THE HARD ROAD

Joseph Vincent Camilleri is one of the true legends of the Australian music industry. As a teenager in the ‘60s he played blues with the King Bees and later joined the Adderley Smith Blues Band for a year when Broderick Smith was conscripted. Later he played in the Pelaco Brothers, a collective that included Stephen Cummings who went on to form The Sports. In 1975, Camilleri founded Jo Jo Zep & The Falcons, becoming the band’s lead singer as well as co-writing songs and playing saxophone along with Wilbur Wilde. After six studio albums, two live albums and a mini-album (So Young) The Falcons ground to a halt in the early ‘80s only to have Camilleri almost immediately form The Black Sorrows to play zydeco, blues and R&B – all genres that Camilleri loved. (The Falcons had a brief reunion in 2003 for the album Ricochet and a tour). After Sonola (1984) and Rockin’ Zydeco – albums that featured some great covers – it didn’t take long for Camilleri to find a song writing partner in Nick Smith, who had played with The Kevins and Stephen Cummings. It is a partnership that has lasted more than 35 years, has now produced 17 albums, hit songs such as ‘Hold On To Me,’ ‘Chained To The Wheel,’ ‘Harley and Rose,’ multiple ARIA Awards, and is one of the more remarkable song writing partnerships in Australian music history. Camilleri explored other musical avenues through The Revelators, Bakelite Radio and The Voodoo Sheiks projects but his main squeeze has always been The Black Sorrows. Now, thirty-six years after the band’s formation, Camilleri has released its latest album, St Georges Road, and celebrated his 50th album. “I’m doing it for a number of reasons,” says Camilleri when I ask him what motivates him these days. “First of all, I still love music. If I’m not playing my music, I’m playing someone else’s music. I’m trying to find something in that. I’m still trying to write things that have some value, or go places where I haven’t been before, still trying to do all those things. “But what’s happened in the last ten years is I’ve become a music fan again, more interested in not so much other people’s music but just listening to music. I’m not a follower of anybody, really. There are people that my ears will prick up and it’s a broader net. I never would have thought that classical would enter my record collection, but it has. I’m still buying blues records, still trying to find something to say through some of the mediums that I really love and respect. I’m not a blues guy, but I play the blues and I love the blues and I like blues, but I’m not one of those purist guys. “The other thing - it’s all I know. I know how to get up on stage and make an idiot of myself. I’ve been doing it for 58 years, you know.” If you look at Camilleri’s touring schedule you would have to conclude that he is the hardest working musician in the nation. Even between bands and recording projects Camilleri has never been afraid of hard work. For a while he even worked at a café and at the Victoria Market, hauling crates of vegetables. “That was pretty tough,” he recalls. “When I was at the Victoria Market that was pretty tough because there were a few bombings. “There was a bit of argie-bargie going on there, but that wasn’t for me.” “Pretty much everything that I’ve done has been accidental,” he continues. “Meeting Nick Smith at AAV. He was in another studio. We were in the toilets. He introduces himself while we’re washing our hands. Then it seemed years later we have written 300 or 400 songs and we’ve had a wonderful journey together. So, you wouldn’t think that. I was recording, ‘So Young’.” Smith was playing in Melbourne indie band The Kevins when that fateful meeting with Camilleri took place. I have referred to Smith as Camilleri’s ‘secret weapon’, penning the lyrics to Joe’s melodies. The new album, St Georges Road is yet another example of the strength of the partnership with Joe providing some classic riffs and Nick providing lyrics, often populated by an array of interesting characters. “He’s doing all the lyrics. I’m doing all the music,” explains Camilleri about the song writing partnership. “It never used to be like that, but it just became like that and it’s fine. I think that the really nice thing is we know our roles now. He’s helped me out with melodies a lot as well. He’s really good with that too. And the nice thing about me and Nick, like any writers I imagine, you’re really good friends.” By the time the Camilleri-Smith partnership began the third Black Sorrows album there had already been two albums of excellent covers. A Place In The World, released in 1985, had 11 co-compositions and only one cover (a nod to Joe’s love of New Orleans music in ‘Let The Four Winds Blow’). “Then we made A Place in the World, and that got us back on our feet,” explains Camilleri, “because we had some really nice songs, but not a very great recording of the songs, but a really lovely little record. Then we made Dear Children in a proper studio and then we got away a little bit. We had some success and got a release with CBS. Of course, that gave us the wonderful Hold Onto Me album and then Harley and Rose. Then we were playing all over the world.” “Of course, music taste keeps changing,” he continues. “It keeps evolving, and here I am now. I’m not trying to recapture those days. The thing I’m trying to do is trying to write the best songs I can write and have a band that’s really joyful to play with and it’s not hard work. You’ve seen us play. It’s never hard. It’s all about entertaining an audience. It’s never about the songs even, even though you need the songs. It’s about everybody getting on the train and having a good old dance and forget what’s ailing you.” For the new album Camilleri decided to revisit the past one more time by calling in his first producer, Englishman Peter Solley who not only had impressive credentials as a musician and producer but also ran a very successful gelato business after moving to America (something that would appeal to Camilleri’s entrepreneurial spirit). “It was by accident because he just wanted room and board,”Joe says of the reunion with Solley, “because he had a world ticket and he wanted to come to Australia. “So, he stayed here for about three weeks. We got on really well and we always had. When we were doing Screaming Targets, we became really close. I went to Miami and recorded at Criteria Studios with him and he knows what he’s doing and that’s what I like about him and he believes in what he’s doing so that makes it even better. He said, ‘Okay, I’ll come down and we’ll make this record and it’ll probably be my last record’, he said as far as he was concerned. And so, he came down and we made this record and it was a real eyeopener. I know a lot more - not that I want to be anybody’s producer anyway - but I’ve learned a lot about how to go about things in a different way than I thought. “When you have a producer that you can trust, he can tell you to stop grazing. All of a sudden, I’m just a musician and he can tell me the same thing, which I really liked. I really thought that Saint Georges Road was better for it. So, it was fun to do. Nothing was hard. A couple of times I challenged him on something that I thought was really necessary for me, and he would try it and then say, “No. No, we won’t be having any of that.” “The day we finished Saint Georges Road we just sat there and played it back, and it really felt like a record. ‘St. Georges Road’ was the last song we played and I realised I mightn’t see him again. So, the song had a bigger feeling all of a sudden to me. He said he’s now had his both shots and he’s playing tennis again, so I figure he’s got another 10 years to live so he’ll be a pain in the ass to someone. “Like that moment was really sad for me because we’re really good friends and we love similar things and when you’re hanging around with someone, you don’t need to sort of say much, you just enjoy their presence.” Why the title Saint Georges Road? “It was to hang it on something I guess, and we had the cover and it felt like it was sort of just walking through your life,” says Camilleri. “It’s a sad song, a sad tale about death and how we embrace that and the fear of it. I just thought that was a good title. There was that time when we lost a lot of people and we started writing that song.” Camilleri adds that the song was inspired by thoughts of the late Chris Wilson, an institution on the Melbourne music scene. “Well, he instigated the song,” says Camilleri. “It all started because we all have a love for Chris Wilson. Then Nick’s mother passed away, my brother passed away. It was to tip your hat to the people that we loved the most, whether you knew them well or not, you knew of them, and Sweet Princes, you know. It just felt sort of right to call it that. I didn’t know where Chris Wilson lived really, but it was in that world, in that area. I had the music and it just felt like it was a good time for something like that from us.”