Notes From The Dark Corner Of a Sunny Room...

John Butler - Port Fairy folkie Official Program

2012-02-21T08:18:00.000+11:00

A brief piece on John Butler to run in the 2012 Port Fairy Folk Festival official program, to commemorate his PFFF Artist of the Year Award.

John Butler

Port Fairy Artist of the Year – 2012

Port Fairy Festival Director Jamie McKew told me recently he remembered seeing John Butler supporting The Waifs in the backroom at The Nash in Geelong, more than ten years ago. “No one knew who he was,” McKew smiled – how things have changed.

Since that day, and indeed, since the days when Butler first embarked upon his musical journey – busking mainly, a slow and steady beginning – his star has risen. Risen to heights not often seen in the realms of roots music, a genre (or a collection of genres) before thought, amongst younger circles, to be ‘uncool’ and ‘old’, until the likes of a few came along and turned that notion on its head. John Butler was one of those few.

It’s because of what Butler has achieved over the past decade or so then, that he’s been awarded the 2012 Port Fairy Folk Festival’s Artist Of The Year. This is a man who began at the bottom, and through talent, drive and creativity, made it to the top, in the process reinvigorating music and minds alike, ideals and perceptions of roots music, of independent artists, of ways of getting your message out.

“It just has to come from a soulful place at the end of the day, and if it has the opportunity of reaching as many ears as possible, then that’s awesome, that’s a dream come true for me,” Butler himself muses from his studio out West, where mere hours before, he’d happily received news of the aforementioned award. Butler is also sage on his methods of presenting his ideas, his messages if you will – “I think, of all things, you have to be playful. If you clutch onto anything too strong, you end up strangling it.”

It’s been this genuine desire to share in such an artistic and subtle way then, that has seen Butler – both solo and in trio format – reach people the world over, come into their lives, enriching them as he’s gone. But in amongst the accolades and the adulation as well, Butler has given back, perhaps most importantly through what was initially known as The JB Seed, now The Seed, “an initiative funded by the music community for the music community”, a true indication that Butler recognises the need for nurturing, particularly given he himself came from such grassroots beginnings.

“It’s all I know… and I’m really proud of where I’ve come from, how I naturally grew from that place – it’s where I paid my dues,” he tells. John Butler is still paying his dues (“I feel like I’ve grown… but I feel like my best work is still ahead of me,” he smiles. “I’m really excited about that.” ), and as such, he’s still exploring, still growing as an artist, still exciting his legions of fans, not to mention himself.

Although Butler is still young, it’s universally recognised that he’s on the path trodden before by the ‘greats’ of Australian music – Paul Kelly, Archie Roach, Jeff Lang, amongst others. This is a canon of artists revered the world over, and Butler, given his past, seems destined to join them – from little things, big things grow, as Paul Kelly sang, an adage which in this instance, rings clear as a bell.

Samuel J. Fell

John Butler

Port Fairy Folk Festival

Record Review - Lachlan Bryan

2012-02-06T11:29:00.001+11:00

Lachlan Bryan

Shadow Of The Gun

Core Music / Sony

Shadow Of The Gun, debut solo record from The Wildes frontman, Lachlan Bryan, has become a much anticipated one on the local scene. The Wildes’ debut record from a few years ago, Ballad Of A Young Married Man, received very positive reviews (including from your humble scribe) when initially released, and so to have the core songwriter responsible now releasing a solo record, it’s no wonder people are keen for a listen.

Now, it’s hard not to judge a book by its cover, but when first informed Bryan had hooked up with mainstream-ish country musician/producer Rod McCormack (Gina Jeffreys, Troy Cassar-Daley amongst others), I had immediate doubts – whilst McCormack has worked with many artists, underground and cult as well as mainstream, I feared the rawness and dirt evident in Bryan’s earlier recordings would be lost amidst an overly slick production. My fears were confirmed first up with opener, ‘Unfortunate Rose’, a song more suited for the Country Music Channel than a smoky, Melbourne pub, where Bryan cut his teeth.

However, my fears are soon alleviated, although not entirely. There are songs on here more than a little reminiscent of Mr. Johnny Cash (Bryan has a marvellously deep drawl when he feels the need), and there are a few that hark to the alt.country scratch we know from Bryan’s previous work. However, then there are those other tracks – ‘I’d Rather Sing In Churches’ for example – which to me just don’t fit. They’re too slick, they’re too “country and western”. Then you get the delightful shimmering guitar of a track like ‘Lily Of The Fields’ and you wonder why it’s not all like that.

So a mixed bag for Bryan’s debut solo effort, strengthened for sure with appearances from both Kasey and Bill Chambers, along with Catherine Britt. There’s a hell of a lot of potential here, but then we already knew that, which makes me think this record is only half of what it could be. I await Bryan’s next offering with baited breath.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.lachlanbryan.com/

Record Review - Joe Robinson

2012-02-06T11:27:00.000+11:00

Joe Robinson

Let Me Introduce You

ABC / Universal

Let Me Introduce You is the third album from young (he’s now 20) Australian guitar-slinger Joe Robinson, who of course won reality talent show Australia’s Got Talent in 2008, but who has since gone on to forge a reputation as a consummate and intelligent artist in his own right.

Let Me Introduce You is a very apt title for this record, because despite the fact Robinson has released two previous albums – Birdseed (’07) and Time Jumpin’ (’09) – this is a record of first’s for this prodigious guitar talent. Initially, it’s a record which features a lot more electric guitar than we’ve heard from Robinson in the past (who I first saw as a solo, instrumental acoustic blues fingerpicking extraordinaire), and secondly (and perhaps more importantly) it’s the first record where Robinson has incorporated vocals. The verdict? Perhaps he shouldn’t have.

Being only 20 and a novice vocalist, in a nutshell, Robinson’s voice just isn’t strong enough to showcase at this point. Not when matched with his guitar prowess, anyway. Added to this is the extremely slick production that drips off Let Me Introduce You, which when applied to his voice, just makes this come off as a super-produced R&B record – the new school kind of R&B, not the old rhythm & blues kind. As well, Robinson’s lyrics are hardly likely to set the world afire, but we’ll let that one pass – this is his first crack, after all.

Given all of the above then, Let Me Introduce You isn’t a very strong record. Save, of course, for Robinson’s guitar. It doesn’t fit with his voice, but what’s there is incendiary – whether ripping effortlessly along on instrumental opener ‘Lethal Injection’, or riding rainbows on the likes of ‘Adelaide’, it’s all in the right place – shredding when the situation dictates, delicate gossamer when needed. Joe Robinson is a guitarist first and foremost, and for that, this record is solid. That voice though, if he wants to continue singing, it has to get tough. It really does.

Samuel J. Fell

http://joerobinson.com/

To Tweet, Or Not To

2012-01-31T11:20:00.000+11:00

In January this year, I created a Twitter account. In the grand scheme of things this is hardly noteworthy, but for someone like myself, despite my relatively young age, it’s a tentative step into the future, into the unknown, away from the analogue and toward the digital. Weird.

I’m not a fan of social media. Perhaps because I don’t know much about it. I know it can raise the profile of a business or individual beyond comprehension, I know it’s a form of ‘staying in touch’, I know it’s Rampant and The Norm and the Way Of The Future, which is fair enough. I’ve not embraced it before now though because of a connotation I have that it’s frivolous, a waste of time, and because why the hell would I want people, strangers, to know what I’m doing? Paranoid perhaps. Lazy too.

As such, I have no Facebook account, I have no MySpace account (I did at one point, but that went nowhere), I do have a blog but that’s more an archive of my published work – hardly a social media tool. Perhaps I’m behind the times and am now languishing in The Past, too proud to get on board with these trends, too dedicated to the old way of doing things. In the interest of pushing my writing profile however, I created this Twitter account. I took my first tentative steps, as I mentioned, and I am now waist deep. I don’t know where to turn next, what to do or why, but fuck it, it’s all about pushing forward, right? So they tell me.

I did some reading first, most notably a study conducted by American company Pear Analytics in 2009. To be quite honest, I didn’t read too much, I skimmed and looked at pie charts and the like – to that end, I am indeed a member of this social media, short attention spanned generation. Anyway, this study postulated firstly that Twitter was used mainly as a form of self-promotion. After exhaustive research (I imagine), it was determined that this was not the case, that the vast majority of Twitter’s over 300 million users (as of June 2011) use the service for “pointless babble”. 40% of them in fact. Self promotion uses up just six percent. The rest is made up of “news”, “spam”, “conversational” and “pass along value”. Basically, Twitter is mainly people talking shit.

Regardless, I decided to get on board, promising myself I’d be one of the six percent – I’d use the service to tweet (ugh) about what I was doing in a professional sense. For example, my first ever tweet was, “Interviewed Justin Townes Earle this morning, great chat about new record, see new song here: justintowneseale.com”. Since then, I’ve stuck to my promise. It’s true, all five of my tweets thus far have been professionally based. I’m pretty happy with that – suck on it, 94%.

So who knows where this will end up. Perhaps I’ll get hooked, a Twitter junkie, hankering after his next fix, tweets evolving from poignant professional prose into pointless psychobabble, the likes of which should not be read by anyone, ever. “Put on my shoes this morning”. Good lord, I don’t even wear shoes. Imagine – I shudder to think, and so I’ll stay strong and use this for the Good of my career or my profile or whatever I’m doing this for and despite the fact I’m an old man in a young man’s body, I’ll forge ahead like Robert F. Scott, into the cold, forbidding unknown. Or something to that end, anyway. To tweet, or not to, that is the question. The answer, no doubt, is somewhere on Twitter. Ugh.

Samuel J. Fell

SJF is indeed on Twitter, and can be found at @SamuelJFell

Cosmic, Man

2012-01-23T08:57:00.002+11:00

Published in February issue of Rhythms magazine (Excerpt below)

Rodrigo y Gabriela

Growing up in Melbourne in the ‘90s, I became consumed with heavy metal. Thrash metal mainly, courtesy of a friend of mine in year eight, who lent me – on my third day at a new school – a tape of Metallica’s 1989 album …And Justice For All. I’d never heard anything like it. I had never even vaguely dreamed that music like that was possible.

What drew me in then – and it consumed me, I spent the next four or five or six years listening to metal and metal only – was the pure power, the blatant aggression, that writhing groove and the sheer terror of hurtling towards a riffed-out breakdown at triple speed, riding the back of Kirk Hammett’s blistering guitar work, holding on for all I was worth. I was instantly hooked, and it’s fair to say that day changed my life forever.

Though I’ve broadened my musical horizons dramatically since then in my never-ending quest to find sounds to slake my musical thirst, there’s always that little ‘something’ in the back of my mind that equates ‘What I’m Going To Like’ with ‘Those Metal Sounds Of Old’. And not necessarily the sound per se, but the aforementioned power, the aggression (to an extent), the galloping grooves, the things that got me so hooked back in year eight. Being a big blues fan too, there’s not been much (aside from a slew of stoner rock) that’s brought that and the love of metal together, yielding something different and as (if not more) exciting – until I found Rodrigo y Gabriela. The power, the precision, the aggression, the groove – in spades. And they’re about as far from metal as you can get, to the naked eye, anyway.

Rodrigo Sanchez and Gabriela Quintero did actually begin their musical careers playing metal. They met in the ‘90s in Mexico, playing in a thrash band called Tierra Acida before teaming up and heading to Europe where they began to forge the style and sound they’re now globally recognised for. For those who don’t know this dynamic duo, to see their guitars mesh so forcefully (for they are virtuosic players), Latin-tinged, acoustic guitar juggernaught, their strings soaked for weeks in lighter fluid, scorched and flaming high by the end of only the first song. They draw heavily from their Mexican heritage, they lean on Latin fire and rhythm, they drink from the well of metal, or at least the spring from which that well feeds – it’s something that sets them apart, that makes them so good.

As a duo, Rodrigo y Gabriela, as they are known, released their debut, Foc, in 2001, but it wasn’t until their self-titled 2006 record, that they began to garner the recognition they now have. Indeed, as Sanchez says, the records before Rodrigo y Gabriela hardly even count. “Yeah, I don’t really count them as official albums,” he muses on Foc and ReFoc (’02). “But certainly before then, we were a touring band, so those albums were for us to only sell at gigs.”

Regardless, the success of the self-titled effort propelled the duo into the musical stratosphere and subsequent records – Live In Japan (’08), 11:11 (’09) and Live In France (’11), not to mention their extensive work on the fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean film soundtrack last year – did nothing to deflate that rising balloon. Today though, sees the duo in a reasonably different spot. They’re about to release a new record, Area 52, and it’s not really as you’ve seen these two before. Well, to an extent it is, but largely, it isn’t.

...

Samuel J. Fell

Area 52 is available now through Rubyworks / Warner Music.

http://www.rodgab.com/

Bibb's Back

2012-01-23T08:48:00.000+11:00

Published in February issue of Rhythms magazine.

Eric Bibb

On Eric Bibb’s website, in preparing for this interview, I watched the film clip for new track, ‘Bayou Belle’. It’s the first track to be released from Bibb’s upcoming new album, Deeper In The Well, what will be the 15^th record under his own name. It’s a track steeped in swampy grooves, it nods its head to the blues and courtesy of a quick little banjo shuffle, gives off more than a whiff of bluegrass – it’s a finger-snappin’ tail shaker, and it more than whets the appetite for what’s soon to come.

