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C Charlie harlie Musselwhite Musselwhite
“Blues
is more than just music. It’s not a fad, it’s really like a philosophy or something –a way of dealing with life.”
$15.00 inc GST
2024
324
UPFRONT
Blues legend Charlie Musselwhite will be back in Australia in September. He spoke to Samuel J.Fell.
FEATURES
Sarah Carroll, the Queen of The Bellarine has a great new solo album. Chris Lambie reports.
Charlie Owen sets off on a solo tour and looks back at where he’s been and what he’s done. Samuel J.Fell reports.
Noted sideman Josh Owen takes centre stage on a sparkling solo set. By Jeff Jenkins.
Andy White’s long and winding road that resulted in his first spoken word album. By Jeff Jenkins.
The blues guitar master Chris Cain is touring Australia in August. By Samuel J. Fell.
The irrepressible Henry Wagons talks about his new solo album, The Four Seasons. By Brian Wise.
Sixteen years after disbanding, the Double Agents are back with a new album, New Motion – and a new outlook. By Jo Roberts.
Pacific Northwest-based garage-rockers-turnedtwo-steppers Jenny Don’t and The Spurs have turned in an album as bright and vibrant as their custom. By Denise Hylands.
38 HOWARD’S WAY
Renowned for creating unique recording environments, producer/engineer Mark Howard has written a book about his work. By Brian Wise.
42 THE JAZZ POLICE!
Michael Connelly is one of the world’s most successful crime writers and one of his most famous characters in print and on screen is a jazz buff! By Brian Wise.
46 SIGNATURE SOUNDS
Susan Tedeschi talks to Brian Wise about playing guitar and the new Fender signature guitar named in her honour.
COLUMNS
50 Musician:
The Fender Susan Tedesch Signature Telecaster Reviewed. By Joe Fulco
52 Songs From The South:
Chris Familton uncovers new Australian releases.
53 33 1/3 Revelations:
Ras Michael & The Songs of Negus. By Martin Jones
55 Lost In The Shuffle:
Free Parking by Stu Daye. By Keith Glass
56 Classic Album:
Judee Sill’s 1971 debut. By Billy Pinnell
57 You Won’t Hear This On The Radio: By Trevor J. Leeden
REVIEWS
58
FEATURE ALBUM REVIEWS:
Jimmy Dowling, Smalltown Romance, Michael Waugh, Jordie Lane, The Decemberists and more.
73 World Music & Folk: By Tony Hillier
75 Vinyl: By Steve Bell
76 Jazz: By Des Cowley
78 Books 1:
Des Cowley reviews The Sound in the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond.
80 Books Too!
Chris Stein, Radio Birdman, Terry Allen and more. By Stuart Coupe
81 Festival Guide
Get out your dancing gear.
82 Hello & Goodbye By Sue Barrett.
Musselwhite
Carroll
Charlie Owen
Susan Tedeschi
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
Subscription Enquiries: subscriber@rhythms.com.au
General Enquiries: admin@rhythms.com.au
SOCIALS
Facebook: facebook.com/rhythms.magazine
Twitter: twitter.com/rhythmsmag
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PUBLISHER
RHYTHMS MAGAZINE PTY LTD
PO BOX 5060 HUGHESDALE VIC 3166
Printing: Spotpress Pty Ltd
Distribution: Wrapaway
The Beatles: Where It All Started
Help!
“Surely one of the best magazines on the planet!”- Ben Harper
THE FUTURE
As we roll through winter and look towards the future it has been a time of reflection and re-assessment. Last month I mentioned the rising costs of production and postage for the magazine and at some stage a modest price increase will be inevitable. Facing the future, we have also decided to undertake our first ever fundraising drive. Through the auspices of the Australian Cultural Fund, via Creative Australia, you are now able to make a fully tax-deductible donation to the Rhythms Writers Fund. This will help us to maintain our current team of writers, recruit more from around Australia and ensure the next year of publishing. All money raised is administered by the ACF and can only be used for the purposes stated. You can click on the donate icon on the Rhythms (rhythms.com.au) website or click the Donate button when you resubscribe.
The other action you might like to take to help the magazine is to subscribe a friend to the magazine. You probably know a lot of people who love the same sort of music that you do but who are not subscribers or readers to the magazine. This is now the time to get them on board. We are working on a special subscriber only CD offer for every new and renewing subscriber that will be ready by the next issue.
THE PAST
Last month we published Jo Robert’s feature on Andy Neill and Greg Armstrong’s book When We Was Fab, which chronicled The Beatles’
Australasian tour of 1964. There was a celebration of the anniversary in the media but it was fleeting and gave little time for reflection. Looking back at the charts of the era it is apparent that The Beatles dominated the music scene in a way that has seldom been replicated since, possibly until Taylor Swift took over the ARIA album charts earlier this year. I remember as a youngster sitting in my father’s car, scanning the radio dial and hearing a Beatles song on 7 out of the 8 radio stations that were in Melbourne at the time! Every Beatles release, single or album, was an event because we never knew what they would do next, especially when they retired from touring to the studio. The group released 11 studio albums in seven years, every one of them No.1 in Australia. Before the group arrived on the scene, the Top 40 charts were dire (think Pat Boone covering Little Richard’s ‘Tutti Frutti’!). Elvis had gone into the army and even the teen idols of the time were saccharine. The Beatles changed all that in a year or two. Ironically, along with the Rolling Stones and other British ‘beat’ groups, they also helped Americans rediscover some of their own great black musicians and songwriters. But it was more than just the music that changed peoples’ lives. Not only were John, Paul, George and Ringo charismatic and incredibly talented (especially the Lennon-McCartney song writing duo) but they were funny as well. For a while, I was a dedicated fan until the Stones took over and had a much worse effect on me!
My friend John used to say, ‘It’s okay to look back as long as you don’t stare.’ In Rhythms we cherish the past, but it occurred to me that we also celebrate new music and that a major part of what we aim to do is to help you discover contemporary musicians who are making great music that is not finding an outlet anywhere else.
Recently, when I was asked by a twenty-something who my favourite group was, I immediately named Wilco. They had never heard of the band. The mission continues!
Until next issue …. Enjoy the music.
Brian Wise, Editor
GET THE RHYTHMS WINTER WARMER SAMPLER!
Rhythms Sampler No.30 available only to subscribers.
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. You can also donate to help keep the magazine thriving (see details on Page 27).
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.
01. The Artist Original
Sarah Carroll
From: NQR&B
Available from: Cheersquad Records & Tapes.
02. Beauty & Truth
Michael Waugh
From: Beauty & Truth on Compass Brothers Records.
03. Parapet
SnarskiCircusLindyBand
From: I Know I Know robsnarski.bandcamp.com/album/iknow-i-know
04. Adventure Bay (Single)
The Night Parrots thenightparrots.bandcamp.com
05. Blame Me If You Want To Jordie Lane
From: Tropical Depression (ABC Music)
06. Freight Train (Going South)
Henry Wagons
From: The Four Seasons (ANTI- Records)
07. Fantasy Girl (Single)
Melody Pool
The first single lifted from Melody’s long-awaited third album.
08. Cut & Run (Single)
Small Town Romance
From the forthcoming album Home Fires
09. Misery Queen
Hana & Jessie-Lee’s Bad Habits
10.Say What You Mean
Hana & Jessie Lee’s Bad Habits
From the Alt-Country outfit’s 2nd album Say What You Mean
11. Eyes On Me
GS Ward
From debut album Incommunicado out June 14th - NSW folk rock/roots.
12. Seabird
Indian Pacific
From the debut album Won The Battle Lost The War out nowfeatured on ABC Country and reviewed by Americana UK - jangly alt-country/indie rock.
13. Eucalyptus Road
Aerial Maps
From the Jim Moginie-produced new album Our Sunburnt Dream out now
14. No Worries
The Wicked Messenger
From the new album Corner of Hampstead & Dornoch out nowsoulful folk rock/Americana
15. Road Less Travelled Wren Bellette
From the debut solo album This Love Will Die out Aug 16th - country soul/ Americana.
16. Blue Alice Anderson facebook.com/aliceandersonmusic
17. This Broken Heart Ally Row
New single from Alice Fitzgerald and Rowan Sizer.
18. Three Sheets To The Wind Asleep At The Reel asleepatthereelband.com
19. Speed Humps Brendan McMahon Check: brendanmcmahon.com
20. The Winter Cate Taylor Available at: catetaylorsong. bandcamp.com
21. Help Me I Need To Hurt You Fallow Fields
New album Rocky Head Road is coming soon! fallowfieldsmusic.com
22. Brenda Lee Floyd Thursby Check: facebook.com/ MrFloydThursby/
23. Anenome Johnny Batchelor facebook.com/johnnybatchelormusic/
24. Coral Coast Karen Law Check: karenlawmusic.com
25. Keep On Going Loki Hines Check: lokihines.com.au
26. Blood Red Moon Nancy Bates Check: facebook.com/ NancyBatesMusic/
27. Dear Friend Tessa Lee Check: tessaleemusic.com
28. Skraeling Tom Harrison Check: tomharrisonmusic.com.au
29. In A Field of Elephants Wire Bluthe Check: facebook.com/ wirebluthemusic/
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Dashville Skyline & Out On The Weekend Celebrate A Decade!
DASHVILLE SKYLINE
It’s been a beautiful sonic stroll for Australia’s very own Cosmic Country Weekender, Dashville Skyline, which celebrates its 10th anniversary in 2024.
Held over the October Long weekend - Friday 4th October, Saturday 5th and Sunday 6th October 2024 - on the hallowed ‘island in the stream’, Dashville, in Wonnarua Country, Hunter Valley NSW, the festival offers a weekend musical camping experience akin to no other.
Eloquently and independently showcasing the best in Australian alternative country music over the past decade, the small hardworking team at Dashville, who organise and host the supreme offering, have built an enviable reputation for eclectic countrified line-ups full of established and emerging superstars. It’s the must-do place to perform for aspiring country superstars and the place to be for punters ready to blow the hair back on an incredible weekend of live music in the Hunter Valley countryside.
Dashville is honoured to reach the 10-year milestone and to be presenting this year’s line-up, which is true to form, headed by one of Australia’s greatest, Ross Wilson, who will be performing along with his killer band The Peaceniks, dipping into the vault of mega hits from over the past 50 years, including Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock.
Other popular Australian-based acts on the first round include country rock legends Kingswood, legendary frontman from Goanna - Shane Howard, local folk ruffian William Crighton, popular blues trio 19-Twenty, and Melbourne spaghetti-western super group The Counterfeit, featuring Freya Josephine Hollick.
It’s a strong cast, alongside international acts Hurray For The Riff Raff, the psych country excellence of Rose City Band, Texan legends Uncle Lucius, and UK-based folk singer Grace Petrie.
The family-friendly camping festival is a favourite for those who like their music a bit more laid back, perhaps a bit of cool oozed over their country, or feel in their folk. The popular festival is chocka-block full of amazing live shows from hand-picked artists from around Australia and the world, with a myriad of artistic collaborations, family activities and laid-back oldschool country-inspired fun.
Further details and tickets available at: dashville.com.au
OUT ON THE WEEKEND
Come springtime, Melbourne’s favourite Americana, alt country, country and western lifestyle music festival Out On The Weekend, celebrates 10 years of good times at Seaworks, Williamstown on Saturday October 12.
BT of Love Police and curator of Out On The Weekend said: “I’m constantly warmed by the loving comments of Out On The Weekend regulars I see on the street or online. “It’s our favourite day of the year.” “Best day ever.” “Been to every one”etc. I love it, they love it. At Love Police, we really are just turning our teenage dreams into colourful vibrations, and this one wears a cowboy hat if it wants to and hangs out for a day of excellent good times with like-minded folk. The weather always does us great, and it’s that time in Melbourne post footy and pre summer where there ain’t that much to do. Out On The Weekend can more than fill that gap if you let it, and some. See ya there.”
TICKETS: outontheweekend.com.au
MEET SOME OF THE OOTW & DASHVILLE SKYLINE ARTISTS
HURRAY FOR THE RIFF RAFF, returning to the land of Oz from the New York Bronx on the back of their latest and possibly greatest album The Past Is Still Alive. The psychedelic cosmic cowboy sounds of firsttime visitors ROSE CITY BAND, led by Portland, Oregon musical leader Ripley Johnson (see also Wooden Shjips, Moon Duo). Through their interplanetary mind-blowing Grateful Dead-owing cosmic saga that is Garden Party.
Their songs ‘Keep The Wolves Away’ featured in Yellowstone and now the Austin, Texas country rockers UNCLE LUCIUS are coming here.
AND ALSO AT OUT ON THE WEEKEND
NICK SHOULDERS all the way from Arkansas, who brings his infectious and reckless tunes featuring those jangling Cajun rhythms and surf rock blues that we love from our friend. And he yodels! EMMA DONOVAN’s country gospel roots with the Gumbaynggirr star sharing songs and stories of her childhood and new album Till My Song Is Done. SWEET TALK, homegrown talent who are about to take on the world with their frenzied states of boogie and high-energetic and satisfying soul food. MARGO CILKER - leaving the Columbia River near Washington to play in Australia for the very first time Down Under with her new album Valley of Heart’s Delight. Our favourite sons of heavy sonic country sound LOST RAGAS.
JONNY FRITZ from Montana and Nashville regular JOSHUA HEDLEY are back, running into our open arms with their joyful blends of country and western, fiddle playing and good ol’ fashioned Honky Tonk. Plus: BARB WATERS reprising her classic album Rosa Duet, Melbourne country favourites JAMES ELLIS & THE JEALOUS GUYS, HANA & JESSIE-LEE’S BAD HABITS return to the stage with their electric vocals and jangly guitars, THE SMITH & WESTERN JURY with their songs of heartache and happiness, our favourite cattle camp crooner WILLIAM ALEXANDER and come honky tonk dancin’ and experience the fun-loving tunes of NO SLEEP TILL TEXAS.
Hurray For The Riff Raff to headline
OOTW and Dashville.
HENRY WAGONS GETS CASH
This September, Love Police presents Cash: A Journey Through The American Recordings with Henry Wagons and The Tennessee Studs in a limited season upstairs at Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre.
Known as The Man in Black, Cash’s music has always embraced the existential void and stared down the darkness head-on. No period of his esteemed career did this more so than his infamous, late-career American Recordings albums. Across the course of these six albums released between 1996 and 2006, Cash’s every syllable serves as both a show-down and an embrace of death itself. Under the genius curative lens of producer and creative guru Rick Rubin, Cash reimagined songs by artists you would least expect, from Nine Inch Nails to Sting, Nick Cave to Neil Diamond. The recordings are revealingly raw, acoustic, beautifully stripped bare. The results of these odd couplings have a synergy unmatched, stretching the boundaries of country music as we know it.
In this brand-new show, Cash: A Journey Through The American Recordings, Australian outlaw country founding-figure and brooding baritone Henry Wagons will lean into the deep mythology and sound of The American Recordings Albums. Featuring the favourites ‘Solitary Man’ (Neil Diamond), ‘Hung My Head’ (Sting), ‘The Mercy Seat’ (Nick Cave), ‘Hurt’ (Nine Inch Nails), ‘One’ (U2) and more. Wagons and his band The Tennessee Studs will re-create the sonic depth, poise and ominous force of the original recordings, as if you were sitting with Cash and Rubin in the control room.
BT from Love Police said: “The story goes that Cash was no longer relevant in the public eye, then good fortune through Rick Rubin appeared and things opened up to another dimension. We at Love Police like other dimensions, and helping Artists achieve their vision in much the same way. We have the good faith in Henry to deliver something very special for music lovers here. Let’s enjoy the ride together.”
Henry Wagons said: “For me, it’s as simple as this. The American Recordings series is what first inspired me to play country music…full stop. I’ve always wanted to play these songs live and I truly can’t wait to join forces with The Tennessee Studs in re-creating and re-imagining these gems into a dynamic live show. Let me at it!!”
Henry Wagons is a renowned singer-songwriter, radio presenter and entertainment megamind. Henry is renowned for his sonorous voice in his popular live shows, which he regularly takes to stages across the globe. He has released a swathe of critically acclaimed and awarded albums with band Wagons as well as solo. He is known as one of the instigators of the modern era of alt-country music in Australia. TICKETS AVAILABLE AT: LOVEPOLICE.COM.AU
EMILY WURRAMARA ANNOUNCES NEW ALBUM
ARIA-nominated, multi-award-winning artist and Warnindhilyagwa woman Emily Wurramara has announced that her second album NARA will be released on August 23 through ABC Music). A new single, ‘Lordy Lordy’ featuring Tasman Keith, was released on July 4. ‘Lordy Lordy’ pushes Wurramara’s sound further into the pop/electronic world and is her ‘protest club song’ which she says, “sets the scene for the album”. It is a reflection on truth telling – Wurramara’s signature as an artist - social division, and her deep frustration with colonialism, especially in the wake of the 2023 Referendum. It highlights the importance of respecting and listening to the voices of First Nations people.
Wurramara’s profile blossomed following the release of her acclaimed debut album Milyakburra (2018). She travelled the world with her music, gave birth to her daughter, lost her house in a fire and struggled with her mental health ahead of a pivotal move from Meanjin/ Brisbane to lutruwita/Tasmania. Finally at peace, she shares her journey on her second studio album NARA - the Anindilyakwa word for ‘nothing’. “It was when I had nothing, that I realised I had everything,” she says.
Wurramara co-produced the album with James Mangohig aka Kuya James (A.B. Original, Daniel Johns) at Boat Ramp Studios on Larrakia Country. Guests on the album include singer songwriter and Wiradjuri man Zeppelin Hamilton, along with Ben Edgar (Gurrumul, Gotye) and Lisa Mitchell.
Look out for our feature on Emily in the September/October issue.
By Chris Lambie
Emily Wurramura. Photo by Sangiorgi Dalimore.
By Anne McCue
NOW IS THE TIME FOR JUDEE SILL
Love rising from the mists, Promise me this and only this,
Holy breath touching me Like a wind song
Sweet communion of a kiss
If you only ever listen to one song again, perhaps it could be The Kiss by Judee Sill from her album Heart Food (Asylum Records 1973.)
This divinely inspired song is beautifully ethereal, spaciously melodic, celestially harmonic. Contrary to what the credits might say on the albums, Judee Sill produced and arranged her albums herself. She heard every orchestral note in dreams and visions.
So why didn’t her music ‘take off?’
Something to do with the Zeitgeist?
Something to do with prejudice? If Judee Sill had had Linda Ronstadt’s voice and body would her music have had wider appeal? A pointless question, I know.
One thing I must say about David Geffen, who signed Judee Sill to his Asylum label in the early 70s, is that he didn’t have that ‘female is a genre’ belief that is prevalent in the music business. That ‘we have a female artist, we don’t need another one’ attitude. Like the band Fanny, Judee Sill was given the same amount of promotion they gave
to the other more ‘successful’ artists on the same label. It just didn’t sell. People did not hear it and say, ‘I must have that!’
Judee Sill was an armed robber, a prisoner, a prostitute, a drug addict, a sublime songwriter, a musical genius, both ornery and spiritual, divine yet hopelessly and dangerously mortal. Abused, she became self-abusive, as so many of us do. And there - i.e. oblivion - but for the grace of the Goddess go so many of us.
Judee Sill really believed in ‘God.’ She believed God was listening to her. Her songs and journals were filled with prayers. She asked for help, especially in the face of her drug addiction. A victim of abuse as a child, her life was sent on a trajectory that it would not otherwise have been sent on. For instance, she learned to play gospel piano when she was in juvenile detention.
Judee Sill was ultra-musical. They call it gifted. She was a jazz upright bassist. She was a phenomenal pianist and composer and sang with the greatest of ease. She had friends like Graham Nash, David Crosby and Linda Ronstadt cheering for her and helping her.
When I think of Judee Sill, I think of Saint Teresa and her ecstatic visions and Hildegard von Bingen with her amazing, divinely inspired musical compositions. Souls like these do not appear often in the human realm.
When I think of Judee Sill, I think of Nick Drake and Vincent Van Gogh - other
geniuses who did not experience acclaim in their lifetimes.
Now is the time for Judee Sill. She just couldn’t live long enough to find out.
Sun sifting through the grey
Enter in, reach me with a ray
Silently swooping down, just to show me
How to give my heart away
The film - Lost Angel: The Genius Of Judee Sill - is now streaming on all the different platforms.
Judee Sill albums: Judee Sill, Heart Food
Not Quite Rhythms & Blues
Sarah Carroll is known as the The Ukulele Queen of The Bellarine but her new album is sure to transcend that tag. By Chris Lambie
Bellarine-based musician Sarah Carroll is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist and so much more. A darling of the Melbourne roots music scene and festival favourite across the country, she pours love and light into every performance. Her collaborations with fellow music legends include GIT, The Cartridge Family, The Left Wing, The Junes and outings with her talented sons Fenn Wilson and George Carroll Wilson. The best gigs happen when performers have as much fun as the audience. guaranteed whenever Carroll is involved. “Well, that’s my modus operandi,’ she says. Between her trademark humorous lyrics and banter, more touching songs land with contrasting emotion. She’s unafraid to wear her heart on her sleeve, as evident on latest album NQR&B
Not quite right? In fact, everything about the new collection of songs perfectly reflects the many talents, influences and experiences of Carroll. ‘Gifts I Was Given’ see her acknowledge the futility of professional insecurity and feeling ‘less than’. But music is her tonic of choice and she sings, ‘When envy threatens to swallow me / I just sing til I feel better
Coping with change became Carroll’s inescapable challenge leading into 2020. Carroll’s husband, blues and roots icon Chris Wilson passed away in 2019. Soon after, Carroll had a vivid dream that inspired stellar track ‘The Artist Original’. It depicts the couple driving through snow, stopping outside a beautiful Spanish Mission style pub with the words of the song’s title in big black letters on the front. There she reluctantly but resignedly delivers Chris: ‘Free forever, free together, at The Artist Original’. As the track closes, Leigh Ivin’s masterful lap steel speaks for the turmoil of heartbreak and release. Another dream with the pair again in the touring van (“Chris driving, sitting in that customary hunched position…”) sparked another song soon to be reissued. She sees the dreams as her trying to tie things together and make sense of them. “But also, to celebrate the mystery of it. I don’t think we should feel we need to understand e ‘One Hand Waving Goodbye’ strikes a chord with empty nesters. When both sons left home, she was proud of their ability to take their next steps. Later, the feeling of loss sunk in. “Then when Chris was sick, for ages afterwards, I didn’t want anything moved or touched or changed. You cling to everything you know. I just felt so desperately the need to not have any more upheavals. But of course, life just keeps doling them out. Even keeping a little corner of the house or a bit of the garden as a touchstone of some kind.” Her delivery on the track is akin to Marianne Faithful’ rendering of ‘The Eyes Of Lucy Jordan’, with that slight catch in the throaty vocals. Covid lockdown track ‘Done To’ contends, ‘We’re not hard done by, we are doing…’ Her sons’ return home for ‘iso time’ provided a timely support space in the wake of their shared grief.
“[That time] gave us such a beautiful slow down. Lots of beautiful networks were formed and a coming back to small communities.
The kids and I streamed our nutty arse video series which turned into quite a hit. We got some live gigs out of it and made a bit of money. It gave us something to do.”
Carroll not only sings, plays and writes with multiple lineups, she’s known as director with the Tides Of Welcome community choir (Queenscliff Music Festival regulars), a broadcaster (often heard on Triple R) and a dedicated teacher. >>>
Teaming up with The Junes’ Gleny Rae, Carroll spent the winter of 2022 in Alice Springs. “I loved it. I got a job at a high school. Gleny and I did shows and visited communities. We went to the footy finals at Hermannsberg. It was a great day and so cool.” She’s planning a ‘double onslaught’ at next year’s Tamworth festival with The Junes and The Cartridge Family, both featuring Melbourne’s Suzannah Espie. The latter band have just made a live album she describes as ‘friggin’ awesome’. Each deliver distinctive takes on alt-Country meets old-school twang.
While her mum was a Country fan, Carroll’s stepdad was a classical buff. “They had a Venn diagram style overlap with pop and folk. They both loved The Mamas and Papas, Simon and Garfunkel, The Beach Boys, The Beatles … I listened to lots of that as a kid, which is what I put my love of harmony singing down to. Every now and then mum would rebel and put Chad Morgan on in the middle of a dinner party. After I lost my mum, I moved into a foster home at 15. My foster mum – a very dear friend of the family - introduced me to the joy of Patsy Cline. That’s where I started getting into the classic old Country. Then at Dixon Recycled records, my first proper full-time job, my boss played me the Texan greats.” Carroll has toured the USA many times since.
“Driving from LA to Austin, there was so much American iconography. With the landscape of buttes and mesas, we were half expecting Wile E. Coyote to drop an anvil off
Not Quite Rhythms & Blues
one of them!” Sarah’s progressive country album Star Parade (2017) was followed by a national tour and her sixth trip to the USA, where she appeared at Americanafest. The album reached Top 5 on the Airit/Amrap regional radio charts and received golden reviews in the press as well as strong support from public radio and the ABC across the country. Part of a month-long audio-visual installation at Geelong Town Hall in 2021 (from a Canadian collaboration) was based on the track ‘Water Bearer’ from 2019 album Medicine, dedicated to her late husband.
On NQR&B, Carroll plays guitars, bass and upright bass, glockenspiel (“Ja, I’m fond of that!”), tambourine, vibraslap, djembe and drums. A specialist of hand percussion, she drives the drum kit in The Tin Stars and is a renowned queen of the ukulele. Her longedfor first visit to Hawaii lived up to all her expectations. ‘The Way We Talk’ evokes the image of lazy days beneath swaying palm trees.
Dedicated to her bestie Shula Hampson, it celebrates the ‘glorious and fascinating women’ in her orbit. Queensland singersongwriter Jackie Marshall joins Carroll on the track. “When Jackie’s vocal got added [with a little yodel incorporated] I just danced around the kitchen,” she rejoices. “Isaac Barter’s mix and mastering was incredibly skilful incorporating the yodelling. I’m rapt in the way it all hangs together. It has a really consistent tone even though the songs are different.”
Her dream team of instrumentalists on NQR&B features both sons, guitarists Shannon Bourne (Chris Wilson, Checkerboard Lounge) and Leigh Ivin (The Re-mains) and Tim Neal (Checkerboard Lounge) on keys and clarinet. It was recorded in 2023 at Big Fridge Studio, Wadawurrung Country/Wallington by
Jasper Jolley, who also played some keys and pedal steel on the record.
“Everyone gave it 100%. They all know each other inside out and back to front. So, it’s easy as pie. Shannon Bourne and I have been playing most of the songs together live for quite a while. I sent the tracks around, they all nailed it and had great fun.”
In the USA, Carroll works with the likes of fellow ex-Melbourne resident Anne McCue, Nashville’s Tommy Womack and guitarist Bill Kirchen (Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen, Nick Lowe). She’s twice served as a tour leader and musical guide with Mezray Tours in the US. Her CV includes local support slots for Kinky Friedman (USA), Mic Conway, Old Man Luedecke (Canada), Eddi Reader (Scotland), Renee Geyer, Tim Rogers, Richard Clapton, Vika and Linda Bull, Monique Brumby and Neil Murray.
Part of Carroll’s latest life chapter is the joy of a new relationship with partner Lars. ‘What We Do’ marks the beginning of a true love. “I haven’t had a new relationship for a long time. It’s a whole different world. While I still catch myself in old mental habits, I pull myself up. Experience has taught me perspective…what’s reasonable to expect from myself.”
The reflective ‘Diamond In The Mine’ is a song made to dance to. She says, “It’s a good example of a sort of sad lyric coupled with a bouncy fun tune. I wanted that one to rock along. The groove is so tight and Shannon’s guitar is killer.” Carroll promises a big launch show bringing all artists on the album together. It’s bound to be a cracking celebration for all – on stage and on the dancefloor.
NQR&B by Sarah Carroll is available through Cheers quad Record & Tapes.
Aaron Frazer
INTO THE BLUE
As Charlie Owen sets off on a solo tour, he looks back at where he’s been and what he’s done; and not all of it has been coloured within the lines, writes Samuel J. Fell.
