to revel in its timeless beauty. The beginning of the three-album run commonly perceived as The Lucksmiths’ “golden period” - rounded out by Naturaliste (2003) and Warmer Corners (2005), all produced by Craig Pilkington - it finds them still in their original trio mode with all three members contributing strongly in the writing stakes: guitarist Marty Donald is in particularly fine form handing in some of his catchiest and most affecting contributions (‘Synchronised Sinking’, ‘The Great Dividing Range’, ‘Broken Bones’, ‘The Year Of Driving Languorously’), while drummer/vocalist Tali White (‘Self-Preservation’, ‘First Cousin’) and bassist Mark Monnone (‘Beach Boys Medley’, ‘Don’t Bring Your Work To Bed’) also bring their creative A-game to proceedings. With good mate Darren Hanlon also throwing some guitars into the mix the results are both immediate and enduring, a beautiful collection of finely-honed guitar-pop from one of the finest (and sadly criminally underrated) Australian outfits of their (or any) era. Available on limited edition turquoise or standard black vinyl.

WELCOME BREAK

WHY THAT DOESN’T SURPRISE ME

Cooking Vinyl

The fact that the vinyl version of Billy Bragg’s tenth studio album lagged two months behind the release of the CD and digital versions - due to COVID, naturally seems somehow appropriate because the legendary UK songsmith has returned with an incredibly empathetic and prescient treatise on the human cost of the pandemic.

Fittingly the whole thing was made remotely, Bragg penning the songs whilst in lockdown then sending his ideas to producers Dave Izumi and Romeo Stodart (of The Magic Numbers fame) who built up the songs at a distance, constructing perfect roots-tinged beds for Bragg to lay down his world-weary but ever-insightful ruminations. The title track covers the despondency of pandemic restrictions perfectly - how we’ve been collectively denied the many life signifiers and milestones we used to take for granted - while keyboard ballad ‘Lonesome Dream’ is a lament about love and solitude and ‘Good Days And Bad Days’ pines for the before times (“Boring, old, normal/How attractive it seems”). There’s also still plenty of Bragg’s trademark socio-political musings, with ‘The Buck Don’t Stop Here No More’ studying the decline of American society, ‘Freedom Doesn’t Come For Free’ humorously highlighting the pitfalls of libertarian lifestyles, ‘Mid-Century Modern’ a concession that many of Bragg’s prior firebrand worldviews have become redundant over time and closer ’10 Mysterious Photos That Can’t Be Explained’ skewering the attentiondraining nature of the internet. Not just one of Bragg’s strongest albums for a long time but one of the best of his brilliant 40-plus year career.

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Rhythms Books

By Adrian Jackson and Andra Jackson (Melbourne Books, h/b)

I

’ve told the story before. It was back in ’94 that I came across a poster, stuck to a pole somewhere in Melbourne, featuring images of the great American saxophonists Steve Lacy and Dewey Redman. The poster indicated they were playing at Wangaratta on the weekend of 28-31 October. I turned to my friend: ‘Where’s Wangaratta?’ That evening, we got out a map. It looked do-able. Two days later, we were driving up the Hume. That was my introduction to the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz & Blues. Since then, I’ve made the journey a further twentythree times, a bright star on my annual musical calendar.

For its tenth anniversary in 1999, jazz writer John Clare published a small celebratory book on the Wangaratta Festival. Despite my admiration for his writing – his book Bodgie, Dada & the Cult of the Cool remains a seminal book on Australian jazz – his account felt perfunctory and undercooked. Perhaps there just wasn’t enough history to mull over by that point. But that’s certainly not the case thirtyyears on from its inception, and this substantial new book on ‘Wang’ delivers the first expansive assessment of the festival’s pioneering role in the history and development of Australian jazz.

The book’s key strength lies in its being very much an insider’s account. Writer Adrian Jackson – whose jazz columns once graced the pages of this magazine – was Artistic Director of the festival from its foundation in 1990 until 2015. As such, he’s well placed to offer behind-

the-scenes insights into its rapid rise from a small-town fixture to a major international event.

The question has often been posed: ‘Why Wangaratta?’. In short, the town was looking to host a music festival, and pretty much every other musical genre was already taken. But what made Wangaratta unique was the town’s forward-looking approach in highlighting contemporary jazz, over trad. That, and putting absolute faith in its artistic director, in good times and bad, come hell or high water. Until the day came when they didn’t – but more on that later.