“Yeah, it does have that swampy feel to it, and other tracks on the album have that too, and other ones sound even more old timey, kinda like country music, and there’s some blues tunes on there that are played in that Louisiana style,” Bibb smiles, regaling me with what to expect once Deeper In The Well is released in March, just in time for what will be his seventh tour of Australia.

And it’s an album which is somewhat of a departure for Bibb too. Not so much in sound – he’s always been known as a world-class purveyor of blues-soaked folk tunes – but in the way it came together, Bibb teaming up with friends old and new to bring an “acoustic band” feel to the whole thing. “Well, it was amazing to be down in Louisiana first of all,” he tells, having made the album down in the Bayou State late last year. “And it was doubly amazing to be able to make some music with some great players.

“So originally I thought it was time to make an acoustic band album,” he goes on, getting into the nitty gritty. “I’ve been doing a lot of projects [recently]… I’d done a solo acoustic record (Blues, Ballads & Work Songs, ’11) and I’d done quite a lot of studio work involving larger productions with my friend Glen Scott, and so I thought a group, acoustic band record with mostly newer songs – along with traditional songs, because I always like to combine the two – [would be good]. And I wanted to reconnect with harmonica player Grant Dermody, who played on Booker’s Guitar (’10).”

From this idea, Deeper In The Well began to take shape – and you only have to watch the clip for ‘Bayou Belle’ to see why Bibb wanted to work with Dermody again – the man can wail. From there then, it was a matter of finding the right musicians – can’t be too hard in Louisiana, right? “My American agent suggested Dirk Powell, who I’d heard about but never played with,” Bibb relates. “He plays fiddle, accordion, mandolin, guitar, bass, piano, he’s whiz kid. In fact, he’s been on tour with Joan Baez for the past few years, he’s her accompanist.

“So then I happened to meet [Dirk] in Scotland [not long before we started] and we got a chance to play, and the idea had been proposed to him before I met him,” Bibb tells. “And he was up for it because he has a great studio in Lafayette… so we knew it would work. So we went ahead with it, Dirk brought in another player, Cedric Watson, who’s a great Creole fiddler and accordion player… and together with a local drummer named Danny Devillier, basically the four of us put together this record in Dirk’s studio.”

Deeper In The Well will be the culmination of some fine chemistry between all players concerned, and seems to be, for Bibb, a bit of a chance to relax a bit after the solo acoustic Blues, Ballads & Work Songs from last year. This also shows how busy Bibb has been – two records within the space of a little over a year – but there’s more – when I speak to Bibb, he’s only just back from Mali where he’s been working with Malian musician, Habib Koite, on a project he’s more than a bit excited about.

“That was an amazing, wonderful experience,” Bibb beams on his recent musical trip. “The story goes back a while, it took a while to come to fruition. 10 years ago, a song of mine was featured on a compilation called Mali To Memphis, and on that compilation was also Habib Koite. We happened to be in the States on tour at he same time, and so [they] put together a little promo tour, which was the first time I met him to play music together.

“Anyway, so we had the chance on this little tour, in the dressing rooms, to play together and there was a real compatibility there,” he goes on. “So we continued to bump into each other until finally my French agent said to me, ‘Listen, I think it’d be really good if you did something with Habib’… and I said sure.

“What we discovered… was that we’re both basically acoustic finger-style players,” Bibb tells on what the collaboration turned up sonically. “His Malian traditions are unique, but they are definitely connected to and related to the country blues finger-styling Piedmont style of my playing. So I’d be able to play a traditional tune or something, and Habib would be able to jump in and play around that in a beautiful way that was not strictly the American perspective.”

Well, that makes two Eric Bibb records I need to get my hands on now (once the latter is released), but as has always been the case, that’s not something I’m complaining about.

Samuel J. Fell

Deeper In The Well will be available in March through Stony Plain Records. See Gig Guide for tour dates.

http://www.ericbibb.com/

The Boogie

2012-01-18T09:19:00.000+11:00

Published, as a news item, in March issue of Rolling Stone.

Endless Boogie

In 1997, somewhere within the labyrinthine expanse of New York City, four guys with a love of rock ‘n’ roll started a band. There was no agenda, just a need and want to piece together toweringly heavy grooves, recreating those sounds of old, just for their own ears, in a jam space on a Tuesday evening – a bit of fun for four guys with a collective age of 169.

Four years later, Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus invited them to open for him and his then band, The Jicks, at the Bowery Ballroom – quite the first gig – and the world was, finally, introduced to Endless Boogie. “Well that’s how it started… we never pictured, at first, Endless Boogie being a band, except for jamming and making up riffs,” explains guitarist Paul ‘Top Dollar’ Major. “But people started twisting our arms saying, ‘You’ve gotta play, you’ve gotta play’, and so eventually we said yeah.”

Part of the Boogie’s appeal then, is that they only play gigs when invited – an Endless Boogie show isn’t something you’ll see every day. “We figured that rather than calculate or pursue what we’re doing… we’d just go with whatever connection we’d make with people.” This seems like the antithesis of the modern day band, to actively not pursue fame and fortune. “Yeah, absolutely, and you can tell when watching a band whether they’re there in the moment, living it, or just putting on a presentation,” notes Major.

The Boogie will make their first foray to Australia in March, riding high on the back of 2010’s epic Full House Head (their second full-length release). “Yeah, I’m looking forward to it, and being on the same festival bill as Roky Erickson, one of my childhood heroes, that’s exciting for me,” Major smiles, referencing the band’s upcoming appearance at Golden Plains, before revealing that the plan, the Endless Boogie plan, remains unchanged.

“We’ll be doing some familiar songs, but they’ll jam out into places spontaneously,” he promises. “We use the songs as a diving board to leap off… we’ll keep it pure and just rock.”

Samuel J. Fell

http://noquarter.net/bands/eb.php

Out Of The Shadow

2012-01-05T14:51:00.001+11:00

Published in January issue of Rhythms magazine. (Alternate version to be published in Inpress).

ADAM COHEN

Expectation can be a cruel mistress, and she can take many forms. Whether it be expectation to carry off a nigh-on impossible task, the expectation that something you do this time will be better than last time, the expectation that you’ll live up to, perhaps, the Family Name. None more so than the latter then, has defined a large period of the life of Adam Cohen. For what could be crueller, what could possibly be more demanding (and indeed, almost futile) than the expectation that your musical career will in any way live up to that of your father, the one and only Leonard Cohen?

Cohen junior however, has come to a realisation. The realisation that whilst expectation will always flirt with you (sometimes from afar, sometimes right in front of your wife and children), there’s a way out, a way to tell her to stop – there’s a way to operate where expectation means nothing. “That’s very much true,” muses Cohen, sleepily, for it’s early morning in Prague where he’s currently located, five weeks into a two month European tour. “There were three [moments where I came to this realisation], ingredients to change.

“The first was disillusionment with my own career. The second was my father’s triumphant return to the stage. And the third one was fatherhood, my own, becoming a father myself, that feeling and connection,” he goes on slowly. “[Now] I walk to work with a sense of pride and a hop in my step, as they say. I used to have a lower ranking position in the family business, and now my office is on the upper floors. And if my music is in dialogue with my father’s, then I have something noteworthy and interesting to say, finally.”

Cohen’s musical career has been varied. He released a couple of solo records a number of years ago (Adam Cohen in 1998 and Melancolista in 2004), as well as Ex-Girlfriends (also in 2004) with rock band Low Millions, with whom he had moderate success. Since then however, despite the fact he’s “been busy”, he effectively withdrew from the music world, citing disillusionment as he mentioned earlier. We talk briefly about how it is to have Leonard Cohen as a father, and he’s sage about it, accepting it (you certainly can’t change these things), and calls it more of a help than a hindrance. But there was always that expectation. Until now.

I mentioned earlier that Cohen junior had come to a realisation. He outlined the reasons why and how. But the main booster? The recent release of his third solo record, Like A Man. This is a record, one that’s been a long time coming, that lowers that expectation (almost kills it stone dead in fact) because it’s the album he’s been ‘expected’ to make, for years now. Like A Man sees Adam Cohen come to the realisation, it sees him gather himself up, and it sees him walk out of the shadow, into the light of his own making. It sees him as a musician in his own right, not just the son of a legend.

“I’m not sure I can answer that without reiterating the word ‘pride’,” he says simply when I ask why he’s called it his “proudest artistic achievement yet”. “I’m proud of it because it’s work that dignifies and honours a tradition from which I come. It’s a record that has the honesty and a signature that is altogether my own at the same time. It’s very much celebrating my father’s work, which has had a deep influence on me, and it’s also my proudest work because it’s so unexpected to me, that I would have ever made this record, and ever made it so well.”

I ask how long this record has been germinating, how old are these songs? “This is an old collection of songs, dating back… some of the songs are really old, the first song on the record is 20 years old,” he reveals. “What links all the songs together, is that one after the other, they were discarded or hidden away when I found them to bare to close a resemblance to my father’s work.” This is interesting then – do they no longer feel similar to Cohen senior’s work? Or does that not matter?

“Like I was saying earlier, they pay homage to a tradition from which I come in a way that I’m very satisfied with,” is the simple answer, and perhaps that’s the key. The reason why Adam Cohen no longer feels the heavy weight of expectation to be like his father, is because he’s (finally, perhaps) released an album that is similar to his father’s work. Not the same, but similar. It’s something that he feels has set him free, it’s something fans and media are agreeing with. It’s interesting – in order to get out of the shadow, Adam Cohen has gone back to it.

At the end of the day though, Like A Man, as Cohen junior mentioned, has his own signature, and that’s important. It’s almost like a fresh start for him, a springboard, one that could hurl him in any direction he chooses. Far away, it would seem, from that cruel mistress that is expectation. “At this point I’m happy to say the record is being released in Australia and Canada and dozens of countries in Europe and the US, and so it’s taking me on a… giant sized adventure,” he sums up, and at this point, that’s all that matters.

Samuel J. Fell

Like A Man is available now through Cooking Vinyl / Shock.

http://www.adamcohen.com/

Record Review - Ani Difranco

2012-01-05T14:44:00.002+11:00

Published in January issue of Rolling Stone.

Ani Difranco

¿Which Side Are You On?

Righteous Babe / Shock

More than three years after last record Red Letter Year, acclaimed songstress Ani Difranco returns with another in Which Side Are You On?, a rootsy, full-figured crusader of a record tackling rabid consumerism, flaccid government and a crumbling planet, not to mention getting older and “being totally OK with the process”, as Difranco herself obviously is.

The Pete Seeger-penned titled track, on which he appears here, is the cornerstone, a funky finger-snapper, bookended by a mixture of folkish whisps and rootsy grooves, all showing you don’t have to be Rage Against The Machine to get a poignant point across, as Difranco has always done.

Samuel J. Fell

NO AID NEEDED FOR THIS 'GATOR

2011-12-08T09:41:00.000+11:00

Last month, I conducted an email interview (never as satisfying as a face-to-face interview, or even a phoner) with Alligator Records boss, Bruce Iglauer for the label's 40th anniversary. Alligator, based out of Chicago, is one of my favourite labels; they've been releasing high-quality blues for four decades now, never compromising on quality, always keeping ahead of the times. For an independent label to still be active, and indeed competitive, is something special in this day and age of digital downloads and major label demise.

The first half of the interview was quite serious, the second half more light-hearted. The latter was published in the December issue of Rhythms as a 'quick-grab', but the first half remains unpublished. I've posted it here in full, along with the short intro from the published piece.

Alligator Records - Bruce Iglauer

Bruce Iglauer. Pic by Chris Monaghan.

Four decades ago this year, a young Bruce Iglauer (disenchanted with the fact Delmark Records, where he worked, wouldn’t release an album by his favourite blues artist, Hound Dog Taylor) struck out on his own and made that record himself. Taylor became the first artist signed to Iglauer’s new label, Alligator, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Over the years, acts like Koko Taylor, Albert Collins and Johnny Winter have called Alligator home, as have countless others, and it’s been Iglauer’s effort and persistence that has seen a lot of these acts reintroduced to fans all over the world. This passion, dedication and pure love of the blues is why Alligator is here today, celebrating 40 years of genuine house rockin’ music, and why it always will be. Iglauer himself waxes lyrical on 40 years of blues.

Firstly, this year obviously marks 40 years since you first began Alligator – given all you’ve been through since then, how does that makes you feel today?

I’m constantly amazed that Alligator has survived (and sometimes even thrived) for all these years. However, I spend very little time thinking about the past or glorying in what we’ve done. My focus is always on the present and the future. Right now we’re preparing new releases by Joe Louis Walker, Janiva Magness, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials (I’m producing that one), Curtis Salgado and Michael 'Iron Man' Burks (I’m producing that one too). So my focus is planning for next year, as well as dealing with the ever-more-difficult task of running a label in this ever-changing music business world. I never wanted to be a businessman, but it’s how I am able to record music I love and share it with the world.

Yr first project, the one which got the label off and running, was yr recording of Hound Dog Taylor back in 1971 – I believe the album was recorded in two days, straight to tape, mastered as you went. You then pressed 1000 copies and began distributing them from the trunk of yr car – tell me how you felt firstly, as you pulled out of Chicago with a boot full of those tapes, and secondly, how you felt when that record was first played on air, after you’d given it to a DJ.