Chaos Theory
As it turns out, Charlie Owen is quite partial to chaos. To those who know of Owen – and most who have been listening to Australian music since the middle 1980s would indeed be sonically acquainted with the man – he’s a wielder of six strings in such bands as Beasts Of Bourbon; Tex, Don & Charlie; The New Christs; Louis Tillett & His Cast of Aspersions; Tendrils; touring player with the Divinyls; bits and bobs off his own bat, sideman, session guy, producer, and in all that there is, indeed, chaos.
But Owen is partial to other forms of chaos, “music being music and not a construction,” as he notes at one point as we talk over the phone in early winter, me by the beach in northern NSW and he on a hill somewhere south of Melbourne. “I embraced electronica and techno when it first started around the place,” he smiles. “I had Kraftwerk records as a teenager, it was like, finally, someone is using a drum machine and a computer.”
Owen and his wife own a small art gallery in St.Kilda and so he can often be found there, on exhibition opening nights, in an adjacent room, mixing sounds together that are quietly piped into the gallery proper. Messing about with sound, in a different way to that which he’s known.
“I’ve always been interested in [that] idea of chaos, beats together, not exactly in time, how you can make two things meld without them actually being in time. It’s all about levels,” he muses. “Often on tour, over the past several years, we’ll get back to hotel rooms and I’ll make music… find something on the radio, throw a blanket over the TV so we can’t see it and then turn it on, switch it around until something matches, grab someone’s phone and get something… a whole piece of music and put that together and slowly just bounce it around, and suddenly, bang! It’ll all fall together, and that’s just the chaos theory in music.
“And people would be sitting around after gigs, drinking, saying, ‘Oh Charlie, shut up, it’s horrible’, and then a couple of minutes later, ‘What? How did that happen?’ And so, it became quite a thing – let’s go to Club Charlie, Room 705.”
Owen’s background is in jazz, lashings of country, and of course rock ‘n’ roll. It’s really not that surprising that he’s so into the chaotic underbelly of music as a whole, whether electronic or not, such are his wide-ranging tastes and inspirations. Indeed, one listen to the distorted guitar intro of ‘No Way On Earth’, the opening track on the New Christs’ debut album, Distemper (1989), is evidence of Owen’s love of the offside, the ungainly, the sonically outta the box. And it’s all these influences that come together to inform where the man is at today, further down the road, all the richer for the experience.
String Theory
“One of my favourite things I’ve ever done was the New Christs’ material,” he says. Our conversation is slowly lurching about from one topic to another. Not in jarring fashion, just covering bases as they come to light. “When Rob (Younger) and Jim (Dickson) asked me to join the New Christs, I said as long as there’s only one guitar,” he remembers. “And Rob was like, ‘Well, no, the New Christs and Radio Birdman stuff is all two guitars’, and so I said, let’s think more like The Stooges, and I had my jazz background, and so we did it and that was a great success.”
Owen was in the New Christs when they released their full-length studio debut, Distemper, and although he left soon afterwards, in 1990, as the group disbanded, his legacy is well and truly in-tact, the album reaching #1 on the ARIA Alternative Albums chart, the band touring Europe twice during Owen’s tenure, a rumbling, diesel-soaked freight train of a record, of a band, of a time and place.
The same can be said for the likes of the Beasts Of Bourbon, although perhaps substitute whiskey for diesel. As we speak, Owen has just come off the road with BoB, the band having reunited last year in order to raise money for drummer, James Baker’s medical expenses, and such was the delight they found in playing together once more, that they put in place a run of dates through April just gone.
“[Those gigs we did] for James Baker’s ongoing health issues, we recorded them,” he says. “And it just came out absolutely incredibly, so we thought we’d do another bunch of gigs to promote that. And so, we thought, [in April], while everyone is here, we should make another record, so we jumped into the studio after the last gig for two days and made a new Beasts’ record.”
“So that took up basically a whole month, and after a Beast’s tour it takes about a month to recover,” he laughs. “So, the Beasts have been going, you know, plodding along. I’ve got a few smaller things on too, just for fun around the place. And Joel Silbersher and I still do things, which is Tendrils, which we’ve been threatening each other to try and get into the studio for a couple of years now.”
Living “out of town”, has seen Owen not do as much as he used to, “Living in town you’re sort of in each other’s pockets, and I’ve got a young family [here]. I’m here a lot of the time, and so that’s why I’ve decided to go and do more solo shows really.”
Six strings, back where Charlie Owen belongs, that other kind of chaos, up and down the east coast on his own, another experiment, chasing, as producer and engineer Tony Cohen once said, that moment in the music.
Searching For Charlie Owen
Through August, Owen will traverse the east coast – south-east Queensland, northern New South Wales, Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne and surrounds. He’ll be on his own (aside from local supports), moving forward and yet, at the same time, looking back. The tour is entitled Searching For Charlie Owen and so I wonder aloud if Charlie Owen is lost, do we need to find him?
“It all came about because I started doing a few shows of songs of people I’d worked with who’d passed away,” he explains. “A friend of mine was looking me up on the internet… he was looking up songs I’d written with other people that had passed away, and it was him who came up with the name – because I don’t have a lot of records and things out under my name, so it was kinda like… it seemed like a good thing to do, because it’s not just a solo show with me strumming an acoustic guitar and doing a few old covers.”
The shows then, will comprise songs Owen has co-written, or written on his own, that have been played with artists no longer with us. And, as he says, it won’t only be acoustic guitar-based, but will showcase his multi-instrumentalism, the man being as proficient on banjo, mandolin, keys, percussion, harmonica, as he is with a guitar. Around the songs, Owen will talk about how they came to be too, who he played them with; the show will have then, a narrative, telling a story as it winds on. “Yes, a narrative,” Owen concurs.
“I’ve got a very varied and full history of people who’ve passed away and different people who I’ve made records with and played with, so I delve into all of it, really. Right from my early days through to very recently.”
“I’ll bring along electric guitar, acoustic guitar, my dobro, keyboard, a synthesiser, basically at some point they’re all going… the electronica thing pokes its head up, not with samples and I don’t use a looping pedal ever, but I do use a synthesiser and a delay machine and things like that.”
I venture that playing solo is a different beast. Owen is, as we’ve discussed, very well versed with the power and mayhem that comes with playing in full-tilt rock bands and its own inherent kind of madness, and as well, playing in country bands or in duo mode also gives our protagonist somewhere to shelter, but playing solo, up on stage by yourself armed with little else but songs and instruments; there’s nowhere to hide. He laughs. “Well, I’ve done it lots over the years, really.”
“When I first started playing music, when I lived in Brisbane and had bands under my own name, but they were predominantly instrumental bands,” he says. “But then as I got more known as a guitar player and musician, I started playing with people and saying, look, I’ll just play the guitar, you just sing. And so, I didn’t really sing at all, maybe occasionally some backing vocals.
“And then when all these friends of mine started passing away, I thought to myself, some of these songs I’ve written may never get played again. So, I thought, I’m gonna fucking sing them! And I’ve loved doing it. I really like it, actually. And I’ve often done things [like this], so it’s not really such a stretch, it’s just I’m holding the microphone rather than the other guy.”
Searching for Charlie Owen then, is essentially Owen ensuring that these songs live on. Songs he wrote with and for others who can no longer sing them. And so, Charlie Owen is singing them. A simple, yet incredibly important premise.
Some of these songs were, originally, performed by the late Maurice Frawley, with whom Owen played in The Working Class Ringos in the early ‘90s, among other things, and a poignant part of this tour, particularly the last few dates in Victoria, is that Owen’s support act for those gigs will be Maurice’s son, Martin. “That’ll be great, I’m sure there’ll be a few Ringos songs that night!” he smiles.
“I’ve been fond of Martin ever since he was a kid, when I’d show him how to play lap guitar, instead of holding it because he was too young to hold it properly,” he laughs at the memory. “So, when the tour idea came up, that was a no-brainer to ask him to come with me, we’d been toying with the idea of doing a couple of shows anyway. He’s a lovely guy and a great performer and storyteller in his own right.”
We wrap it up around here. Owen mentions, going forward, that there’s the chance of a new Charlie Owen record once this tour is done. He’s excited about the new Beasts album. And he’s excited to embrace yet another form of chaos as he embarks on a run to, essentially, search for himself. Not that he’s lost. Has Charlie Owen ever been lost? Most likely not. As it turns out, Charlie Owen is quite partial to chaos, and within that, there is more than enough beauty within the music to keep the man moving forward, music being music, and not a construction.
Charlie Owen tours the East Coast in August. See the Gig Guide for details.
BLUES
Charlie Musselwhite has forgotten the odd story,
Charlie Musselwhite by Danny Clinch
BLUES ATTITUDE
has been immersed in the blues for almost sixty years, and while he’s story, he’s still going as strong as ever, writes Samuel J. Fell.
“There’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember,” says Charlie Musselwhite. He laughs as he says this, leaning back in his chair and shifting position. Behind him, a couple of guitars rest against shelves, there’s general clutter about the room, a gig poster from times gone by affixed to a cabinet. Outside, through the window, trees wave in the springtime wind. Musselwhite is at home, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, the state in which he was born but left at age three, first to Memphis, then to Chicago and San Francisco as the second wave of the blues boom broke and the genre evolved anew and, thusly, was introduced to vast new audiences. He moved back to his home state a few years ago; he tells me that Clarksdale is growing again, that live music is back, “Seven nights a week,” he smiles, and you know he knows where it’s at. >>>
There’s a lot of stuff I don’t remember.
Charlie Musselwhite in Clarksdale, Mississippi, by Rory Doyle
BLUES ATTITUDE
The blues is
an attitude,
it’s way of living life.
Musselwhite has been busy. Just last year, he played a small but pivotal role in Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, a role which came about due to his grandfather’s role (also named Charlie Musselwhite) in the killing of outlaw Al Spencer in the 1920s. “If you’ve read the book [that the movie is based on], there’s a picture of a bad man named Al Spencer,” he explains. “And I have Spencer’s rifle, with notches carved on it from all the people he killed in his day. And the reason I have it, is because Al Spencer died in a shootout with my grandfather.
“That’s not in the book or the movie… but I told Scorsese about it, and he was like, ‘Charlie Musselwhite, back on the scene!’. It was pretty wild back in those days.”
Musselwhite is also working on his biography, along with Living Blues founder Jim O’Neal, a project which has slowly been coming together over the past few years. “[Jim] knows all the questions to ask to trigger my memory,” Musselwhite laughs. “So we’re working together on that, and hopefully this year that’ll come out.” This is where he confesses there’s plenty he doesn’t remember, but as one would expect, there’s plenty he does. At eighty years of age, Musselwhite has been there and done it – he’s played with everyone, and everyone’s played with him. John Lee Hooker was best man at one of his weddings –the man defines the blues, one of the surviving members of those heady days in the ‘60s when things were plugged in and then throbbed and grew and took on new meaning.
“The blues is an attitude,” Musselwhite has been quoted as saying, it’s a “way of living life.” I ask him how exactly this is so; he would know of course, he’s been within the grasp of the blues for almost six decades.
He pauses for a second, thinking about it. “Well, blues is more than just music,” he muses slowly. “It’s not a fad, it’s really like a philosophy or something – a way of dealing with life. Blues is your buddy in good times, and your comforter in hard times. It’ll accompany you through life, make the hard times easier, and you can party with it too, you know? It’s honest music.”
Given he has a handy fallback career as an actor (as well as Killers of the Flower Moon, Musselwhite has also appeared in a number of, “Biker movies, horror movies, you know.”), I ask if he could ever see himself not being a bluesman, perhaps as silly a question as I’ll ever ask. “No, it’s pretty much… I love the blues, I aways have, it’s just part of my nature,” he laughs. “It’s just me.”
The most recent example of Musselwhite being the blues is his last record, 2022’s Mississippi Son, a stripped back and raw record featuring, in the main, just him and his harmonica, and some tasteful guitar, on which he is more than proficient. It was an album which, “was kind of an accident,” he says of the
Charlie Musselwhite in Clarksdale by Rory Doyle
album. “It was during the pandemic, and here in Clarksdale a few blocks away a friend of mine has a studio, and I’d go and hang out there, cos there weren’t nobody working anywhere.
“I was playing and just hanging out, and he asked if I minded him taping some of the tunes I was playing, I said yeah, and then after while I realised I had quite a few tunes, and my wife said, maybe this could be an album. So I overdubbed my harmonica on it, brought in a bass player and drummer for a few tunes, so it was just kinda an accident! And it worked out well.”
As if all this wasn’t enough, Musselwhite has a new album, “in the can, as they say,” an album which sees him return to band format once more, along with a few surprises. “I can’t tell you what those surprises are, otherwise they wouldn’t be surprises,” he laughs before I even ask the question. You know it’ll be true to the blues though; the man knows nothing else.
In the meantime, Musselwhite and his current band are, for the first time in a decade or so (we can’t pinpoint the exact timing, one of the things he’s forgotten) heading down to Australia for a run of shows through September. With him will be long-time drummer June Core, who’s been in his band for twenty years this year, and bassist Randy Bermudes. Added to this is guitar whiz Kid Andersen, a line-up sure to blow minds and win hearts within the realms of Musselwhite’s stellar harmonica work, his blues chops in general.
“Kid plays with me often, I played with him just last Friday night,” he says. “He brings a lot of humour, he’s got a great sense of humour, we have a lot of fun on the road, but he’s also a straight-ahead, fabulous guitar player, and he knows a lot of music, it’s easy to work it out with a guy like that.”
Musselwhite jokes that there’s plenty of things he doesn’t remember, and no one would blame him, given the length of his career. But there’s plenty he does, and all that is as relevant to him and the music he’s made his own along the same timeline, as it ever has been – Charlie Musselwhite is the blues, no one will ever forget that.
Charlie Musselwhite tours Australia through September.
See the Gig Guide for dates.
Charlie Musselwhite by Rory Doyle
HERE COMES THE NIGHT
A noted sideman takes centre stage on a sparkling solo set.
By Jeff Jenkins
“Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good.”
Josh Owen’s new album, As The Night Falls, features a cover of ‘When The Levee Breaks’.
The record – which tells the tale of Owen’s life on the road, past relationships, his love of the seasons, and a penchant for whiskey –sounds effortless and beautiful, but this belies the story of the making of the album.
Many times, the Melbourne-based artist thought about giving up and shelving the project. “It’s always an uphill slog being an original artist,” Owen says. “And I thought, ‘Maybe I’ll just be a guitar player?’”
But James Reyne and his manager, Scot Crawford, encouraged the guitarist to finish the record, and it’s now been released on Crawford’s Reckless Records.
“They have both been incredibly generous and supportive.”
Owen has been playing with Reyne since 2015, learning many lessons along the way. “James is just the master songwriter. He’s got this enviable talent for writing songs and lyrics, and he’s so prolific.”
Reyne’s songwriting style has rubbed off on Owen, with the songs on the new album tight and accessible. “Yeah, there’s no fat,” the artist agrees. “They’re not too self-indulgent, and I learnt a lot of that from James.” Owen calls his sound “digestible complexity”. Musically, there’s a lot going on, but it’s all served up in a dish that’s digestible.
Owen’s other big influence was his father, Peter. “He was such a big part of my life,” Owen smiles, “my sounding board, my favourite person in the universe.” The album concludes with a moving track called ‘The River’, which celebrates Owen’s relationship with his dad.
Owen’s parents were both Kiwis, and the family came to Melbourne when his dad, a nurse, was studying natural therapies. He planned to become a chiropractor and natural therapist; he ended up becoming a chaplain in the air force and police force and a pastor in the Presbyterian Church.
“I was born in a town called Whanganui in New Zealand, which is named after the Whanganui River,” Owen explains. “It’s a very mighty river, with a lot of myth and legend connected to it.”
When Owen was 10, he joined his dad and his mates for a three-day trip paddling down the river. “I wanted to describe the amazing natural scape of that area. But it’s also a song about me being a child and seeing my dad with his friends, feeling like I was doing something masculine. It was a boys’ own adventure.”
Owen says ‘The River’ is “a hymn to him”. But sadly, his dad died before he got to hear the finished version. “But he did get to hear a version that my brother, an opera singer, recorded for an album he made, a very big and bombastic version.”
That version was played at their father’s funeral.
“I didn’t think I could finish the album,” Owen continues. “But dad was always very encouraging of my music and told me I had to get it done, so I thought it was fitting to put that song at the end of the album as a tribute to him.”
The CD version of As The Night Falls also features a cover of Memphis Minnie and Kansas Joe McCoy’s ‘When The Levee Breaks’, which is both a nod to Led Zeppelin and Owen’s dad.
“Led Zeppelin was my first love,” Owen reveals. “And Jimmy Page was my first man crush. I could show you the points in the album that Jimmy Page has influenced.”
When Owen was 11, his father sat him down for a chat. The young boy was squirming in his seat – he thought his dad was going to launch into a lecture about the birds and the bees.
“I think, son, it’s time,” the chat started. Josh felt awkward and embarrassed. He was dreading the talk. But his dad continued.
“I think it’s time you start listening to Led Zeppelin.”
Young Josh was immediately hooked. “It was that mystery of music that captured me. Hearing those songs on a tiny tape player was just as powerful as seeing a band on a huge stage with a big PA in all its rock majesty.”
OUT NOW
And the songs on As The Night Falls capture the thrill of that young boy listening to Zeppelin for the very first time.
As The Night Falls is out in August on Reckless Records.
CharlieharlieMussewhite Mussewhite
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With more than 32 years of writing about ‘roots’ music, in all its many forms, the reason for Rhythms’ existence has never been more apparent: to give exposure to under-represented musicians from Australia and abroad. Rhythms has stayed true to its goal of covering the music that is largely ignored by the mainstream media. That has been possible thanks to a dedicated bunch of subscribers and loyal advertisers.
Now, with rising costs for printing and mailing, the magazine needs your help to ensure its future in the short-term. We have always paid our contributors, and this is one area that we don’t want to cut back. We want to continue to bring you some of the most respected music writers in Australia. At the same time, we would like to recruit new writers from all States to add to our team of some of Australian most respected music writers.
So, we are asking for your help in our first ever fund-raising campaign. Not only is your donation TAX DEDUCTIBLE but also absolutely 100% of your donation will go to the Rhythms’ Writers Fund.
If you would like to see Rhythms thrive into the future, we urge you to consider donating.
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TheWHITEstuff
Andy White’s long and winding road leads to his first spoken word album. By
Jeff Jenkins
The revolution is coming.
So says Andy White on his new album, Good Luck I Hope You Make It, his first spoken word collection. The lyrics of the opening cut, ‘The Revolution’, are so great, they’re worth quoting at length: After the revolution, you will not be asked to complete a survey entitled “How did the revolution do?”
The revolution will not be accompanied by a lifestyle feature entitled “10 Things To Do During The Revolution”.
The journeyman musician remains a believer in the power of words and music. His lines are cutting:
The revolution will not be brought to you by an oil company who “cares” for the environment.
The revolution will not feature a reunion of the original cast of Friends. The revolution will not be accompanied by a soundtrack composed by Dave Grohl.
Good Luck I Hope You Make It is a welcome and withering antidote to the Murdoch media. If you don’t laugh, you’ll cry. As the Irish Times review stated, the record contains “poetic reflections on a world gone stark raving mad”.
White goes looking for “the password of the beast”, a wordy and witty rant about corrupt priests and politicians, the evils of social media, and a world where “they got the software to remember you anywhere … and they try to sell you anything you never wanted anyway”.
And then in ‘Ghost Writer’, “a valediction for Valentine’s Day”, White notes that “everything changes … Have you got the answer? I wish I knew the answer.”
A decade ago, I asked White if pain helped songwriting. He preferred to see it from another angle. “Songwriting helps relieve pain.”
Funky and hypnotic – “Get up everybody and dance,” White implores the listener – this is not your standard spoken word record. Recorded in Melbourne, mixed in Calgary and mastered in Los Angeles, it follows last year’s AT, White’s collaboration with Tim Finn. This outing sees the Belfast-born songwriter return to his punk rock roots, inspired by John Cooper Clarke, The Clash, Dylan and hip hop.
“On my last solo release, This garden is only temporary, I started with poems,” White explains. “You can hear them in ‘Another Sunny Day’ and ‘Everything’s Turning White’, but these songs, and eventually that
album, took a different path. When it was complete, I still had one instrumental track in search of lyrics – ‘Bass Priority’. When the words came, it was a spoken word story about colonisation.
“I was sitting on ancient land, thinking about what happened in Ireland and then in the continent we now call Australia. These things resonate.”
White downloaded beats and started writing. Then lockdown happened. He was stuck in Melbourne, while Boris Johnson was telling his mum and dad in Belfast that they were old, had had a good life and were, therefore, dispensable.
“I read Book of Rhymes by Adam Bradley, listened to [Allen Ginsberg’s] Howl, and watched Kerouac reading from On the Road. Listened to Gil Scott-Heron loud, like I did when I was 20. Wrote lyrics in notebooks and on my phone, and improvised rhymes on the mic. Played bass like when I was a teenager.”
They were strange days. “I was talking to Ireland, texting a friend in Canada, watching the political clown show in the UK and checking Patti Smith’s Instagram. Walking half an hour a day, unaccompanied. “Luckily, we made it.”
White emerged with a record that’s edgy and unpredictable – you never quite know where it’s going to take you. It’s also enormously entertaining.
A woman once asked the artist how old he was when he became a “professional” musician. “Twenty-three,” White replied, wondering why she had asked the question. “Because,” she explained, “that’s the age you’ll always be.”
Andy White might be a little world weary and battered and bruised. But he still rages with the righteous indignation of a young man.
“You will not be able to purchase the revolution with one click,” he concludes. But he’s confident that the revolution is coming.
The revolution is you. You are the one.
Good Luck I Hope You Make It is out now. Check: andywhiteireland. bandcamp.com/
CAIN IS ABLE!
Over a career spanning almost four decades, Chris Cain isn’t slowing down, as his latest record attests, writes Samuel J. Fell.
Chris Cain is on the move around the time we go to chat. This ought to come as no surprise, given he’s been playing stages the world over since his debut, Late Night City Blues, in 1987, but this is a different kind of move – as the American south-west burns, Cain is under an evacuation order, and so our chat gets canned. And canned again. Cain hops a fast plane to Denmark to play a few shows, the situation easing upon his return.
“Sorry for all the delays Mother Nature caused; she can be quite brutal, at times,” his partner notes, via email.
Cain is a veteran. He’s been slingin’ six strings for around forty years, releasing some fourteen albums along the way (including live cuts), mesmerising all and sundry with his guitar prowess, his deep and resonant voice, his poignant lyrics, his genuine verve and showmanship. And in all that time, he’s barely stopped once, age not wearying a man whose love for the blues is legendary.
“That’s what it is,” he concurs via email, where we’re finally able to communicate. “The love for the music and playing it for the people. That’s what has really kept me going, the love for the folks and the fact that they still want to come out and hear it.”
Cain is bringing ‘it’ our way once more come late August, a run of shows with a local band yet to be determined. He’s not been here since, “2019, this is my first time back since the pandemic,” he shares, which for someone like Cain is far too long between drinks, far too long between house rockin’ parties.
On house rockin’, Cain’s last record, 2021’s Raisin’ Cain, was released via the legendary Alligator Records, renowned of course, as the home of ‘Genuine House Rockin’ Music’. After a career with various labels, including his own, Cain came to Bruce Iglauer’s Alligator almost by accident. “Bruce Iglauer found out I was making a record and he was interested in hearing it,” Cain writes simply.
“I heard that Tommy Castro had encouraged Bruce to consider me,” he goes on. “[I’d] recorded the album to put on my own label and Alligator heard it and liked it; I guess they wanted to release it. It was like I was dreaming or something. It was a beautiful experience and beyond anything I could dream of happening. They’ve been fantastic to me,” he adds, the reputation of the label not lost on him.
“Alligator always had important records with serious artists who are respected. They really support their artists and they’ve been doing it
for fifty years which really says a lot. It was beyond my wildest dreams to be invited to be a part of that.”
Such is Cain’s contentment with his newfound home, that is seems inevitable the partnership would continue – enter the man’s 15th record, to be released via Alligator here imminently, Good Intentions Gone Bad. The album, as fans of Cain would expect, is rock solid. It’s a party album, and yet it’s not ‘party’ purely for the sake of ‘party’ – it’s very considered, it’s strong, every thought given to the ‘song’.
“[Yes], I was hoping for that and the fact that you heard it like that makes me very, very happy,” he writes. “I know I was thinking that as I recorded it and the fact that it did come out that way makes me very happy.
“I felt like when I was making it there had been some depth in there. I felt… that group of tunes went together very well as a package. I felt like, when I was recording it, this was all good stuff, thanks to the guys in my band and to Kid Andersen and everybody who played on it. They just all played good things on there. It was exhilarating doing that and a really good experience.”
Renowned guitarist Andersen (Charlie Musselwhite, Rick Estrin, Elvin Bishop, among many others) was involved as producer, also contributing various instruments throughout. According to Cain, he brought an incredible amount to Good Intentions Gone Bad. “Kid brought a load. He brought a ton,” he says, no doubt with a smile.
“[He] was instrumental in choosing some tunes that I was putting on this record. He was instrumental in making my visions come to life. He was really crucial in the whole thing. He helped with writing some things and helped to put some of my ideas that I’ve only thought of into tangible tunes. A lot of the special moments and the tunes being recorded the way they were are because of Kid. He’s a joy to work with.”
The results speak for themselves, and Australian audiences will get a chance to sample it firsthand come August, as Chris Cain continues spreading his love for the blues, with no chance of slowing down any time soon.
Good Intentions Gone Bad is available now via Alligator Records. For tour dates, see the Gig Guide.
Country Noir
The Henry Wagons train is about to fire up again with a new album, The Four Seasons. (No, it’s not a tribute to the ‘60s vocal group!).
By Brian Wise
Henry Wagons.
Photo by Laura May Grogan.
Sometimes when I talk to Henry Wagons I am reminded of Steve Martin, best known as a comedian but a seriously good musician who invariably is unable to restrain himself from making a joke. Henry is a seriously good singer whose larger-than-life personality has seen him reveal his considerable talents: fronting the band Wagons; releasing solo projects; doing a tribute show to Warren Zevon; hosting the gospel brunch at the Americana Festival; being an MC with his daughter Casper for Vika & Linda’s Christmas Show; presenting a radio show on Double J; and, even hosting a BBQ show on commercial television. (Henry was even named in The Age Melbourne Magazine’s ‘Top 100 Most Influential People’ in 2009).
Now, Wagons has released his latest project and when I first saw the title I wondered if Henry had done a tribute to the famous ‘60s vocal group of the same name. I figured not, given that Frank Valli’s voice is quite a few octaves higher. Maybe, given his musical background, it was a reference to the classical work by Vivaldi?
“Of course, it is,” laughs Wagons. “I’ve always sort of joked about making an album called The Four Seasons or calling an album Revolver I thought it’d be just bold and stupid, and I’ve finally done it but it seemed to fit. I’ve always had a view to doing it. There are a bunch of stoned, trippy instrumentals that I think hold the seasons picture together and takes you on a journey through the record.”
Of course, the title has to do with the allegedly unpredictable weather of Henry’s hometown of Melbourne. (Crowded House even recorded a song about it: ‘Four Seasons In One Day’).
“We are experts on the weather,” he laughs, “and I think it sort of reflects the turbulence of my emotions sometimes: ‘four seasons in one day’. I think everyone has days like that.”
As Wagons notes, the instrumentals bearing the titles of the seasons are interludes, somewhat like in a movie soundtrack. ‘Summer’, the longest of the instrumentals, introduces the album almost like the open credits to a Spaghetti Western movie. But what follows is hardly predictable.
“I’ve always liked albums that take you on a little bit of a trip,” he says. “It is not a concept record as such, but I’m hoping it has a bit of a through line to it.”
One of the big discoveries to be made on The Four Seasons is that of singer Queenie, who has released a few of her own singles and who seems destined for much bigger things. Wagons met her at the APRA Awards when he was hosting the event and he suggested that they write together, a project that resulted in five songs, three of which appear here and are some of the highlights.
