Rhythms May-June 2021 by rhythmsmag

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od o g o s ’s y d o b “Every er h t e g o t g n o l a at getting er.” h t o h c a e r o f e c a p s g n i k a m –

HISTORY:

$12.95 inc GST MAY/JUNE 2021 ISSUE: 305

The Continental Café 20 Years On Hollywood Eden Clinton Walker’s ‘Stranded’

Liz Stringer Rhiannon Giddens Emma Swift Shakey Graves

PLUS:

Ed Kuepper Esther Rose Family Jordan Hold Steady Jeff Lang Jimbo Mathus John Smith Katie Brianna Pearl Charles Weeping Willows and more………

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2022 National Folk Fellowship Apply now

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PROUDLY PRESENTS “Hiatt is producing some of the best work of his career, mapping his inner life with an eloquence that most can only aspire to.” - Uncut Magazine The first collaboration between acclaimed lyricist and storyteller, John Hiatt, with dobro master, Jerry Douglas. Recorded at Nashville’s legendary RCA Studio B. Produced by Jerry Douglas

Volume No. 304 May/June 2021

UPFRONT 09 10

The Word.

HISTORY By Brian Wise.

Rhythms Sampler #12. Our Download Card! Only available to subscribers!

Michael Gudinski: (1952-2021) Vale The Road Warrior By Jeff Jenkins.

15 16 18

Vale Doug Parkinson By Ian Mc Farlane

Dear Mum Letters from a new book

Nashville Skyline By Anne McCue. Port Fairy Folk Festival Director Justin Rudge Talks

By Brian Wise.

edited by Samuel Johnson.

COVER STORY 20

GET READY TO GET DOWN

The Bamboos party their way out of lockdown. By Meg Crawford.

FEATURES 23

ROLLING BONES

Shakey Graves revisits his debut album. By Denise Hylands.

24 STRINGING ALONG

JOHN HIATT WITH THE JERRY DOUGLAS BAND LEFTOVER FEELINGS 21-MAY

Liz Stringer’s new album should be her breakthrough. By Brian Wise.

“The record was made as a band, the five Wallflowers. It’s just exciting to have guys playing in a room together. That’s how you get the one plus one equals three factor. That’s the magic.” - Jacob Dylan

GRASS BURNS

Family Jordan offer humid and cosmic country and folk. By Chris Familton.

THE CALL OF HOME

Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi record another album. By Brian Wise.

THE WILDE ONES

BLONDE ON THE ROAD

Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes’ ‘near misses.’ By Denise Hylands.

Emma Swift follows her acclaimed album of Dylan covers with a tour. By Megan Gnad.

POP ACID TEST 34 THE Pearl Charles captures the spirit of another era. By Bernard Zuel. AHEAD 37 LOOKING Lockdown inspired Rhianna Fibbins’s first solo project. By Steve Bell.

First Wallflowers album in nearly a decade. Features new single, “Roots and Wings.” Produced by Butch Walker and featuring singer/songwriter, Shelby Lynne, on four tracks

Ed Kuepper and Jim White team up for the first time. By Martin Jones.

TWISTED FOLK

COUNTRY GOLD

The Weeping Willows’ latest single is a Gothic tale of one man’s sins. By Chris Lambie. Is Melissa Carper a bluegrass Billie Holiday? By Denise Hylands.

STRANDED EXPANDED

Clinton Walker’s book on Australian indie music gets a makeover. By Kerrie Hickin.

FROM STRANDED

FALLEN ANGEL

Clinton Walker reveals his own efforts on stage. In his memoir Some Memories Never Die, Jeff Lang recalls Chris Whitley.

LET THEM CANCEL 64 NEVER The day Michael Gudinski convinced the Stones to postpone. By Stuart Coupe.

EDEN 65 HOLLYWOOD Michael Goldberg reviews Joel Selvin’s new book on the birth of LA. Rock.

COLUMNS

70 Musician: Michael Fix. By Nick Charles. 1/3 Revelations: The Everly Brothers, Felice and 71 33 Boudleaux Bryant. By Martin Jones. 72 Lost In The Shuffle: By Keith Glass. 73 You Won’t Hear This On Radio: By Trevor J. Leeden. Is Where The Action Is. 74 Underwater By Christopher Hollow. Around To Die: 1971: The Folk Evolution. 75 Waitin’ By Chris Familton.

76 Twang! Americana Roundup. By Denise Hylands.

REVIEWS 77

FEATURE ALBUM REVIEWS: Justin Bernasconi, Fraternity, Katie Brianna, Jimbo Mathus, Western Distributors, Esther Rose, John Smith, Krishna Jones.

88 GENERAL ALBUMS 91 Blues: By Al Hensley. 92 World Music & Folk: By Tony Hillier. 93 Jazz: By Tony Hillier. 94 Jazz 2: By Des Cowley. 95 Vinyl: By Steve Bell. Without Getting Killed or Caught. 96 Film: Brian Wise talks to director Tamara Saviano. 95

Books 1. The Authorized Biography of Robert Wyatt. By Des Cowley.

Tana Douglas, the world’s first female roadie has written a memoir. By Stuart Coupe.

Books Too! Books from Tracey Thorn and Barry Divola. By Stuart Coupe.

OPENING DOORS

Hello & Goodbye By Sue Barrett.

LOUD!

THE WALLFLOWERS Exit Wounds 9-July

BEING THERE

THE CONTINENTAL CAFÉ REMEMBERED 44 Ian McFarlane recalls the legendary venue 20 years after its closure.

The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn creates more great anthems. By Brian Wise.

G N OU Y L ed i NEI n de E WON’T B >> The lyrics tell a version of Young’s story. Growing up in Canada, his father leaving when he was a young boy, beat up at school, dreams of stardom, leaving Canada for Hollywood, courted by “business men” who came to hear “the golden sound.” The key verse is the fifth one, especially coming as it did after the success of Harvest. Neil Young writing to himself, writing to his dead friend, writing to every wannabe rock star. “Well, all that glitters isn’t gold/ I guess you’ve heard the story told/ But I’m a pauper in a naked disguise/ A millionaire through a CREDITS business man’s eyes/ Oh friend of mine/ Don’t be denied.” Managing Editor: Brian Wise And the chorus, which at times during the tour he would scream: Senior Contributor: Martin Jones “Don’t be denied/ Don’t be denied/ Don’t be denied /No no, don’t Senior Contributors: Michael Goldberg / Stuart Coupe be denied.” Design & Layout: Sally Syle - Sally’s Studio On this version however, he reprieves the fourth verse, the one Website/Online Wise about businessManagement: men coming toRobert hear the “golden sound.” Proofreading: Gerald McNamara On a tour where Young was challenging his audience with an album’s worth of new material, perhaps with this song he was CONTRIBUTORS insisting one has to follow their vision, no matter the cost. JenCertainly, Anderson he was saying there’s moreAltoHensley life than money – “‘Don’t Be Denied’ has a lot Tony Hillier Suesomething Barrett he certainly knew by then. to do with Danny, I think,” Young told McDonough. “…I think that’s Christopher Hollow Steve Bell the first major life-and-death event that really affected Denise Hylands me in what Nick Charles I was trying to do… you kinda reassess yourself as to what you’re Jeff Jenkins John Cornell doing – because you realize that life is so impermanent. So, you Martin Jones Des Cowley wanna do the best you can while you’re here, to say whatever the Chris Lambie Stuart Coupe fuck it is you wanna say. Express yourself.” Trevor J. Leeden Meg Crawford Michael Goldberg, a former Rolling Stone Senior Writer and Warwick McFadyen Brett Leigh Dicks founder of the original Addicted To Noise online magazine, is Ian McFarlane Chris Familton author of three rock & roll novels including 2016’s Untitled. Anne McCue (Nashville) Samuel J. Fell Billy Pinnell Keith Glass Michael Smith Megan Gnad Michael Goldberg (San Francisco) Bernard Zuel

CONTACTS Advertising: bookings@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

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

THE NEW

RHYTHMS

STUART COUPE PRESENTS

THE SOUND OF SEMI YOUNG AND SUPER PASSIONATE INDIE AUSTRALIA

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NATALIE D-NAPOLEON Introducing her first collection of new songs in eight years, You Wanted To Be The Shore But Instead You Were The Sea sees Natalie D-Napoleon exploring the multi-dimensional complexities of women. Written on the front porch of her 100-year-old Californian cottage and recorded in an old chapel just outside of Santa Barbara, the album reached #1 on the AIR 100% Independent Albums Chart and was voted in the Top 10 Australian albums for 2020 by Rhythms Magazine readers. With its contrasting tone and temperament, the album delivers some of Natalie’s most vulnerable and defiant work to date. Available via: nataliednapoleon.net

PAULA PUNCH New single from singer-songwriter Paula Punch, WE FALL APART is out in May. Paula’s style of folk/rock/alt-country has been well received with her last single FULL MOON RISING reaching No 4 on AMRAP Metro charts and on Australian Country Radio. Her new album “Song To The Trees” comes out in July 2021 with a launch at Django at Camelot on July 15 and she plans to follow up with a mini tour to regional and metro venues. Preorder her album via her website www.paulapunchmusic.com.

MIGUEL RIOS Miguel is a story-telling guitarist, always giving space in his songs to powerful lyrics that speak of closed doors, magic men, replica pistols and the cold spaces that no fire can warm. Slaughterhouse Road has a pared-down grittiness, rich hypnotic timbre and heartbreakingly beautiful interludes of violin and mandolin by collaborators Ash Jones and Matt Stonehouse. Recorded during the Capricorn eclipse full moon July 2020. “We said we wanted that full moon madness and we certainly got all of that,” says Miguel. “It rained, stormed actually. The dog howled outside, but we kept playing and we got it all.” Available at: miguelriosmusic.com

THE WESTERN DISTRIBUTORS “Andrew Travers has always had that special spark as a songwriter, and it shines brightly on this album”. Off in The Distance (Independent) will satisfy your country music needs that only a band as original as The Western Distributors can provide. 7 Solid band members provide the real deal with a 12 track CD “that draws you in and makes it hard to pick highlights”. Jon Wolfe (Capital News.) Happening Thang fans will remember well the fabulous harmonies of Travers and “Miss Cathy” and with this second offering from The Western Distributors it just gets better. This analogue recording at Electric Avenue Studios Sydney captures their sophisticated live sound of which they’re famous. Avaialble from: thewesterndistributorsband.com

STEVE BALBI Steve Balbi first cut his chops on bass with Kevin Borich at just 17 years, before founding Noiseworks (1986), Electric Hippies (1993), Universe (1996), then Move Trees and Moon in subsequent years. A composer, performer and producer, Balbi bespeaks Bowie and The Beatles in melody and verse. I Think I Know For Sure is his third solo LP, which takes us on a transatlantic journey from late ‘60s Liverpool to the streets of San Francisco. Produced by Balbi, who makes every noise on every song, with a little help from Pete Drummond on ‘Sorry’ and ‘Make It Right’, this new record peelsback yet another layer of skin for the creative chameleon. Available at: stevebalbi.com

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

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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knew it was too good to be true. Everything was running smoothly. The 6000 extra copies of Rhythms that we had printed of our March/ April Bluesfest edition had arrived at the festival site and were ready to be distributed. We had spent two nights in Byron Bay, enjoying fish and chips on the main beach, listening to the buskers on the foreshore park, swimming and relaxing in the warm weather. There had been some Covid-19 cases in Byron but those involved had gone back to Brisbane. Then we moved up the coast the day prior to the festival to some accommodation that we could actually afford during Easter. I had the Rhythms banner ready to go for our stall, had purchased an online payment gadget to take subscriptions and our helpers were lined up for the weekend. Everything was looking good. Then early on Wednesday afternoon I turned on the television news and found out that Bluesfest had been cancelled! The first reaction was shock. The authorities had apparently found just one active Covid case in Byron and had decided to cancel a festival that had an approved Covid plan and would have 16,000 people through the gates each day. Organisers, musicians, stallholders and punters were suddenly in limbo because of one person! The next reaction was acceptance. After all we had been through the whole Covid thing for a year and, in Melbourne at least, we were used to drastic action to curb the pandemic. Our thoughts went out to those who were much worse off than we were: the festival itself which stood to lose $10 million, all the musicians who had their first paying gigs for a year nixed, the many stallholders who had purchased supplies for the weekend. Then there were all the local businesses who were banking on the Easter weekend to keep them going. It was a disaster. Before last year’s festival was cancelled, we at least had an inkling and had pulled the plug on printing extra copies. But it is impossible to anticipate that a cancellation would occur less than 24 hours prior to the start of an event. We gambled on getting enough subscriptions at Bluesfest to cover the cost of giving away thousands of copies of the magazine. This time it was a losing bet. Our trip to Byron and environs lasted less than 72 hours. We had arrived Monday afternoon and were able to get a cheap flight home on Wednesday night. The risk of staying and risking quarantine was too great. As it was, we were forced to isolate and get tested (all was fine there). One of the shortest holidays we have ever had.

Still, there is a bright side. We got to enjoy the magnificent Melbourne weather over Easter and also attend a day at Boogie in Tallarook, which was a fabulous experience. Bluesfest has agreed to store the magazines until the rescheduled event, by which time they will be collectors’ items. I have also been selling copies of the March/April issue to raise funds to cover the print bill and have been really gratified by your support so far. Subscribers have been buying multiple copies to give away to friends. You can find details at our website (rhythms.com.au). We haven’t hit the panic button yet because many subscriptions are usually due between March and May and you have been very supportive. But if you haven’t resubscribed yet it would be great if you could do so now. If you are not a subscriber and have been thinking about it then this is the ideal time to do so because we have never needed your subscription more. We are gradually recovering from the Bluesfest setback and we are hoping that the event will be rescheduled for later in the year. If not, let’s hope that by the time of next year’s event we will be well over the Covid pandemic and able to enjoy the music. In the meantime, I am excited to bring you the latest edition which is as jam-packed with features as previous issues. Ian McFarlane’s feature on the 20th anniversary of the closure of the Continental Café is an epic and will bring back great memories for anyone who was lucky enough to go to a gig there. We also have excerpts from books by Jeff Lang and Clinton Walker. We are also running a chapter from Stuart Coupe’s biography of the late Michael Gudinski, who passed away suddenly on March 2. We also have Jeff Jenkins tribute to Michael, who was a giant on the Australian music scene and a frequent supporter of Rhythms magazine. It should not be forgotten that Mr Gudinski got his start promoting and releasing blues and roots acts and was involved in the Sunbury festivals. (The first releases on Mushroom Records were from Madderlake, Chain and The Dingoes). Michael will be greatly missed and never replaced. Until next month, enjoy the music. Brian Wise Editor 9

IT’S ANOTHER GREAT RHYTHMS SAMPLER!

Welcome to our hand-picked Rhythms Sampler #12 in the increasingly popular download card format. Packed with 20 great tracks from overseas and Australia to warm you up as we head into winter (unless you live north of the Tropic of Capricorn!). 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 CD with the tracks. This sampler should fit perfectly onto one CD. Or you can press your own double vinyl album (though this might be a tad expensive). If you are not a member of the Rhythms family, then you need to join to get this fabulous sampler. Please go to rhythms.com.au/subscribe and join us. 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 A

SIDE B

1. SANCTUARY

Hiss Golden Messenger Courtesy of Merge Records. From the great new album from the Grammy-nominated MC Taylor, Quietly Blowing It. Featuring Griffin and Taylor Goldsmith of Dawes, along with Anais Mitcelll as guests.

2. RED DUST

Dean Haitani From the Australian Blues Hall of Fame member, this is the title track of Dean’s latest album available at deanhaitanimusic.com

Steve Balbi From I Think I Know For Sure. Multi-talented songwriter, producer, singer and musician channels his inner psych pop. Check: stevebalbi.com

Andy McGarvie From Going About This. Melbourne-based singer and songwriter with a standout from his new album. Available at: andymcgarvie.com

4. BACK WHEN

14. LITTLE PRESSURES

Melissa Carper From Daddy’s Country Gold. Brand-new old-time songs coproduced by bassist Dennis Crouch (The Time Jumpers) and producer/engineer Andrija Tokic (Alabama Shakes, Margo Price). See feature this issue.

5. THAT’S WHY I’M HERE

Bill Jackson From The Wayside Ballads Vol 3. Third volume in the series from Melbourne songwriter. Produced by Kerryn Tolhurst. Available at: billjacksonmusic.com

6. HOW MANY TIMES

Esther Rose Courtesy of Father/daughter Records. From How Many Times. (See feature in this issue). Esther Rose’s homespun brand of country music has drawn comparisons to legends like Hank Williams and modern trailblazers like Rilo Kiley.

7. PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST AS A MIDDLE AGED MAN

Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes From Near Misses:Live. No.1 on the ARIA Australian Country Albums Chart from this Golden Guitar winning band who come from the eastern panhandle of Melbourne. (See feature in this issue). Check out: lachlanbryanandthewildes.com

8. STORY FOR THE KIDS

Arna George From the album Yes Girl. Sydney-based singer and songwriter. Album produced by Nash Chambers in Nashville.

9. FLAGS STAKED UPON THIS HILL

Justin Bernasconi B-side to the single ‘Blank Page’ and available at justinbernasconi. com. Justin has garnered acclaim in Alt-Country outfit The Stillsons and he has been called one of the country’s most interesting new acoustic guitar talents.

10.MISS THE PAIN

GO TO: rhythms.com.au/subscribe

12. TELLING SOMEONE ELSE 13. DREAM STATE

THE PINK STONES Courtesy of New West Records. From Introducing The Pink Stones. Led by Hunter Pinkston from Athens, Georgia. Produced by Henry Barbe from the Drive By Truckers.

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

11. SORRY

3. BARROOM BLUES

MAY/JUNE 2021 RHYTHMS SAMPLER #12

ANOTHER GREAT RHYTHMS SAMPLER! EXCLUSIVELY FOR RHYTHMS SUBSCRIBERS:

Steve Balbi, Justin, Bernasconi, Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes, Melissa Carper, David Garnham, Arna George, Dean Haitani, Natalie Henry, His Golden Messenger, Hussy Hicks, Bill Jackson, Lynchburg, Andy McGarvie, PJ Orr, The Pink Stones, Paula Punch, Sue Ray, Esther Rose, Helen Townsend, The Winnie Blues.

PJ Orr From a forthcoming album. Here is a new song from the talented Sydney singer and song writerand will be included on this third solo album due later this year. Check: pjorrmusic.com The Winnie Blues From: Half Wide Awake, But Dreaming. Australian-born but now Nashville-based duo. Second single from their forthcoming debut album. Check: thewinnieblues.com

15. JUST GET BETTER

Lynchburg From: How Country Do You Want It? This is a new band project from Allan Caswell and Lindsay Waddington.

16. WE FALL APART

Paula Punch From: Song To The Trees, the new and debut album from the Sydney-based singer and songwriter. Check: paulapunchmusic.com

17. THE EDGE

Hussy Hicks From: Gather Up The People. Here is the latest song from the talented and hard-working duo of Julz Parker and Leesa Gentz. Check: hussyhicks.com

18. THE LONELY ONES

Sue Ray The first song from a forthcoming new album, co-written with Sean Sennett. Check: sueraymusic.com

My checque/money order for $

is enclosed.

19. WEED, WINE & WOMEN

Natalie Henry The first song from the forthcoming album from the Newcastlebased singer and songwriter. Check: nataliehenry.com

20. WHERE ARE YOU NOW

Helen Townsend Latest song from the New EP Love Lies ’n’ Leaving from impressive Perth-based singer and songwriter. Check: helentownsend.com

David Garnham & The Reasons To Live From: Noise To Fill The Void. Latest single from Northern Territorybased band who look like truckers but sing like angels. Check out: davidgarnham.bandcamp.com 11

THE ROAD WARRIOR

Aside from singing, Michael Gudinski did just about everything in the music business. But he was most at home on the road. By Jeff Jenkins

few years back, I worked with Michael Gudinski on the foreword for the book Every Poster Tells A Story, 30 Years of the Frontier Touring Co, which gathered posters from every tour his company had promoted. “For someone who can’t play a note – and Jimmy Barnes has told me in no uncertain terms to not even sing in the shower – I’ve been blessed to have worked with so many incredible musicians,” the foreword started. Gudinski was very proud of the book, particularly when the curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in America got in touch and requested a couple of copies. But when the book was released, Gudinski was already looking to the future. “I’m looking forward to the next 30 years,” he told me. “And my son [Matt] is already contributing a lot and he’ll keep it flowing.” Despite – or perhaps because of – the high risks, Gudinski loved the touring business. “You’re not a promoter until you’ve lost a lot of money over a very short period of time,” one of his rivals noted. But Gudinski was good at it; he made more money than he lost. He brought Bruce Springsteen to Australia in 2013, 2014 and 2017, and Springsteen said he’d “never met a better promoter”. Gudinski was a firm believer in the maxim, “What goes on on the road, stays on the road.” But here are some of the highlights of his touring life, in his own words: “He’s asleep in the gutter” A mate of mine called me at five in the morning. “You’ve brought Iggy Pop to Australia, haven’t you?” “Yeah,” I replied, “but why are you ringing me at five o’clock?” “I thought you might be interested – he’s asleep in the gutter on Punt Road.” I jumped in the car and drove to Punt Road, where, sure enough, Iggy was crashed out in the gutter. It was good timing, too, because the police had just arrived. “I don’t think Bob likes me” At the first Farm Aid concert in America in 1985, I saw Bob Dylan play with Tom Petty. Bob’s then manager, Elliot Roberts, was a good mate of mine and I suggested that a Bob and Tom tour to Australia and New Zealand would be a great idea. “Sure, it’d be great,” Elliot said. “It’d be great to have them perform anywhere, Michael, but this is a charity show.”

About four months later, my phone rang about 4am. It was Elliot. “Remember that idea of putting Bob and Tom together for some shows?” It was a magical phone call. Bob said about two words to me on that tour [in 1986] and I remember sitting in a room with him and his tour manager for about half an hour. Bob went to the toilet and I said to the tour manager, “I don’t think Bob likes me.” “Believe me,” he replied, “you wouldn’t be sitting there for half an hour if he didn’t like you.” “A small price to pay” In 1998, Bob gave me one of my biggest thrills when he did a gig at my club, the Mercury Lounge, in Melbourne. He’d been using the venue as a rehearsal space and agreed to do the gig as a thank you, but he had one demand – I had to be there at six in the morning, handing out coffee and donuts to the people buying tickets. It was a small price to pay for the privilege of having Bob play at my club. “A Miles-free zone” The first two Frontier tours were The Police and Squeeze, two acts managed by Miles Copeland. Miles and his brother, Ian, had a company called Frontier Booking International, and though the companies were not aligned, they gave us permission to use the name Frontier in Australia. My main memory of that first tour was driving to see Squeeze at a leagues club in Parramatta and Miles spent the entire trip moaning and complaining. Now, most visitors love Australia, but for some reason Miles thought it was a shithole – he absolutely hated the place. All future tours were a Miles-free zone – he never came back, which was pretty handy because he could be a prickly character to deal with, but he trusted us. “That’s the last present I accept from you!” As a kid growing up in Melbourne, it was always my dream to fill the MCG. And I did – three times with Madonna in 1993. I met Madonna at the airport at 6am. Never one to miss a photo opportunity, I thought it would be a good idea to give her a present. I gave her a didgeridoo that Yothu Yindi had given me. The plan was I’d get it back off her and give her another one.

As soon as I presented the didgeridoo to her, she was putting it between her legs and making all sorts of erotic gestures. When the photo ran the next day in The Australian and USA Today, Yothu Yindi’s manager rang me. “What have you done? The elders are freaking out.” “Don’t worry,” I assured him. “I’m going to get it back.” “That’s not the point.” It turns out there are male and female didgeridoos and Madonna had offended Aboriginal lore by holding a man’s didgeridoo. I think she actually enjoyed the controversy, but when I saw her the next day, her first words to me were: “Jesus, what are you doing to me? That’s the last present I accept from you!” “I need a whore!” After one of her Sydney shows was rained out, Madonna yelled at me, “I need a whore!” A little shocked, I yelled back, “You need a what?” “I need a whore!” Thankfully, someone translated Madonna’s American accent to me – she actually needed a hall, so that her dancers could stay sharp and rehearse on their day off. And I thought I was a tough boss! “It doesn’t go down too well” A guy who did it in style, and was a bit crazy, was Billy Idol. He just caused mayhem wherever he went and it wasn’t just a publicity stunt. I’ll never forget he drove a hire car through the glass doors at the Rockman’s Regency in Melbourne. Even when you offer to pay for things like that, it doesn’t go down too well. “Don’t call him Frank” During my long-haired hippie days, I never thought I’d be working with Frank Sinatra, Liza Minnelli and Sammy Davis Jr. At that stage he was definitely Cranky Franky, but he had such an aura. On the first night, we were allowed to have dinner with him, but we were told he was “Mr Sinatra” – don’t call him Frank. Of course, in a nervous flurry, the first thing I said to him was, “Frank, I’m Michael Gudinski, your Australian promoter.” He was very competitive. On the second-last night in Sydney, Sammy Davis Jr. – who’d come to Australia so many times and was >>>

MICHAEL GUDINSKI 1952 – 2021 13

>>> the ultimate performer – just absolutely killed them; he went over so well. Even though they were mates, one of the security guys rang me and said, “Listen, you should be aware there’s talk of Frank firing up his private jet and going home.” I jumped out of bed and rang his manager, who said, “Look, don’t worry, he’s just thrown a tizz because he thought Sammy went over too well.” It really surprised me, but egos are involved, and he was an absolute legend. My father had passed away by that time. He wasn’t that hip to music and wasn’t impressed that I hadn’t become a university graduate or whatever, but that would have been the one show he would have been proud of me doing. “There’s no way this show is going to go on” The company I had before Frontier [Evans Gudinski] did a lot of the blues acts, including Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, who were legendary blues performers. In those days, I was driving them around in my own car. Sonny was blind and Brownie had a walking stick. Sonny was in the front seat, next to me,

while Brownie was in the back seat, swinging his walking stick, trying to hit him. I thought, “There’s no way this show is going to go on.” But as soon as we got to the venue, bang, they were on stage and it was as if nothing had ever happened. “Anyone could have been inside those suits” When a few of us started having kids, we decided to do some family shows. It seemed like a good idea until we picked up the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. When I went to see the show in America, I had a sinking feeling: what have we got ourselves in for? And the thing about those kids’ shows is you have to be right on the money – what’s in this month can be out next month. We probably lost more money on that than any music tour we’d done. And the ridiculous part about it was we were paying a fortune for a bunch of suits – anyone could have been inside those suits. It was a good lesson – stick to what you know. “No flight’s too long” It’s easy to go see an act in LA or New York, but an artist will always remember if you go see them in the middle of nowhere. I went to

see Aerosmith in Buffalo. It was absolutely freezing, and backstage it was pretty much just the band and me. They appreciated the effort; it showed that I was serious. “Have four naked girls in the shower waiting for me” We did Aerosmith’s first Australian tour. It was a weird vibe. We had drug counsellors, we had to clear every mini bar, and no staff could drink backstage. Mötley Crüe was a similar situation: one tour was party time, the next was alcohol-free. There were a lot of traps you could fall into on the road. Anyway, the final night of the Aerosmith tour was at the Perth Entertainment Centre. Steve Tyler came up to me and said, “Look, Michael, if you can have four naked girls in the shower waiting for me when I come off stage, I’ll do an extra two encores for you tonight.” Sure enough, he did live up to his bargain and do the two encores. “Mr Gudinski, can you please ask the girls to go and get dressed?” On one Bon Jovi tour, they wanted to re-enact the old “Riot House”, which was the name for the infamous Hyatt Hotel on the Sunset Strip. We spent five days at the newly opened Mirage Resort in Port Douglas. Thank God the plane strike was on at the time, so the hotel was virtually empty. I remember the first night we walked into dinner, the hotel manager walked up to me and said, “Mr Gudinski, can you please ask the girls to go and get dressed?” “No backstage rider” More than 400,000 people went to see Titanic: The Artefact Exhibition. It’s one of the most popular museum exhibitions ever. And I loved it. I’d always been interested in the Titanic, and this was one tour where there was no backchat, no chance of the artist getting sick, and no backstage rider. “They’re sick of performing them” In 2007, we brought Steely Dan to Australia for the first time. The shows were great and they’re incredible musicians, but they refused to play their biggest hits, ‘Rikki Don’t Lose That Number’ and ‘Reelin’ In The Years’. I confronted their manager, who told me, “They’re sick of performing them.” “I don’t give a stuff,” I replied. “It’s their first time in Australia, so the crowd has never seen them.” Unfortunately, that was one battle I didn’t win. “Do you think it’d be okay if I donated some money?” On Black Saturday, I was in Perth with Leonard Cohen. On the way back to Melbourne, I told him that the fires were about a mile from where he’d played the previous weekend. He said, “Do you think it’d be okay if I donated some money?” His generosity [$200,000] triggered something inside me … Sound Relief [at the MCG in 2009] is probably the proudest moment of my promoting career. Hunters and Collectors was the first band to say yes, and Midnight Oil and Split Enz also re-formed. It was a very emotional day.

R.I.P. DOUG PARKINSON 1946-2021 One of the great blue-eyed soul voices of Australian music, the venerable Doug Parkinson has died at the age of 74. By Ian McFarlane

When asked to list the best Australian vocalists of the rock and pop era, many local music fanatics would nominate the late, great DOUG PARKINSON near the top. Indeed, he was recognised as one of the country’s most distinctive and respected musical mainstays. He conveyed considerable charisma with his imposing presence, Lucifer beard and gruff, raspy voice. He also surrounded himself with mature, seasoned musicians who added to his appeal. Yet while he never stopped working or recording, Parkinson only scored six hit singles during his lengthy career. Not being recognised for his own song writing, he was a master interpreter of other people’s songs. Many fans would remember his version of The Beatles’ ‘Dear Prudence’ (with In Focus), or his cover of Love Affair’s ‘Everlasting Love’, or his phenomenal rendition of The Spinners’ ‘I’ll Be Around’ recorded with his Southern Star Band. If there was any doubt how significant his bands were, consider that the Southern Star Band comprised Duncan McGuire, Mark Kennedy, Frank Esler-Smith, Keith Kerwin and guitar virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel. Focusing on some of his other recordings, it was in 1967 with The Questions (including McGuire and guitarist Billy Green) that he issued the psychedelic pop classics ‘Sally Go ’Round the Roses’, ‘Hey! Gyp (Dig the Slowness)’ and ‘And Things Unsaid’. Doug Parkinson In Focus was a wildly experimental band at the time, featuring McGuire, Green and Johnny Dick predominantly but also the likes of Doug Lavery, Mick Rogers, Les Stacpool and Mark Kennedy within its ranks. The band took out Australia’s premier pop prize as first place getters in the 1969 Hoadley’s National Battle of the Sounds final.

In addition to doing covers of ‘Dear Prudence’ and ‘Hair’, Billy Green was the band’s songwriter so his songs ‘I Had A Dream’, ‘This Must Be the End’, ‘Without You’, ‘Then I Run’, ‘Baby Blue Eyes’, ‘Today (I Feel No Pain)’, ‘Caroline’ and ‘Pour Out All You’ve Got’ were the perfect vehicles for Parko’s stentorian vocal roar. When Green scored the soundtrack for Sandy Harbutt’s 1974 cult Oz biker film Stone, he got him to sing ‘Cosmic Flash’ and ‘Do Not Go Gentle’ (based on the Dylan Thomas poem ‘Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night’). Parkinson recorded one album with Vince Melouney’s band Fanny Adams in London. While the band was frustratingly ill-fated and short-lived, their self-titled album (1971) was a minor classic of heavy-duty blues rock, featuring several knock-out tracks in ‘Ain’t No Loving Left’, ‘Got to Get A Message to You’ and ‘Mid Morning Madness’. A lesser-known part of his career during the ’70s was when he formed The Life Organisation to play 1940s-styled big band jazz. The Life Organisation released versions of ‘In the Mood’, ‘Boogie Woogie’, ‘American Patrol’, ‘Pink Steamroller’ and ‘Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Show’. Of his solo singles, he released versions of Kevin Borich’s ‘Sweet Rock and Roll’, Ray Burton’s ‘Love Gun’, Vanda and Young’s ‘Love Is Like A Cloudy Day’, The Walker Brothers’ ‘The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore’ (a duet with Broderick Smith) and Steve Kipner’s ‘Better Keep Your Hands Off (My Potential New Girlfriend)’. His album discography comprised No Regrets (1973), I’ll Be Around (with The Southern Star Band, 1979), Heartbeat to Heartbeat (1983, which featured one of his rare songs, co-written with

Keith Kerwin, the hard rocking ‘Gonna Shake It’), Reflections (1986), the compilation In and Out of Focus 1966-75 (1996) and Somewhere After Midnight (2005). The last named included the likes of ‘Windmills of Your Mind’, ‘My Love’, ‘If You Go Away (Ne Me Quitte Pas)’ and ‘The Moon’s A Harsh Mistress’. Probably the most significant development in his career was when he embraced musical theatre. He’d made an early appearance in English producer Lou Reizner’s Australian stage production of The Who’s Tommy (March 1973) alongside Billy Thorpe, Daryl Braithwaite, Colleen Hewett, Wendy Saddington, Broderick Smith, Bobby Bright, Ross Wilson, Linda George, Jim Keays and Keith Moon. In 1983 he took on the role of Herod in the revived stage production of Jesus Christ Superstar. His subsequent work included roles with the stage productions Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Hunting of The Snark and as the Big Bopper in the very successful Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. His latter-day touring commitments often saw him sharing stages with the likes of Wendy Matthews and Glenn Shorrock. One of his last recording sessions was contributing his version of Greg Quill’s ‘Always to The Light’ to the Kerryn Tolhurst-produced album Some Lonesome Picker the Greg Quill Tribute (2016). Doug Parkinson was due to take part in the Fraternity 50th Anniversary Celebration Concert in Adelaide (18th March) – the performers paid tribute on the night – when he passed away on the 15th. He is survived by his wife Suzie (who he’d met during his days with The Questions) and sons Daniel and John. 15

the booth and sing them in one take and we’d have a song done, start to finish, in a few hours. There were days where no one showed up and me and Jesse had to multitrack everything to a drum machine. You never knew what you were gonna get; you never knew how deeply disappointing or deeply enchanting any given session was going to be…“ “One of the blessings of tracking with these guys was watching them blossom. Unbeknownst to me they can all play piano, and sing. Turns out Justin, the drummer, is the best vocal arranger in the group, Q the bassist is the best synth/aux guy and can whoop on the piano, Aaron the piano player is good enough to be a front man and have his own project, Pierce the guitar player has the best voice in the group. Turns out all I’m really good for is writing songs, and bringing people more talented than me together. Until we made this record I thought everyone had a lane. Now I don’t know who to stick where. Everybody came out of their shell in a beautiful way…”

ANNE MCCUE

’m beginning to suspect that Charlie Treat is the real deal. I’ve known him for a few years now and I’ve seen him grow into his own authentic self - not an easy task given today’s distracting information overload. He is a poet, a journalist and a song writer, beautiful both on the outside and the inside, human to the core. His first full length album, The Comet, has just been released and I asked him to tell me about it. “I remember the weekend after the tornado we came in and knocked out half the record in a day. The tornado swooped in with its mortality, urgency, and vulnerability and gave us that feeling that’s become familiar for Nashville: “you’re about to lose your city, better get this done.” ”Jesse Thompson [the producer] invests all of himself - emotionally, spiritually, artistically - into his records. He’s able to release me from earthy folkiness and bring me into a different dimension, or at least out of the coal mine…” “We tracked all but two songs live as a band. For some songs we were in separate rooms. For some of the early takes we were all in one room bleeding into each other’s microphones, laughing, yelling out chord changes. I chose to use my live band this time. They’re supremely talented, and they’re not country cats or even listen to Americana at all. I’m the only one in the group who even owns a cowboy hat. Justin Turner (drums) and Q White (bass) are gospel guys. They’ve been playing in church together for 20 years and also play hip hop, funk, soul, neo-soul, groove. Aaron Marefka (piano) is a rock and roll Jesus. Pierce Dukes (guitar) is the ice cube that softens our too loud, too strong cocktail; he loves pop - John Mayer, JJ Cale. Jesse loves tempo, and beauty. I’m a folky who was listening to a lot of dream pop and WXNA. These were the influences that went into the record…”

“Pandemic was a blessing for us. Great musicians that would normally be on the road were kicking around Nashville hungry to do something, music, anything.”

“There was lots of spontaneity to be had - the blessing of having the ‘band’ as opposed to hired guns. There was lots to smoke and drink and laugh about, but there was no clock. Jesse was part of the band. If we caught a lick or someone was on one there was no one telling us to stop.

When it felt right we kept on going… You get a barroom band that can’t walk straight one minute and a suit and tie the next…” “There were days we showed up and the guys would spontaneously record a track, I’d write lyrics to it on the couch, get in

“Larry Hanson (Alabama, Righteous Brothers) owns the studio, loved the project and if he was tinkering around the studio, and he was, every day, he would start adding expertly crafted parts onto the songs. He did the horn arrangements on I Ain’t Gonna Be The One To Do It and Biggest Fool On Earth. He also did slide work, piano work, Wurli. All for free. It was truly like an angel would appear, in gigantic button up shirts and white sneakers, and grace your track with a lifetime of expertise you never knew it needed.” “Amber Woodhouse and Amanda Broadway were around. Both powerhouses, they added huge church house background vocals on half the record and Amber played saxophone on ‘Soul Owner of My Own Heart’ “On Drink With Me, Jesse came up with the chords for that whole middle part and I said “okay, I’m gonna preach over that and have the male and female argue there but instead of words it will be harmonica.” That’s where a lot of that modal stuff came from. Jesse didn’t want run of the mill Americana shit, and the second it bordered on that he would steer the ship hard into the wind…” “I probably brush shoulders with a more varied cast of characters, music circles and

genres than the average musician. And yet I don’t feel adopted by any one of them. And I don’t say that begrudgingly. At this point I’m sort of sick of it all and in total shock and awe of it all, at the same time. I dream of going to an alien planet and hearing a sound totally unique to no place on earth. With new instruments, scales, melodies, tunings, phrasings, perhaps something we can’t even conceive of, like a color not on our spectrum. Yet in some ways listening to Charley Patton or Jimmie Rodgers already does that.” www.charlietreat.com

By Brian Wise

PORT FAIRY RETURNS

MUM’S THE WORD

Edited by Samuel Johnson, Dear Mum is an honest, moving, emotionally memorable collection of letters to their mothers from some of Australia’s most notable notables. As you got older I made sure I would do your shopping and have dinner with you at least once a week – we really got on exceedingly well. I miss you, and think about you so much – before you passed I sat with you and told you how much you had done, and how grateful I was. I could have gone in many directions, but you encouraged me to travel my road; as you said, ‘Destiny chooses one for each of us.’ - Russell Russell Morris AM: singer–songwriter, guitarist and ARIA Hall of Fame inductee (‘The Real Thing’)

Justin Rudge

Justin Rudge, director of legendary Port Fairy Folk Festival plans ahead for 2022.

One of the groups that will be new to Port Fairy audiences is Elephant Sessions from Scotland which Rudge says might be “probably the most controversial of my choices.” “They’re kind of a dance band at a folk festival,” he adds, “and when I say dance, I mean beats and loops and that kind of stuff, but with incredible Scottish traditions behind it. So, it’s fiddles and mandolin and all of those traditional Celtic influences. I aimed at a really young audience and I’ve seen them a couple of places around the world and I can’t wait to stand in the Shebeen Bar on Friday night and see the reaction. I think they’ll be really good.”

By Brian Wise

he cancellation of your event would have to be any festival director’s worst nightmare. So, there must have been a lot of directors out there who have had nightmares over the past year. But to be appointed to the director’s job and have to cancel your very first festival before you have even had a chance to settle into the job, well that has to be your very worst nightmare of all. But that is what happened to Justin Rudge last year. With years of experience behind him as a musician, manager and venue booker Justin ended up with his dream job mid-last year in the midst of the pandemic hit only to have to cancel the 2021 event. All this while he was living in Madrid! “We relocated to Spain in July 2019, and I was working with a number of Australian artists over here,” he explains. “I’m working on some festivals over here and everything was going well until the bang moment we all experienced in March in 2020. Then in May, I was fortunate enough to get my dream job in the music industry just as the program director at Port Fairy and have been working remotely on it ever since - and waiting for our time when we’re considered as important as tennis players to get back to Australia, I guess, surprise. So, we’ll keep trying.”

Dear Mum

But to try and show the breadth of the festival with 10 artists is a bit difficult, but I’ve done my best.”

“It’s been pretty full on,” adds Rudge. “But the team down there are wonderful both the very small staff and the contractors and obviously the volunteer committee that puts it all together. But, obviously, I am very much looking forward to getting back to Australia.” “When it comes to the artistic side of things, I have been traveling around the world for the last probably five or six years on with some regularity,” says Rudge when I ask him about his vision for Port Fairy. “I’m really looking forward to bringing some new artists, including a couple in this first lineup, that perhaps some people aren’t aware of. I think the festival has been incredibly successful for 44 years and, certainly, just want to do what we can to continue that trend.” Of course, it’s always a huge bill down at Port Fairy - a few favourites who are returning and new ones as well – and the first round of ten artists has already been announced. “We have booked a range of things this time,” says Rudge. “It’s really difficult when you’ve got a program of over a hundred artists, as we normally would down at Port Fairy. Certainly, what we’re aiming for in 2022 is a full festival.

“Another new one certainly for Port Fairy, and I think Australia, is John Boden,” he continues, “who is a singer from a wonderful British folk act called Bellowhead who had toured Australia about 10 years ago. John is a fantastic fellow and a great musician. So pretty excited about that one. But it’s certainly coming together really strongly, which is really, really exciting.” Tickets for the 2022 event are on sale now and it’s going to be a COVID safe festival, as every event will have to be. “We’ve got a number of plans in place, as you might imagine,” explains Rudge, who adds that there were some small theatre shows in the town in early March, on the weekend the festival would have taken place. “So, we’re learning very quickly about all the COVID safe requirements. We’ll ramp up as we see regulations change, hopefully. In a perfect world, I think by March next year, are we at full capacity. I would really love to think so, but we’ll have to wait and see.” Details of the Port Fairy line-up and ticket sales can be found at: portfairyfolkfestival.com

Dear Mum

Memories fade over thirty years the sound of your voice becomes lost in the din the light in your eyes when you smiled grows dim and the precise expressions of praise and love, difficult to recall. Thankfully, beyond sound, image and word, lies feeling So I close my eyes and you are here as near as my next heartbeat. Graeme Connors: songwriter, recording artist, son of Eileen Connors

Dear Mum

I wouldn’t be doing what I am doing if you weren’t the guiding force throughout my life. I was one of those kids who wasn’t much good at anything. It was almost like the Gaylord Focker scenario, from Meet the Fockers. Any minor achievement I happened to fluke was a massive triumph for you, my dear mother (along with the longsuffering relatives), to celebrate. Hell! Third in the egg and spoon race – ‘Isn’t he amazing?’ What this allowed me to do, and become, was extremely important for my later career. Deep down, I knew I hadn’t achieved much at all. However, I did know I wouldn’t be admonished for failure – I would only be encouraged to try, because what I had achieved by coming second last in the 50-metre freestyle was astounding, as you convincingly pointed out. I really didn’t fear failure, as I had failed, and was lauded for my efforts – it was all about trying. You were always frighteningly loyal to me, and most times I was wrong; you would stand by me – a mother’s unconditional love.

