Rhythms Magazine March/April 2020 by rhythmsmag

“It’s a crazy time here in America and, unfortunately, this sort of craziness always seems to be contagious globally.”

ALBUMS, FILMS, MUSIC, BOOKS!

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE ALLMAN BETTS BAND JOACHIM COODER MARCUS KING MORCHEEBA JIMMIE VAUGHAN DWEEZIL ZAPPA THE WAR & TREATY

PLUS:

“I feel really liberated this time…”

BOOGIE & GUMBALL CASH SAVAGE COWBOY JUNKIES MARK SEYMOUR MAMA KIN THE MASTERSONS TAMI NEILSON …..and much more.

HISTORY:

$12.95 inc GST $12.95 MARCH/APRIL MARCH/ APRIL 2020 ISSUE: 298

THE BONDI LIFESAVER COLD CHISEL – WILD COLONIAL BOYS

Australian Exclusive

Jill Scott 20th Anniversary of Who Is Jill Scott? Words And Sounds Vol. 1 22, 23, 25, 26 May

#VividLIVE

Strategic Sponsors

sydneyoperahouse.com/vivid-live

Sydney Opera House Media Partner

TICKETS FROM JAMESREYNE.COM.AU & MARKSEYMOUR.COM.AU

MARK SEYMOUR NEW ALBUM 'SLOW DAWN' OUT MAY 29 I JAMES REYNE NEW ALBUM 'TOON TOWN LULLABY' OUT JULY 10 �

-�

Volume No. 298 March/April 2020

UPFRONT 09

The Word.

Rhythms Sampler #6. We Got The Blues!

12 13

Welcome to festival season. By Brian Wise. Only available to subscribers!

Music News Nashville Skyline

Anne McCue salutes David Olney.

NEW RELEASES & ON TOUR 14

Slow Dawn

Alive And Kicking

Are You Listening?

Is Mark Seymour’s latest album the best of his solo career? By Jeff Jenkins. Brandon Dodd steps from the shadows of other projects. By Chris Familton. Mama Kin Spender releases a new EP. By Chris Lambie.

Rediscovery!

Flying Back

Transformational, epic rock!

The Wright Stuff

Judith Owen’s new album has an eclectic selection of covers. By Brian Wise. The Gadflys return with their first album for 19 years. By Michael Smith. That’s how Dirty Rascal’s Andrew McSweeney describes their music. By Jeff Jenkins. Dave Wright goes down a country road. By Jeff Jenkins.

Rhinestone Cowgirl?

Tami Neilson has an explosive new album. By Chris Familton.

Mastersounds

Still Got The Blues!

Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitemore are in Steve Earle’s Dukes and have their own new album. By Brian Wise. Robert Cray’s funky new album adds to a great career. By Brian Wise.

Slow Burn

The Cowboy Junkies celebrate more than three decades together. By Brett Leigh Dicks.

BLUESFEST PREVIEW 32

CITIZEN SMITH

THE UNWAVERING WARRIOR

Patti Smith is back with some forthright opinions and is as inspirational as ever. By Brian Wise. Buffy Sainte-Marie Is Unstoppable! By Tony Hillier.

INDIE ICON

WAR & PEACE

Ani DiFranco pioneered the DIY approach. Thirty years on she has published a memoir about her rise. By Brian Wise. Sensational duo The War & Treaty return. By Steve Bell.

BETTS ARE ON

SON OF A GUN

Allman Betts Band contains the sons of southern rock legends. By Samuel J.Fell. Joachim Cooder takes roots music to a new place. By Brian Wise.

STILL STANDING STRONG

After 28 years The Waifs have no plans to slow down. By Brett Leigh Dicks.

48 TEXAN GUITAR SLINGER

Jimmie Vaughan is a blues legend whose brother just happened to be one too. By Samuel J.Fell.

52 53

HOT RATS!

Dweezil Zappa honours his father’s music. By Steve Bell.

ENJOYING THE TRIP (HOP)

Morcheeba celebrate 25 years on their latest visit. By Michael Smith.

THE ITALIAN (BLUES) JOB

Zucchero is Italy’s biggest rock star and he plays the blues. By Michael Smith.

BOOGIE – THE END AFTER 14 YEARS 55 56

The History – By BT GOOD CITIZENS

Cash Savage & The Last Drinks are one of Melbourne’s hottest bands. By Jo Roberts.

GUMBALL 58

The History

Festival Director Matt ‘Magpie’ Johnson speaks to Megan Crawford.

SON

BLOOD RELATIONS

Irish singer-songwriter Susan O’Neill talks musical identity. By Brian Wise. Steve Smyth shares some personal songs. By Steve Bell.

HISTORY 62

WILD COLONIAL BOYS

Mark Mordue shares his memories of Cold Chisel.

SOUNDS OF THE CITY - THE BONDI LIFESAVER Craig Griffith’s book about the legendary venue inspires Ian McFarlane to investigate.

COLUMNS 76 78 79 81 82 83 85 86

Musician: James Thomson. By Chris Familton Musician: Mandy Connell. By Nick Charles 33 1/3 Revelations: By Martin Jones Lost In The Shuffle: By Keith Glass Underwater Is Where The Action Is:

By Christopher Hollow

You Won’t Hear This On Radio: By Trevor J. Leeden Waitin’ Around To Die: Unsung Heroes By Chris Familton Classic Album: Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats. By Billy Pinnell

MORE REVIEWS 88

FEATURE REVIEWS: Come On Up To The House: Women Sing Waits, Pat Metheny, Nathaniel Rateliffe, Makaya McCraven and more…..

98 World Music & Folk: By Tony Hillier 99 Blues: By Al Hensley 100 Jazz: By Tony Hillier 101 Vinyl: By Steve Bell – Linda Rondstadt: The Sound of My Voice. 102 Film By Brian Wise.

104 Technology: By John Cornell Books: Des Cowley reviews David Browne’s saga of Crosby, Stills, 105 Nash & Young. 106 Books Too! By Stuart Coupe 104 Festivals 108 Hello & Goodbye By Sue Barrett.

.,.,.

CREDITS

f•

Managing Editor: Brian Wise Senior Contributor: Martin Jones Senior Contributors: Michael Goldberg / Stuart Coupe

.•..

Design & Layout: Sally Syle - Sally’s Studio Website/Online Management: Robert Wise Proofreading: Gerald McNamara

CONTRIBUTORS Sue Barrett

Tony Hillier

Steve Bell

Christopher Hollow

Nick Charles

Denise Hylands

John Cornell

Andra Jackson

Des Cowley

Jeff Jenkins

Stuart Coupe

Martin Jones

Meg Crawford

Chris Lambie

Brett Leigh Dicks

Ian McFarlane

Chris Familton

Trevor J. Leeden

Samuel J. Fell

Mark Mordue

Keith Glass

Anne McCue

Megan Gnad

Billy Pinnell

Michael Goldberg (San Francisco) Jo Roberts Al Hensley

Michael Smith

CONTACTS Advertising: bookings@rhythms.com.au Festival Coverage Contact: denisetwang@hotmail.com Rates/Specs/Deadlines: bookings@rhythms.com.au Subscription Enquiries: subscriber@rhythms.com.au General Enquiries: admin@rhythms.com.au

SOCIALS Facebook: facebook.com/rhythms.magazine Twitter: twitter.com/rhythmsmag

-,·.- SEPT-EMBER ts�20, 2020 •. 'NASHv·1tLE,··rN . . \ .

' .

PUBLISHER PO BOX 5060 HUGHESDALE VIC 3166 Printing: Spotpress Pty Ltd Distribution: Fairfax Media

americanafest.com

Instagram: instagram.com/rhythmsmagazine

RHYTHMS MAGAZINE PTY LTD

..:'

AN EVENING WITH

FEATURING MASTER PERCUSSIONIST

PEDRO SEGUNDO

2020 AUSTRALIAN TOUR 14TH MARCH UTZON ROOM SYDNEY OPERA HOUSE, SYDNEY 21ST MARCH FYREFLY, ST KILDA ALSO APPEARING: 7TH & 8TH MARCH PORT FAIRY FOLK FESTIVAL

New album redisCOVERed out now

TICKETS AT JUDITHOWEN.NET “The inspirational, unpredictable Judith Owen re-invents Drake, Deep Purple & Co.” The Sunday Times

“A Stunning evening” The Times (UK) “It’s a masterclass on how a show should be done.” Jackson Browne

NEW ALBUM OUT APRIL

Limited edition vinyl & digital Rosary of Tears... a collection of classic ‘parlour blues and ballads’ arranged by Joey Vincent (a.k.a. Joe Camilleri) featuring Stormy Weather, St Louis Blues, St James Infirmary and more from the era of Prestige and Folkways labels. www.joecamilleri.com.au

Rustin Man Clockdust

Wilma Archer A Western Circular

The new album from Rustin Man, aka Paul Webb. Out 20th March.

The debut album. Out 3rd April.

Real Estate The Main Thing

Anna Calvi Hunted

Yorkston / Thorne / Khan Navarasa : Nine Emotions

Spinning Coin Hyacinth

Welcome to the latest edition of Rhythms which contains our special Bluesfest preview as well as previews of Boogie and The Gumball. If you are a subscriber you will also find our latest sampler on which we have some of the finest Australian blues artists, along with a young American up-and-comer Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram. Thank you to all the artists for allowing us to use their music. Thanks also to John Ward from Only Blues Music, a long-time supporter of the magazine and to Alligator Records. If you are not a subscriber and want to get hold of this sensational sampler then all you have to do is join the Rhythms family. You will also be supporting Australia’s only national roots music magazine that is about to celebrate its 28th birthday (happy birthday to us!). If you want to make sure that you can get a copy of the magazine every two months, then please subscribe. It is also the best way of supporting the magazine and ensuring it continues into the future. Of course, you can also access the latest music news and reviews at the Rhythms website (rhythms.com.au), which is constantly evolving. In this issue you will find features on many of the artists appearing at the aforementioned festivals. In this issue we feature Patti Smith, Ani DiFranco and Buffy Sainte-Marie – artists from different generations but linked by their fiery independence and powerful views. They are role models for all of us in terms of their outlook and commitment. Speaking of commitment, Brett Leigh Dicks spoke to The Cowboy Junkies who have been together for 35 years. Steve Bell spoke to The War & Treaty one of the delightful surprises of last year’s Bluesfest. Sam Fell chatted to Jimmie Vaughan, a blues legend and we also have features on a younger generation of ‘blues’ acts such as Marcus King and The Allman Betts Band (containing the sons of music legends) while Steve Bell spoke to Frank

these acts go onto become huge successes, like Ben Harper and sometimes they remain cult favourites. Who can ever forget Johnny Green’s Blues Cowboys’ shows at Red Devil Park and their guitarist Grunter? (Never destined for international fame, the more we drank the better they sounded). Every festival produces its own share of these discoveries and you have to dig into the line-up to explore who is on.

Patti Smith – appearing at Bluesfest and touring in April. Zappa’s son Dweezil who is celebrating his father’s legacy. We certainly hope you enjoy this latest issue. Get reading! You will also notice many features on new or lesser-known artists, and this continues a valuable role that Rhythms performs. This is also a role that music festivals carry out and it is one that is becoming increasingly important, as musicians cannot get any airplay - apart from the ABC and community radio - for any new music. (Actually, this even applies to veteran artists who release new albums). One of the great things about attending music festivals is the discovery of new acts, that often become favourites. Sometimes

Often, word of mouth at a festival can create a vibe as people tell friends about acts. Everyone was raving about a young Kasey Chambers on her first appearance at Bluesfest with her father Bill in the Dead Ringer Band, ensuring a packed tent for the next show. I remember the reaction John Butler got at the New Orleans JazzFest when word started to get around via phone and text. He was already a successful act here but unknown in the USA. By the time Butler finished his set the Blues Tent went from half-full to overflowing. So, if you are going to any of the festivals spend a little time reading Rhythms and examining the line-ups. If you haven’t seen Brandi Carlile then make sure you don’t miss her Bluesfest shows – she is sensational! Same goes for Yola and the War & Treaty. If you are at the final edition of Boogie then you probably won’t be able to avoid the force of nature that is Cash Savage and the mind-blowing Endless Boogie! If you are at Gumball you can see one of Melbourne’s hottest acts for years in The Lost Ragas, the fabulous Dyson, Stringer and Cloher power trio (they were on our November cover), along with legends The Church. I hope you enjoy the festival season. Until next issue…. Brian Wise Editor 9

WE GOT

FOR YOU

Welcome to our 6th Rhythms Sampler designed to help you enjoy Bluesfest with some incredible blues music in the always handy CD format! Fifteen tracks from the Australian delta and the USA will have you dancing and singing for the next two months – and beyond. Available exclusively to Rhythms subscribers and only until May 31, 2020. If you are not a member of the Rhythms family then you need to join to get this fabulous disc. Please go to rhythms.com.au/subscribe and join us. Thank you to all the musicians who made their songs available. Thank you also to the labels. Thank you also to the subscribers who have made this possible.

SIDE A 1. CHRISTONE ‘KINGFISH’ INGRAM Outside of This Town Courtesy of Alligator Records From Clarksdale, Mississippi, Kingfish is a new, young force in the blues at just 21. This track is taken from his debut album on which his playing has been described as ‘astounding.’

2. FIONA BOYES I Ain’t Fooling Still the only Australian to be nominated for the annual Memphis Blues Awards, Boyes spends a lot of time in the cradle of the blues. This track is taken from Voodoo in The Shadows (Blue Empress Records).

3. DAVE HOLE Too Little Too Late From Goin’ Back Down this is another big slice of blues slide guitar from Australia’s greatest ever blues export. The album took three years to make and Dave says, “This is the one I’ve wanted to make for what seems like forever.”

4. THE MCNAMARR PROJECT Holla and Moan From Holla & Moan, the collaboration between Andrea Marr and John McNamara combines two powerhouse voices to bring you the true sound of Soulful Blues evoking the sounds of Stax and Motown with great original material.

5. THE BLACK SORROWS St. Louis Blues From Rosary of Tears, a brilliant album of interpretations and the brainchild of Joe Camilleri who has now released 50 albums over a career that stretches back into the ‘60s! This is a song written by the father of the blues WC Handy and made famous by Bessie Smith (amongst many others).

6. ASH GRUNWALD WITH THE TESKEY BROTHERS Ain’t My Problem Courtesy of Bloodlines. This track is taken from Ash’s ninth album Mojo, a full-on blues explosion. Maybe the best of Ash’s entire career. Other guests include Kasey Chambers, Joe Bonamassa, Mahalia Barnes and Kim Wilson. 7. THE HEARTBROKERS Bad Static From the album Vol.10. which is an early contender for Australian blues album of 2020! This stunning outfit comprises Van Walker on guitar and vocals, bassist Cal Walker, drummer Ash Davies, roots-rocker Jeff Lang and rockabilly-country pianist Ezra Lee. Plus, friends like Jack Howard on sax. 8. OPELOUSAS Third Jinx Blues A Rhythms favourite in our Writers Poll of 2019. A collaboration that teams Kerri Simpson, Alison Ferrier and Anthony ‘Shorty’ Shortte, this trio plays ‘Bare-boned blues for free-wheeling minds.’ This track from the debut album Opelousified features Allison on vocal and guitar, Kerri on baritone guitar and Shorty on drums.

SIDE B 09. GEOFF ACHISON Skeleton Kiss Achison is one of our finest blues guitarists and this track from Sovereign Town shows exactly why. The album was recorded in the heart of the Victorian goldfields at Ballarat, close to where Achison grew up.

10. THE LACHY DOLEY GROUP The Greatest Blues From the album Make or Break. A unique sound in the classic and sometimes very traditional genre of the Blues. A power trio of Bass, Drums and of course Doley firing on the Hammond, his vocal screaming from the heart and the incredibly rare Hohner D6 Whammy Clavinet.

11. HAT FITZ & CARA Hold On From the album Hand It Over. With a musical style that is a unique combination of folk, roots and gospel blues with old time flavourings. Hat Fitz is a “veteran” wild man of the blues scene in Australia. Cara draws on her soul background with a sensational voice as well as being a drummer and multiinstrumentalist.

12. LLOYD SPIEGEL Track Her Down Taken from Cut & Run. Celebrating 30 years on tour, Lloyd released his tenth album in 2019, the final part of an unexpected trilogy about personal redemption. Somewhere between songwriter, social worker and truth-seeker sits Lloyd Spiegel, guitar in hand and a song at the ready.

13. PETE CORNELIUS Shack Song From the album Doing Me Good, recorded live to tape at Pete’s Elephant Room Studio in St Marys, Tasmania over a few sessions during the colder months of 2018. This album features all original material.

14. COLLARD GREENS & GRAVY Going Away Baby From the revered Melbourne blues trio here is a slice of real Mississippi blues with Ian Collard’s harmonica propelling this Jimmy Rogers’ classic. This Aria award winning band have been forerunners of the Australian blues and roots seen since their formation in 1995.

15. CHRIS WILSON Wage Justice From the unique and final self-titled album from the late Australian blues music giant. This is one of the amazing original compositions which reflects Wilson’s political concerns. You can find Chris’s album at Bandcamp.

rhythms.com.au

R H YT H M S S A M P L E R # 6 M A R C H /A P R I L 2 0 2 0 1. Outside of This Town - Christone Kingfish Ingram (4.08) 2. I Ain’t Fooling - Fiona Boyes (4.27) 3. Too Little Too Late - Dave Hole (3.59) 4. Holla & Moan - McNaMarr Project (3.23) 5. St Louis Blues - Black Sorrows (4.33) 6. Ain’t My Problem - Ash Grunwald with The Teskey Brothers (3.12) 7. Bad Static - Heartbrokers (3.25) 8. Third Jinx Blues - Opelousas (4.33) 9. Skeleton Kiss - Geoff Achison (4.40) 10. The Greatest Blues - Lachey Doley Group (5.04) 11. Hold On - Hat Fitz & Cara (2.59) 12. Track Her Down - Lloyd Spiegel (3.49) 13. Shack Song - Pete Cornelius (4.07) 14. Going Away Baby - Collard Greens & Gravy (3.24) 15. Wage Justice - Chris Wilson (6.08)

Christone Kingfish Ingram, Fiona Boyes , Dave Hole, Black Sorrows, Heartbrokers, Geoff Achison, Lachy Doley Group, Hat Fitz & Cara, Lloyd Spiegel, Collard Greens & Gravy, Chris Wilson

THE RHYTHMS CD SAMPLER! EXCLUSIVELY FOR RHYTHMS SUBSCRIBERS:

GO TO: rhythms.com.au/subscribe UNTIL MAY 31ST, 2020. AVAILABLE ONLY GREAT MUSIC.... SAMPLER FULL OF you our EXCLUSIVE today and we'll send Print or Print & Digital Subscribe to Rhythms

MARCH/APRIL 2020 RHYTHMS SAMPLER

DASHVILLESKYLINE.COM.AU

David Olney A Fellow Of Infinite Jest Hands on the guitar Played his eccentric circles At times he was free ~D.O.~

ANNE MCCUE Anne McCue reports in from the home of country music. We just lost a great one. David Olney was mid-song when he paused, said ‘sorry’ and left this mortal coil. He was on stage at the 30A Songwriters Festival and could not be revived by fellow songwriter Scott Miller. Olney was a fellow of infinite jest - a song writer, a poet and an actor. He had memorised the part of King Lear, made 23 solo albums, published a booklet of haikus and a book of sonnets. Songs he wrote have been recorded by Emmylou Harris (‘Deeper Well’, ‘Jerusalem Tomorrow’) and Linda Ronstadt (‘Women ‘Cross The River’). Olney moved to Nashville back in 1973 when “it was a much more small-town kind of a place.” I interviewed him a few years ago and got some of the story. He got his first guitar just before Bob Dylan hit and learnt his craft by singing old folk songs. “Joan Baez doesn’t get enough credit,” he said. “How else were we going to know about Carter family songs and Appalachian ballads? She really did a great thing. So, I kind of served this apprenticeship of learning other people’s songs…” A few years before his arrival in Nashville “Kris Kristofferson had come to town and written those songs like Help Me Make It Through The Night and until he came along, to me, country music was people in garish, sort of strange cowboy outfits and it didn’t seem anything that connected to me. Then these Kris Kristofferson songs came out and I thought, well I could go to this town. Those songs apply in a universal way.”

He continued. “The group that I identified with was Guy Clarke, Townes Van Zandt they were sort of more folk-based writers and when I first came to town Guy Clarke’s first album came out. It’s hard to articulate how cool it was that someone who made this album was a guy that you would see playin’ pool down at Bishop’s Pub. They were people that you would see. And to hear the songs that they were coming up with, it was really startling. It was a cool time.” After a couple of years in Nashville, Olney felt he wasn’t gaining any traction and went back to North Carolina. “There was this constant ‘being broke’ thing,” he said. “Not homeless but sort of in flux. Where you stayed was kind of a fluid idea. And ‘fluid’ was the appropriate term because your entire social life revolved around certain bars. They were like planets you could go to and kind of circle around. After a couple of years, I was exhausted, emotionally, so I left and went back to North Carolina to kind of lick my wounds. And I remember, I went to an interview to wash dishes. I figured washing dishes would be something I could handle. And it was just immensely depressing.” In the car on the way home from the interview a song came on the radio. “The Eagles, of all people, a band that represents corporate greed more than any other (but they’re really good too) – ‘Take It To The Limit’ came on, the line about ‘you’re looking for your freedom’ and I just pulled the car over and listened to the rest of the song. I handed my girlfriend the keys to the car and said, I’m going back to Nashville tomorrow. And I hitchhiked back.”

“It’s only when you’re confronted by the possibility that you’re not gonna get rich and famous that you find out how much you really love something,” he said. Olney formed a band with the intention of playing alternative country “but it sort of morphed into a sort punk band, I think” they became The X-Rays and opened for Elvis Costello. He had been in Nashville for 20 years before Emmylou Harris recorded his song ‘Deeper Well’ on her album Wrecking Ball. Olney had written and recorded the song in 1988. A song is a dream A dream sometimes a prayer You hope they are heard ~D.O.~ “Some years later I got a call from Emmylou Harris which was amazing in itself and she said she was interested in recording that song, would that be okay..? No!!” He laughed. ”Obviously, I was thrilled. Anybody doing your song is a thrill and a huge honour but because that album was a very brave album on her part… a brilliant rock album… and to be a part of it was kind of like being a part of history and I’m very proud of that. It gave me a validation as a writer. I’d been in town for 22 years and I just had it in mind that it’s not gonna happen for me and then it did…” Truth we find shines bright Unexpected truth, blinding That’s why we miss it. ~D.O.~ 13

BETWEEN THE DARKNESS Mark Seymour changes things up for his 10th solo album. And the result is a career highpoint. By Jeff Jenkins

ASE

ELE WR

AND THE SLOW DAWN In ‘Against My Will,’ one of the many standout tracks on his new album, Slow Dawn, Mark Seymour sings: “I’m not worried, I’m just paranoid.” In the lead-up to making the album, Seymour believed that his manager and record company were talking behind his back. So, he called a meeting. “Look,” Mark said, eyeballing them. “You guys have got to tell me what you want. I know there’s all this dialogue going on and I’m not in the room.” Reflecting on the encounter, Seymour recalls, “They kind of looked at me like, ‘What’s he talking about? Seymour’s paranoid.’ And I have to admit, I’ve got form.” Soon after the meeting, Michael Roberts – who has been Seymour’s manager for 35 years – sent the artist an email, explaining: “It would be good if you just tried to do things differently.” Seymour accepted the challenge. He told Roberts and his label, Michael Gudinski’s Bloodlines, that he wanted to make a record with Nick DiDia, the American producer who relocated to Byron Bay after working with Powderfinger. The result? Arguably the finest album of Seymour’s storied career. “There are stories we tell our children as they drift into sleep,” Mark Seymour observes in the liner notes of Slow Dawn, his 10th solo studio album, and the fourth to be credited to Mark Seymour & The Undertow. “Stories we invent to explain the impossible, and others we carry with us all our lives. Stories of fear, love and light.” Mark Seymour is a storyteller. And there’s a searing honesty to his work. He once told me: “Songwriters will tell you, ‘I’m just telling stories, it’s not me …’ But I just think that’s bogus, it’s just a way of hiding. You can fictionalise these experiences, I get that, but you have to have had a reason to go there in the first place.” Slow Dawn takes the listener on an unforgettable trip that starts in Pascoe Vale and ventures to the ‘Kliptown Mud’ of South Africa, to Utah and Nevada in America, Williamstown in Melbourne, and Kelly Country in Victoria. These are epic tales of everyday heroism. “Time to count your blessings and sing this ragged song,” Seymour sings in ‘The Demon Rum’. Slow Dawn is a landmark album in more ways than one. For a start, Seymour has now released more albums solo than with Hunters & Collectors. But it’s the quality of the work that really sets it apart and marks Seymour as a great artist. More than 40 years after he formed his first band (The Schnorts, named after a Belgian tennis racquet), he is still striving to make great albums. And with Slow Dawn, he has crafted a classic. “I just don’t stop writing songs,” he says. “It’s my lifeblood. I don’t not write – it’s what I do all the time. And I’ve learned over a long period of time that the more you do that, the better the outcome.” Seymour also knows there’s power in the union, highlighting the contribution of The Undertow – Cameron McKenzie (Horsehead) on guitars, John Favaro (Boom Crash Opera, ex-Badloves) on bass, and Peter Maslen (Boom Crash Opera) on drums. “They’re a seriously great band,” he says proudly. Seymour knows a thing or two about great bands. A few years ago, he told me: “Music, I think, is about the quality of relationships. There has to be some sort of fusion of ideas and beliefs. Relationships are really important to me, they are critical to my creative energy. And I put everything into my relationships with other musicians.” He expands on that belief when explaining the power of The Undertow: “The thing about them is they’re all really secure – their egos are secure, so you don’t have to negotiate territory with them, they’re just interested in the songs. “It’s not easy [assembling a great band] – it’s like putting a bunch of people together to sail in the Whitbread yacht race. Everyone’s on a

boat and they’ve all got to get around the world as quickly as possible, with no one getting in anyone else’s way. It’s very rare to find a group of people who can do that. People talk about chemistry. I don’t know if it’s chemistry, really; it’s just serving the song.” Seymour laughs. “You could write a thesis about this, particularly with men. They play to the space, which is a lot to do with ego. You have to have ego, but you have to park it at the right time, so you can listen to what the song’s offering and just play to the song.” Seymour also highlights a newcomer, Dorian West, who provides some keys, trumpet and guitars to the album. “Lots of black swans on this record,” Seymour remarks in an email after our initial chat. “The unforeseen effect of combining Nick DiDia and Dorian West. I could talk about it forever!” Aside from collaborations with The Undertow, the album features two co-writes – ‘Night Driving’, which Seymour wrote with his good friend James Reyne, and ‘Joanna’, which was a collaboration with Charles Jenkins. To launch the album, Seymour is doing a joint tour with Reyne, who is also releasing a new album, Toon Town Lullaby. Seymour planned to call his album “Creatures Of The Deep” – a line in ‘Against My Will’. But then he settled on Slow Dawn. The title track was inspired by Seymour’s memories of primary school in Beaufort in Central Victoria in the mid-’60s when two Aboriginal girls arrived. Seymour – and the rest of the students – had never seen an Indigenous Australian before. “It was a real indicator of how utterly buried in the Australian consciousness Indigenous Australia was. It was just not there. But things have shifted so much in the past few decades, and that song is about the awakening.” Slow Dawn also features another quote: “To see yourself in the suffering of others is to see the life you’ve had for what it really is, not how you wished it might be.” I went searching for the origins of the quote, only to discover that it’s a Seymour original. “When I did Westgate [his 2007 album], it had a lot to do with my politics, the inequity that exists within society and just how exploited people are,” he explains. “I just opened my mind up to that again. I grew up in a very politically aware household, but I kind of abandoned that when I became a rock musician – I just got caught up with the whole idea of entertaining people. “But then I really started to look at history. There is a system that exists, that we live with, and I try to be open and honest about it, about how it makes me feel. “I also have questions about my own worth, who I am. I’ve managed to stay active creatively for a long time now, and I need to ask those questions.” Seymour takes nothing for granted. On the album, he sings, “I swear it’s been a miracle to believe I’d last this long.” Remarkably, he seems to be getting better with age – he’s a better singer and a better songwriter. Another big statement: In a world where hot cross buns appear in supermarkets on Boxing Day and we seem to be living on fast-forward, I made the call on January 2: Slow Dawn is the album of the year. Rock critic hyperbole? Perhaps. But I doubt that a better album will be released this year. It’s an Aussie classic. Slow Dawn is available through Bloodlines. Mark Seymour & The Undertow and James Reyne’s Never Again 2020 tour starts in July. 15

ALIVE AND KICKING On his debut solo album, What A Way To Die, Brandon Dodd shows he’s more than ready to step out of the shadows of his other musical projects with an accomplished and wideranging collection of roots music songs. By Chris Familton If you’ve ever seen Kasey Chambers live in concert over the last five years you may have noticed the fresh-faced guitarist to her left. Nineteen-year-old Brandon Dodd and his drummer friend Josh Dufficy were plucked from a country pub and invited to tour the world as part of Chambers’ band, while they continued to build a loyal following for their blues-based duo project Grizzlee Train. Late last year the pair put an indefinite hold on Grizzlee Train activity, one of the key factors in enabling Dodd to pursue his goal of releasing his debut solo album. “I always felt like I would do a solo album at some point, but I needed the time to focus on it,” reflects Dodd. “Grizzlee has been awesome but it has also taken a lot of energy, as have the other tours I’ve been doing. Mentally I feel like having a clean slate and going into the album like that was the best way to do it. If we’d kept touring as relentlessly as we had been this probably wouldn’t have happened.” He’s quick to stress the importance and influence of the time spent with Kasey and Bill Chambers, learning about songwriting, performing and life as a professional musician. “I don’t think I could have written the album without all of that experience!” he admits. “Josh has been a big influence on me musically and obviously Kasey and Bill, spending the last five years with them has been huge for my learning curve. We were so green when we first entered that situation,” he says. “From a songwriter’s perspective, I’ve done a lot of writing over the last three or four years with both of them, but mostly with Kasey on her recent album. I feel like there’s been a lot of growth in learning the craft of songwriting and being on the road and seeing how they conduct themselves.” Both of the Chambers guest on What A Way To Die but the album was essentially the product of the working relationship between Dodd and producer/multi-instrumentalist Damian Cafarella who recorded the pair in a NSW Central Coast studio. They co-produced the record and as Dodd explains, it was very much a collaborative effort. “It was just him and I making this thing together so we knew there would be a strong thread through everything. We thought it would be best if we let the songs go where they wanted to. We decided that if it was a blues song we’d go in that direction and if it was a country song we’d go in that direction. That gave us a lot of freedom in the studio and I wanted people to hear that I don’t write in just one style of music. I feel really proud of what we came out with,” says Dodd. Dodd is preparing to support Patty Griffin on her Australian tour, an opportunity that has him feeling “both excited and scared!” though he’s already well aware of Griffin’s music. “To be playing these rooms and opening for Patty is just a dream come true. I’ve played her songs with Kacey because she plays a lot of Patty Griffin at soundchecks.” As for the title of the album, What A Way To Die could be construed negatively but from Dodd’s perspective it sums up his perspective on a life in music. “What a great way to live and a way to die,” he exclaims, before adding, “my grandmother wasn’t totally impressed with the name though!” 16

NEW SE A E REL

ARE YOU LISTENING?

ASE

ELE WR

Nominated for an ARIA in 2018, Mama Kin Spender release a new EP By Chris Lambie The new video for Mama Kin Spender’s latest single ‘Eye Of The Storm’ shows the duo letting loose in a hedge maze. Capturing a fiery spirit and focussed energy, the cameras (including drone) track dance moves around the panoramic puzzle. “It was so much fun,” says Mama Kin. “It’s always been a dream of mine to make a choreographed dance video. Then once we started, I thought, “No wonder I haven’t done this before. This is frickin’ hard! Two days after, I was still sore. It was all worth it, but there’s a million [outtakes] of me running down a hill, looking really compromised. I didn’t realise I look like that when I run. I think I’m a warrior. I think I’m amazing. But now I’ve seen what that looks like, I wish I could unsee it!” she laughs. Vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Mama Kin (aka Danielle Caruana) and singer- guitarist Tommy Spender were mates long before joining forces to write, record and perform. Their 2018 debut Golden Magnetic was nominated for an ARIA Award for Best Blues and Roots Album. ‘Eye Of The Storm’ is one of four tracks from the duo’s new EP Are You Listening? “For this project, we decided to reach into the corners and the depths of the creative conversations we really want to have. At this point in our careers, we want to go on

all the rides. Each of the songs in the arc of this EP relate to the idea of listening and what happens in [its absence]. The absence of listening creates sheer destruction - to ourselves, our partners, our children, our planet. When we stop feeling heard, we become dangerous, in a state of disconnect and start acting like an unhinged teenager. Listening is one of the tenets of empathy. Writing these songs, we did a bit of an audit of what was and wasn’t working in our lives. Where it wasn’t working was when we weren’t listening or hadn’t for a long time. It’s a legacy of our times that people are so busy, so many feel unheard and alone.” The new tracks are as rhythmic and dynamic as they are thought-provoking. Mama Kin adds, “Every song has a spoken word vignette about its meaning.” Bluesy beats and bass drive ‘What’s Wrong With Me?’ around what happens when we stop listening to ourselves, especially within a relationship. ‘Eye...’ looks at the resulting mess worn in the aftermath. The third track moves towards the need for forgiveness of self and others. The final song in the series asks what it is to be silent and really listen, and to be heard. On their upcoming tour, Mama Kin Spender will be accompanied by local choirs. “We’re both fans of the power of the voice, of harmony and singing together in groups. We

didn’t want to have a one-sided experience of the communities we visit any more but one of collaboration. Rather than sweeping through a town and finding the best coffee, doing a gig and selling a few items of merch...and rolling out again. We want to build a connection, to close the gap of ‘us and them-ness’ that performance can sometimes feel like. It’s all about the dismantling of spaces that keep us separate. Every town we go to sounds different. “On a technical level, there’s a different mix of soprano, alto, tenor and bass. With 16-40 individuals making one sound together, the ingredients are unique, magical. I love it so much, almost like a selfish pleasure. It can be very emotional because we remember something, an ancient knowing that we belong to each other. Some deep part of us remembers that, when we hear voices together as the conduit of community and storytelling.” The EP was written and recorded at Mama Kin’s home property where Spender and his family relocated to for the process. “We share the same priorities. We don’t wanna do any project at the expense of the quality of our parenting or our relationships with our partners. If you don’t have those conversations early on, it can bite you on the arse later.” 17

Judith Owenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s new album contains an eclectic selection of classic songs By Brian Wise 18

clectic is a good word to describe the song selection on Judith Owen’s latest album rediscovered which includes songs by Drake, Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, Paul McCartney and others. ‘Weird’ might be another good word to use if you didn’t know that Owen has chosen some challenging songs in the past. How about ‘Smoke On The Water’ as a ballad? The fifty-year old Welsh-born singer has now released eleven albums, but it is the latest one that seems to be drawing the most attention. Over the years Owen has also appeared with Richard Thompson on stage and on record, supported Bryan Ferry on a UK tour and appeared in The Simpsons, which also happens to star her husband Harry Shearer, who will be here as well. (They are doing some Q&As together as well). Shearer also co-founded the record label Twanky Records. They now live in New Orleans for much of the year and you can often see Harry cruising around at JazzFest. Rediscovered, is actually Owen’s first all covers album and the songs range from Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke On The Water’ to Soundgarden’s ‘Black Hole Sun,’ classics such as Lennon & McCartney’s ‘Blackbird,’ ‘Summer Nights’ from Grease, Donna Summer’s disco hit ‘Hot Stuff,’ Wild Cherry’s ‘Play That Funky Music,’ as well as Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling,’ Ed Sheeran’s ‘Shape Of You’ and even a couple of Joni Mitchell songs, ‘Cherokee Louise’ and ‘Ladies' Man.’ The studio band includes legendary bassist Leland Sklar, New Orleans’ trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and pianist Pedro Segundo who will be accompanying Owen on tour. Owen says that Shearer will be sitting in and playing some bass as well. “She is truly an inspiration to all musicians, especially people like me,” says Owen when I ask her about Joni Mitchell. Owen has just been to a music tech convention where Mitchell was given an award for innovation for the Roland VG-8 guitar which she helped develop. “It was so amazing to see her post her dreadful illness and being in a coma and everything. It was great to see her afterwards and have a few words, and just hang out together. It was amazing. “I've met her a few times in my life, but obviously prior to her being sick and having the stroke, and everything. It meant so much, seeing her and seeing her being honoured, acknowledged, adored, all the things that she should be. She's such a feisty fighting spirit of a woman that she could have come through that. She was on the floor for three days in a coma. It's incredible that she's still with us. That was a marvellous thing to see. “But I've been very fortunate because when it comes to people like her, a lot of people that I adore in life and grew up idolising, or being incredibly influenced by. By the time I moved to California in the mid '90s, the first person that was playing on my music was Larry Klein. To me, that was just the most incredible thing. Then I meet my best friend, Julia Fordham, and she's at Joni's recording

her record with Larry. It was sort of like, ‘Good grief. This is so strange how life turns around and changes in these ways.’ “It's been a little bit that way when it comes to America. I've always adored American music as so many of us have. It's such a British thing, as you know, this love of American music. It's incredible for me that I got to either work with or befriend or be appreciated by so many idols. Burt Bacharach was living across the road at that time, and we became friends. He became a huge fan and supporter of mine. Then of all things, I got to meet Richard Thompson when I was signed to Capitol Records. That became a huge part of my life, working with him. Another of my idols is Stevie Wonder and I end up in New Orleans [and] I ended up meeting a guy called John Fischbach, who was the engineer and Songs in the Key of Life. It's really weird the way life comes around. I can't tell you anything more than that, except that I feel very, very fortunate to have worked with and met, and been around the people that influenced me and who I adore. At the end of the day, if there's anything I'm a geek about, it's musicians and music. That's everything to me, everything.” It may be heresy, but I mention to Owen that I have always thought that Joni Mitchell needs to be revered as much, if not more, than Bob Dylan. Musically, she was certainly more inventive. Dylan, I think. “You're talking to the right person here,” agrees Owen, “because I think it's heretical that he is seemingly adored or idolised more than her. I don't get it personally. Bob's great and all. He took that Woody Guthrie role and went with it and did all that stuff that is so fantastic. And you can say he was a poet to start with, of course, but her lyrics alone are something on a most spectacular level. She did that thing - which is to me, truly, truly inspiring - which is the marriage of beautiful music, astounding music with the most incredible lyrics packaged up in true artistry. I think she's just a one in a million performer of the likes of which you rarely see. That had such a profound effect upon all woman. She did on Prince. She did on so many artists still to this day. But particularly on women, her ferocity, her fearlessness was palpable. “Everything fed the art, every relationship, everything she ever did was about feeding the art. She is an artist through and through all the way down to actually being. In her life as a painter, which by the way, earns her more money actually, at this point, than the music. She has had a profound effect on us all. I hope to God that she, she doesn't have to not be here to get that acknowledgement. I really do.” So, it was natural that Owen would choose some of Mitchell’s songs on what I mention is an ‘eclectic’ selection. “Yes, absolutely,” she agrees. “They cover all the things I grew up listening to, or rather the things that affected me in life. I didn't want it just to be about the past. I wanted to be contemporary too, which is why I chose

songs like the Justin Timberlake and Ed Sheeran, and all that and Drake, of course. But the point is that I cut my teeth, as it were, doing these marathon gigs in order to pay my rent and to survive. I would play these four hour ‘horrors’, as I called them, where you basically are background music in any kind of bar club or restaurant, wherever it might be. It's the best way of learning and of honing your craft. It's the greatest apprenticeship when it comes down to just working at your art. For me, the reason it was so great a thing to do, even though it would certainly tear my insides out sometimes when people would ask if I knew anything from Cats, things like that. There would be times when I would actually want to tear my hair out. There's really very little you can say to that. “So, I figured that in order to be able to actually do four hours of covers while slipping in my own songs so that you wouldn't notice that they were my own songs was by rearranging all of these songs to sound like they were mine because, honestly, I can't write music that I don't connect to or feel is talking about my life in some way. As somebody with a very overactive imagination and as someone who sees music as on a religious level, I have to say, that was the way that I did it. That's the way I got through. It was amazing. It was a fabulous thing to do. “It's a great way of finding your own style whilst using an already written song to completely reinvent to completely make yours. I think one of the best people at doing that was somebody like James Taylor. There've been lots of people who, when they cover songs, you'd swear they had written them because it sounds absolutely like them. That's really part, I think, of the exercise and the craft of covering songs. I don't ever want to do a song exactly as it was written. I don't see the point just because I think the original is usually the best.” “I'm so Welsh, you see. I can just talk forever,” says Owen as she gives me a rundown of most of the other songs on the album “I just literally am an Olympian at talking.” Which is why our scheduled conversation stretches way beyond the allotted time. I finally ask whether the songs on the latest album will form an important part of her repertoire on the Australian tour, though she is working on a new album in New Orleans. “Well, because this is really like a launch for the redisCOVERed in Australia the majority of it will be those songs,” she replies. “You'll hear a few of the new ones from the next one. Why not? Then you'll definitely hear some of my own because I have to, because I must because that's who I am. So, it's exciting because what I love about performing these songs is that the audience know them, but they don't. You think you know them and then you start hearing them but I can see the audience trying to figure out what the hell the song is. I absolutely love that.” redisCOVERed is available now and Judith Owen is touring this month. 19