“Queenie is one of my favorite singers roaming the globe,” says Wagons. “I think she’s great. We got on so well and had a similar worldview, a similar sense of dynamic and vocal dynamic, so that we worked really well together. So, it’s like, ‘Hey, let’s do this’. I’m looking forward to not only people hearing the songs that we sing together on this record but recording more with her into the future. I think there’s a real Lee [Hazelwood] and Nancy [Sinatra], old school country, Cosmic Country quality to our duets, which I really dig.”
One of the outstanding tracks on The Four Seasons, and my favourite, is ‘What You Need’, a gently rolling song that has a far more restrained vocal from Henry. It also might just get him some airplay on commercial radio. In another era you’d say it would be a Top 10 hit!
“I am glad you noticed,” he says. “I’m not surprised you noticed. This record to me is a bit more laid back. Through the last few years, I’ve really admired records that not only stand up to scrutiny on a close listen but you can also have in the background to wash over you and hypnotise you while you’re doing something else. I think there’s value in both of those things and I hope this record serves that purpose. I think it’s a bit more hypnotic, it’s a bit more stoned, it’s a bit more sonically dense. So, a big dramatic vocal performance didn’t seem appropriate, and a lot of these songs are quite introspective or trippy, so I need to be gentle.
“….The whole time I miss being a mad professor, a Dr. Frankenstein, and concocting songs in the studio by myself and getting the rush of blood, the momentum of the snowball of a song as the instruments gather.”
Wagons recorded The Four Seasons at Trentwood Studios, which he explains is ‘actually my kind of garage conversion under my house’ located somewhere ‘in the rock ‘n’ roll streets of Balwyn North.’ He claims that it’s the best room that he has ever worked in.
Wagons also played the majority of the instruments himself, apart from a few other people, including Liam McGorry on brass, Matt Kelly on pedal steel and keyboards from Lachlan Bryan (who was the MD for the Warren Zevon show). It’s an impressive sound and production which belies its suburban origins. One assumes that it was mastered by Andrew Downton at Railtown Mastering in Canada.
“It’s how I first started, really from the four-track era,” explains Wagons about the recording process. “I think my own egomania just couldn’t believe that I could have an orchestra of myself. Across the years and across the decades with Wagons and so on, we’ve recorded records in a whole bunch of ways. I’ve really liked our studio experiences. I’ve made a Nashville record. I’ve engineered band records.
“But the whole time I miss being a mad professor, a Dr. Frankenstein, and concocting songs in the studio by myself and getting the rush of blood, of the momentum of the snowball of a song as the instruments gather. That inspires the composition sometimes as well, just sort of toiling away in a dark room. I’ve returned to that way of writing and recording. I think it’s some of my best songs, not only songwriting wise, but sonically. I’m really happy with the extra time and the space this way of recording affords me.”
“That song I was writing in and around, hanging out a little bit with Gabriella Cohen. I’m a big fan of her work, that sort of Psych Garage, Sixties pop. It’s a bit of solo John Lennon leading into maybe a dash of calypso and it’s a very groove-based song. I think you’re right that I haven’t really put out anything quite like it.”
Another song that features a more reserved Wagon’s vocal, as well as the Wagons band, is Justin Townes Earle’s ‘One More Night in Brooklyn’, a touching tribute to Henry’s late friend who died in August 2022.
“I toured with him on his second trip to Australia and had the pleasure of playing with him in following years as well,” explains Henry. “We got on well enough for him to take me over and I toured with him over in the US as well. He was a great friend, and I had the pleasure of meeting him across a few different countries in various different stages in his life.”
“I think he’s a man that has been sober, has partied hard, has lived to the extreme, has been incredibly stoned and placid,” continues Henry, “but always charming and always a surprise and always a pleasure, and always a charisma machine. You’d see him and you’d pretty much wind him up and let him go, and you’d hear a few of the best stories you’ve ever heard in your life.
“I think his work was incredibly important. I think he was a forerunner and a pioneer for the modern era of kind of Americana. He was really important to me, and I have him to thank him endorsing me in the USA which pretty much gave me whatever career I’ve got in the US and Canada. He wrote a little quote about me; he helped hook my people up with his people and labels over there. So, I’ve got a lot to be thankful for Justin, so it’s very much the least I can do. That feeling extends to the Wagons band. It was Wagons that originally supported him, and we all have an affection for him and I’m really happy with that version of ‘One More Night in Brooklyn’ too.”
By Jo Roberts
HENRY WAGONS
THE FOUR SEASONS
Cheatin’ Hearts Records
The unmistakeable voice of Australian outlaw cosmic country is back with a new soundtrack to your lazy afternoons.
Henry Wagons’ fourth solo album, ‘The Four Seasons’, is another solid collection from the toffee-tonsilled cowpoke who began his career out front of the band Wagons before diversifying into television, radio and solo music-making.
Produced by Wagons at Trentwood Studios, Wagons also plays most instruments himself, save for a little help from friends including Liam McGorry on brass, pedal steel from Matt Kelly, and some keyboard from Lachlan Bryan.
The Four Seasons isn’t as upbeat as its predecessor, 2023’s South of Everywhere, which saw Wagons narrating vignettes of daily life in cheerful detail, or bringing some colourful new varmint to life in song. On The Four Seasons, Wagons feels like he’s digging deeper into his emotions – and the rewards for the listener are rich.
The album opens with ‘Summer’, a parched and dusty Morricone-style instrumental, all high n’ lonesome whistles, plaintive trumpet lines and rattlesnake percussion. True to its title, you can almost feel the sting of the blazing sun.
The second track – and also the first single from the album – is ‘Freight Train (Going South)’, a catchy and percussive tune that, unsurprisingly, evokes the chugga chugga and build-up of a slow-moving carriage. But there’s something else afoot here, something sinister. With the line “once you ride this train, you ain’t gonna wanna ride trains no more”, it all suddenly makes sense.
And yes, the album delivers what it says on the label. The other three seasons make appearances throughout the record as shorter instrumental interludes. ‘Autumn’ begins with a moody and sparse electronic bed, before a delicate nylon string guitar adds a lift to the mood. ‘Winter’ is a short 42-second flurry of rain, gentle keyboard stabs and strumming guitar, while the even shorter ‘Spring’ brings the warmth back with bass, horns and handclaps.
As previous releases show, Wagons is fond of a duet. A glorious revelation here is Queenie – aka Cheersquad Records & Tapes artist Eloise Thetford – who joins Wagons on three tracks. ‘Big City Blues’, with its sultry raga-rock overtones, sees Wagons and Queenie evoke the best of the Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood chemistry, though it must be said Queenie has the better of Nancy. What a voice. She gets to show it off more
fully in the love song ‘Surrender’, where she and Wagons exchange tender declarations between delicate pedal steel lines.
An emotional highlight of the album, however, is Wagons’ tribute to his dear friend, Justin Townes Earle, with a cover of the late American troubadour’s ‘One More Night in Brooklyn’. Rather than the sparse, percussive acoustic guitar – and carefree joy – that drove JTE’s original version, here a slow pulsing electronic beat, aching electric guitar and Wagons’ restrained vocal takes the song in a more poignant direction. You can feel Wagons’ love and lingering grief for his friend. It’s beautiful and deeply affecting. But so too are the songs where Wagons celebrates love, such as ‘My Lover, My Companion’ and ‘I’m Glad I Fell in Love With You’.
‘The Four Seasons’ is an apt reflection of the journey through the seasons of life; the good, bad and sad. And Henry Wagons shows us all sides of his heart – the heaviness and happiness –along the way.
‘The Four Seasons’ is out August 16.
JENNY DOES IT AGAIN!
From the Pacific Northwest in the USA, Jenny Don’t and the Spurs might not be a well-known name as yet but their appearance at Out On The Weekend and Australian tour late last year certainly garnered them a legion of fans here. Now they have a brand-new album, Broken Hearted Blue. By
Denise Hylands
While Jenny Don’t and her band have faced some recent challenges, such as Jenny’s vocal surgery in 2019 and the loss of drummer Sam Henry to cancer in 2022, they have now released 13 albums, including the latest release Broken Hearted Blue, and toured incessantly across the globe. In fact, it took three attempts to finally track down Jenny for a chat about the latest recording!
“I used to rodeo when I was younger, so it’s kind of funny,” says Jenny when asked to fill in her background. “I had a punk rock band, but the punk band was more of a deviation. I grew up playing country music or listening to country music with my mom. She was a rodeo queen in the Seventies in Wyoming, and I just grew up around horses. So, I used to rodeo, and I would wear little cowboy outfits and a cowboy hat. I tried out for a rodeo princess, and I lost by one point!
“Then my late teens our family dynamic changed, and everything got split up and then I just was more interested in music. So, I moved to Portland to start a band - the punk rock band - but I had all of the Spurs’ songs already. So, when the Spurs started, that was Kelly, our bass player, and my husband. He and I just wanted to do a project together on the weekends just to goof around. So, we used the Spurs songs and then it just evolved. Now we are Jenny Don’t & The Spurs and we put out multiple albums - and this is all we do now.”
Jenny and her band play some great country tunes and then speed things up with some great cow punk/country rock too. But where was that transition?
“I feel like the scene had a lot of Western bands,” explains Jenny, “but a lot of ‘em were midtempo. I want to go to a show and have my face melted off, but I wasn’t getting that in the Western scene, even though I love Western music. I want to do something that’s really going to rev people up. I want them to come to a show and walk away being like, what the heck just happened? We definitely took our punk rock elements. You want people to get totally charged up and just have a blast. Then applied that to we’re like, ‘Okay, here’s some of these country songs.’ It just started and it wasn’t even necessarily that contrived. It was more just like this is what we like.”
“I’m the primary songwriter,” says Jenny. “I write most all of the songs. “Kelly [Haliburton, Jenny’s husband] wrote ‘Sidewinder’, and he writes more of the surf ones. He had a surf band with Sam Henry for a little bit during Covid, and then that disbanded obviously. So, he still has this backlog of surf songs and surf is something that we’re all very interested in as well. Then all the other ones, I’ll start with the melody or an idea. Then on this album particularly, Kelly and I did a lot of the writing process together.”
Broken Hearted Blue was recorded at Revolver Studios in Portland, Oregon, and was produced by Colin Hegna.
“It was really wonderful,” says Jenny, “and it’s about letting the musicians that are playing their instruments have a little bit of freedom. They’re the ones playing it. It goes the same for Colin. He is producing it and recording it, so he knows the gear that he’s using better than I do. He knows what kind of sounds he’s going to get if he suggests we play like this or hold that part. He was familiar with us as a band since he lives in Portland too. He’s in the Brian Jonestown Massacre but he’s also in a Spaghetti Western style band called Federale. So, he’s really familiar with the sounds that we were trying to evoke with this album’s reverb. I really wanted it to be really full but also very open sounding at the same time, which I feel like he did a really good job of achieving. The first time that I went into do vocals he had three or four microphones lined up and for each song I would sing one of the verses into each of the microphones and we would see how it sounded. So, that was really fun. It was really cool. He had a lot of good ideas that we hadn’t ventured into or played around with too much before. So, that was nice.”
Broken Hearted Blue is available via Fluff and Gravy records.
Sixteen years after disbanding, the Double Agents are back with a new album, New Motion – and a new outlook. By Jo Roberts
For a long time, playing music wasn’t high on Dave Butterworth’s agenda. In the early 2000s, the singer-guitarist was gigging and recording with his band, Melbourne garage rockers the Double Agents. But in 2008, after eight years together, a couple of European tours, a clutch of singles and one album, Friends in Low Places (2002), the group amicably disbanded to pursue new life priorities; careers, children, relocation.
For Butterworth, his new life was becoming a first-time parent, and a tour manager for visiting international acts. As a result, his own interest in music went on the backburner; quite a change for a man who had long immersed himself in music, not just in bands, but also as a longtime host of the Triple R-FM radio show Galactic Zoo and, for a time, as a record shop owner on the Mornington Peninsula.
“I worked with music so much that I barely listened to it,” he says. “And I didn’t pick up my guitar for over 10 years for more than two minutes. Because I was swamped with music as a job, I never had the time for it.”
“I only picked up my guitar maybe a year into my cancer.”
There it was, and still is; the cancer diagnosis in 2021 that triggered a new set of life priorities for Butterworth.
“And in 2022 the [doctors] dropped, casually – they knew all along, but they never said it and I never wanted to hear it – ‘oh, you’re stage 4’.”
Learning that he had the most advanced stage of cancer became an even more seismic shift for Butterworth – in good ways and bad.
“My world had already changed, but when they told me that, my world went to the next level of sadness and grief, but also the next level of wanting to do stuff – I just felt madly in love with rock ‘n’ roll again.”
“Getting the band back together was a thing to help me.”
And so it was that the Double Agents regrouped. After playing a lowkey return show in December 2022 at the Tramways Hotel (under the name Carnegie Mums), more shows followed, including supports with old friends Mudhoney, and Kim Salmon’s iconic Scientists.
Last year, the Double Agents released their first record in over a decade, a compilation called Best Bits … So Far, the title a clear nod and wink of more music to come.
And so it has. On June 21, the Double Agents released New Motion, an album of 10 songs that signal a quantum leap in sound and songwriting.
“The rest of the band were into [making a new record], but nowhere near what I was,” says Butterworth. “So, I drove them to that point of ‘let’s record six songs’ – because we already had four in various forms that were recorded 10 years ago – ‘and then leave it to me. You do your bits and then let me go crazy and let me live out every fantasy I’ve had, recording-wise’.”
After the band finished recording the six new songs in October 2023, Butterworth took the songs to old friend Dave Larkin (Dallas Crane) to finish the tracks at Larkin’s home studio.
“He came to Europe as our bass player, we’ve been mates for 30 years and he has a magnificent ear. He’s especially good with vocals.” Whereas the first iteration of the Double Agents was more primal, swampy garage-punk and twang, in the vein of the Cramps and early Stones, the 2024 version is a far more polished, assured and poppy proposition. The only newcomer to the band lineup is Mick Stylianou on bass – joining original members Butterworth on guitar and vocals, Kim Walvisch Bukshteyn on keys and vocals, Ryan Tandy on guitar, slide guitar and lap steel and Myles Gallagher on drums. However, a lot of new influences have come into play during a 16-year hiatus.
“When you’re younger you just do stuff, but when you’re a bit more mature you’re like ‘oh, this is what I’m doing and this is where it’s coming from’,” says Butterworth. “I guess you just learn more as you get older, and you perhaps take in ideas that as a younger person you were closed off to, or didn’t know about.”
Butterworth says as a younger musician he was also more wedded to the aesthetic of garage rock. “I could never admit to myself that I loved Steely Dan back then, but I did. But I would never say it out loud.”
In April, the first single from New Motion was released. If Ya Don’t Mind is an instant classic; a racing rock-pop gem that retains the primal snarl of earlier Double Agents material, but with a new maturity and assuredness.
The loping Come Along is one of the older four songs that Kim now sings instead of Dave, recalling the bluer hues of Spencer P Jones, and driven by piano played by Larkin. “Kim nails that song in a really different way. That, and the piano part, changed the whole song dramatically,” says Butterworth.
The gorgeous Kiss Me Once is as close as the Double Agents get to a ballad, with its harmony and lap-steel-laden killer chorus. Golden Rule is the album’s powerful centrepiece of quiet-punchy-quiet dynamics, clocking in at over five minutes and featuring some brilliant guitar by Tandy.
Picture in My Hand is a powerful vignette of mortality, grief and loss, inspired by the death in 2020 of Kim’s husband Greg Bukshteyn, a member of the band Black Pony Express. “I wrote it mainly about Greg, and a little bit about my daughter, because part of dealing with my stuff is about what other people might feel when I depart,” says Butterworth. “So, it’s a combo of those feelings. When the idea came to me, I had to check with Kim if it was OK to write something. I wanted to write something for Kim and Greg.”
Live, the Double Agents are now also better than ever. Supporting Drive-By Truckers a couple of months ago at a sold-out Northcote Theatre, the band was on fire and Butterworth looked a picture of health.
He attributes that to having to look after himself a lot more. He’s had a three-hour surf before we speak today. “I’m lucky enough to be stable for now, and I’m doing everything to remain that way,” he says. “But as a band, we’re way above what we ever were! Now we know about stage sound and writing a good set list. We’re just a much better band.”
That doesn’t mean they’ll be hitting the road again like they used to. Butterworth now has a paralysed vocal cord, which means he can’t do gigs two nights in a row.
“I can only do short bursts; I can’t talk to anyone before we do a gig for the whole day,” he says. “Also, no one wants to see a band reform and play every month; it also doesn’t interest us. We’re five people with families, jobs, lives. We’re very passionate about our music, but we’re not about to schlep our gear around Australia. We’ve got three supports later in the year and that’s it. Less is more.”
This month’s album launch will be the Double Agents’ only headline show of the year. And Butterworth cannot wait.
“It’s a very strange position to be in,” he says of his new lease on life. “I call it ‘healing cancer’, even though I’m in a bad stage of it. But it opens up places that – I wish no-one else ever had to go there – but I’m there. In a way – it’s gonna sound really weird – it’s incredibly lifeaffirming. I don’t know if ‘liberating’ is the word, but everything is just amazing and intense for me.”
The Double Agents launch New Motion at The Curtin, Carlton, on Saturday July 13, with guests Dan Brodie and the Shadows of Love, and Cinco Savage. Tickets through oztix.com.au thedoubleagents.bandcamp.com/album/new-motion
HOWARD’S WAY
Mark Howard, legendary music producer, mixer and engineer who has worked closely with Daniel Lanois for years on albums by Bob Dylan, Neil Young, U2, The Neville Brothers, Iggy Pop, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tom Waits and many more has published a book about the studios he has built over the years. Recording Icons / Creative Spaces: The Creative World of Mark Howard (ECW Press) offers an insight into the process of creating custom studio installations and environments. By Brian Wise
“Then came Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind record. We start there and then Bob is like, ‘Oh, this is too close to home. I gotta go somewhere’ and so we ended up going to Miami, Criteria Studios.”
MARK HOWARD
It’s easy to recall when I first met Mark Howard. It was in April 1995 at the Kingsway Studio in New Orleans. During one of the days between Jazz Fest weekends I was able to spend some time interviewing Daniel Lanois and Malcolm Burn, and engineer Trina Shoemaker, as well as meeting Howard, who had built a studio in a grand old building on Esplanade that saw artists such as Emmylou Harris, Peter Gabriel, Iggy Pop, Robbie Robertson, Chris Whitley and even Midnight Oil record there. Howard had already created other studios in the city for Bob Dylan (Oh Mercy, 1989) and The Neville Brothers (Yellow Moon,1989, their best album).
Five years ago we had a conversation about his first book Listen Up!, a fascinating account of his production work, his sometimes fraught relationship with Daniel Lanois and his battle with cancer. Howard was in his late teens when he began working with Lanois at Grant Avenue Studio in Hamilton, Ontario, after touring and mixing for Canadian artist King Biscuit Boy. The fact that Lanois worked with u2 gave him the name and resources to attract other high-profile acts and Howard became his go-to person when it came to constructing studio environments.
If you had visited Kingsway when it was in its prime as a studio you would have been impressed by the massive staircase that split the main room in half, with instruments on one side and recording consoles and equipment on the other and a large lounge suite at the front for casual listening or hanging about. The 1848 building, as so many others were in the city, was solid brick and timber and offered brilliant sound deadening. It is hard to forget Malcom Burn putting on an ADAT tape of Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball, which they had just completed, and hearing it through the huge speakers in the studio. It was not a only spine-tingling experience but also one that had me straight afterwards calling up a friend back in Australia from a public phone outside a bar on Decatur Street and declaring that I had just listened to the best album I had ever heard! (It is still my favourite album of the past 3o years).
EMMYLOU AT KINGSWAY
Recording Icons / Creative Spaces: The Creative World Of Mark Howard displays photographs captured by Howard that offer an inside look at the recording environments that Howard has created in some exotic locations like Kingsway Studio, the Paramour studio in Los Angeles working with Lucinda Williams and the Teatro studio in Oxnard, California, where he worked with Dylan and Willie Nelson. Howard has also produced and engineered music by musicians as diverse as Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Tom Waits. Howard even ended up in Byron Bay for a project by a Canadian musician.
Last year I was back in New Orleans for JazzFest and revisited Kingsway, but just for an outside view. After seeing that Howard’s book had been published a few months earlier, I decided to try and organize another interview. Little did I know that Howard was in New Orleans also. One evening during the Avett Brothers show at The Saenger Theater I noted that it was the best sound mixing I had ever heard at such a venue. The next day Anders Osborne mentioned at JazzFest that Mark Howard was doing the sound that day and producing a new album. I soon discovered that the person behind the PA mixing console for the Avett’s was none other than Howard!
A few weeks later, after I had returned home, and Howard had gone out to Topanga Canyon in Los Angeles, we caught up.
“I’ve got my studio set up in the old Supertramp house where they did Breakfast in America and all that,” explained Howard about his temporary studio. “And also, Randy Newman wrote a bunch of songs up here, ‘Short People’ and stuff like that. So, it’s got a very musical history. I just got it set up this week. So, I’m just kind of preparing to do a mix for a guy from Canada and then I’m looking at a couple of projects that might be coming through.”
“This is kind of a follow up to Listen Up! and it’s like a voyage through all those records mentioned in that book,” explains Howard when I ask him about the recent book. “So, people can see where those were recorded and what microphones and all that stuff I was using at that time.”
Howard mentions that he had been doing book signings where he was able to project the images from the book and gives a running commentary.
“I was watching a lot of James Bond movies and then I got tired of watching,” he explains, “so I watched the commentaries from the directors and the artists and I thought that’s a cool way to do the book. So, that’s how I’ve been doing it. So instead of somebody asking me questions about the book and stuff like that, I don’t have anybody doing that. So, it’s cooler.”
So, when did he first get into designing studios? Where did it start? >>>
>>> “Well, it’s funny you asked that,” he replies, “because when I look back at my life and how it all started, I recall that I was nine years old and my brother answered the phone one day and he said, ‘It’s Ontario Conservatory of Music and they’re asking if you want to play an instrument. I said, ‘Yeah, I wanna play drums’. They came over and gave me a lesson, if you can play this on the accordion, you can play drums. Sure enough, I played it and so they signed me up to play drums. So, I did that for a couple of years. Then when I was 15 I had a kit in the basement of my parents’ house, I had taken the ping pong table and turned it into a drum riser, and I had the drums on there and I had couches and I had gotten a lot of posters from concerts and stuff like that and had ‘em all over the walls. It was like my boy cave, I guess.”
“So, it really started as a kid, just setting stuff up in the basement and doing concerts and having parties,” he laughs, “Everybody started smoking pot, that was the beginning of everything really. It wasn’t until I was 19 when I was old enough to go on the road. I got a job for a PA company and I ended up working for this guy called King Biscuit Boy. He was like a Canadian legend harmonica player; like all the Little Walter tunes and all that stuff. I learned all that blues from him, which is incredible because I had no access to the real blues music. I’d put a tape on with the Blues Brothers and he goes, ‘This is not blues. Take that shit off! Put on Little Walter.’ I got that education from him.
“So, by time I was 20 I was on the road a lot. I’d come home for a weekend or whatever. I had a weekend off and it was raining and I was on my Norton 750 and I got hit by a car, head on. I flew right over the car, spun around and landed on my feet like a cat and wrecked my bike, but it hurt my back. So, I couldn’t really go back out on the road. So, I got a job at this little studio in Hamilton, Ontario called Grant Avenue.
“I went in there and I told them I do live stuff but I want to learn studio. They said, ‘No, we’re not hiring’ and I said, ‘Well, I have this opportunity from the government where they pay half my wage and then you pay the other half. They say, okay, you’re hired! I was just making coffee in the beginning, then suddenly the owner’s says ‘I only want to work daytime so you do all the night sessions.’ Maybe two weeks in and suddenly I’m the chief engineer for night records and stuff like that!
“So, I did that for maybe two months, then they said, ‘We’re gonna put you with this guy. He is a little weird but, he used to own the studio. It was Daniel Lanois.”
Howard impressed Lanois with his anticipation of what was needed during the recording sessions, a skill he learned mixing bands on the road. But that is a long way from constructing studios or creating recording environments. So, how did Howard get into that?
WITH BOB DYLAN
“A couple of weeks later, he calls me on the phone,” replies Howard, “and he goes, ‘Would you come to New Orleans with me and help me set up a studio? I’m making a record with this band called the Neville Brothers. It’s only for six weeks. I said ‘Sure, I’ll come to New Orleans.’ I’d never been out of Canada, never mind New Orleans. So, I went. I took the job and the boss at the studio said, ‘If you leave your job’s not here when you come back.’ I said, ‘Okay, I’ll take that chance.’ Those six weeks turned into 30 years. So, I never came back to Canada.
“After the Neville Brothers and Bob Dylan’s Oh Mercy record, I found another house. We made that at Soniat Street in New Orleans. After that I moved the studio into this house that Dan bought. It was like a huge mansion in the French Quarter and that became a studio called Kingsway. It became the outlet for a lot of bands to come through. Everybody could stay there at the house and everybody had bedrooms. So, it was kind of like a hotel studio kind of thing.”
After Oh Mercy, they were planning on going to Mexico and putting a studio together but Lanois recorded a solo album, Beauty of Wynona, and Howard ended up touring all over Europe, Canada and the States. While they were gone, production at Kingsway was directed by Trina Shoemaker who ended up winning a Grammy for the album she did with Sheryl Crow! (Shoemaker also won her fourth Grammy this year).
“Kingsway ended up closing,” continues Howard, “and I was on the West Coast by then and I found a theatre in Oxnard, California. It was an old Mexican cinema that was run down. I rented it for $1,500 a month and took out all the seats and built a big stage in the middle. It had a screen. I put the whole studio in the middle. So, there was no
“Sarah would work from seven in the morning till noon. I would start at noon and work till 11 at night and Fiona would work at midnight till seven in the morning. So, nobody saw each other.”
control room or anything like that. It was just one big open concept studio. And everything was always mic’d. So, if you had an idea for the piano, you’d go over to the piano, then bang, you can record your idea. So, it was like a playground for musicians.
TEATRO
“The first thing that came through there was Billy Bob Thornton making a little movie called Sling Blade. So, Dan committed to it. Next year, he’s up for an Oscar, and then bang, he wins it. Then came Bob Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind record. We start there and then Bob is like, ‘Oh, this is too close to home. I gotta go somewhere’ and so we ended up going to Miami, Criteria Studios, and we cut most of the record there and then we came back to the Teatro to mix it. Then, after that
“(Tom Waits) can’t just say, ‘Just turn my vocal up.’ He’ll say, ‘Put a little more hair on it.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, well here’s the hair button. I’ll just turn that up.’
came Willie Nelson’s Teatro record, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Marianne Faithful….. I did a ton of work there. It was a good creative work spot.”
After Teatro, Howard went his own way, moved to Silver Lake in Los Angeles and didn’t work with Lanois for another ten years. “While I was in Silver Lake, I was riding my motorcycle around the neighborhood, and I saw this big mansion with these big metal gates. It looked like a horror movie home. The gates were open and I rode in and met the woman that owned it. It was like an old movie star estate. Silent movie star Antonio Moreno and his wife Daisy Canfield, an oil heiress, were the ones that lived there. Antonio was the first Latin lover of the screen before Rudolph Valentino.”
The 22,00 foot Paramour Mansion that Howard found was listed for sale three years ago for a cool $US40 mllion.
“It was a 22-room bedroom mansion with a big ballroom and they would have opera singers come over to do rehearsals in there,” continues Howard. “So, the ceiling was all cloth, and it was like the sound would go up and it wouldn’t come down. So, it was really dense for such a big, big, huge space. It looked like a church type room, which it eventually was after they died - they gave it to some nuns.
“So, I set up my gear and I made the record for Lucinda Williams in there, World Without Tears. Eddie Vedder came through and I started a Tom Wait’s record there before I took it up to his place up in Northern California. I spent like maybe four years making my own records up there.
“But there were two other wings to the house. So, I had invited Sarah McLachlan from Canada and her producer, Pierre Marchand to take over the one wing while I was working in the main room. Then in the other wing there was this other girl, Fiona Apple, and she was working with John O’Brien. I said, ‘Why don’t you guys work in there?’ Sarah would work from seven in the morning till noon. I would start at noon and work till 11 at night, and Fiona would work at midnight till seven in the morning. So, nobody saw each other. It was like three records going on. It was incredible.