‘I wish the fairies would come and clean this house.’I swore I’d never say that when I became a mother because seriously ‘fairies’? … We knew you were referring to us kids who needed to ‘pull our weight’. You love an old expression and when sitting down to write this letter, I thought of the times you’ve gotten us through situations both good and bad with a quote from the vault. Our shared middle name is from an old saying, ‘Sugar for Joy’, but the first one I can remember hearing was: ‘You’re a cat, you only come around for hugs when you want them.’ I’m allergic to cats so I never understood it, but as a mother faced with the devastating reality of my boys leaving me, I too have uttered that exact proverb. They didn’t get it either. Growing up, all naughty deeds that a young Amber Joy committed were met with, ‘A little birdie told me …’ I never looked at birds the same way again. Their betrayal was always at the forefront of my mind, not knowing at the time, it was your cover-up for a dibber dobber. Later, I learnt ‘Blood is thicker than water’ after leaving in a trail of dust with my ‘one true love’ that ended with a bawling phone call to you, and me being back in my childhood bed. Right again Mum with, ‘Darling, leopards don’t change their spots’ and ‘Only a mother knows.’ My favourite: ‘If you marry for money, you’ll earn every cent.’ Duly noted and completely safe. First date memories (with my now husband) was in a mate’s borrowed BMW and a debt to his sister for $2000. If I was to ‘earn every cent’, I pretty much had him paid off in the first few weeks. Thanks A strong work ethic was instilled in part by your encouragement to ‘Keep the wolves from the door’ so that we’d never know the heartache of ‘When money walks out the door, love flies out the window.’ Truthfully, I never understood this, due to the fact that it was never delivered the same way: love was flying out of windows and money was walking in and out of doors and poverty wasn’t even sure whether it was required in the saying anymore. For the record Mum, the old proverb is, ‘When poverty comes in at the door, love flies out the window’, and now I get it. We’d all like to leave this world with a legacy and this Mum could be yours. It’s your ‘tried and true’ gift to the family, and something special we can turn to when we’re going through our own ‘trouble and strife’. I’ve just returned home from my country music life on the road to a very messy house and I fought the words as they left my mouth, ‘I wish the fairies would come and clean this house …’ Love, Amber Joy Amber Joy Poulton: Top 10 Australian country music charts singer–songwriter 19

The Bamboos party their way out of lockdown with their much-anticipated 10th studio album, Hard Up. By Meg Crawford

elbourne’s premier funksters, the Bamboos, turned 20 last year during lockdown, putting the kibosh on celebrations. Happily, they’re making up for it with their forthcoming album Hard Up. Thankfully, the album was basically in the can prior to the lockdown, having been recorded

GET READY TO GET DOWN!

over a week at a big old country property, replete with a barn in Lancefield, in the heart of Victoria’s Macedon Ranges. The band had been kicking around the idea of recording in that vein for years, but finally got around to it only with Hard Up. “It’s one of those cliches, maybe, but you read the stories about the Stones doing it – many, many artists have done it over the years,” says Bamboos’ founder Lance Ferguson. “The idea is attractive. You’re all there together, with a common goal in mind, and there’re no distractions. We were doing

that thing of doing takes in the middle of the night. You just set it up, everything was there, and if the inspiration takes you, you could rush into the room. You just don’t get to do that very often. Everyone’s got their families and lives, and it was just really nice to be able to do it. Look, it was only a week mind you, but you can get a lot done in a week.” Being out on a rural property also gave the band plenty of space to sprawl out – the horn players took over the barn, the rhythm section was in the house, the guitar tracking was in the bedroom, while funk/soul powerhouse Kylie Auldist was writing lyrics outside under a tree. And loving it. Although, not without some initial trepidation.

“I’m the only girl and I’m a mum and I have to run my own household and do loads of stuff,” she says. “I was thinking, ‘what’s gonna happen here? It’s gonna be so annoying. There’s only one toilet and it’s gonna be too many boys, and it’s gonna be grotty’.”

Instead, it was kind of idyllic. “It was lovely,” Auldist chortles. “Being a bit of a diva and hating camping and all that sort of stuff, I was like, ‘I’m probably gonna have a tantrum and totally lose it. But I didn’t at all, and it was just awesome. I’ve toured with these guys for 20 years, they’re like my brothers. Everybody’s so good at getting along together – making space for each other. I would just get a chair and go sit under a tree, and then Lance would go, ‘I’m approaching now’. I was like, ‘okay, that’s fine’. At one point, I said, ‘maybe I should just go home for a bit and so some housework?’. “I rang my family and said, ‘do you want me to come home and do some cooking?’. Instead, they were like, ‘no, we’re fine’. I said

to someone, ‘what should I do?’. The answer was, ‘go get a beer, and go and sit under the tree, and write some music’. ‘Oh, ok’. That’s all anybody needed from me. Nothing was expected of me other than to just write music. It was the most amazing feeling and I loved it and we got so much done.” Curiously, one of the songs that followed was the title track, ‘Hard Up’. Written pre-Covid, the song considers the precarious position of artists and musicians and does not pull any punches. “It was coincidental, but we wrote that song from a certain thematic standpoint, not knowing that people from every walk of life, but a lot of musicians especially were about to be thrown into a

really difficult scenario and not be able to perform,” Ferguson reflects. “So, it was strangely prophetic in that way.” “With the song ‘Hard Up’ I wrote, ‘what’ve we got to give to you?’,” Auldist muses of the environment from which young artists are required to emerge. “Nothing. We’ve had to work so hard for nothing. It was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. COVID happened, and the job that I thought I had, which was a pretend job anyway, was over. Like, who makes money from singing? That’s a dream, a made-up thing that I actually made happen, and then all of a sudden – that’s over. It was like, I’d written my own life. What was I thinking?” Another stand-out feature of ‘Hard Up’ is its film clip, which was filmed in the midst of lockdown. “The director was sort of a one-person film crew, literally filming people through the windows of their houses,” recalls Ferguson. “I loved the way that video turned out and it does capture a real time, but it was out of necessity.” That the album was in the bag, also meant that Ferguson had a project to tinker with for the duration of lockdown. “I like to impose deadlines on myself,” Ferguson backtracks. “I can’t even work if there’s no deadline. I’m just that sort of person – I’ll flounder >>>

THE ROLLING BONES

Shakey Graves revisits his debut album and his hobo folk days. By Denise Hylands

>>> around aimlessly and knuckle down and do it all at the last minute. That’s just my MO, but anyway, I aimed for the album to be mastered by Christmas Eve 2019, and I did that. It was all done in the can ready to go for 2020. I was going to take a break, come back, and it’d be all done. But then the release date was set for about the April, May mark. So, there was actually a bit of time. “I started to listen to the album and given that the real deadline was blown out on, I went back and meddled with it. I took it apart and was like, ‘because I’ve got the time, let’s raise the bar a little bit.” Plus, it gave Ferguson the opportunity to incorporate another few songs with guest vocalists contributing remotely during the lockdown, including Sydney soul vocalist Ev Jones from Jones Jnr. on ‘While You Sleep’, Durand Jones of Durand Jones and the Indications on ‘If Not Now (Then When)’, and LA-based Joey Dosik on ‘It’s All Gonna Be Ok’. “They were the only ones that have male guest vocals on them, because I wanted to stay out of Kylie’s way for the rest of the album,” notes Ferguson. Which makes sense, because Auldist is a goddamn dynamo. Why would you get in her way? Take for example, one of the jewels in the Hard Up crown, ‘Power Without Greed’ – a hard-hitting exploration of wealth, power, poverty and protest. “We’ve never been a political band but you get a bit older…,” 22

Auldist ponders. “That song was written just before lockdown and since then the wheels have only come off the world more. It’s exposed that everybody in power is simply taking the piss. “Before we could at least pretend that it wasn’t about money. But Trump ripped that Bandaid off and it’s like, ‘no, it’s absolutely about money’. I’m like, ‘oh that’s disappointing’. I didn’t really want to know what was behind the curtain. You know, like that whole Wizard of Oz thing where it’s just a guy behind the curtain trying to make money. So, with the song, we were reflecting that it’d be nice to go back to some sort of ideal where humans actually cared about the world and cared about each other.” The album’s not all doom and gloom by any stretch, though. For instance, especially for people of a certain vintage, there’s the surprise thrill of the Bamboo’s take on the Italo-disco classic, ‘Ride On Time’. Who would have thought it? Even Ferguson marvels. “It’s funny, because when we recorded that it was kind of an afterthought. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a joke, but it happened late at night when we were away. We were like, ‘what if we just tried this?’. It was done in the name of fun, and I think it sounds like that. Once we did it and record labels and management heard it, they were like, ‘this is going to be one of the key songs’ and we’re like, ‘Okay…’.”

More recently, the Bamboos launched themselves out of lockdown in fine style, starting with a weekend of shows backed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. “It had been literally a year between shows for us – to the day in fact,” explains Ferguson. “There were a lot of people who hadn’t been out in Melbourne yet and we found ourselves all together under one roof again. The feels were rolling.” Between lockdown and the MSO gigs, Ferguson’s also had an opportunity to reflect on what floats his boat. Previously, he’d been quoted as saying that making records was his favourite bag. He feels differently now. “You know, I love both things. I love playing live and I love making records, but after the year we’ve had, and how I felt after those MSO gigs, and also how I felt during that year when I couldn’t play, I realised how important playing live was to me. Because I’ve really missed it so much. I make records and write songs and blah blah blah. But at the end of the day, I did start out as a guitarist and it just makes me feel alive to play guitar. I wouldn’t want to live in a world where I couldn’t play live and I wouldn’t want to just only do the studio stuff. It’s a balance, but it’s that thing of being able to connect with other human beings. For me, that’s where it’s at.” Hard Up is available through Pacific Theatre / BMG.

lejandro Rose Garcia aka Shakey Graves reflects and explores the beginnings of his hobo folk days in the reissue of his debut album, Roll The Bones X as a deluxe double album. “Well, 2020 was bittersweet,” says Rose Garcia when I ask what the past year was like for him. “I had been touring a lot for a really long time. So, in some ways I felt like I hadn’t really stopped moving since 2013 or 14 or so. So, this honestly was a much-needed break, kind of an overly dramatic one, so to speak. I had wished for things to just kind of stop. And then I was like, “Well, I didn’t mean exactly like this”. I love creating stuff in my own house. That’s how I got my start. So, it’s been kind of a return to innocence, back to the basics.” “I feel happily changed,” he continues. “I mean, it can be really exciting to have your kind of daily worth be represented by playing in front of people, but it’s kind of a double-edged sword because then it’s like, if nobody’s cheering, are you doing anything? You know what I mean? And so, it was great to step away from that and be like, ‘What am I talking about? That’s crazy talk.’ So, yeah, it was great. It was like a reset, kind of a re-analysis of everything. Talking about back to basics, he has just reissued a special edition of the debut album Roll The Bones, originally released 10 years ago. Was that something that came from his time spent at home? “Yeah, absolutely,” he agrees. “I mean, I think I had plenty of time to think. I’d fantasised about doing a really honest, re-release. At the time that I made my first record, I shot a lot of film and photos. And I took a lot of notes. I have all these journals and diaries that were full of like ‘One day, maybe I’ll play in front of a big audience and blah, blah, blah.’ And I had old prototype drawings of my suitcase drum. I had never really consolidated all that stuff. I thought, “It’d be super cool to build a really nice piece out of it”. And then finally it was like, ‘Well, I mean, I don’t have a new album on my hands yet and it’s going to be 10 years. So, why not?’” Roll The Bones has been a very successful album considering it was released exclusively to Bandcamp for ‘name your price – so, literally

free - and it’s gone on to sell over 100,000 copies. It’s been like a secret little gem just waiting to be discovered. “The more that I could make it feel like some sort of secret,” explains Rose Garcia, “or if you’re out on the internet and just kind of scratching around and you came across this record, I wanted it to feel sort of like a mysterious thing. It’s like, ‘Oh, how have I never heard of this?’ Then I sort of wanted that word of mouth to be the way that it spread. “And so, still for years, I’d have people be like, “I can’t find any versions of this record. It just doesn’t exist.” And it’s like, in reality it just doesn’t exist on iTunes or whatever, but it’s like, all you have to do was just look a little bit further. So, I think anyone who bought it also had to go scratch around for it and go that extra step, which I think makes people have a more personal reaction to it. I think it’s time for it to live its larger life, however it wants to, and people can listen to it, however they choose. Roll The Bones X, the 10th anniversary reissue has been released as a double album and for the first time it’s available on CD, vinyl and other digital platforms. As well as the original album it comes with the bonus of the Odds & Ends album. “So, to dive even deeper into the archives, I had to go and find like early prototypes of songs that are actually on the record. And I poured through a big thing of cassette tapes that I had and had to bust out my old four-track. And so yeah, it’s got just like little baby versions of all sorts of stuff and some strange live recordings. “I tried to give you an example of what it would have sounded like if I made you a mix tape of what I was working on around 2009. It’s kind of what it would have sounded like.” Should we be looking forward to anything new from him soon? It’s been a little while. “I’m working on a new record that I’m hoping to get out. I’m hoping to try and put it out this year. It’s big and I’m really, really proud of it and been working on it real hard. And if I can get my ducks in a row, then hopefully you’ll see something else from me before the year is done.” Roll The Bones X is available now through Cooking Vinyl Australia. 23

eeing Liz Stringer on stage with Midnight Oil on the Makarrata Project at this year’s Womadelaide you knew something had changed in her life. Looking relaxed and happy, playing and singing with energy, this tour was kicking off what should be the best year in Stringer’s acclaimed career with a new album and new record label behind it. First Time Really Feeling is not only Stringer’s most accomplished recording to date but it is the record that should see her gain a new prominence on the Australian music scene. The tour last year as part of the Dyson Stringer Cloher trio (we saw them at Womadelaide too) was not only highly acclaimed but also helped raise their profiles. Now, Stringer is ready to strike out on her own. This year in Adelaide Stringer found herself with one of the nation’s highest profile bands. “It was awesome,” says Stringer when I ask her what it was like to tour with the Oils. Leah Flanagan joined her for backing vocals and Stringer played acoustic guitar. “For that to be the return to touring after basically a year off was pretty extraordinary. It’s just like the dream job really. The band, they were

so welcoming and supportive and all of the collaborators. It was just such an amazing experience.” “My name was put forward with a list of other singers for the backing vocal job with Leah Flanagan,” explains Stringer when I ask how she came to join the tour. “I don’t think I was necessarily their first choice, but I think the fact that I play guitar got me over the line a little bit and a couple of people couldn’t do it. Leah and I have been best mates essentially for many years, so we’ve worked together and sung together a lot. I think they wanted to have two singers that were familiar with each other and had worked together.” It seemed to me after seeing The Makarrata Project that it might be the most important thing that Midnight Oil has ever done. “What I find really extraordinary about them,” adds Stringer, “and really inspiring as a person as well as a musician, is that they’ve been dedicating their life to activism and to representing communities and the environment for decades, and quite relentlessly. This is another chapter in that. I think it’s inspiring.”

It is not Stringer’s first brush with well-known musicians. A few years ago she met Bonnie Raitt on tour who confessed to being a fan of her songs. “It was amazing,” recalls Stringer. It would be nice if Raitt recorded one of Stringer’s songs and there are a few on the new album that could easily be candidates. First Time Really Feeling should be the album to make Stringer a major artist, at least in this country. But the progress was not without some cost and was forged after Stringer moved to Canada and turned her life around. “Personally, I was struggling and in my career. I had no management, I had no money,” explains Stringer. “I had no team to speak of at all. I was really approaching what became a bit of a crisis point as far as how I was feeling about my music career and where I was as a person. I made the record and then I knew instinctively ... I just thought, ‘Look, unless I can release this record with a really strong team and feeling great about it, I’m not going to put myself through the ordeal of releasing it now.’ “I remember saying to a couple of close friends like, ‘I’m really proud of this album, but at this point I think I’m done. I don’t think

STRINGER THEORY

Having toured with Midnight Oil for the Makarrata Project and with a great new album, Liz Stringer has a new lease of life and is set for her biggest year yet. By Brian Wise

I want to put it out. I think maybe I’m just a session musician or I’ve got to do something else.’ It just felt so exhausting and so traumatic to put out the album. Then things gradually turned around. I had a period of really needing to concentrate on my own mental health and my own recovery.” It was then that Stringer teamed up with Milk! Records which is also home to Jen Cloher and Courtney Barnett, who founded the label together in 2012. “Now I find myself with amazing management on Milk! Records and with amazing publicists and agents and this team that’s so supportive and so my people. Now it’s the right time, but for many years it didn’t feel like it was. I couldn’t face it. I’m really stoked that they’re on board because they’re a great bunch of people.” The new album is quite a personal statement - even the title, First Time Really Feeling, indicates this – and some of the songs are quite confessional. Was it difficult to write about her life in this way? (This is usually where many songwriters will tell you that the songs are not about them).

“Well, no, although I guess I find it hard to extricate how difficult that time was anyway, from how difficult it was to write the songs,” admits Stringer. “It’s just, all of those songs I think are part of a process of transformation, and when there’s such a profound transformation, it’s often very painful. It gets

“I was really approaching what became a bit of a crisis point as far as how I was feeling about my music career and where I was as a person.”

harder before it gets easier. I think no doubt that writing those songs was part of a way to process some of what was happening in me internally and also tracing my life and my behavior and my approach to life. “That can be painful, but also I reached a point of being a lot more compassionate to myself. For me, my depression, which I’ve dealt with since I was a teenager - or not dealt with, depending on how you look at it - has manifested in incredibly vicious self-talk. My depression voice was incredibly self-deprecating and self-attacking. That’s really eased over the last few years and that’s through facing it and working on stuff that had really been building over many years, a couple of decades really. This album is part of the reckoning with that voice and just being really honest with myself. I think that my heavy drinking and partying and all that, was just a way to protect myself from some of that stuff that felt very scary, and indeed is scary, but ultimately leads to a much freer life.” Stringer has talked quite openly about the fact that she has been recovering from alcoholism, an illness that a lot of people still do not understand. “I’m very careful to speak from my own perspective, so I’ll do that,” she says. “I think in a way that I was lucky that my issue was something like drinking because it became so destructive that I was really reaching a point where it was going to get frighteningly bad if I didn’t stop. What that does is it was such an obvious marker that I wasn’t okay that it forced me to do something about it. If I hadn’t come to that crisis point, I would still be on the same path of trying to cobble together ways to live that potentially aren’t very healthy, if that makes sense. My mother, she’s a teacher and a youth worker and very empathetic woman. I think that I’ve inherited that from her, so that was always there. I then look at everyone else with even more empathy. I understand that it’s not easy and it’s disproportionately not easy for people. I guess we all face or don’t face our demons in different ways. I think that having to stop drinking has forced an issue on me that I’m actually very grateful for.” >>> 25

>>> Stringer agrees that First Time Really Feeling is her best album to date, or at least the recording with which she is happiest. “By quite a long margin, I think, and in several ways,” she notes. “One is I think that my writing took a very sharp turn in its development as far as being able to write a lot more personally. Also, this is the first album really that I feel like my sonic palette has been realised. I was really lucky to work with Chris Stringer [no relation] on this because I just think a combination of him understanding where I was coming from, but also I think that he comes from a similar place. “So, it was really the lushness and denseness of it that something that I’ve always heard but haven’t really felt like I’ve ever achieved in an album until this one.” Producer Chris Stringer is based in Toronto where the new album was recorded three years ago. It was about to be released last year and then had to be put on hold. After Stringer moved to Toronto she was introduced to Stringer through a mutual friend. “He was very keen to make the record,” says Stringer of her producer. “In fact, he convinced me to. I was going to do it somewhere else, and he was quite adamant about wanting to do it because I just think that he saw a kindred musical person in the way that I write songs and the way that I play guitar as well. “I went in with him. I didn’t know him well. It’s such a gamble in a way because you’re working so closely with someone and trusting them with very personal material, but we clicked, not necessarily straightaway, but a few days into it I think we just realised like, ‘Oh no, we’re onto a good thing.’ He put the band together - including Adrian Cook, who plays keys, Devon Henderson on bass and Joshua Van Tassel on drums. They’re a rhythm section that Chris has worked with a lot and they’re everywhere in Toronto. They’re like the go-to guys and they’re amazing, all three of them. Then I spent days in there just with Chris overdubbing guitars mostly. I play all the guitar on the record and so it took a while to because there’s lots of layering and lots of little parts. That took a few days, and Chris and I became really close during that period. We did 90% of the record in the first two weeks and then 10% over the next 10 months essentially. Chris and his wife have become very close friends and he’s very invested. I could feel his investment in the record from early on and that helped me a lot, I think.” The songs on First Time Really Feeling are not only confessional in terms of the demons that Stringer has defeated but also include her observations about her background and her life in general. 26

‘My History’ is, by Stringer’s own admission, very autobiographical. “Particularly that one. ‘My History is really a kind of verbatim autobiographical,” she agrees. “It picks out moments or scenes from my life since I was a teenager ‘till I guess my mid-20s and in a way charts the start of my relationship with needing to escape and to alleviate some of the pain that in my case stems from my mother’s death when I was 14. That song’s interesting because we were doing studio sessions in Toronto already, and I wrote it very quickly and took it in to Chris and said, ‘I’ve got this idea. I don’t know if it’s any good.’ We tracked it and Chris loved it straight away. It really spoke to him personally, even though some of the references in that song are very Australian, like saying stuff like doona, jumper. I don’t know. He really related to it. I knew then that this is one of those songs that I’m talking about that was speaking so directly. It was a straight line from me out of me, as opposed to these thoughts having to navigate all of the caveats that self-protection had put in place earlier.” There are the songs ‘Big City’ and ‘Victoria’ – the former related to moving to Toronto and the latter about her home state. “It’s really similar,” agrees Stringer when I mention that Melbourne and Toronto are very similar. (In fact, they both have trams). “That song is actually about a friend of mine who grew up in Perth but ended up moving to New York City. It’s inspired by her story, but also there are definitely parallels between that and my moving to Toronto and being in a new place, which was really important for me to emancipate myself from some of my own history at that point.” “It was nevertheless I would say quite a lonely experience,” she adds about the move, “because I was learning how to live without being a drinker, which is a very different experience. Not really knowing how to connect with people. I’d lived overseas before and obviously I travel a lot as a musician and that was how I met people. I’d drink with them and that’s how I would bond with them. So, with that removed and dealing with quite serious depression at the time, it was quite isolating. I self-isolated more than anything else, but I did meet some great people, including Chris and the band and then Chris became a really important friend through those couple of years.” ‘Victoria’ is an ode to a place that is rapidly changing. Its capital city is almost unrecognizable from our childhood years. “Particularly in the last five and then the last two years, it’s just gone absolutely nuts,” says Stringer. “I think that song is a combination of grieving some of what I would consider to be the older Melbourne, but also grieving my own when I stopped drinking. I had to engage with the city really differently. For a while when I wrote that, I think I was railing against how much everything was changing. I was like this 90-year-old 35-year-old, but I now

realise I think I’ve gotten with the program. It’s like, ‘Oh, well, this is changing. This is what happens’.” ‘Dangerous,’ on the other hand, is Stringer’s recounting of a tale told to her by a young couple she met in Toronto after inviting audience members to share their stories. “Well, it was a story that was told to me. I think when I first stopped drinking, I would talk about having done that on stage because I was just trying to normalise it for myself. What it did do is it encouraged people to come and talk to me about their own experiences in recovery from alcohol or addiction and also the experiences of their family and their loved ones. “Those conversations became really important to me and really bolstering and really supportive. This couple just told me this extraordinary story, and what struck me about it, and what strikes me every time about these kinds of stories, is just the ability of humans to turn things around and the resilience of people, and also the loyalty that people can feel. “Ultimately, and as I say in the song, it’s like, things are fucking hard. Life’s hard. We inherit difficulties from our own bloodlines and from the way that we grow up and so many different factors. It’s not always just as simple as you were saying before, saying like, ‘Oh, just stop drinking and pull yourself together.’ It requires so much strength and ability and support from other people often to really get through it. This couple were just an amazing example of that.” ‘The Things That I Now Know’ takes a wider view of Stringer’s history. “When I was into my 20s I started touring and started engaging with different communities around the country and learning way more about First Nations Australia. This song is an attempt to try and articulate the conflict that I feel as a migrant Australian. That my family came here from parts of Europe for a better life and the consequences of that for First Nations Australians.” First Time Really Feeling is available now via Milk! Records.

THE NEW ALBUM OUT 25 JUNE

SEEDS

SOWING THE OF SONGS

Family Jordan continue to refine their cosmic country and folk sound on their fourth album, Big Grass.

ollowing in the footsteps of Americana trailblazers The Band, Family Jordan named their new album after the house in which its songs were written, in the beautiful surrounds of Bangalow in the Northern Rivers region of NSW. Jordan Rochfort, the band’s songwriter, settled down in the area after spending time living across a number of Australian states. “I’m about twenty minutes outside of Byron Bay. I’ve been here full-time for five or six years now. I was at Tamborine Mountain in the Gold Coast hinterland when I was at high school and then moved to Brisbane when I was 17. I moved around quite a bit, down to Melbourne for a while, before I came back here.” Big Grass is a record drenched in laidback country and folk rock. Tellingly they even cover the master of languid roots music, J.J. Cale. One might think that the natural environment around the band plays a key role in their sound but Rochfort discounts that theory. “We record everything in a home studio so there’s really no time pressure or pressure of any kind really. I think it’s more of 28

FAMILY JORDAN

BIG GRASS

By Chris Familton that environment and not so much the rural or hinterland factor,” he explains. “I think I would have still made the record whether I was living here or in the middle of Melbourne. The subject matter would remain the same. Just because we live in a rural area doesn’t mean we feel compelled to use acoustic instruments or play country style music, we would have done that anyway.” There’s a wonderful stylistic blend that permeates the music on Big Grass. Bob Dylan, Kevin Morby, Devendra Banhart and John Prine (who the album is dedicated to) come to mind and on songs such as ‘Let Me In’ and ‘Sally’ they take an even more direct dive into straight country music. “Country music has always been my #1 listening go-to but because of that I never really wanted to fully go down that path. I felt I had to step away from my major influences but still keep them close enough to be true to them” says Rochfort. “On Big Grass I felt like maybe I needed to step a little bit closer on some of the songs. That wasn’t as painful as maybe I thought it would be,” he laughs.

Rochfort was something of a latecomer to music in general, it didn’t play much of a role in his world until his late teens. “I didn’t start playing music or really liking music until I left home when I was 17. That was when I started playing guitar. I mostly just wrote when I was younger and did visual arts stuff,” he recalls. “I found music quite distracting. I liked peace and quiet when I was a teenager.” “I think I was writing a lot and must have picked up a guitar at some point and it was around the time I first heard a Dylan record and thought I could probably do something like that,” explains Rochfort. Once he got the music bug it set him on the journey that has become Family Jordan and any initial shyness and reticence was replaced with creativity and a bounty of sublime songs. “Writing intuitively is definitely the best way. I’m most satisfied when it comes quickly,” says Rochfort, adding “I feel much more relaxed writing and releasing songs now. There’s really no thematic intentions other than making it better than the last one.”

Holiday Maker Records Based in the Northern Rivers of NSW, this is Family Jordan’s fourth album, representing their finest work to date. They deal in country and folk music but not necessarily the traditional or singular forms of those genres. There’s a languid liquidity to the way they’ve absorbed cosmic and indie sensibilities into their sound, making Big Grass a real highlight of local releases so far in 2021. Jordan Rochfort’s songwriting sees him drawing on relationships and friendships with a sensitivity and poetic insight that adds a new perspective to the traditional subject matter of love lost and found. They begin the album with the instrumental ‘Adios’ and it sets the scene like an opening panoramic shot of a film, a perfect sonic sister to the album’s lush artwork. There’s a faithful cover of J.J. Cale’s ‘Crying Eyes’ and the album is dedicated to John Prine. Those two artists give a sense of the framework of Big Grass’ sound and Rochfort’s creative aspiration and songwriting benchmarks. ‘Stillness’ and ‘Song For Alex’ are both highlights of the album while ‘Sally’ and ‘Let Me In’ find the band hitting straighter country sounds with wonderful results. The light psychedelia and modern sensibilities ensure there’s little retro nostalgia going on. Instead, Family Jordan posit themselves as fellow travellers in the vein of Devendra Banhart and Kevin Morby – making exquisite, thoughtful and timeless music. CHRIS FAMILTON

HEAVY DREAMS

THE LUKE SINCLAIR SET

OUT NOW

t was a busy couple of years for Rhiannon Giddens prior to 2020. When she was here last March with Francesco Turrisi on their tour for their first collaboration, There Is No Other, I recall asking her whether she ever got to have a holiday. The previous two years had been hectic. Winning a prestigious Macarthur Fellowship had enabled her to concentrate on her work and she made good use of her time. Amongst the many activities was the first album with Francesco plus one with Our Native Daughters, along with an appearance in Ken Russell’s Country series, an opera for the Spoleto Festival, an opera podcast, and a recording of Nick Drake’s ‘Black Eyed Dog.’ Giddens also won the Inaugural Legacy of Americana Award at the 2019 Americana Honors & Awards. After an appearance at Port Fairy and Womadelaide. Giddens and Turrisi headed to the Melbourne Recital Centre where we saw them give a splendid showcase of all their musical influences. The next day their tour was cut short and they headed back to their home in Ireland – Giddens an expat American and Turrisi from Italy. So, it is apt that the new album, They’re Calling Me Home, explores the meaning of home and of life through the prisms of both of their cultural upbringings. “I don’t really know how to stop,” laughs Giddens on the phone from County Kerry. “I just stopped traveling, which was helpful and kind of realised I’ve been living in jet lag land for the last five or six years. So, it’s been nice to not have jet lag, but yes, I’ve been busy I have to say. We just kind of pivoted and kept going. So, it’s a privilege to be able to, because I’m at a point in my career where I can expand to books and podcasts and things like that, that it’s not dependent on live performance.” “That was actually in the works before the pandemic,” responds Giddens when I ask her about recording the Nick Drake song with Ben Harper. “It was always a socially distanced recording because he just sent me the track and I just recorded my part here. Then it came out during the pandemic, so it fit quite nicely. It’s so hard to know what to do as an artist and sometimes you just have to follow the way that the universe kind of shapes life for you. And that was definitely just the timing of it and everything just it came out like right at the right time, I think. “But that was really cool, a very cool experience. I’d love it if we can get in the same room at some point and make music together because he’s a really cool dude.” I mention that Harper told me that he would like to record an album with her at some stage. “I’m like, ‘Anytime, anytime’,” she says. “I think that would be amazing actually.” Giddens has explored the origins of American folk music and is now casting her gaze more widely to where some of what she studied in the past originated. They’re 30

THE CALL OF HOME Rhiannon Giddens and Francesco Turrisi release their second collaborations. By Brian Wise

Calling Me Home is a very diverse album in its inspirations. “It really reaches far back,” agrees Giddens, “and just sort of [explores] my feelings about being a North Carolinian - feelings about being a southerner. Some of those songs are the first ones that I learned as I started to explore this tradition, the old-time tradition, and they’ve been ones that I would never have thought about recording because they’re just part of my kind of musical DNA. So, I just felt like the right thing. It wasn’t like we just said out of the blue, ‘Let’s make a record and let’s start picking songs.’ We’d been doing these streams and pre-records for streams that were out of our time zone because being in Ireland and most of the streams coming from the States, there’s a five-hour difference and it was difficult. So, we would pre-record some, and we just found it very hard to do songs that we’d last done at the Melbourne Recital Hall for a whole bunch of people and that’s a different energy. It was very hard to do these songs for a little green dot in a computer screen. So, we started doing new things, or new arrangements of old songs and the songs that were coming to me were these songs. They were the ones that really wanted to be sung and the Italian ones from Francesco’s point of view. So, when we decided to just go into the studio and make something. These are the things that were in our hands and sort of voices.” For the title track they chose ‘Calling Me Home’ by Alice Gerrard, now 85, and who played with Hazel Dickens and was married to Mike Seeger (younger brother of Pete). “She’s amazing. Talk about third act!” exclaims Giddens. “She’s just a real force of nature and somebody who’s really important in the Bluegrass Americana world because she and Hazel Dickens were out there in the front at the beginning of all this and not allowing the boys’ club thing to take over. They just created this amazing sound and were an important voice for women in the region, in the music, and kind of really forged a path for women after them. So, the fact that she’s still going strong and still writing songs, she’s in her 80s, I think, it’s just remarkable and she’s just remarkable. So, I’m delighted to get to talk about Alice Gerrard as part of this album cycle because she’s great.” Has Giddens had any reaction from Gerrard to the recording her song? “I did send it,” she adds. “I sent before it was mastered or anything, I sent it to her

through a mutual friend of ours and she said she loved it. She was like, ‘What’s that drone thing? What’s going on in there?’ She really liked the sound of it and I told her it was an accordion. So, yes, it was cool to know that she approved because the way she does it acapella with the harmony. We took a different tack, but I think it works.” Recorded in a studio located on a farm in Limerick, the album features a few more musicians than its predecessor but still sounds sparse. “It’s a working farm, so it’s a studio on a working farm,” explains Giddens. “So, you pull up and it’s near enough to Dublin, but it’s still kind of in the middle of obviously a green space because it’s a farm. But you pull up and there’s cows and hay bales. You go through a door and there it is. It’s just beautiful, very simple stone room and a console. So that’s where we did it. “It really felt like it was very suited to this record because this record is very kind of internal and emotional and it’s a space that’s really supportive for that. It was just really no frills as well. We brought food, we made soup and homemade bread every day and brought it in and shared it with the engineer, Ben. “It was a real homegrown kind of thing. It’s really nice actually to be able to do that. It’s not like I’m Beyonce or anything and my records are super fancy but we would [normally] even have a producer and we’d have a runner and we’d have all of these things. You sometimes treat your recording like you’re supposed to be taken care of and you’re in this little fragile world. I don’t know, there was something about just doing it all ourselves that was really grounding. I wouldn’t want to do it for every record following this, but it was great to do this time and to just kind of go, ‘We’re just making something.’ There’s no thought of label. There’s no thought of what it’s going to be. It’s just going to go in there and just pure active creation because we’re slowly going nuts doing these streams. We really need to make something. That’s what we did.” Giddens adds that she and Turrisi hadn’t planned to make a new album together so soon after their debut and, in fact, she was scheduled to make a solo album with Joe Henry in California. “We even tried another version with a couple of friends from Europe maybe and that didn’t work,” says Giddens. “So, we just said, ‘We’re just going to do even more of what we did

last time. We’re just going to focus even more and do these songs that have been comforting us, really, in the past month. “So, Francesco obviously does his multiinstrumentalist thing and he’s playing accordion and chitarra battente, which is an Italian four string guitar and this cello banjo that I bought from the estate of Mike Seeger. I knew Mike and it’s just a beautiful 1920s Gibson cello banjo that Francesco plays like a lute. The way that Mike had it strung and everything just really gives it a special sound. So, that’s for a lot of the record is him doing that.” (Turrisi also gets to make his singing debut on ‘Nenna Nenna,’ a traditional lullaby from Puglia, Italy, which he used to sing to his daughter when she was a baby).

They also enlisted two guest musicians. Niwel Tsumbu is from the Congo and has been living in Ireland for a long time, playing nylon string guitar. (He actually gets the song ‘Niwel Goes To Town’ named after him). “It’s just very beautiful, unique,” says Giddens of Niwel’s playing. “t’s his style but obviously you can hear the sort of African guitar feel in there and I just hear different instruments coming out of that thing. I don’t know how he does it.” Emer Mayock a traditional Irish player who plays whistles and flute, and Irish flute and small pipes. “So, it was kind of like the traditional Ireland and then the new Ireland all together,” explains Giddens, “because Ireland has

been a place of immigration rather than just emigration. So, people have been coming into the country and changing the face of it and I think that’s beautiful. So, it’s nice that it’s all kind of represented together.” I feel like I should have heard some of these songs on the famous Harry Smith Anthology of American Folk Music but Giddens explains that some of them come from North Carolina and the Old Time community around that area. “So, for me, they’re kind of like the furniture,” she says. “They’re just around and that’s one of the reasons why they suggested themselves because they’re just such a firm part of the fabric of North Carolina for me.” They’re Calling Me Home is available now through Nonesuch Records. 31

THE

WILDE ONES

BLONDE ON THE ROAD Emma Swift returns to Australia on the heels of her acclaimed album of Dylan interpretations. By Megan Gnad

Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes scoured the archives to put together an album of ‘near misses.’ By Denise Hylands

elbourne based Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes have just clocked in 10 years of being a band. The year 2020 didn’t quite work out for them as planned but in that time they had they reminisced through live recordings to create their new album Nearest Misses Live. “This year’s been pretty good,” says Lachlan Bryan when asked how 2021 is going so far. “Everything’s coming back to life. I was definitely working at a much slower pace last year, and I was quite enjoying that. I felt like I had time to do everything I needed to do. Probably had too much time. I had six weeks to do things, which should only take me a couple of days. But this year, it’s the opposite. Getting back on the road, playing gigs, releasing records and doing a bunch of other projects. I’m kind of rushed, which is a feeling that I used to be really used to, and now I’m not. Bryan had a big 2020 planned with UK and European tours and then everything was put on hold. “We were going to Canada, as well,” he explains. “When we first found out about COVID, we thought, ‘Oh, okay. Our trip overseas in May is probably in danger.’ That got cancelled. And then it was our July trip, that got cancelled. Same with September. A lot of dates got moved to this May, and then they obviously got cancelled as well. That really changed things, and like a lot of musicians, I was sitting around not knowing what to do. We’re always planning stuff, like records, tours, or festivals. And all of a sudden, just not knowing, came back into play. That feeling is something I’d never had before. Every time I actually get to do something, I really appreciate it now.” So, 2020 turned out to be a time for a little reflection and a time to delve into the archives of recordings of Lachlan Bryan and the Wildes? “That’s what we ended up doing,” responds Wilde. “And that kind of came out of a place of depression, really. I, particularly, was just trying to dig myself out of feeling so lost and hopeless. The last thing you want to do when you feel bad is listen to old desk tapes, because it can make you feel a lot worse. “We had been religiously recording stuff for a while, and we listened back, and thought, ‘You know, if we actually mixed these, it might start to sound good.’ And we whittled 32

it down from probably six or seven recordings of each song, and quite a few songs that didn’t make the final cut. We ended up with a live record that, we felt really nostalgic doing, because when we were putting it together, we were like, ‘Are we actually going to ever get to do this again?’ Thankfully, we are, but it really didn’t feel like that at the time. In many ways the record’s already served its purpose for me, because it got me out of a bad kind of spot. Most of these recordings are from a certain period of time of the band’s performing time. 2019. It’s kind of put a lid on a bunch of songs that we were playing for years; songs that were kind of always tied to the live set. I did end up writing quite a bit in 2020, and recorded a bunch of new stuff, as well. So, this has kind of put a cap on being a band for a decade. Just being a little band that do a bit of touring and have a few people that really care about the songs. And this kind of wraps it up kind of nicely.” So, somebody had suggested that it was about time, in a decade of Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes, to put a ‘Best Of’ album out but the title doesn’t quite reflect that. “Well someone said, ‘Oh, you should do a greatest hits’,” recalls Wilde. “And I was like,

well, you got to have hits to do a greatest hits. How can we call it the best of? I was just being a smart arse, and I was like, “alright, you know what? Greatest Hits, Nearest Misses?” These are the songs that maybe could have been hits. So, that’s why we went with that title, which is obviously a bit tongue in cheek, but a few people have worked out what I meant. Near Misses, Live by Lachlan Bryan & The Wildes is available now.

ashville-based singer-songwriter Emma Swift returns to Australia in June to perform songs from her album, ‘Blonde on the Tracks’. Produced by Wilco’s Patrick Sansone, the album - a reimagining of some of her favourite Bob Dylan tunes - was released last year on her own label, Tiny Ghost Records. In what will be her first trip home to Australia in more than two years, Swift will perform songs from the critically acclaimed album at intimate venues in Melbourne, Thirroul, Sydney, Perth and Brisbane. Ahead of the upcoming tour, she spoke with Rhythms Magazine about the recording process, her love for Dylan’s music, and how she plans to celebrate his upcoming 80th birthday. Given the album came out in 2020, was it all worked on and produced during lockdown? What was this process like? For the most part, this album was recorded prior to the pandemic. I wasn’t even sure if it would be released, I just wanted to experiment with some Dylan songs in the studio. We recorded six songs over two days at Magnetic Sound, a vibey two room studio in East Nashville. The players are all friends and wonderful people and more importantly perhaps, Bob Dylan freaks. The studio owner, Jon Little collects Dylan memorabilia, so there were loads of fun old magazines to read in between takes. The atmosphere was very casual and easy going. In the studio I prefer to capture a vibe than dictate a sound I’m imagining in my head. Robyn Hitchcock and I played the songs once through for the band, so they had an idea of the feel and then we went from there. After the songs were captured, producer Patrick Sansone took the tracks home and worked his magic on them. He’s a bit of a Paul McCartney figure and enjoys adding keyboards and synths and extra guitars and percussion. I then spent about five days retracking the vocals, getting inside the songs, finessing and deliberating and driving myself a little bit insane. I’m not a “one and done” singer. The human voice is an incredibly mutable instrument and different songs will come out differently for me depending on my mood, the weather, whether or not I was at the pub the night before. Sometimes a hangover is good for texture or hitting the

low notes. Sometimes it’s better to live clean for a while to get a more honeyed sound. What inspired this covers album? I read that you wanted to reimagine some of your favourite Bob Dylan tunes? I made this album because I was depressed and I had writer’s block. Recording Bob Dylan songs was a chance to step outside of my own head and my own neuroses for a while and try someone else’s songs and psyche on for size. When I get low, it’s difficult for me to get out of bed, let alone write my own songs. So, I used the Dylan songbook as an audio Prozac, if you like. I’m not depressed at the moment, but as anyone who has ever had severe depression will tell you, you never know when the next wave is going to crash. What is it about Dylan’s writing that speaks to you? Why is he so important to you as an artist? The poetics of desire and longing, the magpie’s eye for shimmering details, the postmodern playfulness, the nod and the wink, the relentless beauty, the meanspirited barbs, the tragi-comic romances. These are a few of My Favourite Dylan Things. What did you learn about his songwriting by immersing yourself in these tunes? I learned to show up and worry about the consequences later. How did you narrow down which tracks you wanted to include? I just went with what felt right at the time. I’m a very impulse driven person and I run on instinct and intuition. I picked songs that resonated with where I was at emotionally and spiritually. What was it like working with Patrick Sansone (Wilco) on this album? What did he bring to the record as producer?