The Gadflys Return With Their First New Album For 19 Years. By Michael Smith Any album that includes a song in which the rhyme for “unanimous” is “pusillanimous” is well worth the price of admission as far as I’m concerned! That album is Love & Despair, the first album from art-rockers The Gadflys in 19 years, and that song is ‘Jungle’. The song’s composer is the clarinet-toting Philip Moriarty who lives in Candelo in the NSW South Coast, where the bulk of the album was recorded in his home studio. He had already been evacuated twice when we chatted late this past January, with another possible evacuation on the horizon as the weekend was again threatening temperatures over 40°C. “We used to send out a word, say, Friday and the following Thursday we’d all turn up with a song of some kind. So, whether the word was pusillanimous I can’t remember but that’s the kind of thing that happens.” Just to backtrack for those new to their story, the core of The Gadflys are songwriting brothers Phil and Mick Moriarty, the latter the guitarist and main vocalist, who, back in the 1980s exchanged the quiet suburbs of Canberra for the seedy inner suburbs of Sydney to wreak havoc on the sensibilities of a generation with the kind of wit and whimsy that eventually saw them become part of the national fabric as the resident band on the anarchic/satiric TV show Good News Week, musically sparring with its urbane host Paul McDermott. That wit and whimsy, along with a delight in taking their musical cues from any genre that served their ideas – tribal rhythms, doghouse bass, whiskey vocals, growls and howls, lugubrious clarinet figures, violin, bluegrass

notions, as Phil put it in another interview – guaranteed The Gadflys would confound all prospective record deals that were based on the idea of consistency. Anyway, back the story at hand. The section of ‘Jungle’ that ends with the delightful phrase “The verdict of the panel is unanimous/but I am pusillanimous” ponders the protagonist’s bad luck, which finds him ultimately in a hospital bed. “I was actually more trying to inhabit a paranoid frame of mind,” Moriarty explains, “in which everything’s against you, so it’s a little unfair with regards to hospitals. But my own experience has been just terrific I must say. I’ve composed several letters to send to the surgery team in Canberra in order to praise them to the sky, but they just haven’t been good enough. It occurs to me that the apex of civilisation might just be the uppermost levels of running hospitals, with the staff’s good humour and care for how you’re feeling and stuff.” In October 2017, Phil found himself hospitalised after suffering a heart attack and had a stent put in to unblock an artery. By Christmas Eve he thought he was well enough to get back in the saddle and was three songs into an opening set at the Tathra Pub with one of his other bands, Wrack & Ruin – some readers might have seen him as The Great Muldavio performing with Mikelangelo & The Black Sea Gentlemen – when he felt unwell and taken to a seat where he promptly slithered to the floor. He’d suffered cardiac arrest and it was just lucky there were people there who realised and applied CPR for nearly 20 minutes while a frantic publican got hold of a defibrillator from the local surf club. It took two goes but he regained consciousness and was taken first to Bega Hospital and then flown to Canberra. The songwriting credits across the 11 songs on Love & Despair breaks down pretty much 50/50 between the two brothers, with a tune titled ‘Wild Surf’ – a totally un/anti-Surf kind of song – contributed by double-bass player Elmo Reed. Live, The Gadflys are completed

by drummer Peter Kelly. In the years since the brothers last recorded together as The Gadflys, they’ve both obviously written solidly for their various individual projects, so I wondered how they decided what made a song a Gadflys song. “Mick wrote ‘Deborah’ about Deborah Harry, and I think he wrote ‘So Far Out’ for his daughter, when she was little. ‘Blink of an Eye’ he had more of a pastiche vibe going on. As I said, ‘Jungle’… I wonder if you can put paranoid and reverie together – it’s something like that.” The most serious song on the album is a tune titled ‘Ocean’, which I would have thought would have been a hard one to write since it’s about suicide, a subject about which The Gadflys are sadly all too familiar because two of the bass players who have passed through their ranks – Andy Lewis and Stevie Plunder (Anthony Hayes) – committed suicide. In fact The Gadflys’ “sabbatical” was in some ways an inevitable response to Lewis’ suicide back in 2000. “I’ve never been able to formulate a reasonable meditation on it,” Moriarty admits, “and I kind of wanted to do one which expresses… I’ve heard various points of view over the years and I kind of wanted to put all those things in without trying to say, ‘One should feel this way’ about that kind of an event. So it’s supposed to be a kind of conversation – I don’t know if it comes out like that. It’s not only Andy and Stevie – Canberra was ‘Suicide Capital’ for a long time and I knew quite a bunch of guys who I had run into some short time before they committed suicide, and there was a quality of their reaching out which, at the time, I didn’t understand. It’s quite hard to recognise the desperation. It might appear in overfriendliness or something, you know? And I didn’t quite interpret it for what it was, which was a level of desperation I guess.” Love & Despair is out on their own Mongrel Jazz label.

NEW SE A E REL

LION KINGS Singer-songwriter Andrew McSweeney is making music with some legends in Dirty Rascal. By Jeff Jenkins Melbourne band Dirty Rascal has a great description of their music: Transformational, Epic Rock. Singer Andrew McSweeney gets technical when asked to explain. The band’s preferred tuning is A432, lower than the standard tuning. “It’s very much a hippie thing,” McSweeney smiles. “Some people say it’s the tuning of the universe, the tuning of the heart, while other people say it’s bullshit.” The Dirty Rascal sound is uplifting and positive. “We want people to leave our gigs feeling good.” Dirty Rascal was initially a solo project for McSweeney, who has been making music since the ’80s, with bands such as Worlds Away and McSweeney, who released two albums, including 2001’s Up All Night. A few years ago, while fronting a band named Midnight Hunting Crew, McSweeney had an encounter with a Melbourne music identity named Kevin Bolt at the Lomond Hotel in East Brunswick. The following night, he was doing backing vocals at a Bobby Valentine show when Bolt jumped on stage. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he told the audience, “you’ve got to get out and see live music!” He then went into a rave about how good McSweeney was, as a perplexed Valentine looked on.

McSweeney rang Bolt a few days later. “Do you want to be my manager?” he asked. “No,” Bolt replied, “but I want you to meet someone.” Soon after, Bolt – who sadly died last year – introduced McSweeney to Jerry Speiser, the drummer who topped the US charts and won a Grammy with Men At Work and was responsible for several iconic moments in Australian rock, including the door knocks in ‘Who Can It Be Now?’ McSweeney embarked on making an album with Speiser producing. It was intended to be a stripped-back solo record, but it grew into a band as Speiser and McSweeney gathered an all-star crew of players, including Little River Band’s David Briggs on guitar, mandolin and slide; Bruce Haymes on keys; and the late-great Ross Hannaford, who provided the guitar on three tracks that ended up on the Dirty Rascal album, You Be The King. They proved to be some of the final recordings for the Daddy Cool legend. “He was very unwell,” McSweeney recalls. “He’d play a song or two and then say, ‘I’m done.’ But he played some amazing parts. It was such a lesson in just letting go and playing.” Joining McSweeney and Speiser in the band was singer and guitarist John Fleming, who found fame as one-half of the comedy duo Scared Weird Little Guys. The line-up was completed last year with the addition of former Stars bass player Ian McDonald. The band name came from the first single, ‘Be A Lion’ (which McSweeney wrote with his brother Simon and Alan Brooker, who was

NEW SE A E REL the bass player in Paul Kelly and The Dots): “You can be king of the castle,” McSweeney sings, “and I will be your dirty rascal.” “It’s not a great band name,” McSweeney concedes, “but it just made sense. It was the first name we thought of. Then we kicked around other names before coming back to Dirty Rascal.” The band has also been a transformational experience for McSweeney. As well as a bandmate, he now calls Speiser a friend and mentor. The producer challenged McSweeney to become a better singer and songwriter. Speiser, who majored in physics at La Trobe University, also works as a business coach, basing much of his teaching on the principles of Buckminster Fuller, the American architect and systems theorist. Speiser is also a truly great drummer (if you need any proof, check out Men At Work “The Live Concert” on YouTube). McSweeney says it’s “pretty bizarre” – he will often look up and think, “That’s the guy with the bread roll in the ‘Down Under’ clip.” But he has learned much from Speiser, which he now applies in his everyday life. Every Dirty Rascal rehearsal starts with “What I feel like saying”, which allows each band member to talk about their day and how they are feeling. “It’s a talking stick moment, which helps us arrive at a good place. By the time we get to play, we are very focused,” McSweeney says. “I love playing and hanging out with these guys,” he adds. “It’s Transformational, Epic Rock for us, too.” Dirty Rascal’s You Be The King is out now. 21

THE WRIGHT STUFF Dave Wright goes down a country road for his rollicking new record By Jeff Jenkins

PHOTO CREDIT: Mitch Power

NEW SE A E REL

RHINESTONES & RIGHTEOUS SOUL Like Wanda Jackson, Mavis Staples and Patsy Cline all rolled into one, Tami Neilson’s star continues to rise with her stripped-back and explosive new album CHICKABOOM! By Chris Familton It’s a weeknight in Auckland New Zealand, and with the kids are in bed, Canadian-born Tami Neilson takes time out from getting ready to fly to New Orleans for the Folk Alliance Conference, to chat with Rhythms about her brandnew album CHICKABOOM! It’s a record that addresses the joys and challenges of family life and prior to its recording she reveals she had to step back and reassess the way she manages her career and workload in order to achieve that precarious balance between professional and family life. “This time last year I was feeling burnt out after a European tour and I’d just lost the joy,” admits Neilson. “I’d never gone into a tour just dreading it and so my husband and I talked about it and I knew something had to change because it wasn’t going to be sustainable if I kept touring that way. I realised I was following the template that most musicians follow and that most of them were probably young, single and male and that I was none of those things! I thought about what would work best for me and my family at this point in my life and so we made a change from going overseas for long periods with the full band.” Neilson’s brother Jay is a record producer in Canada and so she hit him up with the idea of stripping back her touring lineup to a trio with him plus a drummer from whatever territory they would be touring in. “He was game - crazy bastard!” Neilson laughs. “He didn’t know what he was getting himself into! Logistically it makes more sense but emotionally and for my mental health, having my brother on tour with me is a huge thing, having part of your village with you and having that person who totally has your back, and has since you were kids.”

With the year already mapped out with US, Canada, Australia, NZ and European tours to support CHICKABOOM!, Nielson and her brother have already begun writing for the next album. She’s a prolific writer who, if she had her way, would release an album a year. “My label is always asking me to hold back a bit because it’s a costly thing to release an album. There needs to be a strategy behind it and that’s not so much my forte, as much as it is creating the music.” If you’ve ever experienced a Tami Neilson show, watched her videos or followed her on social media then you’ll know she loves to embrace the show-business accoutrements of fashion, hair and make-up – elements that are clearly an extension of her personality. “There’s definitely an exaggerated version of myself,” agrees Neilson. “If I went strutting around with a beehive all the time I don’t think it would work! It’s definitely me though. Dressing the way that I do and making everything larger than life brings a strut and confidence that’s part of the performance side of it. If you’re not confident in who you are and what you’re saying and creating, then that’ll translate to your performance and it won’t be authentic.” Tami Neilson is appearing at WOMADelaide March 6-9, 2020

NEW SE A E REL

PHOTO CREDIT: By Sabin Holloway

Jay was also a key part of the writing and recording of CHICKABOOM!, a record that was also designed to fit in with her new live configuration. “I also brought in Delaney Davidson to co-produce and I said I wanted to be able to reproduce exactly what the album would sound like live - as a three-piece. It was a really intentional album in terms of the production,” Neilson emphasises. “It was hard sometimes to remember that it would have to sound like a live trio performance but we kept it simple like a Sun Records recording – a tight rhythmic feel, often without bass. I wanted it to sound rough and ready and showcase the songs and the vocal,” says Neilson.

By Brian Wise It is surprising to learn that The Mastersons - singer-songwriters/multi-instrumentalists Chris Masterson and Eleanor Whitmore – are members of what has become the longest-serving version to date of Steve’s Earle’s band, The Dukes. It is high praise indeed, given some of Earle’s previous band members, which include Buddy Miller. But the duo has added an extra dimension to Earle’s sound with some fiery guitar playing from Chris and Eleanor’s vocals and fiddle playing. It’s a combination that has worked brilliantly for nearly a decade now and continues despite the recent loss of longtime bassist Kelley Looney, who was with Earle for 32 years. “It's been pretty hard,” says Eleanor when I mention that it must have been a shock when Looney died last November at the age of 61. “We'll be dedicating our record to Kelly and also to George Reiff who played bass on our first three records.” Reiff was a beloved Austin, Texas bassist who died in 2017 and who played on the previous records by the duo. “Two of the most important bass players in our lives are no longer with us,” says Chris, who also lost his father a few years back, while their friend, brilliant guitarist Neal Casal died last year as well. “It's a tough one.” Chris and Eleanor are also both Texas born and bred but these days they live in Los Angeles, while keeping a getaway in West Texas. They both released solo albums in 2008 and Chris worked with Son Volt (and appeared here at Bluesfest with Wayne ‘The Train’ Hancock), while Eleanor played fiddle for Kelly Willis and played with Angus & Julia Stone. No Time For Love Songs is their fourth album together since 2012 and their most accomplished to date. It was produced in Los Angeles with Shooter Jennings (son of Waylon), whose recent work with Brandi Carlile on the recent Tanya Tucker album which scored her Grammys for Best Country Album and Best Country Song. The Mastersons had also played on several of Jennings albums. It was engineered and mixed by five-time Grammy winner Ryan Freeland, whose CV reads like a Who’s Who of Americana. The album also features Eleanor's sister Bonnie Whitmore - a notable songwriter and recording artist in her own right - who sang and played bass, as well as bassist/ keyboardist Tyler Chester (Andrew Bird, Sara Watkins, Madison Cunningham) and drummer Mark Stepro (Butch Walker, Ben 24

Kweller, Jakob Dylan). Long-time friend, and one of Nashville’s hottest acts, Aaron Lee Tasjan added background vocals on two songs. No Time for Love Songs, as the title suggests, explores some big themes and The Mastersons certainly don’t hold back on their opinions of what’s going on in the world. This is not only reflected in the title track but also songs such as ‘Eyes Open Wide’ and ‘Pride of The Wicked.’ “There's kind of two threads in the record,” explains Chris. “Actually, Eleanor and I were listening to the radio and someone was singing about whisky or something and she's like, ‘Oh my god if I hear another song about whisky, I don't know what I'm going to do.’ We started talking about the fact that we've got a lot of stuff going on over here on this side of the pond. It got us talking about what do you want to say on a record that comes out in the spring of 2020 - an arguably pivotal time for us as a country, as people.” “We're at a critical time on the planet for global warming,” says Eleanor. “The world is literally on fire.” “The Amazon was on fire when we wrote that song,” adds Chris, “and everyone was just going about their business.” (We spoke before the recent Australian bushfires which were even worse, but we are talking when Melbourne is about to experience its hottest day on record). “We're putting people in cages at the border,” says Eleanor. “I mean, tearing children away from their mothers. The Republican Party’s claims to family values and claim to be prolife, is just asinine. Especially, this guy that's in office getting away with this stuff. “It's no time for love songs,” says Chris. “Stop singing about trains. What have we got to sing about?” “What do we want to say or what do you want to?” interjects Eleanor. “I guess losing people also puts things into perspective as far as your life and what you want to say while you're here and what kind of meaning you want to have.” “I think that with the body of songs,” adds Chris, “it was really about trying to find a connection with people and trying to lead with love and kindness and empathy and to try to reach as many people as we could even if they might have different beliefs than ours, because that's what it's going to take for us to move forward with any amount of grace.” “One thing that we learned from Steve,” observes Chris, “is, when you think about art and activism and you have to use your voice

in your own way. We're not Steve Earle. Steve Earle is really good at being Steve Earle. We've kind of tried to figure out how to use our voice and when to speak up and when to not. When we came up with this pile of songs, we wanted to try to speak to people more than just our choir.” “I also think that fundamentally when you get right down to it,” adds Eleanor, “we all want the same things. We all want food on the table, a good job, you know, healthy healthcare. We just want to be happy and be free and there's a lot of people that aren't happy and free, and they're struggling to get by. I think we fundamentally want the same things, but we just don't know how to get there. You've got a lot of people in power and money at the top with a lot of rhetoric that's just pitting all of us against each other. It's not working right now.” Shooter Jennings came into the picture back in 2008 when Neal Casal recommended The Mastersons to him for his touring band. “He put Shooter in touch with Jeff Hill, who plays bass in The Dukes now, and Jeff called me,” recalls Chris. “Shooter called me as a stranger. I was familiar with him, but I'd never met him. We talked about this record that he was going to make. It was called Family Man. It wound up being two records, Family Man and The Other Life, but we talked about it. We talked about the dates and all the pertinent details. I said, ‘Yeah I'd love to do it.’ He said great. Then he said, ‘Now I just have to find a fiddle player. I said, ‘Hang on a second.’ I just passed the phone over to Eleanor. That's how we all met Shooter.” The Mastersons also got to hang out with Tanya Tucker when they appeared on her ‘comeback’ album, Bring My Flowers Now. “She came in and cut the vocals with the band,” recalls Eleanor. “In a lot of cases, she was always hanging out and telling stories.” “It's amazing, I think, when you get to work with artists that have done that much in their career,” adds Chris, “and Tanya, started when was she 13. She's still a young woman, for everything that she's done. “Oh man, there's so many stories. She'd just roll in like a rock star, at one in the afternoon, and it was a treat. The band was amazing, with Shooter and the Twins [Brandi Carlile’s band] and Eleanor and I. It already sounded great because it was a great band playing in a great studio. When Tanya opened her mouth and sang, it just tied the room together. You would hear it and it just took it to an entirely different level.” One of the things that amazed me when I heard Tucker’s album was that she hadn't made an album for 15 years.

Chris says, “I think she might have been amazed.” “It's a long time to go and I think that Brandi and Shooter did an amazing job coming up with some songs that could feel true to Tanya to sing,” observes Eleanor. “Then, of course she and Brandi wrote a song and just the way that Shooter and Brandi approach the production on the record they just made, her voice the centre-piece. It's a really beautiful record.” Eleanor also sounds great on No Time For Love Songs, appearing to sing with more confidence than ever. Perhaps Jennings’ production brings the voice forward, while the harmonies sound warmer. “I think our vocals are definitely the best on this album,” she agrees. “I mean, it takes a lot of time.” “We were talking to a friend before we made this record and another musician in Los Angeles, and he had joked, we do this backwards in this sense,” says Chris. “In a perfect world, a musician would go and sing the songs around the world for 18 months, and then they know them well and they feel groovy and you can do them whether you have the flu or at 6 am or 6 pm or midnight, and they always sound great.” “The muscle memory,” adds Eleanor. “When you have that muscle memory, then you go and record them,” agrees Chris, “but we as touring musicians, we do it the opposite. We play them and then we take them out on tour around the world, and then they take on a life of their own.” “The song sounds a lot different after you've sung it 200 times,” notes Eleanor. “We made it in three weeks, but we did spend a lot of time on the vocals. It just takes a lot of time when you have two singers and two parts. You've got to get the phrasing.” I wonder what they had been listening to over the last year or so because the song ‘Eyes Open Wide’ sounds like it could have been a hit for The Byrds and there’s even a touch of Tom Petty in there as well. “Oh yeah,” says Chris. “I mean, there's always this like steady diet of that kind of stuff, that Southern California stuff, or Gene Clark going on in the house at most times. I'll take that as a compliment - the Gene Clark, Tom Petty stuff I'll take as high compliments.” No Time For Love Songs is available now through Red House Records.

Chris and Eleanor are The Mastersons by day and are in Steve Earle’s Dukes by night (and in the studio)! Their latest album reflects their concerns.

NEW SE A E REL 25

HAIL FALLOW! Fanny Lumsden makes music that will last. By Stuart Coupe Fanny Lumsden’s third album is called Fallow. It’s a word the singer and songwriter likes the sound of as it rolls off the tongue, but also what it represents. “I think of tiled earth ready for planting,” she says. “So, within that is the possibility of something happening, but also the possibility of failure as well. There’s the possibility of both growth and failure at the same time, so it’s like the chance you have to take. “I didn’t really want to talk about the drought on this record because I’d talked about it previously. But the song ‘Fallow’ itself just came out and tied a lot of the record together It’s about people’s different relationships with the land that they work or rely on.” The land and environment has long been central to Lumsden’s life and often her song writing themes and inspirations. She lives on a property on the western side of the Snowy Mountains, a normally idyllic part of the world to inhabit. And an environment that was centre to the gestation and recording of Fallow – and also one that was ravaged during the astonishing catastrophic bushfires of late 2019 and early this year. Lumsden and her family, which now includes a young son, were right in the middle of a particularly ferocious amalgam of fires. “I live near where the southern mega-fire joined so there were two weeks of intense fire activity,” Lumsden says. “We were evacuated for two weeks and I took the baby to Albury. There are four roads that come in to near where we live and all were cut off by fire. There were a few days when the fire fronts were coming through but thankfully, we didn’t lose the house and nor did my Mum and Dad who live nearby. “We were very lucky in the end. At one point they even evacuated the fire trucks and emergency personnel because it was too dangerous. When that happened it was actually very quiet. Strangely quiet.” Lumsden had no power for 26 days and she and her family coped via a generator connected to one power chord into their house. “It was a pretty intense experience and one that sort of links back to the whole album.” Some months earlier this area had resounded to the creative work involved in recording Fallow. Whilst small portions of the album were done elsewhere – drum tracks in the Blue Mountains and a few overdubs in Sydney – the majority of the album was recorded in a stone hut a few hundred metres from the singer’s house. Again, it was recorded with producer Matt Fell who came down to Lumsden’s property. “Matt is intensely creative when he’s limited,” Lumsden says. “So, I removed him from his buttons and the noises of the city, and all the distractions. So, it was an intensely focused process. As well as wanting that I wrote all the songs on the property and I was inspired by the valley here, and the light changing every day. There are little things in the view that I was inspired by constantly, so I wanted to put Matt in that environment and try and capture the feel of what I was trying to portray in the songs.” With that came all the obvious logistical things to deal with. Moving recording equipment into the stone hut and making sure everything sounded OK. Other parts of the structure provided added sonic options. “We had to improvise and come up with different ways of recording, a different sonic approach. I wanted to create a space and a world with the album and all this was part of creating that experience. 26

“There’s a castiron tank that’s overturned and used as a bathroom, so we used that as an echo chamber – and then a horse float came in handy for recording the guitar amps. So, we just used what was around. But all the real equipment had to be moved in.” And also, around were the array of animals and natural sounds that are all part of rural living. The wind would blow, cows would moo, dogs would bark. That sorta thing. They call it ambience. “I don’t want my records to be crisp and clean so there’s a bit of that, but it’s very subtle,” Lumsden says. “But I’d be sitting there recording a vocal and looking down the valley and a cow would walk past, and I’d be able to see horses in the paddock next to us. “I didn’t want to exaggerate that sound for the sake of it but it’s all definitely there in the feel of the takes.” Fallow is truly an album that has growth emanating from it. It’s a collection of songs and performances that have been allowed to nurture and develop in the best possible way. And like the environment that spawned its creation, it’s music that will last.

Tooma Recreation Reserve Food, Bar provided by Tooma Rec Reserve. Camping available. Gates 5pm. All proceeds go to the TOOMA BUSHFIRE RECOVERY FUND

CMAA GOLDEN GUITAR WINNER 2020 CMC Video of the Year

album out march 13. pre-order now for exclusive extras

STILL GOT THE BLUES! Robert Crayâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s recent albums have revitalised his career.

has been 20 years since Canada’s Cowboy Junkies last visited Australia and a lot has happened across those two decades for the Toronto-based four-piece. Not only has the band released a further ten albums since touring Australia in support of their 1999 release Miles From Our Home, but its most recent recording, All That Reckoning (which provides the impetus for the upcoming tour) is arguably one of the finest recordings the band has made. That is no mean feat for an ensemble that has not only released 17 albums across its 35-year history, but also maintained an active global touring schedule. Cowboy Junkies vocalist Margo Timmins feels it is the opportunity to build on the Cowboy Junkie’s legacy that is responsible for continually driving the band to new heights. “Musically I don’t think we’ve been any better than what we are now,” Timmins recently told Rhythms Magazine from her home in Ontario, Canada. “It’s because we’ve put in the 10,000 hours plus, plus, plus and we know what we’re doing. We can take the music anywhere we want to without even thinking about it, so musically, Cowboy Junkies is way more rewarding now than it’s ever been.” It is rewarding for their Australian audience too as the band is returning to Australia in May to play shows in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Sydney, and Brisbane. As Cowboy Junkies has been doing upon recent tours of Europe, the United Kingdom, and North America, the Australian shows will be presented as “An Evening with Cowboy Junkies” whereby the band performs two sets, playing its new album first and then songs spanning its illustrious career in the second. “It’s a format that’s come with time and it works well for us,” Timmins explained. “There’s a weird myth in the record industry that you always have to be reinventing yourself. We don’t try to reinvent ourselves. This is what we sound like and this is what works best for us and the “Evening with Cowboy Junkies” format really sits well with us. There’s no big lights and it’s not all that glamourous – it’s just good music. “We keep the first set short so people aren’t over stressed by things that are new and by the end of the show they hopefully get what they’ve come for and will go home happy, which is the point.” The very fact the band has survived 35 years should be reason enough to celebrate. Cowboy Junkies was formed in 1985 by guitarist Michael Timmins and childhood friend bassist Alan Anton after returning to Toronto following the demise of their previous London-based ensemble, Germinal. The pair enlisted the serves of Michael’s younger brother Pete on drums and sister Margo for vocals and the four-piece recorded their first album Whites Off Earth Now!! in a repurposed garage. Two years later, the collective took their recording equipment into an old church in Toronto where they recorded their magnum opus, The Trinity Sessions. 30

Even today, three decades after its release, the mere mention of the 1988 album brings a knowing nod from even the most casual music fan. “I think the reason that album still stands out and continues to have the legacy it does is because it is so different,” Timmins said. “The feeling that Trinity has is something you don’t find on a lot of albums. It’s raw and real. That album is as close as anybody is going to get to actually sitting in a room and listening to musicians play. I think that’s what people hear when they listen to it. ‘I wish we could claim that we thought it out and made it that way intentionally, but really it was just a very nice accident. We knew we had some good songs and the room sounded great, but we didn’t realize that that day

was going to be one of those days where the band was going to jive like it did. Lots of bands have those moments where it comes together and is as good as it will ever get. We were fortunate that when it was our day for, we had the tape machine running.” The ensuing years saw the band release a succession of albums that built on the success of The Trinity Sessions including Caution Horses, Lay It Down, and One Soul Down. In 2007 the band reconvened in Toronto’s Church of the Holy Trinity for a rerecording of their iconic 1988 album after which it embarked upon a five-album collection called the Nomad Series. Not only have the Cowboy Junkies maintained the same lineup since the band’s

The Cowboy Junkies return to Australia By Brett Leigh Dicks

“Musically I don’t think we’ve been any better than what we are now” - Margot Timmins

1985 inception, but even touring member Jeff Bird, who joined the ensemble in 1987, has remained in the fold. “I kind of compare it to being in a marriage,” Timmins explained of the band’s enduring longevity. “You look back and you’ve had lots of adventures and you’ve had some good times and some bad times; you’ve struggled through some years and wondered whether you should be here or not. But then you reassess what you have and work harder to keep it together. After all that you end up with a relationship that’s really easy to be in, and that’s where we’re at with the band.” There is no better example of that than the band’s most recent recorded release, All That Reckoning. With the previous Cowboy

Junkies’ album, the final installment of the five-part Nomad Series titled The Wilderness being released in 2012, the six –year hiatus between recordings gave songwriter Michael Timmins plenty of time to distill the state of the world around him into 11 unhurried musical reflections that are as haunting as they are poignant. True to form, All That Reckoning is brooding and dark. Drawing from the socio-political uncertainty that is currently consuming the world, Mike Timmins takes the global upheaval and a changing world around him and makes it personal. Given the intensity of the songs the songwriter brought to the band, one wonders if they had given his sister cause for concern about his emotional wellbeing.

after 20 years sounding better than ever.

“Not at all,” Timmins said with a heartfelt laugh. “He’s probably the healthiest person I know because he has all this incredible outlet for letting everything go. Not only does have an outlet, because he writes these songs and then hands them over to me to sing, he can then wash his hands of them. I think writing songs and not singing is a nice position to be in because when you are singing your own songs it’s sometimes like singing your diary.” Timmins feels the collaboration is a liberating exercise for both musicians. “Because I didn’t write the songs, it’s not my heartache or messed up head that’s being laid bare so I can go into them as deeply as I want without the fear of putting a bullet through my head,” she said with another laugh. “The beauty of that is I think Mike feels totally free to write what he wants to write because he’s not going to sing them or have to talk about them on stage. I think that separation liberates him. I know it liberates me as a singer.” With Cowboy Junkies having quietly amassed a musical legacy built around emotional introspection, the band has prospered with only moderate chart success. But world domination was never the point for the three siblings and their best friend, as Timmins explained it was and still is all about the music. “All we’ve ever tried to do is just play good music,” she said. “We never set out to have a hit record or a hit single. We just wanted to have something that we are really proud of. If you play our records in order, you can see the progress of us as musicians. When you listen to the first few albums you can hear that I was a reluctant singer. I was pretty much singing to myself back then, but as I got more and more experience you can see how obnoxious I’ve become! “One of the reasons we had difficulties with the major labels is that we were never trying to reinvent ourselves. We just wanted to play good music – good music that works for us and hopefully works for the few or the many who are listening. We always pushed ourselves, but we always knew where we wanted to go. We’ve always moved forward, but they’ve always been simple progressions. And I like that, I like that slow burn.” The Cowboy Junkies are touring Australia in May.

“All we’ve ever tried to do is just play good music. We never set out to have a hit record or a hit single.” – Margot Timmins

2020 Festival Director Peter Noble is excited about the ‘discovery’ acts at this year’s festival and a special event. By Brian Wise

Peter Noble is excited about Bluesfest. So excited, in fact, that he calls in from the airport lounge at Los Angeles on the way home from his latest trip booking acts. Noble has been to the Folk Alliance Conference in New Orleans where he saw hundreds of acts and met with agents and then he headed on a ‘Blues Train’ up to Memphis for the International Blues Challenge. (Noble has received the Keeping The Blues Alive Award from the Blues Foundation for his work promoting the blues). Now he is revealing that he has also reached an agreement with the Americana Music Association to host the Australian Americana Honours during the festival, another string to the bow of Bluesfest, which has been nominated 9 out of ten years (one year they didn’t have the award) in the Best International Festivals category at the annual Pollstar Awards. So, he has plenty to be excited about but most of all he is vibed up about what he is calling the ‘discovery’ acts – the acts he says, make Bluesfest the special musical experience we are.” Noble says that he found these artists in a variety of ways, “from seeing them play at showcases (LamBros.) and The Regime at Australian Music Week), busking (Roshani), being recommended to him by a Bluesfest fan (Here Come the Mummies). Being so impressed with everything Dani Im does. Beginning with her stunning performance at Eurovision in 2016 where she went close to winning. Seeing Emily Wurramara

32 31

take out the Best Blues and Roots Artist at the Queensland Music Awards last year. Meeting GRAMMY winner Micki Free at Folk Alliance in Montreal last year. Becoming aware of My Baby at the International Festival Forum in London last September and how they Funk the hell out of the Glastonbury festival. With Morgane Ji it's no secret that she is destined for big things. Seeing and hearing hundreds of performances in choosing these 12 artists.” Never heard of Here Come The Mummies? “They are a funk band from Nashville,” explains Noble. “5,000 year old mummies just come out of the coffin! It's show business but the credible part of it is they can actually really play. For me, it's like I love that. I'm a sucker for stuff like that. I used to tour The Residents.” Some say the band is cursed, others claim they are reincarnated GrammyWinning studio musicians. You might find out at Bluesfest! Grammy Award winning Micki Free is of Native American descent and was discovered by Gene Simmons of Kiss, played with the band Shalamar and appeared at Barack Obama’s inauguration concert. Emil Wurramara is one of the most acclaimed young Australian indigenous acts of the past few years. There’s plenty to discover! “These are the ones that I get excited about,” says Noble over the clamour of the airport PA in the background. “Everybody knows Lenny Kravitz and I wish more people here knew Dave Matthews. We know George Benson, Patti Smith and we love them. But it's these other artists that I just get a big buzz out of too.”

Noble says that he travels for three to four months every year looking at acts, speaking to agents, attending festivals and conferences. “If you look at Bluesfest, you can't book a festival like that without doing an awful lot of work,” explains Noble. “Let's say 60 or 80 acts will end up being on the line-up; well, that means we've talked with thousands of artists. We've put in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of offers. They don't all say yes. So, you end up in a situation where we're still trying to get the best bills we can. But for every artist that I talk with there are probably six or eight that we put feelers out to who don't end up coming, for whatever reason. That just happens all the time. That's just the way it is. I'll be jumping off this plane tomorrow morning and put in another whole bunch of offers for the next year!” Finally, before he jumps on the plane, he tantalises with one more act he thinks he might get for the festival maybe this year or next year. Apparently, it’s one of my favourite acts and they have appeared at Bluesfest before and might specially re-form for a few shows. Who are they? “Sorry, have to go,” says Noble, leaving us to stay excited all the way to 2021!

2020

Patti Smith is bringing her renowned band back to Australia after a triumphant and acclaimed 2017 tour! In the intervening years she has been busy again writing. By Brian Wise “It surprised me too,” says Patti Smith when I tell her that it was a delightful surprise to learn that she was returning so soon after her acclaimed 2017 Horses tour. There was talk at the time that it would be her final tour of Australia. Luckily, it was not. “I have a very difficult time flying because I do have bronchial issues,” she adds, “and it's very hard for me to be on a plane so long. So, I really felt like that's why I wanted to come. I felt like I might not be able to repeat that kind of travel.” “And I've just turned 73 and I have to think about things like that,” she continues. “Truthfully, I did fall ill when I first got to Australia and had to do our first concerts in Brisbane not a hundred per cent well. But it was such a wondrous experience, such a welcoming and transforming experience that I just felt this drive to go back. I felt a real drive to go back also because we did something so specific on our last tour doing the Horses album - which I thought was very special - but I really wanted to go back again and do everything that we are. I just felt like I'm going to do it again. “I am going to go a couple days early in case the flight disagrees with me so that I will be nice and sturdy for the task. I know I will because I'm preparing for it.” “Like I said, I didn't imagine that I would be going back,” she adds, “and now I am and I'm very, very excited. I feel really liberated this time because the last time we hadn't been there ever on our own. We opened for Bob Dylan on a tour and we had a specific task to do Horses but now I feel like I can go back. I'm on friendly territory and we can try new things and I'm quite excited.” Smith’s shows last time around were named by many fans and critics as the concerts of the year – well-deserved praise indeed.