“I actually left that scene to go work with Tom Waits. I found a schoolhouse that was just up the road from his house. Usually if he’s making a record he has to drive two hours, two, three hours, to somewhere like Prairie Sun Studios. So, this time he could just roll down his driveway and be at the studio. That was a record called Real Gone and so that was a crazy sounding record.”
“He’s a strange character for sure,” adds Howard about Waits. “He can’t just say, ‘Just turn my vocal up.’ He’ll say, ‘Put a little more hair on it.’ I’m like, ‘Oh, well here’s the hair button. I’ll just turn that up.’ He can’t say the drums sound a little dull. He’ll say, they sound a little ‘beige’.”
“I’m like, beige, that’s bad,” laughs Howard. ”I’d better brighten them up. So, he had all these weird terms for everything. So, it was pretty interesting that way. We brought in some characters too, to play on it. It was the first time he’d ever made a record like this allin-one room with the studio. Usually, he has to run out onto the floor and then come back into the studio and listen and run back out there. He goes, ‘This is amazing. I don’t have to run anywhere. I can just stand here and then listen back!’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s the way it should be.’ Why would you record in a room that sounds completely different to the room you’re listening in?
“I struggle with going to studios where I’m behind the glass and I have to push a button to tell somebody something and they don’t have headphones on. It’s just a whole frustration making a record where I could just lean over and whisper in somebody’s ear when they’re right beside me. So, Tom really had a lot of fun.
“We had a set up in the girl’s bathroom and we brought in this guy, Brain [Bryan Kei Mantia], to play drums. He was in the bathroom taking a pee, but I had a microphone in the bathroom. We were monitoring it in the big room. And I go, ‘What’s that sound? Oh, it’s Brain. He’s taking a piss.’ You hear him flush the toilet and then you hear him open the stall door and it slams bang. Tom goes, what was that? I want to use it. So, we got Brain to play the door slam, bang. So, there was all kinds of crazy stories like that. But it’s cool because they’re all accidents. We’re just falling into sounds. We’re not thinking about building a sound. We just find sounds that we hear and try that.”
RECORDING WITH TOM WAITS
“The first week that I started Tom phoned me up late at night and said, ‘There’s, there’s a situation where I’m feeling like you’re the pharmacist and I’m the patient and you’re trying to prescribe me something and maybe I need to be on something else. So, he was like giving me this suggestion to ‘just shut up and let me find my own way’. I said, ‘No worries. I can be quiet. That only lasted a little while and then I ended up taking over anyways, but it was, it was kind of funny.”
Howard also got to work with Joni Mitchell, for whom he first produced an interview for Radio Canada before Joni asked him back to remix her first album, which had originally been produced by David Crosby, for rerelease.
JONI MITCHELL
“She goes, he mis-produced my record. He made me double all my guitars and I hated that,” recalls Howard. “So, she asked if I could come back and I had to find all the tapes from the Sixties sessions and had them baked and transferred to digital. I ended up mixing that whole first record, Songs To A Seagull.”
Finally, looking at the photos in Howard’s book it is easy to imagine that he sees the studio as another instrument in the making of an album.
“Exactly,” he agrees. “You’re never going to get the same sounds as another one. The room is part of the music too. I try to find rooms that have high ceilings and I’m not so worried about leakage and stuff like that. Dan Lanois had this house in Silver Lake also and that’s where we did Neil Young’s LeNoise and we worked with Robert Plant and made a couple of Black Dub records there. I made them all in the hall in this crazy loud ‘spitty’ hallway and it was just such a magical room.” Recording Icons / Creative Spaces: The Creative World of Mark Howard is published by ECW Press.
PARAMOUR
Renowned crime author Michael Connelly was in Australia for the Sydney and Brisbane Writers Festivals and spoke to Brian Wise about the use of music, especially jazz, in his Bosch series and other works.
“Music is character….. What you listen to says something about you.”
Michael Connelly is the author of thirtyseven novels, including #1 New York Times bestsellers Desert Star, The Dark Hours, and The Law of Innocence. His books, which include the Harry Bosch series, the Lincoln Lawyer series, and the Renée Ballard series, have sold more than eighty million copies worldwide. Connelly, a former newspaper reporter, has won numerous awards for his journalism and his novels. He is the executive producer of three television series: Bosch, Bosch: Legacy, and The Lincoln Lawyer
If you are a fan of Connelly’s crime novels, or the films and TV series they have spawned, you will be aware of the role music plays, particularly in the life of Detective Hieronymous (Harry) Bosch, played brilliantly by Titus Welliver. The soundtracks to the episodes of the Bosch and Bosch Legacy series are replete with names such as Art Pepper, Frank Morgan, Wayne Shorter, Charles Mingus and many more. Harry’s house on Blue Heights Drive juts out into the Hollywood Hills and overlooks a spectacular view of downtown Los Angeles. (There is an explanation as to how a detective could afford such a place).
In the corner of Harry’s lounge is a vintage hifi system consisting of a McIntosh MX110 tuner/preamp, a McIntosh MC240 power amp, a Marantz 6300 turntable and two Ohm Walsh 4 speakers. All up a modest US$14000 on the market now. Below the system is a rack of albums which are obviously mostly jazz. Bosch is a serious jazz buff and he will occasionally recommend a classic album to his daughter Maddie. The music is an important facet of Bosch’s personality, which also shares the usual number of flaws and quirks found in most contemporary TV detectives. (Show me a detective without a flaw and I’ll show you someone who lives in Midsomer, UK). >>>
Michael Connelly in Los Angeles.
Photo by Mark DeLong.
>>> Connelly was born in the mid-‘60s, so where did his interest in music originate and why did he decide to make Harry Bosch a jazz buff?
“Well, there was music in my house, I have to say,” he replies. “Jazz is a more recent thing, and it was more my father’s music than mine. So, growing up I was a big Eric Clapton fan, more rock and roll and blues. But music is character. It is a stroke of character. What you listen to says something about you. So, when I was putting together the character that would be Harry Bosch - in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s - I wanted him to be a jazz guy. I just thought it was appropriate to the loner style of detective I was building.
“Jazz is not for everybody. It probably has a smaller audience than other forms of music and that’s what I wanted for him. I was a newspaper reporter at that time, so I knew how to research and find what was good. I knew some people that knew jazz and so I started giving him music.
“I have to admit not really being in love with it myself. But at the same time, I also wanted to have some music while I was writing and I didn’t want lyrics because I thought they could intrude. So, I started listening to what Harry Bosch would be listening to. Over the years it has taken me, and I am somewhat of a pretender. I think Harry Bosch knows much more about jazz than I do but I do like the music and I’m always on the hunt for something new and something obscure because I
think readers like that they like to learn. It’s a book of fiction but if Harry really gets a good vibe from a piece of music or a musician that is maybe a bit obscure, I think that’s a cool piece of information to add into a book.
“Early on, my wife knew that I was doing this. I was putting jazz into my books. One time she came in with a Time magazine and there was a story in there about an LA based saxophone player named Frank Morgan who had an album coming out. He had gone something like 30 years between albums because he’d been in prison and he’d been a drug addict. Oddly enough, this was actually before there was internet and stuff, so you got your music listings in a weekly tabloid. I happened to check and saw that he was playing that week at a place called the Catalina Bar & Grill in Los Angeles.
“Based on this kind of survivor story I’m writing about a guy who is a detective who is resilient and kind of relentless but has had to overcome a lot of challenges. I liked the connection to Frank Morgan. So, I went to see him play the week that story came out and really loved the performance, loved the album that the story was about and he became a key figure in Harry Bosch’s jazz life. So, I started mentioning him and he has this one song called ‘Lullaby’, which I felt was the anthem for Harry Bosch. It’s just a sad but resolute song, very short, basically a saxophone solo with a little bit of piano accompaniment by George Cable who actually wrote it. I used to play that a lot. It was raising the flag at the start of my day of writing. I would
play that to drop into Harry Bosch mode. And so, little by little jazz was becoming important to me. At the same time, it was already important to the character of Harry Bosch.”
“Then this thing called the internet was invented and people would send in suggestions to my website all the time and I’d do a book signing and someone would give me a CD of their favorite jazz record. When we started making the TV show about Bosch and we cast Titus Welliver as Bosch, he is a jazz guy. He knows more about jazz than anyone I personally know other than a few jazz musicians. He brings a lot of the music to me and suggestions that end up in the books and end up in the show. That was just a bonus in hiring what we thought was the best actor for the part. We also got a guy who knew the music.”
Harry Bosch (Titus Welliver) and daughter Maddie (Kelly Collins Lintz)
In fact, Connelly was involved in the 2014 documentary Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story.
“I got to know him a little bit. It was a little bit too late. He often played at the Catalina and I went a few times. Someone told him who I was, so he came over and talked to me and he said, ‘I know you put me in your books, but I don’t read’.”
Morgan then approached Connelly with the idea of spreading the positive effects of music by teaming up to talk to college students and to ‘try to steer them away from the life that he led and the waste of so many years.’ The idea was that Connelly could talk about the connection he had created between his writing and music and that Morgan could play ‘and he would tell his story, his story of warning’. Unfortunately, they only had the chance to do one appearance together before Morgan fell ill.
“No, it doesn’t reflect mine,” replies Connelly when I ask him if he has an audiophile system similar to Harry Bosch’s. “I have to admit I’m not an audiophile. So, among the many questions we get about the show is about that system and I cannot really respond to it. I know it looks like an expensive thing and it probably is, but it doesn’t work. Obviously, we want him to know what he’s doing and the albums that are in this stack and so forth are very curated. It is not just anybody’s records that get in there. So, that’s important. I like the music and I do have a turntable and probably more often than not if I’m listening to jazz it’s not on that turntable. It’s off on my phone. So, I’m not on that level of perfection but that does draw a lot of attention.”
music references in Connelly’s novels certainly add a different dimension to the characters. Apart from the Harry
“I think the bottom line is that I write commercial fiction. It’s supposed to be entertaining but you are always trying to elevate your craft. In my mind, these are obviously detective stories, but I’m trying to capture what it’s like to do that work. It’s very difficult work. I was a journalist for a long time, knew a lot of detectives and most of them have some way of dealing with the darkness. The job takes you into darkness and darkness can get into you, and you got to find a way of dealing with it. Some people coach little league football or baseball, they find outlets. One detective that I based my character Renee Ballard on rescues Dobermann pinschers and has horses. So, there’s got to be an outlet. I wanted Harry Bosch to kind of be singularly focused on his job and not really have that kind of outlet. But I needed something that soothes the beast of the darkness. I think with Harry it’s music. He can find solace in music and that carries into who he listens to. Probably eight out of every 10 jazz musicians have had to overcome some severe issue, whether it’s addiction or racism or whatever. They’ve had to struggle to make their art and Harry has had to struggle to do what he does, and there’s a connection there, and that’s what I like to use music to explore”
Bosch and Bosch Legacy are streaming on SBS On Demand and are also available on Amazon Prime. There are new series of Bosch Legacy and the Lincoln Lawyer coming up on Amazon Prime.
The
Bosch novels there is a fairly eclectic music selection, not just jazz.
“People aren’t used to seeing women really play and, honestly, I’m probably underestimated.”
“It’s incredible. It’s a dream,”
says Susan Tedeschi when I as her how it feels to have a Fender guitar named after her. “It’s something that you only dream of and you don’t even think it could happen, but when it does it’s an incredible honor and it’s just very humbling. I feel very lucky.”
It’s now 27 years since Tedeschi walked into a music store in Massachusetts and purchased her first Telecaster, which she plays to this day, for US$600. In the years since, she not only released her own acclaimed solo albums (the Tele appears on the cover of her 1998 album Just Won’t Burn) but also forged a formidable reputation with her partner Derek Trucks in the Tedeschi Trucks Band. They recently had a triumphant tour of Australia, including Bluesfest, which had fans rightly acclaiming the band as one of the world’s best touring outfits.
Fender have launched the Susan Tedeschi Telecaster®, honouring one of the most celebrated blues and American roots musicians with her first Fender® signature guitar. [Read Joe Fulco’s review]. The new guitar is patterned after Tedeschi’s instantly identifiable Caribbean Mist 1993 American Standard Tele®, which is featured on the cover of her seminal album Just Won’t Burn and has been her go-to guitar for over 30 years. By Brian Wise
For our March/April issue we had a long chat to Susan about the band and now we get to talk to her about guitar playing.
So, tell me how this came about. It’s your first Fender Signature guitar and it’s patterned after your guitar: your 1993 Telecaster. So, tell us about how the whole project came about.
Well, first off my 1993 Telecaster. I bought it used at Cambridge Music in Boston in probably 1995 and I’ve recorded with it over the years and brought it everywhere.
The custom shop at Fender had been talking about doing a signature model guitar. I was like, ‘What? Of course.’ After talking to some of the guys at Fender, they really were into the idea of copying the Tele that is most known for being on the cover of Just Won’t Burn, my first major release. It’s also one that I still play to this day. It’s just a very versatile, wonderful guitar. So, they replicated that as
well as they could. We came up with a paint colour that kind of matches the paint now as opposed to when it first came out. It changed color over time and now it’s more of a cooler green, but it’s called Caribbean Mist, which I love.
So, it was just back and forth on the phone doing Zooms, doing emails. Also, I’d be on the road and they would mail me out pickups and I’d try them out and be like, ‘These are too hot’ or ‘These sound a little too weird’ or whatever. Then they would send me prototypes for the neck, and I really kind of like that C shape more, not quite a baseball bat neck just the contour of it just to fit in your hand. So, we just went about it, and they asked me things about mine that I really liked and then what could they do to make this similar, but also make it original and kind of different. So, we just worked back and forth on it for about a year and a half, two years, and then it finally all came together. >>>
PERFECTLY GOOD GUITAR
>>> Is there an interesting story behind the original? Did somebody famous own it before you did or did you just find it in the guitar shop?
I don’t know whose it was before. So, there could be a story behind it, and I don’t know it. I actually found it at Cambridge Music in Porter Square, just down the street from Harvard University. It was in this old really great music store, and it was hanging on the wall and I played it and I loved it, and I plugged it in. It sounded so good. Then it was about $600 and I just didn’t have a lot of money, but I was going to college at the time. I’d kind of been out of school for a little bit and started playing around and realised I really wanted to get an electric guitar and was out shopping and had a dream about it. So, I went back the next day, it was still there and that’s how I bought it.
So, the Fender, the new one, is that exactly the same as you mentioned that it’s got the colour. Were there any other changes that you made to the replica?
So, the replica does have a master volume, like a master TBX tone control, I guess. They have a Treble Bass Expander tone circuit, that is different. It basically offers broader and brighter ranges of tones and turning the knob counterclockwise from the center rolls off the high stuff. It basically is similar. It’s almost like it has a whole other area that it can go into sonically.
Is there any reason you chose to play the Telecaster as opposed to either a different Fender or a different brand? What was the specific reason you chose the Tele?
It’s kind of silly, but I always liked playing a Strat but when I play the Stratocaster, I turn the volume knob off a lot when I’m playing rhythm and stuff. It just kind of sits right where I play. So, I’d be turning it down a lot. So, I kind of went with the Tele more just because it had two knobs and not three. It just seemed like the controls were out of the way more. It just seemed a little easier to not turn the volume up and that’s silly!
Usually, the Tele’s pretty bright sounding on stage, isn’t it? You’ve got yourself and Derek playing. The amazing thing about the shows is the fact that when you hear the band mixed, you can hear all the instruments really clearly. But is it hard getting your own sound there if you’re competing with all those other voices and instruments?
So, another reason that I actually tend to play the Tele or the Strat in our band is that Derek is more of a Gibson guy, and he plays humbuckers a lot. So, I do play a Les Paul, but only on a couple of things because really, for the reasons of sort of what you’re saying, it takes up a different space with the sound.
But the great thing about my Tele as opposed to a lot of Teles, it’s not as bright and thin. It’s a little bit warmer and it’s a little bit more versatile where you can blend it and you just roll the tone back on it and use your amp in a certain way. So, I play a Fender super reverb, an old one, not a new one, but an older Sixties model. Then just plug that in with a wah-wah really. You can get all these tones and you can get so many different types of tones out of it.
“Hopefully, with me getting this signature model, it’ll become more common for women to play guitar.”
So, you’re going to bring one of the new ones out on tour and play it, or you just stick to your original?
I have one out on tour actually as a backup, and I used it the other day and I put it in open tuning for a couple songs that I was playing. Sometimes I play different tunings and it sounded great. It worked great. It felt great. It sounded great. I was like, all right, this thing is good. It’s going to be great.
Now, don’t tell Derek, but last year, when I saw you, you were really the star of the show. I know that’s not supposed to be the case. I mentioned earlier in the year that your guitar playing is often underestimated by people in a way.
Yeah, I think it’s just because people aren’t used to seeing women really play and, honestly, I’m probably underestimated. I play with one of the best guitar players in the world and that would make sense that I would not be held up on the same level as him because he really is so unique, and he really is one of the best.
I just have my own sound and then my own style. So, I think some people just like that. Whatever my tone and my style is, some people just relate to it. So, it’s not really comparable. They’re really different. But I do appreciate the compliment. Honestly, I feel very lucky just to play guitar in a band with Derek because he really helps me all the time get better at it.
I’m surprised that there aren’t more women who’ve been playing guitar. For example, someone like Barbara Lynn from Texas is a fantastic guitar player and you would think she would’ve been a much bigger star, wouldn’t you? Is there something that maybe prevented women from doing that? The fact that there were so many men doing it?
I think it’s interesting. I don’t really know the reasons but I have a couple theories. One is that there’s always been so many men that play music and that have had bands and there haven’t been a huge amount of famous or in the spotlight female guitar players.
In the past it’s been people that have played a lot of acoustics and things like that and maybe not so many people that you can mention that played electric.
But there were people like Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Memphis Minnie playing guitar and doing things just like big Bill Broonzy and other people. But then for whatever reason, it just isn’t something that’s as common. So it is kind of a funny thing. Actually, the other day we were playing and there was a solo happening, and they looked at me and they weren’t looking at me with the video cameras, they were filming Derek. I was like, this is great, they think that Derek’s playing the solo right now but it’s me! Then Derek and I went and sat in with Chris Stapleton, they soloed, and the cameras went on them. When I was soloing, once again, it would go to Derek and then Chris, and then to me. I think they were really just kind of confused!
I think it’s just not common. So, hopefully with me getting this signature model, it’ll become more common for women to play guitar and not be afraid, like ‘Hey, girls can hang too. We can play.’ There are a lot of young girls now and they’re teens that I’ve met that really can rip. They can really play guitar. So, I’m really excited to see in the next 10 years what happens. I think there’s going to be a switch, and that would be really cool. Who were you listening to that influenced you very early on? I know that for a lot of Americans seeing the Beatles on Ed Sullivan was a seminal moment. You weren’t even born then but a lot of musicians cite that event. Was there something or someone that you saw that kind of sparked that interest?
Well, when I was really little, my dad played acoustic and harmonica, and I really was moved by Bob Dylan. So, I was really moved by Bob Dylan’s writing, and it was always very emotional to me because I always felt like he was standing up for people that didn’t have a voice. When I first heard ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ or ‘Hurricane’ or the song about Only A Pawn In Their Game’ - all these songs were kind of political but they were also part of the Civil Rights movement - and he was standing up for people that didn’t have a voice. The way that he writes, it’s almost like an Irish folk singer met The Band meets Americana: gospel and jazz and funk and blues are all these kind of elements within his songwriting. So, he was really a huge influence on me early on.
And then it was a lot of blues artists. It was Mavis Staples and Mahalia Jackson. It was gospel musicians and it was this and that. But honestly, Bob Dylan was a huge one for me. Then later on in life, it was a lot of the blues artists. It was Big Mama Thornton and Koko Taylor, and T Bone Walker, BB King, Albert King, Freddie King, Otis Rush, and anybody
from the country blues guys like a Mississippi John Hurt to Son House all the way to Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix.
So, for me, I’m influenced by a lot of different things. I also did a lot of theater growing up and musical theater and things like that. But really what the music I fell in love with was more blues, gospel country folk, Americana music, American roots music, a lot of the stuff that started bands like Derek & The Dominoes or started The Stones or a lot of the stuff they love.
Recently, of course, Dickey Betts passed away. There is a connection there with Derek, of course, through the Allman Brothers Band. He was a really lyrical guitarist and I’m thinking, you have the same kind of lyricism.
Thank you. That is a huge compliment. I was lucky enough to have played with Dickey and knew Dickey through my husband. I actually opened up for the Allman Brothers when I met Derek. My backup band was Double Trouble and I was opening for the Allman Brothers the year that Dickey and Derek played together. So, I got to know him and actually we’re going to his memorial this weekend. He was incredible. He was one of the greatest guitar players of all time. Actually, I was more influenced by Dickey Betts than Duane Allman as a child, like hearing his guitar playing. Then Derek, of course, was more influenced by Duane
Allman but also Dickey in the same band, of course. But Dickey is one of the most beautiful melody writers of songs like ‘Jessica’ and ‘Blue Sky’ and some of these songs that he wrote. I mean, they just gave you goosebumps and they’re so gorgeous. He really was an incredible guitar player and like you’re saying, very lyrical, very melodic on the guitar, telling a story. You remember the solo, you can sing it back. It’s not just a bunch of notes telling a story.
Obviously, those sorts of players with their own distinctive style have influenced you because it must be hard as a guitar player to develop your own sound. I guess when everybody starts out playing guitar they want to sound like Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Yes. See, that’s the thing I think that gets away from people is you don’t want to just reproduce what somebody else has already done. You want to kind of take all the influences of all the people that you love and create your own sound. That’s what I think is so beautiful about all of those artists is you can take a little bit of each of them with you. You don’t have to just note for note copy them. But also, I think because I’m a singer first, I learned to play guitar after I already sang. So, I try to sing melodies on the guitar when I’m playing, but I’m also sort of limited. I’m not super proficient, so I only have so much I can do. So, I think it creates my own sound that way.
THE SUSAN TEDESCHI
Susan Tedeschi’s Telecaster has graced her album covers and countless live shows ever since she bought it second hand in the 90’s. Her playing follows in the tradition of great blues singer guitarists.
The two go hand in hand. With strong vocals followed by always tasteful blues inspired fills and solos. While there is pretty much no chance that you are going to sing like Susan and play in a band as inspiring as the Tedeschi Trucks Band, Fender has teamed up to bring us the Susan Tedeschi signature model Telecaster, which she hopes will inspire someone to do their own thing with it.
Susan has said she hopes people pick up the guitar and have fun with it and create with it. “Make up your own stuff, there’s no rules. If it sounds good, it is good. It’s not like you have to do it this way or that way, music is music, its art, so you just create whatever you want, and there’s no right way or wrong way to do it”.
This creative mindset is a perfect companion to finely honed skills. It means something special might happen. Sometimes the best music leaves that door open. Watching the Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Palais Theatre in Melbourne recently, that door was wide open at times.
With that in mind, it’s great that Fender tip the hat to Susan Tedeschi with this beautiful guitar, modelled after her Caribbean Mist 1993 American Standard Telecaster. The first thing that stands out when you pick it up is that it’s not a heavy guitar, but it does resonate. It really sings. The neck is inviting and feels and sounds warm, with a great match of medium jumbo frets to the 9.5” radius rosewood fretboard. The guitar also features custom voiced pickups letting you move between gritty blues to cleaner soulful sounds. To enhance your options, the tone circuit is a little different. The TBX (Treble Bass Expander) tone circuit offers a broader and brighter range of tones than a standard circuit. It basically can let you enhance the presence and brightness beyond the normal telecaster settings or operate it as normal. The tone knob has a centre position detent to work from to roll off high frequencies turning counter clockwise or turning clockwise to add presence and brightness.
The bonus of the 6-saddle string through body with block steel saddles means you can intonate and set this guitar up with none of that compromise that comes with the vintage vibe of 2 strings per saddle. You get the classic feel and sound Fender are famous for with a touch more flexibility here. Another thing that Fender is doing with these signature model guitars is making the signature aspect more subtle. This guitar has Susan’s signature on the back of the headstock and gives it a custom neck plate with Susan’s own ‘Eagle’ artwork. These personal touches mean the guitar belongs less on a wall as a showpiece and more in a musician’s hands. This is a fine instrument to play, with tone, sustain and a beautiful finish, honouring a strong musical voice of our time. A very nice addition to your collection or if you just choose one guitar, it will do the job as only a Telecaster can.
But as always, go and check it out for yourself and see what you think.
Susan Tedeschi Telecaster features:
• Custom Susan Tedeschi Single-Coil Tele® Pickups
• Tedeschi “C” Profile Maple Neck
• Aged Caribbean Mist Finish with Distinctive 4-Ply Tortoiseshell Pickguard
• Master Volume, Master TBX™ Tone Control
• 6-Saddle String-Through-Body Tele® with Block Steel Saddles
• Deluxe Black Hardshell (Black Crushed Velvet Interior)
By Chris Familton
Alt-country, folk & Americana from Australia & NZ
Over the last couple of years, Melbourne-based New Zealanders Matt Joe Gow & Kerryn Fields have been writing, recording and touring together, harnessing the undeniable musical chemistry they have and channelling it into their sublime new album I Remember You.
Right across the record, even when things get busier, there’s a wonderful sense of space and pacing that allows the songs to breathe and for Gow and Fields’ voices to shine and intertwine. Both are highly emotive singers but they know the power of restraint and release when it comes to maximising the weight that gives to melody and meaning.
The huskiness in Fields’ soulful folk voice at times stops you in your tracks, particularly on the spine-tingling ‘No Trace’ where she takes centre-stage. Imagine a quavering Gillian Welch and Beth Gibbons at their deepest and you’ll know what I mean.
Elsewhere on the album, Gow embraces his inner Elvis on ‘Carry On’ and they ratchet up the fun on the rattle and shake rock ’n’ roll of the single ‘Love Ya Like I Can’. ‘Black Sand’ possesses a more contemporary production sound as it conveys the strong pull of Aotearoa’s west coast beaches. They leave us with another highlight, the slow motion sway of ‘Here I’ll Be’. It’s deeply soulful and emotive music of the highest order on this finely tuned and perfectly balanced artistic collaboration.
Victorian group The Smith & Western Jury dial into authentic, gothic-tinged and dusty twang on their debut album Hotel Texas. Theirs is a distinctly American border sound, where one could picture Calexico backing Eilen Jewell in a late-night honky tonk.
Opener ‘Have Mercy’ tumbles and shimmers beautifully, with singer Samantha Lombardi making her mark instantly, her voice possessing just the right amount of heartache and melancholy and a distant echo of a pop sensibility in its DNA.
The production is top notch, lively and immediate. It pulls you into the songs while still allowing the spotlight to shine on Lombardi as the interlocutor for the songs and stories across the album. Though at times there’s a noir feel to the music, Lombardi and partner Simon Torcasio (guitar) aren’t afraid to lay down completely unabashed dance-floor gems such as ‘Not Even The Devil’ and ‘Cowboy Blues’.
This is an album that finds the perfect balance between contemporary Americana and traditional country with its vibrant rhythm section, evocative guitar twang, hooks and authentic atmosphere.
Speaking of ‘noir’, the reigning king of capturing the essence of that sound in this part of the world is New Zealand artist Delaney Davidson. He’s just released his album Out Of My Head and once again he pushes at the framework and preconceptions of roots music with his brand of modern gothic Americana.
New Zealand has a long history of making warped and dark pop music and you can hear elements of that running through Davidson’s songs as he subverts traditions and blends in obtuse rhythms and synth flavours.
Marlon Williams (the digital rock ’n’ soul of ‘Drive Me Wild’) and Reb Fountain (‘Heaven Is Falling’) both make subtle yet engaging guest appearances while ‘Dissociative From Myself’ is Buddy Holly meets T-Rex and ‘Please Baby Please’ is totally infectious in a Spoon kind of way.
Davidson has been compared to Tom Waits and CW Stoneking but he deals in far more contemporary and progressive sounds (in that sense more comparable to Beck) and on Out Of My Head he’s coalesced all of his varied musical leanings into his most realised album to date.