Patrick is a bright guy and very talented multi-instrumentalist. He brought talent and class and respect for the songs to the project. He’s good at texture and layers and he understood my sonic references: The Byrds, Cowboy Junkies, Marianne Faithfull and so on. The reaction to the album has been amazing. What has the fan feedback been like? I’ve been so delighted with the love the album has received from all over the world. A part of me was quite frightened about putting the songs out there, but the response has been truly wonderful. How will you be celebrating Dylan’s upcoming 80th birthday? It’s great to hear you’ll be heading back to Australia! I will be celebrating Dylan’s 80th birthday from a quarantine hotel in Australia! I’ll probably listen to ‘Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands’ a couple of times, have a whiskey and then jump online to celebrate with other Dylan nerds. A national tour to perform your album Blonde on the Tracks’ sounds like the perfect chance to pay tribute and bring this album to life. What can fans expect? The Australian tour is really exciting and will be the global premiere of live performances from this record. I am being backed by a phenomenally talented band, with Darren Middleton from Powderfinger as the band leader, and we’re planning a really special theatre show. Fans can expect to hear the songs from the album, but also some favourites from the Dylan songbook and some rare gems. Requests are welcome and encouraged, so if you’re reading this please get in touch! Emma Swift’s Blonde On The Tracks Australian Tour is scheduled for June 2021. Check emmaswift.com

Pearl Charles’ second album captures the spirit of another era. By Bernard Zuel

longside the smooth, sometimes glistening feel of Pearl Charles’ second album, Magic Mirror – a record which doesn’t just evoke the spirit of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, it wraps it in denim and silk scarves and feeds it coq au vin – there’s an earthiness that reminds you these are real people, with flaws and needs and quirks, playing it. After drafting some quality session musicians for her 2018 album, Sleepless Dreamer, the native Los Angeleno drafted her live band who were very familiar with her stylistic reference points and influences, for Magic Mirror. “It’s been noted as one of my specialties that I’m very good at curating a band,” Charles says beaming in from her other “home”, the southern California desert fringe of Joshua Tree. “Even down to curating a boyfriend who also gets it and working him into the project.” It was producer, and occasional cowriter, Lewis Pesacov, with whom she had been planning this album for some time, who convinced her to shift from studio specialists to what you might call Charles specialists, including boyfriend Michael Rault. “I always say I kind of locked them into a van for the last two years and just got to play them my favourite stuff,” says Charles, who is as much a fan of British easy groove duo Marshall Hain as Abba, as comfortable referencing any period Fleetwood Mac as she is Gram Parsons. “I don’t say I’m a control freak [but] I was the one who was playing the music, who liked to drive. I’m the tour mom. So, whether they liked it or not, they listened to my stuff … I had to fully immerse them in the world of Pearl Charles.” You gotta like someone who says I don’t want to say I’m a control freak, and explains exactly how they are a control freak. Charles laughs at this truth, but thankfully is not in any way embarrassed. Name one successful artist with a clear idea of what she or he wants who does not take control. Any? Exactly. “I have a very clear vision and that’s taken years of development. When I made my first record my vision was very different and I wasn’t as well thought-through as an artist. I’ve had some experience under my belt. But I would really say curation is one of my specialties: to be able to find the right people and then set them free,” says Charles. “Even though I am in control of creating the universe, once I put them all together, they are such great players and producers and everything that I let them do their thing with

the knowledge of what I want. And the magic happens.” At this point it should be acknowledged that Charles could almost be said to have curated herself, or at the very least is in many ways the profile writer’s dream, with a store of quotable tales up her sleeves before we even get to the songwriting and the recording. There’s the country singer/songwriter at whose house she smoked pot (and then being caught, having to give up the musical theatre group she was in); growing up in the Hollywood Hills with parents in the film industry; starting her Joshua Tree experience in the house owned by the first native American Playboy bunny; an avowed fondness for lysergics; did I mention musical theatre and a past performing at the Edinburgh Fringe? The suspicion is that if Charles wasn’t real, some school of journalism would have had to create her as an academic exercise/teaching example. The truth is they’re all real stories, beginning with the country songwriter. “I have kept the name to myself, but if someone asked me I would have told them,” says Charles. “It was Mac Davis.” Yep, the man who wrote ‘In The Ghetto’, ‘Don’t Cry Daddy’ and ‘A Little Less Conversation’ (all hits for another southern boy, Elvis Presley) and hits of own like ‘Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me’ and It’s ‘Hard To Be Humble’. (For trivia fans, bonus points for knowing that Davis had a US hit with a song written by Australian Kevin Johnson, ‘Rock N Roll I Gave You All the Best Years Of My Life’). Davis died only last year and it was his death that had her discovering his music properly. “I wasn’t into that kind of music at the time [that she was imbibing in his house] so I was like, yeah Mac Davis that’s this kid’s dad, whatever.” The small twist in the tale now though is that Davis’ 1971 solo song ‘Baby Don’t Get Hooked On Me’ (which got to #2 in Australia, and #1 in the USA) is exactly the kind of smooth, just groovy enough, made for denim, ‘70s pop that is one of the key flavours on Charles’ album. Added to the fact that even if Davis wasn’t himself indulging, you just know that in the 1970s someone was toking on a doobie listening to that song on AM radio and smiling beatifically. “It’s really funny because the song obviously is about not wanting to settle down in a relationship and at the time [she visited]

he had a much younger wife,” Charles remembers. “You could tell he had a whole life before this wife: the life that he didn’t settle down in, and then it was like, I’ll settle down but with a much younger wife and have kids.” The bigger twist in this tale is that it’s possible to think that if she hadn’t been caught smoking, and lost privileges, she may well have ended up as a musical theatre writer or performer rather than the pop/ country singer-songwriter she has become. “It’s very easy to attribute it to that moment, and there’s no way to know otherwise,” she says with a benign smile. “Part of me feels like whether it was going to be that incident or another one, I probably would have ended up where I am now because I think that was my ultimate calling. All that being said, I still say to this day, if I was offered to be in Mama Mia on Broadway, I would do it. It would be the ultimate convergence of all my favourite things.” Spreading things a little further, the fact that musical theatre and lysergics are two key parts of her life is more interesting when you realise that her lyrics and music don’t disappear into either abstracts/fogginess or complexity and wordplay. Those influences may be part of who she is, but they are so well entwined with country music, Americana, Laurel Canyon songwriting, and gentle pop, that delineating influences in Magic Mirror’s songs is foolish. “My music has never been psychedelic in the ‘psych rock’ sense but it is born of psychedelics, it is about experiences that have happened on psychedelics,” she says. “I wrote Impostor on a mushroom trip, and we recorded two of the songs on the album on acid. So, it’s definitely a part of the whole process. A big part of it.” This is not just an idle, or drug fun experience for Charles. In conversation she casually makes reference to totemic books of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when alternative lifestylers, escapees from the mainstream world and regular people, looking for some kind of enlightenment, sought guidance in things such as Ram Dass’ Be Here Now, as well as in mind expanding substances. “How do I explain it? It kind of allows you to put the guard down a bit. I think it brings out stuff that is already there but really brings you into the moment,” Charles says about the chemicals. “I think they say in Be Here Now, they call [psychedelics] ‘the shortcut to that headspace’.”

“I have a very clear vision and that’s taken years of development.” “My music has never been psychedelic in the ‘psych rock’ sense but it is born of psychedelics, it is about experiences that have happened on psychedelics.” Odd as it looks now in retrospect, that trippy age feels a lot more chilled than the musical and social period which followed, when the ‘70s (and some of her other favourite albums] were being experienced in blizzards of coke and waves of bitterness. “I’ve read a lot about Laurel Canyon and I’m also into true crime, while the Manson stuff has been one of my topics of study, and I think that a lot of that can be attributed to the fact that in 1969 with Altamont and Manson, people started to get a little scared,” says Charles the student of the counter-culture. “So, this openness that had existed in the Canyon, and in San Francisco and all that, went, and the drugs started getting a bit harder, and made people a bit more paranoid. And they were right to be paranoid. It was kind of a perfect storm that did end that era.” Still, let’s not get too censorious. “Kind of the best time is the early ‘70s where you had a mingling of both. But listen,” she says, now laughing. “Rumours, wouldn’t be a record without cocaine, so we can’t take away its due.” In part two of this interview, Pearl Charles discusses losing the fear of being seen as soft and vulnerable – personally and musically. “I’m not presenting as if I have a hardened exterior, this is who I am, a little soft and a little sweet.” It turns out some of those west coast themes, and some of that west coast music, have survived decades and are thriving again, and Charles is ready to reclaim the middle of the road. >>> 35

>>> As even a cursory listen to her second album, would tell you, the trail of influences leading to Pearl Charles’ Magic Mirror winds its way through more than 50 years – for a writer not yet 30 – and several genres, from coast to coast in her native America and both sides of the Atlantic to some brief landings in Australia. We’re talking someone who starts that album with a song that is pure Abba and then finds Bacharach-ish pop, country rock and, as she confessed in part one of this interview, a lifelong love of musical theatre. “We used a lot of those references but ultimately, we are a modern band,” explains Charles. “We could have gone harder into making something that sounded more retro or throwback, but I just wanted to make something that feels kind of timeless.” There are some key touchstones though, and after we bond over a fondness for the songs of Christine McVie, Charles – also a passionate fan of Stevie Nicks and no small lover of the work of Lindsey Buckingham calls her one of her biggest influences as a songwriter. “I think that [McVie] is very straightforward and very classic. You know exactly what she is saying and somehow she makes a poetic, despite the fact that it is very clear and not cloaked in too much mystery. I connect with it so deeply, and I wanted to make something like that,” says Charles, who today is wearing an Eagles T-shirt she got from Australia. Not that she’s been here, though she insists that “I feel like I was an Australian in a past life”. If the feel of the turn of the ‘60s/’70s is the most striking element at first, the other intriguing boldness of Magic Mirror is that Charles is quite prepared to write and play softly. By that I don’t just mean quietly, or without spikiness lyrically or emotionally: lord knows we don’t have a shortage of people at the moment who think if you strip back or slow down it makes everything “meaningful”. In fact, listen closely to Charles and you’ll find doubt and darkness in many songs, on top of which her love of melody is too strong to just amble into place. No, softly here refers to being prepared to make music that is gentle and sweet and is unafraid to be seen as, well, middle of the road – reclaiming that once cursed term. While there used to be an assumption that if you aren’t in some way agitated you must be making trite, Wet Wet Wet fare, singersongwriters like Charles, Australian Joel Sarakula and UK artist Rumer are happy to say we like how the middle of the road feels and how it makes a listener feel. And irony or distance or mocking does not figure, or matter. 36

LOOKING AHEAD

The lockdown enabled Rhianna Fibbins, usually one half of the Sideshow Brides with her sister, to record a solo project. By Steve Bell

“I think that there is a generational difference. I didn’t grow up with that taboo. I mean, I kind of do because my mom, who really turned me onto a lot of the classic songwriters – Leonard Cohen, John Prine, Townes Van Zandt - she doesn’t like a lot of the same stuff that I like. She doesn’t like the Eagles, she definitely doesn’t like Fleetwood Mac, she doesn’t even really like Neil Young and she might like Linda Ronstadt,” Charles reveals. “They said this on NPR too about my record, that the first time they heard it did they didn’t want to like it because these people grew up with punk or post-punk. I didn’t have that; I just embraced it.”

Actually, not just embraced it but finding a philosophical grounding for it. She tells me about a conversation earlier in the day with the musician father of her partner, fellow musician and contributor to her new album, Michael Rault. Rault senior was marvelling at the appearance of a rose in a city footpath, wondering “how does the sweetness and softness make it through the hard world?” “And I was like, underneath the hard exterior of the world that everybody’s put up is the earth, the universal thing out of which everything grows,” says Charles. “That sweetness is in there but we as a world have tried to cover it up and stamp it out because we are scared of being vulnerable. “There is this vulnerability in being this is who I am: I’m not presenting as if I have a hardened exterior, this is who I am, a little soft and a little sweet and I think being true to myself is going to get me the furthest.” Is the world more receptive to this idea? Well, it helps that while her first album, the more country rock-leaning Sleepless Dreamer, was appealing, Magic Mirror is a significant upgrading in quality of songwriting and sound, projecting her as someone more confident and more in control. On that first record you could see the ideas brewing; here they are realised. “To be really honest, there were some energetic blocks around the last album. Some of them had to do with me, some of them had to do with the people I was working with,” Charles says. “When I look back I really did have a lot of the same ideas, the beginnings of the same ideas, and I wanted to do a similar thing. But I think I was a bit insecure, and some of the people I was working with were a bit insecure, and like I said [in part one of the interview] we used session musicians who were great players but I don’t think it was quite as personal.” Was it just experience and confidence lacking? “There was too much focus on - my therapist just gave me this quote - perfection as the enemy of the good, out of fear of being

exposed as being a fraud. Both for me as an artist and the producer I was working with specifically,” she says. “This time around, everything fell into place in a really cosmic and beautiful way. It’s still a very polished album, but it was more a mental state of mind. “I do feel like it’s more authentically me, and that’s what I feel like is going to connect with people the most.” Magic Mirror is out now on Kanine Records.

he COVID pandemic which has ravaged society for the last year largely wreaked havoc throughout the music industry, but every now and then a situation arose where the enforced spell of isolation from the rest of society led to inadvertently positive outcomes. Such is the case with Melbournebased country artist Rhianna Fibbins, who - alongside her sister Layla - usually forms one half of respected roots duo The Sideshow Brides. When the lengthy enforced lockdowns meant that they couldn’t convene to work on new music Rhianna turned her attention to a new solo project, with the first strong tracks from her debut EP From The Valley Looking Out only now seeping into the public domain. “With The Sideshow Brides we do really different stuff and my sister is the main singer there, so it’s actually been really good just to have a bit of freedom and sing my own songs,” Fibbins explains. “Plus, it’s a different creative process. You don’t have to run stuff by your co-writer so there’s more freedom in it, and I wanted to use different instrumentation. “I love fiddle-heavy songs so I would have a fiddle if I could on every single song - not that it suits every single song, but I’d still have it! So just little things like that, and just writing from a personal point of view - you don’t have to do so much checking with the other person. “And that’s in no way dissing my sister or putting down our band, it’s just really exciting to have different projects and outlets for musical expression to me they complement each other perfectly. “Although having said that, releasing music under my own name is vaguely terrifying! I didn’t realise until I was doing it because I’ve never gone out on my own before, I’ve always been playing and writing with my sister, so this was a little bit scary actually because it all comes back to me and if it doesn’t go so well you can’t blame anyone else,” she laughs. “There wasn’t that dynamic of shooting ideas around with anybody, so yeah I found it a little bit terrifying.”

For the new solo songs Fibbins scratched her fiddle itch in the best possible manner, recruiting US musician Chance McCoy formerly a member of beloved string band revivalists Old Crow Medicine Show - to add a sheen of old school authenticity to the arrangements. “A few years ago when they toured Melbourne Chance found us on Instagram - we were already huge Old Crow fans because we’d just released a song by The Sideshow Brides and he commented how he liked our clip, and we just started chatting

from there,” Fibbins beams. “He said to us, ‘Do you want to come to the show tonight?’ - we were already going - and we met him and Cory [Younts - mandolin] for a drink afterwards and they were just perfect gentlemen and we remained in touch from there. “Then came the opportunity and I asked him, ‘Would you lay down some fiddle for me?’ and he said, ‘For sure’, so it was all really easy! Him reaching out was a real trip, but he’s a lovely guy and I feel so lucky to have him as an acquaintance.” The two songs released so far from Fibbins’ solo EP ‘Little Whispers’ and ‘Diamonds And Coal’ - both favour the old country trope of setting forlorn lyrics against relatively upbeat music (albeit given gravitas by the prevalence of fiddle and pedal steel guitar), something she was all too aware of during the writing process. “I love doing that actually, a song can’t be a total downer so I try to lift it with a few notes here and there,” the singer smiles. “I like how a song doesn’t have to be how it sounds - if I had a happy song it would probably be all minor chords and sounding really sad - but I like just doing something different like that, taking it somewhere where you don’t think it might go. I wanted something like ‘Little Whispers’ to be not as predictable as a standard country song. “The EP Is coming out really soon, the next song is along the same lines - it’s country and it’s got fiddle in it - but it’s a different pace, so I’ve tried to at least do that. There’s a solo album on the horizon too but I’m not sure whether to do that or the new Sideshow Brides album first - they’re both in the pipeline at once - but for now the EP will be coming out in May. “So, there will definitely be a solo album down the track, but it might not be this year it might end up being next year. It’s a good problem to have!” 37

Photo By Anna White that kind of thing. But to put it into a really straightforward package like this – these were the singles. It was kind of interesting to me because I’d never actually listened to them in order before. And when I had to compile it I was actually pleasantly surprised (laughs). And it makes sense. It makes sense as a record.” Indeed, springing from the horns-andguitars, beat-driven ‘Also Sprach The King Of Euro’ through his best selling ‘La Di Doh’ (Jew’s harp and all) and ‘The Way I Made You Feel’ (a timeless piece of early ‘90s originality), through to the wildly varied bonus cover songs (‘Highway To Hell’, ‘Okie From Muskogee’, ‘Kissin’ Cousins’, ‘The Man Who Changed The World’) there’s a relentless drive forward, never back. “Yeah, in a way it did,” Kuepper replies when asked if compiling the singles gave him any sense of accomplishment. “It seemed like quite a lot going back through it and then thinking, oh that’s a decade! Yeah, and the fact that I could listen to them and think, oh they still sort of work. They still sort of have their own little bit of territory that they exist in. I think that was gratifying.”

BEING THERE

If you’re not there when Ed Kuepper and Jim White team up for the first time, you might just regret it forever. By Martin Jones

he Exploding Universe of Ed Kuepper indeed. Kuepper has just simultaneously released three compilations of his vast postSaints recordings, that provide just a taste of four decades’ worth of incredible prolificacy. “Blind faith. I’ve got no idea,” Kuepper responds when asked how he keeps his universe exploding instead of imploding. One secret might be Kuepper’s refusal to play it safe – particularly live. It might be the very reason he left the world- feted Saints; he wanted to take more risks. And so, The Laughing Clowns were born, viciously uncompromising and unique, wild saxophone erupting over everything. Live they were as fierce as anyone – ever. And even though The Clowns lasted at least as long as the original incarnation of The Saints, their five-year run was a blink compared to the subsequent work Kuepper set himself to, commonly releasing albums at a rate of three a year. And ranging as widely and deeply as he dared.

“It doesn’t matter if you’re playing a song from The Saints or a song from The Clouds, they all kind of… they’re all part of the big pot.” “The intent with The Clowns was to keep it as a band… we had some line-up changes but it was a band,” Kuepper recalls. “And the idea was pretty much fully realised once we started kind of thing, so in some ways, The Clowns, you can mix and match the material from around the time that we split to the

time that we started and it all kind of locks in together. “With the solo stuff I basically had bands, but they changed a lot over time and things were wide open and that was my intent.” Of the three current compilations covering The Laughing Clowns, The Aints live and the solo singles respectively, I particularly enjoyed the latter. Who knows how many recordings Kuepper has released since The Clowns disbanded in the mid-80s? There are many, many puzzle pieces to Kuepper’s career and I found that listening to Ed Kuepper Singles ’86-’96 helped me put some more of them in place and provided an impetus to locate more. “It was just the singles that were put out and that was Tim Pitman’s idea [of Feel Presents]. Because we’d talked about doing compilations and I could go off on numerous tangents, there’s instrumental albums and various alternate version albums and

The third current release documents a live recording by The Aints only a couple of nights prior to recording their debut album The Church Of Simultaneous Existence. It is proof, if any further were needed, that Kuepper still prefers to embrace the interactive and unpredictable on stage. As suggested, the refusal to play it safe has a lot to do with his seemingly indefatigable creativity. “It’s weird – that has always been my way of operating,” Kuepper responds. “It’s always been what I thought was necessary. And then occasionally, just to be contrary to myself, I’ll think, gee I wonder what it would have been

like to do what a lot of bands do, just do this one show and do it over and over. Because in terms of a commercial approach that makes sense. It seems to work for a lot of people. So, not doing that kind of challenges the audience a little bit. But it’s too late to change now (laughs). I can’t go back and redo that stuff. That’s what I’ve done that’s what I’m still doing.” Which brings us to Kuepper’s impending duo tour with the Dirty Three’s Jim White. Kuepper has enjoyed a strong relationship with some incredible drummers over the years – Ivor Hay, Mark Dawson, Jeffrey Wegener. But instead of retreading old ground, Kuepper has decided to hit the road with Jim White, for the first time. “Yeah, it’s time to do something new,” Kuepper confirms. “It’s not a reunion, it’s pushing somewhere and where exactly we’re not really going to know. It’s going to develop over the course of the tour and it will have a spontaneous – I’m not going to say improvisational because that will give people the wrong impression – but it will have a spontaneity to it, a thinking on our feet kind of thing and it will be changing from night to night. “I just sort of know that both of us have got a tendency to not get too set in our ways,” he elaborates. “Ever since I started doing shows without a band, I never do the same show twice. I make a point of deconstructing songs and changing them and that’s what I’m doing with Jim except that it’s got drums on it as well. It will be an interaction that will have the looseness of a solo show.” When asked how much rehearsal he and White are planning, Kuepper laughs “oh probably not enough”. He foresees that there will be a rough setlist that will span his career

from beginning to present. In his eyes, the performances will be more significant than the songs. “It doesn’t matter if you’re playing a song from The Saints or a song from The Clouds, they all kind of… they’re all part of the big pot.” If the tour goes as well as expected, could we see a Kuepper/White collaborative recording? “Oh, look, we haven’t really discussed that. This thing came about basically because I’ve been wanting to work with Jim, been thinking about this for quite a number of years, but we’ve never been able to make our schedules meet up. So, it was always just a thought. But because we both happened to be locked in Australia for a bit it made absolute sense, I just thought I’d give him a call and he was keen on it. Where things go beyond this… these days I take the approach that you just don’t take anything for granted. Everything goes by pretty quickly and these shows might be the only shows we do. Even if they go really well, and I’m sure they will go really well, they might be the only ones we do. It’s kind of special, it’s of the time, it’ll be there on the night, it might not be there anymore after that. “But we live in a world where everything is recorded – everything. That never used to be the case. There’s a lot to be said for being there in the moment. Putting down your phone cameras and just being there.” Ed Kuepper - Singles ’86 ‘ ’96, Laughing Clowns - Golden Days / When Giants Walked the Earth, The Aints! Live at The Bowlo are all available through Prince Melon Records. Ed Kuepper and Jim White tour nationally through May/June.

Ryan MaRtin WandeRcease Featuring: ‘coma Kiss’, ‘Fathers to daughters’, & ‘i Just Wanna die’ “Ryan Martin hits that rare pocket in time and captures perfection.” —American Songwriter CD • LP • DIGITAL at www.highmoonrecords.com

The Weeping Willows’ latest single is a Gothic tale of one man’s sins. Credit by Chris Lambie

he finest songwriters have a knack for conveying evocative imagery. The marriage of message, melody and voice can take the listener to a place of their own or send them straight to the intended heart of a song. Andy Wrigglesworth and Laura Coates make a pretty pair. But don’t expect to just hear them croon about the moon in June. As The Weeping Willows, the Melbourne duo - at home and on stage – convey love and light in the caress of their harmonies. But the shadows of many a twisted folk tale echo across dark mountain Bluegrass, alt-Country and the lament of the Blues. Their latest single release ‘Black Crow’ is a Gothic tale of one man’s sins. Coates laughs. “We do have some fluffy stuff,” she says of the pair’s more romantic

and sunny material. “But this one, the story just really flowed. It’s a kind of traditional story. A protagonist, the guilt, judgement and his eventual comeuppance, if you will. A black crow eyeing his actions like his conscience.” The track was recorded in LA at the end of 2019. Julie Zammarchi created a suitably ominous video to depict the tale. Laura explains, “The clip was inspired about 10 years ago when we saw a Johnny Cash documentary. It included an animation with his song ‘25 Minutes To Go’. All black and white with crows in it and it stayed in my mind. We tracked Julie down, which wasn’t particularly easy! She generously agreed to work with us and we gave her free rein to interpret the story however she saw fit. We’re so happy with how it turned out.”

‘Black Crow’ features Wrigglesworth’s deft acoustic guitar work with guests Luke Moller on mandolin, James Church (Dobro) and David Piltch (upright bass). Andrew also plays Dobro with Laura adding accordion, lap steel and flute within their repertoire. Collaborations helped the pair through the Melbourne Covid lockdown. “On tour, we like to team up with our friends, whether it’s Great Aunt, who we’re touring with this time, or Lachlan Bryan and The Wildes. Lachlan is basically a brother.” (The couple first met 13 years ago while both performing with Bryan and sometimes sang Johnny and June songs between sets.) “We did the virtual teaming up. Our way of staying in touch and lifting each other up through those really dark days.” Both acts joined The Weeping Willows for a ‘virtual’ live video stream of a version of ‘Prelude’. (The original also recorded in LA.) It was named 2021 Golden Guitar for Instrumental of the Year in Tamworth’s CMAA Awards. Following an understandable postponement of release, the duo’s third studio album will reach fans soon. “We’ve been doing the AMERICANAFEST in Nashville for a number of years. We generally build a tour around that. We’ve made a lot of friends over there and audiences are so welcoming to Australians; fascinated that we sing an American style of music. “We recorded our last two albums with engineer Ryan Freeland (Justin Townes Earle, Bonnie Raitt, Loudon Wainwright III, Neil Finn) at LA’s Stampede Origin Studio. He’s the loveliest guy and even takes the role a little bit of producer, making suggestions.” The couple released ‘Prelude’ last year on vinyl with B-side ‘Wheels Won’t Roll’. This, before the proverbial ‘wheels’ basically fell off. “An accidental iso song,” Coates laughs. “We wrote it in 2019 when we thought we were stuck in a rut. How hilarious! So we thought, ‘Let’s put this out for a laugh because we can’t go anywhere.’ They’re excited to be touring again. “Out on the open roads, seeing new places and people. Just being in the car listening to music.” Wrigglesworth has teamed up with Damian Cafarella (The Wildes) for an instrumental side project called The Bayside Brothers. Meanwhile another imminent WW project was inspired by listening to covers. An EP will showcase old blues songs, 60s folk tunes and one from the late 1800s, recorded with Roger Bergodaz. For now, they’re thrilled to be back, charming (and occasionally unnerving) audiences with their songs both Gothic and tender. On the road again. Coates says, “There’s nothing like it. The sense of freedom!” ‘Black Crow’ is available via Bandcamp and other digital outlets.

Photo: Aisha Golliher

TWISTED FOLK

A BLUEGRASS BILLIE HOLIDAY OR COUNTRY JANIS JOPLIN? You might not have heard of Melissa Carper but once you do you won’t forget her. By Denise Hylands

MELISSA CARPER

DADDY’S COUNTRY GOLD melissacarper.com

’ll take a wild guess that most people haven’t heard of Melissa Carper, yet. Once you hear her singing you won’t forget her. Comparisons to a bluegrass Billie Holiday and a country Janis Joplin are so spot on, although her sound is uniquely her own. Raised on a good dose of classic country, playing bass in her family band, studying classical bass at university and absorbing old time jazz like a sponge are the backbone of her sound. From bluegrass, to western swing, old time jazz and classic country, with amazing old-style vocals, Carper’s latest album Daddy’s Country Gold has it all. “I’d started playing when I was a kid in my family’s band,” explains Carper when I ask about her background. “That was my mom and two brothers. So, my mom played rhythm guitar and sang. And then my brother that was younger than me played drums and my older brother played lead guitar and sang. I’ve been making my living playing music for a long time now. I was 12 when we started playing the clubs. Country music was the choice of music that was being played around her family home? “Yes, it was. Yeah. My parents had good old country. They had Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, all kinds of great music that I got to listen to growing up. I think it makes a big difference with what you get to absorb when you’re a young person.” Giving in to the scheduled life of university study Carper dropped out to follow her

heart, to ramble, travel, busk and learn music from the streets. “I did quite a bit of that,” she says. “In a little tourist town in Arkansas, I did a lot of busking and then I lived in New Orleans a couple of times and busked a lot down there too. And to this day, I still enjoy doing that at farmer’s markets. Without a PA and just being on the street. I can’t help it.” The latest release, Daddy’s Country Gold, isn’t Carper’s debut solo album but we could possibly call it that? “It’s actually my second solo album,” says Carper. “But my first solo album, I didn’t do anything with it. Most of the stuff I make, I just do myself on a budget and have never really tried to get it out into the world that much. This time around though, I was really trying to make something special and I felt it deserved hiring a radio promoter and a publicist and all that. So, that’s why it’s getting out into the world. And I’m really happy, it feels like a lot of people are enjoying it. So that makes me happy.” For the new album Carper reached out to her good friend Dennis Crouch, also a bass player and asked for a little bit of support from him in getting together a band and producing the album. “I met Dennis shortly after I moved to Nashville,” explains Carper. “I moved to Nashville with my girlfriend Rebecca, and they were rehearsing at our house. So, when I came home, I got to meet Dennis Crouch, which was so cool. I asked him if he would give me a bass lesson sometime, and he said he didn’t give lessons, but I could come over and we could talk bass. So, I did that and eventually I just got brave enough to ask

him if he would help me with my album. He recommended the studio that I ended up using, The Bomb Shelter in Nashville and he recommended Andrija Tokic as a producer. I actually didn’t know if Dennis would end up doing as much production as he did, but I think he just really got into the music. So, he stuck around the whole time through all the overdubs, the mixing and everything. “Dennis suggested Billy Contreras for fiddle and Billy is just incredible and he did an amazing job. Rebecca also played fiddle on a couple of songs as well. Chris Scruggs on rhythm guitar and then he overdubbed steel also. He’s incredible. And I didn’t know Jeff Taylor (keys) before that recording and man, he’s just so good. I’m really happy that he was on the record. Maddie Maya on drums and he’s great too. Also, the great Lloyd Green, he’s still doing session work, which is incredible and Brennen Leigh and Sierra on vocals. “I was just really nervous because I knew how good everybody was that I just had to try to be as confident as I could with the process, but what was amazing was how quickly they learned the songs that they’d never heard before. And they could just play them perfectly by the second time they played them and create what you hear on the album. It just happened so quickly. I didn’t understand that level of musicianship. They’re all so good. I tell Carper that love this album so much and so glad that I’ve found her and her amazing music. “Thank you,” she says. “It’s great to be able to put something out into the world that I’m so proud of too. It feels like a life’s work, in a way I’m presenting everything I’ve learned. And some of what I feel are my better songs, so it feels really good.” 41

OPENING DOORS

The Hold Steady’s eighth album adds to the band’s reputation for creating stirring anthemic songs. By Brian Wise

f you have not heard them before then one of the first impressions you will have of the music made by Brooklyn-based The Hold Steady is the anthemic nature of many of the songs. Think Bruce Springsteen riffs mixed with poet Jim Carroll’s lyrics. “We’re going to create moments where people can lift their beer in the air and feel kind of that big release,” says lead singer/guitarist and ostensible band leader Craig Finn from his Brooklyn home when we connect via Zoom. “So, I think anthemic is one way to describe that feeling and that emotion that we’re kind of going for.” In the case of The Hold Steady, I suggest that audiences could be lifting their beer in the air on every song. You might have noticed that if you saw them on their Australian tour a decade ago. “Well, I do think we sell a lot of beer,” laughs Finn, who co-writes all the songs on the new album Open Door Policy with other band members, including Steve Selvidge, son of legendary Memphis musician Sid Selvidge. Recorded at The Clubhouse in Rhinebeck, NY with producer Josh Kaufman and engineer D. James Goodwin, the band’s eighth album also marks the second album by the band to feature a six-piece lineup, which includes keyboardist Franz Nicolay who returned to the group in 2016 after a six-year break. The album was written and recorded prior to the pandemic but the songs explore some big themes that have come to prominence over the past year. “A lot of the sort of songs in the record were about technology and mental health and kind of this late-stage capitalism thing,” explains Finn. In fact, the album’s title comes from a line in the song ‘The Prior Procedure’ and Finn says that song in particular, “is about sort of a crash pad that’s run by a guy who is a millionaire or billionaire who kind of lets everyone stay in this great place, but he’s still in control and there’s still these strange strings attached. I thought that was kind of a metaphor for maybe some of the times we live in and it’s saying we have an ‘open door policy’. “When we got to naming the album and I was thinking of that line and that song but also I was thinking about the community 42

around the Hold Steady. I mean, ever since we started this band, we wanted to have something that was like, people could be a part of.” Finn adds that there is a community around the band called The Unified Scene. “I think that, in some way, naming the record Open Door Policy was a nod to that part of the community and to say like, everyone’s invited, we’re all a part of this.” I suggest to Finn that it sounds like he has created a cult. “It’s the best kind of cult,” he notes. “It’s way less profitable than most cults.” There have been some obvious comparisons to Springsteen and the E Street Band made in relation to the Hold Steady’s music but the one of the more interesting influences on the songwriting is poet/singer Jim Carroll whose 1980 album Catholic Boy remains a classic. “I first came actually to Jim Carroll through The Basketball Diaries, which was I reading that a lot of people did,” says Finn, “then I looked into his music and that record, Catholic Boy, as a Catholic boy connected with me immediately as well.” When Finn was attending Boston College as a teenager, he saw Carroll at an intimate campus appearance and says, “I’ve always loved him ever since. I mean, he has these great words, great language mixed with that kind of tight, almost like bar room, rock and roll. So, people oftentimes bring up Springsteen and the E Street Band when they talk about the Hold Steady band, but I think that record Catholic Boy is a huge influence.” Finn agrees that his band’s instrumentation with its piano and horns – will inevitably lead to comparison with the E Street Band and he also sees a similarity in Springsteen’s lyrics

and subject matter. “I’m a fan of Springsteen,” he says. “I think that the way he tells stories about people - the people he knows from the place he’s from, in his case, New Jersey, the Jersey Shore - in my case I think we do that as well. A lot of times in my case the stories are from where I’m from, which is Minneapolis, Minnesota. But I think it’s trying to tell stories about the people you know. The other thing that I guess is becoming more and more apparent and part of my fandom of Springsteen is that his characters have aged, and I like that. I think that’s interesting and in my own work, I find older characters more interesting than I used to, as I myself have gotten older. I think people... there’s a lot of rock songs about young people driving convertibles and with the wind blowing through their hair. But there’s also a really interesting story about people in their ‘30s who were feeling a little bit stuck, and whether that’s financially or emotionally or spiritually, and trying to get out of that. I think that that’s become more and more interesting to me now.” The other influence for Finn as a native of Minneapolis has to be The Replacements, which the Hold Steady supported once. “They’re a huge influence on me,” he agrees. “So, when I grew up, I heard The Replacements pretty young. I was going into eighth grade. I bought the album Let It Be - that was the first record I ever remember waiting for it to come out. It’s the only record... that was the first record I ever waited for it. “I think with The Replacements for me, the fact that they were in my town and on their earlier records, they were talking about some stuff, street names that I knew, that I walked down. I joke about this a lot, but it’s also true that I never knew anyone who looked like Steven Tyler or Robert Plant for that matter. But I knew a lot of guys that looked like Paul Westerberg and somehow I believed it could be possible.” Open Door Policy is available through Cooking Vinyl/Thirty Tigers. The Hold Steady is also celebrating the 10th anniversary of their fifth studio album, Heaven Is Whenever, with a special double album re-release. Check out the Rhythms Podcast for the full interview.

THIS WAY Katie Brianna’s new

album was spurred on by her involvement in a writers group. By Stuart Coupe KATIE BRIANNA

THIS WAY OR SOME OTHER Stanley Records

o-one needs to be reminded that the past twelve months have been pretty surreal for everyone, and for many musicians they have been an emotional roller coaster. There’s been no gigs and opportunities to tour so what do you do? Some artists have found the period particularly creative and have thrown themselves into song writing, demoing and recording. Others have felt creatively stifled and unsure exactly what to do. Then of course spare a thought for the artists who had completed recordings and were uncertain what to do with them. Release during COVID – or wait till it – in theory – dissipates? Sydney-based Katie Brianna was one of many artists who found herself with all of those dilemmas – but managed to remain fairly calm about it all. Her rather superb album, This Way or Some Other, was completed and the first single from it, ‘Boots’, had been released. Everything was going as planned . . . and then along came COVID. “And here we are pretty much two years after recording of my album was finished,” Brianna laughs. “For me COVID was a bit of everything, but also not that much of a thing because the recording was all done. It had been four or five years since my last record and I wasn’t doing a lot of touring, just playing some local shows, so I wasn’t doing a huge amount of anything except working and studying in the

lead up to it, so I was pretty cool. I’m one of those people who doesn’t mind being at home not doing a lot, so it was OK.” So, for Brianna a relatively usual gap between records became a much longer one. And even then, there had been a bit more of a between release stretch than she would have liked. “Time flies,” she laughs. “There were all the usual factors. Clearly money is a big issue for a lot of artists – and also, I’m not a prolific writer. I tend to write in bursts. I’m very goal orientated so I work better under pressure. But I wait for inspiration, I don’t force it.” Part of the song writing process for Brianna this time around was spurred on by her involvement with a song writers’ group. “This was an experiment that I tried as a different approach,” she says. “I became part of this group of writers. It was all done online via email. Everyone involved was given a prompt each week which was meant to inspire writing a song. The prompt might be ‘books’ and everyone would have to come back a week later with a song based on that prompt – either literally or you take it off on some other tangent. That was something new for me and I found it really effective, particularly having to meet a deadline. “It was tough. You got one chance to not do a song for a week but if you missed the deadline again after that you were out of the song club. I’m not sure how long I lasted but I got a few songs out of it. “It was a good impetus because I don’t write every day. I write until I have a record. Maybe I might have fifteen songs to select from for a ten or eleven song album so there’s not a lot of extras. I tend to only finish songs I like

and so if I’m not liking a song, I’m not going to finish it. “And when this album was finished, I obviously had to be content with what was there. I’m fortunate in that I really don’t like listening to myself. I did listen a few times but not enough to want to change heaps of things. Overall, I was happy. It’s the record we made.” What makes This Way Or Some Other such a superior album of contemporary song writing, and country-orientated music is that it is in fact a mighty fine collection of songs. Plus, Brianna lives and breathes them and sings magnificently. Then there’s the all-star inner Sydney superstar players that producer Adam Young assembled for the recording. Appearing on the album are the likes of Ken Gormley, Bow Campbell, Gleny Rae, Caitlin Harnett, James Gillard, Matt Allison and many others. “Adam brought in the players that he thought would work best for whatever needed doing,” Brianna says. “And I trusted him – and also I knew pretty much everyone. I’m just lucky to have so many great people living around the parts here I live too and who were happy to be part of it.” It was also Young’s call on the one cover version included on the album – a version of ‘Birds’ by Neil Young. “Of course, I love Neil Young, but ‘Birds’ wasn’t one that I initially thought of, but Adam suggested it and I listened closely to it and it just felt right.” Brianna arrived for our interview with her guitar and the case was sporting a Grateful Dead sticker. She laughs when I suggest that on the next album, she should tackle a Dead song. 43

SOUNDS OF THE CITY May 20, 2021 marks the 20th anniversary of the last show held at the Continental, one of Melbourne’s most beloved music venues.

Continental Drift! By Brian Wise

The Continental, 134 Greville Street Prahran -Courtesy of the Continental Collection

hen I heard that The Continental Café was closing, I thought it was a hoax. I was in New Orleans for Jazz Fest at the time and received a brief email that immediately had me calling home for confirmation. Sadly, the news turned out to be true. A few weeks later I was attending a closing night that was somewhat of a wake for a venue that not only set a benchmark but also became an integral part of my life, even though it was only open for eight years. At the time of its opening, I had been doing my radio show on Triple R for nearly four years and Rhythms was one year old. The Conti, as we called it, was as pristine on the night it closed as the day it opened. It was a place that respected the music: with a semicircular stage enclosed by red velvet curtains set as the focus, tables fanning out around it for diners, standing room at the back and a bar at the back which could be enclosed by glass doors. The sound system was superb and the stunning lightning was designed be the legendary Chip Monck (of Monterey, Woodstock, the Stones and more) who had moved to Melbourne years earlier. This was not a pub or a beer barn but a club in the mould of some of the famous international names like Birdland, The Blue Note, The Village Vanguard or Ronnie Scott’s. It offered dining and the menu was probably the best ever offered at a venue in Melbourne. The closest I have seen to it was Yoshi’s in San Francisco but the food there was nowhere near as good. Most venues show the signs of wear and tear after a few years – peeling or faded paint, soggy carpet, scuffs and spill marks. The polished boards of the Conti retained their lustre, the place was impeccable. Of course,

this was a tribute to the ‘the two Marios’ – Mario Maccarone and Mario DePasquale – who ran the venue and the café downstairs with the same care that they put into their Fitzroy café. The poster art, designed by Maccarone and graphic artist Graham Barker, created a distinctive house style that shouted ‘class’. I still have a few framed posters that evoke fine memories. Venue manager was Bernard Galbally who had the knack for booking just the right sort of acts. Add to that their outstanding publicist in the always-smiling Marilen Tabaco, who would only ever ask you to interview artists who fitted into the radio show or magazine. Even the door and wait staff were always friendly and welcoming. My most immediate memories are personal. In their twenties, my parents used to go to Leggett’s Palladium which was in the same building! (The legendary Station Hotel was also just down the street). Decades later, in the early ‘90s I was working a few hours part-time on Thursday and Friday evenings at Greville Records, and would often go straight to a gig from work. I was also lucky enough to be looking after my daughter during the week when she was at kinder and primary school. Once a week we would venture to Greville Books and I would chat to Des and Jurate while Alicia would sit and read. After the Continental opened, we would drop in for brunch before going home. I credit this as the main reason that my daughter has never eaten any fast food in her life. On a sadder note, but also family related, I was sitting at the Conti in October 1993 when one of the Marios tapped me on the shoulder to tell me that I >>> 45

SOUNDS OF THE CITY Continental >>> needed to contact the hospital about my father, who it turned out had just died. But the other main memories about the Conti are all about music. I saw so many gigs at the Conti that it was almost a second home. All our favourite local musicians played there, often multiple times. It is difficult to choose just a few highlights but several nights definitely stand out. While we were waiting for Karl Wallinger’s World Party to play a record company promotional gig we suddenly heard ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’, from The Beatles ‘White Album’ over the PA. As I turned and said to a friend what a great album it was, the curtains slowly opened to reveal that, in fact, it was Wallinger and his trio playing the song! I never saw The Beatles but that is the closest I will ever get. Chris Wilson and Shane O’Mara with Jex Saarhelaht is an obvious choice because of the legend of the recording they made which remains one of the great Australian live albums of all time. Soon afterwards, I also recorded Chris and Shane there for the Addicted To Noise website and then used it on the radio. My mother listened and noted how rowdy the audience was and how much swearing there was (from Chris)! We had enlisted Julian Wu to record gigs and the Marios allowed him to set up all his gear in a small room behind the stage. Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch were so pleased with their recording that they released it as a double album. There are also great recordings we did of RL Burnside, as well as Ron Sexsmith, Jeff Lang and Greg Brown, amongst many others. When Nick Lowe played with just a trio that included multi-instrumentalist/singer Geraint Watkins and drummer Bobby Irwin it made you wonder why anyone would need any more musicians than that! As he walked past our table to go on stage Irwin saw my meal and said, “Chuck us a prawn, will ya mate.” There was an amazing night with Chris Whitley who held it together for one riveting show here – and one and a half songs when I interviewed him for radio - and then apparently fell apart for the rest of his tour. The list of international acts was incredible: Guy Clark, Iris DeMent, Jimmy Webb, Steve Young, Leo Kottke, Jimmy Smith, Loudon Wainwright III, John Scofield, Mike Stern, Cornell Dupree, The Amazing Rhythm Aces, John Hammond plus John Hammond with Duke Robillard (maybe the best blues gig), Jonathan Richman, Alex Chilton (I still recall him singing ‘Volare’), Alvin Youngblood Hart, Albert Lee…… I could go on but will spare you. Suffice it to say that many of the greatest gigs I have ever seen took place at the Continental. I also saw many of those gigs with my best school friend who I had known since I was in primary school. He left us a 46

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couple of years ago but always talked about the Conti in reverence. When the Conti closed it was also as if a friend had left me. A few venues have tried to emulate it since. They never will. A few more have been inaccurately compared to it. The Conti was of a time and place of its own. It lives on in our hearts.