In those days, I was making everything up as I went along, and spending every penny I had (a whopping $2500, which was the startup money for the label) to alert the world to Hound Dog Taylor. So we definitely mixed his album as we went, because that’s all I could afford! I remember the very first radio spin, at WGLD-FM in Chicago. It gave me a huge sense of fulfilment but also started my ‘addiction'. My music was on the radio!

Iglauer and Albert Collins.

Now I want more…more…more. So I drove to Detroit and got airplay on WABX and WRIF, and then on to Cleveland, and so on. I realised very quickly that Hound Dog’s music had something that spoke to others as it spoke to me. He knew how to put all that joy and raw energy and blues feeling into his music in a way that others could feel. I thought, 'Maybe I’ll be able to sell enough of this record to continue to record music I love'. And that’s pretty much been the story of my life since then; record music I love, and try to sell enough of it to continue recording even more music I love. By the way, I’m still in touch with those DJs who gave us our first spins.

You had some notable early successes – reintroducing the world to Koko Taylor, taking Albert Collins to the top, signing Johnny Winter… those must have been tremendously exciting times.

It’s always exciting both to help the recordings be created and to grow the audience for the artists. I only record artists whose music moves me, so every time an Alligator record gets a good review, is played on radio, or someone buys our music, it’s like a personal affirmation. But between 1971 and the late 1980s, I was producing or co-producing the vast majority of Alligator releases. I got to work with Hound Dog Taylor, Son Seals, Lonnie Brooks, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter, Roy Buchanan, Lonnie Mack, Koko Taylor, Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, Professor Longhair, The Kinsey Report and many more.

I was often producing seven or eight albums a year. Because the market for blues was much bigger then, it seemed like almost every Alligator release was able to pay for itself and make a decent profit. So I was able to spend many, many days (and nights) in the studio. But as the years passed, we signed more artists who either came to us with their own finished master, or with their own producers, or were simply not appropriate for my producing skills. I’m a blues producer; I can help an artist make a great blues record. But my musical knowledge is limited, and I wouldn’t be much help in the studio with artists like Marcia Ball, JJ Grey & Mofro or Anders Osborne who are more 'roots' than blues artists.

Another thrill, then and now, is to be in the audience when my artists get an overwhelming audience response. I get caught up in the excitement — after all, I’m first and foremost a fan. I remember being in great audiences in Australia, seeing Hound Dog Taylor, Albert Collins and Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials. You guys know how to let it all hang out!

Iglauer with Professor Longhair.

It seems one of the reasons Alligator has survived, and prospered, for so long, it that it’s more of a ‘family’ as opposed to a ‘business’ – whether it’s the artists or the staff, it seems yr very close knit – how important has that been to you over the years?

I like to refer to all of us — myself, the artists, the staff — as 'The Alligator Family'. When I signed Joe Louis Walker recently, I sent an email welcoming him to the family. We tend to make long term commitments to our artists. If we believe in their talent and their professionalism, we will work hard to develop their careers, even if it takes a long time. Because we do more aggressive and concerted promotion and publicity than any other label in the blues or roots music world (and perhaps than any other label, period), we have become sort of the Rolls-Royce of labels for touring blues and roots artists.

We never stop working to make their careers more visible and their gigs more successful, even when they don’t have a new release. All the artists have my cell phone number, and before cell phones, they had my home number. And they know how to use it — if the van breaks down, the bass player quits, the club isn’t paying the amount on the contract or their girlfriend or boyfriend dumps them, they call Bruce, and Bruce answers and tries to help. To take it to an extreme, I had one artist live at my home for a month because he was trying to get away from his druggie friends and get clean. Others crashed at my house while on tour to save hotel costs. I’m never off duty. As a result, we often have earned intense loyalty from our artists. For example, Koko Taylor stayed with us for decades on a handshake. She said, “Bless the bridge that carried you across,” and she considered Alligator and me to be that bridge.

As far as the staff, I have the opposite attitude of a lot of businesses. I don’t think people are easily replaceable. When I have an employee who does his or her job well and is dedicated to Alligator and the artists, I’ll do everything I can to keep that person on staff. Alligator can’t pay as much as some other businesses, but we provide good health insurance, a retirement account, and if there is any significant profit at the end of the year, I’ll write bonus checks to the entire staff.

The result is that I have valuable people who have been with the company between 15 and 30 years. These are people I can trust to give 110% even when I’m not looking over their shoulders. Many of them have played a great role in Alligator’s success over the years (and rarely gotten credit). And I’m proud to say that in the 12 years since the worldwide implosion of music sales began (primarily because of illegal downloading), I’ve only laid off one person, and I gave him six months to find another job.

Obviously there would have been some highlights from the past 40 years – give me a few that really stand out in yr memory.

There are so many it’s hard to pick just a couple. Of course my first big thrill was making that very first Hound Dog Taylor record. Taking my favourite band into the studio, producing my first album, directing the mix (which, as I said, we did live; no chance to fix later) and realising that their music would translate from the live show onto record… it was literally a dream come true.

I’ve had huge thrills in the studio since, like when I brought Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland and the ‘new kid on the block’, Robert Cray, together for the Showdown! album and saw the record just about make itself, as each of these three very close friends inspired each other to greater and greater musical heights.

Iglauer and Lonnie Mack.

Then there was cutting the first album by Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials in three hours, when they had come into the studio to cut just two songs for an anthology and I enjoyed the music so much that I asked them to do, “a few more” (which turned into 30 recorded songs and a debut album). I had a great time making Lone Star Shootout album, another multi-artist session, this one with Lonnie Brooks, Long John Hunter and Phillip Walker. They had all been friendly competitors on the Beaumont/Port Arthur scene in Texas in the mid-1950s.

We cut some songs by their mutual heroes, like T-Bone Walker, Gatemouth Brown and Clarence 'Bon Ton' Garlow that brought back great memories for them. And when we had one more track to do late at night and everyone was tired, I woke up their senses of humour by mooning them through the glass of the control room. And I had no greater thrill than recording Crawfish Fiesta by another of my heroes, Professor Longhair, the Bach of Rock, in New Orleans. Dr. John was a huge help on that album. 'Fess declared it his favourite album ever, because he had never been given that level of artistic control. On the day we released it, he died suddenly at the age of 59. I guess he felt he had made his artistic statement. I was blessed to have worked with him. That’s the way I feel about most of my career. I’ve been blessed.

Of course I’ve also had great moments being in the audience and just watching my artists reach straight to the souls of the people around me. Seeing Albert Collins with his 150 foot cord walk through a line of Greek police (who were expecting a riot) and into a wildly appreciative audience, for example. Or seeing Shemekia Copeland’s super successful debut at the Chicago Blues Festival right after we released her debut album. And then there was my honeymoon party at Buddy Guy’s Legends club in Chicago, where musicians from all over the country flew in to play for my wife and me (and about 400 of our closest personal friends). That night, Luther Allison and Koko Taylor performed together; I think it was the only time they ever did. And now they are both part of the Great Blues Band in the Sky.

And no doubt some low-lights – hit me with a couple of those.

As you can imagine, having started at 23 with my first artist being 55, I spent the first part of my career dealing with a lot of death. Since I began, I’ve lost good friends who were also key artists — Son Seals, Koko Taylor, Hound Dog Taylor, William Clarke and so many more. Being a professional blues musician is very hard, and blues men and women tend to die younger than they should. Many of them come from very hard backgrounds — poverty, poor health care, physical labor jobs, and of course my black artists have had to deal with racism. These things age people prematurely. So I’ve buried a lot of people I cared about.

I’ve had great frustration with some artists whom I thought were great and the public never totally embraced. like Fenton Robinson, C.J. Chenier, Michael Hill’s Blues Mob, Rusty Zinn, Long John Hunter and more.

"I’ve also managed to not sign artists whom I should have signed, like a guy I dismissed as, “the loudest Albert King imitator I ever heard”, named Stevie Ray Vaughan. And that’s not my only mis-step!"

And also some possible hair-raising moments – the bio on the label website mentions you’ve gotten more than a few of yr artists “out of some rather sticky situations”… care to elaborate?

I can think of a lot of them. The most obvious one was when I was in a train wreck in Norway in 1978 with the entire Son Seals Band. Because we had derailed and skidded down a steep embankment and part way into a fjord, no one could get to our train car. The band and I had to rescue all the passengers before the train car slid further into the water. During the wreck the drummer, Tony Gooden, was injured so badly that he never played again. It was the most harrowing night of my life. That night the artists and I got each other out of a very sticky situation.

Iglauer with Mavis Staples

One time I was on the way to a gig in the suburbs with Hound Dog Taylor. We were caravanning two cars and he was pulled over by the police. I stopped of course. In the process of ‘negotiating’ with the cops, I ended up being arrested, spending one night in jail on the South Side of Chicago followed by two years on probation for, “interfering with an officer in the performance of his duty,” and couldn’t leave the county without permission of my probation officer.

On my 60^th birthday, I celebrated by spending 14 hours at Cook County Jail trying to bail out a musician member of the family who was arrested on a bogus charge. It took from 9am to 11pm to get him out.

On a couple of occasions, it was the artists who got me out of sticky situations. Brewer Phillips, who played with Hound Dog Taylor, twice helped me deal with people who were coming at me with knives. One was a discontented musician whom I had recorded for an anthology but didn’t sign for a full album. The other was a concert promoter who was refusing to pay the band and the discussion became somewhat, um, heated. In both cases, I was unscathed thanks to quick action by Brewer.

40 years in, and Alligator is still going strong; in fact, you’d have to be the premier indie blues label in the world. Can you ever see an end to this? What are yr plans for the future? Another 40 years?

An end to this? Well, I suppose I’ll die someday, but I intend to keep doing this as long as I can. I’d like to die at either a great gig or in the studio listening to one of my favourite artists cut a terrific performance. But I can sure imagine doing this for another 40 years.

Alligator Records 40th Anniversary Collection is available now through Alligator Records / Only Blues Music.

http://www.alligator.com/

HEY JOE

2011-12-06T07:55:00.003+11:00

Published in the January issue of Australian Guitar (feature) - excerpt below...

Joe Robinson

Pic by Ethan James

Since winning Australia’s Got Talent back in 2008, Joe Robinson has come a long way. So far in fact, it’s almost not worth mentioning this talent show triumph (with its connotation as a crass and questionable way of entering the industry), and indeed, he was a consummate guitarist long before he ventured forth to strut his stuff on prime time television. Joe Robinson, who celebrated his 20^th birthday this May just gone, has become known for his six-string prowess, his technical ability and his almost unmatched drive and ambition; a welcome boost that win was, but it’s been on talent and desire alone that he’s progressed since.

Today sees him based in Nashville, that true bastion of country music, where he’s spent the past nine months toiling within the confines of a studio – an environment more than a little alien to him given his obvious penchant for touring – putting together his third record, Let Me Introduce You. It’s an apt title for Robinson’s third effort in that it serves as a true introduction to Robinson the artist. Where his debut, Birdseed (’07) and second record Time Jumpin’ (’09), were the public’s first taste of the young man – both rollicking, fast-paced acoustic instrumental releases – Let Me Introduce You sees Robinson finding his feet, his style and, most importantly, his vocal prowess, the latter being something he’s not before captured on disc. This is his first record, his first introduction then, of himself as a rounded artist – a musician, not just a guy with a guitar.

“I felt like I got to a certain point, and that I needed to push myself in a new direction,” Robinson explains on why now was the time to introduce vocals into the mix, particularly given thus far, his guitar has had a voice of its own. “Turning 18 and moving to the States was a fresh start in a lot of ways, and I always wanted to sing and make an album like this. To me, the solo guitar thing was always a stepping-stone to bigger and better things, so I felt like this was the best time in my life to make this transition.

“And it has been a challenge, particularly getting used to the experience of performing live as a singer and a songwriter, because that’s something that doesn’t develop overnight, it needs to manifest,” he adds, and he’s right. Let Me Introduce You is a starting point for Robinson, it’s his first attempt at displaying his singing, his songwriting, and while the results aren’t stunning, it’s a solid indication that there’s room to move and grow, and that this isn’t just about his guitar.

...

Samuel J. Fell

http://joerobinson.com/

SWITCHBLADE ROCK 'N' ROLL

2011-11-22T10:08:00.001+11:00

Published in December issue of Rhythms Magazine

Hanni El Khatib

I remember reading The Outsiders at school – Ponyboy, Soda and Darry, slicked back greaser hair and switchblades, Mustangs and girls in skirts with hair just so. Elvis was ‘tuff’ and the Beatles weren’t, there were rumbles and packets of Kools and the kids would sneak into the Drive-In and find off-tack ways to get their kicks. Looking back at the scenes described within those pages now, I can hear a soundtrack to it all, one I wasn’t really aware of at the time, but one which now fuels a lot of what I do on a day to day basis, and I’m quite obviously not alone. If I were to pick up a pack of Kools and look to share ‘em with someone today, it’d probably be Hanni El Khatib.