Matt Hay is another New Zealand songwriter who likes to cross musical lanes, albeit with more subtle combinations. His remit is country, blues, roots-rock, and Americana - the kind of sound that fans of John Hiatt, J.J. Cale, Mark Lucas and Mark Knopfler will recognise and revel in.
Though Dog & Pony Show (produced by Darren Watson) is his fourth solo album, Hay has been treading the boards of the NZ scene since the early 90s, in bands such as Cool Disposition and Surge and as a sideman for artists such as Watson.
There’s an unhurried elegance and maturity to Hay’s music. Mostly mid-paced, these are songs that snake and shuffle along with sublime pacing and an organic feel that never places ‘playing’ over serving the song and maintaining the soulful centre of the music.
‘Faraway Eyes’ has a hazy, dreamy quality and ‘Lonesome Kind’ possesses some fine guitar playing that wonderfully counters and complements Hay’s keening, warm vocal. ‘Holy Smoke’ jumps from the speakers like you’ve chanced upon a technicolour street parade, with its brass declarations before Hay leaves us with the intimate playing and tasteful and beautiful melodic vocal phrasings of ‘Need You Now’.
By Martin Jones
RAS MICHAEL AND THE SONGS OF NEGUS WITH JAZZBOE ABUBAKA
TRIBUTE TO THE EMPEROR
Trojan
From the sleeve of Tribute to The Emperor: “Jah has written it on our hearts and thoughts. Man meditate in silence, noise, during nights and days to find the laws, history and meaning of Jah culture.
“The test of the Rasta is oppression and deprivation – still the stranger could not know Who knows, know everything.
“Real knowledge is dreda – it is a heartical dredness from creation which reveal itself to man and man with dred heart (who was the original black heart man).”
Okay, I’m out of my depth here. As a modern Caucasian atheist, I am the “stranger [who] could not know.”
But the more I learn about Rastafarianism, the more appealing it is in a sea of organised religion based on power, money and oppression. Perhaps the fact it is so foreign to most of our Western religions is what makes it so appealing.
This music could hardly be more foreign to me. It sounds like it was beamed in from a parallel universe. With its muddy, booming low frequencies, ancient acoustic drumming and unwavering sermons of peace and love. But it’s the conviction behind it that is unignorable.
Kingston born Ras Michael (George Michael Henry) is as prolific and influential as any reggae artist. He specialises in Nyambinghi drumming, based on the heartbeat of Jah, and born out of African burra drumming. Blended with the influence of Ethiopian spiritual ceremonies in Jamaica, it became the basis for Rastafarian gatherings.
Michael was one of the first to take this drumming into the Jamaican studios where it got mixed up with jazz, blues, soul and funk in an ever-evolving fusion that would branch into roots reggae, dancehall and then hip hop. This really is the birth of it all.
At its purist, it is evocative spiritual chanting, preaching devotion to Jah and Wadada (love). There is no politics or sex, this is devotional music… though to a god almost unfathomable today. Ras Michael formed the Sons of Negus to honour Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie (one of Selassie’s many titles was Negus which translates to King). Still alive and living in Los Angeles, Michael has released around 25 albums since 1974 and this Sons of Negus album, Tribute to The Emperor, is one of his most obscure and least popular. His 1975 album, Rastafari, recruited popular Jamaican musicians Peter Tosh, Robbie Shakespeare and Chinna Smith for a more commercial production, including the single ‘None of Jah Jah Children’. Tribute to The Emperor, released a year later, was a recoil into more traditional Nyambinghi devotional territory and was seen as a step backwards, commercially. However,
its strangeness is what makes it so compelling. Devotional chants and prayers and Nyambinghi drumming are mixed with organs, electric guitars and unconventional production, including weird booming bass that threatens to overpower. It’s psychedelic, without even trying. It’s almost impossible to find out anything about this album. It’s billed as The Sons of Regus with Jazzboe Abubaka and all compositions are credited to Jazzboe Abubaka and Tesfa Zion. Who exactly the Sons of Negus or Jazzboe Abubaka are, we are not told. We can only assume Abubaka and Tesfa Zion are both Michael. The album is credited as being recorded at Lloyd Coxsone’s Studios in Jamaica. But Coxsone moved to the UK in the early ‘60s and I can’t find any mention of his studio in Jamaica, though he did return to Jamaica to work with the likes of King Tubby. To add to the mystery, Tribute to The Emperor was released through the UK based Trojan label in 1976, but Trojan went into liquidation in 1975! (If any reggae aficionados out there do know the answers, please write in.)
So, an album played by a bunch of unnamed ghosts in a studio that didn’t exist on a label that had gone bankrupt. It only adds to the allure of this otherworldly music. The album opener ‘Gabrail-A-Alma’ with booming hand drums, organ and trilling electric guitar is like an ancient language chant over a doped out half-time calypso giving way to lowdown instrumental, ‘Jazzboe Arubaka at Large’, which fades in and out as if it has been going since the dawn of time… and still is. The slomo mix of spy theme keys and guitars and ancient drumming (revisited on ‘Needs Understanding’ complete with wind? or is it inhalation sounds?) is disarming every time. Then the reverb drenched trombone on ‘Tena in Love’ explores a sound adopted in dancehall and ska. They’ve quickly become three of my all-time favourite instrumental recordings. Totally unique.
To make it weirder, Michael and the Sons seem to be creating their own language. Who knows what significance chants like ‘Gabrail-AAlma’ and ‘Tennaeslyn’ or, indeed, ‘Fa-Fa-Fa’ have? Doesn’t matter, you believe every word, even if you don’t understand them.
Elsewhere, the message is loud and clear: like “keep cool Babylon, you don’t know what you’re doing” (‘Keep Cool Babylon’), and the ecstatic ‘Peace and Love’ – “let’s get together sisters and brothers”. Should be installed as every nation’s national anthem.
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.
STU DAYE
Free Parking
Columbia / CBS PC 33936 (1976)
My fascination with this album began by finding a blank label promo copy with no artist/title listed anywhere and a non-traceable serial number in the runoff grooves. Initial impressions were here is a performer with ‘pop’ aspirations’, a little rough and tumble rockin’ feel, some ‘glam’ touches, a punkier Cheap Trick sort of sound and overall, just a pretty good wild abandoned Rock n’ Roll attitude ending up with a surprise re-working of Paul Simon’s The Boxer into something that suited his sound - a cheeky feat indeed.
Bob Irwin (of Sundazed Records) helped me find out the artist was named Stu Daye, he operated in and around the New York area and this was indeed his first (and only one of two) solo albums…he did make more with other artists later on - but really not too many. So, with that information I acquired an actual production copy. The Stu Daye - Free Parking album cover isn’t giving much away. It features a painting of cars falling from the sky by artist Randall Rosenthall titled ‘Road Friends’ and on back, a full cover pastiche of an empty parking lot, except for three Arab’s sitting in a diagonal painted line space with a distant great pyramid and a few palm trees in-between. The song titles in very small print run across the top & production credits along the bottom - they read (in part) ’Produced by Jack Douglas for Waterfront Productions & Pilot Records Inc.’ Sometimes ‘less is more’ but in this case it really is less so far as giving an indication of the product inside.
Steve Gadd & Rick Marotta on drums and Tony Levin Bass are the only other musicians. Perhaps due to producer Jack Douglas (who worked with Aerosmith and others), Steve Tyler and Billy Squier appear uncredited with back-up vocals on a track or two. The inside sleeve has on one side lyrics of all songs written by Daye (no cowrites) omitting the finale of The Boxer but of course crediting Simon as the writer. Flip side of the sleeve is a black and white photo of the Stuyvesant Curiosity Shop, 48 Third Ave, NYC with either a mock up (or maybe the real thing) of the artist strung up outside the front window with a Fender Telecaster hovering alongside - the dishevelled shop looks like it would have been an interesting place with vintage guitars and audio equipment taking up most of the window space.
So, to the album. It’s just about a non-stop hard rock assault but with a clownish edge somewhat at odds with the genre. That is the appeal. There are love songs (Confidentially Rose/Paper Airplane/Thanx/ Sushi) a touch of spirituality (The Witness/The Good Head) some mock horror (Foxes Howl) and a stab at the more commercial (As It Goes) with the chorus Playing It As I Hear It, Grabbing It As It Goes, Doing My Best To Bring Out, Loving You So It Shows but the main feature is the sometime multi-layered, slightly goofy or even jarring guitar work of the protagonist. He owes something to Pete Townsend and a million others but still remains his own man. The overdubbed vocal harmonies and crazy guitar modes might turn a few folks off but if you are up to something a little edgy then this album offers a lot.
The few period reviews I’ve read just don’t get it…..and I admit my own attachment to the album might be partly influenced by the detective work I had to go through to find a commercially released version….with Punk coming on strong and keeping in mind the antecedents to the basic hard edged Rock n’ Roll sound Daye was propagating this probably appeared a little ‘old hat’ by 1976. Unless you were an established or lucky artist the period stance was fast giving way to ’New Wave’ on one hand and the more countrified (Eagles etc) on the other. That meant anyone such as Stu Daye trying to breath new live into the former genre and avoiding the second were having a harder time doing it.
Time however heals all and now this album sounds like a compaction of a genre when fun was a little more important than taking a more one-dimensional stance of relevance or meaning. Be what you wanna be, do what you gonna do. Daye tried again in 1981 with a group called The Mix - with Corky Laing on drums, Chris Meredith Keys and David Grahame Bass. Their album Word Of Mouth was produced by Felix Pappalardi. I have never seen or heard it. A final Daye solo album came in 2009 called All Roads Lead Here. It is pretty much New York style but not in a Ramones way or a Billy Joel way…if anything just more Daye. Stu went on to play and record with Alice Cooper and no doubt did a lot of other stuff I am un-aware of but so far being his own man on record as far as I know this is it.
Although this album stands a little contrary to the rootsy stuff I normally feature here, I stand by it as a brave venture in an uncaring world. It is as loose as a goose and tight as a drum all at the same time…with touches of glam/hard rock/comic and though hardly even reviewed way back when it is a work that has stood the test of time to today and sounds as fresh as a daisy.
JUDEE SILL JUDEE SILL
Geffen
The history of popular music is full of tragic stories, none more harrowing than the life and death of Judee Sill, the mostly forgotten singer/songwriter whose eponymous 1971 album was the first release on David Geffen’s Asylum label.
For readers not familiar with her work, the album will reveal songs of extraordionary beauty. For fans who were privileged to experience Sill’s music first time around it will be a confirmation of having discovered a unique artist.
There is no easy way to label the music of Judee Sill. Her pure voice revealed a slight country twang. She wrote hymn-like songs with oblique romantic lyrics enveloped in folk guitars, string quartets, pedalsteel guitars and gospel piano with melodies that suggested Bach woven into sophisticated arrangements supervised by herself. She had a sound unlike any of her label mates, that included Linda Ronstadt, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and The Eagles.
Born in October 1944, Judee grew up in Oakland, California, where her father owned a bar. In that bar was a piano. By the age of three Judee began to play and to tinker with stringed instruments. Five years later her father, to whom she was devoted, died suddenly. Her mother, a heavy drinker, moved with Judee and her older
By Billy Pinnell
brother to Los Angeles and married another fellow drinker. When her brother eventually moved away, the teenage Judee was left alone and rebellious in an environment that became increasingly violent.
Drawn to outsiders among her school friends Judee began experimenting with drugs and hooked up with a boyfriend whom she partnered in armed robberies of liquor stores and filling stations. Inevitably, she was arrested, spending her 19th birthday in a state reform school.
One positive was that she was able to practice her guitar and learned gospel chordings on the church organ. On her release she began writing songs and flirting with LSD and heroin. To get money for drugs she resorted to prostitution. Busted, Judee eventually kicked heroin cold turkey in County Jail. Determined to pursue her songwriting she found work as a bass player and read books on religion and the occult, themes that would later appear in her songs.
Her luck changed when she was hired by Jim Pons, bass player of the Turtles, to write for his production company. Her beautiful ballad ‘Lady-O’ included on her debut album, was recorded by The Turtles, reaching the lower reaches of the singles chart.
Next came a call from David Geffen with an offer to record. Her eponymous debut, co-produced by Judee and Henry Lewy - known for his work with Joni Mitchell, the Flying Burrito Brothers and later for albums he did with Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Joan Armatrading - was well received. One song, the ironically titled ‘Jesus Was A Crossmaker’, produced by Graham Nash, got airplay on Los Angeles FM stations. Inspired by a failed love affair with singer/songwriter JD Souther, her best known songs would later be covered by Warren Zevon.
Consisting of all original songs, Judee Sill still commands attention. Her lyrics, full of religious symbolism often reflect a desire for spiritual salvation. ‘I’m hoping so hard for a kiss from God’ (‘Loping Along Through The Cosmos’), and from ‘My Man On Love’, a song about Jesus: ‘Most high, most high, most high’. ‘Enchanted Sky Machines has a more bluesy sound backed by horns and Judee’s piano. ‘Abracadabra’ sounds like a movie score with brass and cymbals.
Despite glowing reviews her debut album wasn’t a big seller.
Continuing to write and record, her second album Heart Food, released two years later, while full of outstanding material suffered a similar fate commercially.
But her escape from the wretched life she had left behind was blocked when she broke her tailbone in a fall. A second accident exacerbated her back problems and she suffered chronic pain for the rest of her life.
Around November of 1979 Judee took an accidental overdose of pain killing drugs and died. She was 35.
Judee Sill’s music more than fifty years after it was conceived remains unique, fresh, stimulating, soulful.
In 2023 a documentary, Lost Angel: The Genius Of Judee Sill was screened at The Melbourne lnternational Film Festival. (See Anne McCue’s Nashville Skykline column on Page 13).
By Trevor J. Leeden
BRUCE CARTER REID
THE RAJA EXPRESS
Independent/Bandcamp
Multi-instrumentalist Bruce Reid has carved out an under the radar career with a diverse aggregate of eclectic high-profile bands, from the Wendy Matthews Band, revered Sydney jazz ensemble The Catholics, to the trans-Tasman ARIA Hall Of Famers Dragon. More pertinently, his own combo, The Field, provides a signpost to Reid’s true musical affinities. Reid’s second solo album is, in a word, gorgeous, a set of predominantly rootsy instrumentals with both feet firmly placed in the same terrain as Ry Cooder, Bela Fleck, and Bill Frisell. Waves of lap steel, BanSitar, and National Steel cascade across Eastern tinged rhythm patterns on an exhilarating ride by a musician unafraid to explore and stretch his musical boundaries. Bruce Carter Reid deserves to be heard.
RUTH MOODY
WANDERER
True North
‘Mesmerising’ is the only way to describe the Canadian soprano and multi-instrumentalist’s lustrous album. From the opening moment of the shimmering ‘Almost Free’ to the final note of the closer ‘Comin’ Round The Bend’, Moody takes the listener on an intimate journey through the highs and lows of human emotions, evoking comparisons with fellow Canadian Joni Mitchell. Open-tuned guitars, soaring pedal steel, banjo and fiddle bring an Appalachian feel to the propulsive ‘North Calling’, ‘Seventeen’ is a gorgeous observation on teenage love, and duetting with Joey Landreth on ‘The Spell Of The Lilac Bloom’ is an incandescent delight. In Ry Cooder terminology, Wanderer is pure ‘chicken skin music’.
GRAM PARSONS
ANOTHER SIDE OF THIS LIFE
Sundazed/Redeye/Planet
Compiled from reel-to-reel home recordings from 1965-1966 of just GP and an acoustic guitar, there is no hint of the country-rock pioneer soon to emerge. Instead, the 13 tracks are almost pure Greenwich Village folk music. Over half the songs are covers of other established folkies a la Tim Hardin, Fred Neil and Buffy Sainte-Marie, as well as a foray into R&B via the Reverend Gary Davis’ “Candyman”. Of the five original tunes, “Zah’s Blues” is a luminous highlight, and “November Nights” is a rarity that later received an obscure release courtesy of Peter Fonda. The International Submarine Band, Flying Burrito Brothers and greatness was on the horizon.
KIM RICHEY
EVERY NEW BEGINNING
Yep Roc/Redeye/Planet
There is something reassuring about seeing Richey’s name on an album; for three decades it has been a sure-fire guarantee of elegance in both songwriting and singing. The warmth in her voice betrays the melancholy to be found in many of the songs; ‘A Way Around’ speaks to the search for comfort in a favourite sad song (we’ve all been there), whilst the relationship breakup heartbreaker ‘The World Is Flat’ is awash in flugelhorn and a phalanx of keyboards – mellotron, piano, pump organ and Wurlitzer. The mid-tempo groove of ‘Floating On The Surface’ has a distinct Tom Petty feel, and Richey leaves on a philosophical high with the Garfunkel-esque ‘Moment In The Sun’.
FAMILY
IT’S ONLY A MOVIE Cherry Red/Planet
By 1973, the Leicester art/progrockers featured an all-star line-up, yet their swansong garnered little publicity at the time of its release; that’s a pity because with the benefit of hindsight, and this terrific reissue package, it abounds in high spirited, good time tunes. Roger Chapman and Charlie Whitney’s song writing is eclectic and engaging, and Chapman’s distinctive vibrato remains as idiosyncratic as it is unique. Songs like “Buffet Tea For Two”, “Boom Bang”, and “Banger” are as fine as any in the band’s catalogue, and the disc of 1973 BBC performances is superb.
THE AERIAL MAPS
OUR SUNBURNT DREAM
Independent/Bandcamp
Arguably, not since Richard Clapton’s Goodbye Tiger has an album captured the quintessential essence of Australia better than Our Sunburnt Dream. It’s there to be found on ‘Eucalyptus Road’, in the glorious sun-drenched reflections of ‘For Just This Moment’, and the vibrant chorus eruptions of ‘The Mullumbimby Night’. Couched in soundscapes that traverse from surf-rock to guitar pop, Adam Gibson’s spoken word vocals are a paean to the beauty, the harshness, and the joy of the Great Southern Land. Bookended by poignantly plaintive observations of days gone by, Our Sunburnt Dream is bloody brilliant.
VARIOUS ARTISTS INTO THE SIXTIES: TOWARDS A COSMIC MUSIC
Cherry Red/Planet
Popular music was re-defined during the sixties, and this 3-disc anthology explores the influences that reshaped music through the genius of George Martin and The Beatles, to Frank Zappa and Pink Floyd, and even Antipodean legends Ross Wilson and Mike Rudd. An aural documentary, Cosmic delves into the world of Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, Ravi Shankar and Sun Ra, Holst and Satie, Ginsberg and Huxley, amongst others. A heady collection of electronica, avantgarde, Indian and Modern Classical, surrealist poetry and progressive jazz, all would inspire a tsunami of 60’s creativity that would transform music.
JACK BRUCE SONGS FOR A TAILOR
Cherry Red/Planet
For his 1969 solo debut, the cream of bassists eschewed the blues origins of his former power trio and instead tapped into his folk, classical, rock and jazz influences. Utilising the services of Colosseum’s rhythm section (Dick Heckstall-Smith and Jon Hiseman) and the guitar prodigy Chris Spedding (as well as a former Beatle), Bruce recorded a masterpiece. Hearing “Theme From An Imaginary Western” in its original and remixed form is worth the price of entry, the Blu-ray disc containing the 1970 documentary Rope Ladder To The Moon seals the deal on a superb package.
By Nick Corr
SMALL TOWN ROMANCE
HOME FIRES
MGM
Melbourne duo Jim Arneman and Flora Smith, partners in music and life, finally follow-up their 2016 self-titled debut with their sophomore album ‘Home Fires’.
To be fair, the lengthy break between albums was so Jim could produce the fantastic 2020 feature documentary Slim & I telling the story of his grandmother Joy McKean and her musical partnership with the great Slim Dusty.
Now that it’s finally here, their new album Home Fires doesn’t disappoint, featuring nine portraits of life, sung to mostly acoustic guitar with beautiful harmonies and the occasional flourish of pedal steel, keyboard or accordion for colour.
The record opens with the title track sung by Flora, a quiet ode to a very one sided relationship (“let me go where I please while you’re true”/“let me take all the time while I hold it back from you”). ‘Home Fires’ includes some beautiful pedal steel from Shane Reilly (Lost Ragas) and subtle organ from Stevie Hesketh (Jet).
Second single ‘Cut Run’ is next up with Jim taking lead vocals for a tale of someone bailing on a new relationship. With its accordion led Tex Mex tempo this one brings to mind mid Eighties Los Lobos
Jim also takes lead vocals for a couple of songs that seem to be steeped in hard worn experiences of Australian touring musicians. And Small Town Romance have certainly served their time having toured extensively, sharing stages with the likes of Don Walker, Paul Kelly, Troy Cassar-Daley, Fanny Lumsden, Mick Thomas, Tracy McNeil, Darren Hanlon and Eilen Jewel
‘Festival Town’ tells the story of a local in a small town that comes to life once a year for a music festival – I’m thinking of Queenscliff or maybe Echuca. While “Pickup Band” is from the perspective of a fiddle player who didn’t quite get the success they had imagined so now they are working cash in hand on regional tours.
The most accessible and pop moment on the record is “Wish The Worst” with full drums and a catchy chorus, albeit with a bitter aftertaste (“I wish the worst upon my best friends”) that brings to mind the late, great Warren Zevon who loved a good bitter lyric wrapped in a sweet delivery.
The zydeco “Piece By Piece” sung by Flora is the record’s most uptempo moment, telling the story of a doomed on again / off again relationship where the subject of the song will “only pick me up just to drop me back down”. While “Piss Fit n Boogie” adds some blues bar room piano.
The album closes on the wistful ‘Ordinary Life’, sung by Flora, a celebration of motherhood and the often-mundane everyday life for someone who is “not bound for big things” but “fool enough to try”
For those already familiar with Small Town Romance, the new album presents more of what you’ve enjoyed about the band. While fans of country, folk and Americana should check it out to see how the duo have earned themselves multiple CMAA Golden Guitar nominations.
By Martin Jones
JIMMY DOWLING IT’S ANOTHER WORLD OUT THERE
Independent
The ole steel bending, bamboo farming seaman from the north coast is back at it with salty sounds and tearful tales. Over two days in Christian Pyle’s north coast NSW studio, Jim poured his heart, mind and soul into the microphones with some assistance from a few friends: Sam Sanders on guitar and piano, Reuben Legge on sax, accordion and percussion, and Jonathan Zwartz on bass.
Relying mostly on guitars and voice, Dowling and Pyle have created a recording of wide-open spaces, allowing for intimate conversations between the spare instrumentation – an acoustic jazz aesthetic. Sometimes, like on ‘El Nino’, they allow that instrumental conversation to take the spotlight, just adding some quiet humming as a gentle bed. On others, like ‘Fibro Shack’, the instruments weave around Jim’s half-spoken reminiscence of beach holidays with “hot chip sandwiches with heaps of butter” and a “fly swat [that] hangs on a nail,” Reuben’s saxophone shimmering and rippling like summer waves.
It would not be a Jimmy Dowling album without sea stories, and the album’s centrepiece and title track recalls times spent on a boat commercial fishing off Newfoundland, describing that “other world” in visceral detail like “stubbed knuckles on frozen oar handles”. His album cover shows him gazing out behind an anchor lamp at this other world; is he looking shoreward or out to sea? He also does his take on the traditional shanty ‘Off to the Sea Once More’ (more arctic seas and frozen oars). ‘Back to the Seafarers Mission at 3am in the Rain, NY’ evokes the title’s scene with piano, sax and bass only. It’s sweet and sombre like the soundtrack to nocturnal scene in a 1971 Clint Eastwood film. ‘Surf Cowboy’, also an instrumental, is a bit jauntier, with more of a lineage to the sound of Bruce Brown’s ‘Endless Summer’.
‘Start Again’ and ‘Ghost of a Memory’ are album siblings, allowing Jim to recite over sparse, rolling music, like a hard-boiled narrator in a Raymond Chandler novel.
Anyone who’s seen Jimmy live will be grateful that he’s recorded his version of the Mary Poppins’ song ‘Chim Chim Cher-ee’, cutting a far more melancholic figure than Dick Van Dyk.
Super sparse instrumentation on this album. In the end it suits the material really well… was that something you just discovered as you got into the studio or did you always plan to keep it limited to just a few instruments, no drums?
I wanted this album to be my sparest, with no drums or bass and just go in with Sam and Reuben and make the whole thing kinda float. But after I listened to ‘Back to the Seafarer’s Mission, 3am in the Rain, NY’
I ended up breaking my own rule for the recording and asked Jonathan Zwartz to play spare yet colourful double bass. And he did.
There might be a nod there to a late ‘50s acoustic jazz aesthetic, is that something you and Christian talked about?
Yes, exactly. I remember asking Christian to make Jonathan’s bass sit back in the mix like a ‘50s jazz recording. I didn’t want it to poke out at all. I wanted it to sound like an olden daydream. I wanted it to breath.
There are three instrumentals on the album. Were they songs that you were intending to find words for but found that they were better without, or always intended as instrumentals?
I had a page of lyric for ‘Surf Cowboy’ that I was still working on, so we just recorded the music, I’d finish it that night and lay it down the next day. But when I got home and listened to what we had, I looked at the sheet of words, screwed it up into a ball and threw it across the room into the bin. Bloody good shot it was. Sam’s playing was so great, it said it all and I wanted the focus to be on his guitar. The other two tracks, ‘El Nino’ and ‘….3am, NY’, were written as instrumentals. It wouldn’t be a JD album without some sea stories… what’s your personal relationship with the sea and how does that inspire your music?
I worked on fishing boats half a lifetime ago and I love to surf, all things nautical just feels normal to me. I’ve even taken to learning how to work with seafarer and fisherman’s knot craft…. the arts of the sailor using ropes. I’ve even taken to roping bottles instead of drinking them, and I’m always threatening to go back out to sea and have kept in touch with some of the guys I’ve worked with. If I’m in a coastal town I end up at the fishing boats… ‘Off to Sea Once More’ is an old sea shanty someone collected off the Liverpool Docks about 200 years ago and I always felt like I could sing it with conviction. The title track, ‘It’s Another World Out There’ is one I wrote concerning the thought patterns evoked by the powerful salty draw of the ocean.
You’re an analogue man, you used to make recordings, hand people a record or a CD. How difficult are you finding these changing times with formats, and how to best distribute your music?
This new way is a nightmare for Luddites like me, it’s the hardest thing. If ya no good at self-promotion or using the internet its almost hopeless to generate a meaningful income. I just focus on being creative and have a day job. I enjoy playing live and intend to sort out a tour as soon as I can. There are a lot of new venues opening up in regional areas in response to the pause of festivals, so I’ve heard.
By Chris Lambie
MICHAEL WAUGH
BEAUTY AND TRUTH
Compass Brothers
Working again with producer Shane Nicholson, Michael Waugh has created a masterful record that more than lives up to its title. “It was a different studio experience to past recordings, with Shane playing 17 instruments and me singing. On this one, we’re tracking the live band so there’s a different energy and urgency to the sound.” Across previous albums, Waugh has written from personal experience with a rare openness. His fifth, Beauty And Truth allows an even deeper view of his struggles, growing up gay in a small country town.
‘Fix Me’ is a response to ‘Smalltown Boy’ by Bronski Beat; writing back about that sense of brokenness in the 80s. He sings, ‘You can’t fix me/ I’m not broken/I’m the way I’m meant to be.’ It continues with ‘Maybe some doctor could make some pill/That could make all this wanting go.’ At that point during the recording, drummer Ali Foster bashed a cymbal at the wrong time. Waugh explains, “Shane said, ‘What’s going on?’, because she’s always so solid. Ali replied, ‘I just heard the lyric and it made me so angry that I wanted to smack something.’ It resonated so much with her as a gay woman. So we kept that moment in.” The album also features bass player James Gillard (Mondo Rock/ Mental As Anything) and guitarist Ollie Thorpe. Nicholson added keys, lap steel, banjo and more to the mix. Jen Mize and The Roslyns provide backing vocals. “With James’ amazing kind of heritage and Ali and Ollie being much younger, it was a lovely group of people.” Waugh confesses, “I felt like a charlatan among these incredible musicians. And being in the Gosford studio where people like Kasey Chambers and Beccy Cole recorded albums. I felt pretty vulnerable, very exposed sharing these little songs.”