“I didn’t imagine that I would be going back……….and now I am and I’m very, very excited.” 33

2020

“Also, my son Jackson is going to come this time,” she explains, noting that he has played with the band intermittently over the past decade, “and he's a great guitarist and he will add another dimension – a great soloist. So, I'm very excited to have Jackson with us on this tour. There's so much to think about and talk about and draw from.” “What my son brings is that he's a master guitarist and he can really play anything. His father, Fred Sonic Smith was a great musician and Jackson has a lot of his abilities. So, it's great to have us all together.” Smith adds that they will be performing Midnight Oil’s ‘Beds Are Burning’ on the tour, as a nod to what has been happening politically and environmentally in recent years. She refers to the song as “a great classic, relevant in its time and even more relevant now. To be able to perform their song and in their home country will be quite moving for me.” (Don’t be surprised if Mr Peter Garrett pops up at one of the shows). Smith’s band will also, of course, contain the great Lenny Kaye on guitar, along with other long-time band members Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Tony Shanahan on bass, who has been with the band for 25 years. “Lenny Kaye and I actually just celebrated our 49th anniversary of when we first played together,” notes Smith, “and, in fact, next February we'll have played together for 50 years! It's hard to believe.” Kaye, who is almost exactly the same age as Smith (give or take 3 days), has not only been with Smith’s band for nearly a half a century but is also the compiler of the famous Nuggets compilations, is a music historian, producer, broadcaster and author (he co-wrote Waylon Jennings autobiography with the singer). You’ll also most likely see him browsing in record stores around town between shows. Kaye will also be having a conversation with Smith at The Athenaeum in Melbourne during the tour; while Smith will be quizzed by Paul Kelly at the Sydney Town Hall on April 8 during the Sydney Writers Festival. “Which I think is going to be really interesting,” says Smith. “Then we wanted to do something interesting in Melbourne as well. So, I just thought that Lenny and I together could talk about what we do, that people could ask us questions, I can read, and we can do some songs or a couple of acoustic things. Because basically it's a book event, but just talking about things, and giving the 34

people access to Lenny to talk too, I think would be great.” In recent years, Smith’s prose seems to have dominated her time, which is natural when you think about the fact that she began her career as a poet and writer back in New York in the late ‘60s. Smith’s brilliant book, Just Kids (which won the National Book Award) chronicles her early years in New York with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. It wasn’t until 1975 that she released her first album, Horses, which turned out to be a landmark album in the history of rock and one of the greatest debut albums of all time. Her biggest ‘hit’ came in 1978 with ‘Because The Night,’ co-written with Bruce Springsteen. In all, Smith has released 11 albums, including Twelve, an album of covers with the latest studio album being Banga in 2012. She was inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. In the last decade, she has published four acclaimed books including the latest one that she will be talking about during the tour, Year of The Monkey. Also known for her activism, Smith mentions that her daughter, Jesse, co-founded the climate action organisation Pathways to Paris. Our conversation takes places during the counting of votes for the Democrats’ New Hampshire Primary, won by 78-year-old Bernie Sanders. Politics cannot be avoided. Does she have any thoughts on who should be chosen? I remind her that a few months back she was quoted as saying that a younger candidate would be more appropriate. “Well, that was a while ago. I said that a while ago,” says Smith, “and I was hoping…. but really it doesn't really matter. I think that what we have is so corrupt and it's so demeaning to our constitution that I will be happy to support whoever the party chooses.” [That’s the Democratic Party, of course]. “It's science fiction that we are living in,” she continues. “But that's what people say after the end of each world war and after a

disaster. It's because their eyes aren't open as things are happening. But we are existing in very troubled times and I think that we all have to be very vigilant.” “Even as a child she was very concerned about the environment, teaching everyone she knew to recycle,” responds Smith when I mention her daughter’s work. “She planted hundreds of trees as a volunteer, as a child and now she is working very, very hard to reduce fossil fuel intake and to raise awareness about our global climate crisis. They not only raise awareness and work with various people in the political world and the scientific world, they also produce awareness-raising events.” “Believe me, there's hardly a citizen that has a heart that hasn't felt just broken hearted for the situation that you've all been dealing with,” adds Smith when I mention the recent bushfires here. “It's been terrible in California and terrible, I can imagine, in Brazil. But to see the extent of it in Australia and the loss of animal life, and human life, and property, has affected us all deeply. “It's interesting because we will soon be there. Of course, I'd be thinking of the people in any event, but to the extent that Australia is on the forefront of our thoughts and prayers and has been, I feel so much closer. And it's almost like I'm going home or something. So, believe me, it's been much on our minds.” One of Smith’s long-time ambitions, as outlined in Year of The Monkey, was to visit Uluru. Her dear friend playwright/author/ actor Sam Shepard, who passed away in 2017, visited there in the ‘70s and very much wanted to go there again accompanied by Smith. “Yes, I did,” says Smith, when I ask if she achieved her dream. “After the band left, I stayed on and I took a plane over to Uluru all by myself and it was unbelievable. I was there for three and a half days and, basically, I spent the whole time there. I didn't stray

away. I would go get the bus - a little bus would take you at pre-dawn - and I would just sit and watch the sunrise over it and think, and write, and just be near it. Then again at night I’d watch the sun go down. Then I went once late in the night to see the Southern Cross. So, it was a wonderful experience: everything that I could have hoped for and it was just one of the great experiences of my life. Very existential because I was alone and I hardly spoke to anyone, but it was beautiful.” “Sam went in the seventies by himself in a Jeep,” recalls Smith. “I would never climb the rock. I only touched it because I walked so much around it and found one little spot that seemed like it was okay to touch the base of it and I did put my hands upon it. But I would never climb it. It's sacred. I would never climb it.” “Sam, of course, he was battling ALS,” continues Smith. “But he had always promised he would take me. But, of course, he wasn't able. But I did call him. Actually I was able to get enough cellphone service to call him and tell him that I made it and he was very happy.” Smith writes very movingly about the Pulitzer prize-winning Shepard in her latest book. If you haven’t read or seen any of his plays or books you might have seen him in movies such as The Right Stuff (for which he won an Academy Award), or more recently Mud (2012) and August: Osage County (2013). “Well, I loved him,” says Smith. “When I was young, we had a beautiful young love affair, but our friendship outlasted it. We never were not friends. We stayed great friends till the end of his life. And I truly loved him. He was one the most important people in my life. So, I miss him very much.” Smith helped Shepard to write his final book, The One Inside, and she also wrote the foreword. If you are a Dylan fan you will also know that Shepard appeared in and

wrote the screenplay for Renaldo & Clara, shot during The Rolling Thunder Revue tour. He also wrote the Rolling Thunder Logbook about it. You can also see a very young Smith appearing at Gerde’s Folk City in Martin Scorsese’s recent ‘documentary’ of the tour. (She also did a brilliant version of Dylan’s ‘Changing of The Guards’ on her 2007 album, Twelve). In 2016, Smith accepted Dylan’s Nobel Prize for Literature on his behalf and sang ‘A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall’ at the ceremony. No pressure! (In the only time I have ever seen her nervous she had to restart the song). “Well, it's very funny,” says Smith when I ask her about the documentary, “because Martin Scorsese asked me to okay the use of it because they were looking around for some more footage of me on the tour. But, of course, I wasn't on the tour. But I had seen Bob Dylan a lot in the city at the time in New York and he had come to see me play. He asked me to come to a club one evening because he said there was going to be some things going on. So, I went and there was all these people there - a lot of very well-known people. And one by one they were asked to go up and do something. Then they asked me to do something and I didn't play an instrument, I was there alone. I didn't have a musician with me. So, I just went up there on the stage and made up a story. I improvised and it was a slightly harrowing experience, but I did it. I could see, all these people were looking at me. It was a bit noisy and then, I think, I started with some trepidation but in the end I gathered my strength and I feel like I did the best job I could. “Everybody was really friendly. In fact, there were a lot of people there. I did a couple other songs. Ramblin' Jack Elliot, I think, and I did Hank Williams, ‘I'm so lonesome I Could Cry’. So, I did that too. But, somehow they got footage of that improvisation.

“The funny thing is I'm still sort of the same. When I looked at it, it's sort of still the way I am. I'll improvise a story and sometimes I fuck it up and I'm still sort of the same. Only now I have silver hair instead of black hair.” Did she get any response from Dylan when she accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature for him? “That's not Bob's way,” she responds. “Bob’s a very private man. I know some of his family members and they said that it was well received. So, I think I'm sure he was satisfied. I did the best I could and that's all one could ask. Bob was always very supportive of me when I was young in the seventies. After my husband died, he took me on two tours including touring Australia. So, whether I talked to him or not, I know that I've felt him in my corner.” The Year of the Monkey follows on from Just Kids, M Train and Devotion. So, it seems that Smith has been writing prolifically over the past few years and that it has almost entirely taken over from recording. “Well, I suppose that's so,” she agrees. “I like to record but song writing does not come easy to me. Really, I had no ambition when I was young to be a songwriter. Songs come to me but I'm much more comfortable writing books, writing poetry. Perhaps I'll do another album but I'm more driven to write. I've been writing since I was young and that was always my chosen vocation. Being a singer or a performer was not really what I thought I'd be doing in life. But it's possible I'll do another record, but I love to perform and my voice is still very strong. So, we'll see.” Patti Smith is appearing at Bluesfest and also in Sydney, Newcastle and Melbourne.

Buffy Sainte-Marie is aone-off, one-off, the epitome of indefatigability and indomitability who Devendra Banhart called the archetype of the unwavering warrior. By Tony Hillier

Yâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S

STILL B

W LO

IN THE W 36

G IN

D IN

n early cyclone alert has been issued for Bluesfest 2020. It’s been this way before and blown away all in its wake, including Bob Dylan. Nine years on from her last show stopping performance at Tyagarah and five years after hitting Port Fairy and WOMADelaide festival audiences for six on her last visit down under, the wholly natural phenomenon that’s Buffy Sainte-Marie is set to strike again. Still feisty and free flowing though now in her late seventies, this most wide ranging and gifted of native North American artists, who’s the standard bearer for First Nations’ musicians worldwide, still runs wild, bending the wind with incomparable singing and boundless energy while hitting hard with her timeless socio-political songs and powwow rockers. Buffy’s last appearance at Bluesfest afforded the chance to catch up with Dylan … nearly sixty years after they first rubbed shoulders in New York’s famed Greenwich Village and wrote songs that became part of the soundtrack to the anti-war movement. “He actually caught up with me,” says Buffy, correcting your correspondent: “We had a good old chat between the big trucks backstage. It was fun, we were both laughing. ‘I didn’t do that’ … ‘Yes you did’ … ‘Did I really?’ That kinda thing.” In a previous interview, Buffy had revealed that it was Dylan who sent her to the Gaslight Café, where things really opened up for her. “I owe him a debt of gratitude. He was such a magnificent songwriter, especially in those early days. He was writing things that very few other people had the courage to sing.” The same could indeed be said of Saint-Marie, whose songs became a clarion call for native North American rights. Buffy’s written a swag of classic songs since her emergence in the early 1960s, yet while Dylan has long since secured immortality, Sainte-Marie has not received acclamation commensurate with her considerable achievements as a musician, even though last year she was finally inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall Of Fame. She’s hoping that the recent release of an award-winning biography written by Andrea Warner and featuring a foreword by Joni Mitchell, or the surprise placement of her recording of ‘The Circle Game’ in the Oscar-nominated Once Upon A Time In Hollywood will elevate her profile. Buffy was very surprised to find her rendition of Joni’s song in Quentin Tarantino’s movie. “I love the song, but I really hate my version of it. I didn’t like the production or the

way they had me sing it. Joni’s version was brilliant. I don’t know why they didn’t use that.” Anomalously, some of Buffy Sainte-Marie’s best-known songs are widely attributed to the artists that popularised them rather than herself, including her Oscar and Grammy-netting song from An Officer And A Gentleman, ‘Up Where We Belong’. Does that bother her? “Yes, sometimes it does, but not much.” However, she was justifiably irked last year, when actor Wes Studi received an honorary Oscar, to hear Christian Bale — her favourite actor — introduce her friend as the first Native American to receive an Academy Award. A cluster of stars has recorded SainteMarie songs over the years, including the legendary likes of Gram Parsons, Janis Joplin, Glen Campbell, Andy Williams, Peggy Lee, Barbara Streisand and Willie Nelson. “They’re all a great compliment,” she says: “How can I not be partial to Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warne doing ‘Up Where We Belong’? Françoise Hardy doing ‘Take My Hand for Awhile’? Roberta Flack ‘Until It’s Time For You To Go?’ And just the other day, the local classic rock radio station played Quicksilver Messenger Service’s version of ‘Cod’ine’.” Buffy’s highest selling composition, ‘Until It’s Time For You To Go’, is also one of the world’s most recorded songs, with hundreds of cover versions. Despite enormous pressure, Sainte-Marie presciently declined to sign away the publishing rights for it. One of her most requested numbers in live performance is ‘Starwalker’. “I don’t know where it came from, but it’s one of those songs that you’re sure glad showed up. It’s real powwow rock. I first recorded it in the ‘70s and I’ve recorded it three times in all. It’s just a showstopper every time.” Sainte-Marie was pleased when Donovan had a hit with her anti-war evergreen ‘Universal Soldier’, even if it took her 25 years to buy back the rights. “I wanted the world to hear those lyrics. I thought the song could be effective, no matter who sang it. And, to some extent, it was effective, especially in expressing something a lot of people felt but couldn’t exactly put it into words: individual responsibility for the world we live in.” What Buffy didn’t like was the fact that nobody on Donovan’s team ever mentioned that he didn’t write it. “Most people still also attribute it to Donovan. I still get arguments about it,” she says. Does Sainte-Marie think politically motivated songs — ‘protest’ songs, if you will — have lost efficacy in this cynical and crass modern world? “No, but they’re not

making people money at the moment, therefore songwriters are hired — or hire themselves — to write ‘what will sell’, and express their social commentary otherwise, through hip-hop, rap, blogs, social media, citizen action etcetera. Protest isn’t dead but most people only know about the money trail. They’re like little kids who believe daddy’s party line about success. It takes a different kind of intelligence to come up with alternative solutions and most people’s creativity centres around what others will buy and sell. “Most of the people singing protest songs they didn’t write themselves in the 1960s accumulated fortunes just following the trends and seeming to care. While protest songs were making money for singers, to record companies, managers and agents it was trendy, that’s all. The real smart people knew that then and still do. Show business is consistently about money. Occasionally it gets to be about other things, too. That’s why, even if our songs are delivering a great message now, or not, we need to be building on all kinds of other fronts as well. Think globally/act locally is still required.” Buffy’s ground-breaking record Illuminations — the first vocal album to employ what is now known as electronica — turned 50 last year, a milestone that was celebrated with a limited edition vinyl re-issue. In a long interview about that landmark release published in Musicworks magazine, she imparted that as an unschooled musician from a non-business family, she had nothing to lose by going off the tracks. “I played my guitars all upside down and inside out, using weird tunings and strings from other instruments, and I hung out with electronic musicians like Jill Fraser and Michael Czajkowski, who was brilliant at sound processing using a synthesiser.” Sainte-Marie has faced erasure throughout her career and had little access to the bigwig publicists and managers that could’ve helped her flourish. In the twilight of her music career, she’s optimistic about the next couple of years, especially since she’s finally working with a publishing company for the first time. “Although I’ve had some success with several of my songs, I’ve never had anybody ‘pushing’ them. I’ve never had a ‘song plugger’, as they’re called, making songs available to producers and artists about to record. So perhaps having a major publisher involved will bring to light some of the other hit material songs in my catalogue beyond the ones already covered. Who knows?” Sainte-Marie, who holds degrees in teaching and Oriental philosophy, also has myriad pursuits away from music,

in art (as a visual artist she pioneered digital paintings), education and public speaking. She recently finished her children’s book Tapwe and the Magic Hat, which is centred in a Cree community in the 1960s. It should be out next year. In the interim, Hey Little Rockabye and a picture book based in her song Farm in the Middle of Nowhere are set for publication. Buffy is also working on the Creative Native Project, which aims to teach Indigenous high school children about getting into the arts and showbiz. As she emphasis: “I’m busy, busy”. On the activism front, Sainte-Marie, who was born into a Cree family on a reservation in Canada’s Saskatchewan but raised by adoptive American parents, is still very closely involved in the welfare of fellow native north Americans, the impacts of colonisation on them and the neverending fight for reparation. Back in the 1960s the author of such passionate songs related to the subject as ‘My Country ’Tis Of Thy People You’re Dying’, ‘Now That The Buffalo’s Gone’ and ‘Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee’ also railed against the lack of Indigenous representation in television culture by agreeing to take a part in the popular Western series The Virginian only if actual Indigenous people were hired to play Indigenous roles. It became the first “Indian show with an all-Indian cast”. When asked how stands that particular fight currently she responds: “Better than it used to be but nowhere near what it ought to be. What’s brilliant is that indigenous people from all over the world are little-by-little coming into their own, all the way to Ph.Ds. And they’re out there writing books, delivering information, working within communities and beyond, it’s great to see. I never underestimate that.” Although she was allegedly blacklisted by American radio throughout the 1970s because of her association with the American Indian Movement, Buffy’s unsure to what extent her activism negatively impacted on her career in music, chart success et al. “Some music biz insider might be able to answer that, but I can’t. Hell, I didn’t even know I was being blacklisted or manipulated by music execs, I just thought singers come and go. Had I understood I might’ve been more pissed. Norbert Hill, Ph.D wrote a long piece about me in his book about Hollywood’s paucity of indigenous actors called The Pretend Indians. He claimed that had I not been taken out; I would’ve had a Joni-sized 38

career and the entire movement would have had a positive voice. Instead we were represented in the public mind by a fist in the air.” Sainte-Marie, who lives on a farm in Hawaii these days, is astonishingly fit and energetic for her age, something she attributes to a health and fitness regimen that includes “daily ballet and flamenco and a little bit of gym”, plus sugar-free eating. Max Lugavere’s Genius Foods is her bible.

Although there’ll be no Bob Dylan encore at Bluesfest 2020, Buffy still can’t wait to renew acquaintance with the event. “I loved both times previously at the festival, in spite of the mud.” She’s particularly looking forward to meeting other premier musicians backstage in April. “Aaron Neville, Mavis Staples and Tim Robbins, whose dad was Gil Robbins of The Highwaymen and recorded ‘Universal Soldier’, were all real nice to me last time,” she recalls.

Apart from being “a couple of notes lower”, which she likes, she claims her singing voice is as strong as ever. “What you call ‘the trademark vibrato’ happens when I get emotional. Occasionally I’ve been scolded that I was ruining my voice by not doing the European singer thing: honey and lemon etcetera. But you know what? My aunts and uncles sing powwow all night long, without warming up or drinking honey and lemon, and they’re just fine, and I’m 78 and I’m fine too.”

Buffy Sainte-Marie performs at Bluesfest on April 10 & 12.

Buffy Sainte-Marie will be returning to Oz with her Ojibwe drummer Michel Bruyere and new sidemen in guitarist Anthony King and bassist Mark Olexon and hard-hitting new songs such as ‘The War Racket’. Catch her while you can Australia. She’s a oneoff, the epitome of indefatigability and indomitability. As Devendra Banhart once pithily observed: she’s the archetype of the unwavering warrior.

Speaking Frankly

2020

“Catharsis is almost mild …… I use the term exorcism. It felt like an exorcism of some of my demons, of my memories.

Ani DiFranco is one of the pioneers of the indie DIY movement with a catalogue of songs that now stretches back 30 years. By Brian Wise “You can't pinch me hard enough at this point,” says Ani DiFranco when I remind her that her debut album was released 30 years ago.” DiFranco is in New Orleans, where she has lived for a number of years, has just finished her annual Babefest gathering and is getting ready to come back to Australia after an absence of more than a decade. “One of the great luxuries of my life now is that I've written hundreds of songs,” she adds. “So, when I go on tour, I never get bored. I just pull shit from anywhere over the course of the last 30 years. But I have these moments now where I'm standing on stage - I'll be 50 this year, my next birthday will be 50! - and I'll whip out a thirty-year old song. And here I still am and we're both still loving this moment that we're in. So, it really hits me sometimes now. As she observes in her recent superb memoir, No Walls And A Recurring Dream, the audience seems to stay the same age and the

artist gets older. “Yeah, that does happen,” she agrees. By any standards, DiFranco has had a remarkable three decades, from busking and then forming her own independent label Righteous Babe to touring the world and now running a burgeoning enterprise. Along the way, she has released nearly 20 of her own studio albums, dozens of live albums, collaborated on a couple more with Utah Phillips, and shared the stage with Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Pete Seeger, Kris Kristofferson, Greg Brown, Billy Bragg and many more. Her most recent studio album Binary was released in June 2017 on Righteous Babe Records while her memoir was published in May 2019, and she even released a No Walls Mixtape to supplement the book. Along with the music, DiFranco has been politically committed to causes such as The March for Women’s Lives along with Janeane Garofalo, Whoopi Goldberg, and the campaign for voter registration and Vote Dammit! tours in multiple presidential

election years. She is also on the board of Roots of Music, an organization that provides at-risk youth with support and musical education in New Orleans and is a member of the creative council of EMILY’s List, which helps elect pro-choice Democratic women to office. DiFranco’s numerous awards include a Grammy, the Woman of Courage Award from the National Organization for Women, the Gay/Lesbian American Music Award for Female Artist of the Year, and the Woody Guthrie Award. Born in Buffalo, New York, DiFranco’s early years - as outlined in her memoir - certainly helped to develop an independent spirit. By the time she was a teenager she was playing Beatles covers and started her record label at the age of 18 with just $50, relocating to New York soon after. Now living in New Orleans, she runs the label and cares for her two children. It's interesting that a lot of the issues that DiFranco has been talking about for decades have suddenly come to the forefront. 39

2020

Speaking Frankly

“Like an infection that was never healed,” she laughs. “Yeah, it's a crazy time here in America and, of course, unfortunately, this sort of craziness always seems to be contagious globally.” We are speaking on the eve of the recent impeachment hearings that acquitted only the third President in history to face them. “So, I can only hope that this sort of political regression that we're experiencing here is I hope the smaller part of a bigger political awakening that is happening around and underneath it,” she adds. “It seems like it's hard to know how these things work, but this is a time of tribalism and political regression. So, I hope that we make it through stronger and smarter. Certainly, in the United States, it feels like a lot of things, as we said, that were sort of hidden, are now out in the open. So, I'm hoping that this makes us more aware, and more able to deal with these endemic problems, racism and misogyny et cetera.” DiFranco’s memoir No Walls and A Recurring Dream outlines the genesis of many of her beliefs and principles. It’s a must-read book for anyone interested in DiFranco’s life and she is surprisingly open and honest about it.

“The recurring dream is life itself,” explains DiFranco. “I think it's metaphoric, the way I intended it. I guess as I was ending the story of the book, maybe I was just feeling reflective, even just on the process of storytelling. Is this all just a story I've told myself, is it my life? Is it my dream state, or is that a naive question? Those are all one and the same.” Was it harder to write prose, or is it harder to write song lyrics? “They're both just really freaking hard,” answers DiFranco. “That's my conclusion and so different, just hard in different ways. For me it feels [when] writing songs you have to be able to access some sort of divine inspiration. You have to position yourself, just so in the universe and let something come through. With the book, it just felt like the opposite of that. It was something that was more like welding, there were no moments to be had. It was just an endless stream of moments and wondering and walking, through this long journey. The challenges were more about trying to step back from something that big and get perspective and get a handle on something like flow and rhythm over the course of 300 pages. That was new and daunting.”

No Walls is only the first part of DiFranco’s story, and there's plenty more to tell. But in that first part of her life she had an amazing childhood. They say that your childhood determines the rest of your life, and in many ways it did for DiFranco. “I mean certainly a template was set early on by my parents too, that created a very independent kid, sort of born of circumstance,” she agrees. “I just needed to take care of myself at a young age. So, that did definitely, I think, influence what happened after that and the choices that I made - and I think educated me early on towards being self-sufficient, being selfdirected. “I struggled a lot in childhood, but so many of us do,” she adds. “I think, the perspective of my adulthood shows me that and the increased perspective of writing that damn book, made me even more deeply aware of how lucky I am on the other hand, and how much I was given.” Was it a cathartic experience? Did it help her writing the book? “Yeah, I would say so,” she responds. “Catharsis is almost mild…… I use the term exorcism. It felt like an exorcism of some of my demons, of my memories. I didn't even feel in the beginning like I could remember it enough to tell it. I think I had blocked so much: you know, how we put things away in order to move on. We put things down, we turn away. So, even the process of remembering felt very difficult and dangerous. But I think having come through it. Luckily, I feel like it was healing in many ways to go through that exercise for a few years. There are some incidents in the memoir that could have made DiFranco extremely angry but somehow, she has managed to maintain a relatively calm perspective. “I try. Some days I do better than others,” she says. “But that's the thing about creating a piece of art over the course of maybe a year and a half that I was really sitting down, staring at a screen writing this thing. I tried to find that centred retention of how I feel. Because like any person, in some moments I feel angry, and some moments I feel devastated. In other moments I feel lucky, and I feel strong, and I feel grateful. Each of the people in my life, they giveth, they taketh away. But I tried to just find that balance point where everybody was human and fallible, including myself, but not monstrous.” One of the fascinating sections in the memoir, for me, is when DiFranco recalls how Pete Seeger was such a mentor to her and a warm, friendly wonderful person. She contrasts his personality with that of Bob Dylan. I mention my criticism of Dylan not responding to his audiences.

“Well, I sure appreciate your level-headed reading and reaction to that,” she responds. “Like you said, I just compared those two men in their essences, because I find them so contrasting. As artists, they're both brilliant, but as men, I take Pete any day.” Obviously, she has copped some flak from Dylan fanatics, or at least those who believe he is above any sort of criticism (and, believe me, there are plenty of them). “I tried to talk about why, just the bravery of being open like you say,” she continues, “and contrast it against somebody who's very closed off and protecting something. So, one compels me so much more than the other. But since writing the book, there's so many people who seem to crave ... What is it? Drama, or who said, ‘Boy, you really attacked Bob Dylan, didn't you?’ I'm thinking, really? I just tried to speak not diss on somebody certainly, or tell personal jabs, but say more, in terms of these two American icons, I'll take the one who's vulnerable any day. “You noticed I didn't say anything in my book about Joni Mitchell - and we have met. So, the old expression is, if you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all.” Is there a second volume of the memoir on the way? “Well, I have heard that feedback” admits DiFranco. “A lot of people are saying, ‘How could you just suddenly get off the train where you did?’ I feel like volume two is something I'm living right now. So, I don't feel ready to sort of kick back and reflect just yet. Binary is available on Righteous Babe Records. No Walls And A Recurring Dream is published by Viking.

2020

War & Peace

A sensation at every festival they play, Michael Trotter Jr. and Tanya Blout-Trotter are back to stun audiences around Australia. By Steve Bell Last year Michigan-based country-soul duo The War & Treaty arrived in Australia for their inaugural Bluesfest appearances as a promising country-soul duo armed with a fascinating back-story and an accomplished debut album, Healing Tide. By the end of the Easter long weekend, however, they’d been the name on the lips of all the discerning punters and cemented themselves as festival darlings with both their powerhouse vocal performances, innate chemistry and fascinating message. And though it was a pretty cool back-story – involving one half of the act, Michael Trotter, being essentially discovered while on active duty in Iraq playing piano in a bombed-out palace belonging to Saddam Hussein – these days it’s Trotter’s fertile creative partnership with his wife and bandmate Tanya Boult and how much they’ve achieved in such an incredibly small period of time which is the real crux of The War & Treaty story. The married pair are now returning with their accomplished band to this year’s instalment of Bluesfest to reprise their stunning debut – you know you’ve made an impression at the festival when you’re asked back the very next year – and are just as excited to be revisiting the Tyagarah region so quickly as we are to have them back in our midst. “Well, I’ll tell you what, Australia period is a very unique place and the people there are amazing,” Trotter smiles. “My wife and I both felt loved, we felt supported and we felt a part of something that was bigger than ourselves, so we were both very excited to be there and to really get the culture of the festival and that sort of thing. “The BluesFest is a very cool place in Australia and I really, really, really enjoyed it, although I really just enjoyed the Australian people everywhere. It’s really refreshing to see people who look at you and they don’t see anything but the colour of love, and that’s what I felt.” Which is entirely in line with the intense connection The War & Treaty were able 42

to foster with the crowd at their Bluesfest shows, as much to do with their innate chemistry and charisma as people as their soulful music and passionate delivery. “I think neither of us – neither The War & Treaty or the audience –are taking each other for granted” Trotter reflects. “As far as The War & Treaty goes we know that that audience could be somewhere else, but they were there with us – they chose to be there. “And for however long – 75, 90, 60 minutes, 45, 30 or 20 – however long I have you for, I want to make sure that we connect. I want to make sure that you understand that I appreciate the fact that you are here, and I want to give you everything I got in the hope that you will also see that we’re happy to be there. “It’s not just a pay cheque and not just a chance to make music for fans, it’s a chance to connect with another human being – that’s the most important thing in life, period.” Reading the lengthy liner notes from the Healing Tide album almost makes fostering that love and connection seem like an overriding mission statement for the pair. “That’s true, both of us were just raised that way,” Trotter agrees. “My mother and father wanted to make sure that we never discriminated against anyone, they wanted to make sure that we were grounded in love and spirituality, and they wanted to make sure that we understood what it meant to have the gift of singing. “With that gift comes great responsibility, but then you start to venture outside of your home and realise that the world is in pain, the world is broken, and we have the chance to kind of use our gift to mend and bridge and connect, and that’s just what it’s all about.” It seems a particularly challenging time at the moment in that regard, especially in their United States homeland. “It is, and we can’t ignore that,” the singer muses. “As artists we can’t go belly over and act as if it isn’t happening and go to other countries and be prideful about it. We have to own it and go to other countries and say, ‘Not only am I here to entertain you but I’m here to learn and take back to my country what I’ve learned’. “And when I was in Australia last time I did take back some of the things I’d learned: I learned togetherness, that there’s a pride in

the land and how they care for one another, and how they take care of the land and how they do it for one another – I just loved it! “And again, in our country – in our world, period – there is a major racial rift that has always been there and always taken place, and for whatever reason we’d forgotten that we’re better together than separate, so that’s where it is.” And while striving to make change via art is always a noble pursuit, in Trotter’s mind it’s completely viable to make a tangible difference using his music as a conduit. “You know it’s funny, I think I am making a change,” he offers. “And I think there’s more

2020 disparate fields of R&B, blues, soul, funk, folk and gospel.

me realise – again – that we are far better together than separate.

“I love many different styles of music,” Trotter chuckles. “I was raised on all of those different styles that you mentioned and particulary in my bloodstream are all of those styles.

“Tanya is my everything and I am hers, and we’ve built a home – we bought our first home a couple of months ago – and we’ve accomplished everything that we set out to do over the past year and beyond. Now I’m very excited to turn over the next chapter of our life together and see where this next record takes us and what we’re able to achieve together next.”

“I don’t think it would be fair to the god of music if I chose one vein, it’s very important to experience all that music has for us as human beings. I’ve discovered what it is to feel complete euphoria when I hear [19th century Italian composer Niccolo] Paganini, I’ve discovered what it is to feel sorrow by listening to the final pieces of work by Beethoven, I’ve discovered what it feels like to be a complete badass when I listen to Prince or Michael Jackson, and I’ve discovered what it’s like to fall in love when I listen to Tanya sing, my wife. I love it, I love music, period.” Which means that he’s been able to throw himself into the creation of Healing Tide’s follow-up with complete abandon. “We are actually getting ready to go into pre-production for the second album: I write every day, it’s very exciting,” Trotter reveals. “I can’t wait to show growth, to show expounding and understanding and that kind of thing, and to explore where the gift of music has taken us: Australia, Rotterdam, London, Montreal, wherever we’ve gone in this past year will have a major say in the recording of this next record, and I’m pleased to be able to deliver it.” Does it feel like there’s more pressure on the pair during the creative process now that The War & Treaty have this ravenous global fanbase and its accompanying expectations or does that presence alleviate the nerves in a way?

change to be made, I think that we all have a chance to touch someone and to change the appearance or the awareness. Even this interview is a chance to change someone’s thoughts or to enlighten, and I feel that we win every time we speak to each other. “We win, and these aren’t small victories, these are major victories. I think the world can change and I also don’t think the world will ever stop changing – I think it’s an ongoing process.” It goes without saying that The War & Treaty’s message wouldn’t be so powerful not just without the pair’s great voices but also the band’s great music, an eclectic and unique strain of Americana touching on the

“It adds on the kind of pressure you need to make sure that you are wrung all the way out,” Trotter tells. “This band they compress and they compress and they push and they push until I have nothing left to give, and that’s what I want – I want to be able to give it all.” It’s remarkable how much the husbandand-wife team have been able to achieve together in such a small time – both of them having been toiling away in the music industry for years without quite breaking through – so meeting and then teaming up with Tanya must seem like an incredible sliding doors moment in Trotter’s life? “When you’re married to a woman like Tanya you can’t help but reach every goal you’ve set for yourself,” he beams. “And the goals that we’ve set together have made

They look so happy singing together in the live realm, like a perfect creative union. “And it’s real,” Trotter continues. “We can’t fake that. It’s so funny, because we get onstage and sometimes we’re upset with each other, but we’ll do something onstage that makes us both laugh, and we’ll apologise right there on the stage. “We’ve decided to make sure that every step of the way it’s honest and it’s real and it has been rewarding both on the stage and off, both in our career as a career couple but also in our marriage in a way that has nothing to do with music. We’ve learned each other’s highs and lows and in-betweens, and we’re just cool with it all.” Despite this indubitable rapport they obviously can’t have all this career success isolated in a bubble, and Trotter is happy to give a shout out to all the people who’ve helped he and Tanya kick so many early goals as The War & Treaty. “We’ve had a lot of guidance along the way and a lot of mentors,” he offers. “Even in 2013 Miss Aretha Franklin – the Queen – pretty much asked us to come and sing at her father’s church, and then being able to sit down with the amazing Don Was and Buddy Miller and Emmylou Harris. “Just being in the same company as musicians like Sam Bush, Russ Pahl, Jim Hoke and Stuart Duncan, and then being touched by Jeff Hannah and learning from and watching Lyle Lovett and Delbert McClinton and some of the younger ones who inspired us like Marcus King and The Suffers and Leon Bridges – you can’t help but grow. “If you are open and let all that goodness in and that kind of creativity you can’t help but grow, man. And that’s where we are baby – we’re just ready to keep growing and growing until we bust right open.” The War & Treaty recently released the single ‘Jealousy’/’Hustlin’’. They will be at Bluesfest and other dates around Australia. 43

Get Your Betts On

2020 A project always destined to happen, the Allman Betts Band brings together the next generation of Southern rockers, adding their own twist, writes Samuel J. Fell.

Duane Betts is packing bags and doing laundry at home in Malibu, California. He’s just flown in from a show in Macon, Georgia, and is about to head south to San Francisco; even rock stars, in the rare downtime they find, have to wash their underwear. “Well, I don’t consider myself a rock star,” Betts smiles. “And the laundry… my wife and I do it collectively, well, my wife is doing it.” She’s just come into the room and caught him taking credit. He corrects himself and laughs. Betts, even when putting on the spin cycle, is the son of Allman Brothers Band founding member and guitarist Dickey Betts. And it’s in line with this seminal Southern rock band, whose heyday was the tail-end of the swinging ‘60s and well into the screaming ‘70s, that Betts now finds himself. For it’s with Gregg Allman’s son, Devon, that Betts has formed the Allman Betts Band, a collective that’s taking the time-honoured sounds they’ve been enveloped in since birth, and reinventing it for a new time, a new place. Throw into the mix bass player Berry Duane Oakley (son of Allman Brothers founding bassist Berry Oakley), and you’ve got a

father-son torch-pass like few others. Allman, Betts and Oakley have known each other since 1989, their chemistry (not to mention their shared history) already honed, but to flesh it out and add colour, they’ve added slide guitarist Johnny Stachela, drummer John Lum and percussionist R. Scott Bryan (of Sheryl Crow’s band) – it’s a tour de force, the overall chemistry so fluid, that the band headed straight for the studio, releasing debut Down To The River in May last year, only months after the band itself was formed. “[Devon] and I had been talking about doing something – he was pretty busy with Royal Southern Brotherhood, [and] making his own records,” Betts explains. Betts himself, who had been playing with Dawes, had left and was making his own music, focusing on his singing, something he’d not really done before. “I wanted to put out a record of my songs with me fronting the band, so when I did that, [Devon] came up with the idea of me coming out to open the shows for his band, the Devon Allman Project, and we could jam together in his set,” he says. “Just to have some fun, do some shows, see what happens, and you know, with no pressure to write songs and start a band. “And a couple of months in, we started writing… we realised we had chemistry, we liked what we had done together, so that was the turning point for us getting together. So, we formed the band, picked who we wanted in the band, and now the band is almost a year old.”

The first song the pair wrote together, “in the back of the bus”, was ‘Long Gone’, the final track on Down To The River. Recorded at the famed Muscle Shoals studio in Alabama, the album saw the band (along with special guests Peter Levin and Chuck Leavell) record as one, direct to two-inch tape, no digital trickery, just rock ‘n’ roll for a new time and place. It’s a quintessential piece of southern rock, a solid calling card for the band to have left first up, and in such infancy. The Allman Betts Band aren’t ones to sit still though, another record already in the works. “It’s not a different style of music, but without giving too much away, it’s a wider scope of influences,” Betts says. “I think that’s what was cool about the first one, it made a statement but it left room to grow. And [so] I think this one’s a little deeper down, a wider scope and a little more experimental.” “I mean, we haven’t made it yet, I don’t wanna jinx it before we make it,” Betts laughs, catching himself before getting too worked up. There’s room to get worked up though, things are going well for this offspring band. “I try to take it one step at a time,” he muses. “I get really excited about stuff, like coming to Byron Bay in April, but there can be some anxiety with all this too, so it’s good to just keep one or two things ahead of you, knock one out, then onto the next. But it’s exciting, it’s an exciting time. The Allman Betts Band play the Byron Bay Bluesfest, April 9-13. For other dates, see the Gig Guide.

2020

Eclectic World

Joachim Cooder, once known for his percussion and drumming, now plays the electric mbira in an intriguing mix of roots musics. By Brian Wise Last time Joachim Cooder was in Australia he was touring with his father, music legend Ry Cooder, and his partner Juliette Commaggere. This time, playing Bluesfest, he steps out of the considerable paternal shadow to bring his own outfit. Though you never know if there might just be a special guest along. Last September when we saw him in Nashville, Ry sat in and played guitar. Joachim was playing an electrified mbira rather than the percussion for which he is better known. It was an unexpected treat. How often do you get to see and hear the impeccable playing of Ry these days? Audiences here are also in for an eclectic musical treat as well with Joachim’s new outfit. Of course, Joachim has been immersed in roots music for his entire life: it would be difficult not to with a father who was one of the pioneers of what was to become known as ‘world music.’ One of Joachim’s early inspirations was drummer Jim Keltner and Ry

enlisted him at an early age as he performed on the famous Buena Vista Social Club project and then collaborated with his father on numerous recordings. In 2017 Joachim released an intriguing album of original music, Fuschia Macchu Picchu (named after a plant not the tourist attraction). Recently the 47-year-old has been recording a tribute to old-time musician Uncle Dave Macon - you will hear some of that in his concerts. The music is mesmerising. For his Bluesfest visit Joachim will be accompanied by saxophonist Sam Gandel and Amir Yaghmai on fiddle and string instruments. But it will be Joachim’s playing of the African instrument in electrified form - the Array mbira - which might create the most interest. “This really interesting guy makes them, he lives down in San Diego,” explains Joachim of the mbira. “It's like the little African thumb pianos that people are most familiar with, but he has it laid out and not in a chromatic way, so you kind of approach it much differently than you would a piano. Because it's electric I can send it through effects and through guitar amps and kind of get it to distort. It's my main thing. That's how I do all my shows and all my records. It all starts with that thing.”

Cooder was known mainly as a percussionist and drummer. So why did he switch the mbira? “Well, I'd always play one,” he responds. “I had an acoustic one for about 20 years, the same made by the same guy and always played it on records, film scores, but it was never a viable live instrument because we can't mic it. Anytime I would try to do it it'd just feedback and you couldn't hear it. “Then I found out that he had made a solid body electric version - something between having that instrument, being able to plug it into a guitar amp. Right around the same time my wife got pregnant and we moved. We went to Nashville for a while and I had this instrument with me and I was in a new city. Something changed and I just started writing these songs almost as if I'd always been doing it, but I hadn't. It still took, I don't know, 4 years to then start doing this. It wasn't like I set out to do it. It all sort of just fell together. And I was on my way. I found it so enjoyable that I just was playing it all day anyways, just sitting around the house.” Joachim’s eclectic approach reminds me of David Lindley, a musician who might just as easily rip out a solo on a bouzouki or oud as on an electric or acoustic guitar. One magazine referred to him as a ‘maxiinstrumentalist.’ “He was a huge influence on me growing up,” says Cooder. “I loved all of his El Rayo-X records. I still listen to those today, and he also gave me my first dumbek, the Turkish hand drum, when I was in 11th grade or something. That was another thing that sent me on. That's what I played on Buena Vista, the thing that he gave me. So, it got me to look at things, another sort of world music kind of roots - the percussion thing that was not just always on the drum set. So, I'm happy to hear that you hear his influences or something in there because it's swimming around somewhere for sure.” 45

2020

The Waifs’ Magical Music

After 28 years of making music together they are definitely not thinking of slowing down. By Brett Leigh Dicks

and our friendships and how we’ve sustained ourselves, that to me is gold. Sure, there’s been times when we’ve come to blows, but you know what? When it’s time to pick your bloodied self up off the floor it’s Vikki and Josh who are always there to help you up. That’s what keeps you going.

As Donna Simpson sits in the shade of a Fremantle café, she takes a long deep breath during what is a rare moment of reprieve from what is quickly proving a hectic summer for The Waifs. With the band already scheduled for a series of headlining Western Australian dates, the recent bushfire disasters have resulted in The Waifs joining John Butler for a series of Fire Aid benefit concerts. Then the collective heads east for shows at the Byron Bay Bluesfest prior to embarking on a North American tour.

