“I fell in love with sound, became intoxicated with it, I felt compelled to get involved with it, and that’s never left.”
– Jeff Lang
$15.00 inc GST
NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2024
ISSUE: 326
“We never had such a good time singing and playing as we did making this record.“
Jeff Lang Rufus Wainwright Black Sorrows Cat Empire MJ Lenderman
Jamie Webster
Christian Lee Hutson …and more! Americana Festival Out On The Weekend
www.stevetallis.com
RY X
SYDNEY • city recital hall
Wed 23 Apr
Melbourne • Recital Centre
Thu 24 Apr
sat 26 apr
SYDNEY • Enmore Theatre
sat 19 Apr
Melbourne • THE Forum
WED 23 Apr
allison Russel
Melbourne • recital centre
tue 15 apr
sydney • city recital hall
thu 17 Apr
steel pulse
Sydney • metro Theatre
FRI 31 jan
Byron Bay • The Green room
SAT 1 Apr
adelaide • hindley st music hall
WED 23 Apr
Perth - Metro city Sun 27 APR
christone ‘kingfish’ ingram
sydney • metro theatre
sun 20 Apr
Melbourne • northcote theatre
mon 21 apr
brisbane • concert hall QPAC
WED 23 Apr
brisbane • The Triffid SUN 2 Feb Apr
marc broussard
melbourne • northcote theatre
mon 14 Apr
sydney • city recital hall
wed 16 apr
BJ the chicago Kid
melbourne • northcote theatre
wed 16 apr
sydney • metro theatre
sun 20 apr
get tickets at bluesfesttours.com.au
Kasey Chambers has a new album that coincides with a new book that chronicles her life. By Jo Roberts.
40 OUT OF THE WOODS
Steve Bell talks to rising US singer-songwriter
Christian Lee Hutson about his stunning new album Paradise Pop. 10.
42 NATURE BOY
Sam Lee is a musician and environmental activist. By Bernard Zuel.
44 POSTCARDS FROM LIFE
Canadian singer, songwriter and multiinstrumentalist Ryland Moranz writes ‘folk/bluegrass historical postcards’. By Michael George Smith.
LIVE
46 AMERICANA
Nashville turns on its 25th Americana Music Festival and Conference. By Brian Wise.
47 OUT ON THE WEEKEND
One of our favourite festivals expands into the regions. By Brian Wise.
COLUMNS
50 Muscle Shoals Now By Zena O’Connor
51 331/3 Revelations: Martin Jones turns you on to MJ Lenderman.
Jeff Lang’s latest album More Life, packed with special guests, is his greatest achievement. By Samuel J.Fell.
Joe Camilleri celebrates 40 years of The Black Sorrows with a sparkling new album. By Jeff Jenkins.
Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram might have achieved a lot thus far, but he’s not done yet. By Samuel J.Fell.
Chicago musician Neal Francis’ band plays great funk, soul, and rock that echoes the 1960s and 1970s. By Brian Wise.
A reborn Cat Empire will be playing Bluesfest behind their latest studio album. By Chris Lambie.
Rufus Wainwright makes his long-awaited return to Australia with a solo tour. By Brian Wise.
Nick Corr caught-up with North Carolina singersongwriter and multi-instrumentalist
MJ Lenderman at his home in Asheville to talk about his new album Manning Fireworks.
38 THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE
On the eve of his Australian tour, Jamie Webster sat down with Rhythms’ Michael George Smith to ponder how far he has come in just five years.
52 The Round Up: Nick Corr sums up the latest in Americana.
55 Lost In The Shuffle: The eccentric Bob Neuwirth. By Keith Glass
56 Classic Album: Rubber Soul by The Beatles. By Billy Pinnell
57 You Won’t Hear This On Radio: By Trevor J. Leeden
REVIEWS
71
FEATURE ALBUM REVIEWS: Nick Charles, Captain Matchbox, Steve Tallis, Nicky Del Rey, The Saints and more.
73 World Music & Folk: By Tony Hillier
74 Blues: By Al Hensley
75 Vinyl: Drive By Truckers, Justin Townes Earle, MJ Lenderman. By Steve Bell
76 Jazz: By Des Cowley.
77 Books 1: The Two Tone Records Story. By Des Cowley.
78 Books Too! By Stuart Coupe
81 Festival Guide: Get out your dancing gear.
82 Hello & Goodbye: By Sue Barrett.
Jeff Lang
Joe Camilleri
Kasey Chambers
Rufus Wainwright
CREDITS
Managing Editor: Brian Wise
Senior Contributor: Martin Jones
Senior Contributors: Michael Goldberg / Stuart Coupe
Design & Layout: Sally Syle - Sally’s Studio
Online Management: Robert Wise
Website/Music News: Nick Corr
Proofreading: Gerald McNamara / Des Cowley
CONTRIBUTORS
Sue Barrett
Steve Bell
Nick Corr
Des Cowley
Brett Leigh Dicks
Chris Familton
Samuel J. Fell
Joe Fulco (Musician)
Keith Glass
Al Hensley
Tony Hillier
Jeff Jenkins
CONTACTS
Chris Lambie
Trevor J. Leeden
Anne McCue (Nashville)
Ian McFarlane (Sounds of The City)
Zena O’Connor (Muscle Shoals)
Billy Pinnell
Jo Roberts
Michael Smith
Bernard Zuel
Advertising: admin@rhythms.com.au
Festival Coverage Contact: admin@rhythms.com.au
Rates/Specs/Deadlines: bookings@rhythms.com.au
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General Enquiries: admin@rhythms.com.au
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Distribution: Wrapaway
THE WORLD TURNS magazines“Surelyoneofthebest ontheplanet!”BenHarper
By the time you read this the world will have changed for better or worse, depending on your point of view. The American election result will be known and, hopefully, the conflicts that have been raging will end soon.
Thoughts of America and Americana were consuming me in September when I made a quick visit to Nashville for the Americana Music Festival & Conference and then spent three great days in Austin, Texas, on the way home.
When someone asked what people were telling me about the political situation my reply was that we were all there for the music and hardly talked about politics at all. It is true. (I do know that we will either have some optimism for the future or be guaranteed four more years of horrible music at every Presidential event).
But while political events might have seemed unavoidable, they didn’t figure much in the many performances or Q&A’s I witnessed. Nor did it figure in many of my conversations - but maybe I was just hanging out with like-minded people. Last year Allison Russell made some powerful comments at the Awards ceremony, but that fiery attitude was missing this year probably because everyone was on the same page.
Outside my Americana bubble things were different. I barely watched any television while I was there but when I did it was certainly dominated by politics. Even the weather channel couldn’t escape the politics after one of the many nutty politicians over there accused the government of having some sort of geo-engineering machine causing hurricanes! But I was so consumed with the music that I didn’t have time to watch television. This was my first festival in a year, also my first gigs in more than 6 months and I wasn’t going to miss out.
Then T Bone Burnett put it all into perspective for me at a Q&A session with Joe Henry during the Americana Music Conference held concurrently with the music event. Burnett, who obviously has strong views on a range of subjects and is quite a cosmic thinker, explained that if we want to know what is best about America then all we need to do is to listen to the music, because it is the nation’s finest creation.
At the Americana Honors & Awards Ceremony at the Ryman Auditorium, Burnett repeated his message to an even larger audience. Given the array of talent on display that evening one could only agree that the music certainly had the ability to uplift and inspire. I think it also helps to explain why I have returned to the USA so many times over the decades.
I am not sure how much music can change things but I like to think that it might. There are certainly a lot of musicians in Nashville who are having a positive effect on the cultural and political life of that city, and you can definitely see the changes there. You only have to look at the evolution of the Americana Honors & Awards evening to see how things have changed.
That love of the music can create a bond with others whether you are from New York, Nashville, Austin, Chicago, San Francisco or somewhere in Australia. You can get that same feeling attending Woodford, Womadelaide, Bluesfest, Port Fairy, Out On The Weekend or any of our other great music festivals.
Music is also something that obviously unites the readers of this magazine and, despite the doomsayers, I think we have covered some great new music during 2024. There have been some stalwarts such as Gillian Welch and David Rawlings who have returned with wonderful albums and there have been plenty of new artists to keep us making excellent discoveries.
I hope you will share your choices in the 2024 Readers Poll. All you have to do is go to the website (rhythms.com.au) and click on the icon which will take you to the voting form. I look forward to reading your choices.
RHYTHMS UPDATE
Thank you to all those who donated to our Rhythms Writers Fund via the Australian Cultural Fund. Your donations are much appreciated and are vital in keeping the magazine going. We will have another fundraiser in 2025 so that everyone can get the benefits of a taxdeductible donation.
The best way of assisting Rhythms is to subscribe or re-subscribe. When you do you will also receive our exclusive CD of Forever Young: The Songs of Bob Dylan available only to Rhythms subscribers. (See details on Page 12).
Until next issue…. Enjoy the music.
Brian Wise Editor
(T Bone Burnett. Photo by Erika Goldring/Getty Images for Americana Music Association)
1. Her Gentleness Van Walker
From: Healing Descent (Available from Cheersquad Records & Tapes)
2. Baseball
Marcel B0rack & The TD Band (Available from Cheersquad Records & Tapes)
3. Two Car Garage
Dave Favours & The Roadside Ashes
From the split 7” Hotter Than Donut Grease (Available from Stanley Records)
4. Formula Juan
Grand Pricks
From the split 7” Hotter Than Donut Grease (Available from Stanley Records)
5. Chronica Majora
The Tall Stories
Taken from the split 7” Hotter Than Donut Grease (Available from Stanley Records)
6. Today Is Just Another Day
James Ellis
Taken from the new album ‘The Party Might Be Over’
7. Where The Money Goes
The Pleasures
The latest single from the Americana outfit.
8. Donovan Dreams
Ashley Naylor
The first single from the Paul Kelly/Church/Stems/ RocKwiz/Even guitarist’s soon-to-be-announced 2025 El Reno Music solo album. The first Naylor vocal solo track in over a decade!
elrenomusic.bandcamp.com
9. Point Impossible
Nicky Del Rey’s Misadventures
From the self-titled album by Melbourne’s Titan of Twang and his hard-driving surf instrumental combo. nickydelrey.bandcamp.com
10. Steely Knives
Early James
From the forthcoming new Dan Auerbach-produced album Medium Raw, out January 10 via Easy Eye Sound earlyjames.com/
11. How Will I Go Central Rain
From Paint Over Paint, the latest album from the ongoing solo project from Luke Thomas (Pictures, Ronson Hang-up etc) centralrain.com
Welcome to the Rhythms Sampler No.32 available only to subscribers.
12. Light of Love
John Dowler’s Vanity Project
From the new Craig Pilkington-produced album
Existential Friend, by the current band from the former Young Modern and Zimmermen frontman and group, out November 29 on Half A Cow Records halfacow.com.au/artists/johndowler/
13. Marianne
Dog Trumpet
Recently Dog Trumpet started playing Marianne at gigs and they decided to re-record it with a new approach and sound and updated lyrics. Peter O’Doherty explains, “I was inspired to write it after reading her vivid and colourful memoir ‘Faithfull’ in 1994. dogtrumpet.bandcamp.com
14. Country Mile
Jodi Martin
Recorded to tape and mixed by Mick Wordley at Mixmasters, Adelaide South Australia. Guitar and vocals: Jodi Martin. Backing vocals: Lachlan Bryan. jodimartin.com
15. Molly Rose
Asleep At The Reel
Molly Rose is the tale of a young man who decides to leave his ‹Galway Girl› to go to live in Australia. asleepatthereel.bandcamp.com
16. Lightning Strike
Keeping North
Inspired by an overnight, post-gig road trip from East Germany to Amsterdam, fuelled by too many schnapps and motivated by the need to make the stage in time for a Belgian festival, the fictional love story ‘Lightning Strike’ is the second single from Keeping North’s forthcoming debut album ‘Demons & Dreamers.’ keepingnorth.bandcamp.com
17. Hands of Time
Richard Madden
Awarding winning songwriter Richard Madden is back with a new single titled ‘Hands of Time’. Produced, performed and written by Richard Madden with the assistance of Miles Thomas on drums, Tony Wall mixing and Paul Gomersall mastering.
18. The Hell of This Town
Ryland Moraz
Ryland Moranz is a Canadian folk and country singersongwriter based in Lethbridge, Alberta, whose 2020 album XO, 1945 was a Canadian Folk Music Award nominee for Contemporary Album of the Year at the 17th Canadian Folk Music Awards in 2022
This year Rhythms is celebrating its 32nd anniversary, maintaining its reputation as one of the longest running Australian music magazines in history! The lifeblood of the magazine is comprised of loyal subscribers, some of whom have been with it from the beginning. Then there are the loyal advertisers who have helped to keep the magazine going for all these years.
You can not only help preserve this unique magazine and receive our exclusive download card. For the download card: Simply go to downloadcards.com.au and enter the code on your card (subscribers only) and you can download the tracks to your favourite device.
Thank you to all the musicians and/or record labels that have made this sampler possible.
19. Mountains
Tessa Lee
Tessa Lee is a Devonport-based jazz singer and multiinstrumentalist who has developed a rare melodic style and freedom in her songwriting. tessalee.bandcamp.com
20. Heart of Silver
We Mavericks
The title track from We Mavericks’ sophomore album, they sing “it’s a good-luck, cold, hard, precious thing”. A journey from delicate harmonies through to driving mandolin and fiddle leading the band, this song explores the idea that sometimes, our shortcomings can be qualities to cherish. wemavericks.com.au
21. Some Little Town
Jesse Lawrance
Jesse Lawrance is a singer-songwriter with a deep appreciation for country and Americana genres. His songs are gritty and poetic, combining powerful imagery with deft story-telling to create moving vignettes from the raw materials of life - think Guy Clark or Townes Van Zandt. jesselawrance.bandcamp.com
22. Neverland
Amarni Grace
Debut single from this singer songwriter born and raised in country New South Wales.
23. For Tonight
Crystal Robins
Darwin-based folk-country artist Crystal Robins is excited to unveil the latest single ‹For Tonight’, from her forthcoming debut album. crystalrobins.bandcamp.com
24. Scheming Plans
Jhana Allan
Jhana Allan is a progressive country folk singer and multi instrumentalist who explores themes of darkness and light, loss and self-acceptance. jhanaallan.bandcamp.com
25. Free Boy
Joel Spence
Melbourne’s Joel Spence has been wowing audiences for over 16 years in pubs, clubs, festivals, functions, resorts and more. As a singer/songwriter, guitarist, pianist and entertainer he has supported some of Australia’s biggest acts, including Daryl Braithwaite, James Reyne, Jon Stevens, Spiderbait and The Angels. joelspence.com.au
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Kial is a songwriter from the Southern Tablelands/ Gundungurra Country, Australia. Paired with his blues drenched guitar and whiskey-burn vocals, Kial delivers his brand of Australian country music. kialmalone.bandcamp.com
27. Cologne
Lewis McKee
Lewis McKee is a born and raised Central Queensland entertainer hailing from the beef capital of Australia, Rockhampton. McKee’s style lends from a diverse background and broad range of musical influences across Country, Blues, Rock n Roll and Pop. lewismckeemusic.com
28. Sell Papa Sell
Luke Watt
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31. God I’m Fxxked Up Over You (SP)
Luke Watt is a folk/blues singer-songwriter and guitar player. With influences including Chris Whitley, Richard Thompson and Kelly Joe Phelps, he draws on elements of folk and blues to convey stories both dark and uplifting. Luke’s new album comes out November 20th on all streaming platforms and features Danny McKenna, Stephen Hadley and Jeff Lang. lukewatt.com
29. You Lost Nothing
Seren Spain
The UK-born songstress, now residing in rural Victoria, Australia, presents her mesmerising track “You Lost Nothing” along with its captivating music video. Fans can also look forward to her highly anticipated debut EP, arriving in February 2025. serenspain.bandcamp.com
30. It’s Just A Drink
Black Dakotas
The first single off the forthcoming debut album from Brisbane band, The Black Dakotas. Recorded live at Incremental Re- cords, ‘Its Just a Drink’ is about enjoying the simple things in life.
Davey Lane (Available from Cheersquad Records & Tapes)
32. Ribbons Freya Josephine Hollick (Available from Cheersquad Records & Tapes)
33. For A While Los Chicos (Available from Cheersquad Records & Tapes)
34. Diamonds Queenie From New Moult (Available from Cheersquad Records & Tapes)
35. The Way We Talk Sarah Carroll From: NQR&B (Available from Cheersquad Records & Tapes)
36. Talk To Me (SP) Skyscraper Stan (Available from Cheersquad Records & Tapes)
A musical homage to The Bard featuring some of Australia’s favourite singers and a band that Bob would immediately hire on the spot if he heard them.
Presented by Caravan Music & Leicashow the celebration on this disc took place at Warrnambool’s Lighthouse Theatre on Sunday May 26, the weekend of Bob’s 83rd birthday!
The recording features Dylan songs by Rob Snarski, Rebecca Barnard, Ross Wilson, Adalita, Mick Thomas, Lisa Miller and Charles Jenkins. Recorded with the backing of Musical Director Shane O’Mara and the house band The Luminaries: Shane Reilly, Ben Weisner, Rick Plant, Adrian Whitehead.
In what has become a beloved tradition in Melbourne since its inception at the Caravan Club’s original location in Oakleigh back in 2011 audiences in Melbourne, Upwey, Bendigo and Warrnambool had the opportunity to revel in Dylan’s timeless tunes, performed by some of Australia’s finest artists.
Bob Dylan’s vast catalogue of songs remarkably still remain as wondrous, relevant and life affirming as ever.
Current Rhythms subscribers will receive the CD with their re-subscription.
By Anne McCue
On the Slowforce debut album, Shift, we hear a sweet contrast between Megan Palmer’s angelic voice and the fine and classic edge of Bob Lewis’s vocal texture. The title describes what we have all been through since and because of the pandemic. Many musicians kind of lost our footing and momentum and had to find a new way to live and indeed, a new way to make a living. A shift in outlook was required and many of us are happier for it.
Megan Palmer grew up jamming with her piano and banjo entertainer Grandpa. “He taught me to play by ear but also encouraged me to study music and learn to read.” She studied classical violin through college and but also jammed with the folkies and indies and learnt jazz improvisation. “I studied nursing but hung out with the conservatory kids.” She became a part of the Alt Country scene in Columbia, Ohio and toured North America with bands such as Luther Wright and The Wrongs. Being a flexible career, Megan was always able to go back to nursing between tours.
Megan is a natural healer and has given much of her heart and soul to helping others. “I always felt called to ‘end of life care’ and very honoured toward that kind of work but when my own health was being affected by how the hospital system was grinding nurses into a bloody pulp during the pandemic, I knew I needed to make a change.”
“By 2014 I had exhausted every possible type of gig,” says Bob, “but was still unsatisfied with my contribution to writing and releasing original music.” He moved from Pennsylvania to Nashville and got a bar gig at the centre of everything, The 5 Spot, where he “got to meet every music junkie in town on every level.” In 2018 he released a solo EP entitled End of an Error, enlisting contributions from local musicians such as Tommy Scifres and Brian Wright.
Megan adds, “Bob and I met at the 5 Spot. He was this friendly and cool guy working there who was always nice to me. We started playing on each other’s gigs and eventually the band Slowforce was born.”
THE YIN AND THE YANG OF SLOWFORCE
Bob talks about his own personal shift during the pandemic. “Covid came and I pivoted out of the music foothold for a career in massage therapy at about the same time we started working on Shift in 2020. That kinda brings you up to speed to where I am today. Making music but only having to say yes to the things I love, instead of scrounging for every rent penny. So, getting out of the business for me was the best thing I could have done for my well being and the health of my music career! I call that a shift for sure.”
Bob and Megan recorded the debut album sporadically. “We recorded the whole record at 3 Sirens in East Nashville with Dex Green over a period of several years. We just went over there and had fun. The studio was like a playground for musicians. He and I would take turns tapping on different keyboards, pianos, organs etc and Bob and Dex would mess around with all kinds of guitars and we found the sounds organically,” says Megan.
“For the second half of the sessions, we brought in Robert Kearns on bass (Sheryl Crow, Bottle Rockets) and Bryan Owings (Emmylou Harris, Tony Joe White) as our
rhythm section and then layered on the rest of the Slowforce vibes,” she adds. “On Good Fortune we brought in Dillon Napier (drummer with Margo Price) to write with us. Recording that one was really fun too. Aaron Lee Tasjan and Erica Blinn joined us in the studio and added a lot of good energy and fun to the track.”
“I began writing Shift (the song) during the pandemic when I was constantly getting asked to work more and more and I also thought of other service workers and how the pressure was on us to continue to work harder and harder. I shared what I had with Bob and he added his own perspective as a shift worker and the song was born. We also loved how the word and feeling ‘shift’ is both a noun and a verb and has so many meanings. We see ‘shift’ everywhere - it’s a word that pops out in bold all over the place now and it shows how our world is ever changing.”
The resulting collaboration and recording is a really cool and organic sounding album with many an ear worm and sweet harmonies. slowforce.bandcamp.com
After a break of six years, Kasey Chambers is making up for lost time. She has returned with not only her 13th album, Backbone, but also a book, Just Don’t Be a Dickhead.
By Jo Roberts
For anyone in Australia even halfway interested in country music, Kasey Chambers has likely been a constant in their musical journey. If they didn’t come across a teenage Chambers in a dusty venue in the Nullarbor, playing with her family in the Dead Ringer Band, then they might have seen her emerging as an artist in her own right, high on the crest of her 1999 debut album The Captain. Her own star had well and truly risen when I saw her play a Homebake gig in Sydney in 2002, winning hearts and minds of even non-country fans as they all sang along to her breakthrough single, ‘Not Pretty Enough’. It was seven years until I saw Chambers again. It was while visiting the studio at her home in Copacabana, on the NSW central coast, that she shared with her then-husband Shane Nicholson, their toddler Arlo and her seven-year-old son, Talon, from her previous relationship. I was there to interview Angie Hart, who was recording with Nicholson (‘Eat My Shadow’ great album, do look it up).
I looked over to the house, and through the window I could see the multi-ARIA and Golden Guitar Award-winning household name, Kasey Chambers. She was pottering about in the kitchen, with a tea towel over her shoulder. Calmly doing mum things, household things. This serene image of domestic ordinariness struck me, connected with me (I had a toddler of a similar age) – and stayed with me.
Chambers shrieks with laughter when I recount this story over a recent phone call. “You won’t believe it, but I’ve literally got a tea towel over on my shoulder now,” she laughs. “Changed much?”
Chambers sure hasn’t, but a few other things in her life have since. She now lives 10 minutes down the road from that house, she and Nicholson having separated in 2013 after almost eight years of marriage. She is now a mother of three, with Arlo, now 18, gaining a sister Poet 13 years ago while Chambers and Nicholson were still together.
She released an autobiography. She battled an eating disorder. She released more albums, won more awards – to date they include 14 ARIAs, 10 APRAs and 24 Golden Guitars. In 2018, she became the youngest woman ever inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame. It was also the year she released her 12th album, Campfire – which marked the beginning of her longest break between albums. So, after six years, Chambers is making up for lost time. She has returned with not only her 13th album, Backbone, but also a book, Just Don’t Be a Dickhead
Backbone debuted at #1 on the ARIA Australian Albums chart and at #3 on the ARIA Albums Chart (behind Coldplay and Sabrina Carpenter). Across 16 tracks, it traverses gospel, country, Cajun and
even hip hop – more on that later – as Chambers sings of her life and times and loves.
Many of the songs’ themes and backstories are also there in Just Don’t Be a Dickhead.
“From my point of view, it actually feels kind of like one project,”: says Chambers. “It feels really like they’re both really connected to each other, and one, you know, inspired the other and back the other way. So, it was a really beautiful journey. It was really different for me. I haven’t written a book before, like, that’s from scratch.”
Unlike her 2011 autobiography A Little Bird Told Me …, co-authored by music writer Jeff Apter, Just Don’t Be a Dickhead is all written by Chambers (in the notes app on her phone, no less). Across 18 chapters, with titles like “Listen to your inner foghorn”, “Find your tribe” and “Live your own dream life, not someone else’s”, it is essentially Chambers’ own self-help book.
“I had to write a book for myself so I don’t live like a dickhead,” she says.
In his foreword, country superstar Keith Urban – an early champion of Chambers – suggested “maybe there was an eleventh commandment and it simply stated: JUST DON’T BE A DICKHEAD”.
“I know, I was like, that is so good,” says Chambers.
Uniting the book and the album are QR codes throughout the book that link back to related songs on Backbone. It was a last-minute decision from Chambers to include them.
“It’s the one and only time I’ve said anything technical in my entire life,” she laughs. “I did my last read-through, and I was disappointed that people then couldn’t hear the song; about eight or nine songs are really closely related to chapters in the book. I was like, ‘I really wish that they could, you know, have the experience at the same time, to be able to hear the little soundtrack to that story’.
“So, I called the publisher and said, ‘can we put these QR codes in so that people can go to the songs?’. And they were ‘no, it’s too late, we can’t, we’ve got to go to print’. And I’m like, ‘no, we’re doing it’. “It was kind of like the final little piece of the puzzle for me, because from a creative point of view, it really does feel like one project. So now it’s connected by QR codes, it feels more complete to me.”
The book is not just an autobiography of her early years living on the road with her family, but an encapsulation of Chambers’ final acceptance of all she is; her strengths and frailties, her successes and missteps. >>>
>>> “Yeah, it really is. It was a real journey in learning a lot more about myself, I think, more than I ever thought it would be,” she says. “I was actually just sort of writing like little lessons that I’d learned in my life for me to be able to live by. I know some of them are kind of funny, but they all have sort of a deeper message underneath the humor as well. And then I was like, ‘oh, I might want to share this with people, that might be fun.
“It’s something that I couldn’t have written five years ago, 10 years ago, something like that. It would have been very different. I feel like I learned. I’ve learned a lot about myself in that time, but also learned a lot about myself in the actual writing process.”
So, what have been some of the big things she has learned about herself in the past five years?
“I think one of the main things that I have learned is to really remind myself where my self-worth sits and lies,” says Chambers, “and not to let it get carried away with other things, with other people, with, you know, my career, even just going through COVID and realising that my identity doesn’t have to be my career. Like, my career is something that I do and I love it, but it doesn’t have to be my identity. It doesn’t have to be wrapped up in that, unless I choose to let it, you know?
“And even parenting; like, often we get caught up in that sort of thing. But, you know, my eldest son has moved out now. He lives over in Perth. And the next one just got his P-plates, so he doesn’t need me as
much anymore. The 13-year-old, she hasn’t needed me for a long time. She’s more independent than both the boys put together, that’s for sure. I mean, it’s been a beautiful thing to watch them do that, but also to remind myself to let go of my identity being wrapped up in being a mother. I love doing it, and it’s a role that I choose, and I’m grateful that I have that choice, but it doesn’t have to represent everything of who I am either, because they’re not going to need me forever. You know, I don’t want to kind of watch my identity walk out the door with them, that’s for sure.”
So, to the other half of Chambers’ latest project: the album. There are some familiar names on Backbone: dad Bill Chambers; longtime bassist Jeff McCormack; and Chambers’ partner and guitarist Brandon Dodd. But there’s a couple of new names she’s especially thrilled to have – revered American drummer Brady Blade and guitarist Sam Teskey of the Teskey Brothers.
“Brady is just one of my favorite drummers in the world,” says Chambers. “That was a real bucket list thing for me, actually, to have Brady play on the album. I first met him when he toured with Buddy Miller, 1998 I think. Then I think he came out and toured with Emmylou [Harris] for her Red Dirt Girl album tour, the tour that I did. So, we got to tour together through that, and we’ve also just crossed paths a lot over the years, like in the States as well. I’ve just always wanted to make a record with him, and we finally got it to happen. >>>
>>> “And Sam Teskey played all the slide guitars and stuff on the new album. So, that was a thrill to get to work with him. I’ve known him, you know, just a little bit over the years, just with crossing paths with the Teskey Brothers and that. But this was my first time actually being in the studio, being creative with him. And I just loved it.”
However, probably the most surprising album guest is Chambers’ former partner in music and life, Shane Nicholson, as they revisit their eight-year marriage – and its demise – in ‘The Divorce Song’.
As big on love as it is on cheek and humour, ‘The Divorce Song’ evokes the spirit of John Prine and Iris DeMent’s ‘In Spite of Ourselves’ –except that Chambers and Nicholson end up “sittin’ on a rainbow” of a different kind, as they sing “couldn’t survive as the marrying kind / but we do divorce pretty good.”
“I’m really proud of how we’ve done divorce, we have two beautiful, blended families,” says Chambers. “Shane’s partner is one of my best friends, and he and Brandon also get along really well. I actually get along well with Talon’s dad [her first son] too.”
At a smidge under three minutes, ‘The Divorce Song’ is the shortest track on the album, but it packs a punch with its succinct storytelling.
“We mainly wrote it on text,” says Chambers. “It’s one of the songs I’m most proud of. Shane wrote that opening line, which is just one of my favourite lyrics ever: “We said ‘til death do us part’. But death didn’t come quick enough”.
However, as far as album surprises go, Chambers saves one of the best for last.
The final track on Backbone is an explosive version of Eminem’s marquee song ‘Lose Yourself’. The 2002 song, from the soundtrack to the Eminem film 8 Mile became a defining moment in modern music, as the first hip hop song to win an Academy Award. To call Chambers ballsy for having the guts to not only tackle the song herself, but write her own version, is an understatement. Recorded live in Newcastle in 2023, it is arguably one of Chambers’ finest vocal performances; the refrain to “lose yourself in the music” clearly not only her own life mantra, but here a veritable battle cry.
“I wanted this album to represent the past 5-6 years of my life, and that song does that as much as any song on the record,” she says. “I spent a lot of time writing my own version of that song – more than I’ve put into my own. Obviously, there’s a level of respect for Eminem that I wanted to reflect in my version too.
“That song has meant a lot to me, and it shows how you can dig deeper. There’s place I go in that song that I don’t know what it means, I just go there, and I feel powerful and vulnerable at the same time, and scared and confident at the same time. It’s just this weird place I go to. There’s something about the connection with the audience that is a huge part of that song, so I always wanted it to be a live version.” Backbone and Just Don’t Be a Dickhead are out now. The ‘Backbone’ Tour begins in Tamworth on Thursday 23 January, 2025. More details at kaseychambers.com
Over the course of his storied career, Jeff Lang has maintained a love affair with sound, culminating most recently in an album which indicates there’s plenty more life to be lived. Samuel J. Fell attempts to wrap his head around it all…
So, how does one go about putting thirty years into perspective? How does one go about summing up the three-decade recording career of one of the country’s most noted guitar players, writers, performers and artists? It is, indeed, no mean feat to distil such a wideranging and influential tenure into a mere few pages, but if one were to try, then perhaps, as Lewis Carroll wrote via the King of Hearts, one should, “Begin at the beginning… and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
For Jeff Lang, the beginning was some thirty years ago, and as it stands today, he’s still ‘going on’, releasing last month his thirty-fourth album – including live cuts and collaborations – and indeed, to lay them end to end is to get somewhat of a glimpse into the mind of the man himself, his take on music, on sound, and how it’s possible to meld and morph and create something new, in such a way as to remain at the very top of his craft.
But perhaps we’re getting ahead of ourselves, and so as already noted, let us begin at the beginning.
Early Life
“Wow, that’s old man territory,” Jeff Lang says with a smile. We’re talking on a sunny Thursday morning via the wonders of modern technology, about time; how fast it moves, of how little concern to it you are. For it has indeed been thirty years since the release of his debut album, Ravenswood, a slab of disturbed folk that ranged wild and unwieldy (yet, in its way, beautifully) about the roots music landscape, the album which marked the beginning of this storied and exceptional run.