Waugh grew up listening to his parents’ favourite music on long country drives. Burl Ives. Jim Reeves. He related most to the torch song queens, expressing the drama and tragedy in living tough lives. On ‘Patsy Cline’ he laments, ‘No one knows how to stand by their man/ No one’s singing my song’. “I don’t pretend to understand what it’s like for women to be in this world. But there was not a lot of fun being queer in Maffra back then. I think of how the [lyrics of Americana] have resonated with Australia’s First Nations people. Being marginalised, the poverty, also the sense of belonging and home. For others it can be through the emotion of opera or punk.” ‘Songs About Women’ namechecks iconic female recording artists. “Cyndi Lauper was where music started for me. Seeing ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’ on Countdown - so joyous and free and, in a weird kinda way, singing for me. It gave voice to that hope. The original version of ‘Songs About Women’ had the band rocking out. But we stripped it back to this punky acoustic guitar, and the song doesn’t take off until those women ‘enter the room’. Then it just flies!”
Waugh has received awards including Folk and Roots album of the Year (Music Victoria Awards), Songs of Peace and Tolerance award (Pt. Fairy Folk Festival) and Heritage Song of the Year (Golden Guitar Awards). His brother assures Waugh that their parents would be very proud of him today. From just before the pandemic set in, they lost both and their other brother within 18 months.
Between the shadows, the album conveys beauty, joy and humour. Initially envisioned as a folk record (for its “grass roots truth-telling”), the celebratory elements shone through. From a youth feeling alone, ashamed and unrepresented, Waugh now stands happy and proud. Mighty anthem ‘We Are Here’ is a statement piece for anyone who fears revealing their authentic self. It’s a glorious showcase of Waugh’s fine voice and songcraft. “[It names] queer people through history who have made it safer for me to speak the truth. And ambitiously, I want to position myself on that timeline. I want to make it safer for someone coming up. What I wanted to hear when I was little. Every song was in some way an anthem for me but also a mantra. To keep reminding myself of this.”
Waugh’s expressions of love can both break and warm the listener’s heart. For family, a child, a soulmate. The longing of ‘Father’s Day’: What I wouldn’t give for a burnt round of toast/And a cold cup of tea on the side. Or ‘Playlist’: I’ve been trying to tell you something but he said it better than me. Waugh wanted to close the album with something playful. ‘To Be Alive’ celebrates simple pleasures. “Being on the couch on a Sunday afternoon, just mooching around with your partner.” “My partner TJ and I may have been partying with some musicians on the central coast,” he laughs. While Waugh doesn’t drink, they needed a gentle day after the night before. “Kind of life imitating art. Those vows, ‘I’m never leaving this couch. Never drinking again’.”
Influences reach from the lively momentum of Mumford & Sons to a Blake Mills-style lo-fi feel. Joining him on the road to launch the album are Liz Frencham, Riley Catherall, and Jacob McGuffie. Fourpart harmonies and raw acoustic instrumentation designed to turn a spotlight on the words.
Album Launch Tour
Friday August 23
With John Schumann
The J Theatre, Noosa Heads, QLD
Saturday August 24
With John Schumann
The Tivoli, Brisbane, QLD
By Brian Wise
JORDIE LANE TROPICAL DEPRESSION
ABC MUSIC
The fact that Jordie Lane returns to Australia to tour behind a new album is cause enough for celebration for his fans. It is Lane’s first studio album since Glassellland six years ago and it has not only been released on a major label, but it also marks a giant step in the singer/songwriter’s career. So, it is even cause for greater celebration.
Listening to Tropical Depression - recorded in Nashville, Lane’s home for the past five years - had me declaring that it is easily his best album to date. It is a stark contrast with the solo acoustic EPs, The Empty House Tapes, that Lane released post-Covid. The songs here find full instrumentation and are lushly produced as they wander across the Americana/folk musical landscape. They also deal with some important social issues and personal ones in Lane’s own life including his encounter with an extreme weather event and his own mental health battles. The title sums up the album’s pre-occupations.
“I just put a lot more work into this album than I’ve ever put into anything,” admits Lane, “and, I think for me, it shows because after I spent six weeks writing, nine to five every day, I then spent another two months editing, and I’ve never done editing of songs before.”
Lane’s friend Mel Parsons, a New Zealand artist, introduced him to renowned producer Mitchell Froom (currently with Crowded House) who told Lane to save his money and find a good engineer. So, Lane enlisted Grammy nominated producer, engineer and instrumentalist Jon Estes (Kacey Musgraves, Brittney Howard, Dolly Parton, Rodney Crowell) to record the album, on the advice of guitarist Jeremy Fetzer. It was mixed by engineer Noah Georgeson (The Strokes, Devandra Banhart, Marlon Williams) and mastered by Juno Award winning Phillip Shaw Bova (Feist, Father John Misty, Angel Olsen). Other musicians include Spencer Cullum on pedal steel, drummer John Radford and John Estes, the producer, played almost all the other rhythm instruments on the record: bass, Hammond Organ and piano. Liz Stringer makes an appearance on the song ‘Internal Dialogue’ (recorded in Australia) and Claire Reynolds, Lane’s partner, adds vocal layers and harmonies. The album sounds fabulous.
“It was good advice,” admits Lane, who adds, “Mitchell said, ‘Let’s talk on the phone as much as you want and I’ll give you advice on the songs and the production.’ So, we started up this kind of friendship on the phone, long distance, never met in person before, and it was still kind of lockdown time. It felt like everybody was a bit more open to doing these kind of weird things, like meeting a stranger. He just taught me so much about songs and how to present them on a record that I never even thought of, just really cracked things open for me.”
“John is just one of those absolute audio technologically advanced people and he just makes it look so easy,” says Lane of Estes, “and at the same time as he’s rigging up the whole recording, he’s charting out everyone’s parts and playing a bass riff from the first time hearing the song. You would know, as well, the musicianship of people in Nashville. It’s just so ingrained in their history as being these session musicians. So, it was an amazing experience with those guys.
“I had two weeks with him but we only had three days with the band pretty much. So, we did three songs a day with the band and then couple of tracks without the full band after that. Then it was done. Then as I do with everything, I was picking it apart and knew that I was
going to have to do a lot of overdubs at my own home studio. It’s part of what I like doing. Then, I started editing things and pulling them apart, rearranging stuff.”
Listen carefully to the album and you can perhaps hear Mitchell Froom’s hand gently guiding the fact that the songs are much more melodic than much of Lane’s previous work and they often feature richer harmonies. A song such as ‘It Might Take Our Whole Lives’ wouldn’t be out of place in a Crowded House set! There is also Lane’s tendency to be able to camouflage a heavy message within an ostensibly joyful tune, such as the first single ‘The Changing Weather’ which namechecks Covid and catastrophes as it bounces along. Or ‘Blame Me If You Want To’ which deals with Lane’s own ‘personal struggles’.
“For some of us, a lot of us changed our lifestyles or changed jobs or found new love or got divorced or lost loved ones, had babies,” notes Lane of the Covid pandemic years. “It felt like a really extreme time where I’ve felt like a very changed person who’s gone through a lot of things myself. I just found it a really exciting time to write songs. There was so much to write about. We were locked out of Australia for nearly two years, and there were births and deaths in the family. Just having that much time, not being in Australia, you get all nostalgic and think about your childhood and think about your past. I started to confess a lot of things and I was like, ‘Fuck, I can’t believe I did that’.”
“It’s basically the idea of severe weather hitting me from all sides and trying to tell me that I had some stuff going on inside me that I had to start dealing with.”
“Then we had a tornado come through our neighborhood,” continues Lane, as he explains how the album’s concept developed. “Then the pandemic lockdown. It really is important for me to have a concept for the album but I’m starting to realise as I get older and as I make more albums that I don’t really know what’s happening until I’m well into the process. This time we’d already recorded a lot of the bed tracks with the band before I realised that there’s a lot of weather references in there because of what was happening around us.
“It’s basically the idea of severe weather hitting me from all sides and trying to tell me that I had some stuff going on inside me that I had to start dealing with. So, that’s the toll. The process has been to
try and open up and work out my own shit and start getting help for it. So, this album is very much for me to be accountable for some of the crappy stuff that I’ve mainly just been doing to myself over the years in terms of my mental health. So, that’s what it really is for me.”
“I’d always struggled with anxiety probably since I was a little kid,” explains Lane when I ask him what sort of things he was dealing with. He cites early experiences of getting ill in Vietnam on a backpacking trip after high school and thinking he was going to die. “The doctors just said, ‘You’ve just got to stress less’, and I left the doctors going, ‘I’m never going to go to the doctors again’. That was when anxiety just kept getting worse and worse. When the tornado hit us in Nashville, it was a terrifying experience. When one hits your neighborhood and pretty much ripped at least half of the houses apart all around us, it scared the hell out of me. I’d had a car accident where I’d fallen asleep at the wheel 10 years ago and not dealt with any of that either. So, my anxiety and fear stuff are just building and building over the next year or so, and then eventually kind of got too much and had just a massive burnout and a depressive episode. I’ve always felt like an anxious, neurotic person, but I’d never felt like a depressed zombie can’t move person. That’s what happened to me.”
“Claire Reynolds, my partner, shopped the record and got a deal and she encouraged me to go to the doctor and that was the beginning of a journey to looking to get in therapy and a vacation. I still really feel like I’m at the beginning of that and still trying to work out what’s going to work best for me. I want to talk about it even though I might not be any help to anybody else. I wanted to try and start being open about it and have a discussion with people. So, that’s kind of what these songs are about. They’re social commentary and satire, but they’re also looking inside and sort of picking apart my own flaws and then trying to also not be so hard on myself. So, that’s what a lot of the themes are about.
Jordie Lane. Photo by Bree Marie Fish
By Brian Wise
RAY LAMONTAGNE
LONG WAY HOME
Liula Records
“I look back on my life so far, my ups and downs, a lot of time I’ve been hit so hard…..” sings Ray LaMontagne on his new album’s second song, the beautifully soulful ‘I Wouldn’t Change A Thing’ which continues, “If I had my chance to turn back time/I’d do it all over again/ I’d get right back in the ring/I wouldn’t change a thing.”
Listening to LaMontagne’s new album, which is his first since 2020’s Monovision and evokes memories from his past, the one thing we would probably like to change is his profile. He did win a Grammy back in 2011 for Best Contemporary Folk Album for God Willin’ & The Creek Don’t Rise which he made with a studio band The Pariah Dogs. He has also been nominated for several other albums and perhaps on the strength of this superb album he might reach a wider audience here. (LaMonagne is doing an extensive theatre/amphitheatre and winery tour with the Secret Sisters and Gregory Alan Isakov after this new album is released).
LaMontagne is reputed to be somewhat reclusive, not a great quality if you have an album to promote, but it might explain why so much of the music here is rooted in the past and recalls some of great songwriters. LaMontagne recalls his 21-year-old self visiting a small club in Minneapolis and seeing Townes Van Zandt perform live. He cites a line from ‘To Live Is to Fly’ as sticking with him, “Where you been is good and gone, all you keep is the getting there.” That’s a pretty good reference point.
“Thirty years later it occurs to me that every song on Long Way Home is in one way or another honouring the journey,” says Montagne. “The languorous days of youth and innocence. The countless battles of adulthood, some won, more often lost. It’s been a long hard road, and I wouldn’t change a minute. It took me nine songs to express what Townes managed to say in one line. I guess I still got a lot to learn.”
The now fifty-year old LaMontagne turns back the clock in many ways on his ninth album by exploring the influences of classic Seventies-era folk rock. ‘And They Called Her California’ starts off with a harmonica intro that sounds like an outtake from Neil Young’s Harvest. ‘My Lady Fair’ could have been a hit for Sam Cooke, and LaMontagne turns on his most soulful voice. The equally soulful but more up tempo ‘Step Into Your Power’, which opens the album, has the Secret Sisters adding ‘choral backing vocals.’ The acoustic intro on ‘The Way Things Are’ will have you expecting Stephen Stills to start singing with Crosby and Nash and the song is redolent of that Deju Vu era. But this is not the work of a copyist. LaMontagne has his own considerable song writing and vocal talents. It’s as if he has been locked in a room for a year with all your favourite albums and been totally inspired by them.
Long Way Home was co-produced by LaMontagne with Seth Kauffman (who has also worked with Angel Olsen, Lana Del Ray) and was recorded over the course of a few weeks in his home studio. The Secret Sisters, who will be touring with LaMontagne, provide backing vocals on the first three tracks. Apparently, the album was engineered and mixed by LaMontagne along with Kauffman and ‘veteran’ multiinstrumentalist, engineer and producer Ariel Bernstein (who will also be touring with LaMontagne). The vocal sound is really fabulous with Montagne’s ‘warm’ voice in perfect balance with the instrumentation. (Any indie musicians who listen to this album should immediately hear the value of hiring an engineer or producer who actually knows what they are doing!).
If the music on the album wasn’t enough to suggest its inspiration, then the album artwork drives home the point with the image of a woodblock print by artist Barbara S. Beck. (It hangs above LaMontagne’s desk where he’s written most of his albums). But this is no mere homage to the past. Montagne synthesises his inspirations into something contemporary and impressive.
By Michael George Smith
CATE TAYLOR
SOMETIMES IN WINTER
From the gentle opening guitar melody that introduces you to her second album, Sometimes In Winter, singer-songwriter Cate Taylor welcomes you into a world of dappled light, tinkling waterfalls, weeping cherry trees and birds. In fact, some of those birds can be heard happily chattering away as song follows song on this beautiful and thoroughly charming record.
“One day when I was just playing a song in the lounge room, making a recording of it on my phone, there were birds in my backyard and I thought, ‘Ah, they actually belong in this song. That’s perfect.’ So then when we got in the studio, I made sure we had a sample of them.”
As for the album itself, “A lot of them were written over a couple of winters, which I didn’t realise until the end of the process and I looked at it all and it had evolved into this little story that I hadn’t even noticed was happening when I was in it. So, winter ‘21 and winter ‘22 and some of the lockdown period as well and then I ended up recording it in the winter of ’23 with Myles Mumford at Rollingstock Studios. I think it was an album where through that period of time we were reflecting on stuff, so I think that’s why it’s got a bit of wistful feel to it and a hibernation.”
For all that, as I suggested at the beginning, the record seems suffused with light. “Yeah,” Cate agrees. “It’s not like a heavy feeling. It’s more just a calming – or that’s how I felt anyway, my relationship to those songs.” It’s obvious Cate has a real connection to the natural world around her. “I think I’m lucky where I am because I live near a creek, and I’ve got a dog (chuckles), so it’s been years of just walking that particular part of the creek, and of course, in lockdown that’s all that any of us were doing, spending time outside. And in the garden – I love gardening.”
Some of these songs may have been borne of the lockdown experience, but in Cate’s hands, there’s no sense of constriction or claustrophobia. “That’s how I would describe it too. With the song ‘This Winter’ actually it did feel like I was kind of trying to break free though; there was a bit of a push and pull with those feelings, so it was kind of like I was missing the garden because it was too cold to be outside and do things, and I was also thinking about what other people were doing outside, but at the same time being quite happy. So, there are a few different things going on in that song.
“And I think I feel re-energised by nature as well, like in the song ‘Wattlebird’. That’s a bit of a breakup song really, and it was written just before breaking up with someone. I think I felt like I’d wandered a bit from myself, which happens sometimes when you’re with someone who’s not perhaps right for you. So, for me, again, that one was just about wanting to reconnect with nature because that’s where I felt I would find myself again. Interestingly enough, two days after writing that song, my partner broke it off! ‘Hang on – I was going to do that!’ That song ended up feeling like a premonition.”
‘Dust and Gold’ is another “relationship” song. “That’s a love song about someone who was in my life a long time ago. That relationship ended when and how it should have, but I guess there’s something I’ll always hold close to me with the memory of that person. It was kind of like this fire and… not necessarily healthy but lovely.”
Joining Cate on the sessions in Rollingstock Studios were guitarist Greg Hamilton and violinist Matthew Arnold, with whom she’s worked for a few years. She met drummer Dave Foley and double bassist Ben Franz in the studio. Franz plays with The Waifs and they both play with Mick Thomas. “I knew I wanted pedal steel on the album,” Cate explains, “and also double bass and Ben’s name just kept coming up and it just so happened he plays both those instruments, so I invited him to play on the album and since they work together it made sense to invite Dave too, and they work together incredibly well in the studio. They’re really respectful of the music and good at listening and feeling into the direction I wanted in the songs. There was a lot of learning in the making of this album,” she admits. “It was very different to the first album-making process” – her debut album, 2020’s Red Dirt. Amla Periakarpan also added a dash of flute here and there across Sometimes in Winter, an album of subtle, generous beauty.
By Michael George Smith
THE BEATNIK PREACHERS
JAZZ IS NOT A DIRTY WORD
beatnikpreachers.bandcamp.com
Vibrantly pulsating “Cool School” jazz meets classic beat poetry, irresistible grooves that make you move, The Beatnik Preachers might have only been around four or five years and only now launching their debut album, Jazz is not a Dirty Word, but, as head Preacher, trumpeter and poet Anthony ‘ToK’ Norris reveals to Michael George Smith, their roots extend all the way back to the mid-‘70s when, as a teenager living Melbourne’s outer eastern suburbs, he came across a cassette (remember them?) that changed his perspective on both music and the spoken-word.
“It was a recording of an interview on New York radio that a guitarist friend of mine put on cassette, and that’s as much as I know about it,” he admits of the tape of late-‘60s African-American music and poetry collective The Last Poets. “He said I should check this out because I love writing poetry. I think it was a little confirmation that actually this is a real thing [jazz and poetry], it’s got some history that dates back not quite a decade before people were saying rap or spoken pictures as they were referred to sort of began. In a lot of ways it goes back to the African tradition of telling stories through, which is not just African-indigenous but most indigenous cultures, especially our own. So that was pretty weird, and I dragged that cassette around with me for years until it finally wouldn’t play anymore.
“I think there are real parallels with issues that this country has with our black community and our indigenous people that are no less pertinent than other countries are dealing with. There’s a real propensity in Australia to, not ignore the impact of colonisation but we have to own not necessarily responsibility for the mistakes of our forefathers but we have to own the weight of those mistakes as they carry into today.”
As you can see, Norris is a deep thinker with plenty to say and he ain’t afraid to tell it like it is. Jazz is not a Dirty Word touches on a pretty vast number of topics, from the war in Ukraine to the torrent of ‘noise’ to which contemporary society is subjected in this oh so ‘connected’
social media world, the state of the human race to its impact on the environment. The trick is that The Beatnik Preachers aren’t all preachy doom and gloom. In the grand tradition of jazz, the message is delivered with enough tongue-in-cheek humour to leaven things –and let’s not forget it’s all delivered with that all important infectious swing
“I love the word raucous sometimes. We’ve got to remember this is music from the street. This is not jazz post-institutionalisation for educational purposes. This is a real New Orleans spirit, and I just loved the time I spent down south in America. It just tied a whole lot of bows for me, made a lot of sense. This is dance music and it’s fun. It’s risqué, and often the lyrics were reflective of what was going on in human society at the time, whether it be about equitable issues about race, creed or colour or just dealing with some of our own shit and owning it. I just love the way that jazz can do that. With the Preachers I hope that after people get drawn into it through the musical stuff, the rhythms and the grooves, they go back and think about what I’m actually saying.”
To that end, Norris has published the lyrics up on the band’s website. The humour starts with the album’s title, an obvious play – well, obvious to a sizeable sector of their audiences – on a certain Skyhooks album title, and in the title of the opening cut, ‘Insane in the Ukraine’ (yup, ‘Jukebox in Siberia’), a punishing swipe at Putin and his abhorrent so-called ‘Special Operation’.
“Skyhooks were a big part of my teenage suburban musical awakening, and then later on getting to meet and work with Ross Wilson, who produced those first two records. I love throwing back to
our own musical history. And there’s the other little salute to Acca Dacca – ‘Rock’n’Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution’ thrown away in the middle of ‘Noise’ that’s presented in a real New Orleans way.”
Jazz has always been referential, full of musical nods to other tunes, and so it is with the Preachers, from the Bond theme that opens ‘007’ to the fact that the music is based on riffs in much the way the music of the ‘Hooks to AC/DC to Led Zeppelin to Hendrix was.
“And this throws back to that Miles Davis ‘Cool’ era and then a lot of the music that followed in that crossover funk period. This is what introduced the ‘riff’ into modern music, and it’s still just a rollicking way to set up a groove. I played a lot of reggae when I was in my early twenties and some really dear friends I met from Ghana, who got me completely hooked into the power of the riff with reggae, and especially how melodic the bass lines were; that and then a mixture of chromatic and modal harmony. And the fact that I’ve got a piano player who is more of an R&B and gospel musician rather than a classic jazz piano player. He sort of becomes the glue to bridge, with the hip-hop thing coming from my drummer, the riffs coming from the bass player – and I love using double bass as opposed to electric bass – through to the trumpet and sax.”
In a way pianist Joel Louis was the catalyst in the formation of The Beatnik Preachers. “Just before COVID hit, I started a quartet with him and we managed to get two tracks done before all shit broke loose and the original rhythm section moved on, and I ended up with Miles Henry on drums, who’s just such a perfect fit, plays drum’n’bass sort of hip-hop grooves but can swing his arse off when we want to throw that classic jazz thing in. So, it’s a great melting pot. Robbie Burke on tenor sax, who I met when we were fifteen at music college, we’ve been playing together ever since as a horn section in a lot of people’s bands, the Black Sorrows, Ross Wilson. And then there’s Nick Haywood on the double bass, who played bass through my tenure with the Black Sorrows from the Nineties into the early Two Thousands. So, the Preachers are built on lots of nice deep musical relationships.”
The Preachers are now a sextet with the addition of soul/gospel singer Katrina B – another deep musical relationship – she’s Mrs Norris. She shines on the album’s closing cut, a ‘gospel’ revisiting of another album track, ‘90 Minutes a Day’, itself a showcase for Hayward. “She’s just got this beautiful, thick tone, and after the record was finished, I dragged her into the studio and said I wanted to do a gospel version, a brooding, real sort of New Orleans sort of ‘death march’ groove, and that’s set up the colour of the next record, which we’re looking to release later this year.”
By Samuel J. Fell
LONG WAY TO THE TOP
It’s been a long road for Dillion James, but the release of his latest record sees him at the top of his game, writes Samuel J. Fell
Dillion James can trace his love of the blues back to when he was eleven, maybe twelve. The son of a music teacher (and, incidentally, the younger brother of Australian blues mainstay 8-Ball Aitken), James was exposed to music of all sorts as he grew up, his interest piquing when his father, “Went through a bit of a blues phase,” he explains.
“And that’s when I was old enough to [really pay attention],” he goes on. “I was playing the drums originally, and [Dad] had a lot of guitar students who didn’t really have many people to jam with… so I’d be out the back playing basketball, annoying them because the ball is going boom, boom, boom. So Dad got smart and said, why don’t you come in here and jam, jump on the drums for the last ten minutes so he can have a beat to play along to.”
This is where the seed was born, “jamming with all these men when I was a kid,” James says, and it grew from there. While he started on the drums, and was never far from a guitar during his years growing up, it was the keys to which he was eventually drawn, and for which he’s known today. He came to the ivories later than most, at 20, and indeed, it almost didn’t happen, the young James was looking to buy a double bass before he “took a left turn at the last minute.”
“There was a party at our house, just an impromptu little jam, and someone turned up with a little Casio keyboard,” he explains. “And I’d always dreamed of playing a solo on a Hammond organ one day, I always loved that Santana, Jimmy Smith kinda sound… so someone had brought this keyboard around, and if truth be told, someone had also rolled a big scoobie-doo, so I had this out-of-body experience mucking around on this piano, and I was like, I’m not spending two and a half grand on a double bass, I know what I’m doing!”
Cutting forward a couple of decades, and that decision has paid off James has recently released his latest full-length, Heavy Keys, a New Orleans-drenched, boogie-heavy set of piano blues – it’s not his debut
DILLLION JAMES HEAVY KEYS
record, but it’s his most accomplished, and the one he feels most encapsulates where he’s at as an artist, and also the one which came together as he felt it should. It’s an album built off those musical roots, plus twenty-odd years since playing as a sideman, a session guy, on his brother’s record and albums by a host of others – Heavy Keys sees Dillion James as ready to go, even though he’s been going for years. “I’ve been trying hard for twenty years,” he laughs. “I’ve had a lot of distractions in life… I studied a bachelor of electrical engineering, I’ve toured with other bands and I’ve made a couple of other albums, which I haven’t released because I knew I didn’t quite have the experience, or the right vision of what the end product would be, from the start.” Throw in there the birth of his son, a global pandemic and the financial tightrope of buying a house, and it’s little wonder Heavy Keys has been a while in coming.
“I started it five years before I finished it,” James expands. “I think the different thing about this project [too], I’ve gotta give a mention to my brother, 8-Ball, this is the first one we’ve worked on… since we’ve been professional. I borrowed some of his experience in preproduction, playing the songs to death before getting into the studio, which I never had time to do nor did I ever see the worth.” The results are there for the listening, Heavy Keys presenting as a fully assured album, James’ confidence in his abilities (as a player, writer and vocalist) really shining through, the elven song set indeed, as his bio reads, specialising in “starting the party”, heavy on the Big Easy vibe, Australian-tinged throw-backs to rollicking barrel-house good times so associated with the Crescent City.
“I feel this album really represents me,” James says simply. “I feel it’s not overdone, I can reproduce that sound live, and that’s something that was really important – these are the songs, these are the words, exactly what we do.”
“My dad said to me when I was 19, ‘I don’t think your music career will peak until you’re 40, Dill, because you’re playing blues and people maybe won’t believe what you’re saying now, but they will one day’,” James says with a smile. “I was listening to that thinking, that’s bullshit, I’ve been alive 19 years… and I feel like I’m ready now. But I had to wait another 21 years, and Heavy Keys went to Number 1 on the Blues Charts three weeks before I turned 40. So my Dad was wrong, I peaked when I was 39!”
Heavy Keys is available now via www.dillionjames.com
By Brian Wise
“I’m not interested in just cranking out music and touring all the time,” explained Meloy, “I just can’t do it and I don’t think anybody else is.”
Photo by Holly Andres.
THE DECEMBERISTS
AS IT EVER WAS, SO IT WILL BE AGAIN
YABB RECORDS/THIRTY TIGERS
It is unusual for a band with a near 25-year history to claim that their new album is also their best. It just doesn’t happen that way: there is supposed to be a gradual decline to the point where when the band tours they might include a few songs from a new album while fans will revel in the back catalogue. (Look at the Rolling Stones recent set lists). But The Decemberists are not your usual band and while you might expect an enthusiastic PR team to claim that this is the band’s best album in this case it just might be true.
Those lucky enough to attend one of the band’s gigs when they go back out on tour
in July would be pretty happy to hear the entire 67-minutes plus of As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again. This ninth Decemberists studio offering is not only a double album on vinyl with each side having its own concept but it also encapsulates every facet of the band’s music: folk, folk-rock, indie-folk, indierock…….whatever. Just think of the best of contemporary Americana!
While the group has been on hiatus since their 2018 album I’ll Be Your Girl album, lead singer, guitarist and songwriter Colin Meloy has thrown himself into numerous projects. There was Wildwood series of books created with illustrator wife Carson Ellis, as well as an animated movie based on one of them, a Substack site and, scoring a theatre project. Then there are the solo covers EPS (homages to Shirley Collins, Same Cooke, The Kinks and Morrissey!).
“I really love his songwriting,” says Meloy of Ray Davies, whose penchant for storytelling and creating notable characters also infuses Meloy’s songs. “I was never a huge Kinks fan. I think I associated with them finally with ‘Come Dancing’, the MTV song. Who are these old guys on MTV, and this song is weird? Then came ‘You Really Got Me’. I don’t think it was until much later in my adulthood that I
discovered stuff from Village Green Preservation Society and Muswell Hillbillies . Then even later, it wasn’t until I sat down and decided I would try to learn some of their songs that I really appreciated what an amazing songwriter Ray Davies is.”