One of Wangaratta’s natural advantages was its geographic locale situated mid-way between Melbourne and Sydney, making it the perfect meeting place for two largely disparate music scenes. The town would provide fertile seeding ground, as it cultivated an environment that sought to pay homage to an older generation of performers, while at the same time ushering in the new wave. In doing so, the festival helped foster the development of a distinctly Australian form of jazz.

While the inaugural festival was largely stitched together by sheer bravura (it only included one major international act, saxophonist Vincent Herring), and lost money, the local Committee pushed on regardless, expanding the 1991 festival with a blues component, along with a free stage to help appease the locals (who, after all, were funding the festival with their rates). The ABC’s Jim McLeod began recording performances, using a mobile truck, and featuring them throughout the year on his

Don Burrows with Barry Harris (Photo: Border Mail)

Roger Frampton conducting Ten Part Invention (with Bob Bertles, Bernie McGann, Ken James) (Photo: Jane March) 96

By Des Cowley

WANGARAT

regular Jazztrack program. Bit by bit, word of mouth spread. And the crowds came.

Jackson’s account makes explicit the arduous nature of running a large-scale festival: the never-ending pursuit of funds, the frantic dashes to the airport to pick-up delayed musicians, lastminute cancellations, instruments lost in transit.

And while there are the inevitable compromises, what stands out is Jackson’s increasingly adventurous programming as the festival took wing. For many – myself included – the festival provided a unique opportunity to sample the best that contemporary international jazz had to offer: Sam Rivers, Horace Tapscott, Steve Lacy, Oliver Lake, Myra Melford, William Breuker, Geri Allen, Kurt Elling, Tomasz Stańko, Sheila Jordan, Joe Zawinul, Dave Douglas, Gary Bartz, Dave Holland, John Scofield, David Murray, Christian Scott. Such a roster – and I’m barely scratching the surface here – would be the envy of any jazz festival in the world.

In providing a platform for Australian and international artists to perform together, the festival doubled as a training ground for local talent. With its air of relaxed informality, it fostered free exchange, helping to forge long-term networks and friendships, and encouraged Australian musicians to study and work overseas, to think global. Increasingly, musicians such as Linda Oh, Barney McAll, and Shannon Barnett returned to the festival billed as ‘international’ acts. By placing our artists on a ‘world’ stage, it contributed to a newfound confidence. In short, Wangaratta helped ‘internationalize’ Australian jazz.

Unquestionably, the festival nourished a new generation of musicians who would go on to change the face of Australian jazz. Critical to this was the establishment of the Australian Jazz Awards, held annually, and modelled along the lines of international awards such as the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition. Recipients were guaranteed widespread publicity along with a recording

TA FESTIVAL OF JAZZ & BLUES: 30 YEARS Charles Tolliver and Linda May Han Oh (Photo: Gerard Anderson)

contract. The list of past winners reads like a who’s who of contemporary Australian jazz: Barney McAll, Julien Wilson, Scott Tinkler, Kristin Berardi, Phil Slater, James Muller, Steve Magnusson, Michelle Nicole, Sam Anning, James Macaulay.

Is there a Wang festival that ranks as best ever? For Adrian Jackson, it might well have been 2002, which featured US trumpeter Dave Douglas, and the brilliant French clarinettist Louis Sclavis. Then again, it’s hard to go past 2005, which delivered towering performances

by Polish trumpeter Tomasz Stańko, and Sweden’s Esbjörn Svensson Trio. Or should we look to 2008, the year of the Big Tent, when powerhouse saxophonist Joe Lovano joined forces with guitarist John Scofield, and trio Lost and Found, comprising Paul Grabowsky, Jamie Oehlers and Dave Beck, delivered a searing one-hour improvisation that defied belief.

Of course, no long-running festival can avoid bumps in the road. The loss of TAC funding in 2009, after twelve-years, was a body blow.

A subsequent run of bad weather, and even flooding in the area, took its inevitable toll on audience numbers and finances. When rains washed out the new outdoor stage in 2015, resulting in heavy financial loss, it appeared the festival lost its nerve. After 26-years at the helm as Artistic Director, Adrian Jackson found himself out of a job. Successive festivals were run by a team that included Adam Simmons and Zoe Hauptmann, who did an estimable job of steering the ship. Hell-bent on getting the finances back in the black, the 2019 was cancelled. Plans were underway for a massive 30th anniversary celebration in 2020. Then the pandemic hit. The rest, as they say, is history.