Khatib, an American of Palestinian heritage, channels these scenes through his current music. It’s a mish-mash of ‘50s-era blues and rock ‘n’ roll and it brings to mind images of knife fights, rumbling trains a-la mid-century America, huge old cars and an attitude one doesn’t really associate with current times. Khatib brings this all together in a wonderfully left-of-centre way (it’s not neat, by any stretch) and it reeks of authenticity and downright Because I Have To. And he does have to, a few years ago leaving a (no doubt) well-paid job as Creative Director for a skate fashion label to pursue his musical dream.

“I dunno man, music is something that I've always done as a hobby and when I got the opportunity to go for it full time, I was like, ‘Fuck it’,” Khatib relates on this unorthodox (but wholly understandable) move. “I knew if I didn't jump on it that I would regret it for the rest of my life.” Regret is obviously something Khatib didn’t want to live with and so off he went, a couple of short years later releasing his full-length debut, Will The Guns Come Out, dropping earlier this year. It’s interesting listening to it too (full as it is of the aforementioned ‘50s sounds), when you realise what Khatib grew up listening to.

“Well (and this is when I was young, it all changed as I got older), but let's just say it was Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Ozzy Osbourne, Neil Young and Snoop Dogg,” he smiles when asked who, when he was younger, he wanted to be like, musically, when he grew older. This has indeed changed, but it seems a fair jump from Snoop Dogg to the likes of Elvis and Buddy Guy. “Growing up in America, music from the ‘50s is pretty much a part of the culture here,” he explains on how he came to find such an affinity with these sounds from times gone by. “It's pretty much been ingrained in the fabric of our society since that time. Furthermore, me being a child of the ‘80s, I experienced one of the many resurgent periods of that era. So for me it's quite familiar and as I got older I really started to appreciate the recordings and innovation of the time as well as the simplicity and purity of the music.

“I think the simplicity and iconic nature of the era [too] is the main thing that attracts me to it. Such easy and classic style,” he adds. Easy, classic style is what is printed all over Will The Guns Come Out. Yes, it is messy and yes, perhaps Khatib should have waited more than just a couple of years before he released it (hone those chops a little, fully grasp the basics so you’re able to then move them outside of the box), but as mentioned, it’s authentic and real and channels not just sounds of old, but some newer ones too, the three groups of more modern times that come to mind being The White Stripes, The Black Keys and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.

“In a sense I guess those bands have paved the way for all bands like myself that make stripped down rock and blues music,” Khatib muses when I ask how influential these newer bands have been. “I don't necessarily think they influence my song writing directly, but I do feel maybe we all pull from a similar bag of references and are inspired by music of the past.” No doubt, although this now poses a tricky question – how is Khatib going about adding his own brand of originality to this music? How is he not just rehashing a rehash?

“I feel like what I do is just pull inspiration from old sounds and music,” he counters. “I don't think I'm necessarily even attempting to make authentic revivalist music. I'm not trying to replicate that sound to the tee. For me, it's about making music that feels natural and it just happens that I'm influenced by all that type of music.” Make no mistake about it, Hanni El Khatib is doing this because he has to. He left his ‘real job’, he relishes the sounds from times gone by, he lives in the now. A heady bunch of ingredients which are informing a musician with a plan. As Khatib has been quoted as saying before, “These songs were written for anyone who’s ever been shot or hit by a train. Knife fight music.” I ask him if those things have ever happened to him, to which he replies, “No comment.” Just what Ponyboy would have said.

Samuel J. Fell

Will The Guns Come Out is available now through Innovative Leisure / Inertia.

http://www.hannielkhatib.com/

Record Review - Huxton Creepers

2011-11-14T08:34:00.000+11:00

Huxton Creepers
12 Days To Paris
Fuse (Re-release)

There’s no denying the unbridled free feeling you get whilst listening to well executed power pop; equal parts The Breakfast Club (that wind-in-your-hair irresponsibility of a teen playing by their own rules back in the 1980s), equal parts The Pixies (dark clothes and shoegazing rubbed in the dirt and the fuzz), it’s something that grabs you just right and has you flipping your middle finger to the man all whilst kicking up your heels with reckless abandon.

In Melbourne, back in the early ‘80s, this was a common occurrence, as any regular attendee at places like The Seaview Ballroom and the Prince Of Wales will tell you. Bands like Corpse Grinders and Olympic Sideburns, kicking out the jams, drawing heavily on ‘60s garage rock ‘n’ roll, punk and rockabilly, twisting it just so, give it a bit of sugar and it’s power pop (or is it?) at its Australian best. Then of course, came Huxton Creepers, and stages, eardrums and the world at large were never the same again.

These cats cut their chops live, that’s where they belonged, on a stage. Nothing they ever recorded adequately captured what that live set was like – the theatrics of frontman and main songwriter Rob Craw, the rock solid rhythm section of Matthew Eddy on bass and Arch Law thumping tubs, Paul Thomas’ guitar wrapping it all up – the power and the passion these four exuded had ‘em jumping in the isles and they lived the life and became part of the furniture.

When they did come to record, whilst the results lacked the power so evident in the live setting, it was never by half. Debut 12 Days To Paris, originally released in 1986, was perhaps where they were firing best; re-released today through Fuse (the full record, plus four bonus tracks), you do get that feeling of almost, of a caged beast perhaps – the idea that a full-on live band is indeed in there, lurking just beneath the surface.

Still, this is where this particular re-release tops all others – the bonus disc. Live versions of crowd favourites ‘Shake Some Action’ and ‘Ramble Tamble’ (albeit live on 3LO’s Sunday Night Live, as opposed to at a venue) as well as ‘Iceman’ and ‘Wishing Well’ (both recorded at The Ballroom in St. Kilda in late 1984) are there to remind you of those heady days when it was all you could do to keep the Creepers off a stage.

12 Days To Paris, the album proper (here, remastered) remains to this day a cult classic. That unmistakable guitar intro courtesy of Thomas as he leads into ‘My Cherie Amour’ makes your arm hair stand on end; it epitomises a time and place for many, and the passing of said time has done little to dull that. The record continues to pulse from there – the chugging rock ‘n’ roll of ‘Autumn Leaves’, the freewheeling ‘Guilty’, the punkish (with a rockabilly twist) ‘King Of The Road’ – it’s all here in its remastered glory, as strong and catchy as it ever was.

Back to the bonus disc: along with the aforementioned live tracks, you’ve got demo versions of a number of the 12 Days… tracks, a couple of unreleased demos and a couple of tracks which featured on various compilations circa 1984 (including ‘King Of The Road’, which featured on Au Go Go compilation, Asleep At The Wheel). All told, this is as powerful and full a picture of a seminal underground band as you’ll find around. Huxton Creepers were at the top of their respective pile during the mid-‘80s, and this set shows exactly why.

Samuel J. Fell

Originally published on Mess+Noise - click here to read edited version.

Record Review - The Vasco Era

2011-10-25T08:15:00.000+11:00

The Vasco Era

ERA Records / Inertia

To be honest, two EPs and now three LPs in, I’m not sure where the Vasco Era can go, or indeed, what they’re all about anymore. Where once they went about their business with reckless aural abandon, now they seem caged, desperate and lacklustre. Gone is the raw power and mind-blowing scuzz and burn. Gone, it seems, is the fun and the freedom they once clung to with an almost fiendish intensity. Their third, eponymous record, sees the band a shadow of its former self, and given how good they used to be, this is a sad, sad thing.

It’s not to say The Vasco Era is a bad record, but it just lacks anything that makes you snort coffee out your nose and sit up straight, leaning across your desk to turn up the stereo, wondering what the hell is going on here and why haven’t you heard this before. That’s how I used to feel when I’d put on their early EPs – Let It Burn (’04) and Miles (’05) – and, to a lesser extent, their debut LP, Oh We Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside, a record they laid down after signing (foolishly, in my opinion) with Universal and heading to San Francisco in 2007.

While there are some standout tracks on here – lead single, ‘Child Bearing Hips’ for example – for the most part, The Vasco Era borrows heavily from The Strokes and late ‘80s fuzz which is all well and good, but they don’t believe what they’re doing. This record has come about after a fairly prolonged absence, frontman Sid O’Neil leaving the band for a year or so after the release of second record, Lucille, and as such, they don’t seem as cohesive as they used to. And that’s the kicker, because they didn’t used to be that cohesive; their appeal was their scruffy, no-frills attack, and that isn’t here at all – or if it is, it’s buried under far too much polish and production. This album is just not very good. At least, not for The Vasco Era.

Samuel J. Fell

Published in November issue of Rhythms Magazine

The Vasco Era is available now through Inertia

http://www.thevascoera.com/

Record Review - Sal Kimber

2011-10-25T08:07:00.000+11:00

Sal Kimber & The Rollin’ Wheel

Vitamin

Not since Mia Dyson first burst – gritty and real – onto the Australian underground roots music scene have we seen anyone of the calibre, of the snake-shimmer-soul of Sal Kimber and this is a goddamn fact. Possessed of a voice which not only raises the dead but reinvigorates their very loins, Kimber has slowly but surely been growing, emerging, honing her songwriting skill – already razor sharp – whipping the Rollin’ Wheel into a deep, dark, country frenzy, the likes of which are few and far between my friends, make no mistake about that.

Here, Kimber and the Wheel unleash their second full-length effort (the first with this particular band actually), one that’s been a while in coming, but one which makes no apologies, one which just exists in its own murky world of song and story, of melancholy and joy. Not only that, but Sal Kimber & The Rollin’ Wheel heralds, to my mind, the coming of our next roots star – this is a record that drips with sensuality, it reeks of the dirt and the grime that epitomises country music, the sweat and shimmy of old time soul, the power of rock ‘n’ roll, all encased within the inherent realism of an Australian artist singing from the heart like she knows no other way.

And therein lies the reason why this eponymous record is so good – whether ensconced within the darkness of ‘Rocking Chair’, the boogie shimmer of ‘Do Right’ or the reticent, shy and retiring ‘Your Town’, you believe what you’re hearing, because Kimber believes what she’s singing. It’s all well and good to pen a handy song and have the instrumental chops to back it up (as Kimber does, and indeed, as her whole band do in spades), but it’s another to take your listener to the same place you are, whilst up on the stage or in the studio, laying the song in question down. There is absolutely no doubt that there’s more to come from Kimber and The Rollin’ Wheel – the only question is, how soon do we get to hear it?

Samuel J. Fell

Published in November issue of Rhythms Magazine

Sal Kimber & The Rollin' Wheel is available now through Vitamin Records

http://www.salkimber.com/

Record Review - Lanie Lane

2011-10-25T08:02:00.000+11:00

Lanie Lane

To The Horses

Ivy League

From an imagined luau in southwest Chicago – ukulele mixing effortlessly with rockabilly twang – combining blues sensibility and ‘50s chic with an eye on the past and no more than a passing interest in what’s happening now, Lanie Lane steps elegantly into the spotlight. Springing seemingly from nowhere, Lane has made 2011 her own: a BDO appearance, guest vocal spot on You Am I’s ‘Trigger Finger’, national support for Justin Townes Earl, a collaboration and tour with Clare Bowditch and recording time with Jack White in the US – the only thing missing thus far, is a record. Enter To The Horses.

Whether flirting harmlessly with the silly and left-of-centre (‘Bang Bang’, with its thumping double-bass line and ringing “Bang, bang, bang-idy bang bang” chorus lyric) or pouring her heart out (the title track, with its mournful delivery and lyrics like, “I’m going to the horses, if you can’t catch me then just give up”), Lanie Lane has proven that the growing interest she’s been receiving over the past 12 months is justified. For this is a record that fairly reeks of poise and musical nous, a record that oozes age and experience and yet has been created by a young woman with barely neither. Lane seems (in dress and appearance as well as in a musical sense) to have stepped from another time, somewhere where she’s already been doing this for an age and it’s old hat and she could do it whenever she wanted.

Whilst the two tracks she recorded earlier this year with White (‘Ain’t Hungry’ and ‘My Man’) aren’t represented on To The Horses, what is, is a step up; there’s nothing over the top, there’s nothing here that seems forced, there’s nothing that makes you think this is merely an act, a shtick. It’s simple, soulful music from another time re-crafted into something which, interesting enough, makes perfect sense in this electronic, shot-attention-spanned universe of ours.

If you were to name a weakness, To The Horses is a little lacking in cohesion, containing as it does a number of genres worked together – the aforementioned rockabilly, lilting Hawaiian folk, blues, swing, a little jazz, some surf and spaghetti western – which sometimes serves to overwhelm, but it’s only fleeting. Because then you get carried away on Lane’s voice, strong and raw with the occasional hint of female vulnerability – “Don’t cry, that’s below you, oh well, that’s what you get, for fallin’ in love with a cowboy” she sings on ‘That’s What You Get’, which is also another example of the tongue-in-cheek stories she tells throughout the record, songs like the bopping and bouncing ‘Betty Baby’ (She’s just a guitar baby”) and the junky and sultry ‘What Do I Do’.

With To The Horses, Lanie Lane has proven she’s worth the ‘hype’. She’s proven she can write seriously and in fun. She’s proven she can take ‘old music’ and turn it into something fresh and vibrant and she’s proven she’s a radiant streak of light, wrought upon the darkening roots scene in this country. A fine record, a fine debut to be sure.