“When that anniversary came around, it was a bit of a surprising feeling,” Lang admits. “Wow, thirty years ago! It does and it doesn’t feel like that; that’s the strange thing with time, I guess. Part of me goes, that feels like another lifetime – who I was, what I was doing, coming up with that record. But against that, I can also remember it pretty clearly, and it doesn’t feel like that long ago in a funny way.”
“It was such a small-scale, no fanfare record too,” he goes on. “I was in complete ignorance of the music business at that stage. It was really pragmatic and kinda goofy. I was basically living in my van, touring, it was 1994 and my radio didn’t work in my van, so I didn’t know about the network of community radio stations around the place, so I didn’t send it to anyone, I didn’t send it out to get reviewed. It was just purely people coming up to me, for about a year, at gigs, going, ‘Have you made a record of these songs?’ And [me thinking], you know, I have actually got enough songs to put on a record, yeah, I should do something about that.” >>>
>>> As a result, he “found enough to afford it, just to sell off the side of stage. So that was really as far as my thinking went for that, it was only maybe my third album that got released properly into shops or anything.”
He pauses, remembering a time gone, but concurrently a time that’s never left, one which, essentially, laid a foundation which he’s spent the subsequent time building off. “That feels like a sweet, innocent time for me, traveling around in the van with boxes of CDs, selling them off the stage in a real kind of cottage industry kind of way,” he reminisces. “It was nice, a nice time.”
Long Life
There followed, over the ensuing years, a slew of records. Live cuts and studio creations. Countless gigs, even more kilometres racked up in cars and vans, planes. Maybe a bus here and there. A train? Perhaps, whatever it takes to get to the gig. Whether it be here in Australia or somewhere overseas, the US or deep within Europe’s jumbled and refined confines, Jeff Lang is plying his trade, has been and will be. So how does he do it, how does he still find, within it all, that something that keeps the pilot light on, the fire still burning?
“Making a living playing music is a struggle at the best of times, but if I’ve ever had a goal in music – and this might even be a failing of mine, in a business sense; I’ve never had a goal of wanting to get to ‘this’ level or playing for ‘this much money’ or something like that – I just always had the idea in mind to stay interested,” he says. “That’s the simplest way to put it, really – just stay interested, remember why you started playing music, which for me was because I fell in love with sound, became intoxicated with it, I felt compelled to get involved with it, and that’s never left.”
Note Lang says he fell in love with sound, not music. This statement encapsulates, at least in part, the wide-ranging nature of the sonic explorations he’s embarked upon as he’s evolved as an artist. From his folky beginnings through forays into blues and eastern-flecked sounds, albums full of songs running the gamut of the root’s spectrum, always based around his guitar playing (which is never staid, always exploratory, often incendiary), imbued with a lyricism that displays a curiosity for what’s happening around him.
Djan; as a duo with the late Chris Whitley; with Bob Brozman and Angus Diggs; with Chris Finnen; by himself, with his long-time band Danny McKenna (drums) and Grant Cummerford (bass), with any and all – Jeff Lang has left little unexplored as he’s moved through it all; he has truly lived a musical life, and he quite obviously wouldn’t see it any other way.
“In all the times where I’ve maybe, you know, lost faith in my own music at times, music itself has never let me down,” he says. “So even if I’m feeling neither here nor there about what I’m doing or a little bit in a flat spot… I can always go back to the well to find something to inspire me and that eventually makes me feel like picking up the instrument.
“I find that really handy if I find I haven’t been writing anything for a period of months and I’m feeling a little flat about that… whatever’s been inspiring me, listening-wise, I think, ‘Maybe I’ll play a song by this person at the gig tonight, that’d be fun’. And so, you just do that, and it somehow seems to make all the other songs you were tired of, have new life and energy. So that’s really the thing that’s kept me going – looking for something that’s interesting and something that reinspires me, and that really carries you through all the vaguaries of this ridiculous business.”
He’s collaborated with Hat Fitz and Itchy as The Silverbacks; with his partner Alison Ferrier as High Ace; with Bobby Singh and Mamadou Diabate as Djan
Danny McKenna, Michael Vidale, Jeff Lang, Don Walker
In trying to get a sense of the impact of Lang’s career on the Australian musical landscape, from his own perspective, I ask him if he thinks about this at all. As in, in moments of quiet reflection, is he wont, or has he even, thought, ‘Wow, look at what I’ve done over this time, it ain’t no small thing’.
In response, he demurs somewhat, as you’d expect, listing musicians who he points out were established when he began his career and who he looked up to, artists like Don Walker, Paul Kelly, The Church, The Triffids, Iva Davies, Mick Thomas in the Weddings era, Matt Taylor from Chain. “These were people who were there, they were established and were bands who were doing it… and to me, they’re still there, and I’m down here in the trenches doing my thing.
“I don’t really see myself being separate from all those people,” he clarifies, “we’re all just part of the same thing, but it is hard to see yourself being in the same game as these people, on the same plane as them, because to me they’re all real artists and they’re doing their thing, The Saints, Radio Birdman, Rose Tattoo, the real thing, Cold Chisel… they’re the real thing and I’m just someone who’s a practitioner,” he laughs. “So, you know, we’re all part of a continuum, we’re just out there doing our thing. It’s kind of wonderful in a way –everyone is struggling to do their thing, and they’re finding a way to make it work… it’s not easy for anyone, but you don’t need to know about that, because music’s the thing.”
More Life
This brings us, in far too concise a fashion, to where Jeff Lang is now, which is releasing his latest album, More Life. It’s an ambitious project that, while it stems from the time-honoured notion of a duets record, possesses a twist in how it was built, by both Lang and his cohort of duet partners.
Not content to write on his own, or merely select a number of standards or covers, Lang wanted to actually write with his selected partners, each song being born of the collaboration, not just the performing of it. “I thought that would be a fun way to do it,” he enthuses. “The people that I thought of to collaborate with, they all wrote songs, so it made sense; I love the way they play, I love the way they sing, but I also love the way they write, and so it seemed like a logical thing to incorporate.
“You know, if I’m going to do a song with Liz Stringer, then let’s write a song together, why wouldn’t you? Likewise, with any of the people involved. So that was where it came from. And yeah, it would be an easier process to just have a pre-written set of songs or pull up some standards or something like that… it makes it bit more of a longer, involved, Tetris puzzle of a process, but that was what I wanted to do, so I just put in that extra time.”
In approaching his selected collaborators, Lang didn’t have many stipulations, saying, “the only thing was we can write whatever type of song we like, but don’t picture it as something that I will sing, we’re gonna write a song we’re both gonna sing. So, you know, that was really it.”
The group of writers and players Lang pulled into More Life is impressive, as one would expect. Don Walker features twice (‘She Uses Silence Like A Hammer’ and ‘Adults Are Full Of Shit’); John Butler appears on opener, ‘Seek High’; Liz Stringer stretches out on ‘The Other Side Of Life’; Kerri Simpson (along with Ray Pereira and Bassekou Kouyate) brings her skill to the title track; Susannah Espie duets on the beautiful ‘The Long Grass’; William Crighton appears twice, Fred Leone, Hat Fitz and Cara, Vari Jauon, Asin Khan Langa and Debashish Bhattacharya (“That was a thrill, getting Debashish to play slide guitar alongside me; I made sure he solo’d after me so I didn’t have to follow him… he is something else, man.”) – it is a stacked line-up, and the music reflects this, in how it’s performed, arranged, written.
Kerri Simpson
Says Kerri Simpson, “We all know Jeff as the incredible guitar player that he is, but what really impresses me about him is his astonishingly creative vision, technical ability and skills as a composer, arranger and producer. That’s one of the things that has really hit home for me over the past few years whilst working with Jeff.”
“I just waited to see what we got,” Lang then says on how More Life began to build. “It was like, the album will be finished when I feel like it’s finished. So, when it got to a certain point, yeah, that feels like it’s enough… it wasn’t like I had songs half written waiting to send to some other people.
“There was one more song I felt was needed though, so I got in touch with William Crighton, and I had a musical idea… the first song we’d done together was the song ‘Hands’, and that was mostly lyrics I’d written and then William came up with the bridge and we both nutted out how we’d sing it and how it’d go in the final iteration together. But with ‘Goodbye Amsterdam’, I could tell that the album needed one more song and so I got in touch with William and said, do you want to see if you can come up with some words for this? >>>
Ben Franz, Jeff Lang, Liz Stringer, Danny McKenna
>>> “[I had] the music and the melody already, and so he came out with most of the words to that song. And that was the point where I thought, this feels like it’s on the home stretch – if I just get this one more song, this type of mellow number would be the one, and that’s what the album needs, and from there it was just getting the right track sequence to make it make sense.”
I venture then, that it seems like More Life was built a lot by feel as opposed to concrete planning. “Yeah,” he concurs. “It’s a little too paint-by-numbers to plan it too much, even when it’s a solo album of mine, for me anyway. I choose the players I like to play with, I don’t tell them what to play, I just love being surprised by the great things they come out with… you have a general idea of where you might lob it, and then see where it lands. So, with this, it seemed like it’d be disappointing in a way, or reductive, to say here’s how we’re gonna do this song, and it’ll fit into the album in this way, so let’s just bring that about. I’d rather see where it lands.”
Suzannah Espie, who’s collaborated with Lang many times over their respective careers, says of the man, “Jeff is not only an incredible musician, but he also has this immense generosity as a peer. He and I have been collaborating for around twenty years I reckon, and he never fails to lift me up.” This statement goes a long way to showing how Lang was able to get the best out of his collaborators on More Life – the pure respect they have of him as a human being, and as a musician.
As we wind up, I mention to Lang that Rhythms editor Brian Wise, in discussing this story with me prior to our interview, had said, in his opinion, this was Lang’s best album – I ask Lang if he thinks this too. He laughs and says, “I’m not the person to ask, I guess, I don’t really sit and listen to ‘em,” which is fair enough. But More Life is indeed a stellar record, a true showcasing of where Jeff Lang is, three decades on from his rag-tag debut, sold from sides of small stages during a more innocent time.
As Lewis Carroll inferred, this then is where we stop. It’s not where Jeff Lang stops though, and this is the beautiful thing. Through More Life – its delicate acoustic numbers, its fusions of east and west, its electricity, its ability to draw you in allowing you to find more within each song the more you listen to them (both sonically and lyrically), its bluntness and its whimsy, and most of all its pure quality – we realise that Lang is still very much on his journey, still very much enamoured with sound, still very much dedicated to unearthing more and more. It’s been one hell of a journey, and it’s not done yet.
‘The Long Grass’
Jeff Lang w/ Suzannah Espie
Give us a history of your collaborations with Jeff. Where to start? Jeff has engineered two of my albums, as well as albums for The Junes and The Cartridge Family. He has engineered albums I have produced for other people, and he’s guested on some of those albums also (he’s pretty handy on the guitar, you may have heard). I’ve lost count of the times I’ve sung backing vocals on Jeff’s recordings.
Tell us about the writing of ‘The Long Grass’ – how did it begin; how did it unfold? It’s just the two of you with acoustic guitars, very simple and beautiful.
It was a remarkably simple process, which is lovely because it’s not always so easy! Jeff and I made a date to get together, he came to my place, and I had a song idea, Jeff happened to have a little thing he was working on, [and] they fit together perfectly.
Tell us about the song itself – what’s the story behind it?
It’s a song about dying love and about someone not having the strength to walk away, even though they know it’s the right thing to do. We actually performed it at Jeff’s triumphant Melbourne album launch last night and it was such a joy to perform. I know this expression gets bandied around a lot, but it really does sing itself!
‘More Life’
Jeff Lang w/Kerri Simpson (and also features Bassekou Kouyate and Ray Pereira)
So Jeff had the idea that he wanted to do a duets record with More Life, but he wanted to actually write the songs with his chosen duet partners… what was your reaction when he put this to you?
Well I was flabbergasted to say the least, but once I got over that, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude, [and] I thought long and hard about what style of song and lyric I might offer up.
‘More Life’, the song itself, is quite an intricate piece of work –tell us about the writing; how did it begin, how did it unfold?
I had just done a short tour and recording with Stranger Cole, with The Ska Vendors, [which] had a profound impact on me. Stranger has a phrase he uses all the time, “more life”, and it was the last thing he had said to me; so, I had written lyrics about that experience.
I sent them to Jeff, [and] he came up with the riff. When we recorded it, Jeff came up with an almost Celtic kind of vocal line which I sang a harmony to, but he liked it so much he later changed his part, so it was more in unison. The intricacies of the song lay with Jeff and Ray Pereira’s parts, embellished by Bassekou Kouyate’s parts. Astounding musicianship.
But the thing I love most about the song is that being about Stranger Cole, a Jamaican Ska legend, Jeff unconsciously turned the two elements of Ska, essentially African and Anglo styles, into something totally different, and paid tribute to Stranger in his own unique way. Stranger loves the song by the way.
It’s a great song – the kind of ‘ethereal’ vocal in the background, the repetition in the percussion, the interplaying strings…
Jeff asked me to make some “Spooky Simmo noises” while we were getting microphone levels, so I did. I had no idea how he was going to use them. He used them in a way which sprinkles a kind of otherworldly element into the song. Which is fitting, even though we had not discussed it, as lyrically I had gone for a simplistic, yet spiritual vibe based around my experience with Stranger. I am so happy with how the song evolved.
Fred Leone, Jeff Lang.
More Life is available now via ABC Music.
The Black Sorrows are not in the ARIA Hall of Fame. And despite making more than 50 albums, Joe Camilleri has never had a number one. His highestcharting record was The Black Sorrows’ 1990 album Harley and Rose, which peaked at number three.
Joe Camilleri celebrates 40 years of The Black Sorrows with a sparkling new album.
By Jeff Jenkins
Joe Camilleri calls it “The Struggle”, the eternal quest to find something new or a new angle on the same thing. “I don’t want to be comfortable,” he explained in the book that accompanied The Black Sorrows’ 2012 triple album Crooked Little Thoughts
Camilleri revisits one of the songs from that album, ‘Shelley’, on the new Black Sorrows album, The Way We Do Business, slowing it down and making the tale sound deeper and darker.
It’s one of the many highlights on an album that opens with the seductive ‘That’s What I’d Give’ (which Camilleri calls “a babymaker”) and closes with a delightful slice of piano blues called ‘Who’s Laughin’ Now’.
The Way We Do Business comes 40 years after The Black Sorrows’ first album, Sonola, which cost $1300 to make. Camilleri’s aims were modest. “I just wanted to have some sort of documentation that we existed.”
Then Elvis Costello entered the picture. The English star bought a copy of Sonola at Gaslight Records in Melbourne. Instead of promoting his own tour, Costello was talking up the Sorrows in interviews, and he started doing the Sorrows version of ‘Young Boy Blues’ live (a song written by Phil Spector and Doc Pomus and made famous by Ben E. King).
The Black Sorrows had suddenly become a more serious outfit.
Camilleri, 76, is not interested in nostalgia – “I just want the future,” he told me when the Sorrows released their 21st album, Citizen John – but it’s worth noting a couple of other significant milestones.
Camilleri joined his first band 60 years ago. It was the first of many “happy accidents”. His friends, wanting a laugh, threw him up on stage when they were watching a band called The Drollies. Suddenly, Camilleri was the band’s new lead singer.
His first gig fronting The Drollies was at Rosebud with Bobby and Laurie. His second show was at Caulfield Town Hall with The Easybeats, Normie Rowe and The King Bees (featuring Skyhooks founding member Peter Starkie and Dave Flett, who later joined The
Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band). They asked him to join their band, but they soon split when Starkie and Flett decided to go to university. Fast forward a decade, and Camilleri was a founding member of the much-loved Melbourne band The Pelaco Brothers (with Stephen Cummings, Peter Lillie and Johnny Topper).
It’s been a remarkable musical journey. Wilbur Wilde, Camilleri’s old compadre from the Falcons – who contributes the sterling sax solo to ‘Maybe The Sun Won’t Shine’ on the new album – has a lovely take on Camilleri’s longevity. “When people come up and say to Joe, ‘Oh man, I saw you 20 years ago, you’re just as good’, Joe won’t say anything, but I’ll step in and say, ‘Hey mate, he’s 20 years fucking better!’”
Joe Camilleri is the ultimate music man. Some make music with one eye on the charts, replicating what’s hot right now. Others wait for direction from record company bosses or managers. Not Camilleri. He makes music because it’s inside him. The result is a body of work that no other Australian artist can match for its consistent brilliance.
In a business filled with marketing people, Joe Camilleri is an artist.
In ‘One Door Slams’, the first single from the new album, backing vocalist Atlanta Coogan sings: “One door slams and then another opens.” And that’s the story of Camilleri’s career. He’s a survivor and a believer.
I collaborated with Camilleri on the Crooked Little Thoughts book, and I dug it out when I wanted to listen to the original version of ‘Shelley’. Camilleri signed the introduction “Son of the Sugarman”, and his words still resonate.
“So, what have I learned during my life in music?” he asked.
“You can never be afraid of change.
“I don’t believe that things necessarily fall your way, but sometimes things just happen. You never corner the market. Never take anything for granted.
“And, most of all, I’ve learned that I love it. Some people like playing golf, I like playing music with my buddies. I signed up for rock ’n’ roll – that’s all I can do. You either become a teacher or you carry on.
“I never want to be seen as a ‘heritage act’. I’m always looking for what’s around the corner.”
Yep, Joe Camilleri is already working on his next record. Taking care of business.
The Struggle continues.
The Way We Do Business is out now on ABC Music.
Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram.
Photo by Laura Carbone.
Christone ‘Kingfish’
Ingram might have achieved a lot thus far, but he’s not done yet, writes Samuel J. Fell.
For Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, a lot has happened in a very short time. From obscurity back in the 2010s, as he paid his dues as a teenager and honed his chops playing around, firstly, his hometown of Clarksdale, Mississippi, before touring further afield, to today where’s he’s known in blues circles the world over, three acclaimed albums under his belt and a reputation as one of the best, if not the best, young bluesmen on the planet.
It’s been a remarkable rise for Ingram, now 25, and to those who’ve seen him play, heard him sing, spun his records, it’s not particularly surprising – the man has a knack for it. And not just a knack for incendiary guitar playing, for deep and soulful singing, nor even for the depth of his writing. But a knack for understanding the blues, the real and raw roots of the music, an understanding of how it works, how it’s worked, how it can work moving forward.
Ingram’s debut, 2019’s Kingfish, was a revelation. An introduction to the wider blues audience, it showcased the young man’s guitar prowess and his effortless vocal delivery, an album Blues Blast Magazine described as, “… a great CD, ‘Kingfish’ Ingram really has grown up to become a superb bluesman.” The album won three Blues Music Awards (Best Emerging Artist Album; Best Contemporary Blues Album; and Album of the Year), and was nominated for a 2020 Grammy in the Best Traditional Blues Album category – no mean feat for a debut (and equally impressive given it was nominated as both a contemporary and traditional album, perhaps highlighting his understanding in melding the old and the new). You could then forgive the man for struggling with a follow-up, but his 2021 record, 662 (so named for the Mississippi area code from where he originated) jumped an even higher bar winning not only a Blues Music Award for best Contemporary Blues Album, but also the Grammy for the same category – who wins a Grammy with only their second record, having been nominated for their first? Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram, that’s who.
Meanwhile, the man had upped the touring stakes, as one would have expected, taking his music all over the world, including here to Australia, where he’s played the Byron Bay Bluesfest twice, a festival he’ll revisit in 2025 once more, and indeed, likely for the final time as the festival is forced to call it quits after three and a half decades. In there as well, late last year, Ingram realised a long-held dream in releasing a live record, Live In London, yet another string to his ever-expanding bow, a live cut on which Guitar World magazine espoused, “there are plenty of great blues-oriented artists around, but Christone – with his Chicago meets ‘70s funk meets gospel leanings – demonstrates he’s got the goods to be a modern day legend.”
“Well, playing live has always been a different thing to playing in the studio,” Ingram tells me when we catch up. “And a lot of my fans [have mentioned that to me too], so we just wanted to capture that, [particularly] for the people who haven’t seen the live show yet.”
Recorded in north London at The Garage in mid-2023, the album really does showcase the extent of Ingram’s musical abilities. He talks of the energy the crowd were giving off, noting, “Yeah, you really need that crowd energy to feed off of, and that’s the natural part of a live record, you’ve gotta have that.” One really need look no further than the blues in terms of examples of live records, the genre surely producing more than its fair share of live cuts over the decades; Ingram’s adds to that canon with aplomb.
And it’s no wonder, given how much effort he’s poured into touring since he kicked off, playing local Clarksdale clubs as a young artist, ending up almost as far from home as it’s possible to be, gracing stages in Australia. “Yeah man, this’ll be our third time over there,” he smiles, referencing next year’s Bluesfest slots, as well as theatre shows in Sydney and Melbourne.
“Even before we came over to Australia [the first time], we were getting so many requests for us to come over there and play,” he says. “So I know we have a deep appreciation over there, for sure. You guys get it,” he laughs. “And I won’t say that [Bluesfest winding up] was the main reason for us coming back this time, we love Australia [as a whole], but it definitely had something to do with it, and we appreciate the opportunity to take it for one last ride at what could potentially be the last Bluesfest.”
As we speak, on a Friday morning in late September, Ingram is in Los Angeles, where he’s based these days. Prior to heading to Australia over Easter next year, he’s locked in for the 2024 Experience Hendrix Tour through October, with a couple of Blues Cruise spots tacked onto the end of that, along with a few other shows in the lead-up to Christmas. While no doubt even more shows will get wedged in there prior to his heading across the Pacific, there are other movements afoot – Ingram, far from resting on the laurels afforded him by his recorded output thus far, is well into work on his third studio record.
To be quite honest, this is astonishing; he’s achieved so much in so little time, surely it’s time to rest and recuperate? No so for Ingram – the pull of the music is strong, and so he’s forging ahead, album number three imminent. I venture, given his relatively young age coupled with the astounding success he’s achieved thus far, that focusing on a new record so soon would be almost inconceivable – how does one so young and successful push all that expectation and hype out of one’s head, in order to focus on the task at hand?
“Man, you know, I just try to ignore the press altogether,” he laughs. “I’m very thankful and I’m very grateful, but to keep a level head, I don’t wanna believe my hype. So I just try to keep my focus on the music, man.” He laughs again, tacitly acknowledging how hard that can be. I ask him, given the amount of expectation that’s on him, if most of said expectation comes from Ingram himself.
“Man, I never really expect anything,” he muses. “I kinda just go with the flow and rock away, you know?” To Ingram, pithy as his responses are, this is just how it works for him – sure, there’s expectation and he’d no doubt want to live up to it himself, but at the same time, there’s this music, and it’s his life, and so that’s where he puts his focus. “Yeah, once you lose focus that’s where you wreck your brain and that’s when the bad stuff happens.”
Having been working on the album for almost two years, it’s now starting to take shape. The two previously unreleased tracks which appeared on Live In London – ‘Midnight Heat’ and ‘Mississippi Night’ – won’t appear on this new one, but there are others that are being revisited and dusted off for potential inclusion. “There are songs that didn’t make the 662 record, so they might be used, we got a lotta stuff in the vault,” he reveals. “So I’ve been out here in LA working with different producers, working on a different brand of sound, and I’ve written some great material.
“For one, I’m doing more music that showcases my voice,” he expands on this different ‘brand of sound’, “rather than my guitar playing. So we’re gonna step more on the R&B side, and there’ll still be a balance with the guitar and rock, but it’ll be a little bit smoother for sure… I feel like it’s easy to be, you know, modern, all while not disrespecting the genre.”
It’s fair to say that Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram is the future of the genre. And there are others, of course, but Ingram is truly forging a new path in a style of music as old as the hills. “It’s life, because that’s what the blues is – everything we have going on in the world, wars and all the divided politics, all that plays to what the blues is, everyday life… it’s all around us.”
Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram plays the Byron Bay Bluesfest, April 17-20, 2025, along with sideshows.
FRANCIS COMES ALIVE
Neal Francis and his band blend funk, soul, and rock echoing the golden era of the late 1960s and 1970s in their own fashion. The Chicago-based singer, songwriter, and pianist who cites influences such as Allen Toussaint, Sly & the Family Stone, and The Meters is going to rock Bluesfest.
The fact that the title of the latest album from Neal Francis echoes that of the famous Peter Frampton live set from the ‘70s is hardly boastful. Francis, who plays keyboards, has a band whose forté really is the live setting and they hit a massive groove that is irresistible. While you might not have heard him, take it from someone who saw him twice late last year, Francis is going to be one of the highlights of Bluesfest in 2025. Late last year I saw Francis in concert twice. First, he was one of the headliners at the small Trans Pecos Festival in Marfa, Texas, and he rocked the first night of the event in what was a revelation to me. It is rare to come across such a funky band that channels so many of your favourite groups and artists and synthesises their influences into something new and exciting. The rest of the audience had the same enthusiastic response. A week later I saw Francis and his eleven-piece band again, this time at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, to a much larger but equally receptive audience on a balmy Sunday afternoon. Here was someone to keep an eye on.
Fast forward a couple of months to November 2023 and the release of Francis Comes Alive, recorded direct to 1” tape, and the very cover of which resembles Frampton Comes Alive! It’s a big statement but many critics declared it to be the best live album of the year. The amazing thing to me was the fact the song that kept rolling around in my head for weeks after I saw Francis, ‘The Back It Up’ a freight train of funk grooves was so recent that it wasn’t on the album! (Francis promises that it will be out on a new studio album which will be out before the Australian tour). Here was a musician who was evolving at a rapid pace – and he had only been making albums for four years!
A measure of the reputation that Francis has been able to quickly establish as a band leader is evident when I catch up with him by Zoom to talk about his forthcoming visit to Australia. He has just been in New Orleans to play in a tribute concert to local legend and genius Allen Toussaint. The concert also featured Irma Thomas, Cyril Neville, Deacon John, John Boutté, The Meters’ Leo Nocentelli, Cyril Neville, along with Reginald Toussaint & The Allen Toussaint Band.
“Man, it was a real honour!” says Francis when I ask about the concert, adding that he performed ’Sweet Touch Of Love’ from the 1970 album Toussaint and ‘Victims of Darkness’ from Toussaint’s 1972 album Life, Love & Faith. Both deep cuts showing Francis’s devotion to the music of a musician he says ‘was a real master’.
“I was right in between Cyril and Leo, and so I was like, this is kind of rough,” laughs Francis, “but it was an honour and I got to meet his daughter Allison as well.”
By his own admission the Neal Francis story is one of redemption. Born in New Jersey but raised in Oak Park, Illinois, Francis began his piano journey at just four years old and by his teens, he was touring with blues artists and became a key member of the funk band The Heard.
“My dad was a prolific record collector,” recalls Francis. “My mother studied music through college, but not in a formal sense after high school, so she knew how to play some piano, and so she had a musical sensibility. My dad was a choir vocalist. All those sensibilities contributed to my taste. So, my dad’s record collection was really important, but just because it was the way I was introduced to most music. He listened to everything from classical country to jazz and anything recorded between the ‘50s, and contemporary. It was a really great exposure just growing up in my house and they encouraged me to play. So, from a very young age, I was playing.”
“I was just trying to figure out stuff on the television - stuff that I would hear on cassettes and records,” says Francis of his earliest musical memories. “Then a friend of my mom and dad came over and played some blues piano and I just remember being really captivated by that. I can’t tell you what he played, but just hearing the way he was able to fill so much sonic space with the piano and it was a driving sort of rock and roll type of thing. I do remember hearing ‘Give Me Shelter ‘for the first time when I was nine and just being like, What the hell is this? I remember hearing ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ for the first time in my parents’ car and I was like, What is this? And just being exposed to my dad showing me The Last Waltz when I was probably seven or eight years old and seeing how cool that seemed to me to be in that position.”
“I was always in bands in high school,” he adds. “I had a couple bands of my own made up of students. I was in the jazz ensemble at school and we played Duke Ellington and Count Basie charts. Then, the years where I was supposed to be going to college, I did a lot of random gigs, a lot of blues gigs in Chicago. I just started jam bands with guys I knew.”
“I crossed paths with guys like Eddie Clearwater, I guess he’s probably the most known person,” says Francis of his early days playing professionally. “Pinetop Perkins. I knew him. That was actually the first time I was in a bar to see music and was when I was 12. My dad took me to see Pinetop and I later played with Willie Smith who played
By Brian Wise
drums with Pinetop in Muddy Waters’ band in the ‘70s. Some guys who played with Muddy Waters in the ‘80s, Marty Bender was a drummer who played with Albert King and Buddy Guy for a while, and everybody knew each other. I played with this guy Mud, who’s the oldest son of Muddy Waters.”
By 2015, Francis had joined local instrumental seven-piece funk band The Heard, a situation that allowed him to develop his playing and his composing.
“I started singing a song or two, but I composed a lot of the music,” explains Francis, “and we started touring nationally while I was in the band. Then I got let go from that band because I just was totally immature. Even as a 25-year-old I couldn’t hold my life together. So, that was actually a blessing in disguise. After I got sober in 2015, I just started thinking about what I wanted to do. I just worked kind of jobs I wasn’t excited to spend the rest of my life doing and I started to get serious about composing, and I went out to LA to record what became Changes.”
That debut album was released in 2019 and the next album, In Plain Sight, featured Derek Trucks as a guest. This was followed by the 2022 EP Sentimental Garbage and a year later the live album emerged.
“We just knew we needed to record a live record,” says Francis. “We felt really good about the live show, and we had these two shows coming up at Thalia Hall [in Chicago] and it just seemed like the perfect time to do it. I initially wanted to just do the four piece and then had a kind of profound white light experience that sort of directed me towards the big band.”
One of the songs that Francis does a really great version of in concert and on record is ‘Strawberry Letter 23’ by Shuggie Otis, the guitarist who recorded on the Super Session album with Al Kooper and Mike Bloomfield when he was just 15 years old and released his debut solo album just a couple of years later. (Legend has it that Otis was once considered as a replacement for Mick Taylor in the Stones).
“He’s the son of Johnny Otis, who’s a great blues man,” says Francis, “he was like that next generation, the psychedelic rockers, and I love his version and the Brothers Johnson version, a little more funky, late ‘70s funk.”
Unfortunately, Otis’s life kind of didn’t go the way many might’ve thought it would’ve.
“I can relate,” says Francis. “For all those same reasons probably.”
Francis Comes Alive is available on Bandcamp and streaming services. Neal Francis will be appearing at Bluesfest 2025.
THE CAT’S NEW LIFE
A reborn Cat Empire will be playing Bluesfest behind their latest studio album which features a fresh injection of international flavours.
By Chris Lambie
With fingers crossed nation-wide that Bluesfest 2025 (#36) may not be the last, one ‘reborn’ act is set to return to the iconic event. The original line-up of The Cat Empire bid an energetic farewell to fans at Bluesfest 2022. But as founding member Felix Riebl says, “Never say never.” Like any evolving family, the group has welcomed new members to the fold. From its three-member origin (Riebl, Ollie McGill, Ryan Monro), the outfit expanded to fill stages with a wondrous wall of instrumentation. The new line-up wowed Bluesfest punters in 2023.
The departure of longtime members (Harry James Angus, Will Hull-Brown, ‘Jumps’ Khadiwhala and Monro) signalled the end of an era. But the songs, stagecraft and spirit of the group live on. New music, musicians and projects are thrilling fans again. As ever, live performances reach the exhilarating high of New Year’s fireworks. The group’s latest studio album, their 10th, features a fresh injection of international flavours.
Riebl has described Bird In Paradise as ‘Australian-Flamenco, Afro-Cuban…with the grit of Aussie rock history and [keyboardist] Ollie’s jazz influence’. Single ‘Blood On The Stage’ describes what they strive for at every show – nothing left in the tank but a shared after-party glow. “It’s like a band war cry,” says Riebl. “[Wherever] we’re playing or to how many people, to dig deep and play it like you mean it. People can feel authenticity, when something moves them. And to make it special for yourself as much as them.”