Aside from Adrian Jackson’s chronological account of each festival, the book draws upon a chorus of voices to reflect the wide-ranging nature of its 30-year history. Journalist and music writer Andra Jackson fleshes out some of the wider context of the story, including the blues component of the festival. Further contributions come from musicians, recounting their own experiences, along with memories of long-term attendees, and Wangaratta residents. The book features a complete listing of every jazz and blues act that has played the festival, along with a record of all performers selected for the National Jazz Awards. Finally, an ‘in memoriam’ honours the many musicians who have since passed, bringing home our good fortune in having seen them. Best of all, Jackson’s book is lavishly illustrated, featuring hundreds of photographs culled from the festival’s performance archive, a treasure-trove of memories for anyone who has made the trek.

In many ways Wangaratta was the little festival that ‘could’. Its extraordinary success is the product of blind belief, visionary guidance, passion, and a town people’s goodwill. The city has played host to many singular performances that have gone down in jazz lore: a terminally ill Roger Frampton literally playing for his life with Ten Part Invention in 1999, just weeks before his death from an inoperable brain tumour; or Stu Hunter’s triumphant delivery of his long-form composition The Gathering in 2010, which touched the sublime; or trumpeter Phil Slater’s outstanding interpretations of the work of classical composer Peter Sculthorpe in 2012; or Lloyd Swanton’s large-scale piece Ambon, a moving musical tribute to his uncle Stuart, who died with many of his contingent in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp on the island; or the frenetic mayhem unleashed when Paul Grabowsky went head-to-head with James Morrison and rock-drummer Kram in an hourlong improvisational workout in 2017.

There were concerns that a three-year hiatus might spell the end of the Wangaratta festival.

If that were the case, Adrian Jackson’s book would stand as essential testimony to its enduring history. Yet the spirit has been kept alive. As I write, the 2021 National Jazz Awards are streaming on the television across the room. The town’s resilience appears strong, as it commits to welcoming back visitors in 2022. Always the jazz optimist, I’ve booked my accommodation in readiness. Come Cup weekend, I plan to be heading up the Hume, repeating a journey I first made all those years ago.

97

Rhythms Books Too Y

ou know that old cliché about a picture being worth a thousand words? There’s some semblance of truth in it – but not always. If it was completely accurate a lot of us would have swapped typewriters and keyboards for cameras. And it kinda looks easier, but what would I know. A really good and accomplished photographer would no doubt roll their eyes tell me that getting a truly great photograph is easily as difficult as a near perfect sentence or paragraph.

Two books of music photographs have held my attention recently – one documenting rock’n’roll in Adelaide, the other Los Angeles.

Both manage to capture time’n’place rather well in black and white images. Is it just me or is black and white the best mode for capturing imagery? Would these two books be as effective if the images were in colour? I suspect not.

Roadrunner magazine was around from 1978 to 1983 (full disclosure here, I was one of the founders) and chronicled the Australian and international punk and post-punk worlds.

One of the publications chief photographers was Adelaidebased Eric Algra who has recently published a delightful hard cover collection – Rock’n’Roll City – The Roadrunner Years – which coincided with an exhibition in Adelaide. It’s a mighty fine collection of images, dotted with brief but evocative text. It’s divided between three main areas – the overseas visitors of the time (Bob Marley, Graham Parker etc), the endless parade of interstate visitors who descended upon Adelaide in that era (The Boys Next Door, Sunnyboys, Divinyls, Midnight Oil and so forth) and the part that I found most intriguing the Adelaide bands of the time, many of whom I saw on a regular basis. We’re talking The Accountants, No Fixed Address, Irving & The U Bombs, Redgum, Young Modern etc. There’s also a brief selection of photographs of comedians of the time.

Algra is a very fine photographer and Rock’n’Roll City is a beautifully presented book. If you’re of a certain vintage you flick trough its pages with not only a sense of nostalgia and remembrance, but with the words ‘gee we were all young once’ running through your head.