Samuel J. Fell

Published on Mess+Noise, October 2011 - For edited version, click here

To The Horses is available now through Ivy League.

http://lanielane.net/

COME FLY WITH ME

2011-10-24T08:49:00.001+11:00

Published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 26th Oct 2011. Excerpt below...

Fly My Pretties

Today, astute reader, we shall lament the apparent loss of the Big Production. That auspicious (and all too rare these days) occasion where a group sees fit to showcase more than just a mere gig. Where the group in question puts on a show, a production, something more than just people on a stage playing music; an all ‘round extravaganza, the likes of which don’t often makes appearances in this fast-paced world of ours where instant gratification is an ethos and the watchword is Now.

Of course, one need look no further back than Pink Floyd to get an idea of where we’re coming from here – these cats were all about the big picture; the music, the lights, the visuals, the stage props, all closely interwoven to present something in a variety of different forms, a feast for all the senses. Another example, a more recent one and one perhaps not so ostentatious, is North Coast group The Windy Hills, who soundtrack, live, surf films put together by renowned filmmaker (and Hills’ guitarist) Andrew Kidman. Not as far out as the Floyd, but a combination of elements aiming to give the audience something other than just the run-of-the-mill fodder so prevalent in today’s age.

Who knows why the Big Production doesn’t make as many appearances as perhaps it used to. You would imagine the cost would be prohibitive, and perhaps people are just lazy these days, short attention spans and all that. Whatever the reasons, fair reader, we lament the loss of it, because seeing something like that really draws you in, gives you a sense of what the group are looking to convey through something other than their music; it makes you feel they care, and that’s a fine thing indeed. Enter, Fly My Pretties, a collective out of New Zealand who have made it their mission thus far (since their inception in 2003) to think, act, play and perform outside the box that has for so long constricted and constrained so many artists. For this collective is all about the Big Production, make no mistake about it.

“Well, it’s just what we do,” shrugs co-founder of Fly My Pretties, Mikee Tucker, who also heads up Loop, an NZ media group who tag themselves as “a multi-level medium for new ways of thinking in music and motion graphics”, the group behind FMP. “What Loop really prides itself in doing is next level production and giving more for your dollar than just a band standing on a stage with a good light show. For us, it’s just taking that appreciation of the music to the next level.”

Let us, handsome reader, take in the big picture: Fly My Pretties is a collective consisting (in their present guise) of 16 musicians, plus another 16-odd VJs, lighting, sound and graphic designers. They’re heading to Australia for the first time this week, just for the one show, but it’s a show that will stand out – the first act, according to Tucker, consists of live visuals playing in time with the music, based around the interpretations of visual artist, Haley King. “Basically, when we put a new show together, the 16 cast members who write songs are asked to put two or three songs into a pool and we turn that into the new album, which is essentially the first set,” he explains.

“And so each new song in that first set, Hayley will interpret into a beautiful piece of art which is based on what the song’s about, what the artist is about,” he continues. “So there’s an exhibition in the foyer [of those pieces]… and then a team of boys basically deconstruct and reconstruct and mess with that until it integrates into the song. It won’t just be the painting appearing or the painting sitting there, there’s some pretty unique and creative ways that that’s happening.”

...

Samuel J. Fell

For full article, click here

http://www.myspace.com/fmpretties

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_My_Pretties

FUNK YOU

2011-10-18T08:27:00.001+11:00

Article published in November issue of Rhythms Magazine, 2011. Excerpt below...

The Dynamites Feat. Charles Walker

Earlier this year at Bluesfest, I’m skulking around backstage looking for interviews to bulk out my review, something solid and meaningful, something to fill the void and make the garbled prose I’ve penned thus far a little more exciting, for wont of a better word. You’d think, given the strength of the lineup, that I wouldn’t need to do much to make it exciting, but I’m hardly getting offered face-time with Sir Bob or Mr King, so I need something big and ungainly, a bit of a booster I guess.

As there’s no one currently playing who I want to see, I continue skulking and my languid persistence eventually pays off as I get offered the only spot with the master of funk, the high priest of the groove, Mr. George Clinton himself, which is indeed an exciting and terrifying prospect all at once – I eventually get ushered into the presence of funk royalty (I’ve actually met him before, he was in his underwear at the time which is another story for another time) and man, it’s funky and crusty, just like I knew it would be. We talk about fishing and playing four-hour sets. I have my interesting interview.

I go and see him and Parliament Funkadelic play later that night and I dig those heavy grooves, and I know who’s got the funk, this man does, as did many like him, cats that aren’t around any more, certainly not around in the sense of being able to get up there, spark up a fatty and groove for over three hours – none that you could think of, anyway.

Well, I’ve found one, and not just me, but the world at large, and they found him around six years ago – or perhaps rediscovered is a better term. Charles Walker is his name, and he was there when the funk was just getting heavy, when the soul actually had soul, when it was sweaty and hot, back in the day. Now, Walker fronts The Dynamites, he’s their missing link to the music of the past, and these cats can cook, as they’ve shown the world over, particularly right here where people embrace this old style sound wrought for the NOW, as band leader and guitarist Bill Elder told me via email last month.

We’ll be seeing you guys over here again this month, which I think will be the third time in 18 months – you’ve certainly hit a chord with Australian audiences.

Elder, aka Leo Black: And vice versa. We love coming to Australia more than anywhere. It was a great feeling stepping on [stage at] the Peats Ridge Festival [in 2010] and hearing the whole audience singing ‘Do The Right Thing.’ I knew we were mates for life then.

I imagine Australia isn’t the only place which has taken to you so well – where else are people embracing your new take on these old sounds?

Europe has also been a great home away from home for us. We’ve done eight or nine trips over there since the fall of 2007, and there’s always some amazing stuff happening on those tours. Some dues-paying gigs as well, but nobody escapes that. We’re very fortunate to have audiences in all these extraordinary places that dig what we’re doing. And it certainly affects our creative output, too. We’re writing our third record right now and there’ve already been multiple instances of, “Oh they’re going to dig this in Australia!” And then we REALLY go with whatever idea it was that led to that.

The Dynamites formed back in 2006, initially for a one-off gig. Elder is a student of the funk and the soul that came out of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and so putting a band together for a local funk/soul night was a serious exercise for him. The only thing he needed then, was a vocalist who could carry it off, who could take this on and bring it like he meant it – enter Charles Walker. That one-off night went so well, the band is still going, two albums in along with fans the world over. The funk is back.

...

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.thedynamites.net/

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS FRIENDS

2011-10-14T09:05:00.002+11:00

Article published in EG section of The Age (14th Oct, '11)

Jeff Lang

Disturbed folk and dislocated blues, six twisted strings and a penchant for telling a story, this is Jeff Lang. Over the past 20 years, via a plethora of solo, live and collaborative releases, Lang has refused to be pigeonholed. He’s constantly reinventing his music, and as such has risen to the top of the roots music pile in Australia.

His latest, Carried In Mind, “A batch of brand-new, reconditioned, rust-removed, freshly ventilated, instinct-driven musical conversations” is the high-water mark thus far, yet another chapter in the anthology of Lang’s songwriting life. “It seems these days I have to make the time to write, which is a change from how things used to be,” he muses on how Carried In Mind began to come together.

“There seems to be a time where I feel, almost, an itch to record, and so I can kind of gauge it off that; there’s just an internal drive at a certain point where I feel like, ‘God, I really need to do something’… it’s almost like you are looking for a new record to listen to and you can’t find it anywhere, and you realise it’s one you’ve got to make yourself.”

Carried In Mind came together in a very ‘live’ sense, Lang and long-time cohorts Grant Cummerford (bass) and Danny McKenna (drums) pressing record after only hearing the basic tracks as MP3s and rehearsing once or twice. “It results in a beautifully spontaneous and spur-of-the-moment kind of session,” McKenna noted to me recently, something with which Lang concurs.

“Yeah, it’s pretty important, and it’s down to the quality of the players I think,” he says on this spontaneity. “Trusting them and picking people that you’ve got there because of how they think on their instrument and how quick on their feet you’ll know they’ll be, and their capacity to lean on their instinct and come up with something that’ll surprise and excite you.”

Another addition this time around is the consummate pedal steel playing of Garrett Costigan; it’s this little bit extra which really seems to lift Carried In Mind, giving it a warm, textured underbelly. “I’ve been wanting to have a project where I could pull him into the fray for a while,” Lang smiles. “So here, there were a number of songs where I could really hear him fitting in and enhancing it a great deal, so it was pretty easy from there.”

Samuel J. Fell

Carried In Mind is available now through ABC Music / Universal

For printed version of article, click here

A Living Legend

2011-09-25T11:01:00.000+10:00

Published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 28th Sep 2011 (Excerpt below)

Allen Toussaint

In New Orleans, where grown men sweat 24 hours a day, there’s some history and there’s a groove. The history is etched upon the faces of the myriad cultures that call the Crescent City home, it is prevalent in the architecture and the way of life and the food and the Dixie beer. The groove though, that’s just in the air, it’s what you breathe as you stroll down Bourbon Street or sit in Congo Square, it’s what defines the people and the vibe and the ethos of The Big Easy, a place where good men go to die and the rest of us stagger out sated, but never full; in N’awlins, the groove always lives on.

If you step off the beaten track then, outside of the French Quarter, away from the tourist hotspots, you’ll come across the real city, the places where the legends were born, places where music was made that still resonates today, with a verve and raw power that epitomises the base urges of this huge, sweaty melting pot. Music that lives and thrives, music that has inspired countless others (it’s part of that history), music that is its own entity, its own life-force, a force which has fuelled so many for so long.

Guys like Professor Longhair, Fats Domino and Champion Jack Dupree got the ball rolling, guys like Dr. John, James ‘Sugar Boy’ Crawford and Irma Thomas have kept it going, the barrelhouse piano and jump ‘n’ jive of that distinct New Orleans R&B running thick through their veins, where a horn section is never far away, where you know there’s somethin’ cookin’, and it ain’t always BBQ. And then of course, there’s the King. The man perhaps most responsible for all of this, and more, and this man is a true giant amongst men, amongst musicians, amongst all and sundry, a true legend, Mr. Allen Toussaint.

Toussaint will, later this month, make his first appearance in Australia, but don’t go thinking that this is because he hasn’t been around. For Toussaint, even though his name won’t ring as many bells as some others’ will, is a giant of our time. As a pianist and arranger, he’s contributed to literally hundreds of albums over the past 40 years (including records from Wings, Eric Clapton and Elvis Costello), but it is his producing and songwriting for which he is best known.

As a producer, he’s worked with the likes of The Meters, Dr. John, BJ Thomas, Solomon Burke and Sandy Denny, and as a songwriter, he’s had his songs covered by almost anyone you can think of – the Rolling Stones (‘Fortune Teller’, also covered by The Who, The Hollies and Robert Plant), Boz Scaggs (‘Hello My Lover’, amongst others), Irma Thomas (‘Ruler Of My Heart’), The Yardbirds (‘A Certain Girl’, also covered by Warren Zevon), Ringo Star (Sneakin’ Sally Through The Alley’, also covered by Phish), Iron Butterfly (‘Get Out Of My Life, Woman’, also covered by The Doors amongst others), Little Feat (‘On Your Way Down’, also covered by Trombone Shorty and Widespread Panic), Bonnie Raitt (‘What Is Success’), The Band (‘You See Me’), Bo Diddley (‘Going Down’), Van Dyke Parks (‘Riverboat’), you name it; Allen Toussaint is a songwriting legend, he’s New Orleans’ finest, he’s the Southern Knight and he’s still got that groove.

“The idea of coming to Australia is very exciting,” Toussaint is at pains to point out early on; indeed, given the length and breadth of the man’s career (which began in the mid-‘50s), it almost boggles the mind that he’s not made this trip before. “Oh yeah, well that’s just the way the cookie has crumbled,” he smiles, in his slow, measured way. “But as they say, it’s not too late – I’m glad to be comin’.”

...

Samuel J. Fell

For the full story, click here

http://www.allentoussaint.com/

New Rollin'

2011-09-19T08:26:00.000+10:00

Full feature published in October issue of Rhythms Magazine - excerpt below.

Sal Kimber

I feel like I’m walking down a long, brown country road, dust on my boots, the sun beating down upon my head. But I’m not, I’m sitting at my desk in Brunswick Heads. I feel like I’m in an old hall in some small country town, old couples dancing slowly to the band up on the stage, plates of sandwiches and lamingtons just over the way. But I’m not, I’m sitting in the chair out the front, smoking a cigarette in the sun. I feel like I’m walking through the woods, twigs snapping under foot, big ol’ trees towering overhead. But again, I’m not, I’m driving up the Pacific Highway towards Brisbane, far removed from the life I’m feeling, the life I’m living almost the polar opposite.

So why am I feeling these things? Why am I being drawn into someone else’s world so effortlessly? What is this world and where is it even coming from, picking me up and embracing me so endearingly and acting like it’s my own, but really it isn’t real. Not for me anyway. The reason is the power of a song, of a collection of songs, the lyrics lapping at my subconscious like waves upon a shore – they’re there, but they’re not mine. The power of a song indeed, taking you places you never thought possible, whilst never really taking you anywhere at all.