The band followed recent tours of the UK, US and Europe with a special run of shows in Australian capital cities. The Cat Empire performed alongside each city’s symphony orchestra, in venues including the Sydney Opera House. “Each orchestra has a totally different personality,” says frontman/percussionist Riebl. “So, you get that wonderful period of rehearsal to get to know one another and trust in the songs and arrangements.” From trademark hits (‘Hello’, ‘Days Like These’, ‘Brighter Than Gold’) to new dancefloor bangers like ‘La Gracia’, the sound was big, bold and brilliant. Flamenco artists Richard Tedesco, Johnny Tedesco and Chantelle Cano added to the global carnival vibe. “We’re at a point where we can be more musically curious than ever…to keep growing musically and to perform with such incredible musicians. It’s a good time for us.”
Now joining Riebl, McGill, arranger Roscoe ‘Ross’ Irwin (trumpet) and Kieran Conrau (trombone) are Grace Barbé (bass/
vocals), drummer Daniel Farrugia (The Bamboos, Mia Dyson), Cuban trumpeter/ singer Lazaro Numa and percussionist Neda Rahmani. “When you look at The Cat Empire family, there are so many different musical backgrounds and interests within those careers. Lazaro bringing that wonderful Cuban spirit, Grace’s sophisticated Seychellois Kreol, and strong Brazilian and Mauritian influences from Neda…”
The ‘Blood On The Stage’ video starts on the tour bus in London. Gigs rarely end at the curtain call. “We play long shows and leave the stage dripping wet. Then the second show begins,” says Riebl. “It inevitably ends up with me, Grace and Laz and Ollie, if he can get his hands on something portable, singing for the next two hours. It spills out onto the street, outside the bus, backstage…. We’ve learnt Grace and Laz’s traditional songs. A lot has informed the spirit of what we do on stage and writing new material.”
Categories fly out the window with The Cat Empire. Ska and jazz/rock sit tastily amongst Afro-Cuban or orchestral notes. “We’ve been nominated for just about every award category,” Riebl laughs. “We’re blessed. I feel like we’re one of the few bands that can go to so many musical places. It leaves us open to a whole world of music and different projects. And [within that], take pride in our Australian-ness.”
Of TCE Mark II, “Some people are lucky enough to fall in love twice and that’s what’s happened with [us]. I still feel the spirit of it is there. There’s something that’s bigger than one person in a band. The culture and the soul remain true. And to bring those who aren’t around back into the room for a brief moment.”
Riebl has fond memories of his first teenage pilgrimage to Bluesfest, “Looking up at the stage with this combination of utter joy and envy.” Bluesfest holds a very special place in our hearts. It’s a festival for music lovers and it’s been a source of pride to play there. It’s not just about the headliners but stumbling into a tent and discovering someone new.” And there is no typical Cat Empire audience. “There might be a footy player, someone in a heavy metal t-shirt, someone you’d expect to see at a classical concert and an 11-yearold dancing around. There’s a sense of a communal uplift.” Expect blood, sweat and tears of joy left on the Bluesfest stage next year.
The Cat Empire will be appearing at Bluesfest 2025.
Visiting Australia for the first time since 2019, Rufus Wainwright will perform stripped-back shows that see him headlining for the first time here as a solo artist.
By Brian Wise
“Guitar and piano and me,” says Rufus Wainwright when I ask him about the instrumentation for his forthcoming solo tour of Australia.
Of course, with his extraordinary voice, there is little need for embellishment and so it will be with what Wainwright says is his first purely solo shows here which will come after a buzz of activity and the excellent album Folkocracy on which he pays homage to some of his favourite songs and collaborations with John Legend, Anohi, David Byrne, Chaka Khan, Andrew Bird, Brandi Carlile and Sheryl Crow.
Before he arrives here Wainwright also has some fairly high-profile concerts, including one at Carnegie Hall at the end of November.
“I have done so many other things,” he says when I ask about the possible repertoire for the tour. “I wrote a musical that was in London called Opening Night, so I like to sing a couple of songs from that. I also have this requiem mass that I composed called Dream Requiem, and I do a little touch of that. There are some new songs that I’ve written. Then I like to also kind of play it off the cuff as well in terms of what’s going on in the world, that particular day and so forth. So, it’s a real hodgepodge of material.”
With eleven studio albums released to date - and other collaborators who have included Elton John, Sting and Carly Rae Jepsen – he has also released three live albums, written two operas and had numerous songs included in movies and television. (In fact, Leonard Cohen’s family had to recently request that a certain presidential candidate desist from using his version of ‘Hallelujah’ at his rallies). He has also been performing his albums Want One and Want Two in concert, including a show at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Then there are the thematic concerts based on Songs of Youth and Addiction, Songs of Love and Desire and Songs of Contempt and Resistance performed over three consecutive nights recently in Los Angeles.
“Let’s be honest, it’s very practical for me to come over on my own and to be able to jet around and do my thing. But that being said, it’s now quite unusual. I think for my parents’, when they were playing and stuff, it was common for artists to just go and do their own shows and just make it into sort of a soiree of exploration and intimacy. But that isn’t the case anymore. There are very few artists who do that. I think my sister and myself are some of the only ones, at least in the mainstream. I think we’re kind of upholding - I wouldn’t say a lost artbut is something that is less the norm than it used to be, which is just as a singer songwriter you’ve got to be able to go out there on your own and just do your thing. You against the world.”
“I’ve always been able to do it, and I’ve always felt, I don’t know, so blessed to be able to do it,” says Wainwright when I suggest that a lot of musicians can be daunted by going on stage solo. “I have done it in amazing places. I mean, the last gig that I did like this in Australia I was
opening for Paul Simon, so we were playing stadiums, and I love that thing: that kind of David and Goliath vibe of having to go out there alone and really tame the tempest or tame whatever, those ladies, the sirens or whatever. But I’m very happy that I’m able to do that and I get a kick out of it as well.”
“You definitely have to read the room,” continues Wainwright when I ask him whether his shows depend on the response of the audience. “You have to be far more agile than usual and also you can afford to be, because you don’t have to tell the band to do anything. You can just kind of skip and jump along as you choose. So yeah, you have to know how to read the room for sure. Definitely, one of the other traits that I have, which my father does, and my mother did to a certain extent and which Martha and my sister Lucy also do, is we really converse with the audience. The songs might be songs they’ve heard before and there might be somewhat of a set and so forth but the banter in between is pretty much always fresh and from that day and directed at that unique audience, which is also unusual.”
Where did he learn that craft? Was it from his parents?
“Oh, very much from my parents,” he agrees. “I would have to say very much from my mother Kate, and her sister Anna [McGarrigle]. It was part of their show. It was less of a talent they had. I think they did it more by default, and that actually made it very charming because it wasn’t at all premeditated. But that being said, Loudon really made it into a serious art form. His banter and the way he would communicate with hecklers or people who we didn’t feel were engaged enough has grown quite legendary. So, so we had a good, well-rounded education.
“As a singer songwriter you’ve got to be able to go out there on your own and just do your thing. You against the world.”
“Well, look, it was my first time at the rodeo, as they say,” Wainwright adds about Opening Night, the musical that he has written in collaboration with Ivo Van Hove, based on the John Cassavetes movie. “The piece itself is very interesting. The music, I’m very happy with it. It wasn’t necessarily to the taste of the West End of London. It was a little too out there for them. To be fair, I think we could have used more rehearsals. Let’s just say it was an artistic success and a kind of financial failure, which is often the case. So, I learned a lot and I will probably sing a couple of songs from Opening Night on the road. But as I’ve often learned in life, it is really through the failures that you learn the most and you become more solid and more fundamental in your approach.
“It definitely has a kind of cult following because by the end when everybody got their shit together, people were loving the show and thought it was great. It just needed a little more time, which it wasn’t given. Thankfully, we recorded the last three performances, and it will be released as an album. So, it’ll be out there, and I think it will live again at some point.”
So, what is it like for an artist who is used to a lot of acclaim when something you do doesn’t get that same response? How did he feel about that?
“How does it make you feel? Believe it or not, that’s not the first time I’ve been squashed,” he admits. “For instance, this piece that I wrote, the Dream Requiem has incredible praise from lots of great places. But
if you just go back in time a little bit, I’ve written a couple of operas, I’ve done some other classical things. I was attacked ceremoniously regularly for years as this kind of pop kid who’s gone outside of his lane in the classical world. So, I really went up against the classical world and experienced a lot of slings and arrows. And now with the Requiem, it’s all I’m, I’m being redeemed. I think with the musical thing, it’s just a thing of, at the outset, you’re going to get a lot of grief, and it takes a while to master any form. So, you just have to consider it as part of your education in a lot of ways.”
Wainwright is involved in so many things, that he can probably move on fairly quickly.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he agrees, “and in the end of the day, I’m just a dumb singer!”
Finally, I mention that I have enjoyed a couple of chats with Martha recently, and particularly about her autobiography. While there has been a biography of Rufus, which he says needs updating, has he thought about writing his own story?
“My dad wrote a book,” he replies, “My mother didn’t write a book, but her sister did. I should write a book at some point. I’ve been mulling that idea over debating it. But we’ll see. It has actually been on my mind a little bit, so I’m thinking about it, shall we say.”
Rufus Wainwright is touring Australia in January.
Nick Corr caught-up with North Carolina singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist
MJ Lenderman at his home in Asheville to chat about his just released Anti-Records studio debut Manning Fireworks.
MJ Lenderman’s new record bridges alt-country with 90s slacker rock. ‘Slacker’ is a label that he gets branded with fairly regularly. “My whole life I’ve been accused of not caring about anything, but I think it’s just because I talk kind of slow, but those reference points also resonate with me. You know, I love Pavement too”.
There was a lot of buzz around his previous solo album Boat Songs This led to Lenderman signing with -Anti Records. I wondered if he felt any pressure with people anticipating his next album.
“Yeah, there was definitely a bit of a journey. I guess it was just something new to get used to. It wasn’t anything I’d experienced before: having any sort of expectation or having the amount of visibility that I do now. It was difficult at times to deal with. So much happened over the year, and just over time it got easier. And I got off social media and that helped me out”.
This is Lenderman’s fourth solo release. I started our conversation by highlighting that Manning Fireworks was a major progression sonically from his earlier albums Lenderman agreed, “For sure I think the melodies, the chords, that’s always what the song is so that that doesn’t really change And this record more than others, the arrangements for songs, especially ‘She’s Leaving You’ or a more poppy song like that. The parts are more structured than they have been in the past.”
Lenderman goes on to explain the way he used to work, “A lot of my other songs, outside of that main structure of chords and lyrics, there weren’t really many parts. I thought about the song as a house, and every instrument is in a room, and they’re able to do whatever they want, but they have to stay in their room”.
Manning Fireworks presents Lenderman’s catchy songs in sparse and clear arrangements. This is very different to his previous recordings where the listener had to do more work to find the gold. I asked if this was the plan going into recording or happened as things progressed.
“Yeah. It was just kind of what I what I wanted to do, just following what sounds good to me. But I don’t have a huge concept of what anything’s going to be before recording.”
Lenderman explains his recording process further, “I do my best to not make any demos and try to ideally have a song with the chord structure and lyrics and build from there in the studio. There’s a lot of magic on the first attempt. If you can preserve that until getting into the studio, that helps out a lot”
The new album was recorded in multiple four-day stints during breaks from touring, as Lenderman explains. “I was on the road a lot, so I would just book a few days in the studio at a time. I didn’t want to do too many days so that I wouldn’t have anything to work on. I’d book it out far enough in advance and just hope that by the time that came around I’d have some material to work on”.
L
enderman explains that this approach had mixed results, “Sometimes I would have just a sketch of what the form of the song would be, and then I would have to lay down some placeholder lyrics and work on that for a while, come back and redo them.”
He credits this approach as the reason the record has such a distinctive and consistent sound. “One of the benefits of doing it this way, is that I had a lot of time in between sessions to listen back to what we’ve worked on, and tweak it in a way that made the record more cohesive. But there are a few sessions where I didn’t have a song ready and sometimes that worked out, but other times It didn’t.”
Melodic and witty Manning Fireworks is also earning comparisons to everyone from Jason Molina to Neil Young and Warren Zevon. How does he feel about these comparisons? “It’s flattering, because I am influenced by those people, so long as it’s not saying that what I’m doing is too derivative. I guess that wouldn’t be as positive. But people always want to have something to compare your music to.”
One of my favorite moments on Manning Fireworks is during ‘You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In’ when the lyrics reference a clarinet
“playing its lonely duck walk” followed by a clarinet solo. Lenderman explains this was more good luck than good planning. “The clarinet was just a happy coincidence. I ran into Shane McCord, who played on the record, I think the day before we recorded that, and he was carrying a case, and I was like, what’s in there? And he was like, it’s a clarinet. I asked him if he could come back tomorrow and he just blew it away”.
Just prior to his Anti- Records debut, Lenderman issued a live album And The Wind (Live and Loose!), documenting shows from Los Angeles and Chicago It provides a brilliant entry point to his early solo material, presenting the songs in a style much closer to the new record
“Playing live is really fun,” agrees Lenderman. “Just the way that the songs grow and morph, I felt like that’s the beauty of the live album, to show what you can do with the same song.”
Frustratingly the record is only available on cassette and streaming. Might it be available on more accessible formats in the future?
“That conversation is happening. The live record was something I was planning on doing anyway, but we signed with Anti- and if we were to make vinyl, it would have had to be a double album, and that just felt like too much to ask for the first release. But the response [to the live album] was really good, so I think there’s some demand for it, so maybe we can do it now”.
Lenderman also recently served as lead guitarist on Waxahatchee‘s highly regarded Tigers Blood LP from earlier this year I asked how that connection came about and he explained, “I played drums for an artist called Indigo de Souza who is also from Asheville, and we did a record with Brad [Cook – the producer of Tiger Blood] and then a few years later, my band played South by Southwest, and Katie Crutchfield [Waxahatchee] was in the audience. She was about to start demo-ing a record with Brad, and she invited me to come out to his house and the demo session went well, and so we did the full record”.
Waxahatchee will be touring Australia in November and December so I finished by asking when we might see Lenderman back here. “Definitely not that soon, but at some point in 2025. We’re working on dates. I’m excited to come back”.
THE PEOPLE’S CHOICE
On the eve of his Australian tour, Jamie Webster sat down with Rhythms’ Michael George Smith to ponder how far he has come in just five years.
“Whilst flicking through my phone, I find old videos of when I played the local bars/ From festivals to sell-out tours, believe me, I was never sure I’d get this far.”
So sings working-class Liverpuddlian, singer, songwriter Jamie Webster, in ‘Better Days’, the song that opens his latest album, 10 For The People, still a little surprised at how far he’s come in just five years. And who’d have thought it would start, sort of, when, quite by chance, he met the man who would become his manager and record company. But we’ll get to that. If you want to see just how big things have become for him, just check out his performance in front of a hometown crowd of 40,000 at Sefton Park this past July.
“I started writing songs when I was about 14, 15,” he begins. “I was always quite good when we done poetry at school and then I picked up a guitar and learnt a few chords and I got into Bob Dylan alongside Noel Gallagher, so I started writing a lot of Oasis-sounding songs with very Bob Dylan-style lyrics. They weren’t the best in the world, but they were a starting point. Then I formed a band when I was about 15, 16, with a couple of me friends that I met in school, and we done the circuit for about a year till we sort of split it up and I went back onto the pub scene playing covers.
“So I’ve always been writing songs but maybe when I was about 19 to 22, I really started to develop a sense of who I was and what the world was, you know, obviously through my eyes, and I started to realise how I felt about life and politics and the way people treated, the way people in the UK have to walk the day-to-day working-class line.
That’s when a lot of We Get By, the first album, was written and when I writ ‘Weekend In Paradise’ and ‘This Place’ and started playing them songs in the pub gigs and whatnot, people were coming up to me and asking who that song was by at the end, thinking it was by someone big and famous, I thought, ‘Well I might be onto something here’ and I really started to pursue gigs for original music rather than covers, and slowly but surely things started to work away and I had a lucky meeting on a plane with me now manager and CEO of my record label Dave Pichilingi. ‘Weekend In Paradise’ was released maybe five or six months after that day.”
That was November 2020, the song the first single lifted off that first album, We Get By, the record label Modern Sky UK, which itself has only been operating half a dozen years, so it really was a serendipitous meeting for Webster. The album reached # 6 on the UK Albums Chart and did even better, topping the UK Official Folk Album Charts, which itself was only inaugurated that year. We Get By was preceded in July by Boss, an album of football (soccer for Australian readers) songs recorded at a Liverpool FC match that also charted Top 10 in the folk chart. All of a sudden, Webster was well and truly in the spotlight.
“It’s been quite a rollercoaster ride from that point, but the songwriting has always been there. Just before I was on this call, I was thinking wouldn’t it be cool on me next album to have early in the morning and late at night, two different songs with them titles, and explore them head spaces, d’you know what I mean. So that was actually what I was doing, so you’re always thinking, the songwriting never really sleeps. You see something and you start playing out
scenarios around that thing in your head, what it could have been before and what it could be in the future and why is it like that now and words and rhymes and melodies just start coming into your head; it’s obsessive. I don’t think I’ll ever stop writing, even if the career doesn’t go the way I want it or even if it doesn’t maintain where it is today. It’s a bit of who I am and it’s my way of dealing with everything that troubles me. It’s cathartic and therapeutic as well. It’s good to write down all your feelings, what you’re seeing, and music is equally a part of me as the writing is.”
And as someone who writes about what he sees around him, there’s plenty for Webster to write about. “It still baffles me the world is. It’s 2024, it’s supposed to be the most intelligent generation the human race has ever seen, with the most access to the most information we’ve ever had in our lives but we’re still resorting to almost medieval tactics in certain places in the world – well, certain people are. It’s mindblowin’ how this can happen, how just lookin’ after each other isn’t the driving force in anything anymore. It’s not about people anymore, it’s not about looking after your brothers and sisters and everyone else. It’s about money, it’s about power, it’s about domination, even in the tech world –it’s just a big ego competition. It’s scary really, the powerful people in the world today – absolute lunatics. It’s scary us sitting here talking about it but imagine people living it and enduring the repercussions of all of this. They’re the ones that need to be spoken for.”
All of which gave birth to the song that closes 10 For The People – ‘How Do You Sleep At Night?’, a song that speaks for the refugees, those forced to do whatever it takes to reach what they hope is freedom, who are vilified by those who peddle the idea that the “differences” in those “illegals” make them “undesirables”. “The song highlights just that,” Webster points out. “As a result of all this conflict in certain countries, like the UK, certain politicians and certain factions of political belief tell us these people who have had to come to our country because it’s not safe in their own countries, it’s not safe for their children to sleep at night, there’s no food, there’s no water. It’s so hypercritical, that we’re the reason that the people have to come here but we’re also told that they’re the problem when they are here, and people are just being battered around like tennis balls really, and worse. It’s got to stop; it’s got to stop. All I can do is share my thoughts on it. The world is a scary place but at the same time it can be a beautiful place.”
And that’s the gift that Webster brings to his music. While his subjects might sometimes be depressing and the characters, he shows us might be having to live lives that are tough, unpleasant and the rest of it, he delivers these stories with the most uplifting melodies and celebratory arrangements. It’s their anthemic atmosphere that has connected with his burgeoning audiences.
“For me next bank of songs, I’m working on a song at the minute that’s about the good times in life. I think it does need to be highlighted that there are a lot of good people doing a lot of good things out there as well. I’m not here to tell you that my music can change the world because it definitely can’t. I’m not that deluded. But if listening to my songs can give people a sense of community and maybe that community is the community that thinks that the world could possibly change one day, that’s a start anyway, isn’t it? I love what I do. It’s all inspired by the artists that have gone before me, and the people –that’s why I called this last album 10 For The People.”
So, Webster’s songs are filled with the ordinary people all around us –the volunteer that mans the op shop counter or food bank, the union rep trying to get better conditions for his fellow workers, the shop girl who just needs to be reminded that she can make her life whatever she hopes it could… There’s even a love song on 10 For The People, ‘Love In The Supermarket’, despite his suggesting that he’s not one to write that sort of thing.
“Yeah, yeah,” he chuckles. “It’s actually me second love song. The first was one I writ about my then fiancé now wife. But it’s not something I can churn out every day, but ‘Love In The Supermarket’ is probably one
of the songs I’m most proud of. I had the music and I knew that the words had to fit the music, which is quite moving as well – it’s bright and beautiful with all the strings and everything – and me wife sent me a picture of an elderly couple in Tesco round the corner from my house. They were both sharing the baskets, so around that picture I built this story and I fused all the characters of the elderly couples that I’ve come to know throughout me life. Every time I play, particularly more in an intimate setting, it seems to really connect with people in the way that I wanted it to.”
With the latest single Webster has put up on his website, ‘24 Hours in A&E’, a song for those stalwart nursing staff of the National Health Service that, during the height of the pandemic, saw people out on their verandas clapping and banging pots and pans in appreciation of their dedication to duty, he’s experienced something of a Bob Dylan moment, though it’s not because he’s suddenly gone electric on his fans but has tried something a little different in the music he’s created.
“Me wife had gone to A&E with me mum and told me how bad it was,” he explains. “It was bad when I went a couple of years ago, but over the years it gets worse and worse. It’s not down to the people that work there, it’s down to the state-managed decline that our health service has been ran into because of the goal of privatisation and private health care. So it was just a documentation of my experiences and the experiences of me wife, and even other people in the same space and time, friends and other family members. Some of the stories were horrific but obviously I’ve embellished and elaborated and put a bit of brown sauce, as they say, on everything for a bit of cinematic effect. But it is to me a documentation of the state of decline of health service, around the world I suppose, have been allowed to be ran into. It didn’t seem to take off with as many people as I thought it would. The sonics of the song were a little bit different I suppose than what I’ve done before.”
Which is a shame, because, quite apart from the importance of the stories being told, ’24 Hours In A&E’ sees Webster add elements of other socially aware musicians, like The Specials’ ‘Ghost Town’ and… well I let him tell you, because you can hear the pure joy involved in the making of the song. “In my head it was an R&B-inspired sort of backing track with little bits of everything really along the way. There’s a little bit of ghostly sort of folky guitar picking hidden in the background. There’s sort of fat-back New York drum beat on tape and even the chorus I suppose with the backing vocals and stuff like that –it’s very eerie, isn’t it?
“I had a great time making that song with a good friend of mine who produced my two main hits I suppose. It’s the first time we’ve been in the studio together since the first album in terms of, like, writing and recording. He had an idea for a drum beat and said if I could infuse my stories and my world into it, it would be great. It was serendipitous because I’d been listening to a lot of ‘90s New York sort of rap and hip-hop, because I love the stories you know – they’re amazing – and they are a documentation of people from that background and that circumstance. It’s inspiring to listen to it. So we got in the studio the next week and I had this sort of A&E poem written out on me phone and knew straightaway what melody I wanted to put down. We laughed all day to be honest. It was like, everything we’d done, whatever idea that I had in that moment… We did it all in four hours. It was like one of them moments where every idea got recorded and worked really well, so we thought. It was worth the abuse I got on line for it. But we won’t go into that. I still stand by the song, and since it’s come out I’ve had lots of health workers messaging me saying how life-like it is to their day-to-day what they have to put up with and thank you for shedding a light on it.”
And so they should – check it out. It’s a great song. And check out Jamie Webster when he comes to your town, a songwriter with something to say saying it with an optimism that truly inspires.
Jamie Webster will be touring in December. Check the Rhythms Gig Guide for details
The stunning new album Paradise Pop. 10 by rising US singersongwriter Christian Lee Hutson doesn’t relate to some intimidating vision of an exclusive afterlife, rather refers to the road sign at the city limits of a small town in rural Indiana where the singer’s father would take him during his childhood.
By Steve Bell
“To be honest I think the people who live there would be really complimented by the idea that it’s ever thought of as a town,” the singer chuckles,” because it really is just like maybe five houses on one side of the street and then on the other side of the street is a cemetery. There’s no businesses or anything like that.
“I’ve never even really known who put up that sign or what the thing is, but it has always felt like a kind of inside joke or something to the people that live there - that they’re like, ‘This is Paradise. This is our town. This is the city limits” - but it’s just this one street in the middle of nothing but woods.
“It’s cool. It’s quiet. Rural Indiana is really beautiful - there are lots of like creeks and covered bridges and when you’re driving through it can make you feel like it existed 60 years ago in the same exact way. So, it feels really untouched.
“When I was trying to come up with the title for the album, I was just throwing a bunch of stuff out there and that one felt like the most right. I was kind of imagining the record almost as like a weird little stage play, and that I was constructing like my own little town or something like that.
“It was like all these different characters living in this place where time doesn’t exist and the past and the future don’t really exist - in my mind it’s a place where only today exists - and that was the mindset that I was trying to get into writing all these songs.”
The songs on Paradise Pop. 10 are like self-contained vignettes, small in-depth character studies which Hutson says are linked only by the occasional protagonist who might flit between the narratives.
“I think they’re self-sufficient for the most part, he ponders. “There might be some overlap where like a character from this song or that song might be making an appearance later in the record as themselves or even a different character.
“As far as I know really the only thing linking everybody together is that I wrote them and that they all find themselves in kinda being in similar places, in that they’re all in-between the time that they left what they knew as their life and before the time where they’ve arrived at what is their new reality.”
Change has been a constant in Hutson’s real life of late as well: he recently started dating singer/actress Maya Hawke, that relationship forcing him to relocate from his adopted home of Los Angeles - the city which played such a prominent role on his last album Quitters (2022) - to the relative hustle and bustle of New York City.
“That change fed into this album big time,” he smiles. “I wrote almost all of it in New York, which is just like a fresh, clean slate. You know, I have no memories in New York really, so it was a nice place to just explore how I’m currently feeling as opposed to going back through memories.
“I lived in LA for most of my life, so that anytime I was writing in LA, I had access to almost three decades worth of memories that I was pulling from. With New York, I feel like the move made me focus in on what was happening right now.
“Though in a way I guess it could have been anywhere. I mean, before making this record I fell in love and that relationship also plays a big role in the creative energy behind this record as well. So, I feel like that, you know, if I had fallen in love with someone from like Minnesota and moved there, I’m sure it would have felt also fresh in that way as well.”
While Huston has had the benefit of having his good friend (and extraordinary artist in her own right) Phoebe Bridgers help produce his last three albums, Hutson also produced and co-wrote some tracks on Hawke’s recent third album Chaos Angel (2024), a collaborative experience he admits enjoying immensely.
“That’s like my most comfortable role, I think, in this life,” he offers. “Just the task of helping somebody else find what they were trying to do and being like a nice supportive voice in the room. That’s a really fun role for me to be in because there’s no stakes other than making sure the goal is attainable.
“Usually, it’s just like hanging out and helping somebody else’s vision come to life in whatever way you can, even if that means you don’t play on any of it or say a word - it doesn’t matter as long as we hit the destination - and that makes me feel really useful.”
Sam Lee, a Mercury prize nominated, broadcaster, birdsong collector and activist is set to visit us at the end of the year.
By Bernard Zuel
He’s ready to laugh, at himself as much as anything, exceedingly amiable and charming, and is curious about any stranger with a story to tell, even before he makes it here for Woodford Folk Festival and sideshows at the end of the year. But there’s no point pissing about with something throwaway when you’ve got Sam Lee around.
For a start, just listing who he is and what he’s done/doing sobers you up pretty quickly. A Mercury Prize-nominated folk singer, whose fourth album, Songdreaming, was released mid-year, and folklorist whose speciality has become songs from Britain’s Traveller communities – most of them previously unheard outside those tightknit communities – he is an author (The Nightingale: a history of the bird in popular culture), broadcaster, soundtrack composer, collector of birdsong (including performing in the woods with nightingales) and, perhaps most of all, a conservationist and climate activist.
But not an activist confined to song and maybe the occasional protest (his involvement with Extinction Rebellion is hardly casual) as a childhood immersed in wilderness groups and a passion for rambling in a country whose unfenced land is fast disappearing (what he calls “the invisibling of the barbed wire fence”) has made him a proselytiser for more sustainable, more connected, more natural, way of living.
Which is noble and admirable, but it’s 2024 so can we be reconnected to a different, natural version of ourselves and world or is he whistling into the void trying to get us there?
“Hmm,” Lee says, and pauses. “Can we do it? We have a choice. If there are enough people in that void listening, you suddenly realise that the void isn’t that big and it’s a temporal thing and slowly by slowly we’ve got to out whistle the other noise actually.
“I work on this principle that to make change and overcome the opposition you have to throw a better party. You have to do something more beautiful and more attractive, more irresistible. I think I’m constantly amazed that when I do, that when I lead people into that place of nature connection – be it that sort of record or be that through the lived, the in-person experience – the transformatory aspect of it
proves to me that the void is a place people are trying to get out of.”
But how are we – the suburban and urban people who are not Sam Lee with his direct daily and constant connection to the natural world – to do it if we can’t sing with the nightingales and are tempted to give up? Or if the rivers we want to swim in are polluted with sewage? When those barriers are staring us in the face and making effort seem pointless? When the void looks insurmountable and inescapable?
“How do we confront that? Joyful activism, firstly,” he says, yes, joyfully. “Part of being an artist is about creating illusions and creating fantasies that paint a picture of a world that we would like to be in. I do that in my music and also in the real-time action work I do, such as the right to roam movement – an organisation I am a cofounder of.
“There are all these obstacles but actually, collectivism, community building and creating experiences and finding the means to do it is a constant. And I found in the UK there is an incredible upswelling of diggers, of land workers, of protesters, who are going out having wonderful times in nature that they’d never be able to do on their own but have got something to fight for, something to protect, and that’s created a new sense of collectivism that is very sexy.”
Collectivism, a broader community, a connection with natural and social traditions, these are all elements that are intrinsic to his non-music work and thinking, but they are also intrinsic to the sound and style of music he plays. That is folk music in every way: trying to connect the past, trying to bring traditions that once connected people to each other or helped define them, into modern sonic and social contexts. Is this a coincidence of passions or did one feed the other in him?
“In my 20s, when I really discovered folk music, I was a music fiend: a vinyl-collector DJ who never made music, never was a singer or creator, but was hungry for it, lived for it and when I found folk music, within those songs it was like here is a musical manifestation of everything I’ve seen in the ecological systems of reciprocity and dependability and diversity and harmony and dissonance,” Lee says. “Everything about it was like, here is a human
expression that is in the form of a natural system: problematic but also full of grit and vulgarity and profanity as well.
“I loved this, and it was a little bit like finding a wild valley that no one had been in, and it was overgrown, unattended – folk music was a bit like that in the early 2000s, and I felt like the lucky first person through the rusty gate.”
Is it because he came late to folk music, or is it because he didn’t initially think of himself as a folk musician, that it is only very recently that he has taken to writing, beginning with writing new lyrics to older tunes, which is a folk tradition after all, and more recently completely new songs?
“Yes, confidence perhaps. But also, interest,” he says. “There I was suddenly given the keys to the museum, and I was in many ways one of the luckiest people because I was mentored by a Scottish traveller, who was really the last of his tribe in that respect, and my song collecting meant that I spent 15 years in the company of the last tradition bearers. I’ve been handed this incredible trove. I got a lifetime’s work to do just to sift through what every song is and what it means and giving it its sense of respect and honour.
“So, I can’t believe that I only made two albums that were like pure folk albums, really. Because I could have made 15 albums if I was a fast worker, and there are so many songs I haven’t recorded. But they are inside me and I carry them, my spell books.”
So, when does Sam Lee the writer come into that, maybe adding to the spell book?
“I think it’s come from someone who has had to take some time to believe in himself, that I have something to say. I felt I had a duty to prove that these songs, these old songs, were beautiful and worthy of being listened to, and me and a lot of my contemporaries have worked very hard to reimagine what these old songs in their true forms sound like today with a range of new instrumentation.
“And then I think it was a case of me wanting to be a little bit more personal and speak as an artist and less as an artisan.”