“There’s a magic there too. I can bring a song to the band and not have to say anything, and Josh will just start playing. He’s such a tasteful guitarist and knows exactly what the song needs. And Vicki knows when to come in with her harmonies or when not to. She has the amazing gift of pulling out a third or fifth harmony and now Josh has developed that. That’s come through playing together all these years.”

Formed in 1992 when Simpson and her sister, Vikki Thorn, were touring through the northwest of Western Australia and met Josh Cunningham, the trio has since amassed a roots music legacy that few Australian artists can match. Eight studio albums, sixteen ARIA Award nominations (yielding four wins), first-place in the 2006 USA Songwriting Competition and a sold-out performance at the Sony Music Hall in New York City last year are just part of The Waifs’ enduring musical legacy. After 28 years of making music together, the band could be forgiven for wanting to slow down a little. “We’ve had our moments over the years,” Simpson said after taking a long pause to contemplate what keeps the band forging their impassioned musical path. “When I look back at what we’ve achieved

The band is currently in rehearsals for a series of regional shows through the West Australian southwest, including a homecoming performance in the Simpson sisters native Albany, before playing in Simpson’s new hometown at the Fremantle Arts Center. While there’s no questioning the band’s rustic roots, with Thorne residing in the United States and Cunningham in New South Wales, home for The Waifs is something of a subjective thing. “Vicki and I grew up in Albany so playing there is always amazing,” Simpson said. “When we play and I look out at the audience there’s not only all of our friends but my old school teachers are there too. It’s our hometown and the whole city is very proud of The Waifs so it’s really great to play Albany. But Broome also claims The Waifs as its own because that’s where Josh joined the band so it’s really where we became The Waifs.”

One of the things that sets The Waifs apart from many of their contemporaries is that its core centers around three distinctive songwriters. While all three write separately and bring their individual contributions to the band for acceptance or rejection, the three perspectives eventually meld into one seamless musical statement. Which poses the question, is having three separate writers in a band a blessing or a curse?

ANI DIFRANCO AUSTRALIAN TOUR 2020

“Believe it or not, it makes life easier,” Simpson said. “It goes in seasons. When someone is having a tough time and there’s no water in the well, there are two others to pick up the slack. We tried writing together once, but it just didn’t work. It was awful, we all walked out and each wrote a song on our own! We all have very different approaches to writing songs, but when we bring them to the band those songs become The Waifs.” For the past two decades The Waifs has been a five-piece with the trio joined by Ben Franz on bass and David Ross Macdonald on drums. After its sojourn through Western Australia, it’s across to Byron Bay for the band where they will undertake several performances at the 2020 installment of Bluesfest. The annual blues and roots festival is an experience Simpson never tires of. “Byron Bay Bluesfest is incredible for the audience,” Simpson said. “I love being in the audience there because you get to see such a smorgasbord of music. Year after year it’s really the cream of the crop that plays there. The amount of music icons you can see is incredible. I saw James Brown there and then shared a custard tart with him outside the Byron Bay Bakery at 3a.m. Where else would that happen? And this year I’m not sure who I’m more excited to see - George Benson or John Prine. For us getting asked to play there is a huge honor.”

PERTH 6 APRIL ASTOR THEATRE MELBOURNE 8 APRIL HAMER HALL SYDNEY 9 APRIL STATE THEATRE BYRON BAY 11 & 12 APRIL BLUESFEST BOOK AT ABPRESENTS.COM.AU RIGHTEOUSBABE.COM

Five-time GRAMMY Award Winner and Blues Hall of Fame inductee returns with a brand new album

OUT NOW DIGITAL | LP | CD

Well Vaughan

2020 After more than half a century playing the blues, Jimmie Vaughan is an icon – and he doesn’t just play the blues, writes Samuel J. Fell.

Jimmie Vaughan’s dogs are barking. You can hear them, faint, in the background, running riot on his ranch, a little ways outside of Austin, Texas, where he’s lived for years. It’s the ranch that blues built. Somewhere to come and recuperate while not on the road, rest the metaphorical barking dogs. Somewhere to perhaps contemplate over half a century spent grinding out the gritty and muscular version of this music particular to Texas. It’s a brand of the blues made famous by the House of Vaughan, Jimmie and little brother Stevie Ray indeed synonymous with Stratocasters wielded in just such a way as to make one think of nothing other than the Lone Star State, and that’s just how it’s been ever since way back when.

Vaughan is a lot older now, but he’s not pulled back. Age hasn’t slowed his flying fingers, it hasn’t dulled his rockslide voice. Age has, in no way at all, blunted his love of this music, of this feeling. “What I love about it, is so many things,” he says after a pause, thinking on what at face value is a simple question, but that really has depths and depths – what is it about the blues that you love? “I love the theme, about a man and a woman, about being in love, or not being in love, it’s about life. It’s the same as a Hank Williams record, you know? “I mean, you have what we call the head, the head of the song which is the theme, but in the middle, the solos are wide open… [the possibilities] are endless, and it’s easy to change as you go along. Your guitar playing kinda moves a little this way, a little that way – you’re really playing what you feel, at that moment, that’s the plan.” Vaughan talks of these song middles being played “in real time”, meaning, in the true spirit of electric blues in general and Texas

blues specifically, that they’re never played the same way twice, as every time you’re playing a song and the opportunity comes up to really move, to ad-lib, as he says, you can go wherever you’re feeling you need to go. Where Jimmie Vaughan has been, in a broader sense, is everywhere. It began for him in Dallas, Texas, where be began to tread the path he’s now worn for countless others, back in the late ‘50s and through the ‘60s – “If I didn’t do this, there wasn’t any other plan,” he’s been quoted as saying. “But even as a kid I knew I loved music, and particularly the blues.” Other bands in Dallas weren’t really hitting it for the young guitarist though and so right at the tail-end of the ‘60s, just after the fabled summer of love (which wouldn’t have made too much of an impression in Texas, one would think), Vaughan relocated to Austin, the state’s thriving musical hub, and it was here that he began to find what it was he was looking for. The Fabulous Thunderbirds, the group for which Vaughan is most well-known, debuted in 1974, a group made up of local blues aficionados all schooled at local venue Antone’s, a tough and ready blues group who released four albums between ’79 and ’82 before losing their recording contract, regaining it in ’86, and releasing three more albums before Vaughan left the group. The Fabulous Thunderbirds travelled the globe, their music, sound and general sonic motif informed as much by Vaughan’s guitar as it was Kim Wilson’s voice and harmonica. This was, at the time, where Jimmie Vaughan belonged. Things change though. Vaughan left the group in 1990; his younger brother died tragically in a helicopter crash, just after the pair had recorded their first album together; his priorities changed. Jimmie Vaughan’s first solo album, 1994’s Strange Pleasure (which contained the Stevie Ray tribute, ‘Six Strings Down’) was the gateway to a new era of the guitarist’s life, an era which has extended and extended, an era still going. Indeed, this is his era, and things are different now. “When I first started playing, I was in a band that was really working, we were making money,” he recalls. “We had to play some of the Top 40 stuff… we were playing at colleges and people like that, they wanted to hear certain things. But now, I get to make a record and just play whatever I want to hear. And usually, there’s fans there that like the same kind of thing. That’s the difference.” ***

Vaughan’s latest release is Baby, Please Come Home (May, 2019). It is, in a sense, a tribute album, continuing a trend he’s been toying with over recent releases, “a series of albums dedicated to the songs he’s always held in high esteem, recorded by artists that inspired him from his very earliest days of performing.”

2020

(On how he managed to distil to a mere eleven tracks songs which have had such an influence on him, he says it’s relatively easy – first, does he like the song? Second, can he sing it? He and the band then “try a lot of stuff, and if it works we keep doing it, if it doesn’t work we don’t do it.”) So Baby, Please Come Home is a tribute, a paean to the players who’ve had a role, no matter how small, in shaping this iconic player. What’s interesting about the track choices then, and if you’re familiar with the music of Jimmie Vaughan it’s not that surprising, is the range of influence. Yes, the blues is there. It’s there in Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown’s ‘Midnight Hour’ and Jimmy Reed’s ‘Baby, What’s Wrong’. It’s there in Chuck Willis’s ‘What’s Your Name’ and T-Bone Walker’s ‘I’m Still In Love With You’. But there’s also R&B, jazz and soul (Lloyd Price, Etta James and Bill Doggett), doo-wop (Richard Berry) and country and folk (Lefty Frizell and Jimmy Donley). It’s a mixed bag of influence, all done over with Vaughan’s trademark brush. “I do a lot of old, what they call hillbilly songs,” he explains, on something he’s always done, not just for this record. “But I do ‘em as if I didn’t know they were hillbilly.” “I love all that stuff… my uncles, when I was a kid, my uncles on both sides of the family were in hillbilly bands, they played country and western and all those kinds of things,” he goes on. “When I was a kid, I didn’t really understand the difference. I just think of it as American music, country music, blues, it’s all the same thing, really.” Technically then, Jimmie Vaughan isn’t really a blues player – as was noted in a recent review of Baby, Please Come Home, “Vaughan completely ignores modern electric blues trends… the past is present and future.” So, what does he call himself? “People call me blues, and they understand what it is, so I say yes,” he shrugs. “But if you ask me what I’m doing, I’m just playing songs that I really like and that I remember from when I was a kid. And once in a while we write one, which sounds like the old ones.” He breaks off his thought to laugh, like it’s funny this music has so seeped into his psyche that he can’t help but write like the music he knows and has known his entire life. “You know, really I’m just doing what I love, that’s what I’m doing. And everybody should do that, right? Everybody should do that; everybody should do what they love.” “It’s a lot of fun,” he then says, steering himself back on topic, still playing this music after more than half a century. “It doesn’t get old.” He’s right. While the man himself might be getting on in years, while his dogs may be barking louder and more often, the music itself, the playing of the music, the sharing of the music with as many people as Jimmie Vaughn has, does not get old. It’s the blues, and in Jimmie Vaughan’s hands, it just keeps on keeping on. Jimmie Vaughan plays the Byron Bay Bluesfest, April 9-13. For other dates, see the Gig Guide. Baby, Please Come Home is available now via The Last Music Co. 49

2020

STRIKING GOLD!

Having impressed everyone with his band Marcus King now releases his debut solo album. By Steve Bell

In his relatively short time amongst us Marcus King has already made a significant impact as the imposing, virtuosic guitarist fronting his titular Marcus King Band, the roots music which has coursed through his veins since childhood making him seem pre-ordained for the role. The son of a blues guitarist, King’s earliest memories are of sitting on his great-grandfather’s porch in South Carolina, surrounded by his entire extended family all fully engrossed in jamming on string instruments while they sang gospel songs and spirituals. By the age of eight he was already a dab hand on the guitar, he made his recorded debut at the age of 11 on one of his dad’s albums and the very next year he started his own band – one step after the other, all down the same inevitable path. Over the next decade King evolved quickly from a kid with pedigree and potential to a genuine prodigy. Still only 23-years-old, 50

he’s cut his chops touring with everyone from Tedeschi Trucks Band, Chris Stapleton and Gov’t Mule – he even got to play alongside guitarists like Jeff Beck and Buddy Guy at Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival – but it’s his own unique take on southern-fried jam rock that has struck a chord with crowds everywhere, courtesy his expressive guitar style and soulful vocals. When Rhythms catches up with the young musician he’s on the verge of ticking another milestone off any self-respecting roots musician’s bucket list, with King set to make his debut at fabled country institution the Grand Ole Opry in his adopted home of Nashville the very next day. “Hell yeah, man, I’m so thrilled! It’s kind of a long-time dream coming true. I’m nervous though. I kinda told them when they asked me how I was going to do the show, I said, ‘Well obviously I’m not going to go in and play like a jazz-fusion tune!’” he laughs uproariously “I try to cater to the audience a little bit, it’s the Grand Ole Opry and I’ve got some country-leaning songs that I’ll probably play.” We saw firsthand the diversity of King and his band’s palette when they played their inaugural Australian shows last Easter, the five-piece making a strong impact with their soulful, psych-tinged take on southern rock.

“Yeah man, I had a great time!” he enthuses. “I did a lot of cool stuff, I got a tattoo – two tattoos! – while I was over there! My girlfriend and I got matching horseshoe tattoos on our fingers which mean a great deal to us, we got those on the Gold Coast. “But we had a really fun time and everybody treated us with a lot of good love, man. We’re really excited to get back.” The highlight of this all-too-brief first Aussie sojourn was, of course, the band’s trio of well-received shows at Bluesfest, but despite his individual accolades from the festival it was opportunities to sit in with others that really defined the experience for King. “Yeah man, the hospitality was great,” he recalls. “It was my first time sitting in with Gary Clark [Jr] and it was also my first time playing with Lukas [Nelson], so I killed two birds with one stone when we got to jam together. “There’s a real spirit at that festival – both backstage and throughout the crowd – which just lends itself to collaborations, everybody’s trying to have a good time and there’s just this tangible camaraderie that’s really rare at those kind of events.” King also seems to enjoy a tangible and robust rapport with his four bandmates, something the guitarist puts down to having put in the hard yards together. “We’ve been together since 2013,” he explains. “Onstage is where we work the best, I prefer playing live. But lately I’ve had a lot of fun in the studio being able to do things in there and create magic which is difficult to recreate live. “But it’s a two-sided coin – it’s difficult to recreate a lot of things from a live setting in the studio, there’s an energy and buzz that you just can’t find anywhere else, man.” King is excited that on their 2020 return to Bluesfest his band will be armed with a swag of new songs from his brand new solo album El Dorado (his fourth long-player but first credited to Marcus King rather than the Marcus King Band). “Oh yeah, you’ll be hearing a whole new record,” he continues. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to say much about it but there will be a whole new bunch of songs for you. “I guess you can say that the new record is a little different, it’s something you can dance to a little easier, and it’s more song-driven and song-oriented and it has a backbeat, but it still has that same sauce that I always try to cook with.” El Dorado is available now. Marcus King appears at Bluesfest and is on tour.

Honour Thy Father! Dweezil Zappa follows in some big footsteps and pays tribute to father Frank’s classic Hot Rats album. By Steve Bell For years now talented US rocker Dweezil Zappa has been working hard to honour the huge legacy left behind by his pioneering father Frank – the legendary avant-garde musician and composer who sadly passed away in 1993 – by presenting his music in concert to fans young and old, newcomers and rusted on Zappa fanatics alike. When Frank’s seminal 1969 solo album Hot Rats – his second solo LP following the dissolution of his long-term band The Mothers Of Invention – turned 50 in late-2019, Dweezil set out to honour that album’s anniversary by recreating it in concert. It was, after all, released just a month after his birth and even dedicated to him in the liner notes, so all seemed perfectly aligned. Except for that fact that Hot Rats – on the surface – seems virtually impossible to cover, for a mere mortal at least. It’s not only the elder Zappa’s weirdly-virtuosic guitar playing that needs to be conquered, but also the fact that the album contains a bizarre concoction of studio trickery such as overdubs and tape manipulation as well as the incorporation of various random makeshift instruments such as a plastic comb and a mechanic’s wrench. “We’ve been doing it live for quite a while now actually,” Dweezil smiles. “It is a fan favourite album but it’s a very challenging record to bring to the stage because so much of what’s on the album is improvisational solo stuff, and we try to make the onstage stuff be evocative of the original but still give the ability to also improvise. “What that really means for me as a guitar player is that I have to sort of learn a lot of the things that my dad played on the record, and use that to develop my own kind of vocabulary that I can use to play in context to the music. My goal is to be able to play with a lot of my own ideas, but in a way that is still in context to the music and evocative of the era. “That’s been an ongoing development, but the other real challenge is that the record has such a distinctive sound and to try to recreate that and make it evocative of the record and the era itself requires a lot of work for the sound design and the front of house. “So, we’ve done a lot of things to make it as close as we can to the record and we don’t try to modernise any of it, we try to make

it sound as close to what it sounded like on the record.” Just striving to recapture the sound of that bygone era can prove problematic, even in this computer age. “Technology these days allows you to zone in on certain things,” Dweezil explains. “So much of the things we love about records that were recorded in the ‘60s or ‘70s or earlier is that the equipment that was used had a certain sound that was imparted to it, and some of it’s just that it has noise in it like tape hiss and distortion and other things that were needed at the time. “People were overloading things and doing things that ended up adding character to the overall sound, whereas so much of what is possible now is that you get pristine sounds which have less character. “So in the context of trying to recreate the album and do so live onstage a lot of the tools that were available at the time of the recording like tape machines and consoles that you would push pretty hard, in this world of software we can emulate a lot of those things and apply that to the sound. “So, our front of house engineer is actually learning a lot of things using virtual tape machines and all of these things to really compound the noise element that would have been there back in the day and to create that layer, that texture, which is

2020

reminiscent of that. We spent a lot of time to get those details in there.” While Frank’s sardonic, oftsurreal lyrics were so often one of his main strengths, Hot Rats is a predominantly instrumental collection that somehow manages to remain ultra-expressive. “It’s also the first record that really showcased his guitar playing and a heavyduty fuzztone guitar sound,” Dweezil offers, “so it was right in step with what was being developed with technology at that time – he was an early adopter of the fuzztone. “There’s a lot of layers going on in that which helps give him some more colours to be expressive with, but as far as I know with my research for the record it’s one of the first – if not the first – album with a stereo drum sound, that’s how far back we’re going. “Now stereo is ubiquitous but at that time it was a very new sound, and I think that’s one of the things that people really liked about the sound of that record overall that it has a certain depth to it that some of the other records purposefully didn’t have because new technology was allowing recording to change.” Dweezil Zappa is appearing at Bluesfest and touring.

2020

Enjoying The Trip Hop Morcheeba celebrate 25 years since the group’s formation

By Michael Smith It’s been 25 years since the brothers Ross and Paul Godfrey and singer Skye Edwards launched their music on the world under the banner of Morcheeba, which, we would eventually learn, was a compound of MOR – Middle of the Road – and cheeba, one of the multifarious synonyms for cannabis. Not that either really had anything to do with the music they were making together. Some bright scribe soon determined that was “trip-hop”, whatever that means. Twenty-five years on, one brother has moved on, Skye too moved on but returned, and Morcheeba continues to make the smoothest, most sensual music. Rhythms caught up with Ross Godfrey before Morcheeba’s visit to Bluesfest 2020. “I don’t think we’ve really changed very much,” Godfrey admits. “We’re still really into the same sort of stuff. I think the music you like as a teenager is the music that stays with you for the rest of your life. I still listen to the same stuff as I listened to then, and we still have the same influences, so there’s always a bit of a guitar riff or psychedelic thing, a blunted beat… I mean whenever we try and make music that’s what we sound like. It would be harder to make a record that didn’t sound like Morcheeba. I don’t think I’m a better guitar player than I was when I was fifteen, but I think I can work ProTools a lot better. We record most of our albums ourselves at home – I have a little studio in my house and Skye has one – and we kind of ping-pong things back to each other. We’ll occasionally go into a big studio to record strings or drums or something and then we get together and polish off a song.” The Morcheeba story began in 1995 when the Godfrey brothers – Paul was a DJ/producer – moved to London and met Skye, who was singing in a funk band, at a party and invited her to sing on some tracks they ‘d recorded. Signing to China Records, they released an EP titled Trigger Hippie in October, followed by a debut 52

album, Who Can You Trust?, that somehow seemed to suit the emerging trip-hop scene of the time with its mix of hip-hop, rock and soul. Their second album, 1998’s more pop-oriented, song-based Big Calm, broke the band internationally. June 2018 saw the release of their most recent album, Blaze Away. “We’re actually in the process of making our tenth album,” says Godfrey. “We’re about halfway through it – and it should be released in 2021, and it’s kind of odd because I’ve been doing this longer than I’ve not been doing it in my life, if you know what I mean, and it’s been very enjoyable. Skye and I always find enjoyment in the music when we’re making it and when we tour because we love playing it, so it’s nice that the songs have stood the test of time in our set. I would say though that we’re not so precious about trying to make it sound like the records anymore, so it’s our interpretations of the songs and how they sound best with a live band, but we don’t go to extremes and make them unrecognisable! “In the early days we used to try and make records that sounded like a really cool mixtape. The thread has always been Skye’s voice, which leads you through quite a wide choice of musical genres. We could play, like, country music and reggae, hip-hop and soul, blues, and if Skye sang on it, it would sound like a Morcheeba record. We do like lots of different kinds of music, and quite a lot of old music, singers like Nina Simone, and I like more ragtime blues. Actually, Skye grew up in a family that listened to a lot of country music, and quite strangely her favourite singers are Patsy Cline and

people like that. So, it’s brought kind of a weird palette to the table and it’s nice being able to draw upon things, especially old traditional music, like folk and blues. I think they’re always the roots of anything that’s got soul.” Morcheeba music has also been flexible enough to allow for the odd extracurricular musical collaboration, and Blaze Away is no exception. The album’s title and opening track, ‘Blaze Away’, features Roots Manuva, or Rodney Smith to his mum, who Morcheeba met when they shared the bill at a festival in Moscow. “I’d always really loved his music and his voice – he’s a very cerebral rapper. It turns out he only lives about a mile away from me in South London, so I got him to come round one morning and recorded the rap and it brought a whole new dimension, which gave it a kick up the arse. I think when we record, everything comes out kind of slow and mellow and reserved – it’s very polite – and when Roots came in it kind of kicked out the jams a bit more, and we’ve been wanting to bring some of the energy from the live show into the recording studio for a while, and that gave us the excuse to use some fuzzy guitars and jam it out a bit.” Then, in complete contrast, there’s French singer Benjamin Biolay, featured on a tune titled ‘Paris sur Mer’. “I was having a ‘stayin’ cocktail party with my wife one night,” Godfrey chuckles, “and we were talking about who was the best French male singer around at the moment and my wife said Benjamin was. We watched a few videos and I think Skye had seen him and liked his music, so we got in touch and he said, ‘Come over to Paris next week and we’ll do a recording.’ So, we just jumped on the Eurostar, went into the studio, drank about five bottles of red wine and sorted the song in an afternoon! He even managed to teach Skye to sing the backing vocals in French and it worked out really well.” Of course, whether future European collaborations will prove as easy post-Brexit must remain a moot point. As well as performing at Bluesfest 2020, Morcheeba will be playing 170 Russell in Melbourne April 7 and the Enmore Theatre in Sydney April 9.

New Grass! Finland’s Steve ‘N’ Seagulls take heavy rock to another dimension. By Michael Smith It’s not a new idea by any means, as they’ll readily admit themselves. After all, our own Fargone Beauties were doing something along these lines back in 1989, while America’s Dixie Hayseed took it to the top of Australian charts in 2001. But there’s something about this five-piece that started out in a little city in central Finland called Jyväskylä, where the various members were either studying music at university or generally gigging around the place, that is, well, really endearing – and if you check out their clips on YouTube – very funny! Their 2014 version of AC/DC’s ‘Thunderstruck’ has already clocked up over 94 million views. Not bad for something that actually started out as a bit of sideproject fun. So, will you please welcome Steve ‘n’ Seagulls – yes, you know who they’re “referencing”. Lead singer Tomi Tajakka aka Irwin Remell – and yes, that’s another comical reference, one for the WWII buffs – took the call from Rhythms to explain it all. “It’s been a surprise,” Tajakka, who also plays acoustic guitar, balalaika and mandolin, admits, “but we’ve been happy with it and since it took off we’ve been working really hard with the band, so we’re

happy that we can go around and play music and maybe have people appreciate the old classics but in our way.” When he talks about the “old classics”, Tajakka is talking about Iron Maiden, Guns’n Roses, Rammstein, Pantera, Metallica, Motörhead and of course AC/DC – they are, after all, kids of the ‘90s. But, like Dixie Hayseed, they’ve translated those “classics” into their idea of all-acoustic bluegrass. “I think the acoustics came along maybe in 2000, after getting more into country or Americana music. For myself, I think musicians like Neil Young have shown me the beauty of the acoustic side in rock music. So, I think after we grew up a little we found these instruments too, but it’s true – a lot of us have a background in metal music or stuff like that. It’s one of the cool things in this band that, with each album we try to find a little bit of new sounds and new instruments and right now we are working on our fourth album. I’m kind of staying boring this time – I might stay with the same ones – but Hiltunen (that’s Wild Till Hiltunen – accordion, kantele, mandolin, keyboards and flute to date) is the first one who is picking up new instruments.” No one today underestimates the power of social media. Within a few weeks of uploading their first video, of Iron Maiden’s ‘The Trooper’, Steve ‘n’ Seagulls were being courted by one of Europe’s biggest booking agents. Since then, they’ve released three albums – they were working on album number four when we spoke, half of which will be original – and have toured heavily through Finland, of course, as well as

2020

Germany, Switzerland and France and have chalked up seven or eight – Tajakka isn’t sure – tours of the States, and even played festivals in South America. “It’s been really nice,” he understates. “I have a feeling that the Americans are happy with the fact that there are some bands that are kind of somehow breathing new air into this music that is really strong in the history of that country. There’s kind of a scene that you could call maybe ‘New Grass’ or something like that, bands that using a similar instrumentation but doing a little bit new things with it. So I feel that people have been really happy that we are doing something new with their tradition.” Of course, another cultural and musical “tradition” Steve ‘n’ Seagulls have explored extensively is Aussie Pub Rock, as expounded by AC/DC. They even dubbed their 2017 tour of Europe ‘It’s a long way to the top’, which they covered on their 2016 album, Brothers in Farms. “AC/DC had so many true classics. I remember when I was a kid, the first time I heard The Razor’s Edge album and then Back in Black, yeah, that was something else! Sometimes I think straightforward rock’n’roll or rock music, which is considered to be easy or whatever, I think it’s the opposite. It’s cool music – I really like it. So many great bands have come out of Australia.” For all the glorious silliness that abounds in their YouTube clips, these five fine young Finns are serious about their craft. The silliness really is left to the clips, and the between-songs banter. “I really like that part of this stuff,” Tajakka admits. “I think it’s a good mixture and perhaps that’s why a lot of people feel that we’re kind of easy to approach. People really like to come over to the merch desk after we play and chat, have a beer and maybe ask about Finland. We really work hard on the music and all that stuff, work really to make it sound good live, but also we love to have fun with songs. A lot of the videos are shot at the home farm of our accordion player (the aforementioned Hiltunen) or close by. We go there, light up the barbecue, maybe have a few beers and then a friend of ours comes over with a camera, and usually our live sound guy comes in with microphones and stuff like that and we start figuring out what to do. So there’s a lot of improvisation.” Steve ‘n’ Seagulls play Bluesfest in Byron Bay 9 through 12 April, having performed at the Perth Festival March 1. 53

2020

The Italian (Blues) Job

Italy’s biggest rock star has just shared a bill with Eric Clapton and U2 and shares a producer with the Rolling Stones. By Michael Smith The biggest rock star Italy has ever produced, Adelmo ‘Zucchero’ Fornaciari has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, won numerous awards, including two World Music Awards and six IFPI Europe Platinum Awards, recorded and performed with pretty much everyone who is anyone, from the late Luciano Pavarotti to Sting and Bono to the late Miles Davis, and continues to write, record and tour the world when he’s not at home in his farm in Pontemoli in Tuscany, where he grows olives and makes his own olive oil), as well as Buffalo cheese, wine and other things. Zucchero is coming to Australia straight from a charity show at London’s O2 Arena, the only Italian artist, sharing the bill with, among many, Eric Clapton, Tom Jones, Mick Hucknall, Mike Rutherford, Bonnie Tyler and Paul Young, performing to raise funds for the Royal Marsden Cancer Charity. As well as participating in Bluesfest 2020 and playing a couple of concerts in his own right, he will be showcasing his latest album, D.O.C., which was, once again, produced by American, Don Was, with whom he has worked on and off for the past 15, since his 2006 album, Fly. I wondered what was it about his previous body of work that attracted you and what do you feel he brought and continues to bring to your own music? “Don is a great producer,” Zucchero explains, in answer to a Rhythms Q&A, “and my brother in blues and web work very well together. So for my new album, D.OC., why change a great working formula?! I did the pre-production in my studio and then I did recording sessions with young indie-like producers and musicians from various different countries, such as Nicholas Rebscher (Germany), Joel Humien (Sweden), Ian Brendon, Scott & Mark Jackson (America), Steve Robson (UK) and Eg White (America) – this all merged together under mine and Don’s direction.” What was driving you – motivating you, inspiring you – as a songwriter, for this latest collection of songs on the D.O.C. album? Was there a theme you felt needed addressing? Obviously, behind ‘Spirito Nel Buio’ was the idea of passing on the flame – of love, of hope, of humanity, of compassion – from one person to another, one culture to another, one generation to another – is that idea what binds all the songs together? 54

“It’s very much my album in the intimate sense. The eleven tracks on D.O.C. reflect my current state of mind, what I think and feel more freely and directly than in the past. There’s a feeling of a return to social commitment that reflects the way in which I try and live my private life. The freedom we’ve lost, that we’ve forgotten yet believe we’ve achieved. But in reality it’s not like that. Just look at the new political scenarios around the world, social media, economic wars and other conflicts, climate change, migrants, the Amazon Forest. What I’m talking about on D.O.C is genuine and authentic; I’m talking about this day and age, about how we’re being invaded by surface appearances, by what’s ‘cool’, by fake by petty-minded respectability and at the same time by frustrations, the underlying pain of living and new forms of loneliness. That is embodied in ‘Spirito Nel Buio’ as well as the other tracks.” You’ve collaborated with quite a few of the world’s biggest musical stars, both in the rock/pop and the classical/opera world. How do you choose the artist with whom you will collaborate for a song idea you’re developing? Was Frida Sundemo the obvious choice for a collaborator on ‘Cose Che Gia Sai (Don’t Let It Be Gone)’? “Some of the musicians I’ve collaborated with in the past are friends, fellow musicians and artists I respect. Somebody from the label sent me the song ‘Things You Already Know’, which I loved and I wrote an Italian lyric ‘Cose Che Gia Sai’, which Frida loved. Then when I heard her voice I thought it

would sound well with mine so we did the duet. I am very happy with it.” You’ve spent quite a bit of time in the US over the years, living in San Francisco in 1975 and then briefly in 1984, and have, of course, recorded albums there, including D.O.C., yet you’ve opted to write and record primarily in Italian. Was that always the plan? “I am Italian; that is my first language. I have sung songs of course in English and other languages – Spanish for instance but Italian is my heritage.” D.O.C. was recorded at Henson Recording Studios in LA, the old A&M Studios. Was that the obvious choice? What was the atmosphere like? “We did the pre-production at my studio as I mentioned above and then did the recording sessions in other countries but for the final production we went to A&M’s old studios Henson in LA. I have recorded there before so I know the studio has a great vibe.” It’s not everyone who can boast having a replica of the legendary LA House of Blues as their personal rehearsal room! Do you also host the odd concert there? “Ha (Laughs) – no I don’t do concerts there but I sometimes use it to rehearse with my band before going out on tour – it’s a wonderful space to have.” Zucchero will be performing at the Enmore Theatre, Sydney Saturday April 4, The Palais Theatre, Melbourne Tuesday April 7, and Bluesfest in Byron Bay Thursday 9 & 11 April. His latest album, D.O.C, is out now through Universal.

PREVIEW After 14 years, Boogie is about to offer its final instalment. Festival Director Brian Taranto writes about the festival’s history. Boogie started as an idea at the really hot Meredith festival around 14 or 15 years ago. Trying to stay cool in the oppressive heat, three of us wondered what an intimate, all-inclusive festival (food, booze and camping included in ticket price) might look like. Cocktails, curated snacks, great music, not many people etc. Larry (Richard Thomas/Boogie partner) said, “Well, I’ve got the small family farm in Yannabil,” and I said I had Tony Joe White touring at Easter, and four months later, Boogie happened. I believe I came up with the name in a second, “Let’s just called it Boogie.” We had been grooving to that great line in Elton John’s Bennie & The Jets “Hey kids, shake it loose together.” So, the latter part of that line was added as our motto. Boogie – Shake It Loose Together. Yannabil, Easter 2007. We didn’t really tell many people, and we didn’t advertise, so the first one ended up being like a grown up 21st. Friends, family and a few ring ins. About 50 people. We had some high -profile party people there though, and the scene was set for the years ahead. Sadly, the week after the event, Larry’s family decided they needed to sell the farm! After the sale we meet with the new owner with a view to maybe continuing on that site. After us telling him of our dream location and what it would have, where it would be located and all that, he says, “Well, I may just have the place for you.” Enter Bruzzy’s Farm in Tallarook. We drive up there and meet Bruzzy and he shows us around our dream location, all set up for a rough and ready festival, an hour out of Melbourne, close to train line etc. The farm had been set up for events but had only had one over 10 years earler. When asked why he set the place up for such events, Bruzzy replied, “We were waiting for you!”

So, there we go - new site. Being idiots, we think we can throw two festivals in a year, so we hold Boogie 2 on the Melbourne Cup weekend. Once again, we forget to tell people, don’t advertise and about 50 people show up. It was a bloody good time though. Bob Log, Even, The Sand Pebbles and the first appearance of Boxwars – and, once again, the all-inclusive ticket with food, booze and camping included…this time with a free return train ticket! Then we thought about things a bit. It was Boogie 3, Easter 2008. We get lucky and we get smart. Once again Tony Joe White plays. We have Dan Auerbach from The Black Keys on his only solo tour and we nab rising legends across of Melbourne, Eddy Current Suppression Ring plus seven other acts, DJs and extra-vibe entertainers. We limit the capacity to 500, but only sell 323 tickets but the legend is set. It’s now not

an all-inclusive ticket but you do get free train travel to and a stretch limo collection and drop off at Tallarook station to try to help Mother Earth. The festival is raucous, loose, magical. We still didn’t advertise or tell many people, but word is starting to spread. From then on until now, it’s been just a colourful ride of professionally orchestrated mayhem. We extended the festival to 3 days, which if you have ever been to Boogie, you know is a real commitment, but it really does transform the place into an alternative reality. You see people all over the world in a Boogie shirt and you know they know. People hug me in the street who I don’t know, but I know they have been to Boogie. It’s a movement, it’s an unintentional cult. Oh, and we have great bands too. With my connections we have been able to secure large or well-known acts for small fees and introduce many up and coming bands to new audiences and bring back old favourites at will. It’s an eclectic musical mix on the main stage of rock, garage, country, show bands, folk and very little electro or hip hop! A number of years back we started the late night Hillybilly stage which floats into the early morning with all kind of future sounds. The Gothic clubhouse has also started to host bands and karaoke amongst a kids’ concert and high tea offerings. And who knows what else pops up around the site. Endless Boogie in a shearing shed at 2am to 43 rammed people. We’ve done that. It’ll be sad to say goodbye to Tallarook but it feels like our time there is done. We’ve certainly had some sweet dances tough. Who knows if and when and where Boogie may rise again. Certainly, we don’t. 55

PREVIEW

GREAT CITIZENS!

Cash Savage and The Last Drinks’ live shows are legendary and their latest album By Jo Roberts What is it that European fans tell Cash Savage that they love so much about her band, the Last Drinks? There is an English word some of them struggle to find when they try to tell her. When they can’t find it, they start to rub their hand up and down the skin of their arm. “It’s not the kind of word you learn in English class or whatever,” says Savage from her Melbourne home. “It’s when they try to tell us, they’ll say, like ‘it’s a bird and it’s little bumps’. So, they’ll often say the word [in their own language] and then try to explain it. And now I can tell they’re about to say it because they start running their hands over their skin. So, that’s what we get [told] the most – goosebumps.” As far as compliments from fans go, it’s hard to beat that one. “Oh it’s massive,” agrees Savage. Still, fans openly weeping at shows must also be right up there too. “In different parts of the world, it’s not uncommon for people to cry at our shows. Including men, which is awesome,” she says. “The first few times it started happening, we were taken aback at how different people are in touch with their emotions.” The audience tears began to appear after the release of the band’s emotionally devastating third album, One of Us (2016). “That’s a real tearjerker, that one, so it usually happens around Run With the Dogs (the album’s second track),” says Savage. “It’s this beautiful thing. I guess we elicit quite an emotional response overseas.” You don’t forget the first time you see Cash Savage and the Last Drinks perform. They’re that sort of band. In this writer’s case, it was the 2016 Out on the Weekend festival at Seaworks. They slotted in to the Americana/alt-country feel of the festival perfectly with their shadowy

country-blues, but brought so much more besides; there was something primal, even menacing about them. Perhaps Savage took a tip or two from her late Uncle Conway’s old band, the Bad Seeds. She commanded the stage, prowling one moment, strutting the next, at times grinning broadly as she surveyed the crowd. Then, the band all leaned in toward each other, building a low, slow, gutteral riff to a steady crescendo. Their backs lifted and fell as one, as if all were propelled by a shared heartbeat.

the birth of her daughter (to wife Amy Middleton), and very sadly the deaths of both her uncle, Conway Savage, and his mother – her grandmother.

Yep, there they were. Goosebumps.

The events of the past two years will undoubtedly help shape the next album. As will Savage’s hunger to keep evolving as an artist, as her earlier Americana influences continue to make way for her own creative voice.

It’s little surprise that the world is catching on to Cash Savage and the Last Drinks. At the 2017 Music Victoria awards they were nominated for best live band, but on the back of their acclaimed fourth album, 2018’s Good Citizens, they secured their first Best Band nomination at the 2019 awards, along with a nomination for best song for the album’s title track. They’ve also been longlisted three times for the Australian Music Prize. Good Citizens also featured prominently in The Guardian Australia’s best-of album list of that year. And for good reason; songs such as the majestic yet restrained plea for more empathy and less focus on the next big weekend, ‘Better Than That’, the withering takedown of toxic masculinity in the mesmerising ‘Pack Animals’, and the closing lament for a dying planet, ‘Collapse’, were each magnificent showcases for Savage’s increasingly diverse songwriting craft (‘Pack Animals’ even made it onto a Berlin radio station’s top 100 songs of the decade list. Lyrically, Savage doesn’t hold back; she writes what she sees and what she feels, within in her own circle and looking outward to an increasingly broken world. Since the recording of Good Citizens, she’s had three major life changes; joyfully,

“I always just write how I feel,” says Savage. “But there’s a LOT of feels going on at the moment, there’s a lot of stuff going on and right now it feels like that the deaths and the births are the most normal things in my life, you know what I mean? Everything else around us seems so … things aren’t right in the world.”

“I really like how every album is different,” says Savage. “The last album actually had quite a country song written for it, but it got cut. And that was a big decision for us to not put that on there. It wasn’t up to shape, but it meant we had no traditional country songs on there. “I’ve already made a country album y’know; I don’t like to repeat myself. All the albums have been recorded in different studios, we do stuff a bit different each time. I just don’t want to do the same thing twice.” What has remained the same is that, apart from the 2010 debut album, Wolf, each album has been produced by original Last Drinks member Nick Finch and engineered by Japanese-born, Melbourne-based Nao Anzai, who now also mixes the band live. “I just really loved the heavier albums he’d engineered,” says Savage. “He normally mixes really heavy bands and I didn’t want to take an engineer in for [second album] The Hypnotiser that was going to mix us like a country band. We just love him.”