The songs are part of a record, a new record, from an artist and a band who I’ve been listening to a lot recently – at my desk, out the front in the old chair, in the car on the road. And these are songs that mean something to the person who wrote them, who is singing them, and that is what makes them so powerful, that is how they’re pulling me in, making me feel like I’m somewhere else. They’re songs about a life lived, sometimes vicariously, but mainly from the point of view of the author, one Sal Kimber, a musician with a lot to say, and the skill to say it in a way that resonates with you. Whether you’ve been there or not.

I first saw Kimber, with her band The Rollin’ Wheel, at the Port Fairy folky a few years ago and was instantly drawn in; the lyrics, yes, but also the low-down desperation of the grinding, churning alt.country sound the band produced, the banjo intertwined with accordion and both electric and acoustic guitars. “These guys blew my mind, and I left, each time, wanting more and more”, I wrote in my review of their set, and really, those words don’t do justice to how I remember the band moving me. Since that weekend, I’ve been waiting for them to release another album, and they finally have, and as I’ve said, it’s been taking me places, places I’ve never been.

“Probably my Dad,” Kimber laughs, a little self-consciously, when I ask her to list for me, the five main influences upon her music. “He’s been writing songs forever, and when I was growing up, he wanted someone in the family to write songs with him, to be like a sounding board… that’s what made me fall in love with writing. He was very passionate about telling stories about things that were around, because I think he feels that without these songs, some of our history will get lost. He’s very passionate about it, when I show him a song, he’ll be like, ‘What is that about? Can you relate to that?’ He’s very honest with me.

“And probably James Taylor, I really like his stage presence, especially when he was really young, he was really humble, and his voice is flawless, I love it,” she goes on. “When I was young, probably The Waifs, although the past few years, I haven’t bought their recent albums… but when was 14 and 15, I was pretty obsessed. And Lucinda Williams, I’m a massive Lucinda fan, I love her, I love how kooky she is, she’s probably my favourite artist. And then probably Bonnie Raitt, yeah. Tasty, tasty guitar. Sometimes her songwriting is a bit cheesy, but I like it… I sing along to her all the time.”

Kimber grew up in regional Victoria before relocating to Melbourne around five years ago. She released a self-titled EP in 2005, and her debut LP, Sounds Like Thunder, in 2008. Shortly after that, she assembled her current band, The Rollin’ Wheel (which comprises of sister Buffy on keys and accordion, Cat Leahy on drums, guitarist Jacob Cole and bassist Trent McKenzie), and it’s been on the up and up ever since. Kimber has won The Young Artist’s Award at the Port Fairy folky, the Acoustic Jazz Award at the Wangaratta Jazz & Blues Festival and the APRA Darebin Songwriting Award. Sal Kimber is a serious, underground songwriting talent in the vein of Mia Dyson and Clare Bowditch, and this new eponymous LP, proves that beyond a doubt.

...

Samuel J. Fell

Sal Kimber & The Rollin' Wheel is available October 14 through Vitamin Records.

http://www.salkimber.com/

Sal Kimber at Vitamin Records

The Arts In Australia

2011-09-08T14:55:00.000+10:00

An abridged version of this story was published in the October 2011 issue of Rolling Stone, the original version being cut due to the "...ad dept needing more pages." Here, the original is printed in full.

Illustration - which appeared with the abridged version in
the October issue of Rolling Stone - by Rocco Fazzari

In early May this year, Treasurer Wayne Swan handed down his fourth federal budget, one which included, amongst other things, “sweeping funding cuts” designed to bring the deficit back to surplus by the year 2013, a bold move and one which was met, predictably, with both praise and strong opposition. 2007’s Global Financial Crisis (GFC) was the catalyst for this tactical decision, and as such, despite the fact Australia was the only western country to avoid the crippling effects of the GFC, these cuts will be felt across the board, at least in the short term.

One area which escaped relatively lightly however was the Arts, even receiving a modest increase according to Federal Minister for the Arts, Simon Crean. Conceivably, this suggests that Arts funding was never that high to begin with, but regardless (and perhaps surprisingly), the Arts is looking comparatively solid, particularly with the imminent release of some potentially compelling policy. “The GFC did have a huge impact,” Crean concurs. “But you’ve got to keep building, and that’s what we do.”

Building is indeed what the current Labor government is looking to do, an outcome (albeit a belated one) of the 2020 Summit held in April 2008, being as Crean says, “to develop a cultural policy”. This comes at a time that, according to Kathy Keele – CEO of peak Arts funding body, the Australia Council – is crucial to Arts in Australia. “Over the past ten years, there’s been an awful lot of work finding out whether artists are making a living, identifying what organisations we have and how healthy they are,” she says.

“Now that we’ve done that, we do need to look forward and say, ‘Look, I think most people do read and attend music, they’re well educated and there’s a lot more Arts in their education, so lets talk now about how the Arts are embedded in our society and how they help us develop communities’.”

The result here, of the 2020 Summit and subsequent “ongoing discussions” with “cultural institutions”, is the proposed National Cultural Policy (NCP), something Crean has been quoted as saying is his “number one priority as Arts Minister”.

Federal Minister for the Arts, Simon
Crean.

“The National Cultural Policy is the opportunity to define the importance of a Creative Arts to the development of a stronger, more sustainable, more self-confident nation,” he explains. “The Arts and the creative industries are fundamental to a nation continuing to develop that innovative, creative edge.

“So I want the Cultural Policy to be a statement about us, to define us as a proud, confident and expressive nation,” he adds. “And also a nation that because of its innovation and creative drive, can match it with anyone in the world. Not only match it, but better it.”

Executive Director of the Australian Major Performing Arts Groups (AMPAG) Sue Donnelly, along with Keele, is very supportive of an NCP, but she brings up a very pertinent point: “We haven’t heard very much at all in terms of what’s going to be in there,” she told me early in August, and this is indeed a very telling statement – not many people have been told what the NCP will entail exactly. This is made all the more alarming when you take into account the fact Minister Crean has stated that the government is looking to implement this policy “by year’s end”.

When pressed to expand further, to explain what, exactly, the policy will entail then, (is it a charter that will provide specific funding to certain groups? Will it create support networks for the arts? Or is it just a statement of intent to support certain organisations and areas within the arts?), Crean’s office said (amongst other things), “A renewed National Cultural Policy will ensure Australia doesn’t miss important opportunities to tell our stories, educate and skill our workforce and enable our culture to connect with the rest of the world.” This does not answer the question, and despite the fact Crean’s office has been given several chances to aptly explain, no viable answer has been forthcoming, not even in the Senate.

“I wanted to ask about the National Cultural Policy that the government announced it was going to develop at the last election, which no one seems to know much about in subsequent estimates hearings,” Senator Gary Humphries, the Liberal Senator for the ACT asked, quite pertinently, during the May Senate Estimate Hearings, and there were more than just a few people quietly agreeing with him.

The idea for this particular National Cultural Policy (the first since the Keating government’s Creative Nation in 1994) was first raised at the 2020 Summit over three years ago. The resulting report had the proposed NCP as something “… the government will further consider”. From there, the idea was taken up by now ex-Arts Minister Peter Garrett, but reading now through Hansard, the official record of parliament, it would seem not a great deal more has happened since.

“I asked about this in the October estimates last year and was told that work was going on,” Senator Humphries again noted during the May Senate Estimate Hearings. “I asked again in February and they said more work is going on. I am told now that even in May of this year, there is no formal role for involving the Australia Council… We are cutting it a bit fine, are we not, to start the formal process of work on this, presumably by some sort of consultative process with formal input from agencies, in the middle of the year?”

A very good question indeed, and one which Minister Crean’s office was again unable to answer specifically. It almost seems Labor are looking to quickly capitalise on an election promise, favouring speed over quality – talk is cheap after all, and even then, there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of it, not in the public arena anyway.

In an effort to rectify this then, the government released a discussion paper in early August, which the accompanying media release explained was, “The next step… taking all previous submissions into account, and is consulting widely to ensure that the National Cultural Policy reflects the interests and aspirations of all Australians.”

It is this paper, along with the Mitchell Report (a report being put together by philanthropist Harold Mitchell, investigating corporate sponsorship of the Arts), that will no doubt inform the eventual NCP, but is it coming a little too late? Deputy Opposition Leader for the Senate (and Shadow Arts Minister) George Brandis’ office says, “...the arts community should view the instrumentalist approach which underlies the discussion paper with skepticism and alarm.” I would view it as a good idea which at this point, seems to have no structure, it seems to be rushed, and this is folly indeed.

Added to this is the fact Minister Crean cannot outline any specific outcomes of the NCP, and this is quite alarming. For what good is a cultural policy that this late in the game, has no specific outcomes, and indeed, no specific outline? The NCP must be one of the most thought through, thorough and deeply considered pieces of policy in recent times; this is not the time to hastily fulfil a promise, this is surely a time to think carefully before we act – the NCP must reach the high standard all Australians demand, and deserve.

Samuel J. Fell

http://culture.arts.gov.au/

http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/

http://www.ampag.com.au/

Soldiering On

2011-09-05T10:33:00.003+10:00

Glenn Richards

To be honest, I’m not a great fan of Augie March. Although I wholly appreciate the importance and the strength of their work, it’s never really hit a chord with me and whenever their music comes on the radio or whatnot, I’m wont to switch stations, or indeed, turn the damn thing off. Having said that however, I am an admirer of Augie frontman and songwriter, Glenn Richards, a man who has proven beyond a doubt that he’s worthy of consideration for inclusion in the canon of Fine Australian Songwriters.

Of course, perhaps this is a contradiction – how can one like a man and his musical nous, but not the band he’s used, mainly, to convey such? Indeed, but it goes a bit deeper than that; what I admire most about Richards, is his ability to convey a story through song, and this is no easy task. A good songwriter, a great one, is able to do this seemingly effortlessly, and no matter how they do it – whether it be singing opera, thrashing some metal or writing children’s music, it doesn’t matter – it’s still a great song, and Richards is a dab hand at this to be sure.

Late last year, he proved this – outside of the ‘safe’ confines of Augie March – by releasing Glimjack, his debut ‘solo’ release, and one which whilst it didn’t set the charts alight, proved that this was a man who was, at his core, a songwriter, and not just the frontman for a long-serving Australian indie/rock band. By all accounts, Glimjack was a learning curve for Richards as you’d expect, and now that it’s been out and about for almost a year, he’s philosophical about its impact, about the process in general.

“Yeah, we weren’t really able to get any of the songs out there, to really build a tour around even,” Richards muses. “But I can only be honest about it, and it’s not something that greatly worries me now… it was just an unfortunate situation, and was almost a carbon copy of the experience we had with the last Augie March record (Watch Me Disappear, 2008) where everyone working on the record [at the record company] was fired or quit within the first couple of months.

“When that happens at a label, generally that means the death of an album,” he goes on. “So it got to the point [with Glimjack] that it was impossible to get a single out… radio weren’t just gonna play your songs – you’d hope they would, but they won’t – so it kinda died a pretty swift death.” It seems it did, in all but a few diehard’s collections, destined to become a cult record, the first ‘solo’ release from Augie March frontman, Glenn Richards.

...

Samuel J. Fell

(Excerpt - full article published in Inpress (Melb), 24th August 2011 - click here to view full story)

http://www.glennrichards.com.au/

Record Review - Raphael Saadiq

2011-08-30T14:25:00.000+10:00

Raphael Saadiq

Stone Rollin’

Sony

Hot damn! Check this out cats and kittens, set yr bangs and grab yr bubblegum, prepare yourselves to worship and fawn, what a dreamboat, Raphael Saadiq we love you, yr tunes are new and alive, this hasn’t been done before, where have we been? Where have you been? Screams and screeching from the girls, cool adulation from the boys, what is this black music that we’ve heard so much about but have been warned off of by our parents, respectable white middle-class people that they are? More screaming and rending of garments, damn!

The desperation in the vocal delivery, it paints vivid pictures of the sex barely concealed beneath the smooth rhythm and blues grooves, oh the primal spirit being unleashed before our very eyes, it liberates and frees you, it’s like nothing that you’ve ever experienced before – makes yr breath come in short gasps, doesn’t it? Make yr very loins tingle, those teenage loins before barely used and yet pondered upon almost religiously, the possibility and the intrigue, the danger and the naughty taboo of it all, all fired just from these songs, these songs about how he loves (he’s talking about you, you know that right?), how he can’t live without you, how he needs and wants you – and it is about you, yr loins are telling you so.

Oh man, the feeling rising within, you can barely contain yourself, you don’t know how to react to the bluesy bounce, to the soul and the velvet smoothness of the whole thing – this is NEW. When yr parents were out dancing at your age, they didn’t have THIS. This has NEVER been done before and so be prepared for the radio to be awash with these sounds, with Saadiq’s mystique, with this INNOVATION and these SONGS… oh man, yr swooning, I can see it happening, how have you ever lived WITHOUT this music?

Samuel J. Fell

Stone Rollin' is available now through Sony.

http://www.raphaelsaadiq.com/us/home

Rise Of The Falcon

2011-08-30T07:57:00.002+10:00

Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons

It seems odd to be writing about a band like Jo Jo Zep & the Falcons in this languid year of our lord, Twenty-Eleven, as people have taken to calling it. It almost, almost, seems a little perverse. Behind the 8-ball? No, but still a little out of the comfort zone, but relevant, no? In this instance, yes, 35 years since the almost accidental formation of the band, and so a reformation show must be had, that crucial line-up coming together once more, just for the one show, ARIA Hall Of Famers all, the Falcon is back. Still seems a little out of place though.