Memories of the Continental By Ian McFarlane

MUSICAL HERITAGE

h yes, the memories. Everyone who went there will have fond memories of seeing shows at the famed Continental. The anticipation as you entered the doorway of 134 Greville Street, Prahran. The gallery of framed and signed posters on the wall as you climbed the stairs. The beautiful spaces of the warm, intimate venue. The tiered levels with tables neatly laid out (white linen tablecloths) for dinner. The stage with the large, red velvet curtain drawn. The bustle as bar and wait staff, and the sound guys, got ready for the show. The DJ playing mood music. Later on, as the DJ lowered the music, the curtain would part, the musicians would be ready on stage and the show would begin. And then it was all about the music. I went to the Continental on a semi-regular basis, but if anyone told you they went every week for something like nine years you know they weren’t lying. The gigs I saw were always entertaining; off the top of my head some of my favourites included: Steve Kilbey, Deborah Conway, the Dave Hole Band, Leo Kottke, Steve Young, the Kevin Borich Express with Ross Wilson and Wendy Saddington, Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes... You will have your own favourites. Having run the famous Marios café in Brunswick Street, Fitzroy, since 1986, proprietors Mario

Maccarone and Mario DePasquale, opened the Continental in 1993 with the aim of providing quality hospitality and entertainment. The venue became a source of great joy for audiences and performers alike. It’s hard to find a comparable venue with such high standards. With a legacy of over 900 shows across nine years of operation, it was a hard act to follow.

Their own PR states: “The Continental Café was a cornerstone of Melbourne’s live music scene between 1993 and 2001. Nestled in a boutique strip in Prahran, its unique blend of elegance and purpose-designed functionality raised the bar for the city’s venues, creating a space of rare artistic ambience to host a stunning array of local and international talent.”

Prahran has a fascinating musical heritage, it’s a rock ’n’ roll town but we have to dig deep to find it these days. To put the Continental into a geographical, as well as a cultural, perspective consider that it was part of the same complex that housed the legendary Leggett’s Ballroom. Built in 1920 and in operation until 1976, it was the largest ballroom in the Southern Hemisphere. By the late 1960s, Greville Street had become the hippie centre of Melbourne, or as writer David ‘Dr. Pepper’ Pepperell once referred to it the “Haight-Ashbury” of Prahran. Greville Street was certainly one of the first in Australia to represent that “birth of counterculture” in the 1960s sense. You had the escalation of the Vietnam War, anti-Vietnam sentiment, people were looking for an ‘alternative lifestyle’, health foods, spiritual and religious guidance etc. Fred Robinson opened Feedwell Foundry, the first health food / macrobiotic food shop in Melbourne, maybe Australia. And then again, what later became the downstairs Continental Café was, during the 1960s, the Eastern European restaurant Transylvania. Just slightly west was the Station Hotel, opened to bands in 1971 and affectionately known as the ‘Snake Pit’. The first band to play there was Keith Glass’ Sundown and it went on to host the likes of the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band (who lived just across the street), The Dingoes, Skyhooks, Daddy Cool, Ariel, AC/DC, The Sports, Cold Chisel etc. It’s now made way for a block of apartments. The lovely art deco Ormond Hall still stands in Moubray Street and once played host to artists ranging from Dame Nellie Melba to AC/DC. In the ’60s the Opus and Impulse dances were in operation there; in the ’70s it was Blaises, the Reefer Cabaret and Stoned Again. There was That’s Life discotheque further south along Chapel Street. Garrison discotheque operated around the corner on High Street, home to many people and bands later connected with Mushroom Records. Then there’s Greville Records, started in 1979 by Andrew McGhee and Bill Tolson, and still open today as run by >>> Warwick Brown and Bruce Milne. 47

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OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS Prior to the Continental’s opening, the upstairs venue was ID’s, run by Dror Erez and his crew. When that closed, the opportunity arose for the Marios to step in with their own vision. The venue provided an alternative to the pub rock scene and drew a capacity of 320 patrons. There have been some notable live recordings released over the years, although not that many when you consider the total number of shows. Most from 1996 onward were recorded, engineered by Julian Wu (see below) but the official live releases include: Chris Wilson - Live At the Continental, recorded 20 May 1994 (1994, recently reissued); Paul Kelly - Live: At The Continental And The Esplanade, recorded 19 and 20 September 1994 (1996); Hunters & Collectors - Living In Large Rooms and Lounges, Disc 1 recorded April 1995 (1995); Bert Jansch Downunder: Live In Australia, recorded 11 March 1998 (2001); Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch - 11/12/13 Live In Melbourne, recorded 12 and 13 November 1999 (2000); The Go-Betweens three bonus tracks, by Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, on the ‘Surfing Magazines’ single, recorded 6 May 1999 (2001); and Matt Walker & Ashley Davies - Soul Witness (Bonus Disc Edition), Disc 2 Live At The Continental recorded 31 August 2000 (2000). The final curtain call for the Continental was announced in the pages of Rhythms (issue #106, May 2001): “The Continental Café and the upstairs Continental venue will close its doors on Sunday 20th May 2001 at 5.00pm. The last show will be on Saturday 19th May 2001. The decision has been made after the owners of the Continental, Mario DePasquale and Mario Maccarone were unable to negotiate a new lease with their landlords. In the 10 years that the Continental Café has been operating it has won many awards including several ‘Best Café’ awards. The upstairs venue is considered one of the best live entertainment venues in Australia and has been consistently voted best venue in the annual Rhythms reader’s poll. Mario and Mario would like to thank all the patrons, musicians, and artists and most of all their staff for 10 years of service and loyal support.” It’s worth noting that the Marios donated an entire collection of Continental posters to the State Library Victoria in 2010. They’ve all been digitized, archived and available to view online. SLV states: “As well as being passionate music lovers, the Marios also displayed aptitude as archivists, retaining one copy of each poster produced throughout the venue’s history. The posters feature a distinctive house style designed by Mario Maccarone and graphic artist Graham Barker and provide an extraordinary snapshot of the eclectic mix of musicians at the Continental throughout its nearly tenyear history. The collection runs to almost a thousand posters and forms a rich resource

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for historians of Australian music and poster design.” They also donated a set of signed posters to Melbourne community radio station Triple R, to auction off and help facilitate the move to new premises at Nicholson Street, Brunswick East. And they are due to do the same for sister community radio station 3PBS. What better way to investigate what made the Continental so important, so essential to the lifeblood of the area, than to ask the people involved for their recollections?

MARIO MACCARONE AND MARIO DEPASQUALE AKA ‘THE MARIOS’ (PROPRIETORS) Mario Maccarone: When I managed the Bachelors From Prague they played regularly at ID’s, on Friday nights in the ‘80s. Dror ran a great venue. Very different from the Conti in size but there were some similarities, in the type of music. I saw early Crowded House shows there with 100 people, Harry Dean Stanton, they did great stuff. Dror’s brother ran the restaurant downstairs, Barcelona, but they weren’t really restaurant people. Mario DePasquale: I think the difference with us, in opening up the Continental, is that we came from a hospitality background. So, we took that basis and with Mario’s growing interest in the music industry we knew that Melbourne needed something that was unique at the time. People have said since, “well, how come it hasn’t been done again?” It’s like, I don’t know, why? MM: You’ve gotta get a few things right. Apart from Mario and I, we had Graham Barker, who was the in-house graphic person who did our logo, our posters, our menus and was on hand to do anything just like that (clicks fingers), “Graham we need this and we need it now!”. MDP: He worked for us in our office. I remember at one stage, between Marios and the Continental, we had 100 people on staff. We were the HR department. MM: We had Marilen Tabaco who had been at Triple R for years; she was 110% all over the promotion. We had Bernard Galbally running downstairs. I booked the acts upstairs initially then he took that over. He’d come from a hospitality background as well. We’d worked together for a while at Mietta’s in the 1980s; he was literally a teenager. Bernard was a huge asset. Once he became the booker, he was not just in a great place to book the room he [also] knew what the managers would be thinking or the waiters, all that intricate stuff. We had a great crew around us. We did our own in house ticketing, Molly, Leanne, brilliant. And front of house people, Simon Schofield; there was just a whole plethora of people. MDP: How would you build that crew again; it would be difficult. MM: You don’t realise how lucky you are at the time; you’re just rolling with the punches.

We had the famous Chip Monck involved with the lighting. He was living in Melbourne; he’d married a Melbourne girl who worked in the industry. He was of an age where he didn’t want to be on the road, climbing up ladders. Technology had caught up with him, he’s an old school manual lighting guy. He literally walked into the room while we were building it. I remember it clearly because he was wearing jeans and a shirt and tie and jacket; that was a bit of a look, it struck me as a bit weird. MDP: They were pressed jeans, what’s more, with a razor-sharp crease down the legs. MM: He walked in, without an appointment, and introduced himself. But he didn’t tell me who he was, he just said “I’m a lighting guy.” He asked me what we were doing with the lights and I said we’re not doing that much. He said, “seeing as you’ve got this beautiful room it’s a shame not to light it properly.” He measured up the stage and said, “I might be able to do something for you and it’ll cost you nothing”, to present the idea. It was hard to say no to that. He came back within a few days, rolled out this whole plan with 150 lights, it was just so over the top, it was just incredible. He was very engaging, very charismatic, so we eventually halved the number of lights and it was still brilliant. We had this incredible light show, the sound was great, this amazing stage and the curtain and this was from day one. The curtain was essential; it meant that they could get everything ready, the curtain would open and the show would begin. We wanted a level of professionalism and a presentation that just lifted everything a notch. We opened with a week of Kate Ceberano and Vince Jones. By the time Bernard started booking the room it had evolved and he started putting in acts that I wouldn’t have put in. They might have been indie acts, folky, it was very broad. We had all the international acts. I wanted a room that was different from the Central Club and the Corner and all the other rooms of the day. I wanted people to be able to sit down, have dinner, watch the show and it to be a little bit classier. As we went on we realised that you can have Tex Perkins, doing something that he’s not going to do anywhere else. You could have Paul Kelly or Hunters & Collectors. Paul did band shows, he did solo shows. MDP: We built the whole tiered thing. That was more about sight lines. MM: The idea of having a tiered floor was critical from the outset. It was longer than a year to fit out the upstairs room and then open. Both of us can be, I don’t want to say control freaks, but we’re pretty hands on. The more you can get things right from the outset, it makes for a better operation. The restaurant downstairs was busy, there was no cutting corners, we knew exactly what we were trying to do. MDP: Those first 80 tickets for the meal and show, they’d sell out straight away. It was cheap, I know it was a long time ago, but it was

45 bucks for a meal and a show. Three course dinner, seat and show. People would say to me, “next time I come in, I’m going down there”. MM: We had guys like Keith Glass bringing in acts: Chris Whitley, Guy Clark, Steve Young. Keith was great, a lot of promoters can be quite brash but Keith had a gentle sensibility, just a genuine music guy. So, then all the record companies saw this happening and came on board for showcases. We started getting side gigs from Byron Bay, that was through Peter Noble. In ’94 I went to the Jazz & Heritage Music Festival in New Orleans. I bought all the tickets and hotel accommodation off Brian Wise, ’cause he couldn’t go for whatever reason. One of the acts we saw was Jimmy Smith, the jazz blues organ player. I loved the sound of the Hammond B-3. He was playing to 2000 people in one of the big marquees and I was just blown away. He did hit after hit, it was an awesome show. A few weeks after I came back to Melbourne, Peter rang me and said would “you like Jimmy Smith for the Continental?” and I went “you betcha!”. That Jimmy Smith show was pivotal for us. Then we had guys like Taj Mahal. MDP: We did lots of record company showcase gigs; k.d. lang, Melissa Etheridge, Harry Connick Jr. We had Jimmy Webb, we toured him nationally, in fact we did two tours with him. MM: The first person we toured for Australia was John Hammond. He’d told Jimmy to get in touch with us, “they’ll look after you, they’re good guys”. Other promoters had been trying to get Jimmy Webb for years, and out of the blue we get him. Bernard booked the shows and he did a great job of it but it can be difficult when you’re also running the Conti. It’s time consuming and you’re taking your eye off the club. I tour managed Jimmy, it was a great thing to do and there are some great stories out of that. I look back on people like Spencer P. Jones and Maurice Frawley, who are both no longer with us. They’d do once a year; they’d be doing a 100 other gigs around town but once a year they’d do a special show at the Conti, the kind of show you’d invite your mum and dad to. Colin Hay is another good example. When he first came through he was at a bit of a low ebb in his career, post the whole Men At Work thing, becoming a solo act rather than a hangover. They were tough those early gigs for him. We did them and what was great for the rest of the life of the Conti, he’d come back each year and he wouldn’t play anywhere else in Melbourne, he’d own the room for two or three days. MDP: Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham were fantastic. Dave Graney was great. To me the unexpected ones were great. Chris Bailey with Spencer Jones, Charlie Owen, Joel Silbersher. It was such a great gig. The other memorable one was Steve Kilbey, just him and a guitar, three hours, all his songs, it was quite extraordinary. We did Leo Kottke and Loudon Wainwright III; they were acts I’d seen at the Dallas Brooks Hall in the ’70s. MM: I can’t pick my best gig but I always come back to Jimmy Smith because it was such an >>> important one for me early on.

SOUNDS OF THE CITY Continental >>> The one that got away was Rickie Lee Jones. The head of the record company was a friend, he was taking her around town and brought her into the restaurant for a drink. She was kinda hobbling a bit, quite aloof. I offered her a drink and she said, “I’ll have a dry Martini with two olives”. We all had Martinis. I was so excited to meet her, I was just listening. The upstairs room was closed that night and at one point I butted in and said, “we’ve got a music venue upstairs, would you like to come up and have a look?”. And she said “no, but I wouldn’t mind another Martini”. So, I never actually got her to go upstairs and never got her to play the room.

BERNARD GALBALLY

(Continental manager and band booker) May 2001 was our last show. The last night we just ended up inviting any musicians in town to come along. Graham Lee was the musical director and Steve Miller was the MC for the night and we had a cast of thousands. It was also my birthday. My relationship with the Marios goes back a long way. I had worked with Young Mario at Mietta’s. When they opened up Marios café in 1986 I worked for them on and off over a couple of years. At the end of ’89 when Mario was managing the Bachelors From Prague, the guys said, “why don’t you co-manage the band?”, so I worked with Mario on that front. When ID’s closed, the Marios were approached to take over the lease so they had the vision of the café downstairs and the nightclub upstairs, with tiered floors, dinner and show. They asked me to manage the venue. It was still another 12 months before we finished building the upstairs. In that year we would get promoters in to have a look at what we were doing. Then Mario booked the bands initially but handed that over to me. We knew from the start what we wanted to do. With that hospitality side of things, the philosophy was if you look after the artists, the artist will look after you and do a great show. Kate Ceberano played on opening night. Vince Jones was a regular early on. Then after we had people like Tom Robinson play, he’d talk about the venue when he was overseas. When Roger McGuinn was due to play, Chip Monck was setting up the lighting for the night. Chip used to light The Byrds, so Roger walks in and he’s fallen over, “Oh my God, what are you doing here?” I was a big fan of Keb Mo, and the promoter, Adrian Bohm, ended up cancelling two nights at a large venue because he listened to me and went, “actually you’re right, Keb would rather play the Conti than to a stand-up crowd in a capacity venue”. We had Hunters & Collectors who could sell out any venue in Australia, they played because they liked the set-up. Paul Kelly played a lot. Then we loved doing Spencer P. Jones, Maurice Frawley. Maurice said, I still get emotional about this, “the thing I love is that you make us feel as 50

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special as the international artists”, that meant a lot to me. We had themed nights, plays. Paul Keating did a talk there and Jimmy Little opened for him. It was really hard to run a venue for 52 weeks of the year, it was important to branch out and do other things. We were eclectic in our music programming because you couldn’t just go to one well the whole time. We had The Waifs with John Butler as support act, then suddenly they both outgrew us as a venue. Kasey Chambers first played there with the Dead Ringers, then she came in solo and did a fantastic night. Keith Glass brought out Guy Clark and he did an extraordinary show. Steve Young was incredible, Nick Lowe, the list goes. Cornell Dupree, Aretha Franklin’s rhythm guitarist. Jimmy Smith, the Hammond organ player. We had Karl Wallinger’s World Party. Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. Jimmy Webb. Alex Chilton. When Edwyn Collins played, we assembled a local band; we had Shane O’Mara on guitar, Bill McDonald on bass, Peter Jones on drums, and they were playing songs from his album Gorgeous George. He’s on stage singing the opening song, it comes to the guitar solo and Shane is one of the great guitarists. Edwyn stops in the middle of the song and says in his Scottish brogue, “that was a fookin’ amazing guitar solo”. Shane just gives the nod but Edwyn is gobsmacked at what’s just occurred. One of the Orange Juice guys was living in Australia and he comes backstage and goes “that was the best band you’ve ever had!”. The posters were vitally important, they had that style, that branding. Young Mario pushed for that, he had Graham Barker do the artwork. Mario had the vision, “I want an in-house style to go with the publicity”. There was that continuity about it all. Then all the artists signed the posters and they were auctioned off later for Triple R. It was so generous of them. They donated sets to the Arts Centre and the State Library.

MAX CRAWDADDY (Continental DJ / Son Of Crawdaddy show, Triple R)

You could be anywhere in that room upstairs and you’d have a sight line to the stage because of the genius of the sunken floor dining area. No matter where you stood the sound was fantastic. The guys put a lot of thought into the sound design. The acoustics were very unique. It was very respectful to all the performers because they realised the quality of the output for the audience. The staging of course, that was taken into account and the lighting. Chip Monck had been a lighting professional for decades. Besides doing Woodstock and Monterey, prior to that he was working at the Village Vanguard. I remember him telling me stories about lighting all the jazz greats like Miles Davis. The venue wasn’t exclusive to a certain type of music. Well, it was in the sense that it had to be good. They were very eclectic with the artists. We got to see the cream of what Australia had to offer, but we also got to see incredible international artists. I have a flyer from March 1995, Blossom Dearie, Guy Clark, and local talent Maurice Frawley with the Working Class Ringos, special guests David McComb and Evil Graham Lee. Vince Jones. I think the Marios relationship with Vince goes back years, so he was a regular there. I was lucky because I was the unofficial house DJ: others would have nights there as well. I was their go-to guy. They’d do those side shows from the Byron Bay Bluesfest. You would see

John Hammond, he played there solo and I remember seeing him one night with the Duke Robillard Band. Another time there’d be Lazy Lester or Alvin Youngblood Hart. The DJ booth was perfectly situated right next to the sound guy, so everything was like clockwork; the lighting went down, my music went down, then the beautiful big red velvet curtains would open and the show would begin. Everything I played was sympatico with the artists. Because I enjoyed it so much, the whole experience, I’d often get down there early and help out. Or I’d play some mood music while people were just starting dinner. Some of my favourite nights? That Chris Wilson night is legendary now. I know I may be a tad biased but, to my ears, Live At The Continental is not only the best live album released in this country but also anywhere in the world. I remember the first time I saw Lucinda Williams, I think Chris Wilson supported that night. Johnette Napolitano from Concrete Blonde with Chris Bailey from The Saints, that was a great night. Some of the blues guys for me were always special. Junior Wells with a full band. Harry Connick Jr, Julian Lennon. Peter Hammill from Van der Graaf Generator played, amazing performers, just ridiculously good. Jimmy Webb was a favourite. He loved the venue, he said it was world class. People from overseas, as soon as they walked in the room they realised that it was a quality space. They instantly realised the respect that the Marios gave to the artist.

JO ROBERTS (Former editor of The Age EG)

Max Crawdaddy, John Hammond & Chip Monck, couresy of the Max Crawdaddy Collection.

It was such a lovely room, you really felt you were in a sophisticated space, a dignified space. It wasn’t that big, and the band room wasn’t huge but I guess it bestowed a certain amount of dignity and respect on the entertainers. I think audiences behaved themselves a lot better in that space. I think performers stepped up as well. The room had beautiful acoustics. >>> 51

SOUNDS OF THE CITY Continental >>> Favourite performances? Off the top of my head, easily Lloyd Cole solo. And Jonathan Richman, he was fantastic. He played in these funny little shoes, looked like old man slippers, I don’t know what the hell he was wearing on his feet. He was in great form, such an entertaining show. He played old Modern Lovers songs, we all surrendered to Jonathan. The Reels Christmas Show, where they had Santa dancing, Roger McGuinn, Richard Clapton. One other thing that sticks out about the Conti were the posters of course. It was such a clever, brilliant branding exercise. Every poster had the same aesthetic going throughout the artwork. So, you’d see a poster and instantly recognise it was the Continental Café. It was smart design sense. Brand awareness, and I think the Marios understood that before a lot of other people. Most other venues in the country weren’t doing that at the time. They also got all the performers to sign the posters, when they performed.

JULIAN WU (Audio engineer)

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that provided a little bit of the ambience which made it feel like you were there. I think a lot of the recordings you did feel the atmosphere of the Continental. It was just the way the room was laid out. It wasn’t huge so acoustically it was a unique space. It didn’t behave like most rock venues which are often just a big boxy space. Those different floor areas meant that acoustically it broke up those kind of nasty reverbs. And I loved the Continental so much but I’m glad that I don’t work there anymore because I just drank so much. I just lived a ten-minute walk from there anyway, or sometimes I wouldn’t go home and just fall asleep in my office. One of the really special nights was seeing Robert Forster and Grant McLennan, 1999. I recorded those and they did use a couple as B-side tracks on the ‘Surfing Magazines’ single. Because those shows went really well, it was after that Robert and Grant had a chat in a hotel room and got The Go-Betweens back together. One time Dave McComb was due to do a liveto-air for Triple R. He was always notorious for having his guitar out of tune, so Graham Lee thought it was a great chance to get a good recording done and so he said, “this time, I’ll tune his guitar myself.” Just before the show, Graham was sitting on the steps going up to the stage, writing out his notes for the set and they get the call to go on, so timing was important. Dave straps on his guitar and swings around and the headstock hits Graham right in the face. Dave plugs in and plays the first chord and the guitar’s out of tune but he just ploughed on regardless. So poor old Graham, all his good work was undone for the whole show.

BILLY PINNELL (Radio broadcaster)

I was the in-house recording engineer. I had a little office out the back, behind the band room, and if acts wanted to have their sets recorded I would do that. We got a few things out, like the Kieran Kane and Kevin Welch 11/12/13 Live In Melbourne, that was really special for me. Matt Walker and Ashley Davies had a bonus disc which came from those sessions. Some of those recordings also ended up on Off The Record sessions for Brian Wise. I had a 24-channel desk and digital 8-track machines. There was a split from the stage box, so we had one split going to the front of house mixer and the other we would run a multi-core to my office in the back room. It was actually Bernard Galbally who asked me to record; he thought they should have a permanent thing, so he invited me to set up in the back office. In recording the shows, I think that a lot of things just came out well because it was a great sounding live room. We had close mics on all instruments, like a standard recording and we’d also run a couple of room mics and 52

I first met Mario Maccarone in 1985 when he was managing Bachelors From Prague. He contacted me after hearing his band’s first album being played on Triple M where I worked at the time. He invited me to attend some of their performances and to visit his restaurant, the legendary Marios. Staying in touch, he asked me in 1992 if I would like to visit a new

restaurant he was renovating in Prahran that would double as a live music venue to be called the Continental Café. With still some work to be done prior to opening night (Kate Ceberano), the room looked ideal, a mezzanine area for non-eaters, a cosy band room adjacent to the stage. What needed completion was the lighting, electrical cords were hanging from the ceiling in large numbers. I suggested to Mario that he contact legendary lighting/stage designer Chip Monck who was living in Melbourne. “Already got him” was Mario’s reply. After attending Kate’s opening night I revisited what became my favourite live music venue countless times until it sadly closed its doors in 2001. I met some extraordinary people at the Conti: Mario DePasquale, Bernard Galbally who organized the music, Marilen Tabaco and Robbie Tickner (who became long time friends) considerate, professional staff who made customers feel at home. Memorable performances, too many to list on this page but some included... Chris Wilson (1990) with my friend Max Crawdaddy the Conti’s DJ; Gulliver Smith who opened for Renée Geyer; Matt Moffitt (post Matt Finish); Jimmy Webb (piano only); Junior Wells; Dave Warner; Julian Lennon; John Hammond; Jimmy Little (when he came on stage the entire room stood and applauded); Jonathan Richman etc, etc, etc...

to do. I was in the company of really excellent musicians that put my music and well being way above their own. I was incredibly fortunate, you know. It was a seat of the pants night that worked. There’s a certain sort of energy in that I guess. It was a funny night, because it was recorded on a Friday night. Friday night was always difficult. Everybody had knocked off from work, they’d gone to the pub, grabbed something to eat and then raced down to the venue. They were always really talkative, it was like a songby-song proposition, you had to win ’em every song. The Continental had an incredible history. I remember doing a support for Lucinda Williams when she first came out here. There was just an array of international acts that went through there. Also, it was a beautiful balance of international and local acts that rubbed shoulders. That room had a certain feeling about it where you really wanted to do your best.

CHRIS WILSON (as featured in Chris Franklin’s documentary Chris Wilson’s Live At The Continental 23 Years On) Live At The Continental was like the culmination of everything I’d done up to that point, Shane O’Mara and Jex just played beautifully. That was a really fruitful period for me. I’ve always been lucky to have incredible people around me that were way better than me in what I was trying

>>> 53

SOUNDS OF THE CITY Continental >>> SHANE O’MARA (Musician); as Chris Wilson said “Let’s hear it for Shane O’Fucking Mara, everybody!”

The Conti was an incredible venue, with incredible sound, with incredible people running it which made it a pleasure to play. You were there to do your job and they made sure you were free to do your job as best you could, not being worried about some dickie rider. The backstage was cool and the staff were incredibly perfect. Of all the records I’ve been involved with, played on and recorded, by far Chris Wilson Live At The Continental is the one most commented on. For some reason it just resonated with so many people. And it still does. I might have been playing with Paul Kelly overseas and people would come up to me and say, “I love that record”, or “I was making love with my wife when we listened to that”, or “I took that with me when I was backpacking through Europe.” People seriously adore it. That album is full of incredible tunes, it wasn’t just a night of blues. It’s amazing that a night like that was captured because it’s not often that it works so well. They’re the moments that you aspire to and they’re few and far between. And it was just beautiful fortune that it was captured.

Drift!

her. She broke off nervously in the middle of her first song. “You guys are just too intense. I can’t play if y’all gonna be so quiet”. Somebody delivered an ice-breaking drink up to the stage, Iris relaxed and the show continued. When Donovan played there in 1998, I’d booked for dinner and show with my wife and a couple of friends. We’d all seen Donovan together at Festival Hall in 1975. He was also scheduled to appear at Basement Discs at lunchtime, prior to his Conti show, so I took some albums with me to the city that day, hoping to get them signed. I bought a bowl of noodles at the Malaysian café close to Basement Discs. The café was packed. I spotted the only available seat in the whole place, at a table occupied by a guy, eating alone with his back to me. “Do ya mind if I sit here, mate?” “Not at all, take a seat,” said the guy, looking up from his bowl of rice. I recognised the voice. And the face. It was Donovan. “What did you get?”, he asked. “I got the noodles,” I replied. “But I see you’re just mad about saffron.” He probably thought I was some kind of idiot. But I introduced myself, and we had a real good chat. He asked me about the Continental Café. He’d heard good things about it. I think telling him that I’d seen Bert Jansch there recently won him over.

He signed my albums at Basement Discs. “See you tonight, Gerald.” I was delighted. I’d had lunch with Donovan! And he knew my name. That night at dinner, I tried to explain to my disbelieving friends that I’d had lunch with Donovan. Ever doubtful, they also thought I was

some kind of idiot. The lights dimmed, and the golden voice of Chip Monck announced over the PA. “Ladies and gentlemen please welcome to the stage... Donovan”. The velvet curtains opened and there he was, right in front of our table. He gave me a nod. “Hello Gerald” he said quietly, launching into his opening song, ‘Atlantis’. My friends’ jaws dropped.

GERALD McNAMARA (Patron) Dinner and show was always my favoured choice, you were guaranteed of a good position in front of the stage. Then there was ‘The Swoop’; if you hadn’t booked for dinner, you’d queue on the stairs, waiting for Standing Room admittance time, then swoop on any unoccupied table, or your favourite standing position. When Iris DeMent performed with just her acoustic guitar, the audience sat in total rapturous silence, but it was all too much for 54

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INTERVIEW

STRANDED EXPANDED

Kerrie Hickin talks to author Clinton Walker about the edition of Stranded, his seminal book on Australian music.

here are a couple of strands of ‘stars’ in the Stranded world, both as it stood at the time of original publication in 1996, and how the cards of ‘fortune’ or in some cases misfortunes have landed now, only to be continually shuffled as time advances. There’s the music as the flashpoint of the project: the bands, the supporters, the behind-the scenes action that propels the artform on. As author Clinton Walker states, “You’re in a room with 200 other people and they’re immediately your best friends. That’s the community that music engenders”.’ The story here stretches from Brisbane’s Johera ‘culture wars’ crucible giving rise to the nascent Go-Betweens, the rough, burning intensity of early Saints, and the wasted potential of the Leftovers among others, against a backdrop of student protests and police brutality (“You didn’t know if they were beating you up because they thought you were a punk or a poofter or a blackfeller”), through to the 1990s’ flurry of national festivals, and beyond. Another strand is the milieu of Australia coming somewhat of age when physically isolated from the rest of the world but still bound by cultural ties to other shores, and a deep taproot to the country’s core, the bigpicture history and geography, morphing to a greater or lesser extent as time inevitably passes. Also, and most undeniably here, is author, music journalist/social culture chronicler, Walker himself, inextricable from the times he lived through, participated in, and documented, rather than just observed. Even without any other content, one could fill a book with his story and stories… but that’s maybe for another time. And, essentially, there’s the story of the book itself, originally written after the underground success of Inner City Sound’s Australian punk/post punk primer, after the worldwide gamechanger Highway To Hell, and prior to Buried Country’s multi-faceted extrapolation of country music by Indigenous Australian performers. The original Stranded, subtitled The Secret History of Australian Independent Music 1977– 1991, was released in 1996, cover adorned with an audaciously eyecatching photo of a naked male torso, Died Pretty’s shamanic frontman Ron Peno with a strategicallydangled backstage pass And now, a recently reissued version graced with Nick Cave’s charismatic, provocative stare.

The body text is largely retained as it was, deliberately “warts and all”, Walker says, besides a few chronology corrections, but now with copious footnotes. It’s a given that virtually all reviews should be prefaced by the reader with the disclaimer “in my opinion.” Through time we can revise our opinion, change our minds, in some cases get with the changing times, yet in others stick staunchly to what we know to be ‘true’ despite the water rushing by. As opinionated as he is, Walker is not afraid to mea culpa when he knows it’s needed, hence the annotation. Things may need further extrapolation, context, or a confession that just maybe he got it wrong. “Some records I used to love and now think, what was I thinking, and other records I used to hate and now think, what was I thinking, they’re great.” In the book, Walker describes belatedly becoming a Paul Kelly fan: “… I was learning that old prejudices are the worst kind… Putting on and taking off blinkers is a perpetual process.” Anyone with even a peripheral interest in Australian music will have heard music by at least some of the artists in the book, seen them play, or shared a flat with them, or even were them, such is the small world. And at least every few pages readers might come across a juicy snippet, whether fact or opinion, and maybe think ‘hey, you can’t say that’. “It was always a bit contentious in some ways. People have different takes on things and that’s fine. Some people liked some of it and other people didn’t like other bits. But I had so much fun with the footnotes to deal with this, rather than write another book,”, Walker explains. “It was kind-of a bizarre, interesting process, going back to something that was 25 years old talking about things that were 40 years old. There are extra things that I thought of later too, but maybe I’ll have to re-edit it again in another 20 years. If only you could re-write your own history, fix things….” Would there be sufficient contemporary interest to warrant a rebooted reissue, like a ‘remastered’ CD, in an era of online information overload? Walker thinks so, as does publisher The Visible Spectrum, whose head honcho Steve Connell moved in similar circles with only a degree or two of separation during

Walker’s early 80s London sojourn, where the ferocity of the likes of Birthday Party and the Laughing Clowns blew the heads off audiences hungry for new kicks, even if, as Walker asserts, chucking, “They were terrified!”. He glances around at the laden bookshelves in his Sydney home, a telling contrast to his austere early childhood environment. “I love beautiful looking books – in every room of my house, out the back in my shedoffice. I love music, I love art, but I also love reading an actual book. Steve said, it’s time to get this one back in print, and he’s done a fantastic job with it. We’re seizing the means of production! And I’m pleased to see that Stranded’s getting a good response.” After a period of ‘time out’ of writing for self-reflection, there are a couple of other publications chugging down the pipeline, including Suburban Songlines, with design by visual artist Carl Breitkreuz, and his “hobby horse”, a yet-to-be-placed biography of The Bee Gees and Robert Stigwood: “It’s a pretty amazing Australian story”. Though one might rightly wonder when he can find the time, Walker still gets a buzz out of discovering music new to him, via public radio, or crate-digging, embracing and sharing the tangential pathways it leads to, the different stories to be unfolded. “When you have a whole world of music you haven’t explored, that’s all you want to do. I’m still doing it now.” Stranded: Australian Independent Music 1976-1992 Revised And Expanded Edition by Clinton Walker, published by The Visible Spectrum 2021 Available in book and record shops, or from www.clintonwalker.com.au 57

STRANDED HERE IN TAMWORTH,

the Slaughtermen. John Kennedy and his self-proclaimed ‘Urban & Western’ was way too earnest for us though. I liked something with a bit more humour about it. I loved the Bum Steers, whose contribution to the Au Go Go Records’ compilation album of Melbourne music Asleep at the Wheel was a version of ‘Old Man River’ done almost heavy metal style. But my favourite Melbourne band was the Feral Dinosaurs, who introduced to the world Conway Savage and Jim White; their 1985 Major Records mini-album You’ve All Got A Home To Go To, posed the delectable question, to paraphrase Waylon Jennings, ‘Are you sure Slim done it this way?’

TIRED AND HUNGRY AND I HAVEN’T GOT A DIME…

The release of a new expanded edition of Clinton Walker’s controversial-classic 1996 book Stranded reveals, in this extract, the glorious folly of the author’s own efforts on stage… AUTHOR’S PREFACE: In 1996 when my fourth book Stranded was first published, there was something in it to upset everyone. But the one thing guaranteed to upset absolutely everybody was mere mention of my own band, the Killer Sheep. The Sheep were what we even then called a hillbilly-grunge band. In the pre-punk 70s, I’d been a precocious teenage black-music fan – jazz, blues and soul – but it took me a little longer to come to terms with my own whitetrash birthright. But when I did, by the early 80s, country music – Johnny Cash, Hank, Gram, Tony Joe White, Kris, Creedence, Johnny Burnette – was everywhere in the smack-sodden London bedsits and Darlinghurst drug dens I frequented back then. So when I fell into forming my own band, at a time long before alt.country or Americana were invented, that’s what we did, and I thought that recounting some of the Sheep’s story in Stranded would serve as a nice insight into the average gigging musicians’ experience on the Sydney circuit at the time, and a nice counterpoint to the more triumphal success narratives otherwise. But no – people howled! But I remain unrepentant – when I went back to the book for this new edition and I listened again to our Au Go Go Records single ‘Wild Down Home’, I thought, yeah, it sounds pretty shitty, and certainly my performance on bass is pathetic, but the song itself, I’m sorry, I think it stands up. So – am I still ruffling feathers? Excellent! Writers get prizes these days for mixing memoir with revisionist history… CW “They’re not cowboys, they’re poofters!” Those words emanated from a female voice in the doorway of a Tamworth pub as my Killer Sheep bandmates and I strolled by. The Killer Sheep went to Tamworth for the annual country music festival in January 1987, expecting a baptism of fire, and getting exactly that. 58

The old cliché goes that rock critics are nothing more than frustrated or failed musicians. If you can’t do, they say, teach, or criticise. There was a certain roteness setting in to the Sydney indy rock scene in the mid-80s. In 1986, the best-selling indy single and album respectively were ‘Out of Control’, by the Lime Spiders (Citadel), and A Nest of Vipers, by the Exploding White Mice, a similarly ‘Detroit’ sort of garage band on Adelaide’s Greasy Pop Records. I wasn’t much into any of that. In 1987, Johnny Farnham made his comeback as Whispering Jack and sold more records than any Australian had

ever done in this country. I wasn’t much into that either. I felt that if I wanted to hear something I really liked, I had to do it myself: PunkRock.101. At the end of 1986, then, I formed a band. Some friends had got hold of a pub—they had convinced the owners of the Courthouse Hotel on Taylor Square to run their upstairs bar as a sort of open stage on Friday and Saturday nights. Myself and a few other friends, including Michael O’Connell, got together to play a few songs; Michael was an old Brisbane boy and former member of the Apartments with Peter Milton Walsh and Xero with Lindy Morrison; when the country duo he’d had with Amanda Brown obviously dissolved when the GoBetweens headhunted Amanda, he and I started mucking about together on some songs. Our band’s line-up was completed by singer Astrid Munday and drummer James McKay, and guitarist James Scanlon, who was simultaneously a member of the Craven Fops, one of the great new punky bands on the Sydney scene. The Courthouse proved a great, if short-lived, success. It was like just another variation on the Little Bands concept really. Bands came and played and went, the room quickly filled with all our friends, all serious drinkers, many musicians and artists, and/or drug users: This was hardcore Darlinghurst. Even when the gig was lost, our unnamed band continued. There was probably an argument around what we called ourselves. Because I know I never liked Killer Sheep greatly; I wanted to call us the Wooden Spoons, as in being on the bottom of the ladder. But Sheep we became. We were a grunge-country band. We were intent on mashing up country music, which we were all smitten by, with the thrashy

We in the Killer Sheep paraphrased Waylon too, rewriting his ‘Big D’ as ‘Big T’, about Tamworth rather than Dallas. We realised we couldn’t out-pick ‘real musicians’ so, in true punk style, we simply tried to make an asset out of our ineptitude. We took pride in avoiding the obvious, so no ‘Jackson’ or ‘Ring of Fire’; we did ‘Silver Wings’ and ‘Barstool Mountain’ and ‘Pay No Attention to Alice’, another amazing Tom T. Hall song. C.Walker Stranded promo 96 pic by Susan Bogle sound of DIY punk because that was about all we were really capable of on our instruments. What we were kind of going for, I used to like to say, was as if the Jesus and Mary Chain were playing bluegrass. When we started out on all covers, we did songs like ‘Roll in My Sweet Baby’s Arms’ but we also did Tom T. Hall’s ‘Macleay Street in Sydney’, and duets like Waylon and Jessie’s ‘I Ain’t the One’, which Michael and Astrid did great. The whole thing was just a lot of fun. I was in the last months of my twenties. I could still do whatever I wanted, make a gnarly racket, take drugs and have a good time. The Sheep were partly a symptom of the ‘new country’ movement of the mid-’80s, not that it would have wanted anything to do with us! New country was an inevitable development, not only in that control of country music had to be wrested from Nashville, its saccharine sound usurped by something rawer, but also for the same reason independent rock was flourishing— because mainstream rock was as boring as it was pervasive. But as much as artists like Joe Ely, Dwight Yoakam and Steve Earle rode the New Country wave out of America, it became clear there were also artists—mostly, like Ely and Earle, Texan—guys like Guy Clark, Townes Van Zandt, Butch Hancock and Jimmie Dale Gilmore, even Willie Nelson—who’d always been there. But then we in the Sheep also loved the Cramps, and the Gun Club – swamp rock, it was an almost genealogical thing in Australia, strains you could hear running through so much, from Nick Cave and the whole Beasts of Bourbon axis on down…

You can listen to our then-world of music on Spotify, the playlist ‘Sheep Heard’. Post-Missing Link, Keith Glass resurfaced running the hard country record shop Deep South, in Melbourne. Weddings, Parties, Anything emerged out of Geelong with a pub rock variation on Australia’s folk roots, a sort of reverse variation on the Pogues. Various Sacred Cowboys doubled as hot gospellers

Nobody took the Killer Sheep seriously—I don’t suppose even I did myself—but there was always the chance we might pull the wool over more than just our friends’ eyes. So it was then that I found myself speeding up the Newcastle Expressway in the first weeks of 1987, bound for Tamworth for the second time but this time as a performer; leaving in our wake the Australia Made tour, that with a bill boasting INXS, Jimmy Barnes, the Models, Mental As Anything, Saints, Triffids and I’m Talking held little interest. >>>

CW w Ed Kuepper and partner Judi Dransfield at Saints 2007 Pig City festival reformation 59

STRANDED >>> We arrived late on a Wednesday night, pitched a tent and slept fitfully, and by nine o’clock the next morning we were ready to go at the K-Mart Talent Quest. It was the first (talent quest) of many. We heard the first of what must have been a thousand versions of ‘Silver Threads and Golden Needles’. We stood no chance against the sheer weight of such dullardry. We played everywhere. The big thing in Tamworth, for the desperates like us at least, was to busk on the main drag, Peel Street, which was sealed off for the purpose. And that we did, plugging our amps into a power source at a menswear store owned by the tolerant father of a friend. Tamworth didn’t know what to make of us, our leather pants, tattoos, track marks and distorted guitars. But still we made some fans. There was a band in Tammy at the time called the Three Chord Wonders, who were way beyond that as an aggregation of the hottest session pickers in town including Laurie Minson and Andrew Clermont. They were playing a lunchtime residency upstairs in the lounge bar at the Tudor Hotel on Peel Street, and they took a shine to us and had us play some guest spots. They thought we were fun, and funny, even if unintentionally so. We went and saw the King of Koori Country, Roger Knox, and in many way this was where my Buried Country project started. We didn’t play the major Starmaker talent quest because you had to qualify for it, but we did play the official Capital Country Music Association quest, at the Town Hall, and at that one the MC was so embarrassed by the mere mention of our name that he pretended to forget it. Twice. But if we thought we had it hard, we had a to spare a thought for our lesbian sista band from Sydney Doris Dazed – now Tamworth really didn’t know what to make of them! We played a gospel tent and rechristened ourselves the Lost Sheep for the occasion, peaking with one of our set-pieces, a version of ‘I Saw the Light’ that we bludgeoned into something you could have quite reasonably called ‘I Saw the White Light/White Heat’… I don’t think we converted any sinners… By the time we left town on the Sunday afternoon, Tamworth and the Killer Sheep had both had quite enough of each other. All this, of course, was merely a prelude to the real life/career of the Killer Sheep. Which was playing solidly on Sydney’s inner-city circuit for most of the rest of 1987. If the Sheep are now largely remembered, if at all, as just some sort of joke, we must have been doing something right because we played everywhere, and we kept getting asked back. We played all the fabled joints, a few gigs a week at the least at places like the Hopetoun, the Sandringham, the Palace, the Petersham Inn, the Harold Park, the Kardomah, The Trade Union Club and the Picadilly, and what I remember is fairly well-populated rooms full of happy people having fun. 60

Only trouble was, as we started to take it a bit more seriously – at least to the extent that Michael, Astrid and I were now all writing songs – the band’s days were numbered due to several of us going our separate ways overseas. But we were determined to cut a single before disbanding. We put down four tracks, with a song I’d written on the road in western Queensland called ‘Wild Down Home’ – a love song to country music itself – set to be the A-Side. The single was finally released the following year, in 1988. My old pal Bruce Milne was doing me a turn and putting it out on his Au Go Go label. I was just chuffed to be sitting in the catalogue with the serial number ANDA78, in between ANDA77, the God minialbum Rock is Hell, and ANDA79, a reissue of Raw Power, of all things! ‘Wild Down Home’ sounds terrible and it isn’t very well performed (certainly by me on bass!), but at least it’s unlike anything else; listen to it on YouTube. I still have a clipping of the indy chart where it entered, for one and only one week, at Number 19. It couldn’t have sold more than a dozen or so copies. By then though, I’d moved on to another band, the short-lived Wild Oats, and if you think the Sheep sound bad, the Oats, with our stated objective of blending rapping with country-grunge, were two steps beyond the pale! But that’s another story, and I’ll spare you it for now. Stranded: Australian Independent Music, 1976-1992, Revised and Expanded Edition is out now through the Visible Spectrum and available through Amazon, Booktopia and selected good record shops. https://www.clintonwalker.com.au/ stranded.html. Clinton Walker’s next release, Suburban Songbook, will be out through GoldenTone later in the year.