Sam Lee will be appearing at the Woodford Folk Festival from December 28-31, 2024, and you can check his other gigs at samleesong.co.uk
POSTCARDS FROM LIFE
It’s four in the afternoon in Lethbridge, Alberta, and Canadian singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Ryland Moranz, a writer, in his own words of “folk/bluegrass historical postcards”, is on the line pondering life, the universe and all manner of music with Rhythms’ Michael George Smith on the eve of his latest Australian tour.
To date, Ryland Moranz has released two singles off his album Better/Worse, due out this November, the second, ‘When I’m Gone’, finishes its last verse with the ultimate existential question – “Seen the face of God/And called the bluff” – so where better to start the conversation?
“Yeah, I’m very proud of that line,” Ryland chuckles. “I got kind of nervous to sing it for a while because, in true Canadian fashion, I didn’t want to ruffle anybody’s feathers. But there was a really great opportunity for me to have to stand by a lyric – ‘You wrote it, you felt like that. It’s an existential question and you’re not, I don’t know, trying to convince anybody of anything otherwise. You wrote it, put it out there’. So that’s been… fun.”
With this latest album, Better/Worse, his third as a solo artist, Moranz is looking at what life could be like post the last big international trauma, “to where we may be going”, releasing it just as the world is toppling into a whole plethora of new traumas! “The more time I spend on earth,” he admits, “the more I feel like it’s out of one frying pan into another fire and then into one more frying pan and so on and turtles all the way down. I’ve done a lot of I guess ruminating on my own mental health coming out of the old road onto the new one, but also trying to figure out what looks and feels like moving forward as good as you can. It’s such a struggle these days to feel optimistic.”
And that can be quite the issue for a selfconfessed “terminal romantic”. “Yes, absolutely! The invention of the digital camera was really hectic for me because I reminisced immediately. It’d be, like, click, oh, look how cute we were! It’s been a particular learning curve for me, but the capacity to enjoy the journey has been something I’ve enjoyed trying to figure out, and I owe my wife and family and everybody that makes life on earth bearable. But as a serial romantic, everything is either a great success or a total catastrophe; there’s no middle ground. Everything is everything else all at once to me.”
Now, when he’s not doing his own stuff, Moranz plays in his Vancouver-based producer Leeroy Stagger’s band – and he’s also recently kicked off a duo thing with bluegrass mandolin player and songwriter Dan Fremlin. Stagger produced Moranz’s previous two albums, 2016’s debut, Hello New Old World, and 2021’s XO 1945, so it seemed logical to turn to him once again for Better/Worse. “I had a bunch of songs set up and had the idea of having a trilogy of records. So I sent them to him and he was into working on the project and said, ‘These songs are great, great record. Could you send me four more songs?’ and I said, ‘Well, I guess, let’s try,’ and I wrote four more and I sent them, and he said, ‘Yea great. These songs are really great, fantastic. Can you do me four more?’ And I’m, like, ‘Sure, yes,’ did some scrambling, writing and sent them to him and he said, ‘Can you give me four more?’ ‘Absolutely! Yes, let’s try it,’ and by this time it was the day before I was supposed to be flying to the west coast to make the record. There’s a song on the record called ‘Never’ that the ink
wasn’t dry when the plane touched down in Victoria.
“But that whole spirit and ethos is kind of where it all came from. When the world took its indefinite hiatus, I lost all of the steam I’d accumulated personally and emotionally, and this whole record was me exploring in real time what it was going to be like to move forward in whatever capacity I was able and everybody else was able as well, and as a result – I didn’t mean to do this but the songs kind of come in pairs. There are ten songs on the record and thematically and almost stylistically, things kind of come in pairs. There’s an extroverted viewpoint and then an internal, introverted viewpoint, it’s almost spooky how the songs pair up to each other. It was a different and interesting process from the rest of the albums I’ve made, just taking the songs I had and recording them. There was a lot of pre-production and planning, which isn’t my strong suit – I’m really ADHD –terminally so probably!”
The resulting album became something of a dialogue with himself – “Absolutely! I’m going to take that with me! It’s truly a dialogue with myself and with others. There are certain characters in the songs that are real people and things I’ve lifted directly from what they’ve said. The new single, ‘The Hell of This Town’ there’s a reference to the neighbours waving, and they heard the single and said, ‘Thanks for puttin’ us in the good part of that song.’”
Now, while Australia has come to know Ryland Moranz as the multi-instrumental folkbluegrass singer-songwriter, and he came from a folk-music family – his folk musician parents have been running an annual folk festival, the South Country Fair, in Fort McCloud in southern Alberta since the year he was born – “so it was kind of the ‘other child’ growing up” – and his sister Gillian is also a singersongwriter in the Patti Smith meets Joan Jett vein – the first album to make a significant impression on his musical career turned out to be London Calling by The Clash, hearing that “was the moment that I realised that this is what I want to do for a living, that I was going to play music and be in a band, but musician at any cost. And kind of the roadmap on how I wanted to do it was I saw a great interview with The Clash where the interviewer is asking questions and Joe Strummer is blowing them off and talking about things that are important to him, and the guy finally says, ‘You say you’re more of a ‘news-giving’ group than a band. Why do you think that?’ And Joe says, ‘Well, everybody’s writing the love songs. That subject’s covered. We want to write about what’s important to us.’ That really stuck with me.
“I was in a punk band for a decade. When I got out of high school, I figured I was either gonna be a pilot or a musician. So I went to flight school and I started a punk band and thought I’d see which one stuck. I did end up getting my pilot’s licence but I stuck with music. Even though there’s not a whole lot of direct influence from The Clash anymore, the punk ethos never left me, and the desire to
play three chords and the truth, especially in a time when the truth is so subjective. I’ve really been careful not to try to tell anybody ‘This is unsubstantiated, right or wrong’. It’s either this is a personal experience or this is generally agreed professional fact – that’s kinda where the punk ended up. I can lay it though (just google his 2017 Riffmania performance with The Leeroy Stagger Band!). I even have the Joe Strummer Telecaster and a T-shirt I’m bringing on tour is the Radio Clash T-shirt with the skull and the Japanese writing, and I just took their name off it and put mine on. I figure if I’m sued by their estate, then that would be good publicity!
“So, when I discovered punk music and Joe Strummer, The Clash and The Ramones and the south California punk scene that was happening in the early to mid-‘90s, late ‘90s when I found it, that was kind of my act of rebellion against a folk, bluegrass and jazz upbringing. When I got into punk music I told my parents I was going to dye my hair blue, and they said, ‘Right. You should.’ It was impossible to rebel, my parents are so cool. When I finally got into a punk band, they were, like, ‘This is good. You’re making new friends. We don’t really like the music so much but we could get into it.’ And they did. My music now, and my obsession with bluegrass that’s come out of working in the folk idiom, has entirely been a return to my roots and my upbringing, as opposed to a radical shift. Most of my punk friends from back in the day, who didn’t grow up as ‘folk kids’, are playing folk music now. It’s an easy transition – you just unplug the guitar. All the chords and all of the words sort of stay the same and now you’re singing freedom songs or whatever. The song remains the same.”
Which makes a great segue to point readers to a YouTube clip in which Moranz plays the banjo with a violin bow, Jimmy Page-style! “One of the first things that was said to me when I picked up a banjo for the first time, and it was probably a decade before I tried to learn how to play it, somebody, probably an old-timer, said, ‘That’s not how you play that.’ Immediately, I’d started to play it how I thought you played it as a guitar player. And that kind of stuck with me. I’ve always had a bit of a chip on my shoulder about ‘That’s not how you do that.’ So when I started getting into bluegrass I was finding that same kind of thing, where bluegrass and classical musicians were these staunch traditionalists that had this preconceived notion that everything had to be reproduced and I thought that was kind of lame. Now there are all these amazing banjo players who not only are doing different things but are getting quite avant-garde – Béla Fleck, all of that stuff. So any opportunity to be ‘extra’-musical – like the violin bow – is alright by me. In university I studied John Cage and Laurie Anderson and really enjoyed seeing what the ‘Outsiders’ were up to. So that was my attempt at being kind of outside of it all. It’s a funny thing – you pull the bow out on a banjo once and it’s extra-musical and cool. You do it a second time in a show and it’s just a gimmick! So you have to be really careful – but I really do enjoy it. It’s a lot of fun.”
He may not be a “Hurtin’ Albertan”, but as it happens, Moranz has played one of Corb Lund’s more recent albums, and Lund lives “just down the street actually, about five blocks from here. He’s a real history buff,” Moranz points out. “We really connected over a couple of different really dry history podcasts that are probably mind-numbing to people who aren’t into it. He’s got a great dry sense of humour and his songwriting is next level for sure.”
As Australian readers are obviously aware, we had our own “equivalent” to The Clash in Midnight Oil, who were certainly no peddlers of love song and were very much “news-givers”. Though it hasn’t achieved anything like the commercial success or critical acclaim of their “Beds Are Burning”, Moranz has written his own little song about the plight of Canada’s Indigenous inhabitants – ‘Stolen Land’ – in his case, as an inhabitant of Lethbridge, the traditional territory of the Siksika, Piikani and Kainai peoples, collectively known among the colonists as the Blackfoot.
“When I was coming up in school, we weren’t taught about the residential schools that happened in Canada in the ‘60s where all the Indigenous kids were scooped up and had their culture beat out of them in national schools. All we were told was that they took kids and put them in schools, but from an early age I remember my parents saying that’s not what happened. They weren’t Indigenous; it was their friends who had gone through it. That was their generation. So when everything started to come out, Truth and Reconciliation is a long road and every step is important. It’s embarrassing it’s taken so long even to this point. Again, like my new record, that song is my attempt at reconciling what to do in a problem that isn’t my story. As a White man in Canada, it’s not for me to tell anybody what to do or how to do it. We have to be very good listeners right now. So ‘Stolen Land’ was me preferencing my personal need to listen and be present. Whatever my role in Truth and Reconciliation, I’m looking forward to taking part in that.” As it happens, Moranz was touring Australia when we had our own Referendum on our Indigenous peoples. “It was wild,” he admits. “Never in a million years would I have thought that it wasn’t going to go.”
“I always thought that Midnight Oil were really inspirational in that it wasn’t just message –and for as much as I love The Clash, they’re still my favourite band in the world – to be able to make your art something that can move people, just as a sonic experience, and then there’s another layer when they listen to the lyrics, and it’s got another layer if they discuss them, they – Midnight Oil – really had all of it. We Canadians have The Tragically Hip. That’s next level art. That’s where I wanna be. When people ask, what’s the end goal? It’s to be doing this but to be doing it in a way that, if you just like music, you’ll like it. I don’t mean to do it as something that everybody likes – we left that to The Bee Gees! You want to make great sounding music that means something to people, to share an experience.”
Ryland Moranz is touring Queensland and New South Wales in November/December.
Forty-four years ago, a bunch of likeminded aspiring musicians and fans came together in a pub that nestled down near what’s now Sydney’s Circular Quay on the Harbour, just down the hill from Sydney Town Hall. They called themselves the Allniters. Fortyfour years later, they’ve decided to call it a day with a couple of farewell gigs. One of the original members, singer Brett Patinson recalls the years between with Michael George Smith.
It all began with a young guitarist named Martin Fabok. “September 1980, I remember being taken to the Sussex Hotel by (bass player) Graham Hood, who was part of that New Zealand invasion that was going on in the ‘70s. He told me about this Mod night that was happening as a result of Quadraphenia, the movie about the Mods based on the Who album, and the first person I saw was Martin Fabok, sitting at the end of the bar in a duffle coat with a pork pie hat and a Bad Manners sort of ska badge on, and someone said, ‘That’s Bad Manners Martin. He’s trying to start a ska band.’ And he did!”
This was a time when punk had crested and Australia was embracing this new thing, pub rock, as expounded by bands like The Angels, Cold Chisel and The Radiators. Fabok was proposing an antidote of sorts to all that. Fabok and the band that assembled around him shared his love of ‘60s British Mod bands like The Who and The Small Faces as well as the prototype ‘60s pop-ska/bluebeat of Little Millie, Desmond Dekker and Jimmy Cliff and that other UK-spawned hybrid Northern Soul.
“Punks were anti-establishment and the Mods became the anti-punks. The punks were all about safety pins and ripped up clothes where the Mods were all about suits and ties and looking sharp. Then there was the Mod revival coming out of England with bands like the Specials and the black and white 2-Tone thing that was happening, so we just connected with that. There was no one else really doing that in Sydney at the time. We were also influenced by the Clash, who were playing a kind of punk reggae in some way, so we came together from all those influences.
“At that time, I was a roadie for The Thought Criminals, so that was my only musical ‘ability’,” he chuckles. “I got into the Allniters by accident because I was going with Graham and Martin to the rehearsals. I used
to just sit in the corner and sing along, and they said, ‘Hey! Get a microphone.’ Then we started hiring people from within The Sussex, anyone who could play drums or sax or anything.” The Allniters ended up being a nine-piece! “Every time we got someone new, we didn’t want to actually sack anyone, so we just kept adding. Brett Pattinson used to play the drums so we hired him, and then after two gigs, we said, ‘No you can’t play drums. Get on the percussion and do backing vocals.’ Then we got the drummer. Then we needed some light relief because there were too many boys in the band so we got Julie (Conway) to come in and do a few numbers. She was actually underage and wasn’t legally allowed to be in a pub, but she used to come along because her brother was part of the scene, so she used to get up and do one song as a guest, just to give us a softer edge. Otherwise, we were eight guys making a lot of noise.”
So, the original eight Allniters were singers Peter Travis and Brett Pattinson, guitarists Martin Fabok and Stuart Crysell, keyboards player Mark Taylor, saxophonist Ted Ayers, bass player Graham Hood and drummer David Bebb. Thanks to Pattinson’s connection with The Thought Criminals, the Allniters were picked by Green Records, the label the band’s bass player Roger Grierson had set up with music writer and aspiring band manager Stuart Coupe, and released their first single, She Made a Monkey Out Of Me, in August 1981. “Originally that was a punk song called She Made a Fool Out Of Me,” Travers explains, “which Hoody had written in New Zealand and we just changed it a little bit. It was as basic as you could get but it was just high energy. Even now, we play it at the end and it starts off fast and gets faster and faster.
“When you start off, you have to have something as a guide and for us it was The Specials, who were talking about social issues that were quite
relevant in England but not necessarily to us. We just liked the sound of them and the high energy, so we had a few songs that we wrote which had a bit of a message, but I didn’t want to become overtly political like Midnight Oil or UB40 or the Spys. Lots of other people were doing that better than us. Our thing was more about being entertaining. Every gig was like a party on stage; you just never knew what was going to happen.”
February 1982 saw the release of a second Allniters single, You Shouldn’t Stay Out Late. “Again, that’s a relatively obscure Jamaican ska thing from the early ‘60s. It’s just a nice, each rock-steady thing. We paid for it ourselves, pressed a thousand copies and we were Number One on the Indie chart with that. It’s actually about under-age dating, though we didn’t really think about it at the time! Now we’re living in this age of political correctness, some of those songs are quite unacceptable by today’s standards.
In 1983, with bass player Perry Andronos replacing Graham Hood, who’d left to form The Johnnys, The Allniters signed with Powderworks and they brought in by then former Sports guitarist Martin Armiger to produce their debut album, d-d-d-dance, which was released in October. “We liked The Sports,” Pattinson remembers, “but Martin came and saw us once and said, ‘Alright, I know what I want to do,’ and when we turned up in the studio, he did what he thought was the good thing to do, which was to give us a bit of an ‘80s sound, where we were more of an authentic ‘60s sound, all real, all live – but Martin thought we needed some synthesisers and some drum machines (laughs), stuff like that, to make it sound modern. The records we made never quite captured the real us. You couldn’t get that energy onto a record. It had to be spontaneous, and experienced live.
“We had a limited amount of time, something ridiculous like twenty hours. We were in Sydney’s Studios 301 and Duran Duran were in there mixing their latest album on the floor above us. They had weeks and weeks to mix their album! We used to go and pinch their drinks.” The album may have been a disappointment to the band, but it included their only real hit, their cover of Bobby Bloom’s Montego Bay. “That’s where it was good,” Pattinson admits. “It sounded right for the times. It’s an obvious classic song.” The album reached #2 in the charts, the single #16 and suddenly the Allniters were a national touring band. “Those were the days of never-ending tours. We had to tour constantly to make money because we were feeding nine people in the band and three roadcrew, so if we went to Perth it cost us $30,000, just to get there and back. So, we had to tour, but now we could appeal to a wider audience.”
For all that, however, by the end of 1985, The Allniters and Powderworks had parted company. “I don’t know how that happened,” Pattinson admits. “We’d sold 30,000 copies of the album. I suppose it’s the usual problem. Your first album’s a huge hit and then you’ve got the ‘difficult’ second album, the crucial second album. We started recording demos and were actually going to call the album Crucial, but then the record deal collapsed and with all the wheeling and dealing and misunderstandings, the band was starting to have personality problems; you’ve got nine personalities to deal with, it was a whole, complicated time – things were all over the place. I don’t even know what happened, but we ended up on Mushroom somehow.”
They released a single titled All That Easy, produced by Mental As Anything singer Martin Plaza. “We knew the Mentals of course – we’d played with them. They were sort of likeminded good time fellows. Again, we were writing things trying to find hits. It’s not as easy as you think. I think it got into a chart in Brisbane or something for a minute and that was it.” And that was it, literally. The Allniters called it a day. Then out of the blue, in 1991, an Allniters instrumental titled This World, was used as the title theme song for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie Secret Of The Ooze. That was actually an incarnation of then Allniters members guitarist Mickey Mahoney and bass player Troy Duncombe, who cowrote it, that was dubbed The Magnificent VII, which didn’t include Pattinson.
So, the official Allniters reformation kicked off in 1999, with Fabok, Travis, Pattinson, Andronos and Luke joined by guest singers Juliana Vasilkov – Miss Velvet Vass – and Justine Harrison, guitarist Marcus Phelan, keyboards player Alistair Law, horn player Nick Hempton and drummer Peter Aitkens. “Probably the best way to explain The Allniters is it’s like a co-op, and people have come in and done something and then gone on. It’s always been a bit flexible like that – it’s never been a really rigid thing. So, we did the ‘crucial’ second album that was 20 years too late, Another Fine Mess. That was down to Pete Porker from The Porkers, who gave us the opportunity to do it. They were part of our original circle of friends, fellow travellers along the ska trail.”
A decade on in 2010, they reunited for the launch of a book about the band titled Stark Raving Mod. Then in 2015 came a documentary about the band titled A Rude Awakening, made by Simon Denny aka Simon Knapman, who’d done time as an Allniters drummer and had then gone into film production. That prompted another reformation, and over the next few years The Allniters got together two or three times a year to play, more often than not at the Paddington RSL Club with the odd quick trip to Brisbane or wherever.
The Allniters have finally decided that Times Up! and so, the lineup boasting five original members – Peter Travis, Brett Pattinson, Marty Fabok, Perry Andronos and Stuart Crysell – along with, again, singer Sara O’Connor, keyboards player Simon Smith, drummer Simon Wale and trumpeter John Penning, trombonist and tuba player Patrick Muldrew and saxophonist Scott Kelly.
The Allniters play the Adelaide Uni Bar Saturday November 2, The Backroom in Brisbane Saturday November 9, The Entertainment Grounds, Gosford Saturday November 16 and, to round things out as close to the day of their first gig, Paddington RSL in Sydney Wednesday November 30.
September 17-21, 2024, Nashville,
Tennessee
This was the 24th Americana Music Festival - surprising given the fact that the term Americana, which should really be seen as a collection of genres, seems to only have come to major prominence in the last decade and a half. But it has been around for a while. In 1998, with the advent of an Americana Chart, it superseded alt.country, which was probably a little less difficult to define but not as encompassing. With Americana’s inclusion in the Grammys and the Billboard charts it has become an important factor in the music industry.
Jim Lauderdale always defined Americana as ‘all the good stuff’, which is a neat summary. I think the label will be truly representative when it includes jazz - a genuine American music invention. But that’s a debate for another time.
The festival itself takes place over five days in a number of different venues throughout Nashville from smaller clubs to the Ryman auditorium where the annual Americana Honors and Awards ceremony takes place. The cost of a wristband is a very reasonable US$125 + tax which gets you in to almost all of the venues. The trick for the really popular gigs is to arrive early enough to make sure you get entry and a seat. If you choose the right record company showcase gigs you can also enjoy the free food and drinks and save a heap of money!
Alongside the festival is the Americana Conference held in the Embassy Suites Hotel downtown. This not only offers plenty of food for thought - with Q&As, exhibitions and panel sessions – but also a chance to network. It is much more expensive and probably geared towards industry personnel but worth considering for die-hard fans. A few of the high-profile Q&A sessions take place at the Country Music Hall of Fame to allow for a larger audience.
The highlight of the week was undoubtedly the Americana Honors & Awards ceremony at the Ryman auditorium on the Wednesday evening. This three-hour, star-studded event features many of our favourite Americana musicians. The fabulous house band is led by Buddy Miller and features, amongst others, Don Was on bass. The night revolves around six public awards plus six honours conferred by the Americana Music Association. This year’s big winner was Sierra Ferrell for Album of The Year and Artist of The Year. (Amazingly, Jason Isbell who was nominated in the Album category failed to win an award). The list of award nominees is interesting and perhaps debatable. Given the richness and variety of the music that had been made in the previous year, I’m sure we could all come up with an alternate list of equally deserving nominees.
Last year’s most memorable highlight was Rufus Wainwright singing Tom Waits’ song ‘Ol’ 55’. This year there were at least five standouts at the Ryman. Duane Betts performed his father Dickey’s classic ‘Blue Sky’ to open the evening. Shelby Lynne, a Lifetime Achievement honouree, performed with her sister Allison Moorer. Waxahatchee performed her song of the year nominated ‘Right Back To It,’ from her album Tigers Blood with MJ Lenderman on guitar. Dave Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore performed Alvin’s classic ‘4th of July. Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell performed ‘The Return of The Grievous Angel’ thus celebrating the 50th anniversary of the release of Gram Parsons’ Grievous Angel album. Those were worth the ticket price alone!
The Awards night would have been hard to beat but there was a lot happening in Nashville. I spent the three nights prior to the Awards at the City Winery. On Sunday and Monday nights I watched in awe as Emmylou Harris presented her Woofstock event to aid shelter animals. The first night featured Emmylou and Aoife O’Donovan performing Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album (plus other Bruce songs).
By Brian Wise
O’Donovan has recorded her version of the album and has also toured it. The second night featured Emmylou with Ricky Skaggs and The Whites in a more traditional bluegrass setting. On the Tuesday evening there was a tribute for the 25th anniversary of Mary Gauthier’s album Drag Queens & Limousines (with Emmylou as a guest). By mid-week, having seen Emmylou on four consecutive evenings I figured my airfare had covered!
The other gig that helped make the week exceptional was T Bone Burnett appearing with his incredible ensemble at The Analog at the Hutton Hotel to just 150 people and performing his latest album The Other Side track by track. The band? Colin Linden on guitar, Dennis Crouch on bass and David Mansfield on mandolin and fiddle. It would be hard to find a better outfit anywhere.
The final day, Saturday, was taken up with the Gospel Brunch (again at the City Winery) which this year was missing Henry Wagon’s enthusiasm and weirdness as host), followed by the rest of the day at the Aussie BBQ at the Five Spot in East Nashville.
As for the Conference, I had already immensely enjoyed a Q&A session that T Bone did with Joe Henry. Mary Gauthier took part in a panel about her landmark album. There was a great showcase on The Songs of Yellowstone (back at the City Winery, which by now was my favourite venue). After this I got to interview Robert Earl Keen. Katie Crutchfield (Waxahatchee) was interviewed by NPR’s Ann Powers and proved to be the smartest person in the room by far. Alyndah Segarra from Hurray For The Riff Raff was equally articulate if a bit more cosmic. The panel on the Springsteen archives featured Gary Tallent as a panelist. The session on Alice Randall’s memoir My Black Country with Alice, her daughter Caroline, Leyla McCalla and Fiona Prine was riveting. Dave Alvin’s Q&A with Warren Zanes was revealing and entertaining.
The other major highlight was being able to record my radio show, Off The Record, with Anne McCue co-hosting, at the Sound Stage Studios. Thanks to the Americana Music Association.
I could provide a list of acts and conference sessions I didn’t get to see, and you would be amazed. But, as I discovered, you can’t see everything. That is why I need to go back every year!
T Bone Burnett and band. The Analog. Nashville. September 19, 2024
For a decade now, Out On The Weekend has established itself as the major Americana music festival in Victoria, mirroring Dashville Skyline north of the border. This year, celebrating that decade, the festival expanded into the regions with events in Ballarat and Korumburra with abbreviated line-ups. I suppose you could call it a ‘boutique’ festival in that it caters for a particular taste rather than having a scattergun approach like much larger festivals. This also means that it has a smaller audience which makes for a consistently pleasant atmosphere with a friendly vibe. It is also one of the few chances hard-core fans can wear their cowboy hats without looking out of place!
This year I was able to attend Seaworks, where it was lovely to catch up with many friends, and then we drove down to Korumburra where the event was held in the rustic setting of the Coal Creek Community Park.
Seaworks in Williamstown by the bay is a scenic location and as the name suggests was formerly a shipbuilding location. There is an outdoor stage, a small bar stage in a tavern and an indoor stage in a large factory-like shed (the sound quality of which varied depending on how close you were to the stage). Tables and benches are scattered around the outside and there were plenty of food and beverage trucks. The line-up is impressive for such an event with the major headliners this year being Hurray For The Riff Raff. They were not on the Ballarat bill but appeared at an outdoor stage at Korumburra where I thought they were terrific and deserved the headline billing. I particularly enjoyed the size of the festival which made for easy socialising and the setting at Korumburra was especially appealing (and I was pleased to have recovered enough that I made it back up a very steep hill!)
Musical highlights were many. Perhaps the major highlight for me was Emma Donovan at Seaworks whose performance with a cracking band was superb. I have been bemoaning the fact that her album Til My Song Is Done has not got more exposure in the mainstream as it is one of the finest albums of the year. In the dozen or so years since I first saw Alynda Segarra in New Orleans the singer has developed enormously into a compelling performer with a batch of meaningful and appealing songs. Uncle Lucius, rejuvenated after one of their songs appeared on the soundtrack of Yellowstone, brought a big
slice of Texas rock ‘n’ roll. They even reprised a great version of the Grateful Dead’s ‘Bertha’. The Rose City Band from Portland, Oregon, was a revelation with their laid-back psychedelic grooves. I could have sworn at one point they were playing a Pink Floyd number. Margo Cilker, from Washington state, was another lesser-known performer who deserves some more recognition. She has a voice that sounds like it has been around for years but at 30 and with just two albums out she has a long way to go. (The latest album Valley of Heart’s Delight is a must). Sweet Talk are a local band in the tradition of Little Feat and The Band and the sooner they release a new album the better. Jonny Fritz and Joshua Hedley are frequent flyers here and are always amusing. Freya Josephine Hollick managed to captivate a small audience playing on a porch at Coal Creek.
All in all, Out On The Weekend continues to be a delight. I have no idea how the promoter manages to keep it going with such a ‘boutique’ audience but a lot of it must have to do with what Dennis Denuto in The Castle referred to as ‘the vibe of the thing’. Let’s hope the vibes keep going, man.
FOOTNOTE:
While you might not have previously heard of some of the names on the Out On The Weekend bill, their presence is due to Brian Taranto, who is head of Love Police Touring. He has not only been running the festival (along with Boogie) but also touring Americana artists for more than two decades. He is also a huge supporter of this magazine, as you will notice. Thank him for bringing out Gillian Welch and David Rawlings when they don’t really like flying. Thank him for letting us enjoy Wilco earlier this year. Love Police is also touring Sierra Ferrell, Tyler Childers and Cat Power early next year. Taranto seems to have his finger right on the Americana pulse: so much so that I joked that he knows about up-and-coming bands before they have even played their first gigs! Myles O’Neil-Shaw from 3PBS-FM joked that Taranto is the ‘Mayor of Nashville’, which reflects the respect that the promoter has in that city from the industry and its artists.
By Zena O’Connor
MUSCLE SHOALS MUSIC NOW
SOUNDS AROUND TOWN
The Shoals constantly provides a rich, diverse, and satisfying array of live music events every week. From legendary songwriters and Grammy-winning artists to established as well as emerging artists, and singer-songwriters, the Shoals is bursting with music. Locals and visitors are spoiled for choice for live music across multiple genres from jazz and blues to southern rock and Americana, to folk and hip hop.
The last few months have been packed with some great events, the first of which was the WC Handy Festival, which honoured a legend in music with an amazing lineup of music events. The WC Handy Festival is a tenday long series of music events that occur throughout the Shoals. The Handy Festival is a highlight in the annual calendar, drawing thousands of visitors to the Shoals. Named after William Christopher Handy (18731958), a Florence, Alabama, native, the Festival honours the legacy of the man who became known as ‘Father of the Blues’. Handy was the first to codify Blues music, translating it into written form, and he is also considered one of the most influential songwriters and composers in America, and he wrote ‘St. Louis Blues’ among many other well-known Blues songs.
The first WC Handy Festival was held in 1982, initiated by the Music Preservation Society along with American jazz musician, Yale music professor and Shoals native, Willie Ruff. Since 1982, the Handy Festival has grown and now features an impressive array of locations in the Shoals including cafes, restaurants, parks, block parties, street parties, and retail stores, as well as libraries and museums across the four towns that makeup the Shoals: Florence, Sheffield, Tuscumbia and Muscle Shoals.
Of the artists who played at Handy Festival 2024, many were crowd favourites who have developed a strong following and who perform at the Festival year after year. In addition, a large cohort of younger artists feature in many of the key events of the Festival. Songwriters in particular are celebrated during the Festival and there are several songwriter events held during Handy Festival including the prestigious Shoals Songwriter Showcase. This featured seven showcase sessions with songwriting luminaries Phillip White, James LeBlanc, Earl ‘Peanutt’ Montgomery, Mark Narmore, and Billy Lawson plus local artistsongwriters Gary Nichols, Billy Droze, Dylan LeBlanc, Lucie Tiger, and Angela Hacker.
One of the highlights of the annual Handy Festival, the Kick Off Block Party, is always a crowd-pleasing event. The main street of Florence is closed off for the party and the event attracts an audience of well over a thousand people. Australian Lucie Tiger + Band - featuring Jimbo Hart (ex-Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit), Randy O’Dell (Elvie Shane) plus Desmond Smith and Justin Holder) had the distinct honour of co-headlining this year’s Kick Off Party, along with Rollin’ In The Hay featuring Donna Hall. The event was such a hit that it was featured on the front page of the local Times Daily.
The wide range of live music in the Shoals is refreshing and a regular and very popular event is the Jazz Masters Series hosted by Ed Bisquera. A pianist, composer, arranger and music producer, Bisquera divides his time between Hilo, Hawaii, and the Shoals. While he’s in the Shoals, Bisquera’s Jazz Masters Series draws an enthusiastic crowd primarily due to the repertoire carefully devised by Bisquera and the guest musicians he invites to play. Recent artists include Marcus Pope (percussion), Aaron Stapler (guitar), David Ray (acoustic and electric bass) and previously, Ken Watters (trumpet and flugelhorn), Jimmy Sullivan (acoustic and electric bass), Tom Hurst (drums) and Josh Couts (guitar). Bisquera was recently a co-headline act at the Tyrrhenian Jazz festival in Italy and the Shoals is lucky to have an artist of his calibre hosting jazz live music events.
Another regular highlight is the ‘Muscle Shoals Meets’ concert series. Held annually, this series was initiated by Russell Mefford and his band The Fiddleworms, and it’s now become an impressive concert production held at the Shoals Theatre to a maximum capacity audience. The concert series is such a hit that it raises thousands of dollars and proceeds are always donated to charity, thanks to the involvement of generous sponsors.