“I think probably taking a lot of time away is the secret,” laughs Meloy when asked how the band has managed to stay together for so long. “I think also we came together when we were adults. I was in my late twenties, some of the band mates in their early thirties. We had all been in other bands and had toured. I can’t imagine where we would be had the success that we enjoyed in the aughties if we had had that when we were in our early twenties or late teens or something like that. That’s the sort of thing where I think you run into issues when you grow up together in that kind of environment. We weren’t experiencing that and we were just happy to be working. It felt like this was our job and our career and it felt very gratifying.”
The other current members of the group include guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee (on piano, keyboards, accordion and backing vocals), bassist Nate Query and drummer John Moen. (Singer and violinist Petra Haden, recently here with Rickie
Lee Jones, was also a member for several years back in the early 2000s). Guests on the new album include James Mercer of the Shins and R.E.M’s Mike Mills. The album was recorded in Tucker Martine’s Portland, Oregon, studio with Martine finally getting involved six-months into the project.
The time off has certainly supercharged Meloy’s writing because the new album includes thirteen memorable new songs. Meloy revisited some of his old notebooks and other older lyrical ideas and musical excerpts to create a double album full of interesting ideas.
The album kicks off with the a folk-rock jangling Byrds-like guitars and harmonies of ‘Burial Ground.’ An auspicious start! The jaunty ‘Oh No!’ explores some more exotic rhythms in a tale of a possibly ill-fated wedding. ‘The Reapers’ is lilting tale of rural life in another era. ‘Long White Veil’, a tragic song of lost love is followed by ‘William Fitzwilliam’, a ballad apparently inspired by a 16th-century British diplomat that the writer insisted “just had a name that had to be sung”. The cautionary story ‘Don’t Go To The Woods’ ushers in a bracket of three quieter ballads before the raucous ‘Born To The Morning’ abruptly changes the mood. The bouncy ‘America Made Me’ is less political than you might have expected in this election
year. (“It is identity oriented and what it means to be branded American, something that I’ve struggled with my entire life,” explains Meloy). The up tempo ‘Tell Me What’s on Your Mind’ and the ballad ‘Never Satisfied’ close out Side 3. Finally, taking up an entire vinyl side, and its not only the longest song that the group have ever recorded, the 19-minute 20 second epic ‘Joan In The Garden,’ inspired by artistic and literary depictions of Joan of Arc’s hallucinatory visitations. It’s as an impressive collection of songs as you are likely to find this year.
“I’m not interested in just cranking out music and touring all the time,” explained Meloy, “I just can’t do it and I don’t think anybody else is. When we’re home, and we’re done with being on tour, I think people like to return to their other creative lives and they do have other projects and things to focus on.”
“It feels kind of Biblical,” agrees Meloy when I mention that the title of the new album might be a religious reference, although it’s also a well-used expression.
“It’s the last line of the song ‘Joan In The Garden’,” explains Meloy, “and there’s a kind of prophetic nature to it. It’s kind of a slogan. I think it suggests this idea of a return or a rebirth. I think in the context of the song, it’s not necessarily a positive thing. I think what we see at the end of ‘Joan In The Garden’ is a kind of very visceral vision of an apocalypse and I think any vision of an apocalypse - it doesn’t matter what side it’s coming from - is not a good thing for humanity. But it is also just a good album title, so decided to run with it.
“I do appreciate the fact that I live in a city that is restive and a lot of really great political movements grow out of that in Portland. We’re not a city that has been content to stay on the sidelines, which is something I appreciate. So, it’s probably found its way in one way or another.”
‘Joan in the Garden’, which is almost a suite in itself, occupies the final side of the vinyl release and not only the longest song that the band has ever recorded but also the most adventurous.
“This idea of trying to do something with something about Joan of Arc that has been kicking around since 2017,” explains Meloy when I ask him about the story behind the song.
“I read Lidia Yuknavitch’s ‘The Book of Joan’, and then went into this kind of wild, deep dive in Joan of Arc. I read two books in succession about Joan of Arc after that, then watched some films about her and then just needed something to do with this. Inevitably, it seemed like a song was the right avenue for it. But what I wanted to do was tricky. I didn’t want to just do a rote, psychedelic biography of Joan of Arc.
“I looked again at Lydia’s book and where she took the story. What is something in the story of Joan of Arc that makes it so universal that speaks to us now in 2024 over the centuries? It was a painting that I remember: the famous
painting of her standing in her garden and being visited by angels with this kind of beatific look on her face. That has always stuck with me. I think I wanted to try to extrapolate that and explore what was it that she saw and how that transformed her. Then, how does it relate to our modern sensibilities and what we know about gender and mental illness and psychedelia psychedelics? What is that kind of the vision that was presented to her? What does that mean to us now? I think that’s what the song explores.”
So, is each side thematic?
“To a certain degree,” says Meloy. “That’s something that I kind of wanted to play with. I think I thought we had an opportunity, we had this sort of wealth of material that did span all these different touch touchpoints and different tones and different worlds that rather than trying to sew them all together in some kind of cohesive whole, which seemed uninteresting to me for whatever reason, I thought it was more interesting to split them apart.”
“I don’t know how often people are going to be coming to this record, listening to it on vinyl, but I think the spirit of that will carry over, even if you’re listening to it on streaming or on a CD. But with each flip side there’s a new experience. That’s kind of what we were going for. I feel like Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade is kind of the model because I feel like that record does have these four distinct sides that have kind of universes unto themselves on each side.
‘William Fitzwilliam’ is another song, based on a true story, that exemplifies why Meloy’s lyrics are so interesting. It is very much in the folk tradition.
“I feel that’s like a Pandemic Fever Dream song,” says Meloy. “It just happened that I was reading Hilary Mantel’s, The Mirror and The Light, which is the third book in her Wolf Hall trilogy, right when the lockdown happened. It’s set in the court of Henry VIII, who was kind of Trumpian. So, living in that Trump era, reading this book about Henry VIII in the middle of a plague, and then John Prine died. I was listening to all these John Prine songs and those two things kind of mixed together. That song was the product of that.”
By Bernard Zuel
KIM RICHEY
EVERY NEW BEGINNING
Yep Roc
This album begins with two songs of farewell, of leaving behind at the very least. Songs that speak of the past as almost tangible and near but yet beyond reclamation or reliving. For audiences and artists of a certain age – to wit, not 25 or 35 –these might be familiar grounds for our music and our lives: reminiscence, like our glasses, are minted (rose) gold after all. The splendid Kim Richey is a more interesting, more nuanced songwriter than that and Every New Beginning – a title containing more than a few ambiguities – is more complex on every level from musical to emotional. Here, those songs, ‘Chapel Avenue’ and ‘Goodbye Ohio’, don’t celebrate automatically, though they can see the glow, and they don’t live with the regret of some golden times for living as if that was the only time to live. Instead, they measure everything on its own terms, and set the template for the eight songs which follow.
The childhood curios and summer parades, the hiding places and sissy bars, the “hippies, hobos, ghosts and goblins/Dracula, Batman and Robin”, of ‘Chapel Avenue’, play as nostalgic, play as formative, but like a charmed embrace – indeed, like the reflective balladry in the acoustic guitar and soft shapes of the backing voices – they also play as warmth of a life lived beyond those references. That life lived informs the requests made of a faltering lover in ‘Goodbye Ohio’ (“Don’t let the fire die down/ Don’t let the light fade in your eyes”) amid the observations of nature replicating/predicting emotion (“The sun is colder/And the lonely nights fall curtain-like/Blackbirds on our shoulders”) and the acceptance that ends do come (“Another place/Another time/ Go before I change my mind”). There are no end-alls and be-alls. Maybe one of those bike riders from Chapel Avenue grew up to be the “do-or-dier, flying low to the ground” a couple of songs later in ‘Joy Rider’. With bar piano setting the pace and Richey singing with a smile, there is palpable pleasure even before she describes how when watching him ride “It feels just like I could grow wings and fly away”. Rules are for later: there’ll be plenty of time.
Maybe the experienced if resigned protagonist of ‘Goodbye Ohio’ is the woman who earlier in her life had come through the experience of ‘Feel This Way’. Turning up late in the album and bringing a southern church-meets-Laurel Canyon mix in
the mould of Jackie DeShannon, ‘Feel This Way’ is riddled with pain (“It hurts like it’s always going to feel this way”) but like the guitar solo which bends with the wind, acceptance has its own strength.
Even regrets have a slice of hope at times. See for example ‘Come Back To Me’ where the fiddle and banjo over a chugging train rhythm gives us a country song that moves forward looking up rather than back, that tells itself “And if I look up just in time to see a star fall down/Then you just might/Come back to me”, that says pretending for a while won’t be the worst thing to happen.
Don’t let this have you think Richey is all sweetness and joy when it comes to breakups, chalking them up to adding experience like some Quaker self help guide. The bitter aftertaste of the prettily elegant ‘Take The Cake’, with its strings and relaxed delivery to balance its (literal and figurative) bite, and the way ‘The World Is Flat’ doggedly scrapes away at the veneer of a relationship – the waltz tempo and languid singing not the only things contributing to the sense we are in territory Aimee Mann would recognise – carry weight.
But like the perceptive observations of those first two songs, there are more shadings than spotlights in these characters, more thoughts than answers. Richey writes songs the way you might want to live your life: circling truths before making a call, trusting in something that holds rather than in the easiest tug, and reaching out rather than always in.
“Drop the needle on your favourite sad song/You’re not the only one,” she says in ‘A Way Around’. You know, I think I just might.
ALBUMS: World Music Folk
BY TONY HILLIER
MALIHEH MORADI & EHSAN MATOORI
OUR SORROW
ARC Music
From their American sanctuary, the distinguished singer Maliheh Moradi and her composer/
santoor (hammered dulcimer) partner-in-rhyme Ehsan Matoori tackle a multitude of injustices imposed by the Iranian regime on women, including the prohibition of solo public music performances. The purity and poignancy of Moradi’s magnificent voice, featuring the quivering vibrato of classical Persian singing and supported by simpatico strings in mostly minor key mode, is particularly effective in emotional ballads, delivered in her native tongue, in titles that translate to ‘The Crier’ and ‘For The Rain’. Elsewhere on Our Sorrow, a mix of instrumentation from Middle Eastern and Western traditions elegantly intertwine. For example, ‘Be My Moon’ has an impressive choral element, while the more upbeat ‘Six Doors’ benefits from a jazz arrangement.
KIRAN AHLUWALIA
COMFORT FOOD
Six Degrees Records
A migrant from the eastern Indian state of Bihar, Kiran Ahluwalia might call Canada home
these days but that doesn’t prevent her from involvement with the geopolitics of her birth land — as the dual Juno winner’s latest album amply attests. Leaning on punchy Punjabi bhangra and hard-hitting Indi-pop rhythms rather than the gentler ghazal and qawwali colouring of previous releases to get her messages across (in her native tongue), this quality singersongwriter takes aim at the ‘Hindu First’ nationalism that’s marginalising Muslims, and general societal discrimination of so-called lower castes. She also addresses the general increase of cultural intolerance in the Indian Diaspora. A hard-pumping opening song, ‘Dil’, sets the tone to perfection.
OLIVIA CHANEY
CIRCUS OF DESIRE
Independent
Although she’s released a couple of previous solo albums, Olivia Chaney is probably best known for her recordings with the diverse likes of American bands
The Decemberists and the Kronos Quartet and the lauded British folkies Seth Lakeman and Alasdair Roberts. The English singersongwriter’s third solo long-player should bring her wider recognition. Sparse arrangements featuring predominantly understated piano and acoustic guitar and some unobtrusive percussion allows the accent to fall on Chaney’s crystalline singing as she reflects on her own and others’ lives, including those of relatives and friends. Circus of Desire is a haunting album in which ten sensitive, intelligent and wellcrafted originals and one cover (Dory Previn’s ‘Lady with the Braid’) create a poetic and meditative music mosaic.
EMILY BARKER
FRAGILE
AS HUMANS
Independent
Back living in her native Western Australia after 21 years in the UK, singersongwriter Emily Barker follows up her outstanding last release of original compositions with a very different album. Whereas A Dark Murmuration of Words (one of this reviewer’s favourite albums of 2020) was folkish and acoustic with environmental awareness and other global matters in the forefront of its subject matter, Fragile As Humans is more poporiented and personal. The comparatively stripped back and quieter numbers, such as ‘The Quiet Ways’, ‘Loneliness’, ‘Acisoma’ and the title track, carry more weight than the musically layered works, as Barker — in her own words — takes listeners “on a deep dive into the human condition”.
OTAVO YO LOUD AND CLEAR
ARC Music
While their nation might not exactly be flavour of the month, Otavo Yo’s compelling modern interpretations of traditional Russian folk songs have endeared them to a multitude of music fans in more than 30 countries around the globe, including the USA and UK. Their latest recording, as the title suggests, has joie de vivre, larger-than-life live feel, featuring mesmerising vocal harmony provided by the core male band and a guest female choir. Propelling the ensemble’s bold beats, hearty harmonies and rampant rhythms is a range of instruments that includes fife, fiddle, glockenspiel, Russian bagpipes, drums and a multi-stringed gusli zither. Each track is significantly different as Otavo Yo updates the rich heritage of its ancestors. Their lusty tales of family and friendship come through loud and clear.
BESH O DROM
HOVA LESZ A SÉTA?
Fonó
Besh o droM celebrates a silver anniversary with ten tracks selected by supporters via the band’s website. The octet’s latest livewire album is based on folk songs from its native Hungary, fused with lively melodies and rhythms from neighbouring countries and beyond. Other elements include hip-hop and drum ‘n’ bass, that underscore the opening numbers ‘Piros’ and ‘Dupla Pita’. Fuelled by Bulgarian and Moldavian tunes, ‘Sandanski’ sports a wicked 22/16time signature. Bulgarian and Turkish melodies merge in ‘Afrika’. Afro rhythm propels the funky ‘1911’. Backed by a wide range of reeds and wind instruments and cymbalom (Hungarian dulcimer), along with rock backline and a dynamic lead singer, Besh o droM shows impressive firepower.
JEMBAA GROOVE
YE ANKASA
Agogo Records
Confidently sidestepping second album syndrome, Berlin-based Jembaa Groove’s sophomore release is a sure-fire winner. Mixing West African Ghanaian highlife — a key component of Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat — with American Daptone Records inspired soul, the band’s conga powered polyrhythms, dancing guitars, pumping horns, steamy organ and potent shared lead vocals are simply irresistible. A truly multi-cultural collective, the septet’s members are a mix of African, European and Latin American. While Jembaa Groove, as stated in their bio, promotes positivity, one of the set’s few stripped back offerings, ‘Makoma’, starts with a solemn pronouncement recorded by Kwame Nkrumah, Ghanaian President and independence fighter of the 1960s, denouncing colonialism in Africa — a topic that’s palpably part of the band’s DNA.
AUSTER LOO COLLECTIVE
AUSTER LOO COLLECTIVE / WE OURSELVES
Igloo Records
Another highly accomplished although decidedly different multicultural group from the heart of Europe, Belgium-based Auster Loo Collective brings together an impressive array of instrumentalists and singers in an acoustically angled album. With expert guidance from a locally raised artistic director (and finger-style percussionist), the Auster Loo octet criss-cross international boundaries with aplomb. Each of the eight players adds his or her own unique touch, creating a refreshingly original sound that blends the distinctive subtlety of the Japanese zither (koto) with the playful melodies of the 21-string West African harp (kora), flute and Iranian setar (lute), piano, double bass, percussion and vocals. Dreamlike melodies alternate with rhythmic, animated compositions in the Auster Loo Collective’s unusual melange.
STUART COUPE PRESENTS
AMARILLO
The alt-folk project of Jac Tonks (Fountain Lakes) and Nick O’Mara (founding member of Raised By Eagles) announce their forthcoming album GOLDEN MOUNTAIN and unveil singles ‘Heatwave’ a harmony rich alt-country ballad, and ‘Breathe’ a Led Zep-esk folk waltz. The band explores the darker, richer more realised aspects of the British and Americana folk scenes of the late ‘60s and ‘70s.The album is set for release on July 20. To celebrate AMARILLO are throwing an album release party on the July 20 at Coburg RSL, with bandmates Jason Bunn, Brooke Russell, Ben Franz, Dave Rose and Chris Baker with support from Ben Mason and other surprise guests in store, this will be a night of music to feed the soul. Tickets available through eventbrite. amarillomusic.bandcamp.com
ANDY JANS-BROWN & CAMERON SPIKE-PORTER
Experience the thrill of Andy Jans-Brown and Cameron Spike-Porter’s latest indie rock sensation, ‘Take Me for a Ride.’ This highenergy, upbeat single is the second release from their eagerly awaited album, Falling ‘Take Me for a Ride’ is ironic and fun and infectious whilst still unravelling deeper layers of meaning. It certainly sets the scene for their upcoming album. “Falling,” has been hailed by Keyline Magazine as “an indie rock masterpiece,” and is set to join Jans-Brown’s critically acclaimed discography. Featuring JansBrown’s evocative vocals and acoustic guitar, Spike-Porter’s layered electric guitars and bass, and David Ely’s powerful drumming, the tracks were masterfully mixed by Christian Pyle at Prawn and Spanner Studios and mastered by Adam Dempsey. Dive into the exhilarating journey of “Take Me for a Ride,” available now on all major streaming platforms, and get ready for the full experience of “Falling.” andyjansbrown.com
GEOFF GATES
‘Willow & Rock’ is Geoff Gates’ second album, following ‘Melancholy Party’ (2021). Willow & Rock covers a range of musical styles: country, folk, rock and singer-songwriter. ‘This Old Life’ and ‘Powerful Voices’ are urban country songs, with walking bass lines, acoustic guitar, telecaster and a touch of banjo. The lyrics are distinctly city stories, however; ‘This Old Life’ recalls a childhood memory of driving to the beach. ‘Powerful Voices’ tells of two men facing court – a Fitzroy truck driver and a Bondi charlatan. ‘Ballad of Charlie’ is a folk song about a troubled boy whose bomber jacket hides his ‘thin, pale arms’. There’s indie-rock in ‘Jack Russell’ (about a wouldbe boxer) and French-style accordion in ‘This Goodbye’. Gates’ strong songwriting is supported by excellent musicianship (Robbie Renu, bass; Brad Christmas, keyboards; Gareth Richards, drums). The album was recorded at Shelter Studios, mixed by Rick Turnock and mastered by Don Bartley. facebook.com/gatesymusic/
LYNN HAZELTON
Never underestimate the power of backing yourself in, so much worse if we don’t. This is a song for the brave, the vulnerable who choose, or perhaps have no other choice, but to be that first drop of water, to wear away at a heart of stone. Showing relentless determination like the constant driving guitar from the king of steel, Bill Chambers, who supports and strengthens this true story in tight harmony. Bring on the big rain.
Taken from - “Chasing Dragonflies”, 5 years in the making and Lynn’s 4th solo album, is coproduced with the wonderful Mark Donohoe and ARIA winner, Bill Chambers, featuring a star-studded line-up such as National banjo champion, Ian Simpson, and Grammy award winner, Lucky Oceans. “All I was really chasing” said Hazelton, “was to bring you in on a jam with me and some mates, or a trusty road buddy for the big open sky, a dusty ribbon road and the sweet return of home”.
NANCY BATES
Barkindji songwoman Nancy Bates releases ‘Blood Red Moon’, the first single off a highly anticipated album. Teaming up with Broken Hill based singer-songwriter Aimee Volkofsky, the pair have crafted a poignant campfire-folk track; celebrating nature’s healing embrace and female resilience. Drawing inspiration from her deep connection to Barkindji Country in Far West NSW, Bates transports listeners to the tranquil, but embattled, Menindee Lakes, known in recent years as the site of mass fish kills. In a time spotlighting global challenges faced by women, and nature, the song invites reflection and renewal under the blood red moon; celebrating female solidarity and healing. Recorded on Kaurna country at Cactus Cactus Sound, with production by Ryan Martin John and musical contributions from Tom Kneebone and Kyrie Anderson, “Blood Red Moon” promises uplifting folk country melodies and a profound message. Available on major digital platforms. facebook.com/NancyBatesMusic/
THE QUIXOTICS
Life has its ups and downs ….’See Saw’ is the first single from The Quixotic’s new album New World State of Mind, due for release in late 2024. Their sixth album highlights the depth of melodic craftsmanship from prolific song writer Michael Francas. We all know folk struggling with the various mental challenges of life and See Saw offers that balm only music can provide with its toe tapping but soothing hooky grooves of salvation. Followed up with the catchy relationship rescue ode Misdemeanour 10 and then the warning salvos of Red Traffic Light. ’Don’t drive……you got a reckless side.’ These first three singles fire up the imagination and get the body moving all signalling an album in the making that will be a must listen. The Quixotics feature also Michael’s son Gabriel on drums a rare and magical combo. facebook.com/thequixoticsmusic/.
ALBUMS: Vinyl
BY STEVE BELL
HOODOO GURUS
STONEAGE ROMEOS (40TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE)
Universal Australia
Despite four decades having passed since its release Hoodoo Gurus’ first album Stoneage Romeos (1984) remains in the conversation as one of the great Oz rock debuts, and for its 40th anniversary has been given a limited-edition reissue completely befitting its iconic status. Firstly the album itself has been pressed onto a picture disc reflecting the incredible artwork of the original Australian release, and not only does the garish prehistoric cartoon vista look spectacular on wax but it still manages to retain its sonic integrity as well, meaning that the cavalcade of timeless bangers such as ‘(Let’s All) Turn On’, ‘I Want You Back’, ‘My Girl’, ‘Leilani’ and ‘I Was A Kamikaze Pilot’ still sound as fresh and vital and weird (in a good way) as they did in the day. But the jewel in the reissue’s crown is the second LP 1984: Live At The Chevron which, as the title suggests, captures the Gurus of that time (though history suggests that this is founding drummer James Baker’s last gig) in all their brash, youthful glory strutting through their early material at Sydney’s long-gone Chevron Hotel. The show was recorded and broadcast on ABC at the time so the audio quality is fantastic (the second disc is also pressed onto trippy Zoetrope vinyl) and even features some long-lost Gurus songs such as ‘Because You’re Mine’, ‘Tomorrow That Was Yesterday’ and ‘I Want You’ (it’s been announced that this live album will not be on streaming). There’s also a 7” of ‘Hayride To Hell’ (which was around at the time but didn’t surface until the follow-up) and era-appropriate poster and postcard in a hand-numbered sleeve, so much to love.
BLUEBOTTLE KISS
NEVER LEAVE TOWN: LIVE IN SYDNEY Love As Fiction
Sydney outfit Bluebottle Kiss burned brightly through the late-‘90s and early-‘00s, initially signed to Sony-offshoot Murmur Records (home to Silverchair, Something For Kate and their ilk) before settling into the independent realms with their distinctively atmospheric brand of indie rock. Having called it quits in 2009, in 2022 they reformed behind a couple of welcome vinyl reissues - their final Murmur EP Somnambulist Homesick Blues (1997) and their third album Patient (1999) - and the hometown reunion at the Crowbar was recorded for both the concert documentary Never Leave Town: Live In Sydney and this 2-LP soundtrack/live album. BBK were always a force in the live realm, mining a rich dichotomy between aggression and lightness that the recording captures perfectly, especially the interplay in the guitars between front man Jamie Hutchings and co-founder Ben Fletcher (who played bass in the original trio incarnation before they added an axe in the early-naughties) who are given room to go all out by the ever-robust rhythm section. Given the nature of the reunion most tracks are culled from the two reissues - augmented by a couple of tracks from Fear Of Girls (1996) and a clutch towards the back-end from Revenge Is Slow (2001) - and amongst the many highlights are rocking opener ‘Give Up The Ghost’, the swampy menace of ‘Six Wheels’, the melodic majesty of ‘General Teen’, the unflinching intensity of ‘Homeless Blueless’, the elegant restraint of ‘Last Cinema’ and the wonderful guitar squalls of ‘Gangsterland’ (though there’s nary a misstep amongst the 16 tracks). Despite being a live album it’s the first new Bluebottle Kiss music in some 15 years, an incredibly welcome return.
JESS LOCKE
REAL LIFE
Dot Dash/Remote Control
Melbourne singer-songwriter Jess Locke has been forging her solo career for well over a decade now (as well as slinging the axe for rockers The Smith Street Band for a long time now as well), and the follow-up to her lauded 2021 collection Don’t Ask Yourself Why is self-admittedly a collection of songs ruminating on the inevitability of death and the impermanence of life. Such existential themes have long proved fertile ground for singer-songwriters, and on Real Life Lockeaugmented by her well-established backing band of drummer Chris Rawsthorne and bassist James Morris - mines this well-worn path with an air of contemplation rather than resignation, making it an intriguing rather than heavy listen. Opener ‘Everybody’s Going To The Same Place’ rides atop an almost country jangle with its matter-offact message about mortality, while the foreboding ‘Red Moon Rising’ and the languidly grooving ‘Piece Of It’ also tackle similarly deep topics without falling into despair. The melancholic title track introduces levity courtesy some deft footy references, ‘Not Important’ builds wonderfully from its sparse opening into a rocking crescendo, the upbeat ‘Uncomfortably Happy’ offers a catchier form of introspection and the prominent dirty guitars of ‘Rocket To Ride’ can’t detract from the song’s inherent pop heart. Towards the back end ‘Take It Back’ delivers more reflections on mortality and death but favours a dreamy country lilt and closer ‘The Place’ uses religious imagery to shroud its central tenet of yearning for simpler times. Ultimately, Locke concludes that death is inevitable so it’s pointless dwelling on itenjoy the moment, seize the day etc - making Real Life a fascinating and rather more-ish listen. Early pressing on translucent orange vinyl.
ALBUMS: Jazz
BY DES COWLEY
ERIK GRISWOLD, HELEN
SVOBODA, CHLOE KIM
ANATOMICAL HEART
Gearshift Music EAR 096, CD, & digital release
This album was recorded at a remote bush property, known as Harrigan’s Lane, in northern New South Wales, where this trio of master improvisors congregated in April 2023. There, in the secluded Lagavulin chamber music hall, they recorded hours of free improvisations, in between engaging in bushwalks, and drawing inspiration from the surrounding landscape. Later, they combed these recordings, searching for tiny nuggets or grooves, which became the basis for the eight brief tracks that make up Anatomical Heart With most barely breaching the fourminute mark, these pieces are like offcuts or miniatures, brief sketches or ideas representing a refined précis of what took place. As such, this music is the antithesis of The Necks’ modus operandi, in this case embodying a reduction or distillation process, intended to capture the essence rather than the whole. American-born pianist Erik Griswold, now Brisbane-based, is an eclectic figure who mashes John Cage-like prepared piano with experimental improvisation. On ‘Opener’, his muffled piano engages in a series of stop/start flurries, spurred on by Kim’s call-and-response percussion. ‘Wallaby’ begins with sparse bass and chimes, before hitting upon a gorgeous piano melody, gentle and lilting. ‘Rock Song’ is anchored by a hypnotic bass groove, provoking driving piano and drums. ‘Bowed’ unfurls like a tone poem, etched from Svoboda’s eerie arco bass. In many ways, this spacious music is suggestive of the landscape in which it was hatched. Contrived from improvised elements, it reflects highwire, intuitive interplay, the sound of a trio creating music that is playful, offbeat, and sure-footed.