The Last Drinks have continued to enjoy a floating lineup since the band was formed in 2009 by Savage, Finch and guitarist Joe Smith (also of Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, who Anzai also engineers recordings for). It often shifts back and forth from six to seven members (current headcount: seven). Finch was there at the start as a keyboardist (he and Savage also played in their first band together as 15 year-olds) – but he has stepped in and out of the Last Drinks to focus on his other band, the gritty chain-gang blues-rock of Graveyard Train. He returned to the Last Drinks two years ago on bass. It’s fairly untraditional, but that’s the sort of band the Last Drinks are. In fact, another anomaly may be the secret to the band’s legendary live shows – unless they are getting ready to make a new record, they don’t rehearse. “We’re playing this weekend and we haven’t played together in a month,” says Savage. “I hate rehearsing. “The musicians are all so good that if they make a small mistake, no one would notice.

Or maybe they’ll change a part and do something different, and we’ll get off stage and say ‘that was awesome, we should do that.’ So that will stay.” It’s clearly working for them. The Last Drinks have so far toured Europe five times, but as testament to their growing popularity, this year they’re going there twice – in May and again in September, playing rooms ranging from 400 to 700 capacity. “Sometimes smaller,” says Savage. “We’re playing a 450 venue in France coming up, last time we were there we sold it out.” It’s also a further testament to the strength of the band as a unit that six or seven of them can travel and tour so much together and still get along. Europe is a shared love for all of them. “I just love it. I love going there. I love eating the food, I love drinking the drink, chatting to people,” says Savage. “And the whole band is like that, they’re all really similar to that, they all love travelling, they all love the people.” Savage and the Last Drinks fiddle player, Kat Mear, have even started going to weekly French lessons. “I learned a bit of

Czech as well,” says Savage. “There was one time we were in a [Czech] restaurant and I started to order everyone beers and then they brought out the Czech menus and I went ‘no no no! I’m very flattered but I can’t read this’.” Somewhere in between the European tours, the Last Drinks will begin work on their fifth album. An fans might get a glimpse into a little of what it may hold it if they see the band at one of the handful of Australian dates they have coming up; Savage doesn’t like to sit on songs once they’re written – they get roadtested. Two new songs are being tried out at the moment, with one looming as a likely new single later in the year. Both are recorded, but one is planned to be re-recorded; Savage says the band has improved the song so much since it was recorded that its newer incarnation needs to be captured. “We had to sort of do it to hear it properly for what it is,” she says. “So now we’re doing it differently.” Cash Savage and the Last Drinks play Boogie Festival at Tallarook on Friday April 10 and will also appear at The Gumball. Full tour dates at cashsavage.com.au.

DASHVILLE.COM.AU/GUMBALL

By Meg Crawford Fresh off the back of adventures abroad, at the tender age of 21 The Gum Ball festival director Matt Johnston awoke one morning to an epiphany. After spending time at music festivals abroad and locally as a performer and punter, he was convinced that he needed to turn his hand to it himself on home turf – quite literally home turf in this case. The Gum Ball convenes on his folk’s property Dashville, so named after Johnston’s dad Dash. It was an ambitious undertaking, but Johnston’s proved himself equal to the task given that it’s now 16 years later, and while other music festivals have come and gone, The Gum Ball’s a stayer. That it was destined to become a festival favourite was probably always on the cards given The Gum Ball became legend even in its first year. Specifically, iOTA featured (pre-Mad Max) and Bomba (Nicky Bomba’s side project from the Melbourne Ska Orchestra) led a conga line through the bush that kicked on until the wee hours. Johnston might have taken a bath that year financially, but it was worth it.

The next few years, although equally fun, saw the festival beset by local pushback and bureaucracy, leading to everything from relocating briefly to an attempt to fly under the radar by making the event by invitation only. However, despite ongoing challenges, Johnston never caved. So, what gave him the pluck to persist? “I don’t really know where it comes from, but I do know that when I travelled overseas and I was on my own for quite some time, I did have a good opportunity to find who I was as a person and when I decided to host this event there was never anything more clear in the world,” Johnston says. “This was something I’d been put here to do and everything else is just an obstacle course to get through to get to where… well, I still don’t know where I’m going. After a couple of years, I even had a tenyear plan. It was like, ‘I give this ten years and it’s either going to ruin me or I’ll make it through’.” Happily, Johnston more than made it through. In fact, from around 2009 The Gum Ball hit it straps as he and his crew found a winning formula and stuck to it.

With the benefit of hindsight, Johnston attributes the festival’s ongoing success partly to the fact that it has grown organically, and word-of-mouth has attracted a legion of loyal fans. In fact, it’s now almost par for the course that The Gum Ball attendees return annually (check out The Gum Ball’s webpage, which sports tales of its “legends” – so-called Gum Ballers, some of whom have returned for now over a decade). “It’s almost this annual pilgrimage,” Johnston explains. “A lot of those people have been to a lot of festivals too. I get this consistent feedback that The Gum Ball is how festivals used to be in the seventies. It’s just relaxed, everybody’s there to have a good time, and people are respectful of each other.” That this is just one of a number of music festivals (including the twang-driven Dashville and its heavier cousin Thrashville) run by Johnston and co. at the family property is testament to the fact he knows what works festival-wise. For instance, the infra-structure for the accompanying campground is permanent and the bands play one at a time (a luxury for festival regulars). Plus, often described as a miniWoodford, The Gumball takes its familyfriendly vibe seriously. In fact, last year saw the introduction of a creche, which runs up until 11.30pm, opening a window of opportunity for gig-goers with kids that may not exist otherwise. As always, the three-day weekender’s lineup is a stellar mix of fresh talent and certified legends, featuring everyone from Ripple Effect Band (an indigenous rock band from Arnhem Land) to Dyson Stringer Cloher, Cash Savage & The Last Drinks and The Church, as well as iOTA, who’s returning for the first time since The Gum Ball’s debut. With the festival’s capacity capped at 2500, it’s an opportunity to catch some perennial and soon to be new favourites in intimate setting, with a bush backdrop. “We program the entertainment and that pretty much signifies that everyone there is someone I can’t wait to see,” Johnston notes. He pauses for a second. “We don’t book any shit bands.” Gumball takes place from Friday April 24 – Sunday April 26 in Belford, in the middle of the Hunter Valley, NSW.

DASHVILLE.COM.AU/GUMBALL

Irish singer Susan O’Neill has had some interesting comparisons made about her voice. Australian festival-goers will be able to judge for themselves. By Brian Wise Comparisons are often difficult for musicians to live up to, so when Susan O’Neill hears herself being mentioned in the same breath as Janis Joplin (along with Amy Winehouse and Florence Welch) she admits that she finds it odd given that she was a late convert. “I actually really only got into Janis Joplin in my later years because everyone kept comparing me to her,” she confesses. What sort of singers was she actually listening to when she was young? “A little bit of everything,” she says. “I loved Joni Mitchell - I thought she was fantastic. I really liked Gun’s N’ Roses actually. I liked rock, but I was into classical music as well. I was into some African choir music.” I would listen to band music. It was very, very eclectic and it wasn't always necessarily vocalists as well. Simon and Garfunkel were two big favourites of mine when I was younger. And then my mother had some lovely Irish singers and ballads and Dad was much more into the kind of rock scene and The Beatles. I guess it's become even more diverse as the years have gone on and now, I can't pronounce half the people in my Spotify playlist.” O’Neill hails from the small town of Ennis in County Clare and became one of the youngest members of the Ennis Brass Band, gaining her first gospel influences with the Really Truly Joyful Gospel Choir. Later, she got a degree in music as she developed her solo career – singing, playing guitar and trumpet and using loops - as well as guesting with festival favourites King Kong Company and Propeller Palms, along with touring with Sharon Shannon (who invited SON to join her on a sold out tour of Australia and New Zealand last year). “I started in the brass band when I was really young,” explains O’Neill. “It's an

PHOTO CREDIT: STEVE FORD amazing service that is available to people in Clare because they teach you, they take you for two or three nights a week and they teach you for free. They're just so glad to have new members. They teach you how to read music, and to play an instrument. It was in the brass band that I became really aware of how much fun it was to share music with people and how music has the ability to change the mood. I could go in there tired after school and you leave feeling completely different or revitalized. I guess that sense of community is involved in it as well. As I got into my mid-teens I really started to explore with the voice and start singing. I fell in love with vocal harmonies. So, I begged the gospel choir leader to let me in. It was an over 18s choir [but after an audition] she let me in, just as I was turning 16. So, I fell in love with gospel choir.” O’Neill released her debut album, found myself lost, at the end of 2016 and has been working on a new album, recorded at Peter Gabriel’s Real World Studios in Bath, which should be out in time for her current visit here. “I play an acoustic guitar, but I hook it up to a loop pedal,” O’Neill explains when I ask her about what we can expect from her on tour this time. “Actually, I use a pedal that is designed for an electric guitar. So, I kind of have that folk sound, but sometimes it kind of merges a little bit into some other territory. I use a loop pedal for creating the sound of a beach, and some other kinds of

vocal techniques. So, it's kind of like folk, but definitely there's a bit of a modern twist in there. I'm using electronic, kind of, fun little tools.” O’Neill decided to use the stage name SON, using her initials to create a new presence. “It's kind of got a double meaning because to be honest,” she explains. “I was a little bit of a tomboy when I was younger, in the sense of, I guess I was happiest when I was outside - and possibly still do wear some, from time to time boys clothes anyway, those big loose, baggy clothes - and I guess getting mucky and dirty and playing. I find it's really nice to have another identity because you can separate yourself a little bit from it, but nothing really sat with me. So, then this really just allowed me to stay very close to reading my name while also having something else to play on. You know, a new identity.” I point out that it is probably handy in Australia to have another stage name, so no-one confuses her with our very famous former Olympic swimmer called Susie O'Neill. “I know,” she laughs. “Actually, I've heard about her from a few people, so it's probably good to have that. My swimming is less than decent!” Susan O’Neill, SON, will be appearing at The Blue Mountains Folk Festival, March 13-15 and The Gumball, April 24-26. 59

DASHVILLE.COM.AU/GUMBALL

By Steve Bell For much of the time since his second album Steve Smyth could be found happily ensconced in his new adopted home of Barcelona, still working hard on the live front around Europe and beyond but playing his cards close to his chest as far as new material was concerned. Now, with the release of his strong new five-track collection Blood, the wait is finally over. It’s the first instalment from four consecutive EPs – Blood, Matches, Fractures and Celebration – that will eventually unite into a personal tale of catastrophe and redemption. “I recorded [Blood] a couple of years ago, and I’ve finally gotten the balls now to release it,” Smyth admits. “I’m a big advocate of the album, but I was feeling that there wasn’t so much of that culture around anymore. There’s obviously still some bands where you want to devour a whole album and let it soak in, but I just wasn’t really feeling that there was still much culture around the album and that everything was single-driven. “And I was realising that in a time of Instagram stories and other social media that everything today is really instant, but the four EPs will ultimately end up being a double-vinyl so it’s still a story – it’s even actually a longer story than an album – but in the delivery it’s like a happy meal for everybody, easily devourable. “I just really wanted for it to be poignant and for each release to be strong – meaning every single song – and for people to have enough time to really feel that. This is a small entity of songs that really make sense in isolation under each title, but there’s a definite flow in delivery which will also really make sense in a couple of years once all four EPs are released.”

down to the environment: so, Blood was recorded in a church which ends up acting as an echo chamber, and it’s very solemn. There’s an embrace about it that I hope people feel, a sincerity. “Being in an environment where there’s been a lot of penitence and confessions, even though I’m an atheist there’s a warmth there in the cold walls of a cathedral – that sound was exactly what I was searching for. “The next three are very different both in the sound and musically, I don’t want to divulge much yet apart from saying that they’re instrumentally quite different and

lyrically it’s moving through a process of loss – the five phases of grief – and a renewal of one’s self.” Throughout Blood the church’s natural acoustics are perfectly augmented by subtle string and horn embellishments that add pathos to the aching, heartfelt songs. “It was a beautiful time,” Smyth recalls. “I was walking in my neighbourhood and I just stopped at the church and knocked on the door, and then a nun passed me onto a priest and I explained my idea and to my surprise – it didn’t really seem like he was very excited about it – he allowed me two days in the church, at times when there were no people coming through. “I flew into a chaotic rage – calling friends and getting all the gear together, picking up microphones from five different studios – and we hit it, it was really spontaneous. We were running through the songs and I was telling people the arrangements and their parts, and it was all cut in live takes – I think there’s an element of that you can hear in the recording. It was a really fun time, a nice couple of days.” And with Smyth on the verge of returning home for an Australian tour, he admits that the new material could re-open some pretty serious wounds. “One of the reasons that Blood hasn’t been released until now was that I wasn’t prepared to share it yet,” he reveals. “I knew that because I’ve been doing this for many years and never once have I got up there and been pretending, or trying to cover up anything or displaying some sort of act. It was something that I couldn’t actually physically do because of the emotional strain, but I’ve sat on it and time passes and now I feel strong enough to be in that place to share.

Understandably, splitting a large batch of songs into four distinct groups brought its own share of headaches.

“It was too raw, and obviously I was constructing this as the idea that I had and it cost me – I lost agents and I lost a label because I knew what I wanted to do and they didn’t agree.

“I tell you what, there’s a scrapbook filled literally with only song titles trying to work that out, I can laugh about it now, but it was doing my head in at the time,” the singer smiles. “It ended up coming

“There were sometimes where I thought that maybe I should just settle for other people’s opinions, but I stuck to my guns for better or worse and it feels right that it’s finally coming to fruition.”

BASEMENTDISCS [

NEW IN MARCH 2020 * ask if available on vinyl LP

• ALAN PRICE 'Your Life Is A Record' • CORNERSHOP 'England Is A Garden' • CREAM 'Goodbye Tour Live 1968' (4CD) • JIM LAUDERDALE 'When Carolina Comes Home Again'

• JAMES HUNTER SIX 'Nick of Time' • ROOMFUL OF BLUES 'In A Roomful of Blues' • KIM RICHEY 'A Long Way Back: The Songs

of Glimmer' • LILY HIATT 'Walking Proof' (John guests) • TAMIKREST 'Tamotait' • PEARL JAM 'Gigatron' • ELTON JOHN w.RAY COOPER 'Live from Moscow' • ROGER & BRIAN ENO 'Mixing Colours' • RORY BLOCK 'Prove It On Me' • JONATHAN WILSON 'Dixie Blur' • THE MASTERSONS 'No Time for Love Songs' • THE UNDERTONES 'West Bank Songs 78-83: A Best Of • AL DI MEOLA 'Across the Universe: The Beatles Vol.2 • CHAKA KHAN 'Homecoming (LIVE) • MARIA McKEE 'La Vita Nuova' • SNARKY PUPPY 'Live @ Royal Albert Hall' • THE SHIRES 'Good Years' • CARLA OLSON 'Have Harmony, Will Travel 2' • FREDDIE KING 'Blues Journey (3CD live tracks from 70s) • TONY ALLEN & HUGH MASEKELA 'Rejoice' • BELA FLECK 'Throw Down Your Heart: Complete Africa Sessions (3CD/DVD) • FRAZEY FORD 'U Kin B the Sun' • WATERMELON SLIM 'Traveling Man'

L IV E IN -S T O R E

IN-STORE G

I 13TH MARC ¯ CHARM OF FINCHES FR T 18TH APRIL CHECK WEBSITE

RECORD STORE DAY SA OD LIFE FRI 24TH APRIL ¯ TRACY McNEIL & THEY GO TH MAY ¯ TAMI NIELSON FRIDA FR15 Y ¯ WEEPING WILLOWS I 22ND MA WEBSITE FOR UPDATES @12.45 (lunchtime)

* CHECK

BASEMENT DISCS HIGHLY RECOMMEND LUCINDA WILLIAMS ‘Good Souls Better Angels’

LUCINDA WILLIAMS produced her latest album with husband TOM OVERBY and producer Ray Kennedy, who last worked with WILLIAMS on her 1998 album ‘Car Wheels on a Gravel Road’. The new album tackles human, social, and political issues of our day, fittingly with one song titled ‘Man Without a Soul’ a clear missive re Trump.

FRAZEY FORD ‘U Kin B the Sun’

The former BE GOOD TANYAS member continues the direction of her last album ‘Indian Ocean’ (recorded with house musicians from Memphis’ famous HI RECORDS), further developing her version of southern soul – but fills it with strife from relationship breakdowns to gun issues. Getting rave reviews everywhere!

JIM LAUDERDALE ‘When Carolina Comes Home Again’

Returning to his geographical and musical roots, his new 13-track bluegrass album pays homage to his native North Carolina and harkens back to the earliest music he learned to play. He’s been a busy man over last 2 years, touring constantly (includ Oz twice within 6 months!) & releasing this, his 3rd album, within that time.

JAMES HUNTER SIX ‘Nick of Time’

THE JAMES HUNTER SIX are back with another sublime offering of no nonsense R’n’B. ‘Nick of Time’ is a shining example of how a master song-smith can continually draw fresh water from a bottomless well. In addition to the uptempo, swinging R’n’B that has put JH6 on the map, this album explores so much more!

NEW RELEASES APRIL

• RUMER 'Nashville Tears: The Songs of

Hugh Prestwood' • GREGORY PORTER 'All Rise' • THUNDERCAT 'It Is What It Is' • M WARD 'Migration Stories' • THIEVERY CORPORATION 'Symphonik' • POKEY LA FARGE 'Rock Bottom Rhapsody' • WATKINS FAMILY HOUR 'Brother Sister' • RON SEXSMITH 'Hermitage' • TEDDY THOMPSON 'Heartbreaker Please' • LUCINDA WILLIAMS 'Good Souls Better Angels' (incl. 'Man Without a Soul' re D.Trump)

Live on!! Stage! S

JONATHAN WILSON ‘Dixie Blur’

CHECK OUR WEBSITE FOR EXPANDED NEW RELEASES LISTS!

The critically-acclaimed artist, multi-instrumentalist and producer (FATHER JOHN MISTY, LAURA MARLING, DAWES) spent most of 2017-18 on ROGER WATERS’ epic US+THEM tour as musical director, guitarist and vocalist, singing the DAVID GILMOUR leads. Following the tour, WILSON chose to temporarily leave his LA based home and studio and head to Nashville to work with a revered group of musicians and co-producer Pat Sansone of WILCO, to create ‘Dixie Blur’, his most personal, accessible and fully realised work to date.

OPEN 7 DAYS

24 Block Place Melbourne 3000 MAIL ORDER WELCOME PHONE 9654 1110 EMAIL info@basementdiscs.com.au WEB www.basementdiscs.com.au

By Mark Mordue There’s a dirty orange sun sinking over Marrickville. After two months of bushfires and smoke haze, another heatwave is coming our way. Soon 2019 will be over. The fires, the atmosphere, the time of year, intensify that melancholy feeling things are ending. But the slightest breeze in the afternoon connects me to a sixth sense there might still be some magic left in the world. At a venue called The Factory, I join an unusually busy line-up for an obscure band called The Barking Spiders. My wrist is stamped with what looks like a bird’s wing – and in I go, to a not-so-secret warm-up show by the legendary Australian group, Cold Chisel. Raceways, wineries, stadiums, sports events… these are Cold Chisel’s more usual stomping grounds these days. The band have just released Blood Moon, their ninth 62

Cold Chisel played a secret show in Marrickville, Sydney. It inspired memories of one of Australia’s great bands.

album, and are gearing up for what is touted, surprisingly, as their first-ever open-air summer tour. A highlight to come will be a huge show on Glenelg Beach in Adelaide, the town in which they formed, where thousands will welcome them back despite swirling winds and baking summer heat. Tonight is the dress rehearsal. Blood Moon is already being acclaimed as the band’s best album since the brightly produced, pop-inclined East (1980) and the ranging, muscular musical terrains of Circus Animals (1982). It could have appeared as a bridge between those two classics, though a nagging feeling persists this new recording is just a few songs shy of a truly great album. As always, the songs have the most power when the details in them get particular. The first single, ‘Getting the Band Back Together’ comes on with the confident swagger of old, and a typically suggestive criminal couplet: “Davo’s polishing an antique Strat / that no

musician could afford.” ‘Drive’ operates off the same ambiguities, “A little speed is what I need.” ‘Accident Prone’ is likewise full of excuses that you know the protagonist barely believes himself. ‘Killing Time’ is close to being operatic, seething with the energy of a mutually terminated relationship, exposing the murderous absolutes necessary to get the job done, with drought on a farm serving as the metaphoric landscape for a couple’s point of no return. Pleasure, morality, love, the law, the road, freedom… we’re moving across boundaries and doing what we want, can or must. At a press conference back in November for the new album and tour, the band’s “match fitness” is questioned. Singer Jimmy Barnes is feisty about having to assure everyone they will be ready. It’s been four years since their last album, The Perfect Crime, and the live shows that went with it. Deep down, Barnes knows Cold Chisel’s Mac truck intensity needs

a test run to make sure the engine is in full working order. The irony for big bands like Cold Chisel is that small venues, up close and personal, can push them in ways spectacular settings often don’t. Despite a savage bush fire season, and at least one show cancelled in the elemental horror of it all, the band will play on to titanic audiences and zealous responses the likes of which only giant acts can achieve. I’ve seen Cold Chisel now over 30 times. You won’t be surprised to hear that after I passed the 30 mark, I let my tally-keeping slip. Despite that, I can safely say this early secret show in Marrickville will only be second time I’ve seen them in the last three decades. Almost all the fanaticism I exhibited was during Cold Chisel’s first grand phase from 1976 through to 1983, or from when I was around 16 years of age till I turned 23. Yes, I saw some very big shows towards the end, but I always liked them best in a tight ring. 63

Nowadays, there’s a revisionist tendency from critics that sees bands like Cold Chisel as hegemonic FM-radio entities to be rebuffed or even expelled. This is history upside-down. Back in the day, no one was playing them or Midnight Oil on the commercial radio I was hearing. These bands succeeded by punching their way through, getting so big on the live circuit they could no longer be ignored. It’s fair to say they not only shifted the dial on radio for Australian content, they helped change how venues were being booked, and together with the varied likes of Dragon, The Angels and Rose Tattoo demanded more space for creative local acts that convincingly reflected their audience’s lives. My hometown of Newcastle has always had a proud hand in supporting tough, smart rock n roll bands. There’s no doubt Newcastle was essential to the early survival and success of AC/DC, Cold Chisel and Midnight Oil. AC/DC filmed their first video for ‘Jailbreak’ there; Chisel and the Oils were so frequently in town they became embedded as local heroes. The fact huge workers’ clubs and harddrinking, jam-packed surfie pubs were just two-hours’ drive north of Sydney helped make Newcastle very appealing and profitable to visit. Venues like the Mawson Hotel, Swansea Workers, Belmont 16’ Sailing Club, Wynns’ Shortland Room and the Cardiff Workers would be known to old supporters of Cold Chisel as thoroughly as Diggers might have once recalled the great battles of World War One.

I recite this background only to point out that Cold Chisel and the communities that loved them were the ones to make a change to the culture, not the forces that sought to control things from above – or the industry that belatedly crowned them. It may seem romantic, but their career was truly a case of the people and their champions going against the grain and winning a meaningful part of themselves back. Even if that victory was only temporary, as victories usually are. The terms of that ferocious bond were simple: speak for us; give us a good time when you play. Stand and deliver. Take a good look at a video on YouTube of the band performing at what were then the Countdown TV Week Australian Music Awards in 1981. Cold Chisel insisted on playing live, refusing to mime to a prerecorded track. They did this so they could bust open during their rendition of ‘My Turn to Cry’ to roar out a litany of venues they had built their career on, destroying the stage amid feedback, and rejecting the ceremony with Barnes’ thumping war cry, “And now you’re using my face to sell TV Week!” The band’s bluesy Led Zeppelin expansiveness, hard-rocking Free and Bad Company influences, and plain-spoken lyrical intelligence – sharpened on the songs of Bob Dylan and slyly sexual, aggressively stripped down ‘50s rock ‘n’ roll songs – were never in easy step with the punk era. Even so, the Countdown TV Week Awards performance was as revolutionary as things got in the Australian music industry. It’s yet to be

Barking Spiders 1983

Cold Chisel in studio - photo credit Daniel Boud 64

Getting the band back together lyrics topped as in-your-face F.U. gesture from a successful band here. Many talk; but few bite the hand that feeds them. Looking around at the age of the crowd tonight, I’d laughed to myself that there were plenty of rock ‘n’ roll Anzacs here who knew this history. Old and sometimes half-familiar faces who’d come out in force for their band. Even so, I was surprised at how much a good half of the crowd were so young – the children and the grandchildren of the original fans, as well as a measure of Cold Chisel’s iconic songs crossing any generation gaps. There’s a gratitude that comes with this and, yes, a little nostalgia. Cold Chisel gave me a language and a regard for my world that I might have otherwise lacked as a boy in late ‘70s Newcastle. The connections were there in the band’s outsider postures and poetic observations of working class life; in an apparently simple drinking song like ‘Cheap Wine’ that managed to be celebratory and down-at-heel at once; and, for a Newcastle lad like me, explicitly detailed in a semitrailer driving anthem like ‘Shipping Steel’, and ‘Star Hotel’, inspired by the city’s famed youth riot over a venue closing and boredom catching fire. I’d lived opposite the BHP and watched loads of steel shipped out and ripping illegally down my street; I’d been a regular at the Star when it was the only place to go in town. Be it a single line of lyric, or a whole song, Don Walker was open about actively writing for the communities that supported the band, returning each time with new songs that were their way of saying thank you to the crowd. When the protagonist of Khe Sanh talked of wandering “from the ocean to the Silver City”, everybody in Broken Hill knew what town he meant. ‘Breakfast at Sweethearts’ wasn’t a clichéd red-light story of the night, it painted Kings Cross

life in its morning-time, aftermath rhythms. ‘Four Walls’ is an object lesson in simplicity, almost an existential gospel song, every line measuring the nature of confinement in gaol, from a sharp mention of the Bathurst riots to the bare contents of a cell, and “calling time for exercise round Her Majesty’s Hotel / The maid’ll hose the room out when I’m gone.” In short, the band, and Walker especially as its main songwriter, was telling stories about places, people and experiences that no one else was articulating or bothering with. Tonight, I heard that connection in unexpected ways during ‘Khe Sanh’, the Don Walker-penned tale of a returned Vietnam vet who can’t settle down and find a meaning for his life. For a moment, it was as if the song’s feeling – rather than its story – knew me before I was old enough to fully know myself. Almost forty years after first hearing it live at the Mawson Hotel in Caves Beach, I suddenly found myself able to understand where a wild and restless spirit can wander into eternal loss. During the song, I was reeled back to memories of being at uni in Newcastle, to my first share house and our neighbour, a Vet whose friendly, but bottled-up energy was something we never knew quite how to handle. I remembered, too, the Anzac Day marches of my childhood, the crowds subsiding into quiet applause when the Vietnam vets came rolling down Hunter Street as part of the parade. This was not as a rejection of them, but an awareness of something deeply wrong. Appearing in a ragged congregation of denim, medals, reflector sunglasses, wild beards, wheelchairs and camouflage fatigues, they flaunted an alien and disorderly image that came from somewhere we could never understand or cover up with false nobility. Yes, they were back here; but they would never return home all the way. My mother would just shake her head and say, “those poor boys”. The idea Cold Chisel could give these men an anthem is spell-binding in the truest

Set List of ways. Jimmy Barnes would remember Walker working on the song for months, basing it on the conversations he had with two friends who’d fought in Vietnam. Walker finally wandered into rehearsal and told the band it was easy to do, let’s play it tonight. He was keen on it being a punk song, but the band leant towards a country-rock form. Walker knew they were right, adding his Duke Ellington inflected honky-tonk piano playing underneath. Jimmy Barnes had other problems to deal with. “It really was easy for them, because there are not many chords,” he said, “but for me it’s like a novel. I had to learn all the words that day!” Since then, ‘Khe Sanh’ has become so loved most Australians can sing it more accurately and passionately than our national anthem. And this despite the song being banned from radio for its lyrics when it first appeared due to its very casual references to sex and drugs. What is it that draws us as a nation to the abandoned and the damaged, to the prisoner, the dreamer and the underdog? What is it that makes songs like ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘How to Make Gravy’ and ‘Khe Sanh’ and ‘Flame Trees’ maps for who we are? The answers to those questions have a lot to do with not just Cold Chisel’s success, but the kind of love that embraces them. Tonight, Cold Chisel prove to be rusty and take a few songs to hit their stride. They make more mistakes than they should, and some new arrangements don’t quite

Barking Spiders Poster gel. To be honest, the start is just a mess. Guest musicians on honking baritone sax, and three backing vocalists (one of whom is Barnes’ daughter Mahalia), don’t always fit in smoothly either. Only Dave Blight, the band’s career-long harmonica player, is able to walk on like it was only yesterday. But much like going to see The Rolling Stones or the Sex Pistols, I don’t need Cold Chisel to be professional or perfect, I just want them to be great. And in the true spirit of great rock ‘n’ roll bands they deliver, standing on the shoulders of one giant song after another, fighting for, then roaring into life. It’s a little melancholy to see Cold Chisel showing their years, aged warriors all. I know from my teenage memories that tonight does not, and can never have, the same raging heat of the band’s early years – and this gives me a stubborn feeling that unless you were there, back then at the Mawson Hotel, there is no way you can understand how great they really were. But the band has something else in its favour that it has always had, and this has only grown stronger over the years – the love of an audience that sings with them in thanks for every song that now belongs to all of us. Jimmy Barnes and guitarist-singer Ian Moss joke about the crowd going so far as to sing over, and even ahead of them. Once or twice, when Moss or Barnes miss a cue or stumble on a line, the audience keeps them on an even keel. ‘Flame Trees’, ‘Four Walls’, 65

‘Standing on the Outside’ and ‘Khe Sanh’ feature in this ritual. There is no denying there is power in our union. Little details and pleasures emerge along the way. In a relatively small venue, the nature of Cold Chisel as a gang is made clear. In the age of ‘toxic masculinity’ it can be too easy to attack notions of ‘mateship’ when its spirit can also serve to enhance ideals like sensitivity, loyalty and communication. It’s one of the great things revealed by watching a fine rock ‘n’ roll band perform on a tight stage like this, each human part locking in to support the other. Male energy; good energy. The rhythmic Jerry Lee Lewis pound in Don Walker’s piano playing sharpens and pushes. Bassist Phil Small’s subtle, almost jazzinflected contributions surprise for their deft touch. The way Charlie Drayton has settled in on drums after the 2011 death of founding member Steve Prestwich shows sensitivity even now, almost a decade later, energising the band and keeping things strong without lapsing into hardness or rigidity. Dressed in black, Barnes prowls the stage like some heavy old panther, his scowling and pugnacious stance breaking open like sunlight every time he smiles and pulls the gaze of one band member or another towards him. Ian Moss stands to one side of the stage as always, a reserved, yet fluid force on vocals and guitar who keeps his lead breaks concise and inside each song’s needs. Once, or twice, a trace of slowness or stiffness in his fingers seems to force an error. Dripping with sweat, he pours onwards again. Barnes’ voice has lost some gravy and sweetness that will never return. The furious blues and soul spirit of old used to remind me of a rock ‘n’ roll Otis Redding. Nowadays, he makes surprising use of a higher register as his throats loosens, giving words and lines new dynamics and emphases. Any loss of natural ability is compensated by a more thoughtful and experienced singer who still knows how to tear into his moment. If anything, he is singing better now than a decade ago when his voice seemed shot to pieces. As Barnes warms up, the whole band starts rising to their game. Things just get stronger and stronger. On a night of many highlights it is ‘Wild Colonial Boy’ – Don Walker’s rewrite of the traditional Irish ballad – that stands out for its overwhelming, almost animalistic power. It comes over as the protest song it is, an affirmation of going-down-fighting energy rooted in the bush-ranging past from which 66

it originally stems, reframed by Walker as a present-day working man’s struggle to hold on to his “union card” and take no shit. The rebellion in it seems to grow out of the landscape itself: “I am just a wild colonial boy / My name you’ll never see / I breathe the silence that destroys / All their desperate harmony.” Barnes becomes that timeless rebel figure, a Robert De Niro figure of sorts to Don Walker’s song-writing Martin Scorcese. The songs are just stories, of course, but they come alive with vivid characters, voices and landscapes that many of us can recognise and even relate to. Barnes old jibe about ‘Khe Sanh’ being like singing a novel is spot on. Each song opens out in the mind like a world. The richness of the lyrics makes Barnes’ commitment even more impressive. He really is the songs when he sings them. I’m made aware again of an unfashionably male intensity to the music; one that is not without its hints of violence and faintly misogynistic traces. But the overriding energy is romantic, caring, affectionate, and sometimes, redemptive – a case of out of the black and into the blue. It’d be pretentious not to also note that Cold Chisel’s music is intensely engaged with good times, seized hard and held tight. Is it really any wonder the common working class expression for partying is ‘raging’? Raging against the dying of the light.

Another elusive form of hedonism and escape underlines the band’s documents of struggle and defiance. It’s harder to put a finger on. But I’d once asked Don Walker about it in an interview. At the time, I had tried to locate it in the band’s life on the road, the bitumen veins that flowed into their uniquely Australian being: a “c’mon-let’s-roll” energy. Walker seemed to agree, and spoke of how heavily the band had toured up and down the east coast. He saw the highway as

an imaginary thread that ran all the way up to Asia, and vaguely alluded to all the drugs and damage, the history and elemental mystery, that had flowed south into our culture after Vietnam. This lead Walker to speak of his interest in “a Pacific sound, something that connects Chet Baker, Jane’s Addiction, The Doors, Dragon… there’s a real similarity there, this demonic, exotic, sea children vibe that I like in all of them.” Walker was always the song-writing engine for Cold Chisel, the lyrical visionary, but tonight affirms Cold Chisel as a genius fivepiece, a band of equals creating something bigger than any individual’s contribution. Barnes’ songs, especially ‘You Got Nothing I Want’, have their own pelting, defiant power and stormy, good times imperatives. A contribution from Moss like ‘Bow Rover’ opens the band’s references to a sweeter sense of landscape than Walker’s burnt-off sugar-cane country inclinations. Phil Small’s ‘My Baby’ is that rare thing, a happy love song, not to mention one of the band’s biggest hits. Every member of this gang adds something to the whole that matters. After a two-and-a-half-hour set, including two encores, the crowd gives up on forcing another encore and the house lights go up. At the merchandise counter, they are selling T-shirts that mark key venues and dates in the band’s history. Of course, they have one ready for tonight. There’s another that shows a torn front page from the Newcastle Sun graphically depicting a bloodied face from the Star Hotel riot in 1979. I want that T-shirt real bad, but I don’t have the money. I walk quietly to my car and put on the band’s first self-titled album at banging volume as I turn the ignition over. The opening track ‘Juliet’ leaps from the speakers. I think back to when I was becoming a young man in Newcastle, driving south to the edge of town to see Cold Chisel before they even had a record out, way back when they would play covers like Dylan’s ‘Mozambique’ and The Troggs’ ‘Wild Thing’. I wonder about my old Mawson Hotel compadres like Brad and Dave, and all the others whose names I have lost, the friends who made “my heart sing” as we sat in the carpark drinking and talking after a show, hearing the ocean waves crash into the darkness of Caves Beach. I wonder where life has taken them all, and about my own life too, and all the feelings prefigured and memorialised inside these songs. And I feel again the native restlessness and tribal loyalties of a working class coastal town that marked itself deep inside my being. As the music plays in my car, I come to an intersection and turn the wheel to see that bird’s wing still stamped on my wrist from when I stepped inside the venue tonight. Then I hit the straight of the road and let my headlights take me home.