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FALLEN ANGEL Excerpt from the chapter Chris Whitley by Jeff Lang from his memoir Some Memories Never Die (Top Shelf).

t was Sydney in 1993 that Chris Whitley and I first met. I was living there and took a friend’s recommendation to see him at The Basement, in Circular Quay. At the due hour out came this wiry figure with a well-worn steel guitar hung around his knees. He proceeded to play a set of songs unlike any I’d heard. There were echoes of things I could place, but there were other ingredients in the mix. The influences of Kraftwerk, Steely Dan, Nat King Cole and Stevie Wonder alongside Dylan and Robert Johnson made for an intriguing style. Plus, he was drawn to densely clustered chords that would jar and soothe in equal measure. On top of all that, was this fallen angel voice, somehow ethereal and guttural at the same time. The next night, I was playing my regular Thursday-morning graveyard shift gig from 2 to 5am at a place called Springfield’s in Kings Cross. Springfield’s was a narrow, dingy space with a low ceiling that seemed to run on the deals that went down in the kitchen next to the stage. Often, I’d see seven of the nine punters in the joint head to the kitchen together, then make their way to the toilet where they’d file in and out in groups, all having seemingly caught a cold whilst inside judging by the amount of sniffling going on. I finished my first set, and a woman came up and said she was there with a guy who’d like to meet me. “Have you heard of Chris Whitley?” She’d told him after his gig that evening I was someone he might like to hear, and so there he was. He had some lovely things to say about my sound, and I told him I was thinking about coming down to the next night’s gig in Wollongong.

“You should bring your guitar and play something with me.” he said. I took my guitar south the following evening, and after an hour or so of his alt-blues-poetry confusing and beguiling the locals in equal measure, I joined him for a run through of Robert Johnson’s ‘Stones In My Passway’. We kept in touch after that and I’d see him if I was in New York City, or when he revisited Australia. After the initial impression from watching Chris perform with such a tightly coiled intensity, it was a real pleasure to get to know him as a person in the years subsequent to our first meeting. My overriding memories are of a warm, sweet man, a thoughtful and intelligent conversationalist, with a humble, quietspoken manner. In October 2004, I was doing a run of shows in the States when I crossed paths with him again, opening some gigs in Oregon, Washington State and Alaska. I met up with Chris backstage at the first show of the run, at Berbati’s Pan in Portland. After my set Chris was waiting behind the curtain offstage. He started talking about wanting to record together. I said that I’d love to contribute to one of his records if he ever wanted me to, though I frankly didn’t hear the need for my guitar in his wonderful music. “No, no, I mean making a duo record - you and me together.” This was an intriguing and appealing idea, but I was wary of getting ahead of myself, as it could be something that seemed like a good idea one day then floats away the next. Chris spent a bit of time on the run complaining to me about his new tour manager, mostly because she was preventing him from drinking.

She had her reasons. After I’d sat in with Chris in Wollongong back in 1993, he asked if I was coming to his last show at the Three Weeds in Sydney the next night, but I had a gig elsewhere. It turned out to be a disastrous night, Chris being too drunk to even perform more than a single song. He had his issues with the bottle from time to time, but he was a sweetheart underneath all that, not to mention being touched by genius. Following the shows in Oregon were two in Alaska, and Chris and I flew to the largest state in the union sans tour manager. Chris’ mother had died only a short while before these shows, and he was devastated by her death. The venues had been warned not to supply him with any alcohol, but when we arrived at the first show’s soundcheck in Palmer it was clear that it was too late, as Chris declined to soundcheck and slumped in the makeshift green room at the back of the venue. Chris walked onstage that night to a massive round of applause. These were people who’d been fans for some 15 years or more, and this was their first time seeing him in person. He started playing the title track of his debut album, Living With The Law. Or attempting to play it, more like. Chris used a lot of open tunings to play his songs, a good many of them far from standard. His guitar was in one of the most unconventional tunings, nowhere near the one he’d usually use for that song. In his drunken state, he couldn’t work out what was happening. Nor could the audience as they watched him fumble through one of his better-known songs. At the end of the song, they nervously broke into applause. Chris looked out into the stage lights in front of him and said “Jeff, if you’re there, man, I want you to join me up here.” I made my way up to the stage, got my lap steel out and sat next to him. “Jefferson!” he grinned at me, hugging me like we’d just been reacquainted after a long absence. “What are we gonna play, man?” We stumbled through an increasingly haphazard set for the folks of Palmer. They really were on his side, calling out requests and encouragement, willing him on, but it was rather wobbly up there. At one point someone called out a request for another of Chris’ more well-known songs. “‘Big Sky Country’! Play ‘Big Sky Country’!” I remember seeing him play that song for the first time back in Sydney, in 1993. He did it as the first encore, just tapping his foot slowly and singing the lyrics acapella, the room in silence as his whispery voice sent the lines like tumbleweeds through the room. Then, after all the words were sung he played a sparse three note figure on his Nationalsteel guitar as the room erupted. Sometimes less really is more. “Play ‘Big Sky Country’, Chris!” they tried again as he sat there. He leaned over to me with one eye closed, trying to focus on my face, and quietly made it clear to me that he couldn’t sing that song, not on this night. My friend was hurting, and he’d been hurting for a long time. “Okay then,” I said, “What do you wanna sing, Chris?” He grinned a lopsided smile. “Some fuckin’ Muddy Waters!” His set in Anchorage the next night was sad, beautiful and courageous. Even in his emotionally frail state he clawed at his songs’ structures, deconstructing and reassembling them in the moment, tying it all together with his poetic lyrics, sung soft and sweet, punctuated by ghostly falsetto.

I was thinking that after that weekend’s emotional roller coaster the recording may not eventuate. But not long after, emails started coming and plans were made for him to come out to Australia to make what became ‘Dislocation Blues’, at Adelphia Studios in Melbourne, during April 2005. The first song we tackled was the traditional song, ‘Stagger Lee’, and what’s on the album is the first take - indeed the one-and-only run-through of the song. Bass player Grant Cummerford and drummer Ashley Davies were the rhythm section, and there was no need to tell them what to play. When we mixed the album I remember the engineer, Mick Wordley, turning up Chris’ vocal mic on its own and saying “Well, that sounds like 80% of the mix right there!” We hadn’t isolated everything, allowing the various instruments to spill into each other’s microphones, and we occasionally left an amp mic off in the mixes where appropriate. In ‘Stagger Lee’ my amp was just a spectral component of the mix, floating in the background, whilst Chris’ National was mixed up front, right in your face, sounding like it could slice the speakers with each distinctive chordal stab. Recording is the nearest thing we have to time travel. Chris died in November that year from lung cancer, but I can put “Dislocation Blues” on, close my eyes, and I’m back there, everything where it was on those three days. I’m sitting on the right-hand side as you walk in, halfway down the room. Ash Davies is behind his kit diagonally across to my right, Grant Cummerford is to my immediate left, his bass in hand. I’m looking across at my late friend Chris, and he’s still here, and I’m watching as he sings in that haunted whisper “about that bad man, cruel old Stagger Lee”. It’s fucking magic, so it is. 63

NEVER

EVER LET THEM CANCEL

One of Michael Gudinski’s greatest achievements was the day that he managed to convince the world’s biggest rock ‘n’ roll band not to cancel a tour. By Stuart Coupe

‘You can never – ever – let them cancel – postpone, yes, but never cancel.’ That’s the only thought going through Michael Gudinski’s mind. It’s approaching 2 am Perth time, Wednesday 19 March 2014. In his room at the Hyatt Regency in Perth, Gudinski is beside himself. Angry. Frustrated. Feeling helpless and powerless. Gudinski knows about stress and pressure. It’s what he thrives on. What drives him. That is, unless it gets out of his control. Gudinski doesn’t like situations he can’t control. This is one of those situations. The Rolling Stones landed in Perth 48 hours earlier – and now are minutes away from cancelling the tour and leaving the country. The tour is budgeted to gross $52 million over six concerts (and eventually does). So tight are the Stones deals that a promoter can lose millions of dollars if even a tiny percentage of the venues don’t totally sell out. Gudinski – like any promoter – doesn’t want to think about the consequences of even one show being postponed or cancelled, let alone a whole tour. The Rolling Stones had arrived in Perth, stepping off their private, customised Boeing 767 late on the night of Sunday 16 March. They’d posed for a few media photographs before departing for their hotel. On the Monday things had been as routine as they can be on a Stones tour. They travel with a large entourage, and their party of 117 immediate staff is augmented by several dozen key Australian figures plus hundreds of workers employed in each city the band will play. Each Stones band member has their own manager. And each manager has an executive assistant, and assistant. There are several hundred people on the road. Carpenters, who report to the head carpenter. There is someone in charge of pyrotechnics. There’s a logistics director. There are tour accountants, road managers, a chief make-up and hair artist, wardrobe head, physiotherapist, digital media head . . . it goes on and on. They have to be flown to Australia, put in hotels and travel constantly with the band. All at Gudinski’s and AEG’s expense. Two stages had been brought to Australia in 52 64

shipping containers. The Stones play on their stage. And while one is being used in one city, another is being constructed in the next. Over 50 huge semi-trailers transport equipment between venues. Even before the Perth concert, the stage for the show in Adelaide has already been constructed – and on this tour, production crews are busy assembling the stage for the huge outdoor show at Hanging Rock in Victoria scheduled for eleven days after Perth. The Stones leave absolutely nothing to chance. With them it’s all about maintaining their reputation as The Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band in the World. Stones World doesn’t need Gudinski. Most of the Stones tour party don’t even know who he is. To them he’s a local contractor hired to do a job. Gudinski is OK with that. He’s promoting the Rolling Stones. He didn’t think it could get any better than promoting Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band a few weeks earlier. He doubts it can, but you never know. Gudinski’s preoccupied with making sure everything is running smoothly. He’s as relaxed as anyone ever gets touring the Rolling Stones – which is not very relaxed. Gudinski has rarely risked this amount of money before. On the Monday night Mick Jagger goes out to dinner. It’s a late one, almost midnight when he’s interrupted with the devastating news that his long-term partner L’Wren Scott has been discovered dead. He’s told it’s a suicide. Only the people very, very close to Jagger are told what has happened. Gudinski is in his hotel room watching TV. It’s approaching 2 am. A banner starts rolling across the bottom of the screen. ‘Mick Jagger’s long-term . . .’ Gudinski looks again. ‘Are you fucking kiddin’ me,’ he yells at the television. Gudinski looks at a bottle of Scotch in his room. He unscrews the top. As he is about to pour a big glass he looks at the wristband he’s worn on his left wrist since a major health scare a few years earlier. There are three words printed on it: Don’t Fuck Up. He puts the Scotch aside. This wasn’t on Gudinski’s list of things that might go wrong. He can’t sleep. He chews his fingernails even more ferociously than usual. He paces. Constantly paces. Looks at the phone. Yells. He calls Reegan Stark, the publicity and promotions director of the

Mushroom Group in Melbourne and fills her in. There’s not much more he can do till the new day breaks. By early morning on Tuesday, 18 March the tragic death of Scott is global news. Media are assembled outside the hotel. Gudinski talks to Paul Gongaware of AEG Live, the huge conglomerate that is the overall promoter for the Rolling Stones tour. Gongaware is tour director for the Stones on the road, and is in Perth. Gudinski has a tense discussion with Frontier’s financial controller Philip Jacobsen and other key people. What’s the deal with insurance? How many millions of dollars are they looking at losing here? Can they minimise any losses? What the fuck can they do? What the fuck do they do now? Right now. There’s a show scheduled in two days – absolutely everything is in place for a national tour. The ripple effect of any changes will impact on hundreds – maybe thousands – of people employed to do work associated with this tour. In the middle of the morning, with no word coming from Camp Stones, Gudinski is told to at least continue with the set-up for Wednesday night. What else can he do? Keep assembling the stage, fine-tuning security, backstage, catering . . . business as usual. At 5.20 pm Gongaware tells Gudinski that the Perth concert is not going ahead. Suddenly, everything looks bad for the whole tour. The impetus for the tour was a concert to open the revamped Adelaide Oval. The South Australian government had guaranteed Gudinski free use of the venue and a substantial fee if he could deliver the Rolling Stones. This concert, with over 50,000 tickets sold, is three nights after Perth. The Adelaide connections are desperately pleading for at least that performance to go ahead. The Stones camp aren’t saying anything beyond the fact that the band won’t perform in Perth. Gudinski knows that this tour can’t be cancelled. Under no circumstances. There’s a very big difference between the words ‘cancelled’ and ‘postponed’. He knows that when a promoter says ‘cancelled’, everyone automatically gets a ticket refund. The tour machine grinds to a halt. It’s over. Finished. He talks to Gongaware repeatedly but he knows nothing definite either.

All they can do is wait. And wait. Throughout this, Gudinski works through scenarios. Can the tour be moved a week to allow Jagger to fly back for the funeral and then return? Can it be moved a month? Two months? He scribbles on notebooks and pieces of paper. Staff are calling venues and checking on availabilities and reporting back. He’s in a holding pattern but not wasting a second. He needs to be prepared for any eventuality. Gudinski is on fire. It’s a weird combination of panic, determination and foreboding. When will there be news? The silence from the Stones and their management is unnerving. The hours drag on. The media are going crazy. Gudinski has his office change the name he’s booked into the hotel under so he’s not inundated with calls. Media have descended on the Hyatt Regency. Every exit is covered. The airport is staked out. Gudinski bunkers down. Doesn’t go out. He knows any comment from him will potentially upset the Stones camp. He doesn’t need that. Jane Rose, the long-time manager of Keith Richards, calls and invites Gudinski to a function for the guitarist’s daughter’s birthday. Amid the chaos and uncertainty, the rest of the Stones’ inner sanctum do their best to operate as normally as possible given these circumstances. Gudinski politely declines. He can’t face it. The stress is too much. Meanwhile, the Stones and their minders are locked in discussions. The decision is made to cancel the tour and plans are put in place for the band members to leave the country. But no one tells Gudinski what is happening. Tuesday night arrives and there’s still no movement. This is starting to creep Gudinski out, big time. Hours roll on. Inside Gudinski’s suite the work rate is frenetic. Every possibility is being canvassed. It’s after midnight. The phone rings. For the hundredth time that day. This time it’s Reegan Stark. She’d been asleep in Melbourne before being rung by the media and marketing liaison person travelling with the Stones, alerting her to the contents of the press release about to go out. The press release had been sent to the Frontier office in Melbourne via the Stones’ office in the UK and, given the time difference, they wanted to know it had been received – and digested – considering that all hell would break loose when the Stones’ decision was made public.

It’s 3.30 am in Melbourne. She tells Gudinski she’s heard that within ten minutes the Rolling Stones’ office will put out the press release announcing the cancellation of the band’s 2014 Australian tour. Gudinski repeats the same five words. Never. Ever. Let. Them. Cancel. The press release must not go out. Under any circumstances. Gudinski picks up the phone and dials another room in the hotel. The wait seems interminable. Gudinski explodes. ‘Paul, what the fuck . . .’ he yells down the line. With Gongaware hanging on the line, Gudinski has Stark send him the proposed

announcement from the Stones – Gongaware hadn’t even seen it. The Stones don’t need to explain themselves, even to their global promoters. Slightly calmer now, Gudinski tells Gongaware that the Stones have to announce a postponement, to allow time for arrangements to be potentially restructured. They just can’t cancel now. It’s a short conversation. Maybe three minutes. Gudinski reminds Gongaware that a cancelled tour never comes back. He stresses how much money he – and AEG and the Stones – will drop. He questions whether insurance will cover what’s just gone down. >>> 65

He implores Gongaware to buy more time so that he – Michael Gudinski – can put in place a new run of dates. He knows he can do it. And he knows he can do it fast. And better than anyone. He has that selfbelief. Now he needs Gongaware to totally believe him and sell this to the Stones’ management. Gudinski is at his most convincing. At this point he could have Gongaware believing the earth is flat. This is Gudinski in full flight. Gongaware tells Gudinski he’s right. It should be a postponement. He puts down the phone to call Rolling Stones’ business manager Joyce Smyth, and the band’s longstanding UK publicist, Bernard Doherty, both in London. Gudinski paces. He’s aware that the next few minutes are beyond critical. Things are out of his control. There is no telling how the Stones camp will react to the suggestion that they change their plans. This is the Rolling Stones, after all. They’re not used to being told they might have made the wrong call. A few minutes later the phone in Gudinski’s room rings. It’s Gongaware. The Stones have agreed to announce a tour postponement. Gudinski and Frontier Touring are still in the game. At 5 am AEDT, Frontier Touring issue a statement announcing the postponement. Never. Ever. Let. Them. Cancel. 66

Jagger soon flies out of Australia on a commercial airline that departs from Melbourne. The other band members and key figures drift back across the globe. But Gudinski has his postponement. That’s one thing sorted. The next is to get the tour back on track. What were he and Frontier staring at, losswise, if that hadn’t happened? ‘Millions mate, millions,’ he says, reclining on the couch in his office in May 2015. ‘And they would have lost millions too.’ Gudinski had thought those losses would be covered by his insurance. The Rolling Stones had thought their insurance would cover their losses. But there’s no precedent for an event like this – even in the colourful and unpredictable careers of both the Rolling Stones and Gudinski. The respective insurers said things that made all parties uncomfortable, suggesting that cancellation because of a suicide mightn’t be covered by the policies. The immediate ripple effect of any tour delay is enormous. All the equipment has to be returned, venues cancelled, hotels unbooked, caterers, security staff . . . contract staff laid off, tickets refunded. What happens to tens of thousands of T-shirts and other merchandise specifically manufactured for this tour with dates and venues emblazoned on them? There is as much work in a tour postponement or cancellation as there is in an actual tour. The main difference is that the outgoing costs are enormous and there’s no

money coming in. Gudinski has to get this tour back on track. With AEG, Gudinski and his key Frontier partner Frank Stivala, long-term lieutenants Gerard Schlaghecke and Michael Harrison and financial adviser Jacobsen set about sorting out a solution. The tour has to go back on. Adelaide is key as the South Australian government is donating the venue. The first possible date is 18 October at the end of the football season, and no later than the twenty-fifth, when the oval is scheduled to be used for cricket. The proposed new run of dates is presented to the Stones’ management, via AEG. Gudinski has done this quickly. Impressively quickly. In a matter of days. He’s firing. On the ball. He wants this tour back on. Badly. But there is Gudinski time and there is Rolling Stones time. His moves faster than theirs. Almost a fortnight goes by and there’s no news. What the fuck is going on? He’s starting to get a bad feeling. Despite this uncertainty, refund requests are minimal. The audience is holding strong, still expecting, still hoping that new dates will be announced. In the midst of this seemingly endless waiting game Gudinski’s wife, Sue, calls one morning early in April to let him know that Keith Richards’ daughter is going to be interviewed on the Today show. Gudinski turns on the TV and hears Alexandra Richards being asked about whether her

father and his mates are coming back to Australia. She says that she’s not meant to say anything but it looks like they’re coming back in October. Gudinski punches the air. He yells. ‘Fuck me drunk, we’re looking good here!’ Gudinski calls AEG to try and confirm if this is in fact true and his chest pumps with adrenaline and excitement when he hears from the more official channels that the tour is back on. But there’s now a lot of work to do. Everything – from the minutest detail up – must start again. On Tuesday, 15 April 2014 at 1.10 pm it is officially announced that the Rolling Stones’ Australian and New Zealand tour is back on for October and November. So, in October the Stones arrive. This time they’re not matchfit after a break from shows. They rehearse for ten days in a film studio in Adelaide. The Stones get an unheard-of 52,000 crowd in Adelaide, and kill it in Perth. Melbourne sells out. It’s a Stones tour in full, totally organised mode. Gudinski’s pulled it off. Bring on Hanging Rock. Gudinski’s phone starts ringing at 6.05 am on Friday, 8 November, the day before the show. He knows that nothing good comes from 6 am phone calls. It’s the news that Jagger’s voice, which was showing some signs of wear and tear at Rod Laver Arena two nights earlier, has deteriorated. Gudinski wonders why this is happening. Jagger may still act like he’s a teenager, but he’s now 71. He can’t keep up both the lifestyle and the performance schedule. The Stones are cancelling Hanging Rock. Gudinski can’t take it. This is fucked. Totally fucked. He deals with the barrage of the day. Dozens of calls. Refunds. Meetings. Abusive posting on social networks. It’s chaos. It’s a mess. That night he looks at his wristband. He ignores the word ‘Don’t’ on it and gets totally pissed. He needs a release. The following Saturday the Stones play the Hunter Valley. It’s a great show. Gudinski is deflated. All he can think about is how great Hanging Rock would have been. He travels to Brisbane then on to Auckland. Gudinski has very little engagement with the Stones themselves. His wife hangs out with the smokers in the camp but it’s not until a party after the concert in Adelaide that she introduces Gudinski to Keith Richards. ‘Are you Mr Promoter,’ he laughs. Richards refers to Sue as Mrs Promoter. After the concert in Sydney, Gudinski gets to spend more time with Richards. He goes with friends to the Caffe Roma restaurant in Sydney’s Kings Cross. By coincidence Richards is dining there in a secured area. Hearing that Gudinski is there, he invites the promoter in for what becomes a friendly chat.

But by the time the whole run of Australian dates has finished Gudinski still hasn’t met Jagger. He’s just the guy making sure a $52 million tour goes smoothly. And then, just an hour prior to the last show on the tour, Gudinski is wandering around backstage in Auckland when word comes to him that Mick Jagger would like to see him. Up to this point, Gudinski has not spoken to the singer on the whole tour. Prior to this, Gudinski had had no contact with the other Stones aside from the few exchanges with Keith Richards and chats with Ron Wood and Charlie Watts. The Stones keep very much to themselves, socialising only with those they know and trust. Gudinski is ushered in to see Jagger. They spend no more than ten minutes chatting. Jagger thanks him for everything he’s done and compliments him on how well he handled everything. Gudinski and Sue are allowed to pose for a happy snap with Jagger and the other Stones. He’s just put multiple millions of dollars on the line for their Australasian tour. The least they can do is a happy snap. After the chat with Jagger, the other band members are hastily assembled and the Gudinskis are told where to stand in relation to each member (it’s that regimented) and the photographer clicks away for ten seconds. Gudinski has to sign a release saying that he won’t use the photo anywhere without the permission of the Stones’ management. The photos are taken away so that each Stone can be sure they’re happy with their appearance and a few weeks later a sanctioned photo is sent to Gudinski. It’s not in this book. Gudinski didn’t think he needed the hassle of going through the whole rigmarole of asking for their approval.

Would he tour the Stones again? He doesn’t think they’ll ever return to Australia but says he’ll be disappointed if they do and he’s not the promoter. And did he and Frontier make money on the tour? ‘We didn’t make a fortune, but I’m certainly not in the club of people who lost money on a Rolling Stones tour,’ Gudinski says. ‘It knocked me around a lot and we didn’t make as much as we should have. But if the tour had been cancelled I’m not sure that it would have ever happened again. Those first three minutes on the phone to Gongaware were crucial. That’s where I really came into my own.’ This is what makes Michael Gudinski the formidable, awe inspiring – and phenomenally successful – figure he is. His intellect is astonishing, his presence commanding, often frightening and totally persuasive. He has the ability to convince anyone that his way of doing things is in fact the only way to do things. In those few minutes Gudinski went up against the Stones – and not just an undecided Stones camp but one that had made a decision to cancel their tour. He convinced one of the prime figures at one of the biggest tour promoting companies in the world that his way was the right way, and in doing so managed to present arguments and business acumen that changed the minds of the management of the goddam fucking Rolling Stones. Welcome to Michael Gudinski World. We just live in it. From Stuart Coupe’s biography of Michael Gudinski (published by Hachette Australia).

The Birth of L.A. Rock In a new book, Joel Selvin tells the compelling story of the beginnings of the Southern California rock scene. By Michael Goldberg

he Beach Boys “Good Vibrations” may be the greatest rock recording every made, and an excellent new book, “Hollywood Eden Electric Guitars, Fast Cars, and the Myth of the California Paradise,” written by author/rock critic Joel Selvin, details how a new Hollywood-centered rock scene that began in the late ’50s led to Brian Wilson’s 1966 masterpiece. Selvin’s book is much more than the story of ‘Good Vibrations.’ It’s a fascinating, at times thrilling, at times heartbreaking, social history of a scene that created a new California youth culture: as the songs of Jan & Dean, Dick Dale, the Beach Boys and others topped the pop charts, kids across the country came to know southern California as home to sun, surf and “two girls for every boy,” as Jan and Dean sang in their 1963 number one hit, ‘Surf City.’ From Selvin’s opening sentence I was hooked; I read the book straight through over about two days, barely able to put it down for meals and sleep. To tell his story, Selvin follows a number of essential characters, starting when most of them were still teenagers and attending one of five Los Angeles area high schools; included are Jan Berry, Dean Torrence, singer/songwriter Jill Gibson, who became Berry’s girlfriend and co-wrote songs with her lover, drummer Sandy Nelson, who played on Phil Spector’s “To Know Him is To Love Him” and scored a #4 hit with his own song, ‘Teen Beat,’ Nancy Sinatra, producer/manager Kim Fowley, Phil Spector, Brian Wilson, producer Lou Adler, surfer Kathy ‘Gidget’ Kohner, saxophonist Steve Douglas and singer/songwriter Phil (P.F.) Sloan, best known for writing the #1 1965 U.S. hit, ‘Eve of Destruction.’ As Selvin tells it, the L.A. rock scene began in the locker room showers of University High in the fall of 1957 when a naked Jan Berry, blonde-haired and “movie star handsome,”

walked in and began singing the Silhouettes current hit, ‘Get a Job,’ immediately joined by Dean Torrence and perhaps a dozen football players who had just finished practice. Berry became obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll and turned his parents’ garage into a rehearsal and recording studio where, using two used Ampex tape recorders that his electricalengineer father had bought, he began cutting demos of the songs he was writing. In the beginning, Selvin makes clear, Berry and many of the other young men and women who would develop or inspire L.A.

rock were naïve, clueless to the sometimes-dark ways of the music business; their innocence would soon fade. By June of 1958, Jan and Dean had scored their first Top 10 hit with the Joe Lubinproduced ‘Jennie Lee,’ a song credited to Jan and his friend Arnie Ginsburg, written after Dean, Ginsburg and some of their friends saw a stripper named Jennie Lee, the ‘Bazoom Girl,’ do her thing at the New Follies Burlesk on Main Street in downtown L.A. A year earlier, in June of 1956, University High School student Kathy Kohner, who was hanging out at Malibu Pier watching a handful of surfers ride the waves, decided she wanted to learn to surf. At the time, surfing was an obscure sport; at Malibu Pier, it was practiced by “a group of determined outcasts who lived in a palm-frond-and-driftwood shack on the beach,” Selvin writes. The surfers there gave Kohner a nickname; “they called her the girl midget— Gidget.” Kohner kept a diary and wrote about her summer of surfing. By the fall she wanted to write a book about her exploits but when she spoke to her screenwriter father about it, after reading her diary he told her he would write it. His book, Gidget: The Little Girl with Big Ideas, was published in October 1957 and as Selvin writes, the book “introduced the world to the California paradise and the nascent surf culture.” Rather than write a traditional non-fiction book attributing everything stated to his sources and quoting all of those sources frequently, Selvin has written his book as if it were a novel, only including quotes when they are part of a scene he is describing. Confident in his research, Selvin’s approach brings the Southern California environment where the action takes place and his

idiosyncratic characters to life; he puts the reader in the room with them as the action unfolds. Selvin suggested during a recent radio interview, Hollywood Eden would translate into a wonderful multi-episode TV series and he’s right. As much as the book is about the musical successes and failures of the artists, producers, session musicians and other characters Selvin writes about, it’s also about their personal lives, and how the way they lived profoundly impacted their professional lives, and thus, the history or popular music. Selvin writes eloquently about Phil Spector, and the ‘Wall of Sound’ producer’s successes, successes that came to an abrupt halt in 1966 with the release of what Spector thought was his greatest recording, Ike and Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep Mountain High.’ Spector never recovered from the failure of that song to become a hit in the U.S. Selvin also covers the rise and fall of the Mama’s and the Papa’s, the reinvention of Nancy Sinatra with ‘These Boots Are Made for Walkin’,’ and much more. And then there’s ‘Good Vibrations.’ Brian Wilson tried LSD for the first time in April of 1965; he believed acid brought out his insecurities, which showed up in many of the brilliant songs he wrote or co-wrote for Pet Sounds, the album he told his wife would be “the greatest rock album ever made!” He was also smoking weed at the time and said it added to his creativity. Wilson, a major fan of Phil Spector’s recordings, began work on ‘Good Vibrations’ in early 1966, a few months after he’d begun working on the songs that would comprise Pet Sounds. Selvin writes that Wilson “had first composed this new piece of music … on his third LSD trip, an ecstatic and enlightening spiritual experience for Brian.” The first recording session for ‘Good Vibrations’ took place on February 17 at Gold Star, the studio where Phil Spector had

recorded many of his epic Wall of Sound hits. Wilson and the session musicians he hired recorded twenty-six takes that night; the next night they recorded another 28 takes. Soon enough Wilson decided the song wasn’t right for Pet Sounds, the album that would be the both the creative highlight of his career, and a commercial disaster. So, he put it aside. On May 16, Pet Sounds was released. It peaked at #10 on the Billboard Top 200, but was considered a failure, which, along with the insecurity and paranoia that Wilson felt due to his continued use of LSD and other drugs, made him question whether ‘Good Vibrations’ was good enough. “Brian envisioned the piece as his greatest work, a self-conscious masterpiece,” Selvin writes. Over the next four months, Wilson divided his time between working on the never completed Smile album with his most recent writing partner, Van Dyke Parks, and working and reworking ‘Good Vibrations.’ “After more than seven months, twenty-two sessions, and somewhere between six and ten finished versions of the song, Brian had spent more than $50,000 on the record, more than any single ever,” Selvin writes. ‘Good Vibrations’ was released on October 10, 1966 and sold more than one hundred thousand copies a day during the first week, according to Selvin. “It was the biggest hit the Beach Boys ever had.” Sadly, the drugs Wilson was taking during ’65 and ’66 sent him on a downhill spiral and he never again equaled the creative work he did on Pet Sounds and ‘Good Vibrations.’ Selvin’s book concludes in 1966, when the early days of L.A. rock were over, and the next phase, which includes the folk-rock of the Byrds and the hard rock of the Doors, had begun. The ending of Hollywood Eden is bittersweet, and just as the book began with Jan Berry, so it concludes. On April 12, 1966. Berry, who frequently drove too fast, was furious as he got into his Corvette Stingray. The U.S. was at war in Vietnam, and Berry had been drafted. He had just met with the draft board hoping to convince them to give him a deferment. The board hadn’t bought into his arguments. Taking the route he and Dean had sung

about in ‘Dead Man’s Curve,’ Berry eventually turned onto North Whittier and accelerated. A gardener, Mitsuru Ondo, was watching. Selvin writes, Ondo “saw the car waver slightly and strike the curb with its right rear wheel. The car flew out of control down the street until it smashed into the back of Ondo’s truck [near the intersection of Sunset Blvd. in Beverly Hills] and, as the sound of breaking glass and screeching metal tore through the air, shoved the truck another seventy feet down the street before coming to rest. Jan’s Stingray was crushed underneath the rear of Ondo’s pickup. Jan had smashed into the truck at something like eighty miles an hour. The fiberglass body of the Stingray exploded.” Selvin writes that “after brain surgery at UCLA Medical Center, Berry was left in a deep coma.” Eventually he recovered from partial paralysis and brain damage. No longer “movie-star handsome,” Berry “looked beat up, his face swollen, his eyes dark, a tracheotomy scar across his neck.” By starting and ending his book with Berry, so young, so fearless in the beginning, so sad and pathetic by the end, the surf rock singer/ songwriter is both a man and a symbol. By 1966 the Eden of the early Hollywood rock scene was done. The final scene of the book shows us Berry sitting in a wheelchair in a Westwood diner as he emerges from his post-accident haze and recognizes someone sitting—in this case Joe Lubin, who had produced ‘Jennie Lee,’ Jan and Dean’s first hit—for the first time. Jan and Dead would never have another hit, but at least Berry’s memory had returned. 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 69

By Martin Jones

MICHAEL FIX BY NICK CHARLES

’ve known Michael for decades now, witnessed his supreme skills close at hand and never failed to be knocked out by his expertise and class. He just keeps getting better. He is simply one of the finest guitarists you will see and hear anywhere. We caught up and had a chat about the state of his music, post lockdown. Well, it has been at least ten years since our last Rhythms chat and you’re still one of the busiest musicians around! My annual routine has involved ten to twelve weeks of the year touring in Europe, and more recently China – where there’s a very active acoustic guitar scene. I have a duo project with Christine Collister (UK) which saw us touring East Coast Australia and the UK, and I’ve been hosting an annual Qld touring event, the Acoustic Guitar Spectacular, as well as producing artists, mainly singer-songwriters, here in Brisbane. I saw many of the videos you produced during the lockdowns, including the one with Brian May – very impressive. How did that come about? When the lockdowns started, I was looking to have some fun in my studio, and artists from all over the world were posting clips from their kitchens or gardens. I would play along, and when Brian May posted a clip of himself playing the rhythm guitar to ‘Stranger on the Shore’, I couldn’t resist joining in! Who were some of the other guitarists that you connected with? I wasn’t seeking to connect specifically with guitarists, it was more often a case of me noticing friends posting songs that I happened to like-Darren Coggan, Weeping Willows, Christine Collister, Louie Shelton, young Ben Gillard, Adam Rafferty and Andrea Valeri. I called this video series ‘Isolation Inspiration’. You seem to have a terrific ear for reproducing classic pieces. Do you look at transcriptions, sheet music etc. or has it become an instinctual process? Thanks, I play mainly by ear, whether it is Classical, or Classic Rock. A good tune is a good tune! I enjoy arranging for the acoustic guitar, and

I’m always considering either a personal connection, will the audience enjoy it, or has it been done before. Before arranging a difficult piece like MacArthur Park or Bach’s Tocatta, I will always do a YouTube search to check that my choice hasn’t already been done to death by other solo guitarists. How do you see your travel plans unfolding when it seems safe to head o/s? No overseas travel this year, but I am planning to be in the UK and Europe from August 2022. You are a player with decades of experience and accumulated knowledge. How do you imagine/describe your progress as a musician? Wow, interesting question! I’ve never really thought about it! I’m 61 now, but in my head and heart I’m 35. I still see a long, winding, and joyful road ahead, filled with learning and discovery. I don’t consider myself to have incredible chops and I’ve never written a hit song, but I don’t measure my personal success by those standards. I’m greatly impressed with your studio and production skills too. How did that skill set evolve? Recording has been a passion since the beginning. When I was 12, I was given a set of headphones and a cassette recorder, and that just ignited a passion for recording and sound. Producing is highly instinctive; part ‘song doctor’ and part psychologist. Forming trust, managing time, budget, and expectations, and having (often) insecure and shy performers deliver great performances is exciting. Tell me about your latest recording. In 2019 I released Cloudsurfing (solo guitar CD), North & South (with Christine Collister), and Walking Bass Grooves (book/DVD). So far this year- two instrumental singles Dalveen and The Other Side, and April sees the release of a new project called Timelines - Australian Stories in Song, a project with Brisbane singer-songwriter Mark Cryle. www.michaelfix.com

WHEN THE EVERLY BROTHERS MET THE BRYANTS

was playing ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ in the shop a few weeks ago, and a hipster strolled in, looked at the turntable and exclaimed, “Who’s this? This is great!’ The influence of The Everlys’ ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, ‘Love Hurts’, ‘Bye Bye Love’ and ‘All I Have To Is Dream’ cannot be overestimated. They predated The Beatles’ formation and their importance might even eclipse that of the Fab Four in the USA. Here, alongside Buddy Holly and Elvis, was the birth of teenager-embraced modern pop music, changing the world forever. Phil and Don Everly did write some incredible songs – ‘Cathy’s Clown’, ‘The Price Of Love’, ‘When Will I Be Loved’ – but they didn’t write their biggest hits. Now, if someone hasn’t even heard of ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, then there are probably people who don’t know that all those Everly classics were written by one husband and wife team: Matilda Genevieve Scaduto and Diadorius Boudleaux Bryant, better known and Felice and Boudleaux Bryant. I didn’t! Even disregarding the dozens of other compositions the Bryants contributed to the Everlys, the country hits through the late ‘40s and early ‘50s, Buddy Holly’s ‘Raining in My Heart’, and an estimated catalogue of 6000 songs, these four songs must number amongst the most influential in the history of Western Music. Indeed, ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ and ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ reached Number One across the Country & Western, Pop and R&B charts simultaneously. What an unlikely story! Classically trained violinist turned country fiddler meets teenaged traditional Italian musician/elevator operator. She claims him as the man of her dreams – literally, having previously ‘met’ him in her childhood dreams, hence ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’ – and they immediately elope, move into a trailer and begin writing together. As their official website rightly claims, “American music pivoted in the spring of 1945 in Milwaukee, in an elevator at the Schroeder Hotel.” Boudleaux has recalled the songwriting started out as a fun hobby, but the pair quickly amassed almost a hundred songs and realised they were onto something. They soon moved to Nashville and, as Felice has recalled, “Boudleaux and I were the first people who came to Nashville who didn’t do anything but write. We were the factory.” Ken Burns paid a reverent homage to the Bryants in his Country Music series, but surely

there’s a more detailed biopic in the waiting. In Nashville, the songwriting couple found favour with the Acuff-Rose machine and had a number of country hits before being introduced to up-and-coming duo Phil and Don Everly. And we know what happened next. “Their stuff fit us like a glove, because it was designed to fit,” Don Everly has reported. “Boudleaux would sit down and talk with us. A lot of his songs were written because he was getting inside our heads – trying to find out where we were going, what we wanted, what words were right.” That’s a bit of a revelation right there: the Bryants were writing songs specifically for the Everlys in many cases. And yet it’s testament to the quality of the songs (not to discount the unique treatment The Everlys gave them) that so many others have recorded them since. Interestingly, though, one of the Bryant’s biggest songs was not written for The Everlys – in fact, it was turned down by dozens of others until it found a home with Don and Phil. “‘Bye Bye Love’ was shown over 30 times before it was ever cut,” Boudleaux has

recalled. “It was even shown the very morning of the same day The Everly Brothers heard it in the afternoon. When it was turned down, the fella said, ‘Why don’t you show me a good strong song?’ So, nobody really knows what a good song is.” But that’s one thing the Bryants did know. And their collaborative process was not as clear cut as many have imagined. As one of their sons, Del, reported, “They both were complete writers. Dad wrote songs such as ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’, ‘Love Hurts’, ‘Devoted To You’, ‘Bird Dog’, the instrumental ‘Mexico’, and ‘Let’s Think About Living’ alone. Mom wrote the country classic ‘We Could’ and the Ricky Nelson hit ‘I’m Not Afraid’ on her own. Dad was perhaps the most complete writer and mother more a lyricist than melody writer, though both. They were complete collaborators and wrote thousands of tunes together including ‘Bye Bye Love’, ‘Wake Up Little Susie’… and ‘Rocky Top’.” Others have reported that Felice had the imagination and Boudleaux the editing skills, condensing an idea down to “a few words and not very many notes.” Fantastic advice to any songwriter. The pair remained lifetime partners, Boudleaux dying in 1987 and Felice in 2003.