“Two different charities approached me about ten years ago and wanted to hire my band to raise money for their charities,” Mefford said. He didn’t want the charities to spend any of their money on the concert, but Medford knew he had to ensure the artists were paid. Over time and with careful planning and collaborating with local businesses, Mefford perfected the concert series’ fundraising model, selling out shows year after year.
In 2024, the concert theme was ‘Muscle Shoals Meets The 80s’ and the lineup featured an impressive array of Shoals-based artists and musicians including Grammy-winners Gary Baker, Gary Nichols, Jimbo Hart, Jimmy Nutt, Barry Billings, plus Angela Hacker, Connor, Cadence Baker, Lucie Tiger, and Halley Phillips. The finale brought the house down with a fabulous rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Tusk’ complete with marching bands filling the aisles of the theatre.
The proceeds from this year’s concerts were used to build two special needs playgrounds at local high schools - which were completed just a month after the shows - and it was such a popular concert that an additional concert is being held in Decatur. A key element of the concert series is the poster artwork by Scott Campbell, which is always spectacular and expertly translated into an even more spectacular stage set. The music, talent, and vibe both front of house and backstage at these concerts is remarkable and reinforces the local legend that there’s something in the water in the Shoals.
By Martin Jones
MJ LENDERMAN MJ LENDERMAN
Dear Life
I’ve been on an MJ Lenderman bender since his new album came out. For those of us whose blood is irrevocably infected with ‘90s guitar music, listening to Lenderman is a fat dose of gratifying nostalgia, like going through your post-high school photo album. He appears to worship at the altar of alt country pioneers like Uncle Tupelo and Son Volt, but incorporates all that was great about indie guitar bands like The Replacements, Pavement, Drive By Truckers and Dinosaur Jr as well as bands on the darker side – Sparklehorse and Songs:Ohia/Magnolia Electric co… if nothing else he serves to remind you why you loved those bands so much.
But there’s much more to Lenderman’s music than nostalgia. He has become a bit of a guitar hero for the new generation (pretty funny that the closing track, ‘Bark at the Moon’ on his new album, Manning Fireworks, is about staying up all night playing Guitar Hero). He played a significant role, for example, on the latest Waxahatchee record.
But back in 2019, Jake Lenderman had just formed the group Wednesday with Karly Hartzman and was still living in Asheville, North Carolina, working in an ice cream shop to support himself. Things were starting to gain momentum with Wednesday and Lenderman recorded his debut album with fellow Asheville musician Colin Miller.
The imminent pandemic halted any touring and promotion but gave Lenderman the opportunity to write and record two further albums, Ghost of Your Guitar Solo and Boat Songs, honing his music and in doing so winning himself an audience.
The elemental ingredients of those later albums are present on MJ Lenderman – the Neil Young-ish shaky but “real as the day is long” voice, the occasional searing fuzz guitar solo, the unconventional pedal steel – even the saxophone which is reprised on the new album in the disarming ‘You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In’. He also establishes his affinity for disguising poignancy with often funny street language and deadpan delivery. However, Lenderman is still experimenting with the process and the recipes on the debut – you can hear him trying things out; why can’t pedal steel and sax coexist with fuzz guitar?
While this makes for a less focused album than, say, Manning Fireworks, it’s all the more compelling in its disregard for convention. It’s a sprawling collection – most songs unhurriedly unwind over six-to-
eight minutes with a band that sounds like they were brought up on a diet of Tonight’s The Night. Colin Miller (bass) and Owen Stone (drums) are ruthlessly sparse where required, Lewis Dahm and Xandy Chelmis contribute guitar and pedal steel respectively, Alex Brown plays sax and Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman helps with some vocals.
The bigger songs are the most immediately charismatic; ‘Come Over’ is all hooks and energy and ‘Left Your Smile’ builds from a simmer to a boil, building a lithe Keith Richards’ style riff into a storm, augmented by Hartzman’s vocals.
But it’s the quieter songs that offer the long-term relationships on this album. Beginning with the gazing-out-the-window contemplation of ‘Southern Birds’, an emotional crescendo is reached in the album’s most gentle moments. It’s worth buying the album for ‘Grief’ and ‘Basketball #1’ alone. Channelling Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, Lenderman almost speaks the opening lines of ‘Grief’; “There’s a part of me, I’d give up for you. A part of me I’d kill”. Then the three-note motif, sax and chorused guitar, sweeps you off your feet. Forever. It’s the kind of song you want to replay immediately to try and work out how the hell it just made you feel what it did.
‘Basketball #1’ takes the same feeling and strips it down even further, drums barely functioning, Lenderman’s voice high and cracking, sounding like he’s calling from the next room, leaning on his elementary guitar riff for structural support. It sounds like the entire band might collapse at any second.
The Dear Life label has released MJ Lenderman as a double LP, remastered for vinyl for the first time.
Word is Lenderman will tour Australia in March next year.
AMERICANA NEWS
By Nick Corr
Lucinda Williams has announced the release of Lucinda Williams Sings The Beatles From Abbey Road, due out on December 6. The new collection serves as Volume 7 of her Lu’s Jukebox series which began during the pandemic in 2020 as a way to help independent music venues when there were no live performances. Previous Lu’s Jukebox releases include tributes to Tom Petty, Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones. This new instalment features 12 Beatles songs recorded at the legendary Abbey Road studio in London, apparently Williams is the first major artist to record Beatles’ songs there – aside from the Fab Four themselves.
Mick Thomas’ Roving Commission headed to Roundhead Studios in Auckland to record a new album with producer Steve Schram (Paul Kelly, Crowded House, Teskey Brothers) Mick Thomas explained the decision to cross the ditch: “the important thing is that each record has its own focus and that the individuals comprising the band at that point in time are best positioned to give it their best effort. And it’s good to be excited by the prospect of ‘what comes next’ and we are buzzing about this one.” The new album will be released mid2025 to be preceded by an EP including covers of Kim Salmon, Carla Geneve, Charles Jenkins and The Screaming Jets.
Out November 15, Dolly Parton & Family: Smoky Mountain DNA – Family, Faith & Fables shines a spotlight on the legacy of Dolly Parton’s family heritage. The project traces her family origins from the United Kingdom in the 1600s, to their home today in the Great Smoky Mountains of East Tennessee. Produced by Dolly’s cousin Richie Owens, the album features songs performed by various members of Dolly’s immediate and extended family, spanning generations. Some tracks include the voices of beloved family members who have passed, alongside contemporary contributions from today’s generation. A companion four-part docuseries is also in production for 2025 that will include concert performances filmed at Knoxville’s historic Bijou Theatre.
Hits (Redux) form. While a couple of recordings including “Eurotrash Girl” come from the 2003 O’ Cracker Where Art Thou?
A collaboration with Leftover Salmon which saw the band reinterpreting their catalogue in bluegrass style. The album is previewed by a mellow country-rock re-recording of “Sick of Goodbyes”, featuring Jay Gonzales and Brad Morgan of DriveBy Truckers. The retrospective is released in November by Cooking Vinyl.
To mark the 50th anniversary of Gram Parsons seminal final album, a lineup of local Melbourne musicians are putting on 50 Years Of Grievous Angel: A Tribute To Gram Parsons. The show will take place at the Brunswick Ballroom in Melbourne on Sunday November 10, 2024. The album expanded on Parson’s theme of Cosmic American Music and contained three of his best-known songs – ‘In My Hour Of Darkness’, ‘Brass Buttons’ and ‘$1000 Wedding’. Introduced by Myles O’Neil-Shaw (5 Feet High & Rising, PBS) and MC’d by Ben Mastwyk, performing on the night will be Loretta Miller, Patrick Wilson, Kerryn Fields, Hana Brenecki, Charlotte Le Lievre, Evan Sillence, Leroy MacQueen, Alex Hamilton, and Kate Alexander. Adding to the magic, the house band for the night will be the Deadnecks
Americana psych rockers Cracker have announced a careerspanning three LP or two CD compilation Alternative History: A Cracker Retrospective. Originally planned as a greatest hits set, it soon became apparent that the cost of licensing early tracks from their original labels would be prohibitive. Taking lemons and making lemonade, a more promising idea emerged to tell an alternate history of the band utilising re-recordings, demos, outtakes, collaborations, and live tracks. Many of their bestknown early songs such as “Low” and “Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now” appear in their re-recorded 2005 Greatest
The Deadnecks are fresh off a tour through the USA as M Ward’s backing band and a successful run playing with Ella Hooper and her tribute to Linda Ronstadt.
Secretly Canadian have announced the November 1st release of a career-spanning compilation by Richard Swift 4 Hits and a Miss will include songs from across Swift’s catalogue and the previously unreleased ‘Common Law’ As friend and musician Kevin Morby explained, “Whether you’re a casual fan or a Swift purist, 4 Hits & A Miss is either a perfect starting place or a destination for us devoted fans to find, yet again, something new to awe and inspire. Like a hidden room inside his already impressive chapel, there’s always something new to discover from our beloved friend and hero, the late great Richard Swift ”
VARIOUS ARTISTS
CARDINALS AT MY WINDOW
Bandcamp
Great value digital release featuring over 100 artists to support flood relief in Western North Carolina. Many artists provide new unreleased recordings including MJ Lenderman, with the slow building “Pianos”, that could easily have fitted on his brilliant Manning Fireworks album Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats provide the mellow almost yacht rock “Smilin’”. Gillian Welch gets a lot of love with Waxahatchee and Sluice both contributing covers of her songs, “Wrecking Ball” and “Hard Times” respectively.
Gillian Welch & Dave Rawlings perform a new song, with a live recording of “Hashtag” from Newport Folk Festival in July 2024. Other live recordings include REM with “King of Birds”, recorded in Greensboro in 1989 (previously included on a super limited Record Store Day EP in 2013).
Jason Isbell’s “Children of Children” from The Ryman in 2017 is a recording not included on either of his Live at The Ryman albums. Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman provides excellent harmony vocals on Jeff Tweedy’s “How Hard Is It For A Desert To Die”, recorded earlier this year at Wilco’s Solid Sound festival. Hartzman herself contributes an acoustic demo of “Baby Me” which reminds me of Juliana Hatfield.
Iron & Wine cover the Bee Gees “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart”. Futurebirds provide a live recording of their cover of Caitlin Harnett’s “5am” Bargain priced at $10USD for 136 songs there’s something here for every Rhythms reader All proceeds are split evenly between Community Foundation of Western North Carolina, Rural Organizing and Resilience (ROAR), and BeLoved Asheville.
MOLLY TUTTLE & GOLDEN HIGHWAY INTO THE WILD Nonesuch
New six-song EP, a follow-up to Grammy winning album ‘City of Gold’. Features three new songs, covers of Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” and Olivia Rodrigo’s “good 4
MORE MUSIC
By Nick Corr
u,” and an alternate version of the ‘City of Gold’ track “Stranger Things.” The new songs are the standout, including the title track co-written with Ketch Secor, and “Getaway Girl” an unfinished song that Tuttle describes as “Carrie Bradshaw meets bluegrass”.
PETER BRUNTNELL
HOUDINI AND THE SUCKER PUNCH
Domestico Records
UK troubadour releases his first album in 3 years. Fantastic bright melodies with Bruntnells soft vocals. Pedal steel dominates the opening title track. The jaunty “Yellow Gold” is a sea shanty. The sombre “Sharks” pines for a brighter time like the “surfers on tv”. “Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump” with its the Beatles-esque swagger, is one of the highlights. The record features Bruntnell’s regular band members Mick Clews (drums), Dave Little (electric guitar) and Peter Noone (bass) together with guest appearances from Son Volt’s Jay Farrar, Mark Spencer, Eric Heywood, and James Walbourne.
JASON ISBELL AND THE 400 UNIT
LIVE FROM THE RYMAN VOL. 2
Southeastern Records
Follow up to 2018’s Live from the Ryman with a second volume of live recordings from Isbell’s annual residency at the legendary Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, TN. This release draws heavily from the 2022 and 2023 shows, covering material from Weathervanes and Reunions. While “The Last Song I Will Write” comes from a 2019 show, their great cover of Tom Petty’s “Room at the Top” was recorded in 2017
BEACHWOOD SPARKS
ACROSS THE RIVER OF STARS Curation Records
First album of new material in 12 years for these LA throwbacks. Produced by Chris Robinson (The Black Crowes), the new record picks up exactly where they left off with well-regarded 2012’s Sub Pop release “The Tarnished Gold”. Clearly in no rush, four albums in nearly thirty years, Beachwood Sparks beautifully blend twangy country vibes with dreamy psychedelic melodies. The best reference point for those unfamiliar with the group is the Laurel Canyon sounds of late 60s Southern California. Beachwood Sparks are one of the first bands I think of when I hear the Gram Parson’s coined phrase “cosmic American music” and there’s more than a hint of The Byrds on the new record, especially songs like ‘Gentle Samurai’, one of the stand-outs on the new record, together with opener “My Love, My Love” with its wordless vocals.
WILLIE WATSON
WILLIE WATSON
Little Operation Records
First solo album of (mostly) original material from Old Crow Medicine Show founder. Watson’s world-weary voice is the main focus, accompanied by sparce instrumentation that includes Paul Klowert and Gabe Witcher of Punch Brothers, and Tom Petty & Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench. Opening single “Real Love” is a tender mid-paced violin-led ballad. Highlight “Sad Song” essentially sets the tone for the whole record “there’s always a sad song living in my heart”.
BY KEITH GLASS
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.
BOB NEUWIRTH
BOB NEUWIRTH
Asylum 7E 1008 (1974)
(Re-mixed & reissued SUNSET BLVD RECORDS 2024)
Anyone who has seen the Bob Dylan documentary Don’t Look Back should remember his cohort for the 1965 tour that forms the backbone of the film. Bob Neuwirth is the fellow hipster that stakes out the ‘us against them’ strategy working it’s way through Dylan’s sociological stance at the time as almost the ‘anti-folkie’ whilst still playing the game. Thru the years it seems Neuwirth kept that dream alive. Writing with famous and non-famous people on a bi-coastal basis, working on his own songs and artwork with scant regard for public consumption and much the same over a 4 decade 6 album release schedule that started out at the top (with this one) and worked its way along an increasing obscure highway.
I encountered Neuwirth on my second night ever in Los Angeles at The Troubadour - a fairly small club in West Hollywood that had become a home for developing artists as well as legendary ones. Kris Kristofferson and Rita Coolidge were doing a multi-night stand. I was about 5th person thru the door and noticed Waylon Jennings and his group The Waylors were sitting at a middle of the room table and me thinking hmm, this could be an interesting night. It was, with Kristofferson dragging up guest after guest including a very much out of it Gordon Lightfoot, Waylon who he announced as ’the greatest country singer ever’ and da da…….’Bobby’ Neuwirth whom Kris obviously had some affection for. I remembered Don’t Look Back, I made the connection and I eagerly grabbed a copy of Neuwirth’s album on release some months later.
It never grabbed me and I wasn’t alone - it sounded like they had recorded a party - too many cooks and some half baked material. However the line-up was astounding - to list all present would take up the rest of the article but here are a few………Kris & Rita of course, and her sister Priscilla, Cass Elliot, Don Everly, Chris Hillman, Booker
T., Geoff Muldaur, Dusty Springfield, Tim Schmit, Chris Hillman..and the list goes on! There was a horn section, Neuwirth had written or co-written seven of the 12 songs and there were a few outstanding ones by others including Donnie Fritts (who at that time was part of Kris’ band - also is listed as performing) ‘We Had It All’, Bobby Charles ‘Cowboys & Indians’ and the Don Gibson classic ‘Legend In My Time’. There was a song written with Kris ‘Rock & Roll Time’ to start things off with the closer being the Janis Joplin co-write (with Bob & poet Michael McClure) ‘Mercedes Benz’
If the sessions had all dissolved into parties (at it appears) then they’d done a fine job atmospherically speaking but for a new artist this was not going to cut the mustard commercially (just a whole bunch of Bolivian marching powder). Stories of a ‘re-mix’ of the work have apparently been making the rounds for many years. Thomas Jefferson Kaye was the original producer but tellingly the original credit ‘Directed by Bob Neuwirth’ appears at the top of the list and this daunting ‘cleaning up’ mix task fell to one John Hanlon, with an equally valuable re-master by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering. The initial vinyl re-issue is a scant 750 copies so I would guess someone checked the initial sales of the album before pressing! Neuwirth proved he was not ‘just a hanger on’ he could write a song, he could paint too, but in a story akin with his musical career throughout his life (he died at the age of 82 in 2022) was not too interested or adept at selling any of his work. If you can gauge by the company he kept then that was high country (no pun intended) spilling over into legendary. Taking his body of work overall there is some good material scattered though-out his releases so he thoroughly deserves the respect given here in the new (get it while you can) remix reissue.
THE BEATLES RUBBER SOUL
For the first time in their recording career, The Beatles’ Rubber Soul, unlike the five albums that preceded it, was recorded during a continuous period not in fits and starts during breaks between tour dates or other projects.
Recorded in just over four weeks to coincide with the Christmas market, it was released on December 3, 1965. It contained only original material - The Beatles would record no more covers until 1969, with the ‘Maggie May’ excerpt on the Let It Be album. Rubber Soul incorporated various styles that included R&B, the contemporary folk-rock of Bob Dylan and The Band, psychedelic rock and world music through to the use of the Indian sitar.
The album revealed a new musical sophistication and a greater thematic depth without sacrificing any of the bands pop appeal. It was the most important artistic leap in The Beatles career, in that it was a shift away from Beatlemania and teen pop towards more introspective and adult subject matter.
Rubber Soul was The Beatles first release not to feature their name on the cover an uncommon approach in 1965. The album greatly influenced Brian Wilson who believed it was the first time in pop music that the focus has shifted from just making popular singles to making an actual album without the usual filler tracks. His response was the create The Beach Boys’ album, Pet Sounds in 1966.
I can remember hearing Rubber Soul for the first time and to this day, the opening song ‘Drive My Car’ remains with me as one of the most exciting opening tracks to any rock album I’ve ever heard. The song’s theme concerns a woman who is convinced she’s going to be a movie star and offers the male protagonist the opportunity to be her chauffeur. When he agrees to her proposal, she admits to not having a car, “but she’s found a driver and that’s a start.” When Paul, who provided lead vocal, guitar and piano, first wrote the lyrics, the chorus
By Billy Pinnell
began “you can buy me diamond rings”, a cliché used twice before in ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘I Feel Fine’. John told Paul the lyrics were too soft suggesting they should be replaced by the “drive my car theme”. ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’, mostly written by John about an extra-marital affair he was having, is generally credited as sparking a musical craze for the sound of Indian sitar provided by George Harrison who first heard it used on the set of the Help! movie. George was introduced to the instrument in August of 1965 during The Beatles American tour by Roger McGuinn and David Crosby of The Byrds. The three musicians spent a day jamming on their 12 string guitars and discussing the music of the Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar whose influences musically and spiritually would have a significant impact on George’s life.
The Byrds also played an important role in one of George Harrison’s most successful songs, ‘If I Needed Someone’, the guitar figure being derived from McGuinn’s riff in their recording ‘The Bells of Rhymney.’ ‘Think for Yourself’, the first of George’s songs not to be a love song, is a warning about the government and their lies.
In another departure from all precedent at the time, Paul recorded two bass lines, a normal one and one created by Paul’s then-unique application of a fuzz box to his bass.
‘Michelle’, composed principally by Paul, won the Grammy for Song of the Year in 1967 and has become one of the best known and most covered of The Beatles’ songs.
Paul wrote the tune in Chet Atkin’s finger picking style on his acoustic guitar and sang some of the lyrics on French assisted by a French teacher, the wife of one of his mates.
John suggested the ‘I love you’ bridge after hearing Nina Simone’s version of ‘I Put a Spell On You’ on which she emphasised the last word, ‘I Love YOU’. Inspired by Bob Dylan, John began to express what he described as “what I feel about myself” resulting in one of his greatest compositions ‘In My Life’, in which he describes the sights he remembers seeing on a Liverpool bus journey in his youth.
‘What Goes on’, originally written by John in the Quarrymen days was resurrected as Ringo’s vocal piece for Rubber Soul providing the drummer with his first ever composing credit on a Beatles’ song. ‘Run For Your Life’ is primarily written by John, its misogynistic message, “I’d rather see you dead little girl, than with another man,” taken from Elvis Presley’s Sun recording ‘Baby Let’s Play House’. ‘You Won’t See Me’ and ‘I’m Looking Through You’ were both written by Paul about his doomed relationship with Jane Asher. ‘Girl’ had backing vocals influenced by The Beach Boys, while ‘The Word” featured a zany piano introduction from Paul derived from the comic piano passages in the Goon Show. ‘Nowhere Man’ - another example of John’s newfound personal, reflective song writing - and ‘Wait’ (originally recorded for Help!) complete one of the greatest albums in popular music.
By Trevor J. Leeden
AJ LEE & BLUE SUMMIT
CITY OF GLASS
Signature Sounds/Redeye/ Planet
Every now and then an album arrives so fully formed it betrays the youthful inexperience of its protagonists. The third album from the San Francisco based quartet is a joyous, feel-good outpouring firmly grounded in their bluegrass roots whilst injecting exuberant doses of country, even dabbling in a bit of Candi Staton-inspired soul. Jan Purat’s fiddle, Lee’s mandolin and two flat-picked guitars courtesy of Scott Gates and Sullivan Tuttle (Molly’s sibling) ebb and flow through a dazzling set of songs that range from the humorous to the subdued and the occasional barn burning stomper.
TEX PISTOLS
DO COWBOYS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP Independent
After the quickfire release of Never Mind The Bullocks and S.L.A.P., misfortune struck the Pistols and the band went into a lengthy hiatus. But there’s more than one way to shear a (electric) sheep, and with a rejigged new lineup, they’re back with all guns blazing on a twanging road trip across the Deep South. The tongue is placed firmly in the cheek on the swinging Tex-Mex romp ‘One God, One Country, One Gun’, ‘Fax From Elvis’ is a crackling rockabilly homage to the King, and ‘Cadillac Dreamin’’ rides on a choogling Bo Diddley beat. Hold onto your Stetsons, the Pistols are back!
BLUE RONDO BEES KNEES AND CHICKEN ELBOWS
Cherry Red/Planet
A child of the early 1980s, New Jazz defined ‘cool’, spawning artists such as Working Week, Sade, and Blue Rondo a la Turk. Following the release of their debut album
Chewing The Fat, and the departure of several members to form the global hitmakers Matt Bianco, the surviving trio ditched the ‘a la Turk’ and continued their exploration of Latin jazz, salsa and Cuban soul. This would be the band’s final album and, after forty years, it gets a long overdue re-release. Bolstered by an extra disc of alternative mixes and previously unheard recordings, Bees Knees brings the smouldering dancefloors of the eighties back to life.
THE RASCALS
IT’S WONDERFUL
Cherry Red/Planet
Spanning seven discs, this box set collates all the New York quartet’s complete Atlantic recordings from 1965 to 1971, including both mono and stereo mixes of their first four albums. Felix Cavaliere, Eddie Brigati, Dino Danelli and Gene Cornish are rightly seen as the pre-eminent progenitors of blue-eyed soul, but delving deeper than the myriad hit singles dispersed throughout their albums reveals a treasure trove of hidden gems that explore psychedelia, jazz, and even garage rock. Foreign language versions of major singles and numerous hitherto unreleased tracks are included in the superbly annotated compendium that will surely leave you groovin’ on any afternoon you choose.
CHUCK PROPHET & QIENSAVE WAKING THE DEAD Yep Roc/Redeye/Planet
Whilst recovering from stage four lymphoma, Prophet found salvation by discovering the delights of Cumbia, the infectious rhythmic music of Latin America. Serendipitously, the veteran roots rock icon crossed paths with Qiensave, a vibrant Cumbia collective with a likeminded spirit of adventure. The upshot is an exhilarating collaboration that references not just their own musical identities but draws upon touchstones such as the San Antonio Tejano sound of the Texas Tornados and Doug Sahm. Whilst the album title (and stunning opening track) is a nod to Prophet’s brush with mortality, the music itself is a life affirming statement writ large.
VANILLA FUDGE WHERE IS MY MIND
Cherry Red/Planet
During the late sixties, the fourpronged behemoth adopted a scorched earth approach that left no genre unscathed in their search for prog nirvana. This thunderous, mind-altering 9-disc box takes in the complete 1967-1969 Atco recordings; from the psychedelic organ drenched eponymous debut that forever painted the Supremes’ ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ in an entirely different light, to the sledgehammer applied to Michel Legrand’s ‘Windmills Of Your Mind’ on 1969’s Rock & Roll, nothing was sacred. Powered by the dynamic rhythm section of Tim Bogert and Carmine Appice (both destined to unite with Jeff Beck), the Fudge took self-indulgence to heights Yes and Deep Purple could only dream of.
GREEN MOHAIR SUITS STAN WELLA
Independent/Bandcamp
If you’re a sucker for the close four-part harmonies of the Beach Boys, Fleet Foxes or CSNY, then the quartet’s fifth album is a great stopping point. Ben Romalis, Jason Mannell, Richard Cuthbert and Brian Campeau have drawn inspiration from a songwriting retreat to compose an expansive set of songs. The infectious jangling country-rock (‘Praise The Thaw’), the desolation permeating through the ballad ‘Hell Or High Water’, the delightful whimsy of the McCartney-esque ‘You’ve Done It Again’, and the joyous reggae-infused bonhomie of album standout ‘No One Else’ are a beautifully played delight.
WREN BELLETTE
THIS LOVE WILL DIE Independent/Bandcamp
Right from the opening line of lead track ‘Woman’, Bellette grabs your attention as she caresses the pained lyrics with a vocal performance that is honeyed with the spirit of Bobbie Gentry and burnished with the anguish of Marianne Faithfull. It may have taken Bellette over a decade to get around to recording her solo debut, but writing and performing within a band structure has sharpened her songwriting chops. The nine songs share a deep personal connection that unite into a country-soul heartbreaker, heightened by that voice resonating with emotive melancholy. Wren Bellette may be late arriving but Australian country music has a bright new star.
Simply go to the Rhythms Readers Poll ad online at rhythms.com.au OR SCAN THIS QR CODE VOTING CLOSES AT MIDNIGHT ON SUNDAYDECEMBER8,2024 ResultsoftheReaders Poll will bepublishedintheJanuary/ FebruaryeditionofRhythms andonlineonJanuary1, 2025.
THE RHYTHMS READERS POLL 2024
For as long as the arts have existed, so too have opinions. You know what they say, everyone has one! The ancient Greeks apparently implemented the earliest form of democracy and back in 500BC they voted for the leaders or candidates they most wanted to be exiled for the next ten years. While we highly approve of this innovative system and wish it could be applied in politics these days your choice is much simpler and more positive.
Rhythms has now opened up the polls so you can have your say about the best albums, gigs, tours, festivals, books and movies that have enthralled you in the past year. Why vote? Thanks for asking.
You can help to spotlight artists who might get completely overlooked in the mainstream i.e. most of the musicians we cover in Rhythms! You can bring joy and a little ray of sunshine into the lives of those who toil away creating their art for little or no reward. (Hey, that’s us!).
Just imagine how the life of Vincent Van Gogh would have been transformed had he won a Rhythms Readers Poll category. Okay, maybe that’s a bad example but you get the general picture. You can lift someone up and bring them joy. (Where have we heard that recently?).
Voting for the Rhythms Readers Poll is officially open and will run until midnight on Sunday December 8, 2024. The results will then be shared online on January 1 and in our January/February edition. So, take a long think back to the start of the year and make your choices on not only what has captured your attention but also on what you think deserves wider recognition. We have provided a selection of albums from which to choose but you can add your own choices.
Have your say in choosing the best albums, gigs, music books and films of the year. Modern democracy in action. We would love your contribution.
By Trevor J. Leeden
NICK CHARLES FURTHER DOWN THE LINE Independent
Nobody is under any illusions about the difficulty of surviving in the Australian music industry, much less in a niche genre that falls under the loose category of roots music. That Nick Charles has forged a career in acoustic blues that started in the early seventies and now spans six decades is testament to several things, not least his virtuosity of his instrument of choice, Australian made Maton six and twelve-string acoustic guitars. Further Down The Line marks a recording career approaching 20 albums, an ideal time to talk to Nick about his musical journey and new album.
“Initially, I played electric guitar throughout the 70s and the early 80s in numerous original bands, but I was always an acoustic player at heart” says Nick. “After that I didn’t touch the electric guitar a lot for nearly 40 years, too much noise and, besides, the acoustic is a part of me.” It took until 1999 for Charles to release his first solo acoustic blues album My Place, an album that has been a template for subsequent releases containing a mixture of self-penned instrumentals, original songs and judicious covers. As it so happens, the new album took some time to gestate. Says Nick: “I was thinking I wasn’t going to do another one after I brought out Guitar Music literally the day before the Covid lockdown. Having toured the US 13 times and played in excess of 300 shows, released numerous solo albums in a niche market, I was questioning whether to continue down the same credit card debt path. However, I kind of got talked into it by an insistent friend who was enthusiastic about what I’d been playing. And so here I am again, I’m still here, waiting for someone to pick up one of the songs to cover and make a hit of it…haha.”
Eight of the eleven tracks are original instrumentals/songs. Is the motivation to compose new music still strong? “Absolutely” says Nick, “whilst I don’t necessarily like recording, I love the writing. I make music by creating melodies, sometimes the melody and lyrics come at the same time, others start to form from a basic idea. Some of these came quickly, others on the album took a long time. Then there are songs like Merle Travis’ iconic fingerstyle classic ‘Cannonball Rag’ that I’ve been playing a long time and it seems right to now record it.” Unlike several previous albums there is no underlying theme running through the songs, however a significant point of difference is that it is much more live in the studio than previous albums. “All the guitar and vocals have been recorded at the same time, it’s more homogenous. There are mistakes on there you know, well not mistakes but things that otherwise I would have slaved over, little things that ultimately don’t really matter, so I’ve done it more for the feel. I tried to trick myself into thinking I could make something perfect, which is ridiculous, if it’s perfect then something’s wrong. I mean, I still can’t play without mistakes, and after all, Miles Davis said he didn’t trust a record without mistakes on it.”
Do you have a personal favourite track? “That changes a bit” comments Nick, “but I’d probably say the instrumental ‘Along The Milky Way’, it’s the very slow, jazzy blues ballad that owes a debt to Duke Ellington’s beautiful slow melodies.” And what about ‘Right Before Our Eyes’, a rare foray into topical environmental themes? “No, I haven’t finally gone political in my old age, it just seemed to come together like that! I’m not overtly political, certainly never on stage, I
don’t want to divide my audience. I like to read poetry, and the song idea came out of a really famous Shelley poem called Ozymandias about Egyptian pharaohs and the ravages of time.”
Apart from the terrific reading of Travis’ “Cannonball Rag”, the album features two other covers, a trait that Charles has employed throughout his solo recordings. Past albums have included songs by his guitar icons ranging from the black American fingerpickers of the ragtime era through to more contemporary artists. It could be a tune from Blind Blake, Mississippi John Hurt, Tampa Red or the mighty Big Bill Broonzy (his 16 Tons album was a defining moment in Charles’ career), or equally Norman Blake, Doc Watson, Davy Graham, John Fahey or Lennon & McCartney. This time it’s Clapton and Dylan. “I’m not afraid to do a cover, I’m not precious. It’s a bit of a guidepost for the listener” states Nick. “They’re usually songs that I’ve been playing live for years and developed a kind of bond with them.
“The version of “One More Night” from Nashville Skyline is much more up-tempo than Dylan’s original. The actual influence on it is the version by (bluegrass fingerpicking legend) Tony Rice who plays it quite quickly, as he does everything. So, it’s my fingerpicking take on Tony Rice doing Dylan.” And the Clapton song “Wonderful Tonight”?
“I’ve always loved this song, it’s got a great feel and a wonderful melody. I just felt that such a beautiful melody, one of his finest, was deserving of an instrumental interpretation.” It is a sublime moment on the record.