Frontman Joe Camilleri, perhaps, thinks so too, as he doesn’t really talk much about Zep & the Falcon, focusing more on his ‘other’ band, The Black Sorrows, and what music is in this day and age, what’s it all about, how different is this? He’s in Perth, sitting in his car on the side of the road, but you can feel the vibrations over here on the east coast and we pass the time wondering things and throwing up ideas and we don’t really accomplish much, although we’d like to say otherwise. I would, particularly.

“Yeah, still with the Sorrows, we’re about to release our – well, I dunno – probably our twentieth album or something like that,” Camilleri muses firstly. “That’ll come out in September, Crooked Little Thoughts, so we’re looking forward to that, make us feel like we’re part of the landscape.” It’d actually be hard to imagine the Australian musical landscape without the Black Sorrows methinks. “Well that’s right, we’ve been going since ’83 and we haven’t stopped and the only thing that’s changed is you get different people coming and going.”

People coming and going is a feature that also defined the Falcons back in their day, although not to the extent of the Sorrows (who, according to that bastion of fact and knowledge, Wikipedia, has had 23 Past Members), but that is hardly the point and is perhaps no more than a lazy attempt at a segue. However, this is no ordinary situation and so we talk about the changing nature of the music industry, and there aren’t many people more qualified to comment on this than Camilleri, who co-founded the Falcons back in 1975 at the behest of Daddy Cool’s Ross Wilson, along with other Cools, Gary Young and Wayne Burt – he’s been around the block, it’s fair to say, of this there is no doubt.

After we’ve done this for a while then, we begin to run very short of time and so we must talk about the Falcons, who are as mentioned, reuniting for a one-off show to celebrate 35 years since they formed, and this is surely an exciting prospect one would think. “Well I am [excited], I haven’t seen those guys for a little while,” Camilleri states. “I just hope they have a heartbeat, you know? Because my motto is I come to play, I don’t just come to muck around, lets do the job, and I’m sure they come with that feeling too.

“So I’m really looking forward to, not just playing some of those songs – I play some of those songs in the Sorrows – but there’s a kind of love affair that you have with those people,” he muses. “You don’t live in their pockets anymore and you hated them when you were breaking up, but whatever it was when you were making the music, still lives, you know?” Jo Jo Zep disbanded in 1981, reforming for a tour and a record, Ricochet, in the early 2000s and then were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in ’07 and so have established their bona fides and even though the members (who for this one-off will include Camilleri, Wilbur Wilde, Gary Young, Jeff Burstin, John Power and Tony Faehse) are off on different tangents, the music does still live, even 35 years down the track.

Samuel J. Fell

(Published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 31st August 2011 - click here to view story)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jo_Jo_Zep_%26_The_Falcons

All Grown Up

2011-08-30T07:53:00.002+10:00

The Adults

Both interview and music are addled and strange, full of things you can’t quite comprehend, whether it be because of a lousy connection or because of what was running through Jon Toogood’s mind at the time – again, both during the interview, and the making of this strange, unusual record, the first from a New Zealand collective calling themselves, The Adults. Toogood’s mind is a complicated beast and it moves in many different ways at one time; he slaps his head and things fall from within, his words scatter across international phone lines and his music bumps and grinds and slithers, digitally, and meshes and moans. What does it mean?

I don’t know and I’m still undecided as to whether or not I like this record, its hodge-podge fodder for full-blown derision and scorn, and yet it seems to go a lot deeper than that, it’s more visceral than that, it bristles with something, and I don’t know if I’ve yet identified what that something is… does Jon Toogood know? Do any of the myriad collaborators on this record know? Fuck it, who cares? This is music, the most primal of languages, of beings and states of mind, and so as it grew and morphed and postulated and cringed and whatever the hell else it did, it became music and ended up here, the baby of Shihad frontman, Jon Toogood – never, might I add, as you’ve seen nor heard him before.

“Oh, without a doubt,” he enthuses, for Jon Toogood never does anything unenthusiastically, whether it be writing his music, performing his music or talking about his music; this is a man you can certainly not accuse of being blasé. “I mean, the whole thing is an experiment of throwing people together into different situations and music that they wouldn’t usually do.”

The Adults, through the vehicle that is the collective’s eponymous debut, have created something that is, to put it lightly, not of the norm. Amongst the kiwi luminaries Toogood has rounded up are the legendary Shayne Carter (Straightjacket Fits, Dimmer), all ‘round musical extraordinaire Tiki Taane (Salmonella Dub, Shapeshifter), hip hop soulster Ladi6 and Julia Deans (Fur Patrol) and yet you won’t find any deep dub on here, you won’t find any art rock, you won’t find any reggae or hip hop or metal or rock ‘n’ roll. Although, and herein lies the hidden kicker, perhaps you’ll find them all, rolled into one ball of sonic sludge which has then been lovingly and abstractly re-moulded into something different. Something electronic. Something fuckin’ tectonic in its unstable condition which may or may not cause catastrophic results upstairs.

And, as do most things that raise eyebrows and cause heated discussion, it began as something quite different to how it ended up. “Originally the idea was that I just had a surplus of music that I’d been writing by myself and I thought some of it would be good,” Toogood explains, “and I [originally] just wanted to get some of my friends to jam on it and see where it would go. But I quickly discovered that writing something from scratch with these people – because they’re all smart as – was actually way more interesting. So I don’t think I used one single thing that I’d written.

...

Samuel J. Fell

(Excerpt - published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 31st August 2011 - click here to view full story)

http://www.muzic.net.nz/artists/2965

School Of Blues

2011-08-17T10:31:00.002+10:00

Jimmy D. Lane learnt from the source - now he's giving back.

It’s a universal truth that education is important, it’s paramount, it’s what sets you up for life and informs all your decisions from the moment you become educated, until the moment you die. Along the way you pick up life experience of course, and this adds to your education and so you become wise and you become enlightened and you fill yourself with knowledge, and as even the most out of touch individual will tell you, knowledge is Power. You can do a lot with Power, just ask Richard Nixon, although he abused his power and it almost seemed, in the hazy aftermath, that he might not have had the education he thought he did.

My education was simple and, so I like to tell myself after the last dregs have been drunk and there’s no more tobacco left, effective. I’m here, aren’t I? That’s the truth, that’s the knowledge in fact. My musical education was also simple, and it’s an ongoing thing, and I think it’s fair to say that it goes a bit deeper than your run-of-the-mill schooling, although perhaps my parents wouldn’t be wont to agree, but this is my business now, and so it’s an education that keeps on growing. It’s also an education which feeds my emotions and my feelings and my moods, and so I’m becoming wise and enlightened and as for abuse of this Power, well, only for good.

My musical education though, as much as it informs what I do now, is a different kettle of fish to others’. Indeed, it’s small fry compared to some others’ and whilst it’s important to me, it’s not anything out of the ordinary really and what other people go through in terms of a musical education is deeper and more intrinsic than mine was – I don’t play professionally for example, and neither do I aspire to. Others though, damn man, they do play, and some of them? Well, not only did they receive an education on the matter, but they were most likely born with it, before they even emerged from the womb, they were dripping with it. And then, they expanded, because as you know, knowledge is Power. And in music, that’s a damn powerful thing indeed.

I spoke to Jimmy D. Lane last month. In an email post-interview, he called me a “very well informed gentleman”, and I’ll take that one to the bank. Now, Jimmy D. most likely isn’t a man you’ll hear too much of around the blues traps, and this is a shame really. You’ll know his father though, one Jimmy Rogers, a man who could sling a guitar with the best of them, and in fact, he was one of the best of them, he played with everyone from A to Z, and he was the man. He’s probably most known for playing with Mr. Muddy Waters through the ‘50s, and it’s through him, Mr. Rogers, that his son’s musical education began.

“One of his songs that really stands out in my mind – well, there’s actually a couple – is ‘Walkin’ By Myself’, you never tire of hearing that song,” Lane tells, almost dreamily, from his front porch, where he’s been “having a smoke and waiting for this call”. “And at his funeral service, Kim Wilson from the Fabulous Thunderbirds and myself, we performed ‘The Last Time’, which was another of his songs, that’s always been a favourite of mine. He’s had quite a few songs that musicians migrate towards, you know? Especially guitar players, they’re drawn to that rhythm he played, he was a fantastic rhythm player, he and Muddy complimented each other very well, so those are two of my picks of his songs.”

...

Samuel J. Fell

(except - published in September issue of
)

The View From Room 8

2011-08-01T07:46:00.004+10:00

After a few years in the wilderness, sometimes literally, Jordie Lane comes back with sublime new record, Blood Thinner.

Cover pic by Andrew Kidman

European autumn 2009, and I’m standing outside the Hotel Ibis at 49 Stationsplein in Amsterdam, just down from bustling Central Station. Three days ago I’d been in France for the wedding of a friend, but had since hopped a fast train to the ‘Dam, the City of Excess, where good men go to die and the rest of us stagger out sated and full.

The reason I’m loitering outside a plush hotel instead of seeking the myriad sin this city produces in spades however, is because a few days before leaving France I’d been tipped off that Jordie Lane would be in Amsterdam this same week. Given we go back a ways, I’d shot him an email and we’d arranged to meet, to hang out for a day or two, sample some of the local brew and generally shoot the breeze. Our initial contact that week was actually through the Instant Messaging aspect of Gmail; “Mr. Lane,” I wrote. “Word on the street is yr gonna be in Amsterdam this week... me too. Playing anywhere?”

His reply came back forthwith. “Really??? I am there right now. No, I ain't got gigs, trying to have a holiday. But feel a bit lost not playing, I must say.”

To those who know Jordie Lane, whether personally or through his finely crafted, Americana-tinged music, the idea of him not playing is indeed quite odd. He’s well known on the Melbourne scene (and increasingly, the national scene), as an artist of the utmost veracity and doggedness when it comes to playing, writing, or anything to do with his craft. What makes this situation even more peculiar as well, is that as I waited for him outside the hotel, it was barely even three months since he’d released, in Australia, his debut long-player, Sleeping Patterns.

This was a record that was long overdue by anyone’s standards, it was a record which when finally released (as it had been the June just gone), garnered almost instant critical acclaim. It was a record which heralded the arrival of, as has been noted in the press, “one of this country’s brightest new roots music stars.” It dropped, and then Jordie Lane fled overseas after the briefest of promotional tours.

I’ve been lucky enough to track him down though, and as I lean against that hotel wall, having waited for fifteen minutes or so, I hear a whistle and looking up I see a be-hatted head amongst the sea of bikes chained up outside the station, the man himself strolling nonchalantly towards me, guitar case in one hand, bag in the other, Jordie Lane, loose in Europe, seemingly without a care in the world.

We head straight for Dam Square where we sit in the sun and drink large mugs of Heineken and he seems happy and I’m happy to see him but underneath, under the smile and the idle chat, I realise that despite all this, he’s basically dropped everything, and is hiding. Hiding from the release of an album he laboured for years to make.

***

“I was really fucked up,” Lane comments with a goofy laugh when I remind him of that time. We’re talking in the beer garden at The Park, the pub in Suffolk Park, just down the road from Byron Bay, a good two years almost, after our time together in Amsterdam. “I don’t know why I was, but I was in a very confused, post-high kind of phase, because finally the record did come out and it got a really good response, we did some great shows on the tour and that was really exciting.

Jordie Lane pic by SJF

“And then I left the country for Europe, didn’t know why I was going there, I can’t even remember what the original purpose for me to go to Europe was,” he goes on. “As far as my musical headspace though, I was not keen on anything at that time, it was a bit of a bad spot for me. I know I had the guitar with me, but I was too scared to play it to people… it’s true, I was petrified, I don’t know why.”

The reason we’re talking now, amidst the bustle of The Park’s lunch rush, is because Jordie Lane has recorded (and by the time you read this, released) the follow-up to Sleeping Patterns, the sublime and strange and elegant Blood Thinner. We talk for about an hour, and the strongest thing I take away from the interview is the stark juxtaposition of how he was then, to how he is now. Then, he was covering for something, something he hadn’t yet come to grips with. Today, he’s genuinely happy, he’s ebullient, he’s a man who’s climbed the mountain, planted his flag at the summit, and made his way back down. He’s conquered. Although it certainly wasn’t an easy experience.

...

Samuel J. Fell

Excerpt - published in August issue of

(Cover Feature)

(for pics and commentary from the interview day itself, click here)

http://www.jordielane.com/

http://www.myspace.com/jordielanemusic

Bombay Explosion

2011-08-01T07:34:00.001+10:00

The Bombay Royale Get In Deep

Rock ‘n’ roll has become black and white, it has no edge and it isn’t dangerous anymore. The kids clamour for something bigger and more ungainly but they get the same over and again, recycled and reused and regurgitated by wannabes and hypocrites and sonic pimps with nothing better to do than steal ideas and pass them off as their own.

Where is the flash and the colour and the noise and the pump, the exotic glamour and the sweaty dance that swells from deep within and explodes all over your face like a technicolour money-shot? Back in the ‘60s was when it was real, mainly because it was new, and this is rock ‘n’ roll but we know about rock ‘n’ roll, all too much, and so we’ll switch continents and immerse ourselves in Hindi cinema, known colloquially as Bollywood, and the music that went with it. Not the more contemporary modern strand of the music, but the left-of-centre ‘60s versions that filled your head with visions of pelvic-thrusting beats and shimmers, as is so eloquently re-crafted this very day by Melbourne’s own, The Bombay Royale.