Jumping to Los Angeles and Hard + Fast is a magnificent collection of photographs from Melanie Nissen from the years 1977 – 1980. It’s a big, beautifully presented collection published by Australian outfit Blank Emporium (BlankEmporium.com). It’s the era of loud, noisy, abrasive, and confrontational punk rock so there’s a host of images of the likes of X, The Zeros, The Screamers, the Germs, the Dils, the Go-Gos, The Nuns and visitors such as The Dead Boys, The Ramones, Pere Ubu

98

By Stuart Coupe

and The Damned. Plus there’s a host of images – the stuff that I’m drawn to – of fans and audience members, the images that give real atmosphere to the band photos and the times.

Hard + Fast is one hell of an impressive collection of photographs – the majority I understand never published before. There’s also an insightful essay from LA writer Kristine McKenna. If you dug the first of the Decline Of Western Civilisation documentaries and loved the memoirs by John Doe, Alice Bag and others – then this is for you.

In other recent reading I finally found time for Chris Frantz’s memoir Remain In Love – Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina. I didn’t love it as much as friends suggested I might. I mean, I was totally enthralled for the first 135 pages - Franz growing up and in particular the REALLY great sections about what it was like moving to NYC and being part of the emerging punk/new wave and arts worlds of the time in that city. By the time we hit a seemingly endless recounting of a European tour with The Ramones I started to flag and raced through the final 200 + pages. All were enjoyabley pacy without being too insightful. Despite fairly constant swipes at David Byrne I didn’t really get a real sense of why he and Tina Weymouth’s relationship with DB fell apart.

But maybe there’s not much to say - DB clearly wanted the limelight and loot and became increasingly less inclined to share either. There was a brief mention of the first TH’s tour of Australia when this photo was taken, nothing about the second. Not that they were really a big deal in the whole scheme of things of course. There also appeared to be chunks of years just passed over despite Frantz seeming to have an astonishing recall for dates, names, what he ate on a particular day etc etc. That seems all the more remarkable that despite being no stranger to drugs he sneaks in on page 356 that his substance abuse was so out of control by the mid 1980s that he entered a treatment program after Weymouth had said drugs or her - not both. Towards the end there’s a funny/scary section on Frantz and Weymouth trying to produce the Happy Mondays. It’s a fun’n’fast ‘n’anecdotal read with lots of cameos from other famous folk.

A cut well above most rock star memoirs for sure but maybe not totally top shelf material.

What’s up next? I sorta thought that I’d read more than I ever need to read about The Doors but I’m assured that I do need to spend time with Robby Krieger’s Set The Night On Fire – Living, Dying And Playing Guitar With The Doors. So that’s what I’ll do. Happy reading.

Ronnie Spector

Robie Porter

Michael Nesmith

Rachel Nagy

The Whitmore Sisters

John Nolan

COMPILED BY SUE BARRETT

Just as things were looking hopeful, COVID-19 has again led to cancellations and postponements. But many musicians have an online store (e.g. Bandcamp – www.bandcamp.com) and indie record shops can do mail order sales over the phone. With Omicron being accompanied by capacity limits, Canberra venue Smith’s Alternative began a ‘donation ticket’ (available via email) for patrons unable to attend, but who want to support an artist.

Queensland singer/songwriter Ella Fence has a new double A-side single (‘I Don’t Mind’ + ‘I was Made for Loving You’). Ella grew up on the Gold Coast and now shares her time between there and Brisbane. “I always identified as a singer and I used to write poetry in the back of my school books. It wasn’t until I started putting music (guitar and piano) to my poems that I began seeing myself as a musician. I made the conscious choice to pursue performance after going to a gig in Brisbane that I was meant to be reviewing for Rave magazine.