Given his lofty status as a fingerpicker of the highest order, does Charles consider himself more an instrumentalist than a vocalist? “I don’t sing often. I sing but I wouldn’t say I’m a singer. Performers who are far more motivated and skilled from the instrumental aspect of things are able to mould their voice to achieve that. For example, Nick
Cave said he fundamentally has an issue with his own singing, and I get it, but he sings and imparts his feelings into song, and it’s great. Bert Jansch never had a great voice, but it suited what he wrote, and Dave Alvin does that in a blues sense.”
Aside from having a new album to promote, Charles also has a continuing partnership with Mick Pealing, as a duo and as a member of country-rock stalwarts Stars. “Mick has a very versatile voice, he’s one of Australia’s truly great singers” states Nick. “I’ve been with Stars for about seven years now, and what I draw out of that is the songwriting. We’ve done three albums, two of which Mick and I wrote the songs for. I fingerpick on my Telecaster to create that classic Stars sound, I sort of fill the role of the late Andy Durant, who was also a fingerpicker. I admired Andy’s songwriting, especially “Riverboats” and “Ocean Deep”.
Guitar virtuosity comes in varying ways, do you choose pyrotechnics or feel? “You go where you’re drawn” says Nick. “What I’ve taken from the blues is the emotiveness. I can listen to exceedingly brilliant pyrotechnical guitar players and be impressed for five minutes, but then I get bored with it. I’d rather hear B.B. King play two notes! I can hear the same thing in John Williams playing Bach as I hear in Stefan Grossman playing a rag, I hear the emotion through the music.”
Further Down The Line is an acoustic blues delight. Liz Frencham, Nick’s favourite acoustic double bass player, and pedal steel whiz Ed Bates create beautiful ambient sounds on selected tracks, but this is primarily Nick Charles and his Maton. There’s no frenzied fretboard assault, instead it is a showcase of what defines him, his outstanding songwriting and interpretive skills, and the virtuosic fingerpicking that places him at the forefront of this country’s acoustic guitarists.
By Ian McFarlane
CAPTAIN MATCHBOX WHOOPEE BAND SMOKE DREAMS
(2024
Remastered CD Reissue, Aztec
Records)
Ican recall hearing the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band’s 1973 single ‘My Canary has Circles Under His Eyes’ on Melbourne radio station 3XY as a kid and being intrigued by its quirky sound and kooky lyrics – “Since making whoopee became all the rage / it’s even got into the old bird cage”. My 13-year-old musical world at that stage was David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Sweet, Slade and Suzi Quatro, yet here was a local band that was just as appealing.
I also had no knowledge, at the time, that it was a cover of an old vaudevillian foxtrot song from the 1930s. A couple of years later Captain Matchbox came out with an even better song, ‘Wangaratta Wahine’, a band-penned tune this time, that was hilarious and still one of the most original from the era. And what about their appearance on Countdown: singer Mic Conway has the plastered-down, parted hair and he’s making silly parping noises with his lips; his brother Jim is playing the catchiest harp lick while wearing a furry, orange kangaroo suit with huge feet; piano player Jim Niven’s gurning with bulging eyes; and bass player Dave Flett is wearing a big shit-eating grin. And all the while it’s clattering percussion, gypsy violin and a riot of other colourful costumes. And little did I know then, the song was about Mic getting kicked out of a Hume Highway roadhouse while being stoned off his face!
Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band certainly latched on to that irreverent dope smoking lark from early on. ‘That Cat is High’, another 1930s song included on Smoke Dreams lays things on the table straight
up – “That cat is high, he’s higher than the sky / that cat is high, just look at them two stoned eyes”. Or what about their version of Stuff Smith’s classic jazz hop tune ‘If You’se a Viper’ from the Wangaratta Wahine album – “Dreaming of a reefer five foot long...”, all of which makes me think of them as akin to Monty Python meets Cheech and Chong and just a load of roaring good fun.
The band came out of that radical, countercultural arts world of the late-‘60s-early-‘70s but they spiced their musical vision by presenting music from a by-gone era in a contemporary rock setting. Instead of taking inspiration from the likes of Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix or The Band, the Conway brothers were listening to old 78-RPM records by Al Bowlly, Fats Waller, Memphis Minnie, Jelly Roll Morton, the Memphis Jug Band and Gus Cannon’s Jug Stompers. Musically they played everything from jug band blues and gypsy swing to rowdy folk and jazz, all enlivened with sideshow entertainment and vaudeville lunacy. They were contemporaries of Spectrum, MacKenzie Theory, Chain, Daddy Cool, Aztecs and the like, yet were readily accepted on the scene as genuine entertainers rather than a mere novelty act.
In the liner notes, Conway explains, “You couldn’t really pigeon-hole us into any genre really. We weren’t rock’n’roll but we worked the rock scene; we weren’t jazz, but we worked the jazz scene. We weren’t really folk, even though we were acoustic. It was really like some perverse joke, but audiences went with us. We just couldn’t believe that we were playing on the rock scene. Look, we just really enjoyed it; we were arts students having a great time.”
Smoke Dreams presents a set dominated by 1920s and 1930s ragtime jazz, blues and jug band standards. As well as ‘My Canary...” and ‘That Cat is High’, there’s the breakneck ‘Who Walks in When I Walk Out’ and ‘I Can’t Dance (Got Ants in My Pants)’ which were two of their regular stage favourites. ‘Nagasaki’ was a popular Tin Pan Alley song, recorded by the likes of Fats Waller, Cab Calloway and Django Reinhardt – “Back in Nagasaki where the fellas chew tabaccy / and the women wicky-wacky-woo”. The warped country folk tune ‘Mobile Line (France Blues)’ was originally recorded by New York folk duo The Holy Modal Rounders. Waller had recorded the pensive ‘Smoke Dreams (Of You)’ in 1939, and here they’ve added organ and mandolin to highlight the lonely reverie of a hapless romantic left without his baby.
Considering the album is over 50 years old, musically it still offers dividends with repeated listening. This Aztec reissue boasts remastered sound by Gil Matthews, as well as bolstering the original 11-song programme with five rare bonus cuts, including their awardwinning, 1977 Jaffas commercial – “You can’t roll your Jaffas down the aisle anymore, but you can still have a rattling good time!”. And don’t forget that Mic Conway is still performing to this day.
By Ian McFarlane
STEVE TALLIS MEMORY GHOST
Zombi Music
Australian blues guitarist-singer-songwriter Steve Tallis has been playing and recording since the late 1960s. Originally from Perth WA, he’s been a resident of Paris, France for 10 years or more. His style is unique in an Australian context although names such as Howlin’ Wolf, Dr. John, Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits might be mentioned by way of reference points. Tallis often digs deeper than those roots might suggest, incorporating blues rock, country blues, spirituals and field hollers and always with a voodoo swamp slant.
In the past I’ve enjoyed his albums Monkey Skulls and Thunderstones (1997), Zozo (1999), Jezebel Spirit (2006), Loko (2004) and Where Many Rivers Meet (2020). Various media commentaries over the years have declared Tallis to be a “Blues shaman” and “A bit of a loose cannon, a maverick, a highly individual performer, a major talent!” (Rhythms, no less), while others described his music as “Voodoo blues!” and “Zombified acid blues!”.
Tallis says, “I call myself a storyteller / griot – all my songs are my life stories. The Blues are my roots – along with music from the Balkans and basically music from the 1950s and ‘60s. In many ways I don’t fit anywhere, which I prefer. I detest purists of any kind; to me that is way too narrow minded. Blues is infinite in my opinion which many are ignorant of.”
Memory Ghost is his monumental new album; monumental in the sense that it’s a 3-CD set comprising a whopping 66 songs and over four hours of music. Tallis explains he just had so many songs he wanted to release that three CDs were his preferred option. And it’s a Limited Edition of 1,000 copies and all in glorious mono (his preferred sound). He says, “A memory ghost is a memory that is so strong, it’s left an invisible mark so it can never be forgotten. Some memory ghosts are so strong they cause an eruption of emotions”.
“Initially I wanted to do a double album – solo and band,” Tallis explains. “But I was in contact with my percussionist / close friend Gary Ridge who lives in Brazil. We did four albums together previously – Monkey Skulls, Loko, Zozo and Jezebel Spirit. He said he wanted to be involved in the project. Initially I was a bit hesitant as I always record live first take together in the same room. But I trust him, so I sent him the solo session which was about 30 songs approximately and he chose the songs he wanted to put percussion and some loops on. And then we created about six songs on top of those – including four spoken word tracks with percussion and loops – which was very interesting. I recorded a few songs on my phone which we also used. I am 100% satisfied with the final result. Also, the cover is by a close friend in France, Frederick Voisin, and I think it is perfect for the music; a powerful, strong image.”
Right off the bat there’s a hell of a lot of music to get your head around but each CD is themed accordingly, to ease you into the sequence. CD #1 is Tallis and Ridge. Tallis recorded his guitar parts, live and mostly first take, in Freemantle with engineer Rob Grant, and sent them to Ridge for his evaluation and percussive input. ‘Jezabel is on the Prowl’, ‘Bite the Bullet’ and ‘I’d Rather be a Hobo than a Bobo’ stand out, nestled next to traditional numbers such as ‘True Religion’ and ‘The Devil’s on the Mainline’ and a rendition of Blind Willie Johnson’s ‘God Moves on the Water’.
CD #2 is Tallis and his Perth band The Snakes of Desire, comprising Phil Bradley (guitars), Yugon Chobanoff (drums) and Hans-Aage Deberitz (bass). Recorded live, first take, with improvisation also on the agenda, they get downright deep and dirty with raunchy blues rock that will get your hips a’shakin’ and your feet a’jumpin’. ‘It Never Entered My Mind’, ‘Two Sides to Every Story’, ‘Where Many Rivers Meet’, ‘Cut Your Heart in Two’ and ‘Skeletons in the Closet’ crackle with gritty guitar riffs and Tallis’s rich vocal tones. It’s a rattling good time! I asked Tallis if he tells the other guys how to play certain licks or what to add to a song? “No,” is his emphatic reply. “They have complete 100% freedom to interpret my music / songs as they feel or hear them. I don’t believe in mistakes. I never rehearse; I get too bored and prefer to keep my songs and music fresh. I have a very simple clear philosophy: when I get on stage I am playing the song for the first time, previous shows, albums mean nothing. Many songs they have never played or heard before – I play the songs to them solo – we discuss a few ideas and then we just record. I rarely do a song more than once. It’s just the way I work.”
CD #3 is Tallis solo with 12-string acoustic guitar. This music is drenched in emotionally charged, deep seated memories. They might touch on stories of grim, tortured souls in a Biblical setting yet ultimately, they’re about redemption. “I’ve settled my account with God”, Tallis sings in ‘I Beg Your Pardon’. ‘The Memory Ghost’, ‘Lizard’ and ‘Arrows of Desire’ match it with versions of John Lee Hooker’s ‘I’m Mad Again’, Willie Dixon’s ‘Same Thing’ and Jagger-Richards’ ‘Spider and the Fly’.
His songs predominate but I ask him how he goes about selecting other songs to cover? “I have so many favourite Blues songs in my vast repertoire, so choosing them is easy really. I don’t really ‘cover’ them – I interpret them to make them sound like one of mine. The a cappella field hollers are a critical part of my whole show / musical philosophies.”
It does seem to me that Tallis might have spread himself far and wide across this project, but there is plenty of decent music here. And in keeping everything live, raw and spontaneous, he’s proven that blues and roots music of this nature retains a deep quality that anything more polished and higher tech would render things false and flaccid. Tallis goes on to explain, “I don’t believe in any restrictions, boundaries, rules, regulations etc. I take risks. There is no such thing as ‘too far and wide’ for me. I flatly refuse to compromise my music or beliefs for anyone, or any amount of money offered to me. I write a very wide variety of songs so whatever I compose is just part of the big picture.”
I sign off by asking what’s next for Steve Tallis? “I will play music till the day I die. It is my life. So, my answer is basically to keep playing, composing, recording, touring, stay healthy, happy and focused. I have plenty to say on many subjects – I am always writing down ideas. I carry a notebook with me at all times.”
STUART COUPE PRESENTS
ASLEEP AT THE REEL
Asleep at the Reel are a genre hopping Brisbane-based ensemble equally comfortable with an Irish jig or singalong as they are with a dance hall country shuffle. Yes, it’s folk music – but not as we know it, Jim! Their original music is powered by the deft song writing of Mark Cryle whose songs, according to a recent reviewer in Dublin’s Irish Music Magazine, ‘evoke the centres of our Irish world whether it be the pub or the parish; he has conjured up places where craic and companionship are the glue of life’.
Asleep at the Reel have now released two CDs of original music – The Emerald Dream (2018) and Time and Tide (2021). Each is a rich and diverse collection which joins the dots between Celtic music and contemporary Australian song a ‘wonderful melding of Celtic influences and Australian stories’ as another reviewer noted.
Asleep at the Reel have forged original songs and tunes which one commentator has recently called ‘the cultural vaccine for the Irish Diaspora.’ The band take its stylings from their roots in the peat-smoked pubs of Ireland and Scotland, from the kitchen, the hearth, the veranda, the dance hall and the shearing shed all the way to the stage where they throw in a little backbeat just for the fun of it.
asleepatthereelband.com
KEEPING NORTH
Inspired by an overnight, postgig road trip from East Germany to Amsterdam, fuelled by too many schnapps and motivated by the need to make the stage in time for a Belgian festival, the fictional love story ‘Lightning Strike’ is the second single from Keeping North’s forthcoming debut album ‘Demons & Dreamers.’
Think Robert Plant & Alison Krauss meets The Delines with Joe Tex standing in the corner, and you will have some idea about the new music of Keeping North. A hypnotic blend of contemporary folk, country soul and Americana -- but based on decidedly Australian characters.
The band’s songs are from the pen of highly regarded writer Steve Tyson, about whom respected music critic Noel Mengel (Courier Mail) had this to say… “these are songs that are built to last.” keepingnorth.com
JODI MARTIN
South Australian singer-songwriter Jodi Martin continues to release worldclass singles from her Anniversary Box Set The Never Settle Trilogy. The first single ‘Never Settle’ premiered on the Australian country charts. The second single ‘Country Mile‘, featuring Lachlan Bryan, was playlisted on ABC Country’s ‘Grassroots’, received airplay across Australia and spearheaded Jodi’s warmly-received ‘Country Mile’ National Spring Tour. This Summer sees Jodi release the third single, a radio edit of her hilariously dramatic blues rap ‘Tommy the Toyota’ - the true story of her dad’s beloved 40 series Landcruiser ute. The radio single features 8 Ball Aitken’s blues production aesthetic and is an Aussie classic! Tommy the Toyota’s mantra ‘Never Say Die’ is symbolic of Jodi’s songwriting career to date. Kicking off at 16, when Kasey Chambers recorded her song Why on the ARIA-Award winning album Homefires, Jodi is seven indie albums in and hitting her stride. Tour dates and Trilogy orders at jodimartin. com
KATANKIN
Said The Starling, is the much-anticipated debut album from Melbourne singersongwriter Katankin. Following her awardnominated 2022 debut EP, Katankin began work on a full album early this year, again arranging and producing all the tracks herself, but this time accompanied by a full band. The result is a powerful, eclectic and extremely well-crafted offering, marked by the artist’s signature poeticism, razor-sharp lyrics and uniquely expressive vocals. The songs by turns uplift and shatter; Katankin’s angelic voice tenderly caresses you one moment, before scathingly, blisteringly, slamming you down the next, in an impressive showcase of her range as both singer and songwriter.
Said The Starling is out on vinyl, CD, and all digital platforms, with Katankin launching the album in Melbourne at a rare performance with full band, in the gorgeous Wesley Anne band room on Sunday November 17. Tickets on sale at Oztix.
katankin.com
RICHARD MADDEN Awarding winning songwriter Richard Madden is back with a new single titled ‘Hands of Time’. Produced, performed and written by Richard Madden. Production duties were handled by the legendary team of Tony Wall (mixing) and Paul Gomersall (mastering). The innovative music video accompanying the single was produced by Paul Ribera @ Raincloudstories (check it out exclusively on YouTube).
This marks the first studio recording since Richard’s 2021’s Second Nature album which featured ‘Heavy Load’ (1st place Rock/Indie Australian Songwriters Award 2021) and is following in the footsteps of Richard’s 2022 brilliant live album ‘Get a Load of This!’. Since the single’s release, the song has slowly been gaining traction around the globe with a number of glowing endorsements. Do yourself a favour, check it out for yourself! Hands of Time | Richard Madden (bandcamp.com)
SEAN POWER & THE MAIN STREET BAND
‘Battle Song’ is the third single from the upcoming album Black Letter Day by Sean Power & The Main Street Band.
Its inspiration came from a 1910 Gibson Mandolin borrowed for overdubs on the record. During recording sessions, lead singer Sean Power found the mandolin so captivating that he wrote “Battle Song” on the spot. ‘Battle Song’ tells the story of a lonesome soul navigating peril in search of salvation. Blending a nostalgic Country Gospel feel with an Alternative Country sound, ‘Battle Song’ features beautiful gospel harmonies by Marie Bond, enhancing its raw emotional depth. Propelled by the mandolin motif, the gospel organ and tremolo guitar add to the songs soulful and haunting mood. The minimalist production evokes early Outlaw country recordings and captures the aesthetic of a Coen Brothers film. ‘Battle Song’ is available for streaming on the December 3 with vinyl release due for early February 2025. seanpowerandthemainstreetband.com
By Ian McFarlane
NICKY DEL REY’S MISADVENTURES
Nicky Del Rey’s Misadventures Independent LP
Melbourne guitarist Nicky Del Rey has been twanging his way around the country for 40 years. I first saw him when he was a member of the King Jerklews, a three-piece combo playing a stripped back mix of hillbilly country and rockabilly. They used to do a clean picking version of The Velvet Underground’s ‘What Goes On’, which was great fun as I recall.
Later on, it was with Intoxica and most recently I caught him playing with The Cartridge Family. As a journeyman musician, in between there’s been a cavalcade of other bands, such as Truckasaurus with Lisa Miller, Doug Mansfield’s Dust Devils, Sherry Rich’s Grievous Angels (having replaced Steve Connolly), Moonee Valley Drifters, Sideshow Brides and Jack Howard’s Epic Brass. And not forgetting his bands, country outfit Slowtown Social Club and Surf & Turf.
He’s certainly a well-connected and much respected player. His latest band, Nicky Del Rey’s Misadventures, comprises Layla Jean Fibbins (Sideshow Brides) on guitar, Dave Folley (Mick Thomas; Man in Black) on drums and Tom Heathcote (Midnight Woolf) on bass. (Lluis Sanchez [aka Lluis Fuzzhound, Thee Cha Cha Chas] played drums on the album.)
The promo material refers to Del Rey as the “Titan of the Telecaster” which is certainly appropriate. I can think of other such epithets as “Sultan of the Strings”, “Nabob of the Knobs”, “Prince of the Plank”... okay, you get the picture.
On the band’s eponymous debut album, he gets to grips with a modern take on the ‘60s guitar instrumental, with ten tracks representing the classic LP music programme of five-tracks-a-side. In the first instance you’ll think of the likes of The Ventures, The Chantays, Dick Dale and the Del Tones, Link Wray and the Ray Men, The Safaris, The Lively Ones and The Atlantics.
Hearing the likes of self-penned tunes ‘Point Impossible’ and ‘Thirteenth Beach’ (just west of Barwon Heads in Victoria, by the way) plus the cover of The Ventures’ ‘Diamond Head’, there’s that surf rock sound but it’s not clear cut all the way. For example, ‘Green Ham’ sounds like Stevie Ray Vaughan jamming with Booker T. And the MG’s. The reverential version of Nirvana’s ‘Heart-Shaped Box’, a rip-roaring cover of Roger & the Gypsies’ obscure ‘Pass the Hatchet’, plus a wigged-out rendition of the traditional Jewish folk song ‘Hava Nagila’, get a big tick as well. All up, there’s surf rock, R&B (in the original rhythm and blues sense) and garage rock mixed in for maximum effect, with that all important seasoning of Memphis soul.
To my ears it mostly recalls The Raybeats, a 1980s New York instrumental combo made up of members from various NY No Wave groups such as James Chance and the Contortions (guitarists Don Christensen and Jody Harris) and 8 Eyed Spy (alto sax player Pat Erwin). The drummer, Danny Amis, went on to join Los Straightjackets later in the decade. They were one of the first surf revival groups. I used to really dig their 1984 album It’s Only a Movie; fun fact: one track on the album was a cover of Jim Waller and the Deltas’ ‘Soul Beat/Intoxica’. I’m also reminded of when The Stems’ main man Dom Mariani fronted his sideline band The Majestic Kelp.
Sonically it’s a well recorded production – by Craig Harnath and Jezz Giddings at Hothouse Audio and produced by Del Rey – with a clean sound and just that big reverb drenched guitar twang leading the way. And the punchy bass lines and snappy drums support the allimportant bottom end with great alacrity. There’s a nagging twinge in my mind that this fun-packed LP might struggle to find an audience beyond a cult fanbase. Melbourne community radio station 3RRR has already given the album a blast, and I really hope the word gets out to the wider listening public.
By Ian McFarlane
THE SAINTS (I’M) STRANDED Box (4-LP Deluxe Edition)
In The Red Records/Universal Music Australia
For some time now, The Saints machine has been gearing up for action. By the time you read this, the (I’m) Stranded box set will have hit the shop shelves and The Saints ’73-’78 will have launched their Australian tour. With legendary guitarist/song writer/main man Ed Kuepper and drummer Ivor Hay leading the charge, the rest of the band will comprise Peter Oxley (bass), Mick Harvey (rhythm guitar) and, perhaps most controversially, Mudhoney’s singer Mark Arm out front. Is Arm effectively replacing the late great Chris Bailey? That’s a tall order, if essentially impossible, but I would expect that he will put in a sterling performance which will do justice, and complement, the original spirit of the band.
It was inevitable then, that someone (i.e. Ed Kuepper) would curate a remastered and expanded edition of one of this country’s very best debut albums, the monumental (I’m) Stranded. Although received cautiously by the general listening public at the time of its original February 1977 release, dedicated fans of the band have always believed in the healing power of this record. I recall telling Kuepper in an interview many years ago, that I really liked the rough, whiteknuckle sound of the record, to which he quipped, “Oh, we were actually trying to be slick and commercial there!”.
Of course, it has been recognised now, across the board, as a landmark album that has lost none of its power and importance in the subsequent 37 years. I wouldn’t be alone in the opinion that not only is (I’m) Stranded “one of this country’s very best debut albums”, but also that its place in the Top 5 Very Best Australian Albums of All Time list is a foregone conclusion.
Before we even get to the music, what does this box set contain? The promo material tells me: the album remastered by Don Bartley for vinyl for the first time in over 40 years; a five-song live performance from Paddington Town Hall Sydney (3 April 1977, supporting Radio Birdman) remastered and appearing on vinyl for the first time; a full live performance from the Hope & Anchor Front Row Festival, London November 1977, remastered and appearing on vinyl for the first time; all three tracks from the 1977 ‘This Perfect Day’ 12” single and all four tracks from the 1977 1-2-3-4 double 7” single, remastered; the previously unreleased 1976 demo mix of the full (I’m) Stranded album; a 28-page 12” x 12” photo essay of the band covering their origins from 1973 through the end of 1977, an authorised band history, an 8” x 10” 1976 promo photo and an (I’m) Stranded sticker.
As for the music? It’s damn near perfect. The thrust of the release is clearly the audio quality, which is spectacular, but for mine the question is: do the songs hold up? Hell yes! Here’s the how and why…
When The Saints first stepped in to a recording studio (Brisbane’s Window Studios, with engineer Mark Moffatt) in June 1976, they had already been in operation for three years. The fact that the howling, milestone single they cut, ‘(I’m) Stranded’, had been written in 1974 is doubly prophetic. Issued in September 1976, in a limited run of 500 copies, on the band’s own Fatal Records imprint, ‘(I’m) Stranded’ remains one the greatest singles this country has ever seen.
Alongside Radio Birdman’s Burn My Eye EP (issued in October) ‘(I’m) Stranded’ kicked off the Australian new wave movement in a shower of teenage sweat and pure adrenaline. Fuelled by Kuepper’s frenetic, surging power chords, Bailey’s cheap’n’nasty vocal sneer and the reckless rhythmic drive provided by Kym Bradshaw and Ivor Hay, the song was an instant classic. The opening lines of “Like a snake calling on the phone / I got no time to be alone” were like a rallying cry, and when Bailey snarled “Aw-right!!” at the end of the chorus, you knew it was a celebration: he was happy to be stranded! It was desperately exciting, powerhouse rock’n’roll.
From a historical perspective, it’s important to note that this was when the Ramones debut album was still fairly new, and prior to The Damned, Sex Pistols or The Clash even making it on to vinyl. The Saints seemed ideally placed for a prime spot amid the burgeoning punk phenomena, although the band members themselves didn’t see it that way. ‘(I’m) Stranded’ revealed more of a reverence for rock’n’roll’s timeless tenets than most of the then spiky-topped upstarts would ever have deemed important or even, heaven forbid, creditable.
The single received scant attention in Australia; nevertheless, the band sent copies overseas and were swiftly rewarded with glowing reviews in England’s Melody Maker, Sounds (with reviewer Jonh Ingram declaring it to be “Single of This and Every Week”) and punk fanzine Sniffin’ Glue, plus French paper Rock News. ‘(I’m) Stranded’ became a pioneering international proto-typical punk hit, yet the band still hadn’t played outside of hometown Brisbane; it was symptomatic of the times that Australia just didn’t know what it had in The Saints. Naturally EMI’s UK headquarters ordered the Australian office to
sign the band, and pronto! After concluding a deal with EMI in late November, The Saints re-entered Window Studios (with EMI staff producer Rod Coe), ostensibly to record a set of demos. The band put down nine new songs in two days flat.
(I’m) Stranded was a truly astonishing debut album, a set full of rough, exhilarating rock’n’roll noise, with turbo-charged rockers like ‘(I’m) Stranded’, ‘Erotic Neurotic’, ‘One Way Street’ and a cover of The Missing Links’ garage punk chestnut ‘Wild About You’, sitting well alongside atmospheric ballads like the Stonesy ‘Messin’ with the Kid’. They stretched out for the epic ‘Nights in Venice’; it starts with a slicing riff not unlike Led Zeppelin’s ‘Communication Breakdown’ on speed and powers ever onwards. It’s on this track that Ed unleashes a wall of sonic white noise that pays an affectionate nod to the work of Stooges guitarist James Williamson on Raw Power. That record – alongside Funhouse, the New York Dolls’ debut and the MC5’s High Time – had been a Kuepper staple for a few years.
There was one further song recorded at the sessions that didn’t make the final cut of the album. Five initial test pressings contained this extra track, ‘Untitled’. As listed on the original master tape box (dated 17/1/77), the initial running order for Side 2 was: ‘Story of Love’, ‘Kissin’ Cousins’, ‘Untitled’, ‘Demolition Girl’ and ‘Nights in Venice’. The band rejected the initial mix, so Kuepper and Bailey threw down a hastily revised mix and re-EQing job. ‘Untitled’ was, for whatever reason, dropped as unsuitable and the music programme re-sequenced for its official release. The original mix, as LP #2, provides a fascinating historical insight into their working methods, but is it essential? Probably not but its place is welcome.
The Saints issued a second single, ‘Erotic Neurotic’ – in which they playfully quoted Lennon-McCartney’s ‘I Wanna be Your Man’ –during May 1977. The band appeared on Countdown to promote its release, but within days had fled the country and arrived in London. They got swept along in the tidal wave that was the British punk explosion, gigging regularly but never really fitting in with such tight classification.
They had long hair for starters. One guy was wearing flared jeans! With nary a safety pin or dog collar in sight! Horror of horrors. To make matters worse, the initial adulation had degenerated into the standard English music press doggerel of “convict rock”, “kangaroo rock”, “play
something fast, Bruce!” and the like. The English press does come around eventually; when Mojo magazine reviewed the 2-CD collection Wild About You 1976-1978 (issued by Raven Records in 2000) the headline proclaimed “Beatification Rock”.
As the band’s next records revealed, The Saints were more attuned to developing far beyond their origins in a relatively short space of time. Their first UK-recorded single, ‘This Perfect Day’, appeared in July 1977 on the Harvest label. It was a powerful and dynamic rocker, a glorious, swirling rush of kinetic energy that put the band within an ace of major chart success.
EMI continued the campaign for the band’s next Harvest release, the One-Two-Three-Four EP in October 1977. It was another strong release which matched re-recordings of two cuts from the debut album (‘Demolition Girl’ and ‘One Way Street’) with ragged but inspired covers of Ike and Tina Turner’s ‘River Deep Mountain High’ and Connie Francis’s ‘Lipstick on Your Collar’, both of which became powerful concert staples.
The two covers had been in The Saints’ repertoire for many years, and what seemed to them to be a natural choice was, to many observers, an audacious, surprising and perhaps fool-hardy move. By that stage, The Saints had replaced bass player Kym Bradshaw with Englishman Alasdair ‘Algy’ Ward (who had joined in July), and completed work on their second album, Eternally Yours
The live album here, LP #4, from the Hope & Anchor Front Row Festival, London, provides further proof that they were a magnificent concert act. Bailey’s between song stage manner and chatter is at times hilarious. Ward’s bass-playing was muscular and brawny in a way that Bradshaw’s never was, so he was an essential part of the sound of the following albums, Eternally Yours and Prehistoric Sounds. He proved his further mettle by going on to play with The Damned and NWOBHM band Tank.
Chris Bailey kept The Saints name alive – but that is another story for another time – and besides, he passed away in April 2022 at the age of 65. Ed Kuepper has continued to pursue an unparalleled career, either solo or within the realms of The Laughing Clowns, The Aints and most recently Asteroid Ekosystem. This box set proves that he and Chris Bailey set out on a path that encompassed greatness right from the outset.
By Michael George Smith
THE SHARP THIS IS THE SHARP
(Vinyl Reissue)
They may have looked like a rockabilly trio in the Stray Cats kind of vein, and they certainly came from a rockabilly covers background, but when singers guitarist Charlie Rooke and double bassist Allan Catlin started writing their own songs, brought in drummer Piet Collins and became The Sharp, they proved to be another kind of vital vibrant animal altogether, pumping out powerpop songs the equal of their heroes, The Beatles, The Kinks and our very own Easybeats. Thirty-one years after the release of their debut album, This Is The Sharp, now reissued on vinyl for the first time, they’re back – or at least Rooke and Catlin are, ably assisted by The Living End’s Scott Owen and, taking up lead vocal duties, Louie Lee Feltrin. Piet Collins brings Michael George Smith up to date.
“The last time we got together was in July 2010 and were fairly happy to let it go, but just in the last few years there’s just been more and more people on our Facebook site asking, ‘When’s it gonna happen?’ So there’s still a lot of interest in the band. Then This Is The Sharp was put on Spotify and the numbers started going up and up and up and we started thinking, well maybe people are still interested. Then at the end of last year, I started getting in contact with Charlie and Allan, and Allan decided he just didn’t want to do it, which is fine – that’s totally up to him – but then I realised that Scott Owen from The Living End was a really huge fan and that he’d be the perfect choice to play double bass. So I called him in January and he said yes immediately, and that’s how it all got started.
“When Scott and the guitarist from The Living End Chris Cheney were 15, 16 years old, they used to sneak out from home and come down to watch The Sharp play down in Melbourne. They were the same thing, played double bass, had the hollow-body guitar, playing rockabilly instruments, but they saw us doing our own originals in sort of a rockpop style and thought that cool, maybe they could do that. So that’s sort of what started The Living End!