BOHJASS UPAS MILITIA INTO THE LOW RENTS / COMPASSION
Independent, digital release
Saxophonist Tim Pledger is something of an enigma. A genuine maverick, he’s fronted experimental band bohjass for decades, rarely chasing the limelight, never playing by the rules. While his music is grounded in the spiritual free jazz of Pharoah Sanders and Alice Coltrane, there is nothing derivative about it, it exists in the here and now, bold, brash, and adventurous. Contrary to band convention, bohjass functions more as a loose community, its everchanging line-up composed of core members, like flautist Belinda Woods and bassist Ali Watts, augmented by a free-floating cast of extras. Into the low rents / compassion represents the work of a 12-piece – a hefty conglomeration of saxophones, trumpets, guitar, keys, bass, flute, drums – dubbed ‘bohjass upas militia’. By all counts, this is bohjass’s (or bohjass upas militia’s) 22nd album, and it’s a whopper, its ten tracks stretching across one- hundred minutes. Opener ‘the gate’ begins with several minutes of random sound: squalling wind, water, before evolving into percussive beats, voice loops. Eventually, the saxes chime in, soaring languidly over a backdrop of guitar, keys, drums. ‘the entrance’ is fuelled by an unwavering guitar figure, galvanizing a barrage of horns, their hypnotic shrill gradually building to a cacophonous freefor-all, before easing the pedal, reedifying the pulse. ‘the door’ picks up the pace, a dense wave of percussion overlaid with dark hues, held in check by Mick Power’s mesmeric guitar. bohjass’s spiritual music, a gargantuan beast, strives for trance-inducing rhythms, powerful and weighty, exploring a terrain somewhere between free-jazz wigout, and dark-patterned grooves.
CLAYTON DOLEY & THE FLASHY DASHBACKS ORGAN TRIO
JAZZ THAT MAKES YOU GO WOW!
Independent, Digital release
When we think organ trio, chances are we think Jimmy Smith, whose Hammond B-3 exploded onto the scene in the late fifties. This was music that was cookin’, a mashup of funky blues, church music, swing, hard bop, and soul. Cue Sydney singer and keys player Clayton Doley. With Jazz that Makes You go Wow! Doley & the Flashy Dashbacks – guitarist Tim Rollinson and drummer Daniel Melillan Zavala –plunge headlong into the archetypal organ trio, serving up 32-minutes of original music, fusing funky keyboards, crisp guitar, and ‘in the pocket’ grooves. Opener ‘Wow Factor’ comes out of the gate hard, burning with an infectious beat, oozing late-night bluesy guitar. ‘Bully Stick’ takes a back seat, an unfussy toe-tapper that finds Doley laying down chunky chords on his B-3, slowly ramping up the heat. ‘The Cool Down’ is just that, an after-dark, blues-drenched track, punctuated by Rollinson’s gorgeous tone, full of clean lines reminiscent of early George Benson. ‘I Miss You’ comes over smooth and romantic; while ‘Blue Clay’ hinges on a shuffle beat, prompting Doley to cut loose, his big, fat sound egged on by Melillan Zavala’s unwavering rhythms. Throughout, Doley & the Flashy Dashbacks boast a sound commensurate with the pioneering B-3 masters. While not striving to break any barriers, Jazz that Makes You go Wow! revels in the music of Jimmy Smith, Richard ‘Groove’ Holmes, and others, conjuring a golden age when jazz dug deep into soul and blues, dripping with latenight sweat, swaying bodies, good times, and dancefloor moves.
KOI KINGDOM
KOI KINGDOM
Earshift Music, EAR 091, CD & digital release
This self-titled album is the third outing from idiosyncratic trio Koi Kingdom, comprising saxophonist Cheryl Durongpisitkul, guitarist Marcos Villalta, and bassist Stephen Hornby. While it would be a stretch to designate this album as ‘chamber music’, there is a strand that recalls the unorthodox stylings of Jimmy Giuffre’s trio recordings, featuring Jim Hall – likewise moulded by sax, guitar, bass – which revelled in fluidity, unencumbered by percussive timekeeping. In other words, music that is free, and free-floating, while still intent on exploring melodic figures. Perhaps the difference lies in Koi’s more aggressive stance, especially Durongpisitkul’s wailing sax, capable of building a head of steam when called for. It has been fascinating to track her progress during the past few years: as composer and player, she has demonstrated a bravura that seemingly knows no bounds. But with Koi, she is more inwardly focused, engaging in rapid-fire runs, dynamic and high-spirited, like a game of chase. The eight-minute opener ‘Arc’ begins delicately, Durongpisitkul’s alto whispering over Villalta’s rippling guitar, shepherding the piece toward a noirish melody. ‘Shit Nipple’ busts out of the gate brashly, loaded with jerky staccato rhythms, and shrieking sax. ‘Theatre of the Everyday’ heralds a sweet turn; while on ‘Death Fish’, Durongpisitkul’s sax blazes with a fiery intensity. The finale, the twopart ‘Day of the Koi’, unexpectedly closes on angelic voices. Koi’s third album displays a hard-won maturation, sure sign of a trio at home in its own sound world, shaping an animated, oft-times intense, music that continually twists and turns, darts and courses.
Rhythms Books
By Des Cowley
Orstralia: A Punk History 1974-1989
By Tristan Clark (PM Press, p/b)
Some believe punk music died off in the early 1980s, its radical origins killed off when it began morphing into a range of popular and userfriendly styles, from New Wave to New Romantics. Others see it differently, maintaining it just went underground, eventually birthing such musical developments hardcore, heavy metal, even grunge.
Author Tristan Clark is card carrying member of the latter school, opposed to the narrative that punk’s demise took place in 1982, when the Clash released ‘Rock the Casbah’, an eminently catchy single that roared up the charts, signalling the jig was up, punk had gone mainstream.
In Australia, there were similar currents at work. By the early eighties, the initial energy of punk had metamorphosed into am assemblage of bands whose legacy is familiar to most of us today: the Birthday Party, the Church, Models, the Moodists, Laughing Clowns. And yet, Clark might add, and yet… Somewhere in the mix was the rise of a new breed, typified by an aggressive sound that took its lead from US hardcore, bands like Sick Things, Civil Dissident, Depression, Mad Flowers.
Clark’s unwavering belief in the enduring vitality of punk across the decades is given full treatment in Orstralia: A Punk History, covering the years 19741989 (a second volume covering 1990-1999 is slated for release shortly). He has styled his book an ‘oral history’, drawing from over 130 interviews with those involved in the scene. But be warned. While many of us tend to associate Australian punk with the likes of the Saints or Radio Birdman, Clark’s interests are geared elsewhere. After all, there are books by Andrew McFarlane and Clinton Walker that have covered much of that turf.
While those bands obviously get a run, be prepared. Clark proves just as likely to devote as much space to a minor band from Rockhampton as he does to the Saints. His aim is to dig a little deeper, fathom the scene from the bottom up, celebrate both the renowned and the trivial, the eminent and the unknown.
One of the enigmas of punk is how it exploded globally near simultaneously – this was eons before social media made that the norm. No surprise that its Australian roots were hatched in Brisbane. With its outrageous politics and police surveillance, it probably corresponds closest to the UK scene, burgeoning with disaffected youth that spawned the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, the Slits, and the Clash emerged.
The fact that you could play this music with the barest minimum of musical competency made it attractive to any sixteen-year-old with a guitar or set of drums. Bands sprung up all over the land, many lasting no longer than a season, often playing no more than a handful of gigs. The most successful might have managed a 7” single, while the rest lie buried in memory, now given a fleeting second life in Clark’s account.
Because punk’s ethos is antithetical to established hierarchies of talent or success, Clark chooses to structure his account democratically, based on geographic locale. Emphasizing that punk was often a local phenomenon, he starts at Qld (Brisbane, Ipswich, Rockhampton, Townsville), before moving south to Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, and further afield to Hobart, Adelaide, Darwin, Perth. If you’d asked me to name a Rockhampton punk band before I read Clark’s book, I’d have drawn a blank.
While the Saint’s ‘(I’m) Stranded’ gets the prize for first local punk single, the fact that they relocated to London by May 1977 means they had little input into subsequent affairs. But by then, Brisbane was swarming with punk bands: Leftovers, Survivor, Razor, X-Men, Disposable Fits, Fujii Angels,
all drawing on a mish-mash of UK and US punk, along with echoey strains of the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and MC5. By 1979-1980, many had relocated to Sydney, the result of continuing police harassment, and a rampant drug culture that was taking a toll, leading, in some instances, to homelessness, even death.
Down South, the more liberal culture of Sydney was dominated by Radio Birdman, who were soon joined by the Psychosurgeons, the Scabs, Filth, Kamikaze Kids, and others. In those pre-internet days, each geographic locale generated its own variation on a theme. Melbourne boasted a more eclectic scene, documented in Richard Linklater’s documentary Living on Dog Food, which found equal space for iconoclasts like the Primitive Calculators.
While Punk was an overwhelming male scene, there were some exceptions, like Melbourne’s Gash, who released a self-titled album in 1986. Guitarist Liz recalls going to Cold Chisel and Rose Tattoo, and thinking: “Why aren’t there more women doing that?”. Lead singer with Def FX, Fiona Horne, recounts a scene rampant with drug use and sexism. She later reinvented herself as your everyday suburban witch. Diversity was also in short supply, though Sydney band the Hard Ons, hailing from then Yugoslavia, South Korea, and Sri Lanka, were proved a rare multicultural success story.
One of the enduring themes of Clark’s book is to be found in routine accounts of violent behaviour at punk gigs. So prevalent was it, that I found myself pondering whether faulty or exaggerated memory was behind it. Clark’s reliance on oral testimony comes with the obvious pitfall, those involved are casting their minds back to events decades ago. On the plus side, we are hearing it from the horse’s mouth, so to speak.
It is fascinating to learn where various punk musicians washed up. Out of this maelstrom of little bands emerged figures like Kim Salmon, Dave Graney and Clare Moore, Dave Warner, alongside founding members of the Hoodoo Gurus, and Triffids. After Jeff Fatt and Anthony Field left the Cockroaches, they formed the Wiggles, a far cry from their punk origins. Vocalist Pete Tillman, of Filth, went on the become a barrister, authoring the mouth-watering title The Legal Adviser’s Guide to Franchising. For others, it’s a distant memory, a precursor to subsequent lives as teachers, public servants.
The 35-or-so photos included in the book give a good feel for the period. Rather than Malcolm McLaren and Vivien Westwood fashion statements –all leather, safety pins, glamour, and spiky hair - there is a refreshing lack of pretentiousness in the Australian scene: long hair still abounds, singlets and sloppy joes, and the club interiors are suitably drecky. This was Australia of the late seventies, for anyone who can remember.
I suspect anyone not conversant with the underground punk scene in Australia is destined to find Clark’s book a bit of a slog. But that’s not who he’s written it for. Far easier to acknowledge his achievement: to have patched together a mountain of first-hand accounts, demonstrating that the spirit of punk far outlived its explosive origins back in the mid-seventies.
By Des Cowley
The Sound in the Machine: My Life in Kraftwerk and Beyond
By Karl Bartos (Omnibus Press, p/b)
When Punk music exploded in the mid-seventies, its effect was analogous to meteors showering earth at the time of the dinosaurs. Suddenly, those lumbering behemoths of prog rock – Genesis, Yes, ELP – found themselves on the endangered list, staring down extinction. Lean and mean was the order of the day, a few guitars, fewer chords. Yet, somehow, the pioneers of Krautrock –Can, Neu, Kraftwerk, Faust, Amon Düül, Tangerine Dream – emerged from the wreckage largely unscathed. How to account for this?
Perhaps it was a cultural thing. Whereas UK prog rock tended increasingly toward overblown, grandiose Tolkien-like musical statements (Rick Wakeman’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth remains a key witness for the prosecution), their German counterparts were drawing from a different well, as au courant with Stockhausen’s oeuvre or Pierre Schaeffer’s musique concrète, as they were with the Beatles or Stones. This experimental mash-up would in turn inspire David Bowie’s seminal Berlin trilogy; provide sustenance for bands like Joy Division and PiL; galvanize the New Romantics; and set the scene for eighties electronica and dance music.
As a member of the classic Kraftwerk line up – with Florian Schneider, Ralf Hütter, and Wolfgang Flür – Karl Bartos is a shining exemplar of that fertile Germanic scene. He joined in 1975, in time for the Autobahn tour, and remained on board until 1990, contributing to the band’s major albums: Radio Activity, Trans-Europe Express, The Man-Machine, Computer World, and Electric Café
Bartos became infatuated by music, at age-twelve, upon hearing the opening chord of the Beatles’ ‘Hard Day’s Night’. Following a few years dabbling on guitar, he found his way to the Robert Schumann Conservatory, in his hometown of Düsseldorf (a hotbed of avant-garde art, courtesy of Joseph Beuys), there to study percussion, and earn his stripes performing the classical repertoire. But, when the offer to join Kraftwerk came, it proved irresistible, despite spelling the end of his nascent classical career. For founders Florian Schneider and Ralf Hütter, Kraftwerk was an all-or-nothing proposition; there would be no time for outside musical activities.
Bartos’s The Sound in the Machine is a surprisingly big book, well over the 600-page mark. While that sounds daunting, his decision to break the text into small soundbites, each with its own thematic heading, makes for relatively breezy reading. He ruminates on his musical beginnings; but, as could be expected, the prime emphasis is on his Kraftwerk years. Against all odds, Autobahn turned out to be a surprise hit in America, and soon after joining the band, Bartos found himself on a plane to New York, the first leg of a whistle-stop US tour. But things weren’t all plain sailing. Schneider and Hütter were exceedingly churlish when it came to sharing the spoils. Both Flür and Bartos received a flat fee, regardless of how many concerts they played, and received no songwriting credits (until Bartos took umbrage). There were never any written agreements or contracts in place, an oversight that resulted in legal disputes decades on.
Bartos is expansively forthcoming about Kraftwerk’s legendary Kling Klang studios, which functioned as a virtual laboratory for the band’s improvisations and experiments. In concert, they often resembled lab technicians, standing motionless and expressionless before banks
of electronic equipment, looking to all intents and purposes like extras who’d walked off the set of Babylon Berlin. There can be no question: Kraftwerk were trailblazers when it came to crafting image, their albums, posters, and stage outfits incorporating elements of Bauhaus and Constructivist design, added to which was their fixation with robots, machines, computers. To this day, they remain the embodiment of futuristic cool.
Bartos relishes the nerdy stuff, detailing the band’s ever-growing collection of electronic gear. More pertinently, he delves into Kraftwerk’s intricate recording practices, describing how the albums were hatched via a complex melding of improvisational hooks with samples and electronics. He recounts European tours, caviar dinners, album launch parties, nights spent dancing at the hippest clubs. For a few years, life was good. But, inexorably, following an unbroken run of groundbreaking albums, the wheels started to come off.
The saga of Kraftwerk’s fruitless attempts to record a follow-up to 1981’s Computer World makes for absorbing reading. Ostensibly to be titled Techno Pop, the band literally went down the rabbit-hole, mixing and remixing tracks to a point where they had so many versions, they could no longer tell good from bad, up from down. Bartos calculates the band did over 280 sessions, without having much to show for it (they eventually totted up 780 sessions before eventually completing the album, retitled Electric Café). They became fixated on the track ‘Tour de France’, compulsively working on it for years, even though they’d already released it as a single.
For much of the eighties, Kraftwerk ceased functioning as a band. They stopped touring – after all, they had nothing much new to tour – and members began drifting off into other diversions: Florian was consumed by the possibilities of speech synthesis, while Ralf pursued championship cycling. For Bartos, the problem lay with “our composing technique, which was developing more and more toward montage, due to all the sampling we were doing. We had long since stopped making music together.”
Electric Café limped out in 1986, to mediocre reviews, and it would be another 17 years before Kraftwerk’s final album of new music landed, 2003’s Tour de France Soundtracks. But long before that, Bartos jumped ship. The final sections of his book recount his not inconsiderable post-Kraftwerk career. To this day, Kraftwerk remain a going concern, helmed by sole survivor Ralf Hütter. By degrees, the world caught on, and Kraftwerk’s music is now seen as foundational to modern music, from synth-pop, electronica, trance and house to hip hop. Bartos’s The Sound in the Machine, an insider’s view, goes a long way to revealing the why and the how.
Rhythms Books Too
By Stuart Coupe
Since we last chatted there has been a (continued) total deluge of music related books enter my world – and that seems to be an ongoing tend. There is a LOT of activity in the world of music writing and for every title that sees the light of day I’m guessing there’s another 50 looking for a publisher.
And heck, just imagine if you like to read things other than music related books! Don’t even think about it. The world is literally drowning in books – and so many of them are so very good and warranting the time you need to spend with them.
So, this issue I’m going to give an overview of just some of the titles that have come into my orbit recently. Some I’ve read fully, others I’ve dipped into, and others look longingly at me – and I look back with the same sentiments – from the bedside table and other places where ‘soon-to-be-read-hopefully’ books gather.
Terry Allen is an astonishing songwriter, singer and artist who should be much more known around the globe than he is. Finally, there is a (big) book about him – Truckload Of Art: The Life And Work Of Terry Allen, an authorised biography by Brendan Greaves.
It is – like the Texas that he comes from – a big book of over 500 pages and is detailed and nuanced in a way that might deter casual fans and the slightly curious, but it’s marvellously written, extensively researched – and once again makes you wonder what is in the water in Lubbock, Texas.
Debbie Harry has told her version of her life and the Blondie (and after) years. Now it’s Chris Stein’s time with Under A Rock – which comes with a Foreword from Harry.
I’ve skimmed through this and it looks like the absolute business. It seems that – like Thurston Moore’s recent memoir - that the real meat here is the evocation and description of Manhattan and its music and art scene in the 1970s. And I for one can never get enough of recollections of those who were around that scene and The City in that era.
Move back to the Southern Hemisphere and whilst and whilst all that glorious activity was happening in NYC there was an also fascinating and vibrant scene happening in inner city Sydney, much of which revolved around a band known as Radio Birdman.
That story is magnificently told in Radio Birdman: Retaliate First (a great title btw) by Murray Englehart who has previously written books on AC/DC and the Australian pub rock scene, the superb Blood, Sweat And Beers
Almost 450 pages on Radio Birdman? Do I see a rolling of eyes? STOP IT. What Engleheart does is not only tell the story of this incredibly ferocious and intense rock’n’roll band but he places them superbly in the context of the music of the time. The book positively heaves with references to people, places, scenes, records etc etc that give a perfect context for Birdman. This is a very, very fine piece of writing about music.
Another musician who can certainly string both a guitar and a sentence together is Australian Joe Matera. His second book – Louder Than Words: Beyond The Backstage Pass is part memoir, part collection of encounters with diverse figures that range from the current incarnation of The Animals through Gerry Rafferty (the Baker Street guy), Bryan (not Ryan) Adams and others. There are ruminations on MTV, the world of touring, ABBA (particularly Janne Schaffer who played on their studio albums) and lots of other stuff.
In all honestly some of these subjects were for me peripheral but it says a lot that Matera can make essays and ruminations on the current Animals (only the original drummer remains), Billy Squier and Adams rather fascinating and insightful.
So, if the sight of a book with a Forward from Bryan Adams gives you cause for concern, cast off your prejudices oh hipters and give this a go. It’s a LOT more engaging than you’d imagine. Matera writes real well and brings you into all these stories.
Finally, if you want a completely wonderful recreation and reflection on the beginnings of what Toby Creswell describes as “the beginnings of alternative culture in both Sydney and Melbourne” search out Gertrude And Me by Tony Burkys, a short but superbly written (and heavily illustrated) memoir from a former member of outfits such as The Original Battersea Heroes, Uncle Bob’s Band, The Café Society Orchestra and The Soapbox Circus amongst many others.
Gertrude And Me is a delight. You can find it on ETT Imprint – PO Box R1906, Royal Exchange, NSW, 1225.
FAVOURITE SONGS
of all time interpreted brilliantly by some of your favourite musicians
Across the Universe (Lennon/McCartney)
Adrian Whitehead
Spirit In The Sky (N.Greenbaum) Billy Miller
Grandma’s Hands (B.Withers) Rebecca Barnard
Lovin’ Cup (Jagger/Richards) Nick Barker
Rose Tattoo (C.Wilson) Liz Stringer
Faded Valentine (J.T. Earle) Rebecca Barnard
Beware Of Darkness (G.Harrison) Shane O’Mara
EMAIL:
Isn’t It A Pity (G.Harrison) Billy Miller
Ohio (N.Young) Andrew Tanner
Coming Down Again (Jagger/Richards)
Nick Barker
Blood In My Eyes (B.Dylan) Liz Stringer
Do Right To Me Baby (Do Unto Others) (B.Dylan)
Andrew Tanner
That’s The Way (R.Plant/J.P.Page)
Jaqueline Tonks
I’m In The Mood (J.L.Hooker) Rebecca Barnard Who Listens To The Radio (S.Cummings/A.Pendlebury) Rebecca Barnard
PRODUCED BY SHANE O’MARA
With backing musicians and vocalists including: Shane O’Mara, Billy Miller, Rebecca Barnard, Harry O’Mara, Rick Plant, Howard Cairns, Ash Davies, Adrian Whitehead, Stu Thomas, Leroy Cope and Ben Wiesner.
Available at: www.rhythmsmagazine.com
JULY
July 25-28
Devonport Jazz Festival Devonport, Tas. devonportjazz.com.au
July 25-28
Leaps & Bounds, Melbourne lbmf.com.au
July 25-28
Winter Blues Echuca, VIC winterblues.com.au
July 25-28
Rockhampton River Festival rockhamptonriverfestival.com.au
AUGUST
August 2-5
Garma Festiva, NT yyf.com.au
August 2-5
Inverloch Jazz Festival, VIC inverlochjazzfestival.com
August 8-15
Darwin Festival Darwin, NT darwinfestival.org
August 2-4
Greazefest, Cleveland, QLD greazefest.com
August 15-17
Mundi Mundi Bash, Broken Hill, NSW mundimundibash.com.au
SEPTEMBER
September 3-6
Big Sound, Brisbane bigsound.org.au
September 12-15
Adelaide Guitar Festival guitar.adelaidefestivalcentre.com.au
OCTOBER
October 4-6
Dashville Skyline Hunter Valley, NSW dashville.com.au
October 4-6
Deni Ute Muster Deniliquin, NSW deniutemuster.com.au
October 12
Out On The Weekend Williamstown, VIC outontheweekend.com.au
October 14-20
SXSW Sydney sxswsydney.com
October 18-20
Groundwater Country Music Festival
Gold Coast, QLD groundwatercmf.com
October 18-20
Wingham Music, Wingham, NSW winghammusicfest.com.au
October 18-27
Melbourne International Jazz Festival melbournejazz.com
October 25-27
Dorrigo Folk & Bluegrass Festival Dorrigo, NSW dorrigofolkbluegrass.com.au
Fanny Lumsden
Nardi Simpson
Duane Eddy Dickey Betts
COMPILED BY SUE BARRETT
Nardi Simpson (Stiff Gins) has completed her 2nd novel, The Belburd, which can now be pre-ordered. www.hachette.com.au/nardisimpson/the-belburd
Clarence Frogman Henry
NAIDOC Week 2024 takes place from Sun 7 July until Sun 14 July. The theme is: Keep the fire burning! Blak, loud and proud. www. naidoc.org.au/news
Canadian audio engineer Julia Graff was part of the Are You Afraid of the Dark? team which won the Outstanding Sound Mixing and Sound Editing for a Live Action Program Emmy at the 2nd Children’s and Family Emmy Awards. Julia’s parents are singer / songwriters Shari Ulrich and David Graff www.juliagraff.com
The Kid LAROI, Budjerah, Djanaba, KIAN, Becca Hatch, Miss Kaninna and Dean Brady have all recently been on the National Indigenous Music Chart www.nima. musicnt.com.au/chart
Entries for Folk Alliance Australia’s Australian Folk Music Awards close on Wed 31 July 2024. www.folkalliance.org.au/afmas
British singer/songwriter Jamie Webster is touring Australia in December. Gigs include: The Factory, Sydney (5 Dec); The Corner, Melbourne (6 Dec); The Triffid, Brisbane (7 Dec); Magnet House, Perth (8 Dec). www. troubadourpresents.com/events
Fanny Lumsden is part of Yesterday’s Gone: The Fleetwood Mac Legacy, which kicks off in late August 2024. www.yesterdaysgone. com.au
Headlining July’s Festival of Small Halls Winter Tour 2024 in coastal Queensland are Quote The Raven (Canada) and Hailey Calvert (Australia). www. festivalofsmallhalls.com
The National Indigenous Music Awards (NIMAs) are being presented in Darwin on Sat 10 August 2024. www.darwinfestival.org. au/events/national-indigenous-music-awards Folk Alliance Australia is hosting the Australian Folk Festival Roundtable Conference 2024 in Melbourne (Fri 27
Larry Page (86), British music manager and record producer, died NSW, Australia (April)
British musician and songwriter Robin George (68), died Spain (April)
Ben Eldridge (85), American banjo player with The Seldom Scene, died in April
Canadian jazz musician and composer Phil Nimmons (100), died in April
British musician Mike Pinder (82), of The Moody Blues, died California, USA (April)
Chan Romero (82), who wrote ‘The Hippy Hippy Shake’, died California, USA (April)
American guitarist Duane Eddy (86), died Tennessee, USA (April)
Dickey Betts (80), of The Allman Brothers Band, died Florida, USA (April)
The Masters Apprentices bassist Gavin Webb (77), died South Australia (April)
Garry Van Egmond (82), Australian music promoter, died in April
Grammy-winning contemporary Christian singer Mandisa (47), died Tennessee, USA (April)
Jean-Pierre Ferland (89), member of the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, died Canada (April)
New Orleans musician Clarence “Frogman” Henry (87), died Louisiana, USA (April)
Keith LeBlanc (69), American drummer and music producer, died in April
English-born country singer Frank Ifield (86), died NSW, Australia (May)
Richard Sherman (95), who with brother Robert wrote the songs ‘You’re Sixteen’ and ‘It’s a Small World (After All)’ and music for Mary Poppins, Charlotte’s Web and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, died California, USA (May)
American audio engineer and producer Steve Albini (61), died Illinois, USA (May)
Spider John Koerner (85), member of Koerner, Ray & Glover, died Minnesota, USA (May)
Performer, writer, director and event producer Ignatius Jones (67), the co-creative director of the opening / closing ceremonies for the Olympic Games Sydney 2000, died Philippines (May)
Mélanie Renaud (42), born in Haiti and adopted by a Canadian couple, died in May
FrankIfield copy
Sept - Sun 29 Sept). https://form.jotform. com/241488163712054
New music releases include: glass beach, plastic death; Ana Egge, Sharing in the Spirit; Blair Dunlop, Out of the Rain; Deerhoof, The Free Triple Live Album; Meghan Trainor, Timeless; John McEuen, The Newsman; Niamh Regan, Come As You Are; Greg Saunier, We Sang, Therefore We Were; Missy Higgins, The Second Act; Old Man Luedecke, She Told Me Where to Go; Ruth Moody, Wanderer; Jamie Webster, 10 for the People; Fanning Dempsey National Park, The Deluge; Willie Nelson, The Border; Nichole Wagner, Plastic Flowers; Ryan David Green, Off and Running; Lynn Hollyfield, Look Up; Two of a Kind, Let the Light In Some new books: Tim Thorne, Greatest Hits: Poems 1968-2021; Renée Fleming (ed.) Music & Mind: Harnessing the Arts for Health & Wellness; Daniel J Levitin, I Heard There was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine; Kristin Hersh, The Future of Songwriting; Greil Marcus, What Nails It (Why I Write); Amanda Kramer & Wayne Byrne, Hired Guns: Portraits of Women in Alternative Music; Ian Glasper, A Country Fit For Heroes: DIY Punk in Eighties Britain
Australian drummer Alan “Fred” Noonan (58), of Public Execution, Blowhard and Six Ft Hick, died in May
Jon Wysocki (53), drummer for Staind, died in May
American saxophonist David Sanborn (78), died New York, USA (May)
Doug Ingle (78), singer with Iron Butterfly, died in May
New Zealand musician Willie Hona (70), died NZ (May)
Rod Paterson, Scottish musician, died in May
Radio and television presenter Bob Rogers (97), died NSW, Australia (May)
Cayouche (75), Canadian singer/songwriter, died Canada (May)
British keyboardist Richard Tandy (76), of Electric Light Orchestra, died New York state, USA (May)
Alex Hassilev (91), French-born member of The Limelighters, died California, USA (May)British keyboardist John Hawken (84), of The Strawbs and Renaissance, died New Jersey, USA (May)
John Barbata (79), American drummer who worked with Neil Young, Jefferson Airplane and The Turtles, died Oklahoma, USA (May)
New Zealand jazz musician Rodger Fox (71), died NZ (May)
60s Stratocaster® in 3-Color Sunburst