“The ‘60s and ‘70s thing is a different kettle of fish to the contemporary stuff, it’s more the Punjabi style,” concurs bandleader Andy Williamson, aka The Skipper, and also known to Australian audiences through the Public Opinion Afro Orchestra. “The pocket of stuff we’re interested in, it mixes in all sorts of stuff.” It must be noted that what the 11-piece Bombay Royale is doing isn’t a tired reconstruction of a tried and true formula, it’s the reintroduction of a form of music and visual expression that sadly doesn’t see too much light in this day and age, and it’s hitting chords, which is really no surprise given how hungry people are for something that challenges them, in every sense of the word.

“Yeah, it’s been very enthusiastically picked up,” Williamson notes, an understatement when you realise the group, formed only last April, has already played Port Fairy Folk Festival, Bellingen Global Carnival, St Kilda festival and the Australasian World Music Expo, not to mention a recent appearance on Spicks And Specks plus decent radio exposure. “The AWME gig in particular was good for us, that got us to a festival on Reunion Island, just off the coast of Africa recently… that was really well received and it looks like there’ll be action in Europe for us and maybe South Africa arising out of that.”

Not only scoring points in their home country, but overseas as well, and in such a short time, highlighting once more the urgent need people seem to have to take in something different. Williamson mentioned earlier in the piece that the pocket of Bollywood music The Bombay Royale are re-exploring is a mix of styles, which is certainly not a lie – surf guitar, disco, western cinema, funk, it’s a heady brew, one this troupe have down pat.

“There are actually areas of the ‘60s and ‘70s music that we don’t use, the folk and more classically oriented styles, we stick more to the funk and the spaghetti western styles,” Williamson explains. “Live, the main focus is the music of course, and we’ve introduced a small amount of a costume thing going on. I mean, the focus of the project has always been the music, but at the same time there’s an expectation (because the cinema is so much a part of it) that there’ll be a visual part of it. So as things have gone on, the show has gotten a little more animated and theatrical, people have taken on characters, but it’s always about the music, it doesn’t get into the theatre.”

What it does get into is your head, deep within to parts hitherto thought barren, something new and exciting and certainly not black and white but bursting with colour and verve, something set to shake you up and break you down, which is just what the people want.

Samuel J. Fell

Published in Inpress Magazine,

3rd August 2011

http://thebombayroyale.com/

Young At Hart

2011-07-28T17:05:00.000+10:00

Published in the August issue of Rhythms Magazine, 2011

Alvin Youngblood Hart

I first discovered modern US bluesman Alvin Youngblood Hart, about six years ago when I first began working for Rhythms, kicking shit behind the scenes, raiding Brian Wise’s immense stash of promo records in lieu of payment. One of the absolute gems I found in there was an album called Motivational Speaker, and because the cover appealed to me, I bagged it and took it home. It was later on then, once I threw it on the CD player, that I found Hart, and I became an instant fan.

Motivational Speaker was a departure of sorts for Hart, being as it was quite a rock ‘n’ roll influenced work, which isn’t far off his radar, but was certainly something different to what he’d released in the past: the acoustic blues of Big Mama’s Door in 1996; the grab-bag of American-influenced tunes that made up Territory in ’98 (an album which netted Hart the Downbeat Magazine critics award for Best Blues Album and a WC Handy Award for Best Newcomer); Start With The Soul, which he recorded with Jim Dickinson in 2000, plus a host of blues-influenced side-projects with various other musical luminaries. So Motivational Speaker was a departure, but it was one which grabbed me just right.

It’s also an album which stands as Hart’s last recorded work under his own name. Six years without a record is a long time by anyone’s standards, although as Hart attests, it’s not like there hasn’t been a valid reason. “Are you familiar with the Ford Motor Company product called the Edsel?” he asks, resignation evident in his voice. “It was this car they released in the late ‘50s and they had this big publicity push for it, and it was a disaster. So I kinda equate Motivational Speaker with the Edsel. Except there was no big publicity push, that was the problem.”

Hart goes on to say how his record company at the time told him they didn’t have the money to properly promote the record (whilst simultaneously trying to sign other, in their eyes, more lucrative acts), and so the record became somewhat of a failure as a result. “That took a lot out of me, I guess,” Hart muses. I imagine it would have – the record was as solid as a rock, and for me at least, it formed the basis of my love of his music. “Well, that’s one [who likes it],” he laughs.

As a result, coupled with the fact the industry is changing so rapidly making it tricky indeed to release in the traditional sense, Hart hasn’t dropped anything of his own since, whether it be solo or with his band, Muscle Theory. What he has been doing though, in addition to his rigorous touring regime (which sees him playing regularly around his hometown of Memphis, and also New Orleans, as well as the rest of the States and Europe) is banding together with other like-minded souls, and there have been some interesting results.

Firstly, The South Memphis String Band, a jug band of sorts comprising Hart, legendary guitarist Jimbo Mathus (Squirrel Nut Zippers) and North Mississippi Allstar, Luther Dickinson. “Yeah, we started officially about two years ago,” he drawls. “Unofficially, we’d been talking about it for a couple of years prior to that. For me, it was something that I had planned for a few years, I just didn’t know who with. I guess for the three of us, the timing was just right where none of the three of us were really doing anything, so we were like, ‘Hey, lets give this a shot’.

“We didn’t even have a set or anything and we already had gigs booked,” he goes on with a laugh. “I recall our first gig was in Dallas, I think, so we’re driving across Arkansas trying to rehearse songs in the van. But we’ve got a fair amount of stuff together now.” The union quickly yielded results with the low-key release of Home Sweet Home. “Yeah, that was towards the end of 2009,” Hart says. It should also be noted that these three musical layabouts also have an electric incarnation of the String Band, Loose Shoes. “Oh yeah, I don’t really remember how that came about,” says Hart.

“We were just messing around in Jimbo’s studio one day and he had a couple of songs and he asked if we minded playing on then,” he goes on. “So we switched instruments and played these tracks… and we recorded a few of ‘em.” Whether or not these will eventually get released is in the lap of the gods, but you can live in hope. In the meantime, Hart will grace Australian shores with his presence later this month, in solo mode, and he is actually working on some new material, as he tells.

“Maybe next year I’ll be able to put something together,” he muses. “Most of them [the songs] are kinda rock tunes, you know? There are a couple already that I’m trying to write for both formats (solo and band), try and play them different ways.”

We also live in hope of another Alvin Youngblood Hart record, although holding your breath wouldn’t be recommended. That’s no drama though, because what’s the hurry? For this modern bluesman, it’s about the music and where it takes you, time be damned.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.alvinyoungbloodhart.net/

Keys To The City

2011-07-28T12:35:00.000+10:00

Published in the August issue of Rhythms Magazine, 2011

Eilen Jewell

With her fifth studio record, Queen Of The Minor Key, American alt.country chanteuse Eilen Jewell has produced one of the records of the year. A heady mix of country rock ‘n’ roll, rockabilly, surf-inspired guitar and folky balladry, Queen Of The Minor Key leaps from the stereo, pulls on its ratty old cowboy boots and struts down the street, a hip-flask in its back pocket, a spring in its step. From instrumental opener, ‘Radio City’ (this is where the surf guitar makes its first showing) to closer, ‘Kalimotxo’ (also surf-drenched, with a hefty dose of honky tonk pump), this is a record which is all in the right place, without a doubt.

“Thank you,” Jewell smiles when I get the chance to chat to her on the phone, telling her straight up how I feel about this record, one which she and the band are very excited about sharing. And well might they be excited, as this is an album which has been some time in coming. Not so much as far as time goes (Jewell’s last record under her name was 2009’s Sea Of Tears, plus the Loretta Lynn tribute record, Butcher Holler in 2010), but as far as the writing process goes. Word has it that Jewell had to overcome a fairly serious case of writer’s block before Queen… got off and running.

“Well to be honest, it’s possible it wasn’t even writer’s block,” she muses, “because writer’s block kind of implies that I was trying to write but couldn’t; I was so blocked, that I wasn’t even able to try to write. So I had to isolate myself in the mountains in order to write anything… I mean, there had been a lot of distraction on the road, fatigue, and it was hard to just get in the right mind frame to create.”

To counteract this frustrating time then, Jewell relocated, as she alluded, to a cabin (with no electricity or running water) up in the mountains of Idaho, where she’s originally from, to really get into the writing of this record. “That was amazing,” she tells. “And because it was a place in Idaho that I was familiar with, it wasn’t distracting; it was beautiful enough to be inspirational, but I felt at home there, so I didn’t feel like I had to be out exploring. I think everyone needs a place like that in their lives, whether they’re writing or not.

“And I started writing right away, as soon as I put my bags down I was writing,” she goes on. “It’s almost like I had the songs stored away in some part of my brain and I just needed to go up there in order to let them out of my head.” So the songs that went to make up Queen Of The Minor Key began to pour out, songs like the slow rolling, ‘I Remember You’, the country inflected ballad, ‘Santa Fe’ and the foot tapping road-tripper, ‘Home To Me’.

What else came out, lyrically, was humour, a tongue-in-cheek aspect which as long-time listeners of Jewell’s will attest, hasn’t been that prevalent in her writing before. Songs like ‘Bang Bang Bang’, describing Cupid as, “about two years of age, a really freaky thing to see, he was bragging about his sawed-off six gauge, hidden right up his tattered sleeve.” Not to mention the title of the record itself. “Yeah, that is a new thing for me for sure,” Jewell concurs with a smile.

“I usually shy away from humour in songs because to me, songs with humour in them can be kind of dorky or clichéd,” she goes on with a laugh. “So the title is definitely tongue-in-cheek, in my opinion, and ‘Kalimotxo’ is one of the silliest songs I could ever imagine myself singing. So with every record that comes out, I try to expand my horizons just a little bit more, and so this was new territory for me that I really wanted to urge myself into, it is possible to do a little bit of that.”

Weaved as it is in amongst the more serious writing and the music itself, the humour Jewell has injected into this record stands as an important part, a part which helps lift this record as high as it is. With this in mind then, I’m interested to know what Jewell’s overall MO was here, what she wanted to come out with at the end of this record process. “Well I wanted an album of all original material, that’s pretty much all that I knew, because we’d just done Butcher Holler last year and that was really fun, but I didn’t want to get pigeonholed as a cover artist,” she explains.

“I want to be known as a songwriter, so I felt I had to get right back on track with the songwriting,” she adds. “And I also knew I wanted to get a couple of guest vocalists, because I’d never tried that before. So I wrote a couple of songs with a couple of friends of mine in mind and luckily they agreed to sing them with me. They were Big Sandy (of Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys) and Zoe Muth, so that was pretty much all that I knew I wanted out of the experience and other than that, everything kinda just fell into place.” One listen to Queen Of The Minor Key proves that, a masterful record from an artist with only more to give.

Samuel J. Fell

Queen Of The Minor Key is available now through Signature Sounds Recordings and Fuse.

http://www.eilenjewell.com

Out The Corner Of Your Eye

2011-07-27T06:48:00.000+10:00

Published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 27th July 2011

Periphery (short excerpt below)

Bringing to mind the brutal precision of Fear Factory or Strapping Young Lad, Periphery precipitate a new dawn in metal. And yet they don’t, for much of what they do has been done before and much of what they strive to do is too much of a new tonic which raises the hackles of the old faithful who continue to pine for something new that truly represents the old, and with the exception, to my mind, of Lamb Of God, Job For A Cowboy and perhaps The Haunted, this has been slow in coming.

The behemoths of the old age are dead and buried, for the most part, and the new guard insist upon watering down their offerings – singing vocals and soaring, melodic interludes? – failing once again to sate the appetite which for so long has churned and pained and plagued the collective metal stomach. And so one must turn to their trusty record collection, or delve deeper into the underground (and even this is becoming a harder task; there is, after all, only so deep you can go before needing to surface for air) or suck it up and dig what’s being offered up as metal in this day and age, at least in some small part.

Dinosaur metal junkies though, well, they don’t call ‘em dinosaurs for nothing and there’s a new guard of rabid hard music fans and this is their staple, this is what they’ll look back on in 20 years and lament the loss of (at the same time, looking back even further and wondering what that fuss was all about) – so Periphery are at the forefront of that, and for the old guard, at least there are elements of those earlier industrial strength bands in here and take that if you will and ignore it if not.

...

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.myspace.com/periphery

Record Review - Old Gray Mule

2011-07-19T07:45:00.000+10:00

OLD GRAY MULE

40 Nickels For A Bag Of Chips

Stobie Sounds (Aust)

If guitar/drum combos are your thing, then listen up and listen good. Straight outta Lockhart, Texas (allegedly the BBQ capital of the world) come Old Gray Mule, a couple of cats with the blues running thick through their veins and a penchant to electrify and get it on down, as low and dirty as it’s possible to be.

Now, you may be thinking combos like these are a dime a dozen, and that’s a fair call, but OGM are a different breed. Where the likes of the White Stripes, the Black Keys and Australia’s own Mess