My first gig was on a nylon string guitar with shitty speakers in my living room – there’s video footage somewhere – may it never be seen! In 2016, I was picked for the role of Snow White in a dark twisted Opera Queensland / La Boite collaboration for the Brisbane Festival, after the creative producer saw one of my Ella Fence shows. Over time, I’ve experimented with electro pop, cinematic soulful exploration and other genres. The new single is the next phase – both songs are a power blast of rock ’n’ roll. Pre-COVID, my whole life felt like it was ‘out there’. When I was forced to get quiet and really be alone with myself, I wrote from a completely different place. My range of emotions, my personality and my history are explored in this new work. COVID has been a nightmare for humanity, let alone its existence in my own space. And there’s a feeling in me that the live music industry has been a political punching bag. We’re all still working in the unknown, doing our best. That’s all you can do – try not to give up and stay in the game. My Wolf face mask and CD (available on Bandcamp) was my way to stay creatively relevant and keep busy. This year (2022) is about releasing music and touring. I’ve recorded an album and will release a series of singles (through the label I signed to last year – Golden Robot Records).” Info: www.ellafencemusic.com Irish musician Niamh Tracey Smith, who currently lives in England, will be launching her debut EP in the near future. Ahead of its launch, and in recognition of the devastation people have endured during COVID, she has released her beautiful new song, ‘Footprints’: www.thisisniamh.com American “dumpster-folk / thrift store” duo The Rough & Tumble has a new EP, Love is Gross (but it looks good on you). “The EP had its origins during early pandemic 2020. Losing every show on the docket, fans and friends reached out … [and commissioned] songs written specially for loved ones. We don’t really do love songs, but we were eager for the work – and it was a great way to connect with people when we were all so separate. By the time 2020 was over, The Rough & Tumble did do love songs.”

Irish musicians Rónán Ó Snodaigh and Richard Campbell are the subjects of Myles O’Reilly’s short film, A Gardener Now: www.youtube.com/ watch?v=clNq_5uTAOk Other new releases include: The Whitmore Sisters, Ghost Stories; Jack Carty, Wake to a Bright Morning; Anna Grindle, TheTurning; Pádraic Keane, In FullTune; Eliza Gilkyson, Songs from the River Wind; Josh Pyke, To Find Happiness; Aisling Lyons, Aistear; Brad Butcher, Storyteller; King Curly, Songs; Alex MacDonald, Hard as Nails; The Waymores, The Stone Sessions; Rain Perry, A White Album; Raine Hamilton, Brave Land; Michael Hurley, Time of the Foxgloves; Nancy Kerr, The Poor Shall Wear the Crown: Songs by Leon Rosselson.

100

American singer/songwriter Bill Staines (74), writer of ‘Roseville Fair’, ‘Early Morning Rain’, ‘A Place in the Choir’ and ‘Streets of Old Quebec’, died New Hampshire, USA (Dec) Scott Alarik (70), Boston-based folksinger, journalist and radio programmer, died Massachusetts, USA (Dec) Jamaican bass player and producer Robbie Shakespeare (68), died Florida, USA (Dec) Robie Porter (80), Australian musician and co-founder of Wizard Records, died in December Australian drummer Lindsay Tebbutt (64), from Choirboys, died in December Wanda Young (78), of The Marvelettes, died Michigan, USA (Dec) Scottish-born musician Steve Bronski (61), co-founder of Bronski Beat, died England (Dec) J D Crowe (84), banjo player for J D Crowe & The New South, died Kentucky, USA (Dec) American county performer Stonewall Jackson (89), died Tennessee, USA (Dec) Michael Nesmith (78), American songwriter, member of The Monkees and son of Liquid Paper inventor Bette Nesmith Graham, died California, USA (Dec) Les Emmerson (77), songwriter for Five Man Electrical Band, died Canada (Dec) Australian guitarist John Nolan (55), of Bored! and Powder Monkeys, died Victoria, Australia (Dec) Ronnie Spector (78), singer with The Ronettes, died Connecticut, USA (Jan) American musician Meat Loaf (74), died Tennessee, USA (Jan) Calvin Simon (79), of Parliament / Funkadelic, died in January Australian nun Sister Janet Mead (83), who had an hit with ‘The Lord’s Prayer’, died South Australia (Jan) Rachel Nagy, singer with American band The Detroit Cobras, died in January American songwriter Dallas Frazier (82), who wrote ‘Son of Hickory Holler’s Tramp’, ‘Baptism of Jesse Taylor’, ‘There Goes My Everything’ and ‘White Fences and Evergreen Trees’, died Tennessee, USA (Jan) Burke Shelley (71), of Welsh group Budgie, died Wales (Jan) Oscar winning American songwriter Marilyn Bergman (93), whose songs written with husband Alan included ‘Windmills of Your Mind’, and ‘It Might Be You’, died (Jan) Sonny Turner (83), of The Platters, died California, USA (Jan) American drummer Greg Webster (84), of Ohio Players, died Ohio, USA (Jan)

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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.

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There is no place like POME!

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April 10: Corner Hotel, Melbourne April 13: The Factory Theatre, Sydney April 14, 16, 17 & 18: Bluesfest, Tyagarah

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