“Louie was a friend of a friend, Daniel Tippett, our old lighting guy. We auditioned a few singers but Louie just worked out instantly. He had the right voice, the right harmonies; he’s hilarious on stage and jumps around a lot, and that’s kind of what we do, so he brings a lot of energy. The band is sounding better than ever. We’ve done a bunch of shows, did some James Reyne supports and it’s just been a whole lot of fun getting back out and playing again. Our record company Warner Music approached us about reissuing the album (This Is The Sharp) on vinyl through their website – we were back in the days of CDs and cassettes so never did the vinyl thing. The guy who originally mastered it 31 years ago, Don Bartley, did it this time round for vinyl and it sounds incredible. There’s just a whole lot of extra punch to it now.”
Now, as I pointed out at the top, when The Sharp came out swinging the first time around, it was a pop rather than a rockabilly band.
“The band started as a rockabilly band,” Collins explains. “They were originally called 59 Sharp but we covered songs by The Beatles and the Everly Brothers, all that kind of classic, big ‘50s and ‘60s kind of rock as well as rockabilly, which is sort of how we perfected the vocal harmonies as well – those songs are really reliant on that nice harmony sound. But from the get-go we were determined not to be pushed down that rockabilly track and to really just create our own sound, despite the look.
“Charlie and Allan were the main songwriters but I certainly chipped in from time to time. They’d write together and separately and bring it into the band and that’s where the arranging and the harmonies happened, and where all the little signature bits were thrown in. We’ve written and recorded three new songs with this lineup and that’s going to be released next year as an independent EP. It’s not some new direction for us. It’s still three-minute, hard and fast pop-rock songs, which is what we love to do.”
When This Is The Sharp was first released back in September 1993, it reached #13 in the ARIA charts and spawned three singles – ‘Train Of Thought’, ‘Scratch My Back’ and ‘Yeah I Want You’ – and sent the trio round and round the country as one of the most popular live acts of the day. “The first single we did (‘Love Your Head’) was self-produced and got us some really good exposure on public radio and then the record deal happened and we went into the studio with Pete Farnan from Boom Crash Opera and Nick Mainsbridge, who previously produced Ratcat. That was a great experience – that was in the days of tape and big recording studios! There’s a good deal of variety on the album – that’s one of its charms I think. There are a lot of different moods and styles and tempos.”
That was followed in August 1994 by “the difficult second album”, Sonic Tripod, which, as far as Collins is concerned, wasn’t difficult at all. “It was a pleasure to record and we’re really proud of that album. It didn’t do as well as the first one, which is often the case, but that’s the way things go. When we’ve been performing, we do 95 per cent the first album and probably five per cent the second album, but as we go on, we’ll start including more things from that album. The first album was very upbeat, positive, kind of a little bit innocent I suppose in some ways. The second one was definitely a bit darker, a bit grungier.”
In the end though, the band themselves pretty much burnt out after four incredibly intense years of writing, recording and gigging 365 days a year. “We did a quick overseas tour,” Collins notes. “We went to the UK, Germany, Sweden, went to the US, but it was basically meeting the record company, doing a few shows, shaking hands kind of situation. We didn’t call it quits because we hated each other or anything like that. Really it was just sheer exhaustion.”
There was a final ‘Thank you Goodnight’ tour, a compilation CD of their singles titled, naturally, Single File, and that was that. And now The Sharp are back!
The Sharp Play … Saturday 2 November – Corner Hotel. Richmond VIC, supporting James Reyne Friday 13 December – Memo Music Hall. VIC
By Michael George Smith
ANDY JANS-BROWN FALLING
Independent
Singer, songwriter, guitarist, filmmaker, visual artist – Andy JansBrown is quite the Renaissance man, and remarkably prolific. Falling, his latest release, is his fourth double-album in the past dozen years, and it’s positively bursting with ideas. Kicking off a chat with Rhythms, Michael George Smith couldn’t resist beginning with the fact that here is a songwriter who’s managed to include ‘velociraptor’ in an indie-pop-rock song!
“That actually came from my son,” Jans-Brown laughs. “He was about three and a half at the time and we’d been reading books at night and I came home from work one day and he just ran at me, threw his arms out and jumped on me and said, ‘I’m a meteorite and you’re a velociraptor’! It was exciting because he’d taken the idea of the book that we’d read that was talking about the possible extinction of the dinosaurs and he’d conceptualised it into a play-act. Human brains are great! I threw it into a song and he was rapt – it’s his favourite song now.”
The song is ‘Take Me For A Ride’, song three on Side 1 of the vinyl version of Falling, which, it turns out, wasn’t actually the album he’d intended to make when he reached to his musical offsider, guitarist Cameron Spike-Porter (ex-Rig City), for a hand on a song he was having trouble with. “I’d had a bit of a writer’s block since my son was born,” he admits, “and then COVID happened and there were a lot of culture-shifts and it got to a point where I wondered what I could say and does anyone ever need to hear anything from me ever again? I’d been working on an album for quite some time and that’s when I reached out to Cam, with whom I’d played a number of gigs with the band, and asked him if he could help me with a song for that new album, ‘Escalating Ruination’, and we worked on it together, and we both loved it so much we decided we’d do some more and all of a sudden we had six ideas done and I went, ‘No, this is an album in itself.’ I’ve still got that other album in the works, but this just came out. It was like, once I opened the valve or whatever, all of a sudden words and ideas started just pouring out. It was all written in three or four months.”
While it’s not a concept album, there’s something of a common thread lyrically that runs through the 13 songs. “When I was listening back to it, the penny dropped. I just heard ‘falling’ or ‘fall’ recurring and I thought, ‘Right. This is what I’m trying to communicate to myself.’
I suppose I was reflecting on this whole rise of ‘alternative facts’, ‘alternative truth’, whatever you want to call it and wondering how people I respect suddenly be falling for these ideas. It was just baffling to me so I guess I was always reflecting on these things, so it was more a reflection on the division in our society and how polarised we are because of these bot-driven algorithms that keep us trapped in our own prejudices and cognitive biases. I’d read that really powerful book Mindfuck: Cambridge Analytica and the plot to end America by Christopher Wylie, and that shook me a little bit but it also explained a time that I’d been living through.
“But falling in love; I’ve always been interested in this idea of heroic failure, trying to achieve one thing, we make fools of ourselves constantly, so that was coming out as well. I don’t place myself above
it, but I do lament it, though with the occasional touch of absurdity, like in ‘She’s going out with David’! (more laughter) The older I get, the greater my compassion too.”
Listening to Falling, you realise that Jans-Brown’s voice is as flexible as the musical references and genres his songs encompass, his tone one minute recalling classic ‘90s indie rock, the next The Doors’ Jim Morrison. “He was probably my first hero-crush. I remember being a twelve-year old boy and an older kid coming over with a cassette version of an album called Alive, She Cries by The Doors. I saved up my money and bought it on LP. Those influences, they stay with you and they creep out. Someone else said to me they heard a bit of Billy Idol in there! When people point it out you realise there were all these crushes along the way.”
While Jans-Brown writes, sings and plays acoustic guitars across the album, it’s Spike-Porter who creates a lot of the sonic textures as electric guitarist, bass and synthesiser player. “He’s a wonderful character! We share an enormous amount of influences and we kept sharing music with each other through the process of recording this album as well and I think that really helped.” As for the drums on the record, they were all done in a studio in Los Angeles. “David Ely had been living in Byron Bay for a while and we’d done a lot of gigs together, but he moved back to LA and we just felt that, for these tracks he had that same kind of edge that Cam has. We didn’t want someone too safe and he has his own edge. We demoed the album completely and sent it over to David and he recorded his parts and we re-recorded everything to him.”
As I mentioned earlier Jans-Brown is a visual artist as well as a songwriter and musician, and you can see his work in the clips he’s created for the music he’s made. “The fall-back for me with writing a song has always been to find a melody and mumble it and then try to decipher the mumble. The amazing thing is that often the mumbles are very visual, almost like dreams. It’s like a process of divination, very Jungian in a way, and I guess it’s that dreaminess, looking for what’s under the surface, almost like fishing for the idea. With ‘Take Me For A Ride’ for instance, I must have done 20 or 30 rewrites, digging, trying to bring up – and it was very visual – it was like this process of going into a daydream thinking about symbols.”
Falling is almost like listening to a contemporary indie-pop-rock Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as the listener follows the White Rabbit – Andy Jens-Brown – down that hole that leads… Well, that’s your choice.
By Michael George Smith
KATANKIN SAID THE STARLING
Independent
Katankin is the name by which singer, songwriter, guitarist and remarkably evocative whistler Helen Catanchin and in her debut album, Said The Starling, she has created a remarkably beautiful collection of songs about topics you don’t usually associate with beauty – loss, sadness, love, infidelity, repression, suppression and even a little claustrophobia – along with lots of images of fire, though that’s actually the next album, so we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Katankin ponders all this and more with Michael George Smith.
“I really started writing very intensively when COVID arrived, and I’d actually planned to record the album several times but had the recording dates cancelled because of lockdowns here in Melbourne. Then I did the EP (The quiet shimmer of the world, released in December 2022), which I did as a desperate ‘oh my God I can’t do this I’m going crazy’. So, I just recorded six tracks that worked solo, all acoustic and stripped back. Then early in 2022 I went into the studio and recorded all of these songs, but I’d already started the EP, so they basically got shelved. So, it’s kind of a continuation of the EP.
“The first song that became the springboard for my intensive writing was probably ‘In a New Way’, the first single off the album. That’s a song very much written to myself and about the difficulty I’ve had my whole life to sort of embrace what I think I need to be doing. I was not allowed to be an artist of any kind. I hopped from different things all my childhood, but it was always a flat-out no, ‘You have to be a doctor.’ I know it sounds funny and I sort laugh at it too now but as a child, when you are forming your identity, it’s very stifling and I did not want to be a doctor at all! I compromised and probably around ten years old I said I’d be a vet, because I loved animals, and that led me to zoology and led me to working in that area a little bit – I worked in entomology for a couple of years, but it was always this Plan B. It was never what I really wanted to be doing. So ‘In a New Way’ is really about taking that plunge even if, and I say it the song, we’ve all heard it before. There are millions and millions of songs but damn it I’m going to put my song out there too!”
There’s no song on the album about starlings, but the title is an essential key into what Helen is exploring on Said the Starling. “People attribute the quote, ‘I cannot get out,’ said the starling’, to Nabokov all the time (in his novel Lolita) and it took a lot of digging to finally find that it’s from (18th century Anglo-Irish novelist) Laurence Sterne (in his 1768 book, A Sentimental Journey). I was fascinated by the phrase. There was something melodic about it and I was very curious about its origin and what it was all about. And I have to say, I was sure that the novel’s protagonist lets the starling out. He actually tries and tries but he fails, and the starling is thrusting its head through the bars and continues to say, ‘I can’t get out, I can’t get out.’ And the narrator goes back to his room and contemplates on it as a theme for incarceration and slavery.
“Anyway, I loved that but I don’t feel incarcerated or imprisoned, until I read (early 20th century American poet) the Amy Lowell poem, The Starling, and straight away, reading the first few lines I knew, that’s it. It’s not a prisoner in a societal sense; it’s actually a prisoner in your own existence in a way! It’s existential, when you can feel that there’s just so much more out there and it’s calling you, but how do you get
there? I feel there are basically three things that give you that escape in life. One of them is illegal! (laughs) Sadly, but it works. One of them is travel, so going to a completely different place – it doesn’t have to be overseas but that is the most potent, to just leave yourself It’s like your brain spawns neural pathways that you never knew existed before. And then music; I realised when I was reading it, this is exactly what music does for me and has done since I was a kid. I’d go into the song so completely that afterwards I want to go back there again and listen to it again and again and again, get addicted to that transportative experience.”
The point is that Helen’s journey into making the music she’s now making, to living the life she now lives, allowing herself to fall in love –“and be loved. I feel like that the hardest one” – has been about giving herself permission to do so, as she says in her song ‘In A New Way’. As she points out, growing up, the pressure on her was to choose a career that her parents chose. Zoology, entomology was a compromise. It turns out that, even when she opted to also study music, it was in the field of jazz rather than the singer-songwriter genre – a pretty broad church itself of course – until, again, she gave herself permission. “I have got a jazz EP out with a group of great musicians,” she informs me. “I was pursuing that for a while and I really loved doing that, but something happened 2016, 2017 and I wrote a different song – it just felt different. It probably was that feeling of giving myself permission. I realised I don’t have to do that only. I don’t even have to do that at all. I can do what I want. I believe it was probably to do with leaving university and having a long enough gap coming out of that academic world. All those things that you thought were so important aren’t important anymore, and what’s really important is what you really want to do. It’s your life, you’re living it. It seems like a no-brainer but when you’re caught up in any insulated kind of bubble, for better or worse. I felt like I was in a box and that this was the only thing I could do. I wasn’t a classical singer and so I was a jazz singer. But I wasn’t a very good jazz singer – I didn’t grow up with jazz – at all. I love it and I really immersed myself in it for five years, but it never rang true. When I wrote ‘Hey Little Spider’ (her debut single), I started Katankin.” What Katankin did bring from those jazz years into the music she’s now making is the stunning arrangements you hear on Said The Starling, whether they’re her vocal harmonies or the string arrangements she wrote out for violinist Esther Henderson, her producer husband and double bass player Philip Rex and drummer/ percussionist Felix Bloxsom.
ALBUMS: General
PEPPERCREEK REVIVAL
PEPPERCREEK REVIVAL
Independent
Kelly Auty’s vocal is a thing of beauty. Warm but powerful. Intimate and inviting. If you’re looking for a reference point, she’s like a mix of Bonnie Raitt and Martha Davis from The Motels. She can tell a story, with the wisdom of experience, or deliver a pop song that sounds fresh and vital.
This might be a debut record, but you can tell these guys know what they’re doing. Blues Music Victoria Hall of Famer Barry Hills put the band together. His mission was simple: find a bunch of experienced players capable of playing any musical style.
Mission accomplished.
Hills found Brian Fraser (lap steel, guitars, vocals), Roland Kretschmer (guitars, mandolin, banjo, Dobro, ukulele, vocals) and drummer Nick Carrafa. He gave the band “a non-genre name”, so they could play “roots, blues, alt country, folk and rock”.
Among the sparkling originals – including the powerful duet ‘Thank You’, where Auty is joined by Carrafa – sit three cleverly selected covers: the Everly Brothers’ ‘Gone, Gone, Gone’, Maria McKee’s ‘If Love Is A Red Dress (Hang Me In Rags)’, and Lindi Ortega’s ‘Tell It Like It Is’.
The playing is superb, perfectly complementing Auty’s vocal. When you have a voice this strong, the temptation is to over-sing. But Kelly Auty realises the beauty of restraint. Everything sounds effortless on Pepper Creek Revival’s self-titled debut. Not a syllable seems out of place.
JEFF JENKINS
CATHERINE TRAICOS SWANSONGS
catherinetraicos.bandcamp.com
There are songs that express the rapture of new love. Others celebrate an enduring partnership. On her 10th studio album, Catherine Traicos charts the course of love from its thrilling origins to the chaos and pain of an eventual ending. Single release ‘O Darling Don’t Be that Way’ tells such a tale. In typically frank and considered fashion, Traicos lays her heart, hopes and disappointments open to listeners. Across the nine tracks there’s passion, elegance and grace in each lyric and melody.
Traicos is a classically trained pianist who brings out the most expressive voice of the instrument. ‘A Heartbeat Away’ opens the album with a piano intro as delicate as soft Spring rain. ‘Home’ features scattershot digital pops like intermittent and troubling hail. Moods range from playful pop-tinged balladry to the swirl of doubt and confusion conveyed in quirky, complex rhythms. As a songwriter, Traicos plays with shifts from major to minor keys with a deft touch. Her ethereal vocals are both haunting and soothing. On Swansongs she also showcases a self-taught command of electric guitar and synthesiser. Refined accompaniment includes trumpet and fluegelhorn (John Bannister), bass clarinet (Philip Everall), cello and vocals (Gather Skinner), drums and percussion (Steven Rea), Teo Mando and electric guitars (Grant Ferstat). Recording took place at Tiny Music Studios in Cottesloe WA. Producer Anna Laverty (Stella Donnelly, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Florence and the Machine) captures all the subtlety, strength and sensitivity of the compositions with some well-placed samples enriching the mix.
‘Holy Hell’ with a catchy refrain (‘Holy Hell, you’re down tonight’) is utterly captivating with jaunty piano and ominous brass creating a twisted carnival setting. Album closer ‘Shadow Love’ is grand, glowing and poignant all at once. Swansongs is an exquisite musical journey of heart and mind that gazes upward to a sliver of light beyond lovelorn tears.
CHRIS LAMBIE
DEAD BEAT DADDIOS FURTHER AWAY
Independent
Dead Beat Daddios might be broadly drinking from the country-rock well but on the title song of this second album from the Melbourne collective led by singer, songwriter, guitarist and bass player Hugh Martin, piano player Nick Collopy takes the Daddios down into honky tonk as we board the train from Darwin and the memories elicited by “every mile you get further away”. Callopy also put the honky into the celebratory ‘pub song’, ‘1000 Lives’. But then the stories Martin tells are more urban or suburban than country or regional (except for ‘Shady Creek’) – Urban & Western if you will, to borrow John Kennedy’s phrase – and why not? These are little snapshots from life remembered, life experienced simply, little home truths – “time to bury the hatchet” suggests ‘High Time’ – life’s potentials, opportunities missed, but in the end, no regrets. Thematically, opening song ‘Stonehaven Road’, written by Overnight Jones’ James Stewart, fits in perfectly with its images woven from childhood memories, singer Emilie Martin’s voice matching Hugh’s voice beautifully, the pair trading parts in the duet ‘Toast Of The Town’. Memories recalled too in ‘The Letter’, over a loping country rhythm held down by Jim Carden’s drumming – he also cowrote the chugging up-tempo ‘Standing Still’ with Martin. You know something? What Dead Beat Daddios are doing today isn’t a million miles from what the much-missed Greedy Smith was doing in Mental As Anything. They’ve just dialled up the country and dialled down the pop a little. ‘Long Gone’ is a prime example.
MICHAEL GEORGE SMITH
STUART COUPE PRESENTS
TESSA LEE
Mountains is the second album from NW Tasmanian artist, Tessa Lee. Loosely fitting under the umbrella of ‘Americana,’ this collection of songs showcases Lee’s mature and competent writing, which is deftly enriched with banjo and Hammond organ (Teresa Dixon and Jethro Pickett), a rock solid rhythm section (Ian Howard, Isaac Gee) and the dirty blues-laden lead guitar of Fintan McCullough (you can take the boy out of Ulverstone, but you can’t take Ulverstone out of the boy). One of the sexiest horn sections you’ll hear all year is that of Phil Pitcher and Michael Woods, and they feature on A Long Way From Home, taking the album into Stax/Chess/ Motown territory, before returning to the alt-country and indie rock homelands with All I Want and The Last Rehearsal. With place-based story telling a feature of this album, we are transported to backdrops including small country pubs and chillingly anxious beach scenes, whilst simultaneously navigating inner-life themes of self-doubt, death, desire and temptation. Seek out Tessa Lee on the socials, and the usual online places. Keep an eye out for some mainland tour dates in 2025. tessaleemusic.com
Tim is an awardwinning artist who has vast experience performing live playing his original music as well as playing the lead role in a theatre production dedicated to the music of James Taylor for a number of years.
Tim was signed to Herb Alpert’s publishing company Essex Music in Australia until his contract was bought by Warners Chappell. Tim is now a free agent and owns the copyright to all of his songs. Although Tim has had Top 10 success on the country charts in Australia with his acoustic band, “Strum”, his music as a solo artist covers a wide range of genres.
His actual name is Timo (he moved from Finland with his family when he was a toddler) and as long as he can remember he has had to tell everyone he meets that his name is Tim with an “o”. When it came to launching his solo career he decided that Tim Withano would be an appropriate stage name :).
Tim is very much a do-it-yourself guy. He plays guitars that he actually builds himself and records all of his songs in his home studio. Tim also produces his own videos. His videos for Bondi Sand and Bob Dylan and Me are on YouTube. timwithano.com
WE MAVERICKS
One of Australia’s newest and most intriguing folk/ country acts, We Mavericks’ new album Heart of Silver leaves no doubt about this duo’s songwriting credentials. Full of their trademark dynamism, it’s a perfect mix of country heartstrings and folk-song depth. The whole album is a journey from vulnerable lyrics & strong harmonies right through to driving mandolin & fiddle leading the band. The title track sings “it’s a good-luck, cold, hard, precious thing”... Vigenser’s penchant for turning cliches into meaningful metaphors combines beautifully with Martin’s extraordinary ability to pull a swathe of emotions out of a set of strings. Add the rhythm powerhouse that is Julia Day on drums and bass, plus beautiful string sections comprising cellists Rachel Johnston and Trent Arkleysmith, and this album is certain to please ears across the genres. They’re currently touring throughout Australia, the UK and Europe to wide acclaim. Booking 2025/26 now: wemavericks.com. au
TIM WITHANO
ALBUMS: World Music Folk
BY TONY HILLIER
AHMED MONEKA KANZAFULA Lula World Records
As multicultural as Australia, Canada is rapidly becoming the domicile of choice for musicians from conflicttorn societies. Singer-songwriter and actor Ahmed Moneka fled to Toronto as a refugee from Baghdad and is now on a mission to merge the music of his birthplace with that of his Kenyan ancestors while incorporating elements from his adopted country. The end product is an uplifting fusion of Afro-Sufi styles that unites his unusual heritage; African grooves and Arabic melodies laced with funk, jazz and Latin rhythm. A hot 10-piece band that includes male and female backing vocalists helps drive Moneka’s husky and soulful singing in opening rockers that bookend Kanzafula, and in slower tempo songs in between.
ASLEEP AT THE REEL HOMES AND HEARTS Independent
Homes and Hearts completes a classy trilogy of original folk-styled albums from talent-stacked Brisbane band Asleep At The Reel. Joining the dots between Celtic music and contemporary Australian song, the quintet’s master composer Mark Cryle — one of no fewer than four singers in the group — touches memory banks via this latest volume. ‘Hibernia’, for example, brings to mind Dougie MacLean’s stirring ‘Caledonia’. References to Irish diaspora anthem ‘The Fields of Athenry’ and ballad ‘My Lagan Love’ surface unselfconsciously in the catchy ‘Shamrock Serenade’. Equally impressive numbers like ‘The Streets of Dublin’ and ‘Cold Killarney Clay’, which also hark back to centuries past, were inspired directly by passages discovered in collections of letters alluding to Irish Australia.
AYOM SA.LI.VA. Ayom/ Believe
From their home bases of Lisbon, Barcelona and Florence, the musical adventurers at the core of Ayom traverse the Atlantic Ocean — from Portugal to Angola and from Cape Verde to Brazil. Blending century-old traditions with Mediterranean mien and the rhythmical language of modern lusophone cultures via coladeiras, funanás, maracatus, sembas and frevos, this inventive band and its handpicked guests tackle themes of migration and racism with passion and panache. Buoyant brass arrangements, driving accordion licks and rapid-fire percussion, underpinned by synths, electronics and thumping tuba, create compelling rhythms that counter the serious content contained in Ayom’s songs. The closing cover of a classic 1950s’ Italian ballad, featuring the crooning vocals of Portugal’s Eurovision Song Contest winner Salvador Sobral, seems sadly out of place.
CAPERCAILLIE RELOVED Bandcamp
DOBET GNAHORÉ ZOUZOU Cumbancha
Côte d’Ivoire’s Dobet Gnahoré may have played a major part in putting her birth country on the world map but pan-Africanism and the continent’s social issues are still her raisons d’être. With her seventh album, the Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter consolidates a place on the pantheon beside her fellow France-domiciled West African comrades, Angelique Kidjo and Rokia Traore, by combining slick Western production with heritage values. Singing predominantly in her native tongue, she conveys her sentiments over beds of judiciously utilised electronica and indigenous rhythms, to create an irresistibly catchy blend of 21st century Afro-pop. Gnahoré has an expressive and versatile voice that’s warm and tender in the slower numbers like ‘You’ and potent in octave-leaping upbeat pieces such as ‘Dobet’ and ‘Srikpi Ah Blilé’
MARÉ
MARÉ
Sons Vadios
NASTASIA Y KYIV SOUL Lula World Records
Powerhouse Kyiv-raised multilingual singer-songwriter and keyboardist Nastasia Y might have relocated to Canada and settled in Toronto back in her youth in the 1990s, but the thrust of her tracks on this latest album relate to the suffering endured by her compatriots during the ongoing war in Ukraine. In particular, her octogenarian grandfather, whom she visited in a bombed-out neighborhood of Kyiv. The set starts explosively with the songstress singing a passionate rock-infused re-imagining of a Crimean Tatar folk song that reflects on the generational trauma occupants of the peninsula have suffered in the wake of Russia’s 2014 invasion. Other songs, including several ballads are equally intense, courtesy of Nastasia Y’s emotional octave jumping voice.
In their 40th anniversary year, Capercaillie finally realise an ambition hatched back in 1995 (when they recorded a soundtrack with an orchestra for the movie Rob Roy) to create an entire album of songs and tunes from their repertoire with symphonic arrangements. ReLoved is an interesting if somewhat overly lavish fulfilment of that desire, featuring the strings of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. The majority of the songs are delivered in Gaelic by the band’s crystalline lead vocalist Karen Matheson. A notable exception is bouzouki player Manus Lunny’s stirring closing duet with Matheson in English on his emigration song ‘Servant To The Slave’. That and the opening cut ‘Tobar Mhoire’ and several of the jigs/reels medleys are the pick of a 16-track set.
With this eponymous album, the collective known as Maré pays lyrical tribute to the life and toil of Portuguese fishermen and their communities. Although centred in the coastal town of Nazaré, north of Lisbon in the historical Estremadura province, it also comprises inspired performances from some of the finest musicians and singers from throughout Portugal’s countrywide contemporary folk scene. Backed by a stringed instrument whiz on cavaquinho, mandolin, Portuguese guitar and electric guitar with support from an accordionist, Celtic harpist and percussionist, the collective’s lead female singers shine on a set of wellcrafted orginal songs and traditional works that tug the heartstrings. The album also includes contributions from a choir comprising individuals connected to the local fishing sector.
Ballaké Sissoko has recorded with many great players, most notably his legendary late Malian compatriot and fellow kora virtuoso Toumani Diabaté on the classic 1990s’ duet album New Ancient Strings. His latest collaboration, which embodies the African griot tradition of call & response, includes a couple of other artists of West African descent, although an American flautist and composer shares the credits. Nicole Mitchell is also a jazz player, whose playing is pivotal on the set’s funkiest songs ‘Kanu’ and ‘Doname’, in which Fatim Kouyaté’s hypnotic vocals also play a central role. Fassery Diabaté’s balafon (wooden xlophone) holds the rhythm on several numbers. Recorded in Chicago, it’s a groundbreaking album.
ALBUMS: Blues
BY AL HENSLEY
JOHN PRIMER & BOB CORRITORE
CRAWLIN’ KINGSNAKE
VizzTone
On this title, their fourth collaboration since 2013, singer/ guitarist John Primer and harmonica player Bob Corritore reach powerful new heights re-creating a pure Chicago blues sound not heard since the Muddy Waters band lit up the stages. Windy City blues flows through the veins of sidemen Jimi Primetime Smith on second guitar, Anthony Geraci on piano, Bob Stroger on bass and Wes Starr on drums, all of whom provide insistent backing with gliding easiness. Mississippiborn and raised, Primer moved to Chicago in 1963. His CV boasts tenures with the bands of Waters, Willie Dixon and others prior to his long stint with Magic Slim & The Teardrops. An eminent line of descent indeed for his custodianship of the Chicago blues tradition. Phoenix, Arizona-based Corritore, who produced the album, is also a veteran of the Chicago blues circuit who has played alongside many of the genre’s greats. From Primer’s ‘Hiding Place’ and the Big Joe Williams-penned title tune to a funky reworking of Jimmy Rogers’ ‘You’re The One’, a 12-song smorgasbord of boogies, shuffles, stomps and jump blues is on offer from the catalogues of Waters, Dixon, A.C. Reed, B.B. King and Magic Slim.
RICK ESTRIN & THE NIGHTCATS
THE HITS KEEP COMING Alligator/Only Blues Music
By the time he co-founded US West Coast blues band Little Charlie & the Nightcats with hotshot guitarist Charlie Baty in 1976, harmonica playing vocalist Rick Estrin was already a seasoned performer and gifted songwriter. When Baty retired from touring in 2008 after 10 releases on Alligator Records, Estrin with his bass playing keyboardist Lorenzo Farrell recruited jaw-dropping Norwegian-born guitarist Kid Andersen and assumed leadership of the band he’d been fronting from the outset. This title, a long-awaited follow-up to 2019’s Contemporary, is their sixth release for Alligator and the second featuring one-time Little Richard drummer Derrick “D’Mar” Martin. Produced by Andersen at his Greaseland studio in San Jose, California, the album’s traditional blues has a wickedly cool modern twist and packs a punch offering 10 hard-hitting groove-heavy new Estrin originals brimming with streetwise vocals and peerless musicianship. A departure from the blues, the band’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Everybody Knows’ sits comfortably in the mix alongside a potent revival of Muddy Waters’ ‘Diamonds At Your Feet’. Vocal backing by The Sons Of The Soul Revivers brings a sparkling effect to the intelligently conceived minorkey title tune.
Guitarist/singer-songwriter Rick Vito restarts his recording career after a five-year hiatus with Cadillac Man, his 11th album since his 1992 solo recording debut. Well-known through session work with numerous big-name artists and a fouryear stint with Fleetwood Mac, Vito’s sideline membership of the Mick Fleetwood Blues Band significantly expanded his blues fan base. Undeniably one of the genre’s best axemen practising the art today, Vito’s masterful fretwork at times reflects that of Mac founder the late Peter Green. While his tenor vocals are clear, smooth and well-articulated, Vito’s strong suit is his outstanding lead and slide guitar technique. He bursts out of the blocks with a riveting double shuffle ‘Love Crazy Baby’ ahead of ‘It’s 2 A.M.’, one he wrote for Shemekia Copeland which won him the 2001 W.C. Handy Award for Song Of The Year. The title song’s proto-rock ‘n’ roll gives way to other hip-shaking originals like the swinging ‘Gone Like A Cool Breeze’, the up-tempo ‘Barbeque’n Baby’, the minor-key moan ‘Crying At Midnight’, and an instrumental arrangement of Sam Cooke’s ‘Just Another Day’. Vito covers most of the bass parts, convening with distinguished guests on sax, B3, harmonica and drums.
THE COUNT BASIE ORCHESTRA
BASIE SWINGS THE BLUES
Candid
Headquarters of the territory bands in the 1920s and 30s, Kansas City was ground zero for a heady mix of blues and swing jazz that gave rise to Count Basie’s Orchestra. In 1935 when band-leader Benny Moten died, it was left to his pianist Count Basie to pick up the baton and form his own unit. Over eight decades later and 40 years since its founder passed away the big band is still going strong under the leadership of Scotty Barnhart. A jubilant mix of down-home blues shuffles and uptown swing that evokes the jump blues era of Louis Jordan, Basie Swings The Blues is a testament to Basie’s love for the blues in an explosive collaboration with some of the genre’s greatest living artists. Shemekia Copeland, Buddy Guy, Charlie Musselwhite, Bobby Rush, Keb’ Mo’, Robert Cray, Bettye LaVette, Ledisi and others perform original compositions and readings of songs by Koko Taylor, George Jackson, T-Bone Walker and Muddy Waters. On the jazzier side guitar great George Benson dusts off Jack McDuff’s souljazz gem ‘Rock Candy’ and long-time Basie band vocalist Carmen Bradford serves up Lil Armstrong’s blues ballad ‘Just For A Thrill’.