By Trevor J. Leeden A.J. FULLERTON THE FORGIVER AND THE RUNAWAY VizzTone/Planet

BY KEITH GLASS LARRY SAUNDERS (The Prophet Of Soul)

STRANGER

Soul International Records (1975)

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. The story of Larry Sanders/Saunders (and more name variations) is a sad indictment of how major talent can go wanting. Larry is probably the best near unknown Soul singer you are ever (or maybe never) going to hear. Reputedly a son of the tragically short-lived Johnny Ace, Larry at least had a longer life but was stymied at most every turn. An early recording on Mobile, Alabama label Hot Cakes (later re-issued on Modern, The Bihari Brothers label,) brought him to the attention of Sylvia Roberts’ All Platinum group with some composition claims made by Larry on her hit ‘Pillow Talk’ and others by The Moments and The Whatnaughts but by 72

’75 Sanders was in Muscle Shoals completing the one and only album released during his lifetime. Stranger is a dead set Soul masterwork where Larry found kindred spirits in the form of the Fame Studio’s deep well of great musicians with that hard to define ‘something’ that makes most everything great. The rhythm section Hood/Hawkins/Johnson and Beckett came over from the by then competing 3614 Jackson Highway studio, there were other journeymen such as Tippy Armstrong and Travis Wammack (gtr), Clayton Ivey (keys) - a mighty horn section Calloway/Thompson/ Eaden (and more) whilst fellow singer/ songwriter William Bell arranged the great backing singers. What could go wrong – well nothing! The result was a masterpiece up there with the best of an era that admittedly by the mid 70’s was coming to a close. Larry’s primary influences were pretty easy to spot. Sam Cooke into Curtis Mayfield would just about cover it but if Larry was a lesser singer/writer that could have been embarrassing – here it most certainly wasn’t. He had the pipes and he had the songs (here possibly for contractual reasons all attributed to ‘August Moon’) Among the standout’s the autobiographical ‘Three Strikes On Me’ takes its theme from Cooke’s ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ with Larry wailing ‘I was born in Alabama/In a wooden shack/Deep In the heart of Dixie/Way across the tracks” on paper it sounds a little cliché but his conviction

makes it tangible. Elsewhere, the state of the cosmos concerns the singer/songwriter with ‘This World (Is A Ball Of Confusion)’ but more hopeful are ‘This I My Prayer’ and ‘Love, I Haven’t Found You Yet’. The rarity of the album makes the reasoning for a brand-new cover some short time after release puzzling but version two with a street scene and youngster on it is equally hard (if not harder) to find. When re-issued in CD (only a matter of a few years back) a closeup image of Larry from the first cover was settled on. The legitimacy of the CD however is questionable. As usually happens, it was the Europeans who took to Larry with a Dutch film crew arriving in Mobile a decade ago to meet with him and tell his story. Never hitting the heights he did at least keep trying; in 1981 with a fine 45 (as Frankie Sanders) on the Jackson Mississippi label Juana with the standout ‘Blues Time In Birmingham’ both sides written (and the session engineered by) the extremely capable Jerry Powell. The classic R&B sound was by then somewhat out of place and time - but still great. Larry even tried releases on his own label (Ro-La) and planned another album -only an acetate may still exist -but alas time caught up with him. His funeral in Mobile, Alabama was a 5 hour-long affair. Larry’s sister Lynn White still carries the R&B flame while his daughter Ledisi is a multiple Grammy nominated contemporary artist.

performances with guitar aces Diz Disley and Martin Taylor, it is a sheer delight for jazz lovers.

‘Black Rose’. Forget that these are Waylon Jennings songs, Shannon McNally makes them all her own.

HARPERS BIZARRE

MENAHAN STREET BAND

COME TO THE SUNSHINE Cherry Red/Planet

With the second album by the Colorado singer-songwriter, it’s clear Fullerton is more than your average bluesman. Sure, there are plenty of blues riffs and slashing bottleneck to enjoy, but it’s the strength of his songwriting and the warm timbre of his voice that truly stand out. Whether it be churning electric blues (‘Say You’ll Stay’), an organ drenched slab of Southern gospel soul (‘Remind Me Who I Am Again’), or homespun acoustic picking (‘Hooks In The Water’), Fullerton is a commanding presence, aided and abetted by Jake Friel’s harp snaking its way through several songs. There’s good reason A.J. Fullerton is attracting plenty of accolades and attention, here’s a dozen of them.

Under the guidance of legendary producer Lenny Waronker, the Californian quintet released four albums in short time (all included here) that made them the poster boys for late 60’s Sunshine Pop. With songs contributed by Randy Newman, Leon Russell and Van Dyke Parks, and utilising L.A.’s peerless session musicians the Wrecking Crew, their exquisite baroque harmonies defined the genre, encapsulated in their meticulous rendition of Paul Simon’s “Feelin’ Groovy”. Lead singer Ted Templeman would go on to find success as producer for the likes of Van Morrison, Little Feat and Van Halen.

STEPHANE GRAPPELLI

THE WAYLON SESSIONS Compass Records/Planet

When a 3-disc collection featuring a violinist universally regarded as one of jazz’s greatest is released, containing 30 tracks never previously available on CD as well as 17 previously unreleased tracks, it is cause for celebration. That the first disc features 22 tracks from his last session with his old sparring partner, the peerless guitarist Django Reinhardt, is further reason to get excited; the performances are exquisite. With a disc of solo recordings and another featuring late career live

It’s unusual to hear a female interpret the songs associated with outlaw country legend Waylon Jennings; however, Shannon takes on the challenge with relish. With some able lieutenants including Buddy Miller, Lukas Nelson, Rodney Crowell, and Jennings’ wife Jessi Colter, McNally wisely shuns histrionics and honours the spirit of the originals. Testosterone is substituted with intensity and uncharacteristic tenderness on a dozen standards, including ‘This Time’ and ‘I’ve Always Been Crazy’, ‘Out Of The Stars’ and

FROM PARIS WITH LOVE Sunset Blvd/Planet

SHANNON McNALLY

THE EXCITING SOUNDS OF Daptone Records/Planet

The first stand-alone outing since 2012 for the Thomas Brenneck led supergroup is a soulful delight that never plunges too deeply into the retro soul pond. Instead, the 14 instrumentals play out like a collection of vintage cinema soundtracks, each composition with its own story to tell. There are few ensembles in the funk/ soul world able to match the MSB for the sheer ability to capture a mood, whether it be sultry, late night shots of l’amour or pumping blaxploitation styled horn arrangements. If you’re looking for ‘the vibe’ then search no more.

ROBIN TROWER, MAXI PRIEST, LIVINGSTONE BROWN UNITED STATE OF MIND Proper/Planet

As unlikely as this summit of three veteran British music legends sounds, the result is quite superb. Trower steps away from his blues-rock guitar pyrotechnics for a more organic approach that vividly highlights his virtuosity and doesn’t rely upon string shredding. Priest, an iconic UK reggae vocalist, is in stellar voice throughout, textured and silky smooth, whilst Brown’s organic production technique sonically unifies his accomplices. The surprise packet of the year, taking rock and reggae on a thoroughly enchanting journey.

NICK WATERHOUSE

SUSS

PROMENADE BLUE Innovative Leisure/Planet

If there is such a sound as ambient alt-country then this is it. The New York quartet’s latest is a hazy, panoramic soundscape, tumbleweeds rolling across endless plains and through deserted country towns. Moaning Daniel Lanois-esque pedal steel mixes with lonesome harmonica, baritone guitars, and waves of subtle electronica, shades of early era Pink Floyd mingle with Brian Eno moments. Promise floats on a sea of mesmerising psychedelic tranquility, haunting and thoroughly immersive.

A salvo of Spector-like drums is a direct hit to the solar plexus on the stunning ‘Place Names’, a string laden opening gambit that announces the clubhouse leader in the ‘soul album of the year’ category to date. Bursting with impossibly infectious slices of hip twitching dancefloor fillers to lashings of sultry jazz-noir, Waterhouse has rewritten the blue-eyed soul songbook in one fell swoop by turning the sound of nostalgia into a thoroughly contemporary soul symphony. Over to you James Hunter and Eli Reed, here’s the new benchmark. 73

PROMISE Northern Spy/Planet

IS WHERE THE ACTION IS

BY CHRIS FAMILTON

By Christopher Hollow

NATALIE BERGMAN

WINDS

MERCY Third Man

LOOK AT THE SKY Natural Music

I’m not religious. I wasn’t brought up with religion. My parents had to fight to be married in 1966 Australia (my father Catholic, my mother Protestant). In the aftermath, they refused to have anything more to do with it and I, like them, have no faith in faith. Still, I can’t help but be drawn to good music that employs spirituality, religious metaphors and sometimes uses the Lord’s name in vain. (The Velvet Underground’s ‘Jesus’, Blind Faith’s ‘Presence of the Lord’, Madonna’s ‘Like a Prayer’). Natalie Bergman is a Chicago artist formerly with the band, Wild Belle, whose solo debut is out-and-out Christian rock. It appears Bergman is more spiritual than Bible-thumper and the best songs are couched in classic indie melodies albeit with relentlessly Christian themes. My favourites included ‘Talk to the Lord’ and ‘Shine Your Light on Me’ which talk of ‘shepherds’, ‘flocks’ and ‘sweet Jesus’. ‘When you are scared, reach out your hand, talk to the Lord,’ she sings in the former. The melody for ‘Home at Last’ takes its cues from Bob Dylan’s ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ and touches on the death of Bergman’s entrepreneur father, Judson, in a 2019 car crash where he was killed by a drunk driver. ‘When a great man falls and the skies collapse,’ she intones. ‘Where’s the joy in this world, is he home at last?’ Consider me a convert. 74

Winds – great band name, mysterious and elemental but you can file it into the ‘impossible to Google’ category. Winds band. Winds songs. Winds California. It doesn’t help and hello to the Norwegian neoclassical/prog metal band named Winds and the J-Pop boy band, W-inds, which both sound interesting too. This Winds is based in Los Angeles and Look at the Sky is their strong debut album. If you’re looking for easy cues, ‘Don’t Fall Apart’ has the same simple charm of a Buddy Holly number and ‘Time We Take’ has a similar feel and vocal sound to Julian Casablancas and The Strokes. The way the voice cracks at 1.33 and the coda cements this notion. Meanwhile, the vocal in the bouncy ‘The Way You Feel’ resembles a teddy bear stuck in the top-floor attic of a haunted house, which I love.

has felt that. Someone who obviously feels it keenly is Bobby Lee, a guitarist who hails from Sheffield, the home of the Industrial Revolution in the UK, rather than his Arizona desert dreamscape. But he gets there, at least artistically. Origin Myths is an instrumental album and relentless in its vision. It’s slow and gazey and introspective. It’s a record you have to make time for, surrender to -- like all those great old westerns such as Ride the High Country, Red River and One-Eyed Jacks. I must say, it’s hard not to laugh at the titles – ‘Broken Prayer Stick’, for instance, ‘Fire Medicine Man’, and ‘Enchanted Mesa’, while ‘Impregnated by Drops of Rainbow’ really takes the piss and must have had them laughing in the studio when the producer asked, ‘So what’s this one called?’ But they’re all fine numbers especially ‘Rainbow’ with its krautrock drum machine and cyclical lines folding in on themselves.

DAVID HOUSTON NEW VOICE FROM NASHVILLE Epic

BOBBY LEE ORIGIN MYTHS Tompkins Square

Born in the wrong time, living in the wrong place, don’t fit into this world. I think everyone

When I started penning this column a decade ago the idea was to be able to write about discoveries that really lit my fire. Things you’d recommend to your friends. Songs you could base a mixtape around. The latest one for me is a number from long-past Louisiana country singer David Houston called ‘Cowpoke’. Part-creamy Marty Robbins style yodelling, part Dean Martin ‘My Rifle, My Pony and Me’. It was the centrepiece

for his 1964 album, New Voice from Nashville. Incredible singing and a tale that could inspire its own satisfying cinema experience. ‘I’m lonesome but happy, rich but I’m broke/And the good Lord knows the reason I’m just a cowpoke.’ On the same album is another waltz 3/4 belter called ‘Whippoorwill’. Make sure you hear his cry.

TOMMY JAMES & THE SHONDELLS CELEBRATION: THE COMPLETE ROULETTE RECORDINGS 1966-1973 Cherry Red

Tommy James has a great rock and roll story. Plucked from obscurity to instant stardom, insane international success, a scary mobster-connected mentor, and surprising tales of autonomy in the studio that led to songs that still get played and covered 50 years after their inception. Roulette, of course, is the label led by the infamous Morris Levy (who managed to get his sticky mits on everyone from Chuck Berry to the Lovin’ Spoonful and John Lennon). James had a crack at many of the trends of the day and did it well whether it was soft rock (‘Crimson and Clover’, ‘Crystal Blue Persuasion’), hard soul (‘I’m Alive’ as done by Johnny Thunder and later Tommy himself), bubblegum pop (‘Mony Mony’, ‘I Think We’re Alone Now), psychedelia (‘I Am a Tangerine’), country rock (‘Paper Flowers’) and he even went through his Christian period and delivered a great gospel song, ‘Light of Day’.

1971: THE FOLK EVOLUTION

olk music in the widest sense has been around since humans began communicating via song and music but in the 20th century, in particular the 1960s and 1970s, it reached its pop culture zenith. Looking back with the advantage of 50 years of hindsight, 1971 was something of a watershed year for folk music. Gone was the singular image forged by Guthrie and Dylan since the 1950s, replaced by a number of divergent strands that had spun out from traditional folk and which now included acoustic troubadours alongside confessional songwriters, jazz-folk, country-folk and more cosmic psych-folk explorations. On both sides of the Atlantic musicians were finding new and fascinating ways to further the spirit and intellect of folk music. Female songwriters were leading the way when it came to dissecting the human experience. Towering above everyone else in 1971 was Joni Mitchell and her seminal album Blue. A landmark record that defined a generation of confessional singer-songwriters in terms of both the songs and Mitchell’s crystalline vocal performance. Karen Dalton, on the other hand, gained widespread recognition many years later with the reissue of her album In My Own Time, with its earthier, more soulful and Appalachian sound that showcased Dalton’s croaky, livedin voice and which stands as an equally sublime contrast to Mitchell’s pure tone. Judee Sill also arrived on the scene with her self-titled debut album, another that gained wider plaudits with the passage of time. Leonard Cohen’s emotionally intense masterpiece Songs Of Love And Hate was released in March, 1971 and though it only reached 145 on the US Billboard charts, here in Australia it entered the top ten. The lasting influence of the album is its greatest legacy, far outweighing any commercial concerns. The race for folk popularity was well catered for by artists such as Don McLean, the title track to his album American Pie reaching number one in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. John Denver released two albums in 1971, including his breakthrough Poems, Prayers & Promises featuring ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ and James Taylor continued his mainstream success with his less than inspiring third album Mud Slide Slim And the Blue Horizon.

As a quartet Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had been titans of the folkrock world for less than two years before the cracks appeared and the members struck out on their own. While the group released 4 Way Street, the defining document of their live performances, 1971 also saw the release of critically acclaimed solo albums from David Crosby (If I Could Only Remember My Name) and Graham Nash (Songs For Beginners). Over in the UK, folk music was also diversifying at the start of the 1970s. Cat Stevens followed up his breakthrough album Tea For The Tillerman with the equally strong Teaser And The Firecat, featuring his take on the traditional song ‘Morning Has Broken’ and the hits ‘Moonshadow’ and ‘Peace Train’. Van Morrison added country flavours to his R&B/folk sounds, with mixed results, on Tupelo Honey and the band Trees released their final album On The Shore, recently reissued to renewed critical acclaim. It featured the epic psychedelic sound of ‘Sally Free And Easy’, an example of the willingness of many English folk musicians to take the genre into expansive cosmic territory. Roy Harper was another who was open to the possibilities of progressive folk on his classic album Stormcock. Back in America and operating outside of the mainstream, John Fahey released America on his Takoma label, further advancing the possibilities of instrumental acoustic guitar playing. In Greenwich Village, Michael Hurley showed a marked evolution from his traditional sounding debut (1964) to his new collection of outsider folk - Armchair Boogie. Evolution was the name of the folk game in the early 1970s as artists sought to break the shackles of convention that had become tired and predictable. Finding new ways to tell stories while respecting the central tenets of the form continues to be the fascinating and ongoing appeal of the folk song.

ALBUM PREVIEW

NEW DIRECTIONS

Melbourne musician Justin Bernasconi offers fans a taste of his new musical direction.

By Denise Hylands

et’s start with Cocaine and Rhinestones: The History Of Country Music. Have you had the pleasure of listening to this magnificent podcast yet? If not, get onto it now, you’ve got a bit of catching up to do. Cocaine & Rhinestones, tells the history of country music like you’ve never heard before. The first series covered the controversy over Loretta Lynn’s recording of ‘The Pill’, the meaning of Merle Haggard’s ‘Okie from Muskogee’, and the musical relationship of the Louvin Brothers, as well as sometimes confronting stories of people like Spade Cooley, Wynonna, Ernest Tubb, Bobbie Gentry, Ralph Mooney, Rusty & Doug Kershaw and more. There were 14 episodes in Season One which was launched in 2017. Hosted, produced and created by Tyler Mahan Coe, son of country musician David Allen Coe. He grew up in the country music scene and played guitar in his dad’s band from age 15 for many years. Now, Season 2 has arrived. Coe continues his discovery and stories covering the history of country music but this time through George Jones. Yep, the whole season centres around Jones although taking in subjects like Spanish bullfighting, the commercial development of the ice trade, the history of western wear and the threat of pinball machines on American youth. But it’s all about Jones. It was launched on April 20 and features 18 new episodes. And while I’m talking about podcasts, country music website Saving Country Music has also just launched a podcast Country History X which tells the history of country music, one story at a time. Delving into the darker side of country music, meaning crime, death, drugs, deception and murder. The subject matter will span from the very beginning of the genre to more present day stories. And for those of you not really into country music, give these stories a listen and you’ll soon be discovering the other side of the genre and it might just make you hear it all in a different way. Good music keeps rolling in with so many great new releases and great to see so many bands being able to tour and be out there playing music live. Bill Jackson, one of Australia’s finest songwriters, has just released his new album The Wayside Ballads: Vol. 3. Part 3 of the trilogy which started with Jackson’s brother 76

The Pink Stones Ross recording Vol. 1 in 2014 in Australia and Vol. 2 recorded in the US. Forming a musical partnership with ARIA Hall of Famer Kerryn Tolhurst, after a chance meeting, they recorded this album during the pandemic time of 2020. Outstanding musicianship and songs. If you haven’t checked out the cosmic country sounds of The Pink Stones, I highly recommend their debut album Introducing The Pink Stones. There’s a story in this issue I did with their founder Hunter Pinkston. Also, in that Cosmic country zone are another relatively new band Silver Synthetic from New Orleans. Made up of members from rock and roll and garage punk bands Bottomfeeders and Jeff the Brotherhood. They’ve just released their self-titled debut album. Full of distinctive bursts of familiar influences they’ve very much created their own sound reminiscent of 60’s / 70’s country rock . Co-founder and co-owner of Third Man Records, Ben Swank was so blown away with their sound when catching a live gig he signed them to his label. If you want your country a little more grounded in its classic sounds you can’t go past the amazing new album by Melissa Carper. She has an incredible knack of mixing those classic country sounds with old time jazz to create something that is nostalgic but new and fresh. Check out the interview I did with her in this issue. Nick Shoulders, the ever yodelling and whistling dude from Arkansas has just released his new album Home On The Rage and as expected it’s another great one. Selfdescribed as ‘grampa music’, his love for Slim Whitman still shines. A collaboration of Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert and Jon Randall is The Marfa Tapes. Marfa, Texas served as something of a muse for these three, with its vast expanse of nothingness on regular writing trips over the past 6 years. In November 2020, they returned to Marfa once more to record their

new album inspired by their time spent on those writing retreats. The Shootouts have released their second album, Bullseye, highlighting their honky tonk and western swing sounds. Produced by Chuck Mead and recorded in Nashville, it’s reminiscent of his earlier bands BR5 49. The High Heaven are Jackson Freud and Tom Hulses, a new band on the Melbourne scene. Drawing inspiration from the desert plains and whiskey-soaked saloons of the Old West, their debut album ‘Fairytales of the Heartland’ is one ride you’ll want to take, partners. Then Jolene from the mid north coast of NSW, have just released their 2nd album The Putdown. An 8-piece outfit that have been described as “the bastard son of bluegrass and the wayward daughter of country music”. New releases and forthcoming releases to look out for that I can recommend: Melissa Carper - Daddy’s Country Gold Esther Rose - How Many Times Hiss Golden Messenger - Quietly Blowing It 25th June Lachlan Bryan & The Wilds - Nearest Misses Live Bill Jackson - The Wayside Ballads Vol. 3 Jeb Cardwell - Blood Moon - out soon The Shootouts - Bullseye Jack Ingram, Miranda Lambert & Jon Randall - The Marfa Tapes The Felice Brothers - From Dreams To Dust Nick Shoulders - Home On The Rage Silver Synthetic - self titled Zach Schmidt - Raise A Banner The High Heaven - Fairytales of the Heartland The Pine Hill Haints - The Song Companion of a Lonestar Cowboy Jason Ringenberg - Rhinestoned Bobby Dove - Hopeless Romantic Then Jolene - The Putdown Callum Wylie - Marfa “The truth is that country music is wild and it is amazing because the people who made it were wild and they were amazing”. Tyler Mahan Coe

elbourne musician Justin Bernasconi offers fans a taste of his new musical direction with the release of songs ‘Blank Page’ and ‘Flags’ ahead of his upcoming third solo album. His trademark intricate guitar playing, and folk-infused storytelling remain sublime and evocative. But the new compositions hark back to more British roots influences than his previous Americana leanings. He shares the process that took him on this path. Were the new tunes the result of so much recent time at home? They were being worked on after the launch of Barefoot Wonderland in London in 2017 and finished by early 2019. I did write and play a lot during lockdown, but there was a lot going on. Cat (Canteri) and I were looking after our baby daughter in solitude, but the most writing I did was when my father died in the UK. Being unable to travel, I wrote a eulogy and recorded it to send over to be played at his service. Intense times. ‘Blank Page’ shifts away from the standard song form. I see it as a sound painting, with the struggles of torment like splashes of colour in the music. A big part of this track is Justin Olsson’s amazing drumming performance. I’ve been a fan since watching him study at the VCA and we have a long musical relationship through working with Cat. I love ‘Birdman’ (the film); how the drums on the soundtrack are like psychological triggers for Michael Keaton’s character. I [suggested] Justin approaches the track almost like it was a jazz drum solo. What he came up with was so crazy I knew it

By Chris Lambie was right. Anita Hillman recorded a stunning cello part which gave an extra dimension. At the end of the session, we were all excited looking at each other saying – this sounds different! You return to the British folk traditions this time around. Our trip to Europe in ‘17 changed me. We spent weeks wondering around galleries in France and Spain, seeing lots of classic paintings. I’d work out pieces and arrangements in my head and sing them into my phone. Fellow gallery patrons probably thought I was mad. Back in Melbourne, I began experimenting more with dissonance in my playing. Some influential artists behind these new songs? Last time I went to Basement Discs in Melbourne, they suggested I buy Joseph Tawadros’ World Music and several Ali Farka Toure’s albums. I was also getting into Martin Simpson’s use of free time and space on Vagrant Stanzas as the classical composer Satie. Lyrical inspiration for ‘Flags’ came from listening to the Tallest Man On Earth. I trust Jeff [Lang’s] instincts to help me achieve what I’m after in the studio, whether sonically, stylistically, tones or performance of the songs. Tell us about the inspiration behind ‘Blank Page’ and ‘Flags’. I record a lot of musical ideas using the voice memo app on my phone. I came across the ‘Blank Page’ riff on the plane to London in 2017. At first, I couldn’t work out how to play it as I thought it was in alt tuning, but it was in standard tuning. I hadn’t written any lyrics in a few

years and returning to Australia, I wasn’t in a good way emotionally. I felt I had writer’s block. So that’s what I wrote about, the rest just flowed. The Blank Page video was shot by Jim Arneham (Small Town Romance) over several very early mornings around Reservoir to capture the landmarks of our neighbourhood in the right light. So, we shot around Mount Cooper, Linh Son Temple and the Thomastown pipeline easements behind the industrial estate, just to keep it real. Sean Kirkwood filmed the Flags video late one evening between the easing of lockdowns. Both film makers are gifted craftsman and fun to work with. How has it been to perform live again? I was so looking forward to my first gig, but as soon as I was on stage, I was a total ball of nerves. It was so confronting. I’d forgotten how much energy and focus you need to play live, engage with an audience! You’ve released a virtual A-side / B-side? Has the ‘new normal’ opened up the way for artists to give more options a try? I think so. There are no rules when releasing music. I wanted to go back to that old school idea of giving an audience two tracks to experience. Although I’m releasing on digital platforms, these tracks give people a taste of the energy and musical direction of the new album. When can we expect to hear the new album in its entirety? Spring. I’m coordinating the release in the UK as well. We’re also expecting our second baby this winter, so it’s gonna be a busy time!

ALBUM FEATURE

FROM HERE TO FRATERNITY

With the release of a new 3-CD Fraternity anthology, and a book on the band due, it’s time to take a look at their history.

he story of 1970s Australian rock band Fraternity is often told as a mere thread in the early history of AC/DC. As lead singer of both Fraternity and AC/DC, Bon Scott was the link in the chain. The recent anthology released via Cherry Red in the UK, Seasons of Change the Complete Recordings 1970-1974, positions the band as an entity in its own right. No longer should it be Bon Scott and some other blokes.

Seasons of Change combines the albums Livestock (1971), Flaming Galah (1972) with bonus tracks, plus a third disc, Second Chance, which features previously unreleased live cuts and demos recorded in London in July 1972. The liner notes do push the case that “Fraternity are pioneers of pub rock, arguably the most famous genre of music to come out of the land down under”, which is a romantic notion but really the band was just one of hundreds of similar groups traversing the early ’70s local pub, concert and festival arenas. Fraternity was definitely a top live act, winning the 1971 Battle of The Sounds over Sherbet and Jeff St John and Copperwine. First prize included passageway to an overseas destination, yet when Fraternity left for an extended stay in the UK, in mid1972, they had no idea of the struggles that awaited them. With financial backing from their benefactor Hamish Henry (of the Grape Organisation), they set up residence in a large house in Finchley, London, but with only occasional gigs coming their way any sense of unity was quickly eroded. The band returned to Australia in disarray during 1973. While bassist Bruce Howe reassembled the group, Scott left and went on to link up with AC/DC in October 1974. Guitarist/keyboardist Sam See was a member of Fraternity from September 1971 to early 1973, having previously worked with Sherbet and Flying Circus. His subsequent career extended to a return tenure with Flying Circus, then Greg Quill’s Southern Cross, The Stockley See Mason Band, the Fabulous Zarzoff Brothers, the Broderick Smith Band and most recently as a duo with Glyn Mason called The Pardoners. He recalls his interaction and time with the other members of Fraternity. Thanks for your time, Sam. How did you come into contact with the Fraternity guys? 78

By Ian McFarlane Well, they’d evolved out of Levi Smith’s Clefs. They were legendary in Sydney and I used to see them at the Whisky a Go Go. The guitar player, Mick Jurd, was spoken of in hushed tones because he was so fabulous. They were an amazing band, playing R&B and soul, entertaining the GIs who were on R&R from the Vietnam war. I became friendly with Bruce Howe, the bassist, and the drummer, Tony Buettel. I was playing keyboards with Sherbet and about a year in, the guys in Levi Smith’s Clefs left Barrie McAskill and went out on their own as a four-piece band. It was without Bon at that stage. They got a residency at Jonathan’s and we were looking for a residency too, so Sherbet ended up playing there as sort of the junior house band. So, we’d play, from memory, it was 9 till 1, half hour on half hour off; it was a great training ground. How did Fraternity come to record one of your songs even before you’d joined?

see Aretha Franklin, so that was a shared experience which was amazing.

They’d moved into this house in Jersey Road, Paddington, just near where I was living. Bruce and I wrote ‘Somerville’, which I regarded as the song that wouldn’t die because Fraternity recorded it, Flying Circus recorded it later on, and then Fraternity recorded it again. I wasn’t too enthusiastic about that; it wasn’t such a great song. It kind of ripped off The Band, the Civil War vibe. ‘Somerville’ was just some name that I dreamed up, an idea. We needed a place name because the first line was “Overlooking...” so I needed something; “Overlooking Holmesville” didn’t work. So, I came up with Somerville and I’d probably never heard of Somerville in Victoria at that time.

On the other hand, I still thought I had a lot to learn and in my opinion the guys in Fraternity were the best musicians in Australia. So, I reluctantly said to the Circus guys that I was leaving but by the time I got back to Australia, John had decided not to leave. So, we were then like The Band, with piano and the organ.

You joined Flying Circus and went to Canada with them. How did you come full circle to end up leaving Flying Circus and then joining Fraternity? I’d wanted to play guitar as well as keyboards so jumped at the chance when Doug Rowe asked me to join Flying Circus. While we were in Canada, the keyboard player from Fraternity, John Bisset, decided that he was going to leave, and I got a telegram from Bruce asking did I want to join them? I didn’t really want to leave Flying Circus ’cause I loved those guys, still do. We’d learnt a lot. The first week we were in San Francisco we went to

Bon had joined them and they were living up on Hemming’s Farm just outside of Adelaide. The first song I wrote with them was called ‘Hemming’s Farm’ which we recorded for Flaming Galah. To me the essence of the band was never captured on record. Live it was just devastatingly good, I think.

course! He was a great guy. When we went to England I think he became frustrated with the band.

Club, mostly to Aussie expats, so we never attracted a wider audience. We just couldn’t get a break.

What was the experience of living in London?

I was living in Tunbridge Wells by that stage. I got a couple of day gigs, like bar tending because I’d had enough. So, then I got a call from the Flying Circus guys, they were still in Canada, “come and rejoin us”. I told the guys from Fraternity and they were all a bit pissed off and mean. Somebody said, ‘like a rat deserting a sinking ship’ and I said ‘right onto the rocks’ so I took off via the escape hatch and went to Canada.

I had begged them not to go to England because I thought it was the wrong place for us. Anyway, I lost that argument. We were an ugly band, it was the time of glitter rock in England and it was just the wrong decision.

How did you get on with Bon Scott? He had a very distinctive voice, and he gave Fraternity a great presence on stage. As a band I think they made a good decision in getting Bon in because they needed a front man.

One of the first gigs we did was in Bournemouth, supporting Status Quo. We thought we’d knock them off the stage. They arrived in Bentleys, in their Kings Road finery and we thought, “come on guys, this is ridiculous”. We went over quite well; we thought “try following that”. So, in the meantime they’d changed into their denim gear and turned on the rest of the PA and I just knew we were done. They were so loud and so good, they were great. A fun boogie band. If you’ve seen them live, that’s just what you get.

I think so. John Bisset was a great singer, and as a vocalist he would have been fine, but you’re right, Bon was a great front man. He had the image and the attitude. Bon off stage was certainly not like Bon on stage. He was a really lovely bloke and I recall that when people would come round to the house, he’d always be the one to say, ‘can I get you a cup of tea?’ That was before he’d roll a joint, of

We did do a couple of trips to Germany and people liked us over there. It was just, the momentum had stopped. We did a tour there ourselves and we played a couple of dates with Brian Auger’s Oblivion Express but mostly it was just doing clubs on our own. We supported Geordie one time, and that was with Brian Johnson singing. We played with Atomic Rooster. We played at the Marquee

The compilation is out, so what’s next? Victor Marshall in Adelaide has been the driving force behind the reissue. He’s also written a book on the band. I ended up doing a bit of editing on it because my English is good, just tidying up a few details too. Victor’s on the case. I don’t know how such a young guy can be so obsessed with a band that’s 50 years old, but he is. The book he’s written is so in-depth, it’s staggering. I think looking back over the band’s career, there should have been a bit more of a considered plan to go overseas. With all due respect I think it was a bit naive, like we were stupid boys really... not a clue. Inevitably there were gonna be stuff ups. That’s the bitter part. But then there are great memories of the gigs we did and the camaraderie.

3 CD

2 LP

MUSIC BOOK FEATURE

LOUD

Tana Douglas, the world’s first female roadie has written a memoir. By Stuart Coupe ntil I was researching my book on the history of Australian roadies – imaginatively titled Roadies – I’d never heard the name Tana Douglas. Then a friend called me up and said, “you should really track down and talk to the world’s first female roadie – she’s Australian.” And that’s how I encountered and eventually became friends with the now Los Angeles-based Douglas who aside from having her own chapter in my book recently had her memoir LOUD published by ABC Books. Whereas the chapter in Roadies really only concentrated on Douglas’ time working as a roadie with AC/DC in their very early days, LOUD explores her entire career which, following the groundbreaking stint with AC/ DC (let’s face it, doing front-of-house sound mixing for AC/DC before you turn 18 – and being a woman) IS groundbreaking and then some. LOUD covers her extraordinary working life that includes (often lengthy) stints with and encounters within the world of Status Quo, The Police, Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Ozzy Osbourne, Elton John, The Who, Santana . . . and many, many more. Everything about Douglas’ life is pretty amazing, right from running away from school in 1973 and ending up in Nimbin where she encountered a French guy called Philippe Petit, who a year later would walk cross a tightrope between the two World Trade Centre buildings. Yes, that guy. Douglas travelled to Sydney with Petit and his coterie of friends for an earlier but still audacious adventure – a tightrope walk between the northern pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Douglas played a small but significant role in this caper which they were filming to document the event. “I didn’t do any of the rigging because obviously that’s really technical and they had their own crew for that,” Douglas says. “I was part of the ground crew – one of the people who caught the cans of film as they dropped them down off the edge and then took off like I was in The Great Escape so they didn’t get confiscated.” This escapade had brought Douglas to Sydney where she started hanging around Kings Cross, watching bands and befriending legendary Australian road crew figure Wayne ‘Swampy’ Jarvis.

Photo by Lisa Johnson

Douglas quickly learnt the ropes as to what was required to be a roadie, before soon finding herself in Melbourne and into the orbit of the young Michael Gudinski, roadie crew figures $crooge Madigan, John ‘D’Arcy and Howard Freeman plus booking agent Bill Joseph. One day Joseph mentioned to Douglas that there was a band coming to town and they’d be looking for a full crew, and he thought it might be an interesting job for her. The band was called AC/DC. Joseph connected Douglas with the band’s manager Michael Browning, and she went to the band’s house in Lansdowne Road, East St Kilda. It was late 1974. There she met Bon Scott, and Angus and Malcolm Young. Also, there were Harry Vanda and George Young. After the introductions were made, they told Douglas the band needed someone to be their stage roadie, and asked if she wanted to do it. She did. Douglas was with AC/DC for about 18 months, and as well as being their roadie she did their front-of-house sound. Yes, Douglas was not only the word’s first roadie but most probably the world’s first sound mixer – and for the fledgling AC/DC. “I was with them for the first three albums,” Douglas says. “We went back to Sydney as returning heroes. They invited me to stay with their families for a night before we started a run of Bondi Lifesaver shows. I think we did four or five nights there and 12 shows in total. Then we came back to Melbourne and did the Myer Music Bowl, and we started doing Festival Halls and the like.” Eventually Douglas moved on, doing a bunch of international touring, and learnt lighting skills with one of the Australian masters of rock’n’roll concert lighting Peter Wilson. And then the overseas world beckoned and Douglas headed to the UK to work with Status Quo and many many other artists, carving out a career working with some of THE biggest names in the entertainment business. LOUD is a wonderful collection of stories and insights from Douglas’ world. It’s a rollicking and fun read from someone who grew up working with musicians and the technical side of the business and still does. “I’ve never really felt normal anywhere else,” Douglas laughs.

Maria Muldaur Let’s Get Happy Together SPCD 1429

Alligator Records 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music ALCD 5000

New Moon Jelly Roll Freedom Rockers Volume 2 SPCD 1417

Chris Cain Raisin’ Cain ALCD 5003

CD + VINYL

Doniger Renegade

Duke Robillard Blues Bash SPCD 1423

Alligator Records 50 Years Of Genuine Houserockin’ Music AL 5000

Curtis Salgado Damage Control ALCD 5002

Rambal Hold Your Fire

Selwyn Birchwood Living In A Burning House ALCD 4999

CD + VINYL

BB Factory Live At The Wallaby Hotel BBF003

Joe Bonamassa Royal Tea CD - JRA90712 LP - JRA90711

CD + VINYL

20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Lachy Doley Double Figures

Fiona Boyes Blues In My Heart

Blues Arcadia Live at The Royal Mail

Elvin Bishop + Charlie Musselwhite 100 Years Of Blues ALCD 5004

CD + VINYL

Ronnie Earl & The Broadcasters Rise Up SPCD 1418

Mike Zito And Friends A Tribute To Chuck Berry RUF1269

Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram Kingfish ALCD 4990

www.onlybluesmusic.com

Lloyd Spiegel Cut And Run LS0891

ALBUM FEATURE

BIRDS OF A FEATHER Mississippi legend Jimbo Mathus reunites with Andrew Bird for an album of old-time music. By Denise Hylands

JIMBO MATHUS & ANDREW BIRD

2018. And as you said, corresponding through texts and just sending messages to each other? Well, I put a lot of the ideas out there. I THESE 13 would say we shared the songwriting on Wegawam Music Co. everything but I put a lot of the ideas out there. I’m a generator of ideas. This is an album of old time Americana imbo Mathus and Andrew Bird have a country blues and gospel. Was that the friendship of over 25 years. These 13 their aim or is that just what happened? latest collaboration is as much about that That’s just what happened. The friendship as it is about the music. I spoke to songwriting was natural between the Jimbo Mathus from his home in Mississippi two of us. That’s the only way I can say about friendship, music and the other person it. It was generous and it was thoughtful who was listening in on the making of these and it was philosophical, musical of songs. course. And magical. We took each With this new album I feel like you’re going other’s concepts into consideration and back to your musical roots, to the music we just helped one another as it went you were surrounded by as a kid growing along. The thing that struck me the most up, when you were playing mandolin is how close our friendship actually was proficiently at 8 years of age with your – that camaraderie - and how close we family. were as friends. “When we finally got together, I grew up in a rural area, in the country, and What’s so beautiful about this music, then there wasn’t a lot of distractions, so the it was even better than when we is its simplicity. You tell a story in a few music was a big thing with my father and minutes in a song with two voices, a my uncles, my cousins and I just picked up played 20 years in the past” guitar and a fiddle. It’s amazing how an instrument, generally, around six years impacting that can be. old, and joined the band. But they weren’t professional musicians. They did it to pass time, for joy. I learned the Yeah. Just hearing the human breath in this pandemic time, it’s Southern cannon, all the songs. All the chords and harmony singing been refreshing to just hear two gentlemen singing, breathing, and the feeling that you get when you’re really singing like that. and performing like that. But the simplicity of the songs is key and that’s when it’s got something to do with song writing. I really do On this album I am hearing that gospel, country blues. It’s all there. just a simple message. And that’s about the poetry of the song. The It’s really quite beautiful. message, the clear message. That’s what song writing is about. It’s the That’s the style I know the best, that deep South sound. folk idiom, right? It’s the people’s music, it’s communicating. And so, Tell us about your friendship with Andrew Bird. He was fresh from it should be a simple message. I am not a complicated person in my studying music when you first met. There must’ve been something lyrics and Bird appreciates that. And not overthinking it. about him musically that stood out to you. What was the preparation like for the recording of the album? Well, yes, ma’am. Of course, his talent... his raw talent at that time. It was mostly over the phone. And then we got together and we Just the virtuosity he possessed to me at that time. So, we’re talking rehearsed at T Bone Burnett’s house, which was kind of cool for the 25 years ago. But as a musician myself, I recognised that in someone. first set. He was a spirit animal for the record. I haven’t seen this I had a leg up then with a group, the Squirrel Nut Zippers. There was printed or really talked about, but this simpatico thing there immediately. We collaborated quite heavily T Bone is a huge Andrew Bird fan. for about five, six years in the mid to late nineties. Now he’s a Jimbo fan. We went Then we’d lost track of one another. When we got back together it was to his house in California and we just magic. It was like we hadn’t missed a step. rehearsed a lot of days and he So, he reached out to you and said, hey, we should do a record. peeked in and out and said what Something that he’d been thinking about doing for quite a while he likes. Being the great producer and finally just made that simple phone call?? and visionary he is, it meant a lot to me to have him in that early stage Yes, it was as simple as that. What a great thing when an old friend to push us in the right direction. I comes out to you like that. When we finally got together, we got our ideas, our concepts together just over text messages, over the phone think Bird and I both took a lot out and really didn’t even have to speak about it. Then when we finally got of those early lessons with T Bone together, it was even better than when we played 20 years in the past. two years ago. He’s a big part of Because his fiddle and the way we think, our philosophy is so similar. it, a huge part of it. There’s a lot of advice and he knows the roots of So, this album, These 13, has been in the works for a few years. American music. So, you started collaborating and getting things together back in

ALBUM FEATURE

LISTEN LIKE THIEVES After producing some hit albums, Christian Pyle has put his own band back together. By Jeff Jenkins

ACRE THIEVES & FAKES Zen Arcade

“I’m no diplomat,” Christian Pyle sings on Acre’s new album, Thieves & Fakes. “I let my feelings show.”