THE NEW

RHYTHMS T-SHIRT

t ’s at

The brand new limited edition Rhythms Americana style t-shirt is available now for a special price of

$30

Simply go to: bandtshirts.com.au/shop/rhythms-magazine 67

Bondi

It was dubbed the

“Wifeswapper”

Lifesa

ver-Bil

ly T w it - Phot h Ross Ha nn o by Ju dy Mc aford Maho n

but it was the music that mattered at the Bondi Lifesaver By Ian McFarlane (Thanks to Craig Griffiths, Helen Carter) Everybody remembers the aquariums full of tropical fish at the Bondi Lifesaver, but one and all have a different story about what happened to the fish. Promoter and entrepreneur Michael Chugg has been quoted as saying that Billy Thorpe and the Aztecs killed the fish because they played so loudly. Others have said they recall the fish turning belly up when AC/DC rocked the joint. Either way, the reverberations from the amps must have been ferocious in order to create such an effect. Others maintain that because punters were continually pouring LSD, speed, beer or even glasses of urine into the tanks, the hapless fish just didn’t stand a chance. Of course, all of the above are likely true and what is certain is that the owners were spending up to $500 a week in order to replenish the fish stocks until it just got too much and they removed the tanks. The tanks are a recurring theme in the history of the legendary and iconic rock venue which is now laid bare for all to see and read in Craig Griffiths authoritative book The Bondi Lifesaver - Sydney’s 1970s Sex, Drugs & Rock n Roll HQ (Skullbug Music). In his Introduction, Griffiths writes: “This is the story of the much loved rock and roll fun park told by those who were there – which is tricky because we partied hard, hardly slept, and were careless with our brain cells.” The Bondi Lifesaver existed for 10 years, closing its doors in August 1980. Griffiths had been a Bondi resident and regular Lifesaver gig goer in the last years of the venue’s life. His interest in documenting its history was piqued when he found there was very little information available. When interviewed recently he explained, “Because the whole block where the Lifesaver had been was demolished, to make way for a new development, it got forgotten. Around 2010 memories of the place popped into my head and I googled it and I could not find one photo or image. I started a Facebook group but

there was very little interest; gradually it got to about 700 members. By the end of 2012, I thought it might be worth writing a book and just put it online, up there for free, because there’ll be hardly any information. I kept thinking, ‘there’s nothing else out there, no one else is gonna be doing this’. And it gradually snowballed. I got a lot of items from people like Greg Johnson, who booked the bands for many years. “The venue itself could be pretty wild at times but to me it had a clubhouse feel where musicians, punters, industry people, whoever, were there for the same reason, which was the music. It wasn’t just a boys’ club either, Bondi there were a lot of strong women Lifesaver involved. Kim Parkes was always - Final gigs there and Sandy Dewsbury ran flyer 1980 the place for years with an iron Collection of fist, and I think a .38 pistol at John Parkes times. A lot of women got to play on stage too. “You’d walk into the main room and the stage was beside you. Along the right hand wall there was a long bar and at the back was an elevated V.I.P. section with tables and chairs. To the left was a veranda section which had pinball machines and you went through a little corridor that led to the beer garden. There was a brick wall and behind that was the council car park; people were always climbing over that trying to get in without paying, with various levels of success. It wasn’t a big room. They’d squeeze a lot of people in there with little concern for safety, unlike these days.” Another Bondi resident and Lifesaver regular was Helen Carter, later bass player with Do-Ré-Mi. Her attraction to the venue started at an early age. Bondi Lifesaver - Craig Griffiths - Cover 69

“I was 16 when I first started going there. It was such a great scene, and there were plenty of people like me who were underage. It was strangely comforting to be there. I came from a family in turmoil and, also, I was very unruly myself, so I enjoyed being there. I always had people looking out for me. I was never stalked or hit on in a way that made me feel uncomfortable... except there was one particular musician one night, and anyway I said ‘no’. “I can still picture the venue in my mind, it’s like an early imprint as if I were an embryo when I was going there. That long bar was just astonishing with all the bottles and the mirrors and the lighting behind it. These days people would think it was a waste of space, but it really was beautiful. The fish tank was still there but it wasn’t too long

after that it was removed. I remember seeing AC/DC, and meeting Bon Scott. That night I was wearing tight, navy blue flares, a light blue top with glitter on that I’d borrowed from a friend and silver leather and cork platform shoes... oh fuck, I nearly killed myself wearing those things! “Before hitting the Lifesaver you’d be round the corner at the Squire Inn, on the top floor disco having a drink and dancing to KC and the Sunshine Band. It was like a little hub of excitement and all the bands used to stay at the Squire. Then you’d nip round to the Lifesaver which was a two second walk and you’d have a rock and roll injection. I spent quite a few nights with Bon at the Squire. One time he pointed to this blotch on the ceiling and said, ‘see that thing up there, that’s a cockroach I killed with a telephone book’. He’d thrown this telephone book up in the air and smacked this insect and it was stuck to the ceiling!” The Bondi Lifesaver was located at 56 Ebley Street, Bondi Junction, about three kilometres from Bondi Beach. Lionel Parkes and his son John owned the whole block, including the building that became the venue. Lionel originally opened it as a wine bar in August 1970 and John and his wife, Kim, then began putting on rock bands at the end of 1972. Robert Highfield came up with the design for the famous Bondi Lifesaver winged logo and was responsible for the interior design, including the tanks

and the fabulous etched mirrors that were mounted behind the bar. It swiftly became the place where punters and musicians (both local and international) would meet regularly, to hang out, to party and to play. While other Sydney venues such as Chequers (CBD), Whisky A Go Go (Kings Cross), the Manzil Room (Kings Cross), French’s Tavern (Darlinghurst) and the Oxford Tavern (also Darlinghurst) had their own scenes, the Lifesaver came to epitomise all that the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle had to offer: not only the music but the sex, the drugs and the alcohol. Putting it plainly, it was like the nexus between environment, entertainment, community and commerce. It was a hedonistic existence but to use a cliché, surely they were different times. There’s an anonymous quote included in the book that reads: “They say we wallowed in sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll at the Lifesaver. Wish I could remember all of that”. The fact that the Lifesaver was popularly known as the “Wifeswapper” is further proof of the goings on there. The first band to play there was the La De Das (Kevin Borich, Ronnie Peel aka Rockwell T. James and Keith Barber). Borich wrote the song ‘The Place’ about the Lifesaver: “All kinds of people in off the street / They keep telling me that this is the place to meet / Hey look back there against the bar / Isn’t that Rockwell T. James the recording star?”. Sherbet were also regulars

Bondi Lifesaver-JPY & The All Stars 1978 - Photo by Patrick Jones 70

and their song ‘The Swap (You Can Get the Lot)’ offers another view: “If what you want is satisfaction / And you’re not gettin’ a good reaction / Here’s a real possibility with satisfaction guaranteed / Cause you can get the lot, baby at the Swap”. When the bands weren’t on stage, DJs (including Sandy Dewsbury) were spinning discs throughout the night. As to the capacity of the venue, estimates range from 400 punters to 1,500 for a big drawcard (and that must have been really squeezing them in). Essentially, you’d classify it as a club, as opposed to the larger, suburban hotels commonly referred to as beer barns. The most popular attractions over the years included AC/DC, Cold Chisel, The Angels, Skyhooks, Rose Tattoo, Dragon, Renée Geyer, Kevin Borich Express, Marcia Hines, Australian Crawl, Richard Clapton, Jimmy and the Boys and John Paul Young and the All Stars. Rose Tattoo actually made their live debut on New Year’s Eve 1976 at the Lifesaver. AC/DC’s gigs at the Swap included their farewell appearance on 27 March 1976, prior to jetting off to London. On a subsequent return to Sydney in mid-1977 the band slotted in two gigs, 1 and 2 July. Due to the fact that newly instated bass player, UK-born Cliff Williams, had been unable to secure a working visa, the advertising for the shows announced the band as “The Hottest, Livewire, High Voltage Act in the World”. They appeared incognito as The Seedies the first night and then Dirty Deeds the next; some fans recalled the second show as among the best thing they’d ever seen. In AC/DC Maximum Rock & Roll, writers Murray Engleheart and Arnaud Durieux quoted Angus Young as saying “It turned into a right Babylon”, in reference to such decadent behaviour as fans stripping and a young lady appropriating Bon Scott’s microphone as a dildo. A ripping, seven minute live recording of ‘She’s Got Balls’ was added as the B-side to the 1986 reissue of the band’s 1980 hit ‘You Shook Me All Night Long’ and subsequently included on the Volts disc of the 1997 box set Bonfire. This would indicate that at least one of the shows was recorded for posterity but no further tracks have seen the light of day. Over the years, Sydney-based RAM (Rock Australia Magazine) printed numerous Lifesaver gig reviews; here are snippets drawn from two in 1977 and both capture the essence of the live club experience: Rose Tattoo by Roxanne Hamilton (RAM #62, 15 July) “The nite (as any other at the Lifesaver) began with the crowd just hanging around, waiting for something to happen. The floating population of ‘See-Me’ in-scene people seems to have increased, with Rose

Tattoo attracting their own breed (one on roller skates, the other with a shaven head in the style of singer Angry Anderson). “The group themselves provided some high energy music-grinding and grimacing in fine style. For the last bracket, Angus Young and Bon Scott of AC/DC joined the ranks onstage for a final melee of ‘Johnny B. Goode’ and ‘Shake It Baby! Shake It! – which is exactly what we all did. The Seedies seemed to enjoy themselves. Bon and Angry took turns on mic, and Angus stole the show with his acrobatics on guitar. The audience got a chance to meet him when he leapt into the middle of the gyrating spectators. On returning he contorted into further frenzied motion, somehow managing not to miss a chord.” Dragon by Andrew McMillan (RAM #65, 26 August) “Sunday nights at the Lifesaver have a disturbing habit of developing into Bondi Lifesaver ACDC flyer rather cliquey gatherings of the super cool and tonight was no exception. J.P.Y. was there, resplendent in an army giggle hat and glasses while Rockwell T. James stood behind the bar singing ‘Satisfaction’. And there in the darkest corner of the restaurant stood... I could go on but I won’t, cos Marc Hunter does it far better than I could ever hope to. In one foul (sic) swoop during Dragon’s performance he cut absolutely everybody in the pub down to size by cynically mirroring their cool. “When Dragon kicked their set off with ‘April Sun in Cuba’ Marc’s form wasn’t exactly at its peak and some of the singing in ‘Same Old Blues’ left something essential in the dim dark past, but as the evening progressed into the early morning hours he settled in and put so much guts into his vocal aerobatics, there wasn’t a trace of doubt left that he can sing the knees off anything within miles. Guitarist Robert Taylor flashed Bondi Lifesaver off some stunning Stranglers flyer 1979 lead work, particularly in ‘Any Fool Could Tell You’, backed by Kerry Jacobson, whose kit sound was all encompassing as cannon fire. Bondi Lifesaver “During the bulk of the Daddy Cool performance there was Poster 1975 something missing that in Collection of retrospect I can only put down Craig Griffiths to a cold ‘super cool man’ response from the audience. Which is a pity, cos Dragon did put on some of the best live performances to be found in this country. Unfortunately, the only real flash of their capabilities that affected the audience came 71

through during their last numbers, raging versions of ‘Dreaded Moroczy Bind’ and ‘White Light/White Heat’ which tore through the drunks like an amyl burst.” While it seems that Aussie pub rock royalty dominated the Lifesaver stage, the Parkes were open to booking many young, up-and-coming bands, in particular with the emergence of punk and new wave in the late ’70s. Radio Birdman played there on 13 November 1976 as part of their Blitzkrieg tour. Midnight Oil played one of their earliest gigs there on 10 December 1977 and went on to appear a further dozen times. From that time onwards the Lifesaver provided gigs for the likes of Dave Warner’s From the Suburbs, Mental As Anything, Matt Finish, Paul Kelly and the Dots, Boys Next Door, Teenage Radio Stars, XL Capris, INXS, The Radiators, The Numbers, La Femme, Johnny Dole and the Scabs, X, Lipstick Killers, The Nauts, Hitmen, The Sports, Flowers, The Reels, Models, Young Modern... International artists also featured: Jesse Winchester, The Hues Corporation (1975); The Stranglers, XTC, Maria Muldaur, Dr Feelgood, The Motels (1979); The Cure, Three Dog Night, Major Matchbox (1980). While on tour in January 1976 Frank Zappa

Helen Carter in 1978 Collection of Helen Carter 72

and his band were spotted at the Bondi Lifesaver, partaking in après concert activities having completed a successful gig at the Hordern Pavilion. After eight years as Sydney’s best loved rock ’n’ roll venue, the Bondi Lifesaver closed its doors to make way for a Coles New World shopping centre complex. Closing night on Sunday 31 August 1980 featured the “Special Party Appearance” of headliners John Paul Young and the All Stars and super group The Headhunters (Marc and Todd Hunter from Dragon, Kevin Borich and John Watson from the KB Express and Mick Cocks from Rose Tattoo), with the opening slot going to “1980 Hoadleys Battle of the Sounds Winners” Street Level. Angry Anderson was the DJ for the night, with the likes of Glenn Shorrock, Ronnie Peel, Stevie Wright and Chrissie Hammond hitting the stage for guest spots with the All Stars. Writing in RAM, the late Anthony O’Grady said that the undeniable highlights of the All Stars’ set were “J.P.Y.’s ‘Yesterday’s Hero’, Stevie’s double header of ‘Hard Road’ and ‘Evie’ and the fervent ensemble rendition of ‘Love the One You’re With’ (the Wifeswapper theme, if ever there was one).” While he praised the performances, he bemoaned that “the party vibe in audience land stayed mostly in the deep freeze” and that the Lifesaver “was dying as it had lived for the past two years – without grace, without style, with surliness, not civility”. Documentary film maker Cliff Atkinson filmed the night and although the full doco never eventuated, brief sections were shown on Sounds Unlimited and Countdown. There’s a three and a half minute segment viewable on Youtube which starts with a quick burst of the All Stars launching into ‘I Hate the Music’, followed by vox pops with J.P.Y., Stevie Wright, Ignatius Jones, Warren ‘Pig’ Morgan, Marc Hunter, Ted Mulry and Ronnie Peel. Everyone looks in good spirits, full of facetious comments about the place. Asked by the interviewer how it felt “to close such a fantastic venue?”, J.P.Y. quips “I had to pay for my beer!”. Likewise, when Marc Hunter is asked “Do you have any fond memories of the Bondi Lifesaver?” he deadpans “None at all, I think it’s a shithole. Should have dynamited it years ago”. Among the mayhem of the party, people souvenired anything they could lay their hands on – bar stools, plants, kitchen items, even bricks from the wall in the beer garden – while the largest of the etched mirrors was Bondi Lifesaver Company Caine flyer-1975

smashed. It was the end of an era. At the time it was reported that, as part of the redevelopment, a new Lifesaver was to be created within the complex. It was planned to be twice the capacity of the original and to feature more overseas acts as well as the usual local bands. Things didn’t pan out that way. Griffiths explains in the book’s conclusion, “... when final plans were released the new Swap had disappeared, a breach of contract that allegedly cost Coles dearly. Perhaps it was for the best, as romantic notions often can’t be recreated, and a life that involved less stress and more sleep may have simply been too great a temptation for John and Kim Parkes”. In conclusion, Griffiths said to me, “One of the Holy Grails in my search for Lifesaver related memorabilia was a picture of the fish tank. I could not find a single photo. There must be a photo, so if I ever do a second edition I’ll need one of those.” The Bondi Lifesaver - Sydney’s 1970s Sex, Drugs & Rock n Roll HQ by Craig Griffith’s is available via Skullbug Music at www. thebondilifesaver.com.

Bondi Lifesaver-December 1975

BY BERNARD ZUEL

DIGGING DEEP

Allison Forbes is an artist who doesn’t just know her craft but knows herself. Watch out for the patented Allison Forbes Bullshit Meter. It might be as handy a device to have in your house as Forbes’ debut album, Bonedigger, a record which is frank and direct about herself and the world around her. “I’m a pretty good judge of character and of music and I’m very open,” says Forbes, forthrightly, of course. “I don’t give anyone any bullshit, because life’s too short. It doesn’t need to be that hard.” Don’t just be good enough, be better! All through the gutsy, powerful Bonedigger, Forbes lays out reasons to care about how you live, how you treat others, but especially how you treat yourself. Coming out the other side of busted hearts and busted lives, wise choices on mental health, reminders to enjoy yourself however it plays out - it may be a debut but it sounds like it was made by someone who knows who she is and what she can do. Someone who can sing “There’s ghosts in my head, shadows in my bed”, not as complaint but openness about learning to live with your past.

“I feel like I’m in a stronger place as a person and as an artist, where I’m happy not to compromise at all. I’m past the point in my life where I need to worry about whether I’m going to be played on TV or radio, I just wanted to make something that was true to the music.” And the music holds true for the Wee Waaborn singer/songwriter, who spent the first half of her life in Tamworth. Drawing from country music for sure, but happy to take in the sound of guitars hardened up by anger and rock’n’roll, the shapes of songwriters who looked inwards even as their melodies floated higher, and even, oh yes!, some nautical folk. All of it moulded by ARIA-winning producer Shane Nicholson, a regular sparring partner since her first EP in 2013. “I’ve been around but I never had confidence in my music at all and Shane turned that around for me and gave me belief,” Forbes says, adding that he recognised a need in her that wouldn’t be talked away.

“I always want songs to be perfect. I can’t see the point in rushing something out, just because you haven’t been around for a year or two years or whatever. It’s about the quality of songs, being the best they could possibly be. He understood the songs so well and his musical genius is incredible. He could hear things in the song that I couldn’t even hear.” Importantly, he understood her need to make a record that sounded even tougher than her two EPs, “more Gretsch” as Forbes describes it with a laugh. “It’s something we talked about pretty early in the process. There are a few songs on there where I was a little more angsty, I guess. That tougher sound was important to the songs, it was important to the content and the way I was feeling when I wrote the songs.” Even a cursory run through the album would tell you that Forbes understands what it is to be isolated and without control. In these songs she is saying, you can feel like this and still do okay. “Ever since I was a kid I struggled with fitting in, or knowing where I fit in. That’s been a constant theme through my whole life: I don’t look like a country singer, I like contradictions.” Contradiction like the way the album flows from country to rock to bluegrass to something tougher, and then something wholly vulnerable. Like the way she may sound modern and city-fied and nothing like the old school country, but yet still connected to what matters. “I grew up a huge fan of bush balladeers, I am a huge fan of John Williamson: I love that people can sing about our country like that,” says Forbes. “Also, I love that he is a bit of a prick because he stands up for what he believes in and doesn’t give a fuck what anyone says. Love that.” That’s what you get when you’re dealing with an artist who doesn’t just know her craft but knows herself. And knows there’s no room for bullshit with either. Bonedigger is available now through allisonforbesmusic.com.

Bear Family at 45 1975-2020

DESTINATION LUST

The World Of Love, Sex And Violence ●

Film divas like Jayne Mansfield and Ann-Margret sing, and moody burlesque show instrumentals provide the setting. CD with 28-page booklet • 32 tracks • BCD 17516

THAT’LL FLAT GIT IT VOL. 33

dig it BOoK EARLY aND

SAVE

From The Vaults Of R ENOWN & H ORNET R ECORDS ●

Carefully remastered 45s and unreleased tracks from the vault. CD digipac with 36-page booklet • 35 tracks • BCD 17589

BIG JOE TURNER

The Complete Boss Of The Blues ●

Feat. both mono and stereo versions, plus session outtakes

What’s better than an Americana Music Tours adventure in the World’s Greatest Music Destination? Taking $1,000*off the cost!

2-CD digisleeve with 24-page booklet • 30 tracks • BCD 17505

ON VINYL: MARTY ROBBINS* Rock’n Roll’n Robbins

Colored vinyl 10“ album • 10 tracks • BAF 11024 *Exclusively available at www.bear-family.com

Book by 29 February 2020 and take a cool grand off our trip to the Americana Music Triangle — the birthplace of nine different genres of roots music. We’ll take you there with our highly personalised, in-depth, local knowledge, off-the-beaten track adventures. First and foremost — we’re music fans like you — you’ll love the places we go.

15-DAY TOURS DEPARTING THROUGHOUT 2020!

SAVE $1 000

EN O N WH PER PERS OK BY YOU BO

2020 29 FEB

For more information, call Garry Smith on +61 400 269 653 or visit americanamusictours.com

w w w. b e a r- f a m i l y. c o m

*Conditions apply. Bookings must be made before midnight on the 29th of February 2020 to qualify. $1000 (AUD) per person discount is applicable for any 15-day tour in 2020 and is based on our standard tour price as advertised on our website. A deposit is required at the time of booking with full payment of the discounted rate per our standard booking terms and conditions. Subject to availability. For more details visit www.americanamusictours.com ©Americana Music Tours. All rights reserved.

BY CHRIS FAMILTON

COAL CITY GOLD

James Thomson’s third album is his finest yet, the result of his steady creative evolution. Golden Exile sees the Newcastle songwriter digging deeper and more widely into his influences and writing with a greater sense of musical identity. James Thomson’s third album is his finest yet, the result of his steady creative evolution. Golden Exile sees the Newcastle songwriter digging deeper and more widely into his influences and writing with a greater sense of musical identity.

about. Having that ability to play with a band every week took the shackles off a bit and I could explore more with styles and formats that I loved. Having a band made me realise I could do that compared to when I was playing solo.”

Back in 2012 he came to the attention of journalist and label owner Stuart Coupe, who, recognising his prodigious talent, quickly signed him to Laughing Outlaw Records and released his debut album. It was a stripped back, mainly solo affair that highlighted Thomson’s laidback style and strong affinity for the masters of folk and blues.

Thomson chose to record Golden Exile live, over six days, with Roger Bergodaz at Union Street Studios in Melbourne. Taking his guitarist Marty Burke with him, he called on the skill and experience of some of the city’s finest alt-country musicians including Sean McMahon, Tracy McNeil, Shane Reilly (Lost Ragas) and Steve Hadley. “I liked it because they had different ideas,” he enthuses. “I sent demos down and they made notes and had some ideas. We tried them all and went with the idea that worked best. Sometimes that was truer to my demo and other times it was an idea that they had that I hadn’t really thought of.”

“When I was younger and starting out I couldn’t always reconcile the music I liked and the music I was writing and playing,” says Thomson. “That first record was reflective of how I envisaged performing the songs. I was performing solo so I was writing songs to be that kind of artist.” In the ensuing years Thomson learnt that he could add greater depth and nuance to his songs by playing with other musicians. His 2015 album Cold Moon was a leap forward as Thomson refined and expanded his sound by fleshing out the songs with a full band. “With the second album I thought I could change things up a bit and add in more instrumentation. It was also about having more time and experience in the studio and being able to try things and be more fluid with the process. Sometimes the best things come from accidents in the studio – putting a slide guitar on a pop song or a synth on a country song and seeing what happens.” With Golden Exile, Thomson continues his growth as a writer, both lyrically and musically. One can hear The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, 60s and 70s folk rock and country soul, all woven together in songs that chronicle optimism and heartbreak, emotional and physical departure. “After Cold Moon I put The Strange Pilgrims band together and that sound naturally came 76

As Thomson explains, the album title gathers together the songs and the experience of writing them. “It’s an allusion to a happy disengagement from a whole bunch of things and it’s golden because this music and these songs came out of it. It came out of being physically, emotionally and socially removed from certain aspects of life. Rather than making it a maudlin thing, this is the other side of the coin, it’s a good thing,” he reiterates. “It’s a reminder to myself, of sorts.” As the local country, folk and Americana scene continues to grow, Thomson is reflective of his place in it and clearly doesn’t want to be pigeonholed by preconceived expectations. “It seems to me that Folk/blues/roots music have only ever really existed on the periphery of popular music – despite the fact traces of them are in almost all popular music styles. There’s a bit of difference in what I do as I don’t want to paint myself into one corner with what I do. My goal is to keep writing better songs. I want to be able to try different things and not be restricted. I want people to like and respond to my music.”

available now CD and digital or direct from

JAMES THOMSON GOLDEN EXILE INDEPENDENT

dirtyrascal.com.au DirtyRascalBand

DirtyRascalAustralia

Thomson returns with his third album, and his most accomplished work to date. Golden Exile is a record that will bring to mind the loose rhythms and grooves of The Rolling Stones and the melodic nuance of The Beatles. Throw into the mix that sweet intersection of 70s folk rock and country soul and you’ve got an early contender for local album of the year. Thomson has always had the ability to create his own languid tempo and warm, flowing sound and to achieve that on this record the Novocastrian drew on a mainly Melbourne cast of players including Roger Bergodaz (engineer, drums), Tracy McNeil (backing vocals), Sean McMahon (guitar), Steve Hadley (bass) and Shane Reilly (pedal steel, keyboard). Their treatment of Thomson’s stories and relationship dissection is restrained and in perfect taste. They rock when they need to, gently intertwine when required. Above all, they highlight Thomson’s voice and the way he constructs his songs with economy and that sleepy melancholic voice. ‘Sunday Girl’ is the closest Thomson’s got to a pop song, “Roll Away The Stone’ is smoky, winding blues, while ‘See The Wheels’ could roll on forever with its effortless groove. ‘Fatal Ribbon Highway’ is a dreamy slow dance, cosmic, heavy-lidded and sparkling and just one example of the diversification Thomson has brought to his impressive songwriting on Golden Exile. 77

BY NICK CHARLES

MANDY CONNELL Mandy is a truly gifted and committed artist, ready to reveal her trials and tribulations in a riveting stream of strongly narrative melodic songs. She brings a refreshing and vital honesty to her live performances. Until now she’s been a hidden gem in the folk, singer songwriter scene but excellent reviews and peer acclaim point to great recognition just around the corner. I hear many diverse influences in your work. Who are some of the primary figures in your development? My first loves were Mary Black and Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Then I scored a punk cassette of Alistair Hulett's band Roaring Jack and have loved him ever since. In my awkward teens I loved Iris Dement and Kate Rusby. Then I discovered Kate Burke and Ruth Hazleton, Eliza Carthy and Nancy Kerr. Folk music as a genre is difficult to pin down these days. How would you describe what you do and perhaps how the genre lines are so blurred now? Folk music is a river of narratives pouring downstream, spilling, never stopping. I come from the Anglo Celtic tradition, with a bit of Americana and African, but there are folk traditions everywhere, all with different rhythms. I love old ballads with modern production- combinations using world, electronica, dance, audio visual, theatrical and retelling as well as more normal instrumentation. When you’re writing, are you contemplating traditional and formal song structures? Are you working with much theory in mind or is it mostly intuitive? 78

Songs used to just turn up. I’ve written intuitively in the Sean Nos style, and old timey, and in the 90’s songwriter style. Then I learned about bridges! Now I write purposefully. I look at rhythm, mood, instrumentation, narrative and style. I love to write for bands. ‘Pot and Tinker’ (from the Stray Hens album The Confluence) took months. You often tell a heartfelt or humorous story and set up a picture before the song is performed live. That’s a quintessentially “folk” tradition. Is that perhaps why you seem to favour live recordings? I love studio work but live stuff is cheaper, and studios scare me. It’s probably why I make my web-series An Otherwise

Quiet Room. But I do love to make bigger productions for recordings. It’s different from the sharing connection of stage, but not better or worse… maybe a bit harder. I’m usually broke. How do you rise above the many singer songwriters out there and grab the gigs and festivals etc., let alone be heard? There must be a self -belief? I find I am often compared to other artists in the scene, often because I work closely with them and it’s easy to feel competitive with artists coming up around me who are achieving huge success. It’s easy to feel left behind! So, I try to concentrate on the show. I let time stop on stage, and speak to the audience as though it's just ‘us’ together rather than trying to 'stand out'. I try to focus on the experience I'm having with my audience and let time stand still so that the audience and I aren't making comparisons, just concentrating on the story, on each breath, on each sound. Everything else is just promotion- or a combination of money, timing and luck. You’ve mentioned the economic factor with recording. What’s coming up for you and your new material? I spent about 18 months from early 2018 travelling constantly, without a home of my own. I went to the UK and made an album with Tom Wright at yellow Arch Studios, which is now almost ready to release. Living in regional Victoria has helped. I'm rested now, looking forward to working more with a band again, presenting the album and keen to record what I've written in 2019. I love having a home lately! My dream is to release, rehearse and tour this record, and make a new one soon. I love creating the work. Check out Mandy’s great recordings and schedule at www.mandyconnell.net.

3 3 1 / 3 R E V E L AT I O N S By Martin Jones Joni Mitchell

Shine Craft Recordings

Craft recordings are releasing Joni Mitchell’s final album on vinyl for the first time. The release should instigate and rekindle relationships with Shine, for it’s a beguiling record. For a start, it marked Mitchell’s return to recording after she famously quit the music industry in 2002 in disgust (though she subsequently managed to remain fairly industrious with reissues and compilations). Shine appeared to be an unplanned birth for Mitchell. This is how she described the genesis of opening track ‘One Week Last Summer’, the first song composed for the album. “I stepped outside of my little house and stood barefoot on a rock. The Pacific Ocean rolled towards me. Across the bay, a family of seals sprawled on the kelp uncovered by the low tide. A blue heron honked overhead. All around the house the wild roses were blooming. The air smelled sweet and salty and loud with crows and bees. My house was clean. I had food in the fridge for a week. I sat outside 'til the sun went down. “That night the piano beckoned for the first time in ten years. My fingers found these patterns which express what words could not. This song poured out while a brown bear rummaged through my garbage cans “The song has seven verses constructed for the days of that happy week. On Thursday the bear arrives.” A tender instrumental, the song was originally entitled ‘Gratitude’ and was written in the Vancouver house Mitchell purchased in the late ‘60s, the house where she wrote For the Roses and Court and Spark. Mitchell added the orchestral instrumentation later in the studio with a synthesizer and invited Bob Sheppard to play alto sax on it. It’s interesting that so many of the reviews at the time of the album’s release criticised the ‘cheap’ sounding synth strings, pointing out that Mitchell could afford any string section in the world. A less famous artist might have been praised for her ingenuity in finding a way to write and play and record all her own arrangements. Shine is a fairly sparse album, Mitchell aiming to handle as much of the instrumentation as she could herself. Sheppard is all over the album, guitarist Greg Leisz, drummer Brian Blade and bassist Larry Klein contribute sporadically. For the most part it’s a fairly sombre record too – indeed Mitchell called it “as serious a work as I’ve ever done.” But it’s certainly not hopeless. Maybe there’s some mature resignation, but ultimately it feels like Mitchell is registering her awe at the beauty of the world, for all its flaws. Perhaps this is best represented in the song ‘Bad Dreams’. Its line “bad dreams are good in the great plan” was uttered by Mitchell’s 3-year-old grandson and was a key inspiration for the album. “I spent a couple of years in anger,” said Mitchell at the time. “I had fallen into a place where there was a lot of shaming and blaming,

which I believe is the lowest level of evil. It conspires to having a bad heart - a heart poisoned with anger. I did a lot of weeping for what's happening to the earth when I was in my twenties. I could see a lot of things coming. Now I feel kind of inoculated to what people are now just discovering. If they're waking up and seeing it, they're in pain and they're feeling helpless.” This quote sums up the tone of the album, much of which is more relevant than ever today. ‘Strong and Wrong’, for example, was partially inspired by George W Bush claiming he’d talked with God – it could just as easily apply to Trump. As if to prove this very point, Mitchell included a new version of ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ on the album. “Why is this song still viable?” asked Mitchell. “It's taken people a long time to see that we have to cut back on our electricity, but we won't. The idea of this song wasn't popular when I first recorded it, and it's not now either because we're drowning in pop culture.” The title track, like most Mitchell albums, is the heart of the record, a long meditation or prayer on the state of the world, pleading for God? Us? to “let your light shine” on everything from Wall Street and Vegas to world-wide traffic jams to the Catholic Church to “lousy leadership licensed to kill” to “a hopeful girl in a dreamy dress”. Sonically there are elements of Mitchell’s recent past evident, particularly her ventures into contemporary jazz. The most adventurous, and ebullient experiment comes in the form of ‘Hana’, all jerky drum’n’bass programmed rhythms and blurps, an ode to a survivor role model that Mitchell credits to a ‘30s movie. Elsewhere on the album she draws inspiration from the film adaption of Tennessee Williams’ The Night of the Iguana and Rudyard Kipling’s poem ‘If’. There’s a lot to digest on Shine, musically, intellectually and emotionally and listening to it now it feels perhaps more relevant today than it did in 2007. Sonically, it’s lush and unconventional and it’s a treat to have it on wax for the first time. 79

Melbourne’s Danny Walsh Banned release their highly anticipated 3rd album In the Wimmera A collection of stories from Victoria’s wheat belt with a live rock ‘n roll feel, the album traverses from heavy blues to Irish folk and wigged-out Australiana.

OUT APRIL 2020

LP and CD from dannywalshbanned.bandcamp.com and great indie record stores

UPCOMING GIGS & NEWS 3/3 - Langan Band (IRE) 9/3 - Chain (labour day arvo show) 10/3 - Tony Mcmanus (Scot) 11/3 - Ye Vagabonds (IRE) 12/3 - Will Kimbrough (USA) 13/3 - Jade Holland 14/3 - Lost Ragas 17/3 - Streams of Whiskey (St.Pats day) 20/3 - Karise Eden 27/3 - Jeff Martin solo(Tea Party) Every Thursday - Sugarland Blues featuring the best local blues acts for free.

“It’s a crazy time here in America and, unfortunately, this sort of craziness always seems to be contagious globally.”

ANI DIFRANCO PATTI SMITH “I feel really liberated this time…”

ALBUMS, FILMS, MUSIC, BOOKS!

BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE ALLMAN BETTS BAND JOACHIM COODER MARCUS KING MORCHEEBA JIMMIE VAUGHAN DWEEZIL ZAPPA THE WAR & TREATY

PLUS: PLUS:

BOOGIE B OOGIE & GUMBALL GUMBALL CASH SAVAGE SAVAGE CASH COWBOY JUNKIES JUNKIES COWBOY MARK SEYMOUR SEYMOUR MARK MAMA KIN KIN MAMA THE MASTERSONS MASTERSONS THE TAMI NEILSON NEILSON TAMI … ..and much much more. more. …..and

HISTORY: HISTORY:

$12.95 inc GST $12.95 MARCH/APRIL MARCH/ APRIL 2020 ISSUE: 298

THE BONDI THE BONDI LIFESAVER LIFESAVER COLD CHISEL C OLD C HISEL – WILD WILD COLONIAL COLONIAL BOYS BOYS

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. GEOFF & MARIA MULDAUR Sweet Potatoes REPRISE RECORDS MS 2073 (1972) Changes were happening in the Muldaur household. After a long 1960’s stint with The Jim Kweskin Jug Band the married couple embarked on a duo career commencing with 1968’s Pottery Pie; a genre-bending album that eventually hit pay-dirt for Geoff with the much later use of his version of ‘Brazil’ as an on-going theme in the Terry Gilliam movie of the same name. My guess is Geoff was always a little ‘domineering’ because by the time of 1972’s Sweet Potatoes his exploration of roots and Tin Pan Alley themes seems obsessive, almost like a personal crusade - alas few were converted and also the couple’s marriage was seemingly dying in the grooves. Sporting a great cover fashioned by folkie Eric Von

Schmidt it remains a fine album, perhaps more so because the seeds of Maria’s soon to explode solo career are all right there. Most notably when Amos Garrett plays a staggering guitar solo in a song - he also sings lead vocal on the Hoagy Carmichael/ Johnny Mercer masterpiece ‘Lazybones’ thus setting the scene for a crucial appearance on Maria’s huge hit ‘Midnight at The Oasis’ - recorded shortly thereafter. Many critics believe this work to be the finest electric guitar solo ever recorded! On Maria’s subsequent solo album Garrett is used to great effect but also sparingly – here he is everywhere. Playing trombone along with Geoff, plus loads of guitar. For sure the two men are having a ball, Maria is more or less sidelined with only a couple of vocal featured tracks – the lead off ‘Blue Railroad Train’ and the next to last ‘Lover Man’. Her soon-to-be ‘hit’ producer Joe Boyd is credited for mixing desk work on the ‘back to the blues’ ‘Hard Time Killing Floor’ while other guests include Bearsville stalwart, harmonica legend Paul Butterfield and Bill Keith on pedal steel. Otherwise, the production credit is (literally) ‘Nobody’. Geoff would begin working with Butterfield for a few years and the latter probably learnt a lot from Muldaur in that period – at least in terms of attempting to widen out his style– the Better Days grouping (also involving Amos) is a era that has been unfairly dismissed by Blues fans but for the more

broadminded marks a period that produced a couple of excellent Americana style LP opuses. At this stage (Sweet Potatoes) still much more of an interpreter than writer, Geoff does manage to roll out a few off-kilter originals. ‘Cordelia’ late on side one is a great New Orleans style sleazy blues similar to some Randy Newman songs. Ditto opener of side two, a raver titled ‘I’m Rich’ with a full-on horn section including Muldaur on trumpet. It is followed two songs later by the weird ‘Kneein’ Me’ a near nonsense, certainly juvenile ditty of injury in painful places. Perhaps it has some Freudian undertones. Probably in response to Maria’s soon to be over-ground success, Geoff literally went Hollywood. His 1976 contract closer for the Warner label was called Motion – I’m sure he’d like to forget about it (I naturally, still kinda like it). Nevertheless, over the years Geoff Muldaur has created a fine body of work (actually starting on the Prestige label in the early 60’s) while remaining pretty much under the radar. Long ago I raved over his 90’s release The Secret Handshake in this magazine, especially the song ‘Got to Find Blind Lemon’. That track in particular hasn’t diminished one bit and remains one of the great Blues tributes. Geoff and Amos still occasionally play live shows today, mainly in northeastern United States and Canada. Time is running out to catch him live; it’s on my wish list. 81

UNDERWATER IS WHERE THE ACTION IS By Christopher Hollow

Andy Shauf The Neon Skyline (ANTI-)

Here’s an easily relatable concept for a concept album - having a night out at a bar and (accidentally/purposely) running into a particularly hot, funny ex with whom you’ve experienced a particularly bad breakup. It’s the subject matter for soft-serve Canadian singer-songwriter Andy Shauf’s The Neon Skyline (the name of said bar). The protagonist runs the gamut of emotions from nostalgia and regret to introspection, in-jokes and (quiet) anger to, finally, resignation. Shauf’s strength is melody and best heard on the title track. But ‘Try Again’, for instance, has great lyrics too: “Somewhere between drunkenness and charity/ She puts her hand on the sleeve of my coat/She says, ‘I've missed this.’ I say, "I know, I've missed you too"/She says, "I was actually talking about your coat". Who says dead romance is dead.

Very happy to see a new Isobel Campbell album – I love my sweet nothings whispered sweetly and Isobel’s close mic offerings are always fabulous. This is the first solo album since 2006 (she has done several recommended duet records with Mark Lanegan in that time). The word is this album has been ready for six years – caught up in bureaucratic record label red tape, which is interesting when it comes to the version of Tom Petty’s ‘Running Down a Dream’. The context now is that it’s an R.I.P tribute rather than just a cover of a song that deserves an alternate rendition (replacing Mike Campbell’s guitar line with a cool drone). Meanwhile, it’s easy to hear that ‘Hey World’ will be a standout number in a live setting with its perfect tension and release. My fave is the plaintive ‘The National Bird of India’ (“And as he flies/Does he try?/No, he just is.”) By the way, India’s national bird is the peacock.

Headland

What Rough Beast (Agitated)

Countless Branches (Dead Oceans)

Land of No Junction (Ba Da Bing)

Here I am listening to Aoife Nessa Frances after a stifling Melbourne summer day with a cool change rainstorm and breeze blowing through a bracingly hot house. Perfect conditions for Land of No Junction, the debut album from this Irish songwriter (Aoife is pron. Ee-fa). It’s produced by one of my other fave Irish artists, Cian (pron. Kee-an) Nugent, and

‘Filled with Wonder Once Again’ and ‘I Will Remain Here’ are the best ways to jump into Fay’s meditations. ‘In Human Hands’ lays it out straight: “I wanna turn my back on the force from hell/And feel my heels touch something real.”

Bill Fay

Aoife Nessa Frances

Isobel Campbell There Is No Other… (Cooking Vinyl)

doesn’t disappoint. A real bed-in mood piece that suits rain more than sun. Highlights include the wild strings in ‘Blow Up’ and the experimental pop of ‘Here in the Dark’ (“Oh the skies won’t fall over things we said / in the hour after light it’s my very last thought”). The relatively upbeat pace and 12-string sounds of ‘Libra’ sounds like a welcome addition to The Notorious Byrd Brothers. The only drawback is six out of the nine songs break my ‘numbers-should-be-lessthan-four-and-a-half-minutesor-more-than-seven-minutesnever-in-between’ theory.

The cult of Bill Fay is based on an eccentric single from 1967 (B-side ‘Screams in the Ears’ is especially good) and a pair of austere Deram label albums from the early ’70s. Songs like ‘Be Not So Fearful’, ‘Omega Day’ and ‘I Hear You Calling’ are rich slices of kitchen-sink poetry that perfectly capture the bleak end-of-the-’60s London landscape. It’s easy to imagine those records as the alternate soundtrack to a film like Withnail & I. And, just like Withnail, Fay’s shot at stardom seemed to take its toll. It’d be more than thirty years before he’d release another. With Countless Branches, a gentle, ruminative, slow-rise of a record, he’s now released three in the past seven years. ‘How Long, How Long’,

Headland is a project led by Murray Paterson, the guitarist/ songwriter with Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses. Paterson is also known for his super-8 film collection that celebrates the soul surf culture of the northern NSW scene. So, it’s no surprise that the music on What Rough Beast has an ocean feel and a cinematic eye. It also successfully evokes the ‘coming-into-the-nearness of distance’ theory in that the best songs appear both vast and microscopic; seemingly in reach and impossibly remote. It’s easy to lose your point of reference in soundtrack-style instrumental numbers like ‘Betrayal’, ‘What Rough Beast’ and my favourite, ‘Reverse Painting’. The biggest surprise is this album also contains covers as diverse as Motörhead's ‘Deaf Forever’ and the Lovin’ Spoonful’s ‘Darlin’ Be Home Soon’.

By Trevor J. Leeden MARTIN BARRE

finest work, and the unanswered question “how high can you fly?”

(Garage Records/Planet)

SAMANTHA FISH

50 YEARS OF JETHRO TULL

KILL OR BE KIND

BILL KIRCHEN & TOO MUCH FUN TOMBSTONE EVERY MILE

THE THIRD MIND THE THIRD MIND (Yep Roc/Planet)

(Last Music Co/Planet)

(Rounder/Planet)

Over four decades as the 6-string foil to Tull’s maniacal vocalist/ flautist, Martin Barre was responsible for some the most recognisable riffs in rockdom. Over two discs, he revisits 24 songs from one of the great songbooks, all re-recorded and rearranged yet retaining the essential essence of each. The first disc bulges with classics like ‘Teacher’, ‘Nothing Is Easy’ and ’Hymn 43’, all recorded live in the studio, whilst the second focuses on more pastoral renditions of the canon, including a swaggering ‘Locomotive Breath’. As anyone who saw his December 2019 shows will attest, Martin Barre remains a guitar wielding leviathan.

ERIC BURDON & THE ANIMALS

WHEN I WAS YOUNG: THE MGM RECORDINGS 1967-68 (Esoteric/Planet)

Reforming the Animals upon arriving in San Francisco at the end of 1966, nobody could have foreseen the impact the counterculture would have on Burdon’s music. In the space of two years, they would release four mindbending, psychedelic blues-rock albums that left an indelible mark on the Summer Of Love. This superb box set brings together ‘Winds Of Change’, ‘The Twain Shall Meet’, ‘Every One Of Us’ and ‘Love Is’, along with ten singles, a definitive statement of Burdon’s

Now New Orleans based, Fish’s seventh studio album opens with a snarling blues boogie (‘Bulletproof’) that would make Billy Gibbons proud; it’s an aural blitzkrieg that will have you hooked. The ensuing ten tracks lay out what is a defining moment in her rapidly burgeoning career, a breakout album that showcases a songwriter of vastly increased maturity and, regardless of gender, a blues guitarist capable of mixing it with the best (but we already knew that). Memphis horn flourishes pump up several songs, including the gritty closer ‘You Got It Bad’, but this is all about the songwriter and the smokin’ Fender Jaguar.