RICK VITO
CADILLAC MAN
Blue Heart Records
ALBUMS: Vinyl
BY STEVE BELL
MJ
LENDERMAN MANNING FIREWORKS
ANTI-
Young Asheville singer-songwriter MJ Lenderman has had a crazy couple of years since dropping his acclaimed third solo album Boat Songs (2022), releasing the equallyadored album Rat Saw God (2023) with indie rock band Wednesday, drumming on All Of This Will End (2023) by Indigo De Souza, and playing an important part in Waxahatchee’s band on her recent opus Tiger’s Blood (2024). Somehow he still found the time to pull together his own gorgeous fourth album Manning Fireworks, the best rendering yet of his distinctive aesthetic: a beguiling blend of laidback Americana and ‘90s slacker rock, his cracked voice reminiscent of the muchmissed Jason Molina as the spins his in-depth character studies of characters down on their luck (a la Drive-By Truckers or The Hold Steady), the cryptic and obtuse lyrics crammed with pop-culture references and wry lyricism evoking the great David Berman. Recorded in his hometown (with Alex Farrar co-producing) the sound is a lot cleaner than his past lo-fi recordings, and though most of the nine songs come complete with a cool guitar breakdown, none of them ever seem in a hurry to reach the end of their meandering arrangements. Lenderman plays most of the instruments himself - although Wednesday bandmates drop in, with Karly Hartzman adding vocals to a handful of songs (including the gorgeous She’s Leaving You) and Xandy Chelmis adding pedal steal to the poignant Rudolph - while Shane McCord adds weird clarinet flourishes to the moving You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In. As closing track Bark At The Moon devolves into seven-minutes of guitar drone and distortion it’s abundantly clear that this is an artist doing things defiantly on his own terms, an already fascinating journey which in some ways is only just beginning.
JUSTIN TOWNES EARLE
ALL IN: UNRELEASED & RARITIES (THE NEW WEST YEARS)
NEW WEST
When young Americana artist Justin Townes Earle first arrived on the scene much was made of his famous pedigree - he was the son of country-rock legend Steve Earle, and carrying the name of outlaw country icon Townes Van Zandt - but those comparisons became quickly redundant as his own incredible talent became so abundantly obvious. Sadly in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, we lost Earle far too younghe passed from an accidental drug overdose at the age of just 38 - leaving behind a young family as well as the wonderful canon of work that he’d assembled over the all-tooshort course of his career. Now his label New West - who released the final two of his eight studio albums - have released the new 2-LP posthumous collection All In: Unreleased & Rarities, collating a slew of predominantly unheard material from the singer’s final years among us. There’s a handful of demos for songs which didn’t make the cut on his last album The Saint Of Lost Causes (2019) - certainly for thematic rather than quality reasons because some like Cold Comfort and I Know You are stunning - while the bluesy If I Was The Devil (a demo from 2017’s Kids In The Street) shows another side to his vast skillset. Earle was always adept at making others’ songs his own, and All In includes a raft of incredible covers of tracks by the likes of Paul Simon (Graceland), Bruce Springsteen (Glory Days), Fleetwood Mac (Dreams) and John Prine (Far From Me) recast in his own inimitable image, which with the beautiful packaging and 52-page photo book help make this a fitting reminder of a massive talent taken too soon.
DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS
SOUTHERN ROCK OPERADELUXE EDITION
NEW WEST
Alabama-born Southern Rock legends DriveBy Truckers were at a crossroads in 2000 whilst recording their third studio album Southern Rock Opera (2001) - things weren’t going great internally, and though they had a great batch of songs they had no money and no label. But the concept double-album about a fictional band (loosely based on their forebears Lynyrd Skynyrd) and the checkered history of the Deep South (what came to become known in their mythology as “the duality of the southern thing”) had pre-dated the Truckers themselves so they were determined to make it work, recording in guerrilla DIY manner and then using a pioneering fan investment model (crowdfunding years before that was a thing) to press the record themselves. They sold thousands of copies on the road before critical buzz caused Lost Highway to sign them, the fact that both of the band’s songwriters had brought some of their best ever songs to the table - Patterson Hood with Ronnie And Neil, Let There Be Rock, Wallace and Angels And Fuselage, and Mike Cooley with Shut Up And Get On The Plane, Women Without Whiskey and Zip City - making it a cherished part of the Truckers’ everburgeoning canon from the get-go. Now it’s been given a deluxe 3-LP vinyl reissue, the whole collection remastered, remixed and slightly resequenced for maximum fidelity, newly augmented by extra era-appropriate songs - including an unreleased track from the sessions named Mystery Song plus some rollicking live versions from the time - and a gorgeous 28-page booklet with illuminating liner notes about the whole saga by Hood, making the package a wonderful new rendering of this classic record.
ALBUMS: Jazz
BY DES COWLEY
AUDREY POWNE FROM THE FIRE
BBE Music, Vinyl & digital release
Trumpeter and singer Audrey Powne first came to my attention via her role in Aura, a stellar quartet whose forward-looking music channels the spirit of bands like Old and New Dreams. Certainly, she demonstrated she can be a fiery trumpeter. But that’s not what she’s about with From the Fire, her debut album. Instead, Powne has chosen to highlight her vocal prowess, alongside her skills as arranger, composer, and multiinstrumentalist. Aside from trumpet and voice, Powne contributes piano, Rhodes, and organ; and has composed all nine tracks. She even produced the album, a self-assured move by an artist deemed ‘emerging’ a few short years back. The album’s brief overture sets the scene: lush strings, over which Powne’s trumpet drifts and glides, kindling late-night romance. ‘Feed the Fire’ injects a shot of Nu Soul, with Powne chanting you back yourself against the wall over percussion and beats. When her trumpet materialises, it nails the groove, its gorgeous tone elevated by judicious use of strings that elegantly layer this music. ‘Sleep’ has the hallmark of a lullaby, with Powne’s vocalese, dream-like, hovering above gentle piano and strings. ‘Indigo’ finds her multi-tracked vocals progressively building to a bluesy wail, interpolated with smouldering trumpet. The title track comes across as a gentle hymn, Powne’s ethereal voice sweetly calling out across a bedrock of rhythmic percussion, electric keys, and joyous brass. From the Fire joins albums like Barney McAll’s Precious Energy in pushing jazz into new territories, suffusing it with the spirit of soul, gospel, hip hop, and classical.
ROSS MCHENRY WAVES
Earshift Music, EAR084, Vinyl, CD & digital release
With its elegantly designed packaging – depicting a moody landscape by photographer Thomas McCammon – Ross McHenry’s new album is a pleasure from start to finish. The bassist, hailing from Adelaide, is an inveterate explorer, whose work ranges across jazz, improvised, experimental and classical. In recent times, he has been holed up in New York, where Waves was recorded. For the session, McHenry put together a formidable line-up of mostly US players, including drummer Eric Harland (Charles Lloyd, Dave Holland), saxophonist Donny McCaslin (Dave Douglas, David Bowie), guitarist Ben Monder, and trumpeter Adam O’Farrill; rounded out by McHenry’s Adelaide – though currently New York-based – compatriot, pianist Matthew Sheens, whose dazzling work is fundamental to the album’s success. Featuring just seven originals, all by McHenry, across its nearly hourlength run-time – many nudging the ten-minute-mark – the sextet is really given the opportunity to stretch out. There’s melody and groove aplenty, magnified by Sheens’ intense lyricism, full of shimmering surfaces. Opener ‘Waves’ is an extended trio piece, driven by Harland’s dense, rhythmic percussion, juxtaposed with Sheen’s free-flowing pianistic lines. ‘In Landscape’ is driven by a relentless staccato beat, over which McCaslin’s sax and O’Farrill’s trumpet weave and dance, ratcheting up the intensity. Guitarist Monder features on ‘July 1986’, his eerie, fuzzy soundscapes a foil for O’Farrill’s slow-burn, ghostly trumpet. Throughout, McHenry confines himself to electric bass, laying down ceaselessly imaginative lines, improvising freely. But, above all, it is the confidence and bravura of McHenry’s compositions that sustain and drive this music, performed to perfection by this top-notch unit.
NIC VARDANEGA NEW BEGINNING
Independent, CD & digital release
Sydney guitarist Nic Vardanega has been spending a lot of time in New York since re-locating there in 2016, and it shows. His third album, New Beginnings, feels like a bona fide step up, a mature statement of intent. Working with his US trio – bassist Ben Allison and drummer Allan Mednard – his music revels in conversational interplay, foregrounded in a delicate, stripped-back sound. The beginnings, referenced in the title, reflect recent changes in Vardanega’s life, as he emerged – like all of us – from the pandemic, at the same time as becoming a father. Is it too much to say his new album harbours an undercurrent of optimism? Fronting a three-piece can be a challenging format for a guitarist, requiring they sustain momentum, while generating rhythm, melodic lines, improvisatory flights. Bill Frisell and John Scofield are masters, but Vardanega, to his credit, brings his own game. To my ears, his sound is more closely aligned with guitarists like Kurt Rosenwinkel, reflecting a delicately nuanced and harmonically warm sound. Never flashy or flamboyant, Vardanega’s guitar casually lopes or gambols across a layer of flittering bass and percussion, his tone breezy and flighty, full of clean lines. Standouts include ‘Looking Back’, with its leisured melody, all wistfulness and raw beauty; and ‘Summers’, a lolloping, groove-laden, and captivating piece that evokes wide skies, vistas, and gleaming light. His guitar on the slow-moving ‘M’s Lullaby’ is elegant and deeply rendered, golden in its clear-eyed purity. Assuredly, Vardanega’s rebooted New Beginning bodes well for his next gambit.
ELLIOT LAMB
BETWEEN WORLDS
Cross Street Records, CD & digital release
Melbourne-based trombonist Elliot Lamb has been a strong presence on the scene over the past few years, playing with trio Trip!, and the Jazzlab Orchestra. But, without a doubt, Between Worlds ranks as Lamb’s grand statement to date. The six-part suite resulted from the Take Note commission, an initiative by the Melbourne International Jazz Festival to address the underrepresentation of women and gender diverse musicians in Australian jazz. It allowed Lamb to develop new work, premiered at the 2021 Festival. Thankfully, Lamb has now managed to release this music on the newly founded Cross Street Records. The composition, scored for octet, explores themes of identity, and the experience of living between genders and genres. While such themes lend a resonant overlay, it would be meaningless if the music failed to measure up, which is far from the case. Opener ‘Flying, Falling’ begins with Lamb’s solitary trombone, a plaintive cry that calls forth trumpet and sax, sketching the suite’s central theme. Lamb’s precision writing abounds with spirited and uplifting passages, elevated by the lofty purity of Niran Dasika’s trumpet. ‘Dreaming’ is an introspective piece, with Lamb’s trombone cushioned by Flora Carbo’s silky alto and Stella Anning’s guitar. ‘Sinking’ is introduced by Oscar Neyland’s arco bass, before shifting to a delicately etched groove, gingerly boosted by clarinet, spiky guitar, blustery trumpet. ‘Breaking’ variously highlights Maddison Carter’s scampering percussion, Dasika’s ballad-chops, and Rammer’s free-jazz tenor; while the buoyant closer ‘Being’ ultimately returns the suite to its opening theme, closing the circle. Put simply, an exceptional achievement.
By Des Cowley
Too Much Too Young: The 2 Tone Records Story: Rude Boys, Racism and the Soundtrack of a Generation
By Daniel Rachel (Hachette Australia, p/b)
Irecently watched the BBC’s This Town, a six-part television series written by Stephen Knight (who brought us Peaky Blinders), and set in Coventry and Birmingham in the early 1980s. The plot involves various machinations with the IRA, a bunch of young roustabouts hoping to start a band, plenty of rude boys, and skinheads. It pitched mean and dangerous adults against clueless kids, and I found myself – what else? – rooting for the kids.
But what really hooked me was the soundtrack, drawing as it did on music of the period – The Specials, The Selecter, The Beat, UB40 – as well as classic ska and reggae that influenced and inspired those bands: Desmond Dekker, Jimmy Cliff, Toots & the Maytals, Prince Buster. Sure, I knew all these songs, but I came away wanting to know more about the Coventry and Midlands scene of that period. Cue author Daniel Rachel, whose new history of 2 Tone Records was there to guide me.
England was a knotty place in the mid-to-late seventies. A decade earlier, right-wing politician Enoch Powell had unleased his ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, decrying the UK’s immigration policies, and Thatcher’s repressive government was just around the corner. Unemployment and strikes were rife. On the flipside, punk music proved a shot in the arm. Bands like the Clash and Steel Pulse played Rock Against Racism concerts in London, combatting a rising tide of racist attacks on the streets. It was a country divided. This was the setting in which 2 Tone was hatched.
Central to the Rachel’s book is keyboardist Jerry Dammers, selfstyled “architect of this new sound and image”, which blended ska with punk, all modishly packaged in the “killer black and white visual style” that came to define 2 Tone. It was Dammers who, inspired by Motown, negotiated an agreement with Chris Wright and Terry Ellis’s Chrysalis Records whereby 2 Tone, as a sub-label, could benefit from Chrysalis’s financial oomph, while at the same time operating independently.
When 2 Tone Records was founded, in 1979, punk and reggae were largely separatist movements, one predominantly white, the other black. Inspired by Rock Against Racism, Dammers set out to form “a multiracial punk reggae band with both black and white musicians.” But when pondering the Clash’s recent dalliance with reggae, Dammers uncovered what he saw as the problem: the laconic reggae beat was too slow when mashed with punk’s breakneck rhythms. In looking for a solution, he harked back to an older, more up-tempo form – ska music. In slowing down punk, and speeding up ska, Dammers hit upon the perfect elixir. The result was 2 Tone’s inaugural 7” single: The Special A.K.A. – Gangsters vs. The Selecter
The look of 2 Tone was integral to the label’s success. Pilfering from the fashions of the day, Dammers’ designs incorporated pork-pie hats, two-tone suits, skinny ties, blended with distinctive blackand-white checks, all rounded out by the stylized character of Walt Jabsco, based on a photo of Peter Tosh, “posed defiantly attired in a suit and wraparound shades.” The response to Gangsters vs. The Selecter was immediate. It sold more than a quarter-of-a-million
copies, famously described by John Peel – who flogged it mercilessly – as “one of those records that really changes your life.” Madness’s single ‘The Prince’ likewise did solid business, as did The Selecter’s 7” single ‘On the Radio’. Improbably, within months of being founded, the fledgling 2 Tone label “was poised to take British youth culture by storm.”
The 2 Tone story revolves around a small number of bands: The Specials, The Selecter, Madness, all-girl-band The Bodysnatchers, The Beat, The Swinging Cats. Most managed only a 7” single or two before imploding (or, like Madness and The Beat, jumping ship to other labels). Not surprisingly, Rachel devotes much of this book to Dammers’ seven-piece band The Specials, by far the most successful of the 2 Tone stable. Their debut album, produced by Elvis Costello, tackled the landscape of modern Britain, involving “social concerns, youth culture and the everyday realities of street violence and social injustice.” Sales topped a million.
Rachel chronicles the shambolic 2 Tone tours, with buses crammed full of overly exuberant, alcohol-and-weed fueled youngsters, playing in run-down pavilions in British seaside towns. Unfortunately, tribal violence – so endemic to football – became commonplace, with mods and skinheads both laying claim to this music. The multi-racial composition of 2 Tone bands increasingly became a flash-point for racism, invariably involving the National Front, union jacks, and chants of ‘Seig Heil’. The Specials would take fans to task in their classic hit ‘Ghost Town’: Bands won’t play no more / too much fighting on the dance floor
The title of The Selecter’s sole album Too Much Pressure could have been 2 Tone’s leitmotif. An oft-told tale, the label’s runaway success harboured the seeds of its demise. Band members constantly bickered about musical directions, about royalty splits, or just plain bickered. The Bodysnatchers imploded, having been together less than a year. The original line-up of The Selecter, with one album to their name, ditto. With their brilliant 1981 single ‘Ghost Town’ at the top of the charts, Terry Hall, Lynval Golding, and Neville Staple, called it quits on The Specials. While it limped on for a bit, the 2 Tone experiment was all but over, the music charts increasingly dominated by New Romantics and flamboyant fashions.
While it might have only survived for a few years, 2 Tone’s enduring legacy can’t be overestimated. It fostered a culture, according to Rachel, in which “black and white youth found a common language,” creating music that “spoke to a disempowered generation, and gave them hope; a reason to promote change.” Rachel’s book, which draws heavily upon first-hand accounts, is destined to be the definitive history of 2 Tone Records, giving truth to the assertion that “For a brief, bright burning moment, 2 Tone shaped British culture.” Who can be credited with such a thing now?
By Stuart Coupe
How many sleeps till Santa Day? Not as many as most of us would hope. But I’m here – your humble servant – to help with Christmas book gift ideas for the music lover and reader in your world. Along with my fellow Rhythms book commentators we’ve already covered a lot of books this year – so start by scrolling through your back issues. But here’s some more Contenders.
Before we get to non-fiction let me remind you about a book I mentioned at the end of the column last issue. Benjamin Myers has written a truly wonderful novel in Rare Singles. It’s set in the world of Northern Soul fanatics in a small UK town.
Bucky Bronco lives in Chicago and isn’t doing too well. Decades ago he recorded a couple of songs, one of which is considered a Northern Soul classic so he’s invited to a weekender in the rainy town of Scarborough. What evolves is a beautifully rendered story of music, passion, redemption and soul in all its forms. This and Willy Vlautin’s The Horse are my picks for music centred fiction in 2024.
For the country music lover the new book of the moment is undoubtedly Cocaine & Rhinestones: A History Of George Jones And Tammy Wynette by Tyler Mahan Coe, the creator and presenter of the podcast of the same name.
This is a beautiful almost 500 page hardback that looks to be the absolute business. My copy has only just arrived and I’m about to start devouring it and advance notices suggest it’s a complete winner which will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been mesmerised by the podcast.
And guess what – there’s ANOTHER Bob Dylan book out. Number 7640 in an ongoing series – or so it seems.
But Ray Padgett’s Pledging My Time: Conversations With Bob Dylan Band Members is a cut above many of the others, partly because Padgett knows his Dylan and partly because of the concept. It’s a simple but great idea – interview more than 40 musicians who’ve toured and recorded with Dylan over the decades and get ‘em talking about what the experience is like. Dylan as we all know doesn’t give much away – but these cats have a different perspective and Padgett knows how to get them yarning candidly and with insight about His Bobness. If you think you’ve read more than you’ll ever need to read about Dylan you actually haven’t till you’ve devoured this. There are not quite as many books by former music industry publicists as there are Dylan
tomes – but the list is starting to creep up there!
Latest in the I-Worked-With-FamousPeople-And-I’m-Going-To-Tell-You-About-It book stakes is Alan Edwards in I Was There: Dispatches From A Life In Rock And Roll and it’s pretty damn good.
Edwards is described as ‘the godfather of British music PR’ (a title that might rankle a few others) and has worked with the likes of David Bowie, Bob Marley, the Spice Girls, the Rolling Stones, the Stranglers, Blondie, Prince and Amy Winehouse.
Edwards first saw Bowie perform when he was 16, never of course imagining he would work with him, a gig that including accompany Bowie to Australia on the Serious Moonlight tour in 1983.
I Was There is pacy, anecdote filled (ooopsie, that’s not pot, that’s heroin in the cigarette he smokes at Debbie Harry and Chris Stein’s apartment in Manhattan).
In the world of publicists writing books telling you what it’s really like this is a superior read. Crazily detailed but also very readable –despite what the title might suggest to some people – is Toby Manning’s book Mixing Pop And Politics: A Marxist History Of Popular Music
Clocking in at over 500 pages that’s exactly what this is, taking 70 years of music and showing how it has. “both reflected and resisted the politic events of its era.” Sadly, the survey of music ends in 2020 – an updated edition is already needed!
An extremely well written, insightful and wonderfully presented new Australian book is Aussie Rock Anthems: The Stories Behind Our Biggest Hit Songs by Glen Humphries.
That’s what you get – 40 songs with lots of info, anecdotes and trivia on each. Also functions as a good conversation/argument starter which is exactly what these books are partially designed to do.
And there are so many more! I’m trying to find time to get stuck into these too – Blind Owl Blues by Rebecca Davis which came out some time ago but (I’m an early Canned Heat obsessive) tells the story of Alan Wilson, co-founder of the group.
Until next year –happy reading.
Victorian artists, venues and festivals were recognised at the 2024 Music Victoria Awards in a star-studded ceremony at Fed Square. Australian youth music organisation The Push was formally inducted into the Music Victoria Hall of Fame alongside multi-instrumentalist, composer and sound designer Ollie Olsen was sadly posthumously inducted following his devastating passing in late October. “It is inspiring to reflect on a Music Victoria Award’s impact on our artists, venues, and festivals” says Simone Schinkel, Music Victoria’s CEO. “Previous winners have often shared how these honours elevate visibility and recognition, and this year’s nominees and recipients are worthy of it all.
WINNERS
PUBLIC VOTED
BEST SONG OR TRACK
Presented by PBS
Good Morning - Excalibur - WINNER
BEST ALBUM
Presented by Triple R Gregor - Satanic Lullabies - WINNER
BEST SOLO ARTIST
Presented by Triple R
Audrey Powne - WINNER
BEST GROUP
Presented by PBS
RVG - WINNER
BEST REGIONAL ACT
ZÖJ - WINNER
INDUSTRY VOTED
BEST MUSICIAN
Cheryl Durongpisitkul
BEST PRODUCER
Lauren Coutts
DIASPORA AWARD
Wild Gloriosa - WINNER
BEST BLUES WORK
Presented by The Blues Train
Opelousas
BEST COUNTRY WORK
Hana & Jessie-Lee’s Bad Habits
BEST FOLK WORK
Evan & Mischa
BEST JAZZ WORK
Michelle Nicolle
BEST REGGAE OR DANCEHALL WORK
JahWise
You can read the full list of winners at: musicvictoria.com.au
Music Victoria Awards 2024 Winners
Revealed At Fed Square Ceremony
Opelousas, winner of Best Blues Work.
JIMMY CARTER 100: A CELEBRATION IN SONG
The Carter Center in Georgia presented Jimmy Carter 100: A Celebration in Song, a musical event celebrating the centennial birthday of former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. The landmark concert took place on September 17, at Atlanta’s historic Fox Theatre, and featured Georgia artists performing live tributes and special guests celebrating President Carter’s legacy of service to humanity. The concert was filmed and broadcast on the Public Broadcasting Service on October 1, Carter’s actual birthday.
Acts included Chuck Leavell, The B52s, Duane Betts, Drive-By Truckers, Carlene Carter, Angelique Kidjo, Eric Church, India.Arie, Lalah Hathaway, The War And Treaty, and The Atlanta Symphony Orchestra Chamber Chorus. Emmy awardwinner Rickey Minor was the musical director for the show
“Back when Jimmy Carter was running for president, the Allman Brothers played concerts for his campaign because we believed in his vision for hope and change for America. We could never have imagined what a positive impact he would have on the entire world,” said Chuck Leavell, former keyboardist for the Allman Brothers and current musical director for the Rolling Stones touring band “It’s an honour to play at his 100th birthday and celebrate a man whose legacy will surely continue to inspire future generations.”
LIFE IS A CARNIVAL: A MUSICAL CELEBRATION OF ROBBIE ROBERTSON
Life Is a Carnival: A Musical Celebration of Robbie Robertson took place on Thursday, October 17, 2024, at the Kia Forum, in Los Angeles, CA, featuring an amazing array of artists, including (alphabetically): Trey Anastasio, Ryan Bingham, Mike Campbell, Eric Church, Eric Clapton, Warren Haynes, Bruce Hornsby, Jim James, Jamey Johnson, Daniel Lanois, Taj Mahal, Van Morrison, Margo Price, Robert Randolph, Nathaniel Rateliff, Allison Russell, Mavis Staples, Benmont Tench, Don Was, Bobby Weir, and Lucinda Williams. Robbie Robertson.
Martin Scorsese, was one of the Executive Producers of the concert which was filmed for later released. Of course, Scorsese also filmed The Band’s famous swansong, The Last Waltz.
Life Is a Carnival took place at the Forum 50 years after the iconic venue served as the final stop on the famed tour of Bob Dylan and The Band, which marked Dylan’s return to touring after an eight-year hiatus and became known as one of the largest and highest-profile tours of the era (with the live performances featuring a number of Robbie’s hit songs documented in the critically acclaimed record release Before the Flood). Four discs of those shows are now available in the recently released Bob Dylan & The Band box set: The 1974 Live Recordings.
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NOVEMBER
November 8-10
Maleny Music Festival, QLD malenymusicfestival.com
November 15-17
Mountaingrass Bright, VIC mountaingrass.com.au
November 22-24
Queensciff Music Festival Queenscliff, VIC qmf.net.au
DECEMBER
December 6 – 8
Meredith Music Festival, VIC mmf.com.au
December 27 – January 1
Woodford Folk Festival woodfordfolkfestival.com
JANUARY
January 8-25
Sydney Festival sydneyfestival.org.au
January 10-12
Cygnet Folk Festival, Tasmania cygnetfolkfestival.org
January 17-26
Tamworth Country Music Festival tcmf.com.au
January 17-19
Thredbo Blues Festival, Thredbo, NSW thredboblues.com.au
January 17-19
Illawarra Folk Festival, NSW illawarrafolkfestival.com.au
St Kilda Blues Festival, VIC stkildabluesfestival.com.au
March 2 – 10
Brunswick Music Festival, VIC brunswickmusicfestival.com.au
MARCH
March 7-10
Port Fairy Folk Festival portfairyfolkfestival.com
March 7-10
Womadelaide womadelaide.com.au
APRIL
April 17-20
Bluesfest, Tyagarah, NSW bluesfest.com.au
Hellherons
Greenmohairsuits
Some free music: Open Rehearsals, Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre (6 Nov & 4 Dec); ANAM Concerto Comp Final, Federation Concert Hall, Hobart (8 Nov); Serenading Italia, Balmain Town Hall, NSW (10 Nov); L-FRESH The LION, OzAsia, Adelaide (10 Nov); Folk Music Workshop, Darwin Community Arts (9 Nov & 7 Dec); ALWAYS LIVE: Yerambooee, Fed Square, Melbourne (7 Dec).
The Australian Songwriters Association’s National Songwriting Awards take place in Sydney on Thurs 28 Nov 2024. www.asai.org.au Australian spoken word/music collective Hell Herons (Melinda Smith, CJ Bowerbird, Stuart Barnes, Nigel Featherstone) has released the album, The Wreck Event. Nigel says… “Poetry has been in my life since childhood. I was lucky to have a mother who taught my brothers and me the importance of reading. For a few years she was a bookseller and she frequently brought books home. She especially loved the Monaro poet David Campbell. My father loved playing with words, not as a practicing poet, but he clearly enjoyed writing doggerel and limericks.
Julian Taylor Zulya
COMPILED BY SUE BARRETT
Music has been in my life since childhood too. The first song I fell in love with was ‘London Calling’ by The Clash. The first single I bought was Kate Bush’s ‘Wuthering Heights’. A wonderful thing about reading poetry is unlocking the meaning of the poem and that often comes from letting the key image work its magic. I’m primarily a novelist, but I do love writing poetry. In 2014, I was commissioned to write the libretto for a song cycle and when writing those poems I started with an image or an image emerged from the poem during rewriting. In 2022, I completed writing the demos for a play with spoken word songs (now in the final stages of development with The Street Theatre, Canberra). I wanted to keep writing spoken word songs, but outside the theatrical context. After writing half a dozen songs, I realised I wanted to collaborate with other poets. So I approached Melinda, CJ and Stuart and asked them if they’d like to collaborate. With The Wreck Event, it was essential each poet perform their own work – although to explore the compositional possibilities when developing the songs, it was my voice on the demos. As we bedded a song down, the vocals were redone by the poet (in my closet), which in many cases changed the music. Towards the end of the process, all vocals were re-recorded by Kimmo Vennonen (thanks to funding from artsACT). In writing the music, I let the words influence the music. For example, Melinda sent me a fragment
BBC Radio producer and co-creator of PopMaster quiz Phil Swern (76), died in August
Charles Blackwell (84), English record producer, arranger and songwriter, died in August
Malaysian-born Australian operatic tenor Steve Davislim (57), died Vienna (Aug)
of a poem about sinking into the earth due to a significant event. I followed that musically, but when the poem stops, the music shifts and lifts the poet – and listener – back up. Hell Herons is about exploring how music and poetic text might work together. We have a rule: if it gives us goosebumps, we are heading in the right direction. If it gives our listeners goosebumps, well, that’s just brilliant.” www.hellherons.com American musician/artist Natalia Zukerman has a new book of cartoons (Millietown News: Vol. 1). Australian singer, songwriter and poet Kate Fagan has a new book of poems (Song in the Grass) www.nataliazukerman.com www. giramondopublishing.com
New music releases: Niamh Tracey Smith, Linger; Green Mohair Suits, Stan Wella; Christy Moore, A Terrible Beauty; Horse, The Road Less Travelled; John Ferullo, Changes; Teni Rane, Goldenrod; Woody Platt, Far Away With You; Katie Toupin, Big Magic; Cliff Stackonis, Solid Ground; Laura Jane Wilkie, Vent; Nick Carter, Carved in the Bark; Kate McDonnell, Trapeze; Steve Lundquist, The Great Northwest; Jackson Harden, Dakota Blue Moon; Savanna’s Secret, One of Those Days; Kate Young, Umbelliferæ; Ed Clayton-Jones, Interloper; The April Family, Baby, I’m Gone; Willi Carlisle, Tales from Critterland; Julian Taylor, Pathways; Steve Madewell, Haunted; Andrew Calhoun, Different Now; Route 33, Chapters; Garfunkel & Garfunkel, Father & Son
Herbie Flowers (86), English bassist, died in September
Brazilian musician Sergio Mendes (83), died California, USA (Sept)
American rock singer Jack Russell (63), of Great White, died USA (Aug)
Jessica Mbangeni (47), South African praise poet and singer, died South Africa (Aug)
American singer/songwriter Greg Kihn (75), died California, USA (Aug)
Maurice Williams (86), singer with American group Maurice Williams & The Zodiacs, died North Carolina, USA (Aug)
Grammy-winning American bluegrass fiddler Bobby Hicks (91), died North Carolina, USA (Aug)
Russell Malone (60), American jazz musician, died Japan (Aug)
American rapper Fatman Scoop (53), died Connecticut, USA (Aug)
Danielle Moore (52), vocalist with British electronic group Crazy P, died in August
Dean Roberts (49), New Zealand multiinstrumentalist and experimental music composer, died Portugal (Aug)
Canadian singer/songwriter Paul Dwayne (60), died Canada (Aug)
Carl Bevan (51), Welsh artist and drummer with punk band 60 Ft Dolls, died in August
Russian-born Australian singer Zulya Kamalova (55), of Zulya and The Children of the Underground, died in September
Billy Edd Wheeler (91), who wrote/co-wrote ‘The Reverend Mr Black’, ‘Long Arm of the Law’, ‘A Picker’s Prayer’, ‘The Coming of the Roads’, ‘Jackson’ and ‘Coward of the County’, died North Carolina, USA (Sept)
Will Jennings (80), Grammy-winning American songwriter, died Texas, USA (Sept)
American singer/songwriter JD Souther (78), whose songs included ‘New Kid in Town’, ‘Faithless Love’ and ‘White Rhythm and Blues’, died New Mexico, USA (Sept)
Mark Moffatt (74), Australian musician, record producer and songwriter, died Tennessee, USA (Sept)
American singer/songwriter, Grammy winner and Rhodes Scholar Kris Kristofferson (88), died Hawaii, USA (Sept)
Kenny Hyslop (73), Scottish drummer with Simple Minds, died in September
Netherlands-born bassist Dick Diamonde (76), of Australian band The Easybeats, died in September
Tito Jackson (70), of Jackson 5, died New Mexico, USA (Sept)
American singer/songwriter Nick Gravenites (85), of Electric Flag and Big Brother and the Holding Company, died California, USA (Sept)
Eddie Low (85), New Zealand Musician, died NZ (Sept)
English keyboardist Zoot Money (82), died in September