“I don’t really pull my punches,” explains the producer and musician. “I am renowned for saying what I think. As a producer, I have to be sensitive to people, but if you’re working with a band that’s all alpha males, you’ve got to be top dog, so you have to be able to say what you think. I’ve always believed in being straight up.” When we catch up with Pyle, he’s just been in the studio with William Crighton. He also produced a recent Rhythms fave, Jimmy Dowling’s Sociable Sounds, a record that inspired Pyle to reactivate his own band. Thieves & Fakes is Acre’s first album in 18 years, following 1999’s The Vision Splendid and 2003’s In God’s Car There’s No Spare Seats. The band says they’ve gone “from arrogant young cynics to bitter middleaged men”. A lot has happened between Acre albums: some good, some bad. Pyle beat cancer, but producer Anthony Lycenko, an early member of the band, died in 2017. Pyle also had two sons, released a solo album, Nothing Left To Burn (which Rhythms’ Martin Jones called “beautiful and intimate”), and opened a recording studio, SS Prawn & Spanner Studio, in the Byron Bay hinterland. Pyle is a prolific songwriter, but his producing commitments prevent him from recording everything he writes. “You know how chefs don’t make their own dinner?” he laughs. “It takes a while before you get the motivation.” But he’s driven to make his own music (as well as Acre, he has an ambient/soundtrack band, Oscillator A, with Cye Wood). “You’ve got to nurture the garden. I will get really frustrated if I don’t have a little outlet of my own. Even if I’m watching someone play guitar all day, when they leave, I’ll pick up a guitar – I just have to have a go.” Can he take off his producer’s hat when he’s working on his own material? “I think you’ve always got it on, even when you’re listening to the radio. I was doing a gig with Tex [Perkins] recently and he said,

‘Do you ever switch off?’ We were coming home at 3 in the morning and listening to something and I said, ‘The drums are a bit loud in that mix.’” Acre – which also features Rohan Sherlock on bass and Dave Sanders on drums – defy easy categorisation. The opening track on the album, ‘Redlines’, had me thinking of Ed Kuepper, while a colleague hears “echoes of Bon Iver, The National, Fleet Foxes, R.E.M. and Elliott Smith”. When I mention it’s a fine album, Pyle says, “You know what makes it good? We really don’t give a shit anymore. I think that’s the thing with art – once you stop caring, you free yourself. We’ve got nothing to lose and nothing to gain, it’s probably the most pure thing we’ve ever done.” The closing cut, ‘All Alone In The World’, is an “homage to Neil Young”. “In fact, there’s a lot of recalcitrant guitar solos on this record. I thought we should make an angry record because of the way the world’s going.” A counterpoint is ‘Heartspace’, a shining pop moment, “an homage to guys our age and the music we grew up with – jangly Rickenbacker guitars”. The first line on the album provides the title. “I’m surrounded by thieves,” Pyle sings, “surrounded by fakes.” “That’s a line about where I live,” Pyle points out, “but it’s also a global comment. It’s actually quite a political record.” Indeed, the album includes a song with a rather pointed title: ‘Your Government Hates You’. Musically, it’s driven by Pyle’s piano. He says the song was a “gift” from Don Walker. “He was in my studio with Tex, Don and Charlie. They left one night and the next morning I walked over to the piano and that song just came out in one go. I figured Don left it on the keyboard for me.” Explaining the title, Pyle says: “When I was young and I travelled the world, I was proud to be Australian, thinking we were progressive and our beer was good. But then you get older and you realise that in reality we’re a nation of right wingers. A lot of people I associate with, well, the government certainly hates them. “That’s the diplomat side of me,” Pyle laughs. Thieves & Fakes is out on Zen Arcade Music. 83

ALBUM FEATURE

WESTWARD HO! The Western Distributors have released their second album, I

Off In The Distance.

have to admit that by the time Clare O’Meara handed me a copy of The Western Distributors self-titled album I could quite easily have listed my profession as being “country music cynic” - after all I’d been involved in the genre on many levels, from radio, journalism, management et al, for nearly five decades – and if anyone else had handed me that copy I probably would have filed it under ‘don’t bother’.” But I do consider Clare has plenty of musical cred, and when I saw the names Andrew Travers and Catherine Wearne in the band lineup, I did slip it into the car stereo – after all The Happening Thang was one of the best bands to come out of country music in the late 1980s and early ’90s – just when Australian country was starting to make decent inroads on radio and I Don’t Wanna Go To Work was somewhat of an anthem in the circles I hung around with. So, imagine my surprise when the first effect that album had on me during the trip home the long way turned my cynicism into full on redemption for Australian country music. Here was a band that knew the licks, knew the structure and the power of a great country song and could deliver all that in a baker’s dozen of great country songs and instrumentals on one album. Although the Thang had won a Golden Guitar in 1990 and plenty of critical success, Andrew and “Miss Cathy” soon spent 15 or so years on having a family, while us fans occasionally pulled their two albums out of storage and wondered “Where are they now?” But, Andrew in particular wasn’t laying musically idle. He worked with bands like the Milky Bar Kids, Dog Trumpet, The Flaming Stars and was asked to put a band together for a 40-minute country set. “My friend Guy Donnellan and I had been talking about getting a band together for years,” Andrew told me, “and I thought ‘Here’s the chance’, we were mutual Gram Parsons, Hank Williams, Louvin Brothers fans. We quickly learned 13 or 14 honky tonk songs and when asked what the band called, I don’t know where it came from, but I immediately said, ‘The Western Distributors!’” The band started getting gigs and eventually Andrew started writing songs for the band.

LATE BLOOMER Living in New Orleans for a decade inspired Esther Rose to learn the guitar in her late twenties. By Denise Hylands

By Jon Wolfe

“I hadn’t written for a long time but the band thing spurned me on to write again,” Andrew said. “Maybe because I was a lot older, wiser or whatever, I found it a lot easier to write the songs. Having a reason to write songs made me enjoy the process of writing songs.” “And the songs Andrew was writing weren’t suited for the covers, rock ‘n’ roll bands bands he was in,” Cathy says. “It was destined for him and I to sing together again and we always said we wanted to get back to doing something again.” The band recorded and released the self-titled album in March 2018 and that’s where I came in. After Clare gave me the album, I put the saddest, up-tempo country song ever written – ‘No One Will Miss Me’ - on high rotation on Tamworth’s 88.9fm and it topped the station’s airplay chart and I immediately made it my mission to get The Western Distributors to come to the next Tamworth Country Music Festival in 2019. Mission accomplished when they closed the official Opening Concert of the festival and held a 5000 strong crowd – even after the fireworks that normally herald a mass exodus from the city’s Bicentennial Park and they went on to gather big crowds for shows at West League Club and the famous Joe Maguire’s Pub. Everyone has tales to tell of how the Covid pandemic put a virtual stop to live gigs in 2020, so let’s move on to Distributors album #2 – Off In The Distance. Released in 2020 it was produced by Andrew, Cathy and the legendary Phil Punch on analogue equipment in Phil’s Electric Avenue Studios and the songs again showcase Andrew’s knack of taking his early country music influences and turning them into new, original works that honour the traditions but are uniquely modern and with harmonydriven stories that force you to listen again and again. The first single from the album – ‘Off In The Distance’ – gained some airplay early this year and the current single – ‘Day Job’ - has added to the number of fans now discovering The Western Distributors on radio and with venues opening to live music again, fans will get the chance to see this incredible seven-piece outfit in the flesh – and enjoy a well balanced mix of original songs and carefully chosen covers that entertain and bring joy to ex-cynics like me.

ESTHER ROSE

“Yeah, this is definitely my reflection on heartbreak,” she responds. “But HOW MANY TIMES I do think that what happened was that I kind of wrote a pop album Father/Daughter Records unintentionally because I’m not really one to mope. I really want to work through things and want to be introspective. So, when I say that it’s a sther Rose has come to music a heartbreak album, it’s funny because it little later in life than most people. might not be what people think.” The influences of her hometown of Although it’s an album that came from the past 10 years, New Orleans, was the heartbreak it is not necessarily all catalyst to fulfilling that dream. about that. “I lived in New Orleans for 10 years,” “There was a lot of new experiences says Rose. “Moved down when I was in for me,” notes Rose. “I signed with the my young 20’s and really just got such a label, Father/Daughter Records, and wonderful musical education and made so began touring a whole lot more with many great records with my band. And I my band. There’s all that other aspect recently just kind of restructured my life so of living and learning kind of roped that I could live in the high desert of New in, but the primary lens is through a Mexico, which has been a fantasy and now broken heart.” a reality for me.” How Many Times was recorded way When Rose moved to New Orleans she “When I say that it’s a heartbreak before the move to New Mexico, while wasn’t making music and at 27 decided album, it’s funny because it might Rose was still in New Orleans, taking it was time to learn the guitar and do advantage of the many great artists something musically. not be what people think.” in that town, like members of The “I was dabbling,” she recalls. “I’ve always Deslondes. kind of written songs here and there, “The Deslondes are an incredible band,” agrees Rose. “Since they’ve but I really didn’t take it seriously. I’m sure that it was the immersive sort of taken a break from their own thing, they have nurtured so music experience of living in New Orleans and knowing such great many songwriters and created a recording studio as well. A few of songwriters that kind of dragged it out of me. And for that, I’m very them are in my band. Sam Doores has engineered a lot of my records. grateful. I have my five band members that I’ve made my records with and then I just cared enough to kind of give it a shot and learning guitar as an I’ve brought in a few other excellent musicians just to kind of switch older person or anytime. It’s awkward, it’s a tough instrument. I guess up the vibe, but there’s no shortage of incredible people to collaborate I really wanted to sing these songs bad enough that I was willing with down there. I’m lucky I found a few people and developed our to finally figure out how to accompany myself and wanting that things through the course of three records.” responsibility and wanting to be able to do it myself and not really Rose says that she records her albums live and onto tape. need anyone else. It really is a lonely solitary pursuit.” “With a reel-to-reel,” she adds. “The thing with recording live to tape “I’ve always loved singing,” she continues. “I have two sisters and I is if you’re on a budget, it’s incredible and it forces the band to play definitely feel like I learned a lot about singing by singing three-part together and really use the time wisely because no one wants to be harmony with them and just learning whatever radio songs. It’s like the joker who messes up and then you have to rewind the tape and any instrument, the more you use it, the more you sing, the more you start over. understand where the power is and where the emotional resonance is. And so, it’s really been so wonderful, such a journey to kind of explore It’s like the tape machine is this sixth member of the band, you’re that.” working with it. And it’s really fun and really just in the moment.” Was Hank Williams also an inspiration in that learning process? “Definitely,” replies Rose. “I think something about Hank really set me free because I’m listening to this guy as an adult, as a songwriter, and I’m like, he only is using three chords. I can do that. He’s so rough and raw and also just prolific and funny. And I think growing up, I wasn’t necessarily drawn to his sound. I guess it took wanting to write songs for me to kind of understand finally where he’s coming from. And then I really just dug in.” In the span of two years, Rose moved three times, navigated the end of a relationship and began touring more than ever. Is the new album is her breakup album?

ALBUM FEATURE

ABOVE THE FRAY English folksinger John Smith’s latest album features some special guests to take him to a new level. By Brian Wise JOHN SMITH

THE FRAY

John Smith is in northern Wales when we catch up by Zoom to talk about his new album which should rightfully elevate his profile. Early last year, on his abbreviated tour of Australia supporting Gomez and performing solo gigs, everyone who saw Smith noted that he was something special and a step above your average guitar toting folkie. Given his extensive work as a session musician and working with such producers as Joe Henry and playing with Joan Baez and David Gray, as well as starting his career touring with John Martyn, it is no surprise that Smith has developed his own quietly powerful style. The new album, produced by Seth Lakeman and recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios also sounds rich, warm and inviting. Not only does the album feature Smith’s distinctive guitar and rich vocals but it also features guests such as Sarah Jarosz, The Milk Carton Kids from Nashville as well as the brilliant guitar of Bill Frisell. The album arrives after Smith and his wife relocated to the Clwydian Range in northern Wales after a tough 2020, not just because of the pandemic. “A bit of life and death, thrown into everything else that was going on,” explains Smith. “Strangely though as horrendous as last year was for so many people, my tribulations aside from losing all my work didn’t have anything to do with the pandemic. It was just health issues of other kinds that just really kind of leveled my family. So, I was reeling from that whilst everything else was going on and pretty soon the songs just started just to come out, as they always do.” “Just kept my chin up,” responds Smith when I ask him how he coped. “I resolved at the start of this, just to keep my chin up, dig my heels in. We decided just to simplify things with the prospect of no touring, which is more than half of my income. We had to kind of rethink how we’re going to do things. I’ve found that being optimistic is a much healthier way of getting through things. Haven’t always been that way, but it’s served me well this last year.” “I’ve worked there over the years as a session musician,” says Smith when I asked him how he came to record his latest album at Real World, where he spent a week in the studio. “I’ve always wanted to make my own record there. I wanted the sound of the room to participate in the recordings, I wanted it to inform the shape of the 86

sound. So, we recorded quite openly and added lots of room mics and really kind of captured the sound of the wood room at Real World. So, it’s pretty amazing space, really beautifully acoustic and lively.” “I just called up my friends,” replies Smith when I ask how he assembled his guest: Sarah Jarosz, The Milk Carton Kids, Bill Frisell – who adds guitar on ‘The Best Of Me’ - and Lisa Hannigan and Courtney Hartman who also contributes backing vocals. “Everyone was in this similar situation where all our gigs had gone. The thing that gave me the idea was that Sarah Jarosz had invited me to sing something with her on the BBC for a remote collaboration project that BBC Scotland were putting together, and it worked really well. The first time I tried anything like that. I was so taken with it, I thought, ‘Well, what if people could record remotely and maybe send me the part?’ So, I could play John Smith. them into the room at Real World, we could Pic by Elly Lucas re-record using the acoustic at Real World and maybe it would work. I just phoned my mates: The Milk Carton Kids and Sarah and Courtney Hartman, Lisa Hannigan, the only person I didn’t know was Bill Frisell.” “So, Bill, my guitar hero, turned out like everyone else,” adds Smith. “He was sitting at home wondering where his gigs had gone, up for doing things. So, I was introduced to him by our mutual friend, Joe Henry, who is my old friend and mentor. So, Bill Frisell sent me eight different takes of the same song and said, ‘There you go, try them.’ So, I had this evening of listening to Bill Frisell play my song in different ways it was kind of mind blowing.” “She’s the queen of the young roots scene,” says Smith of Jarosz, who duets on ‘Eye to Eye’. “She’s just unbelievable. Her musicality is so highly evolved that you have to really concentrate when you’re playing with Sarah Jarosz. She’s got such a dynamic vocal and that’s quite a kind of poppy, kind of up-tempo song, at least for me. So, I wanted to get her involved, her vocals really sort of sparkle, I think.” Of course, with the Milk Carton Kids it would have been an advantage not being in the studio with them as Smith would have probably spent most of his time laughing at their jokes. “Yeah, and we tend to take the piss out of each other quite a lot,” he agrees. “We’ve done studio sessions before and it just takes too long! So, it was good this time. Kenneth sent me his guitar solo as well, I just asked them for vocals, but Kenny sent me this guitar solo for ‘StarCrossed Lovers’ that was so beautiful. I just had to keep it.”

BACK FROM THE EDGE

Krishna Jones re-releases his solo debut – and looks to the future.

By Jeff Jenkins

tours”), gigs with Radiohead on their rishna Jones was still a teenager first Australian tour, as well as an when his band, Juice, signed a appearance at Sydney’s Big Day Out major deal in the ’90s. The funk rock in 1994, where Jones managed to outfit released two albums and scored an sneak side of stage for Soundgarden’s ARIA nomination before going on hiatus. headlining performance. “I also got By the time Jones came to make his first to say hello to Chris Cornell and tell solo album, he was struggling. Indeed, him how much I dug his music. He was the album includes a song that addressed really lovely.” where he felt he was at the time: Post-Juice, Jones had another band, ‘Stuck In A Hole’. Juggernaut, with his brother, who did That album, The Razor’s Edge, is about some recordings produced by Tim the choices we make. “Your own eternal Farriss. “He became a great friend after struggle,” Jones explains. “We’ve all dealt we toured with INXS.” with that at some point … I’ve definitely Juice re-formed in 2019 to release their made the wrong choices many times.” third album, Signs, and Jones doesn’t “I’ve got to live with my mistakes,” he sings rule out more recordings with the in album highlight ‘Everybody Wants To band. He’s also working on a new solo Know’. Then, in ‘For Once In Your Life’, he album, while continuing to prepare his realises, “All the choices I’ve made now I other solo material for release in the can’t rewind”, before adding: “To live in digital world. regret is a waste of time.” “I’m quite content now being a After a year of COVID, one of the lines So what would Jones do differently if he in ‘On The Move’, a song on The Razor’s had his time again? studio artist, recording and creating Edge, stands out for being strangely “That’s a hard one,” he says thoughtfully. “I prescient: “Been too long since I hit the and putting music out into the don’t know if you can go back. And all the road.” mistakes you make shape you as a person. world.” But Jones has no plans to return to a At that time, I was going through some relentless touring schedule. “I’d love to difficult personal stuff, but looking back, if I be touring with a band, it’d be fun,” he says. “But I don’t have the same hadn’t made those choices I wouldn’t be here and wouldn’t have met yearning to do it as I did when I was younger. And now, being a father, I the people that I’ve met and I wouldn’t have a beautiful [eight-yearhave different responsibilities – I wouldn’t be able to just jump out and old] son.” be on the road for a couple of months. The digital re-release of The Razor’s Edge has given Jones a chance “I’m quite content now being a studio artist, recording and creating to reflect. He realises it was a record he had to make. “You have to and putting music out into the world.” embrace the pain to move forward,” he says. The Razor’s Edge is available on all streaming platforms through Zen But amidst the darkness there is light. “You can’t take my soul,” Jones Arcade Music. declares defiantly in ‘Everybody Wants To Know’, while the title track is “where your life begins again”. And the soulful grooves are life-affirming. “Funnily enough,” Jones notes, “with the challenges I was going through, the music itself feels positive.” For inspiration, he drew on some of his favourite artists, including Dr. John, James Brown, Stevie Wonder, J.J. Cale, B.B. King and Stevie Ray Vaughan. “To me, what’s really important is a rhythm section that grooves. If I don’t hear a groove in a song, no matter what style it is, it’s hard for me to connect.” Juice (which also featured Jones’ brother Amarnath on guitar and Kevin Borich’s son Lucius on drums) emerged at the height of grunge, though looking back, the Australian scene was actually quite diverse, with bands such as Juice – who added a potent funk element to the hard rock mix – plus Skunkhour, Swoop and DIG. Krishna, who went to high school with Skunkhour’s rapper Del Larkin, says it was an exciting time to be part of Sydney’s live scene. Juice also did some big shows, including a tour with INXS (“it’s even more special now because it was one of Michael Hutchence’s last 87

ALBUMS: General KATIE BRIANNA THIS WAY OR SOME OTHER STANLEY RECORDS

Ultimately this is a country soul record. It’s the closest Brianna has come to capturing her heart and soul in her music and in the process rewarding listeners with a sublime collection of songs. CHRIS FAMILTON JOHN HIATT (& THE JERRY DOUGLAS BAND) LEFTOVER FEELINGS New West

Sydney singer-songwriter Katie Brianna has already had a fascinating musical journey, from Paul Kelly and Tamworth approved teenager to one of the most riveting and melancholically melodic vocalists on the local Americana scene. Now with three solo albums to her name, her latest, This Way Or Some Other, is hands-down her finest work. Brianna’s previous albums had strong writing but there was a feeling that she was still searching for her own sound, where her writing, voice and the musical setting could blossom in sympathetic unison. Producer Adam Young brought together players with a wealth of experience in bands including The Cruel Sea, The Clouds, Front End Loader and more. Young and co’s sensitivity to Brianna’s songs and the ability to frame and complement her stunning voice with a real emotional depth is an essential part of the album’s success. It’s not all heartache and turmoil though, ‘Boots’ takes an exhilarating modern glam pop diversion and she rounds out the record with a wonderful reading of Neil Young’s ‘Birds’ which sounds like The Band floating in space. Elsewhere there’s 50’s torch-song noir and guitar-led country rock, making her sound akin to a dream line-up amalgam of Neko Case, The Delines and Ron Sexsmith. 88

and ‘Mississippi Phone Booth,’ Hiatt immediately locates the songs in the rich diversity of the South (‘Ashville’ is also one of the titles). “I was immediately taken back to 1970, when I got to Nashville,” says Hiatt about entering Studio B and he pays tribute to the city on ‘The Music Is Hot.’ Many of the songs find Hiatt in gently contemplative mode, reflecting on his life and some of the characters he might have met, and showing that he is a still a master songwriter. BRIAN WISE JOHN KENNEDY’S LOVE GONE WRONG ALWAYS THE BRIDEGROOM Foghorn/MGM

Over the nearly 47 years that he has been recording John Hiatt has managed to not only grow old gracefully as an artist but also to retain his gift for writing perceptive and memorable songs. He courted fashion only briefly in his younger days and on his very early albums he resembled Elvis Costello. But by just over a decade later Hiatt had recorded his landmark albums Bring The Family (1987) and Slow Turning (1988) and he has made consistently good albums ever since. Since 2003 Hiatt’s music has had an increasing Nashville connection: from his place of residence, to his record label and the musicians enlisted. This latest album features one of Music City’s most revered musicians in Dobro master and 14-time Grammy winner Jerry Douglas, who also produced the 11-song set at the famous RCA Studio B. Douglas’s guitar is almost as prominent as Hiatt’s voice on this collection of gritty songs that recall an earlier era of Hiatt’s career as he gets back to basics (there is no drummer on board). Opening with ‘Long Black Electric Cadillac’ (a song for changing times)

The way he tells it in his extensive liner notes for this beautifully packaged remastered and expanded 2CD reissue of the band’s 1987 album, Always the Bridegroom “killed his career”. It certainly led to the breakup of the band the following year, but 35 years later, with the benefit of hindsight, he’s reassessed that contention and admits that he can now “hear the care and the craft that went into” the songs that made up the album and has finally embraced this part of his legacy. It’s also an important part of the legacy of lead guitarist Wayne Connolly, who was still making a living as an electrical engineer when he joined the latest lineup of Love Gone Wrong. He, of course, has subsequently had a stellar “indie” career with his own bands The Welcome Mat and Knievel as well as muchrespected and sought-after

ALBUMS: General producer. So, how does it sound 35 years on? Very much of its time certainly, but nowhere near as “imperfect” as either Kennedy or many of its original reviewers suggested. The sound is spare, even Spartan at times, for all the harmonies added here and there. For all its professed “pop” sensibilities, Kennedy’s songs remained as strongly “urban and western” as the line-up of that name that had preceded Love Gone Wrong, and why not? If that’s essentially your muse, why deny it? No one was dismissing Kennedy’s much more famous contemporary Paul Kelly for much the same kind of songwriting. I’m sure Kelly would have been as pleased to have written a line like “nothing’s worse when evening comes than knowing you feel nothin’ at all” (When Evening Comes’) as Kennedy was when he did. Despite his having lived in Sydney a few years by the he recorded Always The Bridegroom, or the fact that most of the band members were Sydneysiders, Kennedy’s muse definitely has a Brisbane sensibility, even when he gets the band to dispense with their instruments for the a cappella gospel ‘Better Days’. I know this might sound odd, but in a sense you can “hear” the same “light” that fell on the developing creative sensibilities of the nascent Saints and Go-Betweens, the same small suburban vistas. Five non-album bonus tracks have been added to the original album, filling out the first CD, while the second “bonus” CD is a live-in-the-studio recording made for Melbourne radio 3LO barely a handful of gigs into the life of this final Love Gone Wrong lineup, which inevitably includes a few songs Kennedy had recorded with his earlier bands as well as early “takes” of songs that found themselves onto Always The Bridegroom, and a cover of Dylan’s ‘You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go’. MICHAEL SMITH

KYLE JENKINS LOVE, LOST LOVE Near Enough Records

At its core this is a deeply personal album and one that sounds timeless due to its emotional resonance and world class songwriting. CHRIS FAMILTON MY DARLING CLEMENTINE COUNTRY DARKNESS Fretsore Records

Kyle Jenkins, the prolific songwriter and frontman for Toowoomba alt-country band Suicide Swans, has also found the time to release his second solo album. His debut, Meltdown, shared a lot of similarities with Suicide Swans but on Love, Lost Love, things get darker and starker. Predominately acoustic in nature (plus some atmospheric synths), this is a long deep dive into Jenkins’ songwriting. Think Van Zandt, Dylan and Ryan Adams. It’s a long album too – running to 15 songs and clocking in at 110 minutes, essentially making it a double album. Impressively, there’s also a second companion album due this year. When you consider his description of it being “moments of isolation, destruction, hope that is housed in the finality of loss of relationships,” the going can be heavy at times, when consumed in a single sitting. Taking each song on its own merit, there’s little to fault as Jenkins has a seemingly endless well of country/folk melodies and wordplay at his disposal. His voice is the perfect vehicle for conveying pain, sorrow, regret and disdain and musically he understands the balancing act of ‘less is more’. When things get more rousing (‘All Remains’, ‘Rosey Red Day’, ‘Burn Brightly’) there’s a clear affinity with the raw folk ragas of The Felice Brothers.

How would you choose the songs if you were creating an album of Elvis Costello covers? Husband and wife duo, Michael Weston King & Lou Dalgleish, otherwise known as My Darling Clementine, have wisely decided to concentrate on Costello’s country leanings. (It is also natural given the group name they have chosen). There has been a plethora of cover albums over the past year. Maybe the lockdowns have encouraged this but the principal of making something distinctive seems to me to remain: there hardly seems any point in trying to merely imitate what has already been done (and probably better). You might think that this could be difficult when the duo has enlisted Steve Nieve, Costello’s long-time keyboard player and collaborator, to help out. Not so. The musical backdrop is often markedly different than the originals and the harmonies add a delightful extra dimension to some of the songs. Most casual listeners would not pick many of the songs as Costello’s work because the temptation to choose some of his best-known compositions has been resisted (apart from maybe ‘Indoor Fireworks’ and

‘I Lost You’). The title track is named after a song from The Delivery Man which also contains ‘Either Side of The Same Town,’ a great song that is delivered here in far less tortuous fashion than the original. ‘That Day Is Done,’ one of Costello’s collaboration with Paul McCartney, is an excellent choice and different to McCartney’s own excellent rendition on Flowers In The Dirt back in 1989. (Also, a reminder that Macca could use some more collaborations like this nowadays). The one nonCostello song is the final track, ‘Powerless’ (from the duo’s own pens), references ghosts from the past. But these songs are hardly ghosts given that they have been given a new and meaningful life here. BRIAN WISE CLINT ROBERTS ROSE SONGS Carry On Music/Planet

melody is faintly Dylanesque before erupting with the strains of a driving Bruce Hornsby arrangement, and yet this environmental statement from the heart is all his own sound. The rustic ‘The Drifter’ would fit snugly on any latter-day John Hiatt album, a tale of unrequited love awash in Dan Dugmore’s lap steel and Fred Eltringham’s insistent percussive shuffle; it’s a great song. On ‘Nothing Left To Say’, Roberts explores the dread and depression that comes with following a life in music, a calling that nonetheless has its own eternally optimistic rewards. ‘Medicine’ is a cracking song that rides upon a Neil Young riff, like Crazy Horse fronted by Jeb Loy Nicholls, whilst ‘Annabelle’ is a lilting reminder of James Taylor’s laid-back glory years. And so it proceeds, each song its own emotive story, culminating in Roberts baring his soul on the glorious piano ballad ‘Çarolina Moon’. Quite simply, Rose Songs is a stunning record. TREVOR J. LEEDEN GRAHAM SHARP TRUER PICTURE Yep Roc/Planet

Clint Roberts hails from the mountain country of North Carolina and his bucolic upbringing informs his wonderful debut album. Rose Songs is a patchwork quilt of Americana-roots inspired vignettes, each song bristling with influential touchstones, and yet remaining a singularly original work. Roberts’ lyrical eloquence is immediately apparent from the opening lines of ‘Nero’s Waltz’: “Well welcome to paradise, take off your coat, find yourself a seat and enjoy the show, this world is a stage, this world’s gonna blow, but hey enjoy the show”. Initially, the

Without trivialising the impact of a global pandemic upon the music industry, some good things have transpired; one of them is emergence of Graham Sharp as solo artist. For two decades he has been the creative songwriting genius, banjo player and one of the vocalists behind the music of progressive bluegrass titans >>> 89

ALBUMS: Blues

ALBUMS: General

BY AL HENSLEY >>> the Steep Canyon Rangers, but life in isolation courtesy of 2020’s lockdown gave Sharp the opportunity to explore a truer picture of himself. With musical backing from producer Seth Kauffman (drums, bass, keys) and the Honeycutters ace pedal steel guitarist Matt Smith, Sharp has completely eschewed the SCR sound. Instead, the ten songs are simple and raw, his trademark banjo giving way to fingerpicked guitar and allowing his gorgeously expressive baritone voice to fully resonate. Whether singing about the emotional effects of isolation, about the continuing political unrest in his homeland, or just imparting worldly wisdom, Sharp’s songs are uniformly breathtakingly good. Much of the album is reminiscent of the bare honesty of the late John Prine, indeed, Prine devotees will find solace in songs like ‘Love Yourself’, the whimsical ‘Coming Back To Life’, and beautiful country ballad ‘North Star’. ‘Deeper Family’ evokes memories of Gil Landry’s wonderful 2015 solo debut, and ‘My Neighbourhood’ could’ve been written with Dave Alvin in mind. Instead of writing for an ensemble, Truer Picture is the sound of Graham Sharp doing it for himself, and it is an undiluted triumph. TREVOR J. LEEDEN

MARK TINSON TINNO LIVE @ LIZOTTE’S Independent

celebrate a life in music with him. It’s an infectious, high energy outpouring of joy lapped up by the Newcastle faithful; enjoy the show. TREVOR J. LEEDEN VARIOUS ARTISTS WORDS... A BEE GEES SONGBOOK Playback Records

When it comes to contributions to Australian music, Newcastle and its environs has long punched well above its weight; since the early seventies it has produced a constant flow of artists who have become household names, from nascent prog rockers Tamam Shud to contemporary country singer Catherine Britt. Mark Tinson’s imprint on Hunter Valley music is indelible, a lauded producer, mentor and music industry teacher, and not for nothing is he referred to as the Godfather Of Newcastle Rock. He has strutted his stuff with 70’s glam rockers Rabbit, as well as the Ted Mulry Gang and Swanee, and received national notoriety when his band Heroes played on during the Star Hotel riots. In more recent times he has collaborated with the likes of Chris Spedding, Oz Noy, and Aussie legends including Martin Cilia, Dai Pritchard, Mick Hamilton and Dannie Davidson on a series of award-winning surf guitar instrumental albums. Live @ Lizotte’s is a rollicking showcase of Tinson in his natural habitat, drawn from performances alongside a host of local and national luminaries. Whether his Stratocaster is powering hits by Rabbit and Heroes, accompanying Spectrum’s Mike Rudd on THAT song, trading licks with guitar ace Bob Spencer and Brian McVernon’s Retro Rockets, or delivering languid surf guitar instrumentals with the Surfcats, this is Tinson’s invitation to

You’ve probably heard more Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb songs than you care to remember. Ubiquitous might be an overused word but... when their recorded legacy is of such a consistently high standard of song craft there’s always room for more. Then there are the hundreds of cover versions, going back to the early 1960s. Even before the trio’s own run of success one of Barry Gibb’s stated aims was to write songs for other artists to record. This collection then is kind of a tribute album in reverse. These songs are for everyone to hear. Fortunately, you don’t get lumbered with the big ones – Barbara Streisand, Dionne Warwick, Diana Ross, Samantha Sang, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton etc. Every one of these lesserknown recordings is better than the worldwide smash hits we all know. The tracks from the 1960s are exquisite examples of baroque pop, with ornate, sweeping string arrangements, counterpoint melodies, horns and harpsichords, all up a majestic, melancholic sound (The Cyrkle’s ‘Turn Of The Century’ adds a sunshine pop flavour). The 1970s recordings are

more soft rock oriented (Nimbo’s ‘When The Swallows Fly’ marries the Bee Gees genius to a nearperfect Badfinger arrangement). The Australian contingent includes Mike Furber (‘Where Are You’), Noeleen Batley (‘Watching The Hours Go By’), Johnny Young (‘Lady’), The Seekers (‘Massachusetts’; most recent from 2003), The Brigade (‘All By Myself’) and Barrington Davis (‘Raining Teardrops’; the one punker on offer). International artists include Jackie Lomax (‘One Minute Woman’), The Marmalade (‘Butterfly’), Cilla Black (‘Words’), Lulu (‘I Started A Joke’; married to Maurice at the time), Swamp Dogg (‘Got To Get A Message To You’), Martin Carthy (‘New York Mining Disaster 1941’) and Jose Feliciano (‘Marley Purt Drive’). Many stick to the original arrangements but they’re all idiosyncratic in their own way. The absolute cream of the crop is Nina Simone’s astonishing rendition of ‘To Love Somebody’. Given it’s a soul ballad par excellence (originally written with Otis Redding in mind) Simone makes the song her own, turning it into a slow burning gospel masterpiece. There are many more where those came from but we’re unlikely to see a Volume 2. Still, I’d nominate the likes of the Flying Burrito Bros. (‘To Love Somebody’), Candi Staton (‘Nights On Broadway’), Matthew Sweet and Susanna Hoffs (‘Run To Me’), Esther and Abi Ofarim (‘Morning Of My Life’)... insert own selection here. IAN McFARLANE

KENNY ‘BLUES BOSS’ WAYNE GO, JUST DO IT! Stony Plain/Only Blues Music

Over the last 25 years Kenny ‘Blues Boss’ Wayne built his reputation as a master of jump blues and boogie-woogie piano. A versatile artist, Wayne seamlessly swings between traditional blues styles and full-blown R&B. If Wayne’s two previous releases for Canada’s Stony Plain imprint showcased his prowess in the Amos Milburn/Pete Johnson mould, this new title reverts to the funky soul blues that throbbed at the heart of his 2014 title Rollin’ With the Blues Boss. There are still sprightly sojourns into old-school rockin’ rhythm & blues with ‘You Did A Number On Me’, ‘T&P Train 400’ and JJ Cale’s ‘Call Me the Breeze’. The shuffling ‘Motor Mouth Woman’ and the celebratory horn driven jump-swing instrumentals ‘Bumpin’ Down the Highway’ and ‘Let the Rock Roll’ also evoke Wayne’s blues roots. The warm tenor-voiced musician composed 10 jaunty uptown grooves here, his pulsating organ and piano leading a tightly knit rhythm unit, a pumping horn section and soul-tinged backup chorus. Dawn Tyler Watson sings intoxicating duets with Wayne on two songs while Wayne’s vocal duet with Diane Schuur on Percy Mayfield’s ‘You’re in For A Big Surprise’ is show-stopping.

RONNIE EARL & THE BROADCASTERS RISE UP Stony Plain/Only Blues Music Ever since he began wielding his Fender Stratocaster as Roomful of Blues’ guitarist in the 1970s Ronnie Earl has captivated audiences with his distinct brand of emotioncharged blues. Opening with a solo acoustic guitar rendition of the traditional ‘We Shall Not be Moved’, Rise Up marks the prolific musician’s 27th release as leader of The Broadcasters since their 1983 debut album. Recorded partly in Earl’s home in Massachusetts during 2020, the sessions also include some 2019 live dates played in New England clubs. A deeply introspective person, Earl’s music reveals his social conscience reflecting on injustices like bigotry and racism exemplified in such titles as ‘Blues for George Floyd’ and ‘Black Lives Matter’. Heartfelt instrumental tributes to dear departed friends Lucky Peterson and Jimmy Smith yield to Earl’s ‘Navajo Blues’ paying respect to the struggles of Native Americans. It’s not all melancholy though. Musical spontaneity and playfulness abound in impeccable readings of originals and songs by Magic Sam, Fenton Robinson, Eddie Taylor and Lillian Green. Diane Blue’s commanding vocals are once again to the fore, keyboard whiz Dave Limina offering a dazzling piano instrumental take on Ray Charles’ ‘Mess Around’.

HENRY GRAY & BOB CORRITORE COLD CHILLS VizzTone/Planet Co.

Phoenix, Arizona-based harmonica player Bob Corritore keeps the blues alive in the US south west hosting a radio show, producing records and running his music venue the Rhythm Room. Having compiled a vast archive of historic recorded material over the years playing with visiting big-name artists at his club, Corritore has been releasing his collection in a series of albums sub-titled From the Vaults. In 2015 Corritore released volume one of his collaborations with New Orleans barrelhouse pianist/singer Henry Gray. Another 14 songs make up this CD, volume two of these sessions recorded between 1996 and 2018. Gray died aged 95 in 2020. He was a stalwart of Louisiana swamp blues and a Chicago blues veteran who played for 12 years with Howlin’ Wolf. Gray’s thumping piano chops are heard on all sides here, his robust voice wailing on eight of them. Other seasoned vocalists include John Brim and Tail Dragger, while guitarists Kirk Fletcher and Robert Jr. Lockwood, bassist Bob Stroger and drummer Chico Chism are among the noted accompanists reviving selections by Gray, Tampa Red, Jimmy Rogers, JB Lenoir, Hank Ballard, Junior Parker and Jimmy Oden.

JUNIOR WATSON NOTHIN’ TO DO BUT TO DO IT Little Village Foundation In the US west coast blues scene there’s no guitarist more valued by his peers than Junior Watson. A professional musician for over 40 years, Watson was a co-founder and 10-year veteran of The Mighty Flyers before a decade long stint in Canned Heat. Since his 1994 debut solo album Long Overdue, Watson’s recording output on his own behalf has been somewhat sporadic. However, Watson has achieved cult status due largely to his impressive CV as a session guitarist for a list of artists that reads like a who’s-who of the blues. Inspired by such diverse talents as Tiny Grimes, Pee Wee Clayton and Earl Hooker, Watson has created one of the genre’s most unique and influential guitar voices of his generation. While Watson’s reputation has been built on his jaw-dropping guitar mastery, he is also an accomplished singer. Here he shares vocals with stand-out guests Alabama Mike and Lisa Leuschner Andersen, wife of album co-producer Kid Andersen. Backed by keyboardist Jim Pugh, reed-man Sax Gordon, bassist Kedar Roy and drummer Andrew Gutterman, Watson mixes a few originals alongside exhilarating takes on relatively obscure blues and R&B gems.

ALBUMS: World Music Folk

ALBUMS: Jazz 1

BY TONY HILLIER

RYAN MOLLOY / VARIOUS ARTISTS TEMPERED Independent

Irish musician, academic and composer Ryan Molloy has engineered a genuinely boundarybreaking album of Celtic instrumentals with five pipers and his own intricately tuned piano. In traditional Irish music, the uilleann pipes often stand alone, the use of drones and regulators making them a virtual orchestra in their own right. The harmonic clash with piano has hitherto inhibited the pairing of these two instruments, but Molloy has overcome this incongruence by using digital sampling to individually control the tuning of each note on the piano so that it more closely matches that of the pipes. The result is a surprisingly absorbing and accessible set of 16 tracks containing jig, reel and march medleys and the odd air, in which the skilful pipes playing of Sheila Friel, Jarlath Henderson, Tara Howley, Padraig McGovern and Tiarnán Ó Duinnchinn is underpinned by judicious piano chords weaving complementary patterns. BOB JENSEN FOR THE SAKE OF THE SONG CD Baby

Canadian poet Bob Jensen, who toured Oz early last year with Celtic guitar virtuoso Tony McManus, takes a leisurely stroll down memory lane with his first 92

album of music since 1985. Jensen initially recorded a couple of his favourite songs just for fun, but enjoyed himself so much that he decided to kick on. The result is a tribute to some of his favourite troubadours that’s accomplished while prudently sidestepping most of those artist’s best-known numbers. On one of the set’s best covers, ‘My Skies’, Jensen duets delightfully with that song’s creator, James Keelaghan. Elsewhere, he genuflects to other legendary compatriots Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot and David Francey. Songs from the pens of leviathans Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie, Townes Van Zandt, Jerry Jeff Walker and Tom Waits comprise Jensen’s homage to American idols. In an acoustic setting with the assistance of some excellent compadre players, Jensen succeeds in breathing fresh life into most of the old songs, some of which would be known only to aficionados. AFRIKA MAMAS ILLANGA Naxos World

Afrika Mamas are the female equivalent of that venerable and venerated male South African choir and fellow KwaZulu-Natal province residents Ladysmith Black Mambazo, whose sophisticated isicathamiya (pronounced “izzeecat-a-meeya”) a cappella strains have seduced audiences worldwide. The Mamas’ harmony vocals are as tightly knit and every bit as mesmerising as the men’s, with the septet mining similarly rich bottom register that’s commensurate with having three bass singers. With a trio of sopranos, the upper end is also well served — not that there’s any deficiency in the middle-range sound either! Afrika Mamas’ soaring Zulu harmony vocals adds another dimension to an imaginatively arranged

cover of John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’. Co-produced by a member of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the rest of Ilanga (The Sun), which includes songs written by the sons of LBM’s founder Joseph Shabalala, is equally luminous. URBAN VILLAGE UDONDOLO No Format

Between an opening track of soft choral singing and a soulful closing male-female duet, young Sowetobased quartet Urban Village’s enchanting debut album covers considerable territory. Udondolo blends a range of styles into its own elixir. Hybridised Zulu rock, Xhosa funk and pop-influenced styles such as mbaqanga and maskandi are referenced without surrendering to those past mores, although memories of the late Johnny Clegg’s genre-bending bands Juluka and Savuka and Paul Simon’s trailblazing Graceland album are evoked here and there. The horns-doused centrepiece ‘Marabi’ swings irresistibly while dropping quotes from the muchcovered ‘Wimoweh’ (‘The Lion Sleeps Tonight’). A couple of songs tilt towards blues; another nods to hip-hop and jazz. IGNACIO LUSARDI MONTEVERDE DEL CANTO GITANO ARC Music

Del Canto Gitano explores the unique and historical blend of influences that combine to make Andalusian flamenco music such a rich tapestry of sound. Castilian, Arabic, Indian, Sephardic, Greek and Roman are some of the building blocks referenced in award-winning Argentine-born UK-based guitarist/producer Ignacio Monteverde’s intriguing melange. Interplays between the leader’s flamenco and baroque guitars and violin are to the fore with percussion and harmonium drone providing backdrops on several tracks. The singing of Indian Rupesh Gawas is prevalent on a piece that links Rajasthan and Andalusia and the vocals of English songstress Couper take pride of place in a couple of classicallyinclined works. Album centrepiece ‘The Watchtower’, an instrumental written in the style of taranta, ends with a familiar Al di Meola figure. DOM LA NENA TEMPO Six Degrees

As a Brazilian-born Paris-based singer-songwriter who sings in four languages (Portuguese, Spanish, French and English), Dom La Nena is the quintessential international artist. La Nena’s also a do-ityourself kind of gal, although she does include Mexican superstar Julieta Venegas on overlapping vocals on one track on this third solo album. There and elsewhere, she creates predominantly cheery dreamscapes laced with Brazilian saudade (nostalgia), using layers of her vocals, her cello, and a few piano parts. Tempo is, in essence, a blend of world pop and chamber music. Warning: cynics might find the Amélie-esque cuteness overpowering!