The reissue of the 1993 solo debut by the Titan Of The Telecaster is a veritable treasure trove of rockabilly, honky tonk, C&W and hillbilly licks, showcasing swinging numbers from the likes of Nick Lowe, Blackie Farrell, Johnny Horton and Austin De Lone, many of which still form the bedrock of his live shows. With the legendary Buddy Charlton providing pedal steel foil, Kirchen is in twangtastic form throughout; Buck Owens and Bob Wills would surely approve.

NICK LOWE & LOS STRAITJACKETS WALKABOUT

(Yep Roc/Planet)

KALLE KALIMA– KNUT REIERSRUD

If Dave Alvin’s pyrotechnics form the basis of attention, his renowned compadres Michael Jerome (drums), Victor Krummenacher (bass) and multi-instrumentalist David Immergluck more than hold their own on this freewheeling retelling of the 60s underground music scene. Taking their name from a book by Beat Generation icon William S. Burroughs, the quartet jam their way through sprawling renditions of landmark songs by Fred Neil, Roky Erikson, Bonnie Dobson and Alice Coltrane, and an astonishing 17-minute psychedelic immersion into the Butterfield Blues Band’s ‘East West’ that will leave Deadheads clamouring for more.

V.A.

1977: THE YEAR PUNK BROKE (Cherry Red/Planet)

FLYING LIKE EAGLES (ACT Music/Planet)

Two Scandinavian guitarists, one a Finn immersed in traditional American folk music and jazz, the other a Norwegian protégé of Buddy Guy and Otis Rush. Layers of sound ebb and flow across a melodic Americana canvas as the guitarists intuitively explore American traditional folk standards. A brace of contemporary West Coast classics (‘For What It’s Worth’ and ‘Hotel California’) also receive mesmerising instrumental facelifts that turns nonchalant familiarity into fresh rediscovery; it’s a beautiful album.

To commemorate Lowe and the masked marvels’ first joint tour of the Great Southern Land, the appropriately titled Oz-only compilation brings together songs from Lowe’s two superb 2019 EPs, highlights from the Straitjackets’ 2017 surf rock tribute to Lowe, as well as a couple of previously unreleased gems, not least being the unhinged rendition of ‘Friday On My Mind’. Whether it’s a stellar interpretation of ‘Heartbreaker’ (yep, the Bee Gees song), the pumping horns on the soulful ‘Trombone’, or an outright twangfest on ‘What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace Love And Understanding’, there is not a wasted note or whammy bar in sight.

Love or hate it, punk was a major cultural phenomenon, especially in the UK, and if 1977 wasn’t exactly ground zero then it most certainly was ‘the year punk broke’ (and everything else in its path!). There have been many compilations that focus primarily on the major players and their ‘best’ moments, however this phenomenal 3-disc set eschews the usual torchbearers, instead concentrating on the obscure, the never-weres, and the almost-madeits, e.g. The Wasps, Chartreuse and Blitzkrieg Bop. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but punk cannot be denied its place in music history. 83

BY CHRIS FAMILTON

BETWEEN THE PAGES As any righteous fan and music nerd will attest, biographies and autobiographies of their favourite artists and albums are an invaluable insight into the life and creative journey of a songwriter. Even in this day and age of smorgasbord information access via the internet, an in-depth and well-researched book by a writer with an empathy and understanding of their subject can make fascinating reading. In Australia there have been a number of landmark publications that look at music and artists of note. Clinton Walker wrote Buried Country: The Story of Aboriginal Country Music (2000), a definitive document that also spawned a film and CD. Local songwriter Jason Walker looked offshore to the golden era of cosmic country rock with his hard-tofind Gram Parsons: God’s Own Singer, named UNCUT magazine’s book of the month in 2002. Respected author Stuart Coupe has tackled artists, roadies and entrepreneurs and his forthcoming book on Paul Kelly (July, 2020) promises to be another must-read. Coupe and Jane Clifton will also be publishing a book prior to Christmas on the 100 Greatest Australian Singles of the 1970s. Most recently, Archie Roach released his intimate and emotional autobiography Tell Me Why to much acclaim. All major roots music artists have had books written about them, either by their own hand or by other authors. Some have written multiple publications – Willie Nelson

in particular has been heavily involved in collaborating on books, the two most essential being Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die: Musings from the Road and It's a Long Story: My Life. Neil Young has taken to writing books about music, technology and cars – the best being Waging Heavy Peace, while Dylan captivated fans with Chronicles in 2004 and Springsteen finally took pen to paper with his 2016 bestseller Born To Run. Other major artists have been reluctant to tell their story. Tom Waits in particular went to great lengths to deter friends from speaking with author Barny Hoskyns for his excellent book Lowside Of The Road: A Life Of Tom Waits. Some lower profile yet still hugely influential songwriters have been analysed and detailed in book form. John Kruth did a fine job with To Live’s To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zandt, Erin Osman got to the heartbreaking core of Jason Molina’s tooshort life in Riding with the Ghost and Tamara Saviano combined elements of memoir and biography in her wonderful book Without Getting Killed or Caught: The Life and Music of Guy Clark. Books on specific albums have gained in popularity in recent years, spearheaded by the success of the short form 33 1/3 series. Americana-related titles that are worth exploring include books on Neil Young’s Harvest, The Replacements’ Let It Be, The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street, Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A, The Band’s

Music From Big Pink, Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited, Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark, The Byrds’ The Notorious Byrd Brothers and many more! Scenes and events such as festivals are well covered in music writing. From Woodstock to Newport, Delta blues to the roots of country rock, every angle has been dissected and researched with forensic detail. Recentlyread personal favourites of particular note include Michael Streissguth’s Outlaw: Waylon, Willie, Kris and the Renegades of Nashville and Hoskyns’ Small Town Talk which explores the rich musical history of the town of Woodstock in the ‘60s and '70s. For anyone looking to read a definitive overview of country music, the book most widely considered the best in its field is Bill Malone’s Country Music USA. Hailed by Rolling Stone as "The country-music history bible,” the book covers the genre’s origins and evolution. If you’re keen to dig deep into the history of English folk music, a similarly comprehensive and highly recommended book is Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music by Rob Young. The selection above only dips a toe in the water of the seemingly endless range of music books out there. Head to your favourite bookshop or library and immerse yourself in the world of a favourite artist. For fans, it’s an absorbing and endlessly rewarding way to understand why and how they’ve created their music.

JOHN MAYALL BLUESBREAKERS WITH ERIC CLAPTON POLYDOR - By Billly Pinnell Released in July 1966,Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton (aka The Beano Album) is one of the most influential guitar albums of all time, an album that changed the way electric guitarists played while transforming the language of blues guitar.

CLASSIC ALBUM

John Mayall

one of the most revered figures in the history of blues/rock who turned 87 in November 2019 and whose career spans over sixty years, will take his place among a galaxy of stars at this year’s Bluesfest. Born in Cheshire England on November 29,1933, Mayall pioneered the acceptance of the blues as a valid musical artform when there were very few British musicians willing to do so. Discovering blues and jazz at an early age via his father’s vast record collection, young John became proficient on guitar, ukulele, harmonica, piano and organ. Honing his craft in a number of local bands he put his own group together when he was nearly 30. Opening for Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated in 1962 was a turning point for the young musician. Befriended by Korner who acted as his musical mentor, Mayall decided to relocate to London to become fully professional forming his first Bluesbreakers in February of 1963 after having played music for nearly 20 years. An early member was innovative folk and blues guitarist Davy Graham while bass player John McVie would remain a cornerstone of the band for the next four and a half years before leaving to form Fleetwood Mac. Players came and went by the time Mayall recorded his first album with McVie, drummer Hughie Flint and guitarist Roger Dean. In April 1965, Mayall made a decision that would change the course of electric blues music. On hearing the B-side of a single by young London R&B band The Yardbirds, an instrumental called ‘Got To Hurry’ that featured some amazing soloing from guitarist Eric Clapton, Mayall made the decision to replace Dean in the Bluesbreakers.

Clapton played the blues like no other white guitarist before him. The intensity and ferocity he brought to the songs on this album was unprecedented. For the first time a white man was able to express a sincere feeling for the blues inspiring countless blues musicians who came after him. Clapton, eight years Mayall’s junior, was born in Surrey on March 31, 1945. Raised by his grandparents the young loner immersed himself in traditional blues and American R&B prior to taking up guitar in his early teens. Joining The Yardbirds in 1963 he needed little convincing to leave them when Mayall offered him the lead guitar spot in the Bluesbreakers,a band with no pop aspirations. While it was Clapton who created the template for electric blues/rock, Mayall’s role cannot be underestimated. From the beginning of their association Mayall broadened Clapton’s musical horizons and understanding of the blues. He introduced him to the music of people such as Freddie King whose guitar playing inspired the young musician to switch from a Stratocaster to a Gibson Les Paul, King’s guitar of choice. Audiences at the early performances of this latest Bluesbreakers line-up were witness to a guitar player with a sound so unique it placed him miles ahead of any other British guitarist of that time. Tracks like Otis Rush’s ‘All Your Love,’ the album’s opener, is as mind blowing today, fifty plus years after Clapton’s bell like tone, sustained notes and full throttle soloing inspired fans to graffiti ‘Clapton Is God’ on buildings around London. The twenty-one year old’s technique and dexterity were on full display on the Freddie King instrumental ‘Hideaway’,

his solos growing in unprecedented intensity. Memphis Slim’s ‘Steppin’ Out,’ another instrumental, is played in similar fashion with Mayall’s arrangement enhanced by Alan Skidmore and Johnny Almond on tenor and baritone sax and Dennis Healey on trumpet. On Ray Charles’ ‘What’d I Say’ Flint gets a drum solo while Clapton sneaks in a splash of The Beatles’ ‘Daytripper’ during another blistering solo. Clapton’s deep understanding of the blues is in evidence on two slow blues performed back to back towards the end of the album. One is Mayall’s ‘Have You Heard’ the other is a cover of Robert Johnson’s ‘Ramblin’ On My Mind,’ which marked Clapton’s recorded debut as a lead singer. The only sounds on this track come from Clapton’s voice and guitar and Mayall’s piano. This performance alone would have been sufficient to warrant Clapton’s canonisation as a guitar God. In addition, it exposed for the first time to a young white audience the music of blues legend Robert Johnson. Clapton moved on shortly after the album’s release to join Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce who had briefly played with Mayall, in Cream. Mayall continued to do what he did best, discover, nurture and encourage new talent. Post Clapton, his bands included: guitarists Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Miller Anderson, Jon Mark, Jimmy McCulloch, Harvey Mandel, Coco Montoya, Walter Trout; drummers Mick Fleetwood, Micky Waller, Aynsley Dunbar, Colin Allen, Keef Hartley, Jon Hiseman; bass guitarists Andy Fraser and Larry Taylor; saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith; and violinist Don ‘Sugarcane’ Harris. Clapton’s career continues unabated; his sell-out concert tours and million selling albums a testimony to his worldwide following. Mayall and his current band, bass guitarist Greg Rzab, drummer Jay Davenport and lead guitarist Carolyn Wonderland are among the star attractions at this year’s Bluesfest.

CD: Feature BY BRIAN WISE

VARIOUS ARTISTS

Australian singer Angie McMahon is a revelation with the quiet closing song, ‘Take It With Me.’

COME ON UP TO THE HOUSE: WOMEN SINGS WAITS DUALTONE Tom Waits turned seventy on December 7 last year, yet he sounded like he was that age when he released his debut album Closing Time in 1973 so time has not aged him. This album, which is much more than a tribute, was released to coincide with the reclusive Waits’ birthday and it stands amongst the best of its type ever recorded. In the early 1980s, maybe just after Heartattack & Vine, Waits rejected his previous musical approach; how long could he keep being the hungover beatnik hipster, dragging on a cigarette? By the time of the adventurous Swordfishtrombones in 1983 he had begun collaborating with his wife, Kathleen Brennan and relocated to California. By that stage he had already written a batch of great songs, some of which appear here, and enjoyed royalties from the Eagles cover of ‘Ol’ 55.’ While Waits’ music in the post 1980 era has been remarkably different to that of his earlier career – employing guitarist Marc Ribot, bassist Les Claypool and guests such as Keith Richards and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos – listen carefully and there are as many great songs, sometimes hidden under the patina of eclectic instrumentation. Stripped of this it is as if you have a fresh view of an old familiar painting and see it in a completely different light. Sometimes you will even get a completely different meaning from it. 88

Warren Zanes – the album’s producer – is a musician, author (he wrote an acclaimed biography of Tom Petty), former education director at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and director at Steve Van Zandt’s Rock and Roll Forever Foundation. Zanes has managed to dig deep and bring Waits’ songs to life in completely new settings that are not only often stunning but will also have you re-examining Waits’ later work. Zanes sought out an intriguing mix of established and newer artists to interpret Waits’ songs, five of which come from 1999’s Mule Variations. That album provides Iris DeMent with the starkly beautiful ‘The House Where Nobody Lives.’ Aimee Mann – who has one of the very best voices in contemporary rock - captures the melancholy and emotion of the shuffling ‘Hold On.’ (“I miss your broken China voice”). Portland’s Joseph lend an air of old-timey authenticity to the title track. Phoebe Bridgers imbues the tale of ‘Georgia Lee’ with an ineffable sadness and power – the voice of a parent, perhaps. (‘Why wasn’t God watching?).

Hearattack and Vine provides ‘Ruby’s Arms’ for Patty Griffin who almost turns it into a hymn. Corinne Bailey Rae makes ‘Jersey Girl’ into a moving love ballad. Rosanne Cash offers a bittersweet acoustic rendering of ‘Time’ from Rain Dogs. Kat Edmondson sings the obscure and eerie ‘You Can Never Hold Back Spring’ and gives it the feeling of a classic that Billie Holiday or Sinatra could have done. Nashville’s Courtney Marie Andrews brings a country feel to ‘Downtown Train’ and The Wild Reeds choose ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues.’ One of the undoubted highlights, for me, is the magnificent version of ‘Ol’ 55’ featuring the harmony of sisters Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer. While you might have thought that many of Waits’ characters were down-andouts, deadbeats or vaguely threatening, here they become sad, world weary and sympathetic. Of course, there are a lot more of them in other Waits’ songs which, hopefully, might lead to a second volume to follow this inspired effort. When I spoke to Warren Zanes – who, with his brother Dan, was a member of one of my favourite American bands the Del Fuegos – he was busy working on a number of book projects. He had been enlisted for the Come On Up To The House project by Scott Robinson of Dualtone Records who had begun the project with Rodney Crowell and recorded the song with Iris DeMent before Crowell had to withdraw ‘for personal reasons.’ Can you tell us about the genesis of the project? Was it planned to coincide with Tom's 70th birthday? Rodney couldn't continue. Scott reached out to me to shepherd this project from that point to completion. I knew Scott

because I've put out a few records with Dualtone and I love Tom Waits and I know I'm not alone in that. We knew that his 70th birthday was coming, and really the idea was to honour this songwriter and performer by wrapping up this particular birthday gift for him. So, the spirit of this thing struck me as being right. I was introduced to Tom Waits by my mother when I was a pre-teen, so it's been a lifelong affair and it spoke to me. How did you put the rest together and did you choose the singers? How did that all come about? Well, on some level I feel like God chooses the singers. You create wishlists and then you start making phone calls. Having done a number of multi-artist shows, particularly when I was working at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, I knew that you call fifty and you get four. So, we had those people that we were dreaming of that we couldn't get. Patti Smith. Tried Chrissie Hynde on ‘16 Shells from a ThirtyOught-Six.’ Regina Spektor. There were a bunch of them.

really needed to do. Then artists had their ones. For Patty Griffin it was going to be ‘Ruby's Arms’. She knew that was the one she wanted to do. I mean, you listen to it, the song tells you why. But it was a mix. Sometimes I could make a case for a song with an artist, but more often than not, they had that one that they used in that way we use songs, which is you're going through a challenging time in your life or maybe a euphoric time of love and you connect with a particular song and so it becomes one of your core life songs. And so, in some cases, people had those. And Tom Waits writes those kinds of songs. So, it made perfect sense that people saw a deep personal connection to some material.

For artists, this is like stepping to the side from their career path. They're really doing it if they do it because they love Waits and their schedule allows. So, some people you can't get just because they're in the middle of cutting an album, writing a book, taking care of an elderly parent, they're doing something. So, you just start calling and the thing takes shape just by virtue of who can do it and who can't.

Did you suggest the songs to some of the singers or did they choose the songs? How did that work? I always had a couple in my back pocket. For instance, I went to Aimee [Mann] with one song. I just listened to the thing and I thought, "Man, if Aimee can do this", and she was one of my first calls. She's an old friend and I love what she brings to a song and ‘Hold On’ just felt like a good fit. Maybe because she was being kind to me, maybe because she felt the same way, she went with it. Then in other cases I brought material because I felt there were songs we just

I think that's baked into the very idea of let's gather a group of female artists that have a reverence for him and have them do this male songwriter's material. You know it's going to start to become a little different, even if the words are the same. What struck me is how much more different it became. So, when - going back to Phoebe Bridgers - when she did ‘Georgia Lee’, I thought I knew that song and she introduced it to me in a different enough way that it felt almost new and it's a devastating song. There was something about a young woman singing it that brought it a little more up to the present. Sometimes, I'll listen to Tom Waits singing and I'll be like, ‘This song must be 200 years old and that man might be 300 years old.’ It just feels like that. In Phoebe Bridger's hands ‘Georgia Lee felt very of the moment. Hopefully we're in a period of awakening when it comes to gender inequities. It's gone under the label of this Me Too moment. But I think it's even bigger as a historical issue and, hopefully, we're slamming up against some real hard questioning when it comes to gender politics. Maybe because of that, I felt like her ‘Georgia Lee’ was speaking to it and Tom Waits couldn't have brought that, despite it being his song. So, I'm with you. I think both your points are really good.

Along the way you'll describe the project to people and they'll say, “Have you tried Phoebe Bridgers?" and you get this version of ‘Georgia Lee’ that stops you in your tracks. So, when I say, "God chooses the singers", I say it because really the elements of chance are many. So, it depends on your relationship to chance how you think of it.

So, it did bring a consistency to the performances. It wasn't just that we wanted to give him a good 70th birthday party. It was also because this is such durable, such emotionally resonant material, people just wanted to show up in the right way.

You got a really good mix of established artists, people we know and people who are lesser known. I'll just note that all of the singers are beautifully appropriate for this album because on some tribute albums you get people contributing who maybe don't fit in or maybe don't have an empathy with the songs that they're singing or the artists that they're covering. That is not the case here and in a lot of cases they bring a different character to the song. So, you actually hear the songs differently now and listen to the lyrics differently than you did in the originals. I think you're making two important points. One is people were bringing a really great performance. I think the material asks that: it's just that this is songwriting at the very highest level and so people wanted to honour that.

I think these multi artists collections need to breathe a little in that way. I've listened to them when they make every effort to line up a string of mega artists and sometimes I want to make a discovery as I'm listening. I want to hear a voice I haven't heard before. So maybe if we had gotten Chrissie Hynde and Patti Smith, we wouldn't have had room for newer voices or lesser known voices. But it worked out that way and we believed in that principle. This is part of what we do. If you're a lifer in carrying your music with you, part of that is bringing something that you found to the next person, so we wanted the collection to do some of that.

CD: Feature BY TONY HILLIER

PAT METHENY

FROM THIS PLACE Nonesuch

Pat Metheny’s first album of new material since 2014’s Kin is, by his own account, a record he has been waiting his whole life to make. As he summarised in a recent press release: “It’s a kind of a musical culmination”. Given the American’s status in the pantheon of jazz guitar playing over the past four decades — he’s topped Down Beat and Guitar Player magazine reader polls with monotonous regularity and is the only artist to have won Grammy Awards in a dozen different categories, and an incredible 20 gongs all up — that’s some endorsement for From This Place. Connoisseurs of the genre worldwide have long lauded Metheny’s trademark sound and style, his ability to blend the pliable articulation of horn players with acute harmonic and rhythmic sensibility. With his 1976 debut album Bright Size Life he refined and redefined the traditional jazz guitar sound for a new generation of players. Over the intervening years, while remaining grounded in the jazz tradition of melody, swing and blues, Metheny has deftly blended boundaries. Apart from consolidating his place at the cutting edge of jazz, From This Place is something of a magnum opus for this esteemed artist. If the album’s not the apotheosis of his career, it’s certainly the most extensive, ambitious and colourful studio recording in a 20-strong back catalogue. As he commented in the presser: “The album reflects a wide range of expressions that have interested me over the years scaled across a large canvas and presented in a way that offers the

kind of opportunities for communication that can only be earned with a group of musicians who have spent hundreds of nights together on the bandstand.” The band Metheny leads on the recording is the same one that will tour Australia with him in March (dates below). It’s a cosmopolitan crew comprising Perthraised Australian-Malaysian bass virtuoso Linda May Han Oh, exciting young British pianist Gwilym Simcock and MexicanAmerican drummer Antonio Sanchez. As a quartet, they have played in excess of 400 concerts over the past three years or so, a fact that‘s reflected in the outstanding rapport between them on the recording. That From This Place has a cinematic quality, referencing American movie music in general, is not entirely surprising given that Metheny has scored more than a dozen films and that the album also includes backing from the Hollywood Studio Symphony Orchestra. ‘America Undefined’, the ultra-bold 13-minute-plus opening piece, covers as much ground and troughs and peaks as a Quentin Tarantino film, reflective mid-track sections to a

thrilling crescendo of clanging intensity. The quiet, mildly cloying closing track ‘Love May Take A While’ skirts more sentimental film score territory in melody and the mood created by Metheny clear-toned guitar playing. Melodically as strong as anything on the set-list, ‘Everything Explained’ has a jaunty, joyful Amélie skip in its step, showcasing superlative guitar work in between crashing cymbals and palmasinformed handclapping. The title track — evidently written by Metheny as an immediate reaction to Trump’s ascendancy to the presidency in 2016 — has a sad hymn-like quality over which Meshell Ndegeocello sublimely delivers lyrics written by her partner (Alison Riley). The set’s quietest and shortest track is followed by a wider-ranging piece, ‘Sixty-Six’, that signifies the artist’s age. In ‘The Past In Us’, Swiss guest Gregoire Maret’s harmonica works wonderfully in conjunction with Metheny’s understated guitar, Simcock’s delicate ivory tickling and lustrous strings to engender wistful contemplation. ‘Same River’ is similarly built over a sumptuous strings’ wash, finishing with a subtle guitar solo. ‘You Are’ builds impressive momentum before fading out to solo piano. ‘Wide And Far’ offers jazz with blues and pop overtones. Recruiting two of the most distinguished arrangers on the contemporary jazz scene, Alan Broadbent and Gil Goldstein was a masterstroke. Their combined experience and expertise ensured Pat Metheny superior charts with which to enhance and colour his creations. Pat Metheny plays Perth’s Riverside Theatre (March 4), Melbourne’s Palais Theatre (March 6) and Sydney’s State Theatre (March 7).

CD: Feature BY BRIAN WISE NATHANIEL RATELIFFE

AND IT’S STILL ALRIGHT STAX When Nathaniel Rateliff went to a writing retreat outside of Tucson, Arizona, for 11 days in the spring of 2017 he was intent on finishing the last few songs for the follow up to the 2015 self-titled album with The Night Sweats. He did manage to write the last few songs for what was to become Tearing at the Seams, produced by his long-time friend Richard Swift, but one of the other songs that emerged from the retreat, ‘What A Drag,’ was unlike anything he had recorded with the band. The song was prompted by the fact that his marriage had ended after 11 years and then the sadness he was feeling was compounded when Swift fell ill and died in July 2018 from the complications of alcohol addiction. It left Rateliffe to finish the album himself, with the help of Night Sweats drummer Patrick Meese and engineer James Barone. Given Swift’s passing the scope of the album became even broader, examining the issues of getting older and losing friends and love ones. And It’s Alright is Rateliffe’s first solo album since Falling Faster Than You Can Run in 2013. It not only contains his most personal songs it was also partly inspired by the vision he and Swift had of making it like a Harry Nilsson album (they were both big fans of Nilsson Sings Newman and A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night). Can you tell us a little bit about Richard? Well, Richard was just one of those guys that made everybody feel like they were family. He was hilarious. He was a brilliant guy. He and I just had a kinship that I haven't found with a lot of people. And as far as creatively, I had anticipated continuing to work with him even as The Night Sweats. I felt like we had found our creative home together. Also, we really cared about each other and loved each other on a personal level as well. But unfortunately, he was struggling with alcoholism and it unfortunately took his life.

It was a turbulent time in your life in a way. Not that that hasn't happened before. I was going through a divorce and then Richard eventually was going through the same thing. So, that was a lot of what our conversations were about. That's kind of the way it goes, I guess. You're having that stuff happening in your life and at the same time, as a band, you work your whole life to get to a certain point. I certainly felt like I was falling apart. But it was really not the time to quit or walk away from what we were doing. So, it's hard. It's hard to make it through it, but we did. Even before I knew about what was going on in the background, just listening to the album, I could tell that something must have been happening because it's a much more reflective album than anything you've made with The Night Sweats. Right. I guess part of writing, for me, especially this record, was very cathartic. But also, in some way I'm starting to realise that somehow that's tied into me moving forward: to actually be able to write about it or sing about it. Richard, along with yourself, was a big fan of Harry Nilsson. Yes. And that was an influence on one of the songs early on and it formed ‘All or Nothing’. I was even just playing Richard the progression

and he was like, "I love it. You can't be too Nilsson." And I was like, "Well, we'll see." I've certainly wanted to, I guess, pay homage to Harry Nilsson and a couple other artists on the record. I could certainly relate to some of the crazy stuff he did. I wouldn't put myself on the same mark as a songwriter, but I'm trying. The sound on the album's fantastic. Your voice sounds great. There's beautiful instrumentation on it. Tell us a little bit about the lead-off song, ‘What a Drag’ because it features some vibes on it as well as percussion. I was talking a little bit about separation, and it was one of those songs that kind of came out of nowhere and then it just featured some slide and I liked it as the opening track and setting the mood for the rest of the record. I try to think of when I'm doing a track listing to the way a Wes Anderson film would start. How would he open the scene? So, I always imagine somebody putting a needle on a record. Then the scene starts and what it would go into. There's a song called ‘Mavis’ on it. Immediately we think it's about Mavis Staples but it's obviously not necessarily about her at all. It's not. I just did a few shows with Mavis. I wish I would have written it about her. I'm really just writing about the idea of having somebody you're so close to for a long time. But there's never anything romantic there. But I guess I was trying to talk about, in some other places, maybe it would have been a romance instead of just a friendship. ‘And It’s Still Alright.’ The title song is very basic with very minimal instrumentation. Well, that song talks about some stuff about Richard. I guess the whole point of the song is talking about as our lives change, and as we grow we just continue to live our lives regardless of growth. Regardless of deaths or challenge, or the feeling of hopelessness, there's a chance to continue to find hope. So, it's really just, regardless of the circumstance, trying to look at one's life and find a sense of hope and try to see that it's still all right regardless. 91

CD: Feature BY BRIAN WISE

ORDER: 106727 pgs 4-1

CHEDDAR ROAD ALL-STARS Debut album ‘Nowhere Else to Feel Rotten: The Verses of Barry Dickins’

OUT NOW from reservoirstomp.com

A collaboration between Reservoir-based songwriters and prolific Australian playwright and long-time Reservoir resident, Barry Dickins. Together they vividly capture in song the beauty, terror and humour of life in Reservoir, an often scorned outer suburb of Melbourne, during the 1950’s and 1960’s. “Raucous rock, alt-folk and spoken word gems make for compelling listening...a lovingly local and most worthy tribute” Rhythms Magazine

CD: General

STONED - Celebrating the music of the R

CD: World Music & Folk

u the m

sic of

oll the R

to ing S

nes

Featuring unique interpretations of Stones classics by some of Melbourne’s greatest musicians. Under My Thumb - Tracy McNeil, Hip Shake - Chris Wilson, Hide Your Love Nick Barker, Gimme Shelter - Lisa Miller, You Got The Silver - Raised By Eagles, I Got The Blues - Linda Bull, Factory Girl - Sal Kimber, Miss You - Simon Bailey, Salt Of The Earth - Dan Lethbridge, Silver Train - Nick Barker, Little Red Rooster Loretta Miller, Star Star - Justin Garner. Bonus Track: Midnight Rambler by Nick Barker, recorded live at the Caravan Music Club.

Available now at rhythms.com.au

nes

Produced by Shane O’Mara and recorded at Yikesville.

ing S to

of the Roll

ebrati ng th e mu sic

Sally

Stones

thank Shane O’Mara, all the is album, Mick, Keith, Brian, nie, Chuck, Bobby, Bernard,

Like Shanren, a band that regaled punters at the WOMADelaide festival a few years back, Manhu hail from the mountainous province of Yunnan in the far southwest of China bordering Tibet, Burma, Laos and Vietnam. Since both acts draw on the ethnic music of the Yi minority — the umbrella under which the Chinese government categorises the Sani (nine million people from over 40 distinct cultural groups) — there’s a similarity in styles, although Manhu features female as well as male singers.

the Rolling

Garner - guitar / Shane O’Mara rford - bass / Ash Davies - drums / an Music Club, nally on Let It Bleed

of the music

LINA_RAÜL REFREE Glitterbeat Records

R (LIVE) - Nick Barker & The

ES N O T S G ROLLIN Tribute Album!

g Celebratin

cking vocals / Grant Cummerford . d Soup LINA_RAÜL REFREE

MANHU

VOICES OF THE SANI Riverboat/Planet

’s Only

Australia

rating

ng Stones

TUULETAR

RAJATILA/BORDERLINE Bafe’s Factory

In some respects, Tuuletar — performing at WOMADelaide 2020 — sound like a 21st century version of their compatriots Värttinä, the long-time flag bearers for Finnish female folk acts at festivals around the world. In place of jazz and rock accompaniment, they weave their ethereal otherworldly harmony singing and chants over electronic beds and beatbox rhythms. While the doof tends to detract from their vocals on several tracks, they are offset on the latest album by a couple of a cappella songs that show the luminosity of the girls’ voices. Their songs, like Värttinä’s, are rooted in Finnish folk tradition and some have a vaguely shamanic vibe, in keeping with their name which translates as: Goddess of The Wind in Finnish mythology. Tuuletar, whose music has been in Game of Thrones, might narrow the gap between mythical and modern idioms but they won’t be everyone’s cup of mead.

STONED -

Traditional Appalachian repertoire converses with English chamber music aesthetic in an intriguing debut album from The Idumea Quartet that, much like its Aussie counterpart Bush Gothic, deconstructs and reassembles time-honoured folk fare with a predominantly minimalistic approach. Blending tradition and innovation with superlative string playing (violins, viola and cello) and harmonised ley (5.36)singing, their music is as high and tars / Sean Albers as - drums, lonesome it is symphonic. The s /Chris Wilson - harp / Shane Quartet’s arrangements vacillate rcussion between / Grant Cummerford darkness and light, Girls highs and lows. The set peaks early with(6.07) a pristine rendition - Dan Lethbridge of the/ evergreen standard coustic guitar Shane O’Mara delivered with backing ‘Silver vocalsDagger’, / Ash Davies b.v.’s. crystalline beauty by one of the anquet band’s two female vocalists. Another old chestnut, ‘Cluck Old Barker (4.38) Hen’, gets rather less reverential Garner -treatment. guitar, backing vocals/ Two and three-part hris Wilson - harp /singing Bruce Haymes harmony and a long d - bass /Ash Davies -break drums. instrumental combine d Soup to lift the morose ‘Am I Born To Die?’ to celestial R (W. Dixon) - Loretta Miller heights. (4.03) ‘Carthy Hoose’ morphs ane O’Mara – guitars / Rick Plantfrom mournfulness to something more / Darcy McNulty - baritone sax. upbeat. The male-female duet Stones Now! ‘Fall On My Knees’ is punctuated Garner (4.17) by bluegrass-influenced ar / Nick Barker - backing vocals / instrumental breaks.

Like Shanren, Manhu marries the traditional folk songs and instruments of their region with Western pop sensibilities, combining bowed sanhu, lusheng gourd pipes and adiza and chazi lutes with electric bass guitar and drum kit to create a veritable village hoedown vibe. The band’s wholly accessible international debut release, like Shanren’s on the same label six years before, also juxtaposes raucous and seemingly obligatory songs in praise of drinking and dancing alongside haunting familial odes, several bearing what could be construed as an Appalachian influence

Celeb

MORE THAN ONE Penny Fiddle Records

The mournful Portuguese folk ballad style known as fado has been modernised over the past decade or so by the likes of Mariza, Carminho and Ana Moura. Lina goes a step further than her fadista sisters on this selftitled debut collaboration with Barcelona multi-instrumentalist and producer Raül Refree, to cover songs associated with the legendary Amália Rodrigues in a minimalistic and yet quite radical fashion. Eschewing the chiming cavaquinho guitars that have long been fado’s trademark accompaniment, Refree has recorded Lina’s lovely voice over atmospheric analogue synthesiser washes and other (mostly) judicious electronic effects. The results are even more impressive when piano joins synth, as on ‘Gaivota’ and the melodramatic ‘Quando eu era Pequenina’ and better still when he sets her voice to pedalling piano chords. This serves to heighten the drama in songs such as ‘Ave Maria Fadista’ and ‘Barco Negro’ without in any way impinging on the purity or power of Lina’s passionate singing and the nuances of sorrow she expresses or the intrinsic beauty of the fado melodies.

ey (5.36) drums, rs - Simon Bail Sean Albe e 8. MISS YOU - vocals, guitars / - harp / Shan y is Wilson ord Simon Baile vocals /Chr t Cummerf n, backing ussion / Gran percussio box, perc ne O’Mara mxr blue e by Sha CREDITS O’Mara Some Girls wink from at Yikesvill (6.07) inally on a nod & a & mixed k Lethbridge e O’Mara bass. Orig Recorded O’Mara with erely than TH - Dan by Shane like to sinc h Richards THE EAR guitar / Shan Davies Produced ne would Keit 9. SALT OF e - vocals, acoustic ists. Sha Jagger & vocals / Ash all protagon s by Mick Dan Lethbridg , percussion backing . All song bass d. b.v.’s. Brian Wise - guitars, rwise state ro Pickett eil (3.53) unless othe drums / Jeth Beggars Banquet - Tracy McN - guitars, backing on ) ara MY THUMB Originally s, Barker (4.38 r, backing vocals/ 1. UNDER / Shane O’M ley - drum eil - vocals TRAIN - Nick es - guita / Bree Hart rmath Tracy McN 10. SILVER vocal/ Justin Garner / Bruce Haym Barker - bass Originally on Afte on - harp er s. vocals / Nick vocals. Nick Bark on (4.46) r / Chris Wils /Ash Davies - drum n, backing ara - guita o) Chris Wils r / Ash percussio Shane O’M t Cummerford - bass (Slim Harp guita ) YOUR HIPS / Shane O’Mara et - piano / Gran Goats Head Soup Miller (4.03 2. SHAKE l, harp Main Stre n) - Loretta ton - voca inally on Exile On Dixo Orig Chris Wils inally on rs / Rick Plan STER (W. drums. Orig ara – guita RED ROO er (3.52) ls Davies – 11. LITTLE - vocals / Shane O’M baritone sax. Nick Bark backing voca r McNulty R LOVE er - guitar, s / Darcy Loretta Mille e Haymes 3. HIDE YOU vocal / Justin Garn Davies - drum Stones Now! vocals / Bruc - drums / er ing bass / Ash r, backing Nick Bark es on The Roll ) ara - guita / Ash Davi / Originally Garner (4.17 er - backing vocals / Shane O’M t Cummerford - bass R - Justin merford ing vocals. r / Nick Bark STAR STA - piano / Gran Cum 12. back t guita p Barnard er - vocal, vocals / Gran Rebecca Head Sou Justin Garn r, backing on Goat’s ara - guita r (5.15) Originally s. in Garner Shane O’M - Lisa Mille vocal / Just Davies - drum d Soup SHELTER Rogers Wilson bass / Ash Hea 4. GIMME er & The guitar / Tim percussion / Chris on Goat’s r - vocal, - Nick Bark bass / Originally - guitar, Lisa Mille R (LIVE) merford e O’Mara T RAMBLE Grant Cum ara - guitar / Shan Haymes - organ / d 13. MIDNIGH (7.32) / Shane O’M s / e Let It Blee er - guitar inally on - harp / Bruc Monkey Men vocal / Justin Garn Davies - drum (4.31) - drums. Orig er - bass / Ash , By Eagles ed ord Bark dolin Ash Davie merf Nick ER - Rais dobro, man r / Grant Cum van Music Club, THE SILV O’Mara slide guita Cara y Gibson 5. YOU GOT - vocal, guitar / Nick It Bleed live at the y on Let le bass / John lair Recorded . Originall Luke Sinc ardson - doub l / RBE - oooohs. r 18, 2016 Luke Rich Decembe ony voca lap steel / all the ussion harm ne O’Mara, - drums, perc Let It Bleed n, THANKS thank Sha on ) Keith, Bria ld like to Originally m, Mick, bass / a Bull (4.06 n Wise wou Bria ES - Lind rs, organ, in this albu ck, Bobby, Bernard, THE BLU ara - guita s involved nie, Chu 6. I GOT Shane O’M musician Mick T, Ron - vocals / ussion. Linda Bull Charlie, Bill, Stan Rofe. - drums, perc ers and Cat Leahy Fing Lisa, Tim on Sticky By Sally (3.35) yGraphics Originally Sal Kimber - guitars / Cat Leah Design by Y GIRL e O’Mara 7. FACTOR - vocal / Shan gars Banquet Sal Kimber Beg inally on drums. Orig

THE IDUMEA QUARTET

BY T O N Y H I L L I E R

CD: Blues AL HENSLEY

THORBJORN RISAGER & THE BLACK TORNADO

TORONZO CANNON AND THE CHICAGO WAY

COME ON IN Ruf/Only Blues Music

THE PREACHER, THE POLITICIAN OR THE PIMP Alligator/Only Blues Music

Since their 2004 debut CD Live, Danish blues band Thorbjorn Risager & The Black Tornado have rarely let more than 18 months pass between writing, recording and releasing new material. Come On In marks their fourth title for German based label Ruf Records whose international reach put them on the world stage. In the last few years the hard-working band has risen to the front ranks of global blues having toured extensively throughout Europe, Canada and elsewhere. An octet comprising vocals, guitars, keyboards, bass, drums and horn section, the band’s line-up remains virtually unchanged since its formation. It owes much of its success to sticking together through thick and thin, united in talent, dedication and perseverance. Whether dispensing plaintive soul-drenched tunes or greasy dance floor R&B, the band maintains a high standard of musicianship, avoiding any tendency to overplay. Guitar playing lead singer Thorbjorn Risager is the band’s chief songwriter. His compositions are deeply immersed in the blues, each song bearing its own distinctive brand of originality. His full-bodied baritone voice, evocative of Ray Charles, caresses tender ballads with tasteful restraint and wails swampy blues with unbridled passion.

If anyone deserves recognition as the modern standard bearer for west side Chicago blues in the tradition of Son Seals, Buddy Guy and Luther Allison, Windy City born-and-bred musician Toronzo Cannon would have few if any challengers. A blistering guitarist, soul-charged vocalist and exemplary songwriter whose day job is a bus driver for the Chicago Transit Authority, Cannon’s fourth title for a major blues label since 2011 attests to his staying power. Solid group rapport with his piano/organbass-drums rhythm section and session guests abounds throughout the dozen truth-telling original songs on this smoking set. Hometown blues harp hero Billy Branch puts a Jimmy Reed stamp on ‘Insurance’, fat horn charts underscore the blues rumba ‘Stop Me When I’m Lying’ and Cannon’s acoustic slide guitar on ‘The First 24’ evokes the music’s Delta roots. From the funky ‘Get Together Or Get Apart’ and the swinging ‘Ordinary Woman’ to the boogie driven ‘The Chicago Way’, the gospel-inspired ‘The Silence Of My Friends’ and the slow burn of ‘She Loved Me (Again)’ Cannon lives up to his hard-earned reputation as one of Chicago’s most exciting blues artists to emerge in the last decade.

MIKE ZITO & FRIENDS ROCK’N’ROLL: A TRIBUTE TO CHUCK BERRY Ruf/Only Blues Music

Chuck Berry’s brand of rock’n’roll combined elements of blues, rockabilly and honky tonk. One of the most successful pioneers of rock’n’roll music, the St. Louis, Missouri native had a string of hits on Chicago’s Chess Records label between 1955 and 1964. The guitarist’s influence on later iconic rock bands such as The Rolling Stones and The Beatles in terms of his songs and his playing is legendary. Many of Berry’s singles that became crossover chart hits were actually straight-ahead blues tunes. When you compare the nuanced polyrhythms at play in Berry’s original cuts with more modern interpretations of his songs, few covers nail the subtle complexities. Singer/guitarist Mike Zito makes a good fist of his hometown hero’s musical legacy however, on this 20-song tribute CD. Backed on all tracks by his keys-bass-drums combo, Zito performs all lead vocals convincingly. He enlists an array of noted and lesser-known six-stringers from both rock and blues circles to share guitar picking. Among blues-laced chart toppers like ‘No Particular Place To Go’ and ‘Too Much Monkey Business’ is the more obscure Memphis Minnie-inspired standout ‘I Want To Be Your Driver’ featuring Ryan Perry of the Homemade Jamz Blues Band.

VARIOUS ARTISTS THE ROUGH GUIDE TO BLUES DIVAS Rough Guides/Planet Co. The widely perceived image of early blues performers is that of black itinerant male acoustic guitar playing troubadours performing in rural settings from the Mississippi Delta to the Piedmont and beyond. In fact, it was female singers who dominated the first decade of recorded blues, launched by Okeh Records in 1920 when they brought African-American singer Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds into the studio to record ‘Crazy Blues’. So began the era of classic blues, an urban amalgamation of country blues and theatre music performed by black female singers in vaudeville, cabaret and tent show circuits, accompanied principally by pianists, brass and reed players. The popularity of Mamie Smith, known as “The First lady of the Blues”, was soon to be eclipsed by artists such as Gertrude ‘Ma’ Rainey (dubbed “Mother of the Blues”) and Bessie Smith (crowned “Empress of the Blues”). Celebrated on this 25-track compilation of recordings made between 1921 and 1936 are these and other outstanding performers such as Alberta Hunter, Clara Smith, Ida Cox, Lucille Bogan, Victoria Spivey and Sippie Wallace who were hailed as the first stars of the blues.

CD: JAZZ TONY HILLIER

BUDDY RICH JUST IN TIME Gearbox

Singer Mel Tormé succinctly summed up the drummer’s place in the jazz pantheon: “There’s Buddy Rich and then there’s everybody else”. Belated evidence of Rich’s exceptional abilities as a skin & sticks man and, indeed, as a bandleader — albeit a reportedly querulous and tempestuous frontman — is provided by a live recording cut over two nights at Ronnie Scott’s famous club in London in November 1986 but only recently released. It turned out to be the final ever recording made by the legendary drummer, who died less than six months after the gig. Rich’s virtuosic technique, which allowed him to generate immense power and speed, is in evidence throughout — especially so in the dazzlingly dexterous 14-minute departing solo. Other set highlights include a rendition of the Lambert, Hendrick & Ross standard ‘Twisted’ from Buddy’s talented daughter, Cathy Rich, that’s the equal of Joni Mitchell’s lauded cover. The 14-piece band plays consummately, the master’s direction and dynamic drumming eliciting some equally superb soloing from the horn section throughout a predominantly up-tempo set.

WAYNE SHORTER THE MUSIC OF WAYNE SHORTER Blue Engine Records After a 60-year-plus career that’s netted a dozen Grammy gongs, including a Lifetime Achievement Award, Wayne 100

Shorter is already well and truly ensconced as a giant of modern jazz. Aside from leading his own fabled quartet, the now octogenarian sax supremo and composer has also shone as a sideman/collaborator with all-comers from Art Blakey to Miles Davis. In this newly released 2015 live recording, Shorter joined forces with equally prodigious and prolific trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the 14-piece Lincoln Center Orchestra.

Over three nights at the New York City venue, he played some of his finest works, rearranged by different members of the JLCO. While keeping the spotlight on Shorter’s superlative saxophone playing, the big band setting combined with new charts serves to cast classics from his back catalogue in a fresh light. In keeping with the title, the brooding ‘Armageddon’ has some intriguing twists and turns, highlighted by a slowburn tenor sax break from the maestro. Shorter’s soloing on a swinging version of the hard bop classic ‘Hammerhead’ and squealing soprano lead in the uplifting ‘Three Marias’ are other highlights on what is a stellar ensemble album.

CHRISTIAN MCBRIDE THE MOVEMENT REVISITED Mack Avenue Records

Christian McBride’s latest offering in what has been a highly productive past couple of years — even by his own standard of prolificacy — focuses specifically on the civil rights movement and the words and writings of four iconic figures, not only of the movement itself but of American human rights in general. Melding big band jazz with spoken narrative from poets and actors and choral interludes from a gospel choir, it’s arguably the most eclectic album of the prodigious double bass player, bandleader and composer’s career. The contrasts are sharp, ranging from a paean for Malcolm X (beautifully sung by mezzo-soprano Alicia Olatuja) to an ultra-funky genuflection to Muhammad Ali (and James Brown) and a legendary boxing match in Kinshasa, to Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I Have A Dream’ speech recited by actor Wendell Pierce of Treme fame over military drum beat and muted trumpets.

JULIEN WILSON STOCK Lionsharecords/Planet

Both the quartet and its selftitled, long overdue, debut album cast a spell from the ethereal global hues of a short opening piece — the first of four atmospheric band compositions that reference natural phenomena linked with witchcraft and sorcery. Melbourne saxophone supremo Julien Wilson’s two cornerstone 10-minute plus creations have more of a kaleidoscopic, cavalier quality and improvisatory feel. Both commence as melodic and breathy ballads eliciting the lauded tonal qualities of

the leader’s tenor sax playing, before morphing into more raucous and adventurous rocknudging sonic territory, aided and abetted by co-lead Craig Fermanis’s intricate electric guitar work, Christopher Hale’s bass guitar and Hugh Harvey’s drumming. Wilson’s clarinet lends another self-composed work a wistful hymn-like quality. His soprano sax runs blow brooding Arabesque feel into the set’s arresting curtain-closer.

MIKE NOCK THIS WORLD Lionshare Records/Planet

Veteran pianist Mike Nock might get titular pride of place courtesy of his seniority, the alphabet and the fact that he compositionally opens the batting, but This World is a bona fide collaboration between New Zealand’s internationally bestknown jazz export and Aussie stalwarts saxophonist Julien Wilson, drummer Hamish Stuart and double bassist Jonathan Zwartz. Although this is the first time they’ve joined forces as a dedicated unit before, they’ve all worked together in various settings over the years. So, it’s no surprise that this quartet of thoroughbreds coalesce like a combo of long-standing. If Wilson takes the lion’s share of leads, Nock’s rhythmic piano playing is pivotal, particularly so in the tenor’s deliciously bluesy compositions ‘Riverside’ and ‘We Shall Rise Again’. The South African township jive Abdullah Ibrahim-esque vibe of Zwartz’s ‘Home’ and Nock’s ‘The Dirge’, which is anything but mournful, are other highlights of a hugely enjoyable set.

VINYL: BY S T E V E B E L L

BILLY BRAGG

DRIVE-BY TRUCKERS

BEST OF BILLY BRAGG AT THE BBC 1983-2019 Cooking Vinyl/Sony

THE UNRAVELING ATO/Inertia

Legendary UK singer-songwriter Billy Bragg famously bribed his way into influential BBC DJ John Peel’s heart via his stomach back in 1983: hearing the announcer say on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed him over a mushroom biryani along with a copy of his debut album Life’s A Riot With Spy Vs Spy (which Peel proceeded to air a track from at the wrong speed). New 3-LP collection Best Of Billy Bragg At The BBC 1983-2019 proves that The Bard Of Barking’s mad dash was worth it as he’s been a staple on the BBC ever since (racking up no less than 11 Peel Sessions before the DJ’s tragic passing in 2014, as well as recordings with numerous other Beeb hosts). The 38 songs here act as almost a career overview, many presented in their infancy – the Peel Sessions in particular often used to try out new material – but this is made up for by immediacy, Bragg always at his best with just guitar and voice, plus it’s great to hear some of the later-era songs stripped-back to their core essence. Everything’s been completely remastered so the sound is clear and cohesive, and it’s a fitting testament to Bragg’s mastery of both the personal and the political that this great canon of song still moves on so many levels.

Revered Alabama-bred Southern rockers Drive-By Truckers have been a political beast in some form or other since their early days – whether examining the “duality of the Southern thing” (as they like to call it) or just the societal travails of small-town and working-class life – but of late they’re really doubling down and focussing with laser-sharp intent on the current political climate. Their 2016 eleventh album American Band was a furious treatise about the tumultuous times taking place in the lead-up to that year’s historic election, while new follow-up The Unraveling seems to be an even angrier analysis of events since and the state of Trump’s America (complete with scathing looks at mass shootings, the border crisis and the pharmaceutical opioid emergency amongst other hot-button topics). Co-frontmen Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley have no third songwriting foil these days, and with Cooley only supplying two tracks (including the excellent ‘Grievance Merchants’ which eviscerates white supremacy) it’s very much Hood’s baby, and he delivers with some timeless Truckers tracks in ‘Thoughts And Prayers’, ‘21st Century USA’, ‘Heroin Again’ and ‘Armageddon’s Back In Town’. Thoughtprovoking and rocking in equal measure, it’s quite remarkable that this band is still putting out imperative music after nearly 25 years at the coalface. Initial pressings of The Unraveling come on limited edition marble sky vinyl.

THE LUCKSMITHS

NATURALISTE Lost & Lonesome

Melbourne outfit The Lucksmiths were the undisputed mainstays of the fertile Australian indie-pop scene during their tenure between 1993 and 2009, and their 2003 fifth studio album Naturaliste is regarded by many as the high-water mark of their excellent recorded career. The trio’s last album before their expansion to a four-piece with the addition of an extra guitar, Naturaliste found them embracing the inherent limitations of that initial set-up by embracing space and restraint – as well as sparse strings and horns – to underscore their maturing and expanding songwriting abilities. Simple-yetgorgeous melodies and harmonies abound, yet as always it’s the enthralling innocence, introspection and subtle wit throughout the lyrics that really packs a punch. Songs like ‘Midweek Midmorning’, ‘Camera Shy’ and ‘There Is A Boy That Never Goes Out’ provoke a yearning for the simpler worldview of youth, ‘Sandringham Line’ mesmerises with gentle pathos and ‘Stayaway Stars’ stuns as it builds to a wonderful climax. There’s nary a false step on the entire album, and this first ever vinyl release – courtesy The Lucksmiths bassist Mark Monnone’s Lost & Lonesome label and limited to 500 hand-numbered copies – reminds what a thoroughly brilliant and criminally-underrated band we were fortunate to have in our midst for so long.

101

LINDA RONDSTADT:

THE SOUND OF MY VOICE Greenwich Entertainment

“Linda was the queen. She was like what Beyonce is now,” says Bonnie Raitt interviewed for this recent, and very welcome, documentary. It is not an idle claim. Rondstadt was the only female artist to have five platinum albums in a row. If you listened to radio in the ‘70s she was all over it with hits such as ‘You’re No Good,’ ‘When Will I Be Loved,’ ‘Heatwave,’ ‘Blue Bayou,’ ‘It’s So Easy,’ ‘Poor, Poor Pitiful Me’ and many more. She might not have written her own songs, but she brought attention to a lot of other worthy songwriters such as Warren Zevon, Lowell George, Kate & Anna McGarrigle and even Jackson Browne. Ronstadt also figured prominently on the cover of magazines such as Rolling Stone with some photos that she probably now regrets to a degree because, while they are glamorous, they do not capture the essence of who she was: a very independent and creative artist. Not only was she politically active as well, she managed to attract even more notoriety – and the paparazzi - by dating California Governor Jerry Brown. It must not have been easy for Rondstadt to transcend the demands of record company executives for ‘marketable’ and photogenic singers and command her own career. The compromises would become far fewer as her career became more successful. 102

The fact that Rondstadt enjoyed a hit in 1967 with the Stone Poneys and Mike Nesmith’s song ‘Different Drum’ – the story of an independent women who doesn’t want to be tied down – is perhaps symbolic of her career. “My mom told me early on, ‘Go out and have a life,” he recalls in the film. “You don’t have to get married. There are alternatives.’” Just when she was at the peak Ronstadt appeared in a stage production of The Pirates of Penzance and then released an album of traditional pop ballads helped by Nelson Riddle in 1983 with the ironic title of What’s New. It too was a success, despite the misgivings from her record company. This is decades before such releases became de rigeur for just about every singer. She followed up with two more similar albums and then, as if this wasn’t daring enough, in 1987 released an album of Spanish songs reflecting her heritage, Canciones de Mi Padre (in 1991 there was the follow up, Mas Canciones). Rondstadt also teamed up with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris for the enormously successful Trio album around the same time. As if to prove that she could still cut it on the pop market she released Cry Like A Rainstorm, Howl Like The Wind in 1989 which won her a Grammy for a duet with Aaron Neville on ‘Don’t Know Much.’ Later, she turned to jazz for her final solo album with her career cut short in 2009 due to Parkinson’s disease after 11 platinum albums and ten Grammys. (Interestingly, her grandfather was an inventor who spent years trying to find a cure for his wife’s Parkinson’s disease).

But this doesn’t adequately sum up her career. Two of my favourite examples of Ronstadt’s versatility and talent occurred when she appeared on Carla Bley’s extraordinary 1971 avant-garde jazz triple album Escalator Over The Hill and produced the David Lindley & El-Ray X 1988 album Very Greasy. Given the opportunity she could have become a great producer. By any standards Rondstadt’s career has been an enormous success and this documentary by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (The Times of Harvey Milk et al) traces that career with a series of interviews bookended by Rondstadt herself, who turns 74 this year. Rondstadt moved from her hometown of Tucson to Los Angeles in the mid-60s when she was just 18 and so witnessed the rise of the music scene there, which was incredibly fertile scene and later produced some of the great music of the ‘70s. So, the film features a bevy of the Southern California ‘Music Mafia’ including Jackson Browne, Emmylou Harris, JD Souther, David Geffen, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt and members of Eagles (who formed after playing as her touring band.) Souther, who was in a relationship with Ronstadt recalls telling her that she should make him dinner; her reply was to hand him a peanut butter sandwich! There are also plenty of clips of Ronstadt in performance to underscore her appeal: the voice backed by some of the best musicians of the era. “She cares about the music, not the career,” says Ry Cooder in the film and that is about as good an encapsulation of Linda Rondstadt’s life as you will find.

With its Retro looks and matching stands that are also designed to hold some vinyl records at the bottom, they have the look and feel of a 60”s era vintage British luxury motor vehicle (think Jaguar or Daimler ).

Choosing loudspeakers, looking forward looking back. Choosing and purchasing a new pair of loudspeakers can be a daunting task for the uninitiated with the range of options and variations on offer from most specialist hi fi stores. Speakers come in lots of iterations, Floor Standing (2 way, quasi 2 way and 3 way), Stand Mount (normally a large 2 or 3 way designed to mount on a floor stand), Bookshelf (Typically 2 way design) and Sub / Sat Systems (2 Bookshelf style speakers coupled with a Subwoofer) just to name a few as well as in wall, on wall and in ceiling speakers, certainly enough to make your head spin. Here are a few basics to take into consideration which will make the journey a little easier to navigate when choosing a pair of stereo speakers : A. Choose your speakers before choosing your Amplifier. Because of the many options available to you, the rule of thumb is it will become easier to make an amplifier choice based on the efficiency and impedance of the speakers you choose. B. Large Rooms generally require floor standing speakers given the need for increased bass response in bigger rooms C. A medium Sized Room will typically require a smaller floor standing speaker or large Stand Mount Speakers (mounted on matching floor stands) where slightly reduced bass response is needed D. Smaller Rooms are better suited to Book Shelf style speakers and if more bass is required add a matching subwoofer As well as the multitude of speaker types available today you also have not only a lot of brands to choose from but country of origin as well if you are fussy about where your money ends up, but sometimes along come some speakers that stand out from the crowd. In the early days of Hi Fi, British loudspeakers certainly dominated the market in Australia. One of the companies that started in the 1930”s and is still around and manufacturing today is WHARFEDALE. WHARFEDALE was founded in 1932 by Gilbert Briggs, a British Engineer with a love of classical music and went on to become one of the most important loudspeaker companies in the world. When I started in the Hi Fi Industry forty years ago, WHARFEDALE was one of the 104

most highly regarded and largest selling brands in the country. In 1982 they released a revolutionary squat, cubic bookshelf speaker called the WHARFEDALE DIAMOND which took the market by storm due to its punchy sound and value for money becoming probably the largest selling bookshelf speaker in Australia at that time. It is still available today, although it has undergone many design changes since then. A new speaker release from this company as part of the Heritage Series is the Denton 85 Book Shelf Speakers and the Linton Stand Mount Speakers with matching stands. WHARFEDALE decided to look at the past for inspiration for these models, re-engineering two of their 60’s era’s most successful speakers and they do really stand out from the crowd. I have taken a liking to the Linton ( the original model Linton debuted in 1965 ).

With the new version, WHARFEDALE have taken traditional styling and old school speaker technology mixed with 21st century driver and crossover design. It is a 3 way bass reflex design with an 8”woven Kevlar woofer, 5”woven Kevlar midrange and 1” soft dome tweeter. All design work for the Heritage Series is carried out in Huntingdon , Cambridgeshire, UK where WHARFEDALE maintain a 50 person research team. Peter Comea Director of Acoustic Design when asked why go back to the past for inspiration said “I grew up with larger speakers at a time when an 8” bass unit was considered “small”. I believe that despite considerable advances in driver unit technology over the years, “a good big ‘un will always outperform a good little ‘un. I’m sure you agree that the Linton Heritage is one of the good big ones.” The Linton including matching stands are priced at $2,799.00 and are certainly worth an audition particularly for lovers of vinyl listening.

Crosby, Stills, Nash &Young By David Browne (Da Capo, h/b) It was writer Peter Doggett, in his very different take on CSN&Y, who perhaps best summed up the task confronting any biographer: “Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young have spent approximately two of the past 50 years as a functioning band and the other 48 years fending off questions about why they are no longer together.” Unlike Doggett, whose book focused almost exclusively on the few, brief glory years, author David Browne has made the plucky decision to recount the full saga, including the ‘other 48 years’, starting with that inaugural and mythical meeting in July 1968 (was it at Joni Mitchell’s house, or Cass Elliot’s? the jury is still out), when the angelic voices of CS&N first blended, right up until their final performance, a shambolic and disastrous attempt to sing ‘Silent Night’ at the White House Christmas tree-lighting ceremony before President Obama in 2015, and then some. While the term ‘supergroup’ is today something of a cliché, it wasn’t always so. The combined pedigree of Crosby, Stills & Nash – fashioned out of the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, and the Hollies – was rock royalty. Is it any wonder Atlantic label founder Ahmet Ertegun leapt at the chance to sign them to a six-album deal? But therein lies the rub. Rather than paying their dues and working their way up the food chain, CS&N headed straight for the summit. Their debut, self-titled album is perhaps the perfect jewel in their recorded cannon. Made without fuss, and boasting some of their best-known songs, like ‘Suite: Judy Blue Eyes’, ‘Wooden Ships’ and ‘Long Time Gone’, its 1969 release saw sales of half a million copies – all this before they’d even performed live. The album’s cover photo showed a cosy and relaxed threesome, bunched together on a beaten-up old couch, their cohesiveness belying the dark clouds that lay ahead. It was Atlantic boss Ertegun who pushed for CS&N to add Neil Young, quick to see the potential. Not everyone agreed. Consider Stills first reaction: “Why would we do that?” It is not hard to see that Young’s inclusion was the beginning of the end. While it resulted in their greatest album, Déjà vu, it also laid down the future template. Henceforth, it was a band trying to stay on top of everything that was destroying it: fractious in-fighting, monstrous egos, control issues, squabbles over song inclusions, who had the longest guitar solo. Reading Browne’s account can be dispiriting: the terms ‘child-like’ and ‘petty’ spring to mind at every turn, as does ‘train-wreck’. The number of ‘missed opportunities’ documented in his book are too legion to mention.

Beginners, and Stills’ self-titled debut. There were the various combos: Crosby & Nash, the Stills-Young band, along with Stills’ sprawling triumph Manassas. Then, of course, the sporadic gettogethers, which yielded a further seven recordings scattered across nearly half a century, some with Young, others without. Most of us would be hard pressed to name more than a few songs off these latter-day efforts, though the 1991 box set, assembled by Nash, showed there was more depth in the recorded well than we’d credited. The problem was, those records never lived up to the enormous expectations we harboured for the band. As punk and post-punk music steam-rolled its way across the seventies landscape, the Californian dream was tossed aside, with the exception of Neil Young. Aside from the slightly whacko phase when he found himself sued by Geffen for not sounding like himself, Young continued to put out relevant music, defying the odds. So all-encompassing is Young’s career, that Browne can only nibble at the edges. If anything, Browne employs Young’s story as a counterpoint to the less accomplished careers of CS&N. Whereas early on it might have been Stills calling the shots, by the midseventies the trio played to Young’s tune, unpredictable as that may be. There would be no more doubting where the true genius lay. Browne’s story is one more version of an oft-told tale, though to his credit he strives for objectivity. His prose is workman-like rather than inspired, but he brings a much-needed antidote to Crosby’s and Nash’s earlier memoirs. While Crosby is the group’s resident asshole, derailing things with his perennial drug-abuse and gun-busts, there is something oddly likeable about him (and anyone who watched the documentary Remember My Name would probably agree). How he has survived remains one of life’s mysteries, up there with Keith Richards. As for the others, Nash is the sensible one, Stills the ornery one. Put together, it turned out to be a combustible mix. By the end of Browne’s book, in late 2018, Nash is still not on speaking terms with Crosby. Is it the end of the story? Your guess is as good as mine.

Had Crosby, Stills and Nash all staged successful solo careers, things might have turned out differently. But, as each stalled, they were forced to acknowledge that the corporate entity CS&N was exponentially greater than the sum of its parts. In the end, it can be likened to an albatross hanging around each of their respective necks. While they invariably hated it, the reality was that their legions of fans demanded it. More to the point, it was their sole means of excavating themselves out of the various financial holes they’d dug, whether yachts, drugs or unpaid taxes. At a time when Stills or Crosby might be playing clubs, a CS&N re-union could guarantee stadiums. With the addition of Young, the financial kickbacks were mind-boggling. Post Déjà vu, Browne’s story fractures, as it endeavours to keep abreast of four narratives that occasionally merge. He covers the earliest – and arguably the finest – of the solo albums: Crosby’s masterful If I Could Only Remember My Name, Nash’s Songs for 105

When the pile of books by your bedside is taller than the bedside table it’s time to do a couple of things. These can be making plans to somehow extract enough loot from somewhere so you can retire and do nothing but read books. This is not possible for most people. The other option is to decrease your interests so you have less things you want to read about. This is plainly and clearly stupid. So, what do you do? You already read pretty quickly. You hardly ever turn the television on and thereby have to deal with the feelings of inadequacy when By Stuart Coupe everyone gets in your ear about the latest must watch series, documentary or film on Netflix or Stan. They usually do this whilst you’re reflecting on the dozens and dozens of DVDs that you’re still meaning to watch one day whilst realising they’ve been on the ‘must watch’ pile for about a decade. A DAY AT A TIME – IN RHYME – By Jane Clifton. In 2018 author, singer, and actor Jane Clifton decided to write a poem each and every day of the year. And it’s a delight. I opened my copy on August 3 which is a poem called The Game – a beautiful evocation of the call of the AFL, why you go to the game week after week instead of staying at home and watching on TV. It concludes: I could be at home enjoying crystal vision and no toilet queue without my tribe my telling crew of ‘ball’ and ‘boo’ the roar of camaraderie censure outrage ecstasy that is why I love it so On crumbling aching knees That is why I have to go. April 17th titled Records and celebrates the vinyl LP. June 13 and 14 are On Tour. July 7 is On Drummond Street. January 14 offers Jefferson Airplane Sang. They’re funny, poignant, and never dull. Read one a day. Open, read, close, open, read, close . . . as you wish. 106

What you end up doing – at least in my case – is reading bits and pieces of lots and lots of books. You do that until you settle on something and go the full journey, but often it’s just a little here and a little there. It helps of course if these books are collections of short stories, poetry or essays. Or photography books. Here’s some of the books I’ve been having bite size relationships with since we last talked. BJELKE BLUES – Edited by Edwina Shaw. This is a much overdue and fascination collection subtitled “Stories of Repression and Resistance in Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s Queensland 1976 – 1987. You’ll read the astonishing Strangers In The Night from Raymond Evans which is worth the price of admission alone. You’ll marvel at Matt Condon’s short but brilliant Foreword and then dip into other pieces, such as former Go-Between and now Halfway member John Willsteed’s excellent Nazis Are No Fun. THE GAY TALESE READER – By Gary Talese. This one is subtitled Portraits & Encounters and contains two remarkable and influential pieces of journalism – the wonderful New York Is A City Of Things Unnoticed and the legendary Frank Sinatra Has A Cold, a masterful examination of the figures in Sinatra’s world that Talese encounters after the singer cancels an interview because he has . . . a cold. SOUTHERN ROCK OPERA – By Rien Fertel. The now massive 33 1/3 series of books on classic and often I think not-so-classic albums now stretches to a few hundred volumes. This one (#133) is a cut above many I’ve read and is an insightful and intelligent read for anyone like me who fell under the spell of the DBT with this album in 2001 or has come to them more recently in the Isbell or post-Isbell period and want to go back to what I still believe is their crowning achievement. But let it be said that 2020’s The Unravelling is also pretty fucking great. CRUEL TO BE KIND by Will Birch. “Yep, ‘The Life & Music Of Nick Lowe.” Is exactly what you’d expect from the musician and author of a biography of Ian Dury and another on British pub rock. It’s pacey, affectionate (author and subject are friends) with all the info you’d want and enough spice to keep you turning pages long after you’ve stopped wondering if you really want or need to read a nearly 400 page book about Lowe. THE PEANUTS PAPERS Edited by Andrew Blauner. This is, “Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown & the Gang, and the Meaning of Life.” Contributors include Ira Glass, Jonathan Frazen, Jonathem Lethem, Ann Patchett, Mona Simpson, Chuck Klosterman and Rick Moody. My favourite piece so far is Lethem’s re-writing of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl about guess who. Grief begins: I saw the children of my neighbourhood destroyed by mangle comics, disease comics, and gory comics, aggravating hysterical fussbudgets, Dragging themselves through the sarcastic streets at dawn looking for an angry plaid ice cream, Angelheaded blockheads obligated to play outside whenever the starry dynamo in the machinery of night is shining. Yes, it’s the length of Howl and beautifully done. See you next issue. Happy reading.

57 swan st, richmond, melbourne corner box office 9am - 6pm mon - fri 12pm - 5pm sat closed sun phone bookings: 1300 724 867 or online:

www.cornerhotel.com

PORT FAIRY FOLK FESTIVAL March 6-9 I portfairyfolkfestival.com

WOMADELAIDE

March 6-9 I womadelaide.com.au

COMING UP AT THE CORNER

LARKIN POE . TWIN PEAKS WEYES BLOOD . WALTER TROUT NGAIIRE . THE ALLMAN BETTS BAND THE HOLD STEADY . JOHN MAYALL KEVIN BORICH EXPRESS . BIG THIEF BRASS AGAINST . FRANK TURNER THINGS OF STONE & WOOD USA

USA

BANYULE TWILIGHT SOUNDS March 14 I banyule.vic.gov.au

USA USA

USA

AIREY’S INLET OPEN MIC MUSIC FESTIVAL March 13-15 I aireysinlet.com.au

USA

UK USA

plus heaps more at www.cornerhotel.com

BLUE MOUNTAINS MUSIC FESTIVAL March 13-15 I bmff.orBGg.au

YACKANDANDAH FOLK FESTIVAL March 20-22

301 HIGH STREET NORTHCOTE TIX PH: 1300 724 867 OR ONLINE:

2020 BLUESFEST April 9-13

WWW.NORTHCOTESOCIALCLUB.COM OR FROM THE CORNER BOX OFFICE

COMING UP AT THE NORTHCOTE SOCIAL CLUB

. LEIF VOLLEBEKK + AINSLIE WILLS . CEDRIC BURNSIDE . HOLLIE COL . THE EAST POINTERS . BEN WATT . NICK CUNNINGHAM . MICHAEL DUNSTAN . KIKAGAKU MOYO . SOLO BANTON . ALLARA + OLENKA CAN

B+OOGIE

Friday April 10 – Sunday April 12 I boogie.net.au

USA

CAN

THE GUMBALL

Thursday April 24 – Sunday April 26 Website: dashville.com.au/gumball/

JPN

‘REKINDLED SYSTEMS’

BLUES ON BROADBEACH

Thursday May 14 – Sunday May 17 I bluesonbroadbeach.com

Plus heaps more!

at www.northcotesocialclub.com 107

David Olney

Eleanor McEvoy

Greedy Smith

Kutcha Edwards

Neil Peart

Norma Tanega

COMPILED BY SUE BARRETT

HELLO

Irish singer/songwriter Eleanor McEvoy, whose album Forgotten Dreams was recorded live in Air Studios, London, is starting an Australian tour at the beginning of March. The tour is expected to take her to Valencia Creek (Vic); Geelong (The 2020 ExChange Conference); Fyansford (Vic); Port Fairy Folk Festival; Melbourne (Caravan Music Club); Blue Mountains Music Festival; Bathurst (Jack Duggans Irish Pub); Canberra (Tuggeranong Arts Centre); Wollongong (Illawarra Folk Club); Sydney (Petersham Bowling Club and Riverside Theatre, Parramatta). BUT as the tour has already been affected by the bushfires (including postponement of Cobargo Folk Festival), keep checking for concert updates. More info at: www.eleanormcevoy.com Lin van Hek (artist, writer, musician) and Joe Dolce (songwriter, composer, poet) have released the album, Live at Poet House – engineered and mixed by Siiri Metsar. Songs include: ‘Dr Eloesser’ (about Frida Kahlo and her personal physician Leo Eloesser); ‘The Digger’s Daughter’ (based on a poem by Louisa Lawson); ‘I Tell Ya True’ (Indigenous poet Ali Cobby Eckermann’s poem, set to music by Joe Dolce); John Lennon’s ‘Working Class Hero’; Tiffany Eckhardt’s ‘Toyota Corolla’; Kath Tait’s ‘Poor Dim Sally’. The Port Fairy Folk Festival’s Elaine Weissman Lifetime Achievement Award is going to Jamie McKew, with Gina Williams and Guy Ghouse receiving the Artist of the Year award. On 13 February – the anniversary of the apology to the Stolen Generations – Williams and Ghouse released their 3rd album, Koorlangka. Australian country singer/songwriter Allison Forbes is currently touring with her debut album, Bonedigger (produced by Shane Nicholson). Australian singer/songwriter Fred Smith has a new album, Domestic. And American performer Katie Toupin (formerly of Houndmouth) has released her solo debut album, Magnetic Moves. The line-up for the National Folk Festival in Canberra at Easter includes: Hat Fitz & Cara; Colum Sands (Ireland); Chaika; Elephant Sessions (Scotland); Kutcha Edwards; The Mammals (USA); Gina Williams & Guy Ghouse; Susan O’Neill (Ireland); Ruth Hazleton; Māmā Mihirangi & the Māreikura (NZ); The Spooky Men’s Chorale; The Honey Dewdrops (USA); Cloudstreet; Jon Boden (UK); Stiff Gins; Afro Moses (Ghana); Deline Briscoe; Fay Hield (UK); The Pitts Family Circus. English singer/songwriter Grace Petrie is on tour in Australia (www. gracepetrie.com) – with gigs in Melbourne, Sydney, Port Fairy Folk Festival, Blue Mountains Music Festival. New music books include: Chris West – Eurovision! A History of Modern Europe; Ian Preece – Listening to the Wind: Encounters with 21st Century Independent Record Labels; Anne Lorne Gillies – Songs of Gaelic Scotland; Steve Roud – Folk Song in England; Emma Hanna – Sounds of War: Music in the British Armed Forces during the Great War; Ed Vulliamy – Louder Than Bombs: A Life with Music, War, and Peace; James Buhler & Hannah Lewis (eds) – Voicing the Cinema: Film Music and the Integrated Soundtrack; Richard King – The Lark Ascending: Music of the British Landscape; Stephen Tow – London, Reign Over Me: How England's Capital Built Classic Rock. 108

…AND GOODBYE

Bose, the international electronics company, is closing its retail stores in Australia and some other parts of the world in response to the rise in online shopping Melbourne record shop Polyester Records (Brunswick Street, Fitzroy) is also closing down Jessye Norman (74), Grammy-winning American opera singer, died New York, USA (Sept) Scooter Brown Band keyboardist Carrigan Shields (30), whose final performance was at the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, died Tennessee, USA (Dec) Juno-nominated Canadian singer Kelly Fraser (26), died Manitoba, Canada (Dec) Vic Juris (66), American jazz guitarist, died New Jersey, USA (Dec) American singer/songwriter and artist Norma Tanega (80), died California, USA (Dec) Jack Sheldon (88), American jazz musician with a long involvement with The Merv Griffin Show, died California, USA (Dec) Australian musician Andrew “Greedy” Smith (63), of Mental As Anything, died NSW, Australia (Dec) Jerry Herman (88), American composer and lyricist, died in December Irish guitarist Arty McGlynn (75), who worked with Tommy Sands, The Chieftains, Frances Black, Seán Keane, Van Morrison, Enya, Patrick Street, Cherish the Ladies, Four Men & A Dog, Maura O'Connell and Jerry Douglas, died Ireland (Dec) Roy Loney (73), of American band Flamin’ Groovies, died in December American songwriter Allee Willis (72), died California, USA (Dec) Stuart Fraser (57), of Australian bands Blackfeather and Noiseworks, died in December English musician and songwriter Neil Innes (75), who worked with the Bonzo Dog Band, The Rutles, Monty Python and Linda Thompson, died France (Dec) Kenny Lynch (81), English singer/songwriter, died in December Swedish musician Marie Fredriksson (61), of Roxette, died Sweden (Dec) Mikey Lawless, bassist with Falling Red, died Scotland (Jan) English drummer Martin Griffin (Hawkwind) and Canadian drummer Neil Peart (67) (Rush) died in January Tommy Hancock (90), American musician, died Texas, USA (Jan) Australian conductor and horn player Barry Tuckwell (88), died Victoria, Australia (Jan) David Olney, American singer/songwriter, died Florida, USA (Jan) South African musicians Steve Fataar (76) and Jethro Butow, died in January Chris Darrow (75) (The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band) and Steve Martin Caro (71) (The Left Banke), died in January American multi-instrumentalist Marty Grebb (74) and American singer/ songwriter Nancy Falkow (49), died in January Fiddler Pat Collins, of Mushroom, Hotfoot and Café Orchestra, died Ireland (Jan) Lorraine Chandler, American singer, songwriter and producer, died in January

CD + DVD CD + DVD

Ryan Perry High Risk, Low Reward Ryan Perry RUF 1278 High Risk, Low Reward RUF 1278

Bernard Allison Songs From The Road Bernard Allison RUF 1276 Songs From The Road RUF 1276

Roomful Of Blues In A Roomful Of Blues Roomful Blues ALCD Of 4998 In A Roomful Of Blues ALCD 4998

Stars One More Circle Round The Sun Stars One More Circle Round The Sun

Mark Easton Free Yourself Mark Easton Free Yourself

Joe Bonamassa Live At The Sydney Opera House Joe Bonamassa CD - JRA61071 LP - JRA61075 Live At The Sydney Opera House CD - JRA61071 LP - JRA61075 CD + VINYL

Mike Zito And Friends A Tribute To Chuck Berry Mike Zito And Friends RUF1269 A Tribute To Chuck Berry RUF1269

BB Factory Let The Good Times Roll BBBBF002 Factory Let The Good Times Roll BBF002

Lazy Eye Whisky & Gin Lazy Eye LER 009 Whisky & Gin Now On VINYL LER 009

Blues Caravan 2019 Ina Forsman - Katrina Pejak - Ally Venable BluesRUF Caravan 12732019 Ina Forsman - Katrina Pejak - Ally Venable RUF+1273 CD VINYL

CD + VINYL

Matty T Wall Transpacific Blues Vol 1 Matty HIPST- Wall 19 Transpacific Blues Vol 1 HIPS - 19

Ronnie Earl And The Broadcasters Beyond The Blue Door Ronnie Earl And The CD - SPCD1407 LP Broadcasters - SPLP1407 Beyond The Blue Door CD - SPCD1407 LP - SPLP1407 CD + VINYL CD + VINYL

Lloyd Spiegel Cut And Run Lloyd Spiegel LS0891 Cut And Run LS0891RED VINYL CD or DOUBLE

PLAYING AT BLUESFEST 2020 Now On VINYL

PLAYING AT BLUESFEST 2020

CD + VINYL

The BB King Blues Band The Soul Of The King The BB RUF King1268 Blues Band The Soul Of The King RUF 1268

Christone ‘Kingfish’ Ingram Kingfish Christone ‘Kingfish’ ALCD 4990 Ingram Kingfish ALCD 4990

Joe Bonamassa Redemption Joe Bonamassa CD-JRA61069 LP-JRA61070 Redemption CD-JRA61069 LP-JRA61070

Tinsley Ellis Ice Cream In Hell Tinsley Ellis ALCD 4997 Ice Cream In Hell ALCD 4997

Thorbjorn Risager & The Black Tornado Come On In Thorbjorn Risager The Black Tornado RUF&1271 Come On In RUF 1271

John Nemeth Memphis Grease John CD - BCM1401Nemeth LP- BCM1401LP Memphis Grease CD - BCM1401 LP- BCM1401LP

CD or DOUBLE RED VINYL

Joe Bonamassa & Beth Hart Black Coffee Joe Bonamassa & Beth Hart Black Coffee

NEW WEBSITE NEW WEBSITE

www.onlybluesmusic.com www.onlybluesmusic.com

A R MOW W U R AY N O Y K E TAW B oSoT E R G EA