CHARLES LLOYD & THE MARVELS TONE POEM Blue Note

playing adorns two of the most dynamic pieces, ‘Paradise Trinity’ and the title track itself, in a predominately high-octane set that crams 11 tracks into 33 minutes.

It Felt Like a Kiss’), sexism (‘How Lovely to Be a Woman’), racism (‘You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught’) and fake news (‘The Sports Page’). ‘Trust in Me’ from Disney’s The Jungle Book, Lionel Bart’s ‘As Long as He Needs Me’ from Oliver and George & Ira Gershwin’s ‘The Man I Love’ take on a darker connotation with Swift’s arrangements.

to a sextet for the follow-up to his 2018 Grammy Award-grabbing big band album Back To The Sunset.

NAÏSSAM JALAL & RHYTHMS OF RESISTANCE UN AUTRE MONDE Les Couleurs du Son

As the first all-instrumental release from Charles Lloyd & The Marvels, following 2016’s and 2018’s collaborations with legendary country singers Willie Nelson and Lucinda Williams, Tone Poem is — from a jazz perspective at least — this unique quintet’s finest hour. The symbiotic partnership between pedal steel maestro Greg Leisz and Bill Frisell’s equally distinctive electric guitar playing blends beautifully with the soft, soulful tone of Lloyd’s melodic tenor saxophone throughout the set. Not unexpectedly given his advanced years, the band leader shines in the ballads, in particular on in Leonard Cohen’s ‘Anthem’, in which poetry lingers despite the absence of words, in the gently swinging Thelonious Monk standard ‘Monks Mood’, and in higher register on Bola de Nieve’s Afro-Cuban-scented ‘Ay Amor’. The alternating rhythms of Gabor Szabo’s ‘Lady Gabor’, in which the octogenarian switches to flute, bring out the best in drummer Eric Harland and bassist Reuben Rogers and sparks an exhilarating exchange between the guitarists. An album that kicks off with a brace of Ornette Coleman tunes ends a tad lamely with one of three Lloyd compositions, the pick of which is the title track. CAMERON GRAVES SEVEN Mack Avenue With his sophomore album as a bandleader, pianist/composer Cameron Graves moves away from the shadow of Kamasi Washington while retaining an association with his long-time Los Angeles brotherin-arms in the groundbreaking West Coast Get Down collective. Washington’s virtuosic tenor sax

On album closer ‘Eternal Paradise’, Graves’ melodramatic singing (on his debut as a vocalist) features over a frenzied piano ostinato. Offsetting his self-tagged thrash-jazz — 1970s’ jazz-rock fusion dragged screaming into the 2020s — the pseudonymous Planetary Prince shows classical chops and considerable subtlety on a solo piano piece, ‘Fairytales’, that echoes Erik Satie and Debussy. VERONICA SWIFT THIS BITTER EARTH Mack Avenue

Veronica Swift follows up her lauded 2019 album Confessions with an even more captivating set that not only seals her place in the upper echelon of young American jazz singers but also advances her reputation as a fearless reinterpreter. With The Bitter Earth, the New York-based Virginian imbues songs from the annals of jazz, musicals and R&B that address socio-economic concerns with contemporary resonance. Swift sets the bar high with her smouldering opening strings-adorned rearrangement of the titular Dinah Washington signature number, before tackling songs that pertain to domestic abuse (‘He Hit Me And

Middle Eastern nay, a wind instrument that has been played since time immemorial, is not normally associated with jazz. In the expert hands of Naïssam Jalal, however, the ancient end-blown flute functions as well as saxophone in the frontline. Alternating between nay and modern flute and swapping breaks with her quintet’s Moroccanborn tenor and soprano saxophonist, the French-Syrian instrumentalist, composer and vocalist is in the vanguard of an engaging 10th anniversary double album, accompanied in a studio session with her own band, augmented by a scaled down symphonic orchestra on a live set. Both lead players impress on extended Arabic-informed and Andalusia-inflected works, aided and abetted by classical strings and an impressively tight French rhythm section. Jalal’s feverish flute and vocalese brings flamenco passion and Arabic mystique to a buleria-inspired composition. Throughout, complex rhythmic cleavages are handled with aplomb by band and orchestra courtesy of the leader’s excellent concerto grosso arrangements. DAFNIS PRIETO SEXTET TRANSPARENCY Dafnison Cuban-born drummer and composer Dafnis Prieto scales down

Not that there’s any lack of fire power in the abbreviated front or back line, with two saxophonists and a trumpeter pushed along by a strong rhythm section led by Prieto’s distinctive and dynamic drumming. The leader’s Latintinged tunes are right on the money, the pick of his creations, ‘Amanecer Contigo’ and ‘Feed The Lions’, comparing favourably with a fresh arrangement of the Dizzy Gillespie standard ‘Con Alma’. JOE CHAMBERS SAMBA DE MARACATU Blue Note

Venerated multi-instrumentalist and composer Joe Chambers celebrates his return to American jazz’s premier label in style. Most impressively, Chambers shows his prowess as a mallet player on vibraphone, drums and percussion on the self-composed Brazilian Pernambuco-scented title track, which compares favourably with the leader’s takes of standards by Wayne Shorter and Bobby Hutcherson (artists whose Blue Note albums he once graced). New Orleans songstress Stephanie Jordan embellishes another cover (‘Never Let Me Go’), while MC Parrain contributes a surprise but mediocre rap to the hybrid song ‘New York State of Mind Rain’. 93

ALBUMS: Jazz 2

ALBUMS: Vinyl

BY DES COWLEY

BY STEVE BELL

JOHN SCURRY’S REVERSE SWING EARLY RISERS 2-CD, Lionshare Records LSR20211

John Scurry is a man of many parts. As a painter, he has exhibited widely. As a musician, he is best-known for his involvement with the Red Onions Jazz Band, founded in 1961 by late drummer Allan Browne. The Onions, of course, were notorious for their larrikin-infused, anarchic brand of trad jazz, mixing mayhem with Storyville. But if Scurry’s recent music is anything to go by, he has mellowed in the intervening years. Rather than emulating the Onions’ hot jazz, his recent recordings instead emphasize cool and dulcet tones, evoking Ellingtonian swing at its finest. Early Risers is his second album with band Reverse Swing, following 2017’s PostMatinee. Somewhat surprisingly, given his musical pedigree, they are the first to bear his name as leader. If that marks him out as a late-bloomer, then so be it. It certainly proved no hindrance when it came time to hand-pick his stable mates: Reverse Swing boasts some of Melbourne’s finest, including Eugene Ball on trumpet, Brennan-Hamilton Smith on clarinet, Stephen Grant on saxophone, James Macaulay on trombone, and Danny Fischer on drums. The album’s opener, ‘Early Risers’ begins with an arresting melody that recalls Ellington’s elegant and mellifluous voicings. With its intricate melding of trumpet and winds, languidly played over pattering bass and drums, it conjures an earlier era, before Parker and Gillespie’s bebop revolution changed the face of jazz forever. ‘Clandestine’ slows the pace, unfurling like an autumn breeze, kicked along by Grant’s 94

yearning alto sax and Ball’s sadeyed trumpet. ‘Egyptian Violet’ is a tonal mood piece, funereal and mournful, with Smith’s clarinet sounding a sombre lamentation over the gentle beat of Fischer’s percussion. Several tracks, such as ‘Cheers Antioch’ and ‘A Big Surprise’, strive for a jauntier feel, highlighted by a cohesive ensemble approach, and enriched by Wayne Macaulay’s irascible and growly trombone. As leader, Scurry is content, for the most part, to languish in the background, rarely soloing, his guitar instead functioning as timekeeper. His chief contribution rests with the quality of his compositions, in this case all twenty of them. Nowhere is this more apparent than on ‘Lyonesque’, a sublime six-minute tone poem, featuring the piano of Sam Keevers. It bears all the hallmarks of Billy Strayhorn’s consummate writing for Ellington, as heard on Far East Suite. While there are plenty of influences that have fed this music, from Woody Herman’s small groups to Benny Goodman’s trio sides, it is the spectre of Ellington that haunts the album. It would be unfair, however, to label Scurry’s work merely derivative. Boasting a generous run time of around 100-minutes of original music, Early Risers reflects Scurry’s lifelong engagement with the jazz tradition, as performed by a stellar cast of musicians, who fulfill their brief to perfection. LAURENCE PIKE PROPHECY CD, The Leaf Label

Percussionist Laurence Pike was a founding member of electronica jazz outfit Triosk, originally formed in Sydney in 2001. I have strong memories of their intense and visceral performances, as

they radically deconstructed the traditional piano trio, pushing it to near-breaking point. Since Triosk disbanded back in 2007, Pike has kept busy, playing with PVT and the UK’s Szun Waves, as well as recording two superb duo releases with pianist Mike Nock. In recent years, he has shifted emphasis to solo performance, and Prophecy represents his third solo outing since 2018’s Early Distant Warning. While the prospect of a record devoted to solo drumming might sound daunting, Pike’s incorporation of loops, sampler and other electronic effects places his music closer to minimalism and ambient than to traditional jazz percussion. His capacity for layering drums and electronica, in a live context, bears affinity with The Necks’ use of electronics in their recent studio work. The ten tracks that comprise Prophecy all hover around the four-to-fiveminute mark, never overstaying their welcome. ‘Golden’ is introduced with a shimmering cymbal wash, overlaid with bass effects, and muted organ-like drones. Pike gently layers these musical elements, fashioning a series of hypnotic waves, rhythmic and trance-like. ‘Ember’ starts with other-worldly voices, soon overhauled by a repetitive piano vamp, before these two distinct oceans of sound collide across an occasional metallic surface. ‘New Normal’ consists of little more than a percussive pulse, overlaid with a distant melodic piano refrain, the effect like a dancing glimmer of light. Recorded in a single day in Sydney in December 2019, Prophecy reflects something of Pike’s response to the intense climate-related disasters that were then happening in this country. Despite this, the music, performed live in the studio, resonates with futuristic hope and freedom. It affirms Pike’s ongoing quest to explore the intersection between jazz and electronica. AURA AURA Independent digital release Time will tell whether Aura is a one-off project, or the start of something else. Members of this

all-female quartet, which features several distinctive new voices on the Australian jazz scene, first met in 2019 when attending a jazz workshop in Banff, Canada. Saxophonist Flora Carbo is already established as one of Melbourne’s most versatile and creative musicians; bassist Helen Svoboda was recipient of the 2020 Freedman Jazz Fellowship; trumpeter Audrey Powne doubles as a soul singer with her outfit Au Dré; and Adelaide drummer Kyrie Anderson plays with a range of indie bands. With a surfeit of talent on board, it is no surprise that Aura does not disappoint. Opener ‘Then They Ran’ reveals the quartet in thrall to Ornette Coleman’s harmonic revolution, with Carbo’s sax floating freely over intricate patterns of bass and drums, before uniting her voice with Powne’s trumpet, evoking the spirit of Coleman and Don Cherry. Svoboda’s bass lines form the core of ‘Contrefact’, an intricate patterning over which Powne’s trumpet languidly roams. ‘Flordrey’ sees Carbo and Powne gently repeating a single motif across the complex patter of Anderson’s drumming. The album’s six tracks, with a run-time just shy of thirtyminutes, predominately shows Aura investigating the chordless jazz pioneered by Ornette Coleman, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, and others, giving it a modern twist. The self-assurance displayed on Aura is even more remarkable for its having been recorded in just a few hours, when exploiting a brief window at the Banff Workshop. The album’s seamless quality is sure testimony to the growing artistry and vision of the musicians involved.

JOE STRUMMER

DENIZ TEK

THE WHITE STRIPES

ASSEMBLY Dark Horse Records

TAKE IT TO THE VERTICAL Wild Honey Records

GREATEST HITS Third Man Records

Legendary punk icon Joe Strummer never again reached the lofty heights he achieved with his band The Clash after they disbanded in 1986, but new 2-LP solo compilation Assembly proves that he still penned and delivered some fantastic tunes before his untimely passing in 2002. He’d already moved well beyond the three-chord limitations of punk whilst with The Clash - that band often incorporating divergent sounds like reggae, dub, funk and rockabilly - but in his later years, particularly his final three albums with his band The Mescaleros, Strummer explored his beloved world music palettes even further. Hence amidst these 16 tracks we get the gospel-folk of ‘Johnny Appleseed’, the polka-waltz of ‘X-Ray Style’, the skainfused ‘Tony Adams’ and the Latino vibes of ‘Mondo Bongo’ sitting alongside songs like the uplifting ‘Yalla Yalla’ and ‘Coma Girl’ which straddle genres and exist in a more modern context. Elsewhere highlights include two Rick Rubin-produced acoustic tracks (‘Long Shadow’ and his cover of Bob Marley’s ‘Redemption Song’) as well as two live Clash covers (‘I Fought The Law’ and ‘Rudie Can’t Fail’) and an unreleased acoustic rendition of old blues song ‘Junco Partner’ (which he’d tackled before in The Clash). It’s nicely remastered and sounds great and comes in gloss gatefold with liner notes by Jakob Dylan, early pressings on indie exclusive red vinyl.

Deniz Tek’s first ever solo foray Take It To The Vertical appeared out of the blue on Sydney indie Red Eye Records back in 1991 and promptly sank without a trace, the rareas -hen’s-teeth CD long a collector’s item. Which makes this reissue - the album’s first ever appearance on vinyl, with a rejigged tracklisting and bonus song ‘Press On’ - such a delight, because it’s an excellent collection of classic sounding rock’n’roll which deserves far better than its initial treatment. After the demise of his seminal band Radio Birdman in 1977 Tek finished his medical degree and by the early-‘80s had moved back to his native United States, joining the US Marine Corps as a flight surgeon and flying backseat in F4 Phantoms (even lending his call sign Iceman to the movie Top Gun). But he stayed enamoured with music, and for his return he decamped to the legendary Sugar Hill Studios in Houston - where the chief engineer was Birdman’s former sound guy Andy “Mort Bradley” - and gathered a band including Chris Masuak from Birdman (guitar/keys) and Scott Asheton from The Stooges (drums) to bring his songs to thrilling life. Favouring clean guitar tones throughout - the opposite to the distortion frenzy of both his Birdman days and the grunge tidal wave about to sweep through the music world - and aided by excellent vocals from his wife Angie Pepper (formerly of The Passengers), songs like ‘Run Out Of Water’, ‘Steel Beach’, ‘Dead If Looks Could Kill’ and ‘Is It Good Enough’ belong in any discerning Oz rock collection.

To some people ‘best of’ collections have become relatively redundant with the advent of streaming services and YouTube and what have you, but there’s still something revealing about a well-curated career overview. In the case of Detroit garage-blues duo The White Stripes’ first such anthology these 26 songs over 2-LPs cover their decade-long rise from their scratchy independent roots in the late‘90s through to their sixth and final album Icky Thump in 2007 (although they didn’t officially call it quits until 2011). Over the journey frontman/songwriter Jack White teamed with his wife/ex-wife Meg White on primal-slashrudimentary drums to concoct an increasingly efficient (and often weird) amalgam of blues, country, classic rock and punk, their inherent chemistry and lo-fi, retro tendencies dripping with charm from the get-go. Despite opening with their first 7” single ‘Let’s Shake Hands’ (1998) the collection isn’t chronological, in fact it’s almost akin to a live setlist the way it ebbs and flows until the one-two punch crescendo of ‘You’re Pretty Good Looking (For A Girl)’ and the ubiquitous ‘Seven Nation Army’ to bring things home. In between tracks like ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’, ‘We’re Going To Be Friends’, ‘Hotel Yorba’ and ‘Hardest Button To Button’ remind that with everything filtered through the distinctive skills (and limitations) of the duo’s armoury it can be easy to forget the depth and breadth of this excellent canon.

Tamara Saviano

BY BRIAN WISE

WITHOUT GETTING KILLED OR CAUGHT Slow Uvalde Films Directed by Tamara Saviano and Paul Whitfield

uy Clark left behind a legacy of one of the great song catalogues in American music, country or otherwise. This 95-minute documentary follows his career along with that of his wife Susanna Clark and their close friend Townes Van Zandt. It also traces the relationships amongst the three, which were complicated to say the least. Susanna was muse to both – and later to other song writers - but felt that Townes, despite his self-destructive ways - was her ‘soul mate’; when he died in 1997 she shut herself off for years before passing away in 2012. This compelling film, which premiered at this year’s SXSW Film Festival and which takes its title from Guy Clark’s song ‘L.A. Freeway’, is based on the diaries of Susanna Clark (also a songwriter) and Tamara Saviano’s 2016 book Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark. It tells the story with Academy Award- winner Sissy Spacek voicing Susanna’s narration. It also includes Susanna’s audio tapes along with family photographs, vintage film footage and radio interviews. The film is co-directed by Saviano and Paul Whitfield. Saviano, a respected figure in the Americana scene as a journalist, artist manager, and Grammy-winning producer, spent nearly 8 years writing Guy’s biography and had his complete cooperation in gaining access to Susanna’s diaries. The film also features interviews with some of Clark’s friends and colleagues including Rodney Crowell, Steve Earle (whose first appearance on record was on Old No.1), Vince Gill, Verlon Thompson (who toured for years with Clark), and Terry Allen. Clark’s debut album, Old No.1, released in 1975 when he was 34 years of age remains one of the finest country albums of all time and certainly one of the albums that turned me onto country music, along with Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. “I’m with you, Brian,” agrees Saviano, talking to me just prior to the film’s premiere. “Me too. For sure. I mean, that album still stands the test of time. That

album has not aged at all. It stands now just as much as it did then. I became a Guy fan when I was 14 years old,” says Saviano. “So, he’s been impacting my life for a long time. I met Guy in 1998. I was the managing editor at Country Music Magazine at the time and I’m not sure that it was because I was writing about him but we really hit it off. So, we became friendly and I’d see him around town. The Nashville music community is really pretty small, so everybody knows everybody, and I’d see him around town and at parties and we’d go out to lunch together.” In 2002, Sugar Hill, Clark’s label at the time was releasing his album The Dark and hired Saviano to write the press releases and biographies. Four years later Clark hired her to be his publicist, a role she filled until they started working on his biography. Before the publication of the book Saviano had also produced the tribute album, This One’s For Him: A Tribute To Guy Clark, which won the Americana Album of The Year award in 2012. Saviano was also thinking about a documentary and started shooting interviews on film for the next couple of years. “We started shooting Guy on camera in 2014,” she explains, “not knowing what the film was going to be but knowing that he

wasn’t going to be around very long and that we needed to get him on camera while we still had him. So, while we were doing those shoots, he was so cooperative and generous with his time and kind, but we just did not know what the film was going to be at that point.” “When Susanna died, Guy and I were really deep into working on the book in 2012,” explains Saviano when I ask her how she got access to Susanna Clark’s diaries and tapes. Two days after Susanna died Guy gave Saviano a box of her written diaries, cassette tapes and mini-cassette tapes, admitting that he had not read or listened to any of it but saying, “Whatever is in there is Susanna’s truth and you’re welcome to it.” “So, that was a pretty powerful and brave statement from him,” adds Saviano. “I don’t think Susanna ever meant for anybody to hear those tapes, but I do think that she would be happy about the way that we used them. I think she would be happy that her story is being told because Guy and Townes were such big personalities, and I think her voice really got lost, not in her small circles with Rodney and Steve and that artistic community, but in the larger world, for sure. Susanna was not well-known because Guy and Townes took up all the oxygen in the room. So, I really was happy to have this

opportunity to bring her forward and have her voice heard, and what better way to do that than through her own words.” “As it turns out, Sissy and Susanna grew up a hundred miles apart in Northeast Texas,” explains Saviano. “So, as Rodney Crowell says, Sissy has that same timbre to her voice. So, to me, Sissy came in the studio and she just became Susanna. So, she was the perfect narrator. We use Susanna’s real voice in the tapes and then we use Sissy’s voice. She voices more of Susanna’s written diaries and narrates, moving the story along. Before I listened to those tapes, we had already decided that we were going to tell the story from Susanna’s point of view, but then having those tapes just kind of solidified that.” The central part of the documentary and the lives of Townes and Guy is their relationship with Susanna. It’s one of the more fascinating relationships, not just in music but in art in general. “I think so,” agrees Saviano, “but I’ve been obsessed with this story for a long time. As Susanna said, she and Guy were married, Guy and Townes were best friends and Susanna and Townes were soulmates. So, they made it work because they wanted it to work and they all loved each other. I think they came of age at a little bit of a different time. They were all in their twenties when the Summer of Love was happening in San Francisco. So, I think that Townes took some of the pressure off of Guy so he didn’t have to be the charming husband all the time. Guy was a real pragmatic, practical, stoic, West Texas hard-ass and Susanna and Townes had this more vulnerable, mystical side to them. So, I think Guy thought that all of that was nonsense and so, he was happy that Townes was there to take care of that part of Susanna. Who knows if there was ever jealousies or anything? I mean, there could have been, but I don’t know. They made it work and they all loved each other. Every piece of evidence I have found in my research points to the fact that they all loved each other deeply.” The three were all fixated on songwriting and both Guy and Townes wanted Susanna’s approval. Later, other writers such as Rodney Crowell and Steve Earle would also seek Susanna’s blessing, suggesting that she must have had an incredibly magnetic personality. “I wasn’t there when they were all young,” says Saviano, “but when I

was interviewing all the songwriters for my book - Guy, Rodney, Steve, all of them, to a person - they all told me how they were in love with Susanna. I think she was kind of an enigma to them as well. I didn’t know Susanna until the year 2000 and Townes had already died. So, Susanna was on her downward slide, but she did have this magnetic presence about her. “When I would sit with her in her bedroom at her bedside and talk to her, I was enthralled with her, the way she spoke, and the stories she told, and her strength. She used to tell me not to take any shit from any of those men. I think she had such a sad ending: a long, long, sad ending. That’s what I think a lot of people in recent years that knew Guy at the end of his life just wrote her off as crazy and she wasn’t crazy. She was grieving. I think part of me wanted to set that straight too, that here’s a strong, magnetic, talented, successful woman undone by grief. She was not crazy.” “It was hard on him,” adds Saviano when I mention that Susanna’s slow demise must’ve been incredibly difficult for Guy as well. “He was at the pinnacle of his career during these years. He really took off and he was

BY BRIAN WISE traveling everywhere and, on the road, and having this great career and Susanna was home with carers. I think Guy would have loved it much more if she had been out there with him. So, it was hard on him, absolutely. I felt bad for Guy during those years that Susanna did give up.” The collection of musicians who interacted with Guy, Susanna and Townes and the scene that they created has been likened to great literary gatherings. In the film, Steve Earle refers to it as the ‘salon.’ (Susanna called it a ‘hippie poet salon’). “Guy has said that many times and Kris Kristofferson has said that to me, that Nashville during the ‘70s was like Paris in the ‘20s,” agrees Saviano. “I think they like that analogy. That’s what they were going for. They had the salon and what a beautiful time. I think to some extent that still exists both in Nashville and in Austin with artists gathering together. It may not seem as romantic now because it’s currently happening and the ‘70s are now history. But I think artist communities are really important to the creative process and they had a pretty extraordinary artist community then.” Finally, Rodney Crowell poses the following question and then answers it: why wasn’t Guy Clark a big star in the country scene? Clark did become a superstar in what became the Americana movement after albums such as Boats to Build and Dublin Blues and Saviano says that he was “happy to have that home.” But his decision to choose the path of a folk singer precluded him from mainstream country airplay and, though he had played and recorded with bands he decide that wasn’t for him. “He really wanted to make his living as a songwriter and a performer,” say Saviano, “he gave it a shot and it took him years to decide that he needed to just go back to be a folk singer, and that’s what worked for him because that’s who he was. It suited him. I think the timing also worked out in that this Americana movement was happening. There were a lot of people from our generation and the next generation that really wanted to hear this roots-based music. So, it all just sort of came together the way it did.” Check out withoutgettingkilledorcaught. com for screening and streaming details. 97

Different Every Time: The Authorized Biography of Robert Wyatt By Marcus O’Dair (Serpent’s Tail, p/b)

arcus O’Dair’s book on Robert Wyatt was published in 2014, but thankfully remains in print. I can clearly remember how excited I was when I first heard about it. It begs the question, then – why did it take me this long to get around to it? Indulge me, then, this dip into the recent past, for it is a book worth trumpeting. First up a confession: I am an unrepentant Soft Machine devotee, especially the band’s resplendent Third album, with its four sidelong – and mostly instrumental – tracks fusing prog rock with avant-garde jazz. Despite this, Wyatt’s subsequent solo career, beginning with 1971’s End of an Ear, largely passed me by, at least up until Shleep (1997) and Cuckooland (2003). If I was late to the party, I have since played catch-up, though O’Dair’s wide-ranging biography makes clear I still have my work cut out if I want to fully grasp the extent of Wyatt’s achievement. Wyatt’s formative years, from childhood onwards, fed directly into the general weirdness of his later musical make-up. A lover of English wordplay, especially the writings of Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear, Wyatt grew his intellectual palette to embrace a clutch of diverse influences, from Dada to Pataphysics, from minimalism to avant-garde jazz. At school in Kent, he met Mike Ratledge and Hugh Hopper – future Soft Machine alumni – along with Daevid Allen and Kevin Ayers, both of whom boarded with Wyatt’s family. As these things invariably happen, chance encounters dictated the birth of the now renowned Canterbury scene. Like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, in its earliest incarnation, epitomised London’s underground music scene. Both bands regularly played the UFO Club and both headlined the legendary 14-hour Technicolour Dream concert in April 1967. Soft Machine’s first two albums were infused with the same madcap psychedelic ethos as Barrettera Floyd, but the early departure of Allen and Ayers saw a seismic shift toward free jazz, effectively leaving the band’s singer and drummer out in the cold. A disgruntled Wyatt – who by this stage was drinking heavily – found himself dumped from his own band, a slight that took him years from which to recover, though not 98

before recording his masterpiece ‘A Moon in June’, which appeared on Soft Machine’s Third. For many, Wyatt’s 1973 fall from a fourthfloor window, which left him confined to a wheelchair, is considered the defining moment of his career. Yet, as O’Dair makes clear, there is a remarkable continuity between the music he recorded before and after the accident. The chief contrast was that he no longer needed to worry about being part of a band. Henceforth, he would create music only in the studio, releasing it quietly to the world, and leaving it for others to champion or ignore. Unlike many of his peers, whose music slowly ossified from the need to relentlessly perform past hits, Wyatt had no need to revisit earlier songs, and consequently never looked back. While far from prolific, he has, over more than half a century, chalked up a body of work, much of it flying under the public’s radar at the time, that is the envy of musicians everywhere.

Critical to Wyatt’s career has been the contributions made by wife Alfreda Benge. She has furnished lyrics to many of his songs and designed the striking images that adorn his album covers, perfectly rendering the dreamy quality of his compositions. In fact, it

is hard to think of the records without them. Critical also has been Wyatt’s politics, a mash-up of old-school English communism, anti-Thatcherism, and revolutionary fervour so eloquently conveyed in Wyatt’s recording of the Elvis Costello/Clive Langer-penned ‘Shipbuilding’. The eclectic roster of musicians Wyatt has worked with is astonishing. To a tee, they are happy to sing his praises: whether his noteperfect voice, his imaginative drumming, or his unorthodox approach to composition. Few artists, I suspect, could count among their collaborators the likes of Syd Barrett, Eno, Elvis Costello, Paul Weller, Evan Parker, Björk, Keith Tippett, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Michael Mantler, Carla Bley, Phil Manzanera, David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Max Richter. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. For much of his career, Wyatt was more admired by musicians than by the public. But the tide began to turn following his highprofile appointment as curator of the 2001 Meltdown Festival. Sundry accolades soon followed: a nomination for the Mercury Music Prize for Cuckooland in 2004; and Lifetime Achievement Award from Mojo Magazine in 2005. Such end of career recognition remains a source of amusement to Wyatt; though, as he acknowledges, it helps pay the bills. The term ‘authorized’ can sometimes trigger warning bells when it comes to biographies. In this case, we need not fear. O’Dair was granted unlimited access to his subject. Wyatt, for his part, is honest and candid about his life – the drink, the depression, the hurts – even as he sugar-coats it with old-school self-deprecating English humour. For a man who has suffered his share of life’s knocks, Wyatt comes across as surprisingly resilient, even today retaining a wide-eyed and childlike wonder about the world around him. For much of his life, he just seems happy to be there. O’Dair’s finely-etched portrait of Wyatt is essential reading for anyone wanting to come to grips with the scale of his accomplishment. Despite having drawn a line under his career, Wyatt remains one of the great musical iconoclasts of the modern era, deserving a place alongside genuine outliers such as Scott Walker, Cecil Taylor, or Don van Vliet. Like them, he has never compromised his singular vision, never chased fame or fortune. If these things took the best part of a lifetime to find him, then well and good. Safe to say, Wyatt would not have wanted it any other way.

ooks. Books. Books. So many collections of words vying for our time. Since the last issue of Rhythms I managed to get through as many as I could – whilst still leaving a bedside table heaving with titles that I wish I could get to. By Stuart Coupe I raced through Tracey Thorn’s wonderful My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend which is her rumination on a decades long friendship with Go-Betweens drummer and co-founder Lindy Morrison, the two having met in London in March 1983 backstage at the Lyceum. Thorn, well before the formation of Everything But The Girl, was there with her band The Marines, who were opening for Orange Juice and The Go-Betweens. The two forged a friendship and, despite long periods of not being in regular contact, maintained it to this day. Thorn puts that interaction under the microscope and tells a fascinating story, and in the process reclaims Morrison’s position in the history of the band. It’s something that shouldn’t need asserting but for far too long the story of the band has been whittled down to that of Robert Forster and Grant McLennan. This book tells how Morrison turned two songwriters into a band. Thorn writes effortlessly about some big subjects but never sounds as if she’s pontificating or lecturing. She doesn’t always fawn over Morrison and writes evocatively, tenderly and sometimes firmly about her subject and the world she inhabited. There are many, many wonderful moments in My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend – Morrison preparing Christmas lunch for a smacked-out coterie of Australian musicians in London. Yes, Nick Cave is one of them. There’s wonderfully drawn sections on Morrison’s childhood, travels through Europe, her pre-band life and of course her interaction with the other members of the Go-Betweens. Look, just get a copy and read it. I’ve known Morrison – not overly well but well enough – for many decades and I learnt so much about her from reading this book. You will too. And you’ll learn a lot about music and creativity and human interaction and struggle and sexism and re-writing history. Bigger issues than just a great rock’n’roll band from Brisbane. And My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend did for me what it will probably do for you and what the best

music-related books should do – it made me go back to the music and listen to it again with fresh ears. I played songs and records I’ve heard literally hundreds of times with a new understanding and appreciation of their creation. I also wanted to draw your attention to a book I obviously read months ago as I have a quote on the front cover. The line says: “Driving Stevie Fracasso reads as great as the fifth Replacements album sounds. A +.” The book – a novel – is by my friend Barry Divola, a well-known and respected music and travel writer. I’d tell you to buy it even if he wasn’t my friend mind you. It’s just really, really good. Poignant, funny and nerdy in a Nick Hornby kinda way. In fact, I think this is better than anything Hornby has written in a long time – but if you saw your life in his High Fidelity you’ll love this. It’s largely set in September 2001 and very, very New York-centric. In fact, it’s dedicated to that city. There’s also an extended road trip that takes in Austin, New Orleans and many other cities, allowing Divola to draw on his now decades of travel writing about America. If you dig indie music, America, and New York City in particular this is a novel for you. And it’s much less wordy that Utopia Avenue - and more readable. Beautiful Book Of The Month award goes to Matt Taylor’s biography I Remember When I Was Young by Phil Riseborough and Toby Burrows which expands on an earlier edition and includes hundreds of absolutely superb illustrations in a wonderful hardback volume published by High Voltage Publishing, an independent Perth company. The terrific Foreword was written by Michael Gudinski shortly before his unexpected passing. It’s one of those books you’ll pick up for a casual flick through and still be immersed in hours later. It’s footy season and recently I’ve read two books about the great game. That’s AFL by the way. And no discussions will be entered into. CARN - The Game, And The Country That Plays It by Andrew Mueller came out a couple of seasons ago but I only recently had it drawn to my attention. Now Londonbased, Australian-born Mueller is best known for his music and travel writing but, as he points out, his obsession with the Geelong footy club is a lifelong one. In CARN Mueller takes 57 games that have been played from 1897 till 2017 and within that tells a remarkable trivia-filled and often side splittingly funny history of not only Aussie Rules but its relationship with this country. There is so much in this that I read it slowly, loving every page of it. I also devoured Tony Wilson’s book from last year 1989 – The Great Grand Final which is an equally superb book about on one level just one game of footy – the infamous

Hawks vs Cats Grand Final – but much, much more. It’s a magnificent book about sport and our relationship with it – but a wonderfully told, page turner of a re-telling of that game. I was so caught up in it that I immediately ordered the DVD of the game – before realising that it’s also there in its entirety on YouTube. Great book. Amazing, brutal game. Next book to be read? Rckie Lee Jones’ memoir Last Chance Texaco. We’ll chat about that next issue. Happy reading.

Bunny-Wailer

Dan Hopkins

Hilton Valentine

Mary Wilson

Tom Stevens

Trisha Noble

COMPILED BY SUE BARRETT

HELLO

Australian blues / roots / gospel musician Dan Hopkins (www. danhopkins.com.au) has released his debut album, Different Economy. Dan told Rhythms, “Growing up, I was exposed to my sister’s records (she was into Motown). And my tennis coach played mix tapes on long trips – Neil Young, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin, Bowie, Zappa. Mates later introduced me to a lot more blues (Elmore James, Muddy, Robert Johnson, Mississippi John). When I was 18, a mate gave me his guitar and within months we formed a bedroom band – never made it out of the bedroom. Through perseverance, I finally got onto a stage and I’ve kept honing my craft ever since.” Dan’s decision to move to the country has been beneficial during COVID. “We’re on acreage and we just buckled down and did things which we do anyway. For months there, we only had to go into town once a week to pick up supplies.” Dan Hopkins’ album, Different Economy, was “recorded in my solar powered home studio, The Blues Den, and its title refers to the lifestyle we choose to lead. The album is a mixture of songs that have been floating around for years, newer ones and a few old blues covers. Some songs are stripped back and others have members of my band (The Generous Few) for a full band sound.” The National Folk Festival (normally in Canberra at Easter) has appointed Katie Noonan as its new artistic director. Folk Alliance Australia (www.folkalliance.org.au) will open nominations in late May for the Australian Folk Music Awards. And the Australia Council has appointed Franchesca Cubillo as Executive Director, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts. South Australian singer/songwriter Kelly Brouhaha (www. kellybrouhaha.com.au) is touring during May, June and July. National Reconciliation Week 2021 (More than a word – Reconciliation takes action) runs from 27 May until 3 June. Info at: www.reconciliation.org.au The Irish Composers’ Collective (www.irishcomposerscollective. com) has been fundraising to launch a new record label to release music by its members, beginning with Kate Ellis (Crash Ensemble, Ireland), Claire Edwardes / Jason Noble (Ensemble Offspring, Australia) and Rarescale (England). Sue Jeffers has a new album, Up with the Masses, which includes ‘Lives Stolen’, ‘Essentially Expendable’, Woody Guthrie’s ‘All You Fascists’, Ralph Chaplin’s ‘Solidarity Forever’, John Nordquist’s ‘The Parasites’. Other new releases include: Renee Millner (Out Their Windows); Lachlan Bryan and The Wildes (Nearest Misses Live); Laura & Susie (Meremba); Crys Matthews (Changemakers); Rod MacDonald (Boulevard); Michael Carpenter and The Banks Brothers (Introducing…); Amanda Cook (Narrowing the Gap); Roving Crows (Lockdown); Edel Meade (Brigids and Patricias); Rachel Baiman (Cycles); Ben Mastwyk (Livin’ on Gold Street); Allison Russell of Our Native Daughters and Birds of Chicago (Outside Child); Megan O’Neill (Getting Comfortable with Uncertainty) 100

AND GOODBYE

Captain Sir Tom Moore (100), who raised millions of pounds for National Health Service charities by walking laps of his garden and who had a #1 hit with Michael Ball with ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, died England (Jan) Grammy-nominated Scottish musician Sophie (34), died Greece (Jan) Tom Stevens (64), of The Long Ryders, died in Jan American guitarist Sylvain Sylvain (69), of New York Dolls, died Tennessee, USA (Jan) Randy Parton (67), American singer/songwriter and brother of Dolly, died North Carolina, USA (Jan) Canadian keyboardist Michael Fonfara (74), of Electric Flag, died Canada (Jan) Tim Bogert (76), American bassist for Vanilla Fudge, Cactus and Beck, Bogert & Appice, died in Jan English guitarist John Russell (66), who grew up on the edge of Romney Marsh, died in Jan Celia Humphris (70), singer with English folk rock band Trees, died in Jan English musician Hilton Valentine (77), of The Animals, died USA (Jan) Bill Arnett, Australian folk music venue manager, died in Feb Australian musician John Thompson (56), of Cloudstreet, died Qld, Australia (Feb) Mary Wilson (76) of The Supremes, died Nevada, USA (Feb) Jazz keyboardist Chick Corea (79), died Florida, USA (Feb) Elliot Mazer (79), recording engineer and producer, died California, USA (Feb) Patsy Ann Noble (aka Trisha Noble) (77), Australian singer and actor, died in Feb American bassist Matt Harris, of The Posies, died in Feb Anne Feeney (69), American folk musician, died Pennsylvania, USA (Feb) Irish musician Joe Burke (81), died Ireland (Feb) Peter Ostroushko (67), fiddler and mandolinist, died Minnesota, USA (Feb) Jamaican musician Bunny Wailer (73), died Jamaica (Feb) Michael Gudinski (68), music promoter and founder of Mushroom Records, died Vic, Australia (March) Australian singer Taryn Fiebig (49), died NSW, Australia (March) Doug Parkinson (74), Australian singer, died NSW, Australia (March) New Zealand born guitarist Dion Hirini (51), died Vic, Australia (March) Alan Cartwright (75), of English band Procol Harum, died in March

STUART COUPE PRESENTS

THE SOUND OF SEMI YOUNG AND SUPER PASSIONATE INDIE AUSTRALIA

HUSSY HICKS With a sonically adventurous reputation and energetic live show, it’s no surprise Hussy Hicks have staying power. From Gold Coast Artist of the Year and Album of the Year wins to Queensland Music Award and Golden Guitar nominations. Never ones to shy away from activism, social commentary or using their voices for the greater good, Hussy Hicks followed up their 2017 Album of the Year winning release with their new 6th studio album, Gather Up The People, which looks at many of the issues at the forefront of the global consciousness this year, calling for a future without sexism, racism, homophobia and xenophobia, but most importantly, without fear. Available at: www.hussyhicks.com

JEB CARDWELL Melbourne based guitarist/ singer/ songwriter Jeb Cardwell has opened for artists such as Tony Joe White and Steve Earle. He also plays guitar for other various artists, among them ‘Aria Hall Of Fame’ inductee Kasey Chambers. ‘Blood Moon’ - Jebs third single from his upcoming debut studio LP is an infectious toe-tapper reminiscent of J.J. Cale. Written by Jeb Cardwell. Recorded at Union Street Studio, Melbourne. Produced by Jeb Cardwell, Roger Bergodaz and Tim McCormack. Musicians: Jeb Cardwell- guitars, vocals, percussion. Roger Bergodaz -bass, drums, percussion. Tim McCormack - bass synth. Brendan McMahon - Keys . Available via: jebcardwell.com

BILL JACKSON ‘Bill Jackson is coming from the grass roots, from the ground up, from the struggle of the 99% - his songs are gritty and real and come at you like a hammer, ringin’ in the mornin’. Take it or leave it, he’s telling it straight up’ (Shane Howard). A chance meeting between Jackson and iconic Australian musician and producer Kerryn Tolhurst culminated in the recording of two new albums during Melbourne’s 2020 lockdowns. The first, ‘The Wayside Ballads Vol 3’, has just been released through Laughing Outlaw Records and will be launched at The Brunswick Ballroom on June 3, 2021. Available at: billjacksonmusic.com

TORIA RICHINGS Toria Richings is an Alt Country Singer Songwriter originally from the UK, Now living in Sydney. Toria’s new EP Diamond Stone is being received very well, her love of lyrics and heartfelt delivery really shine through in this EP. Getting great radio attention in America and Australia her music is something to listen out for. Toria has a fantastic band of musicians to back her, they have shows lined up in Sydney starting on May 19th at El Sol Cronulla Petersham Bowling Club May 30th Butchers Brew Bar June 20th. Toria and her band offer great Alternative Country music with a twist of something new. Available at: toriarichings.com

WEEPING WILLOWS Winners of the 2021 Golden Guitar for Instrumental of the Year, world-beating Alt. Country duo The Weeping Willows plunge headlong into darkness once again with brooding new single ‘Black Crow’. Encroaching doom never sounded so sweet. Rooted in ageless Americana tradition and shivering with misgiving, ‘Black Crow’ is yet further proof that The Weeping Willows’ celebrated vocal harmony is as exquisitely suited to tales of murder as it is to a delicate love song. The Weeping Willows have netted eight CMAA Golden Guitar nominations and supported Americana luminaries from Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real (USA) to Iris Dement (USA). Available via: theweepingwillows.com.au

SUE RAY Sue Ray is thrilled to be releasing her single “All The Only Ones” co-written with the incredible wordsmith singer/ songwriter Sean Sennett. A mystical track seeping with old country vibe, yet crafted with intricate sweeping harmonies and instrumentation, it evokes haunting emotions reminiscent of the vibe of Springsteen’s Nebraska. Sue and Sean felt inspired to look outside of familiar country clichés, and explore the sentiment of living as a songwriter, the sacrifices, the joys, and the relentless uncontrollable drive to pursue a dream. Stepping seamlessly into the role of sound engineer and producer, Sue is proud to release this beautiful track. Avaialble at: sueraymusic.com

11 - 14 MARCH 2022 FIRST ARTIST ANNOUNCEMENT Baby et Lulu Courtney Marie Andrews (USA) Eilen Jewel (USA) Elephant Sessions (SCO) Emma Donovan & The Putbacks Eric Bibb (USA) Jon Boden (ENG) Kee’ahn Watchhouse (USA) (formerly Mandolin Orange)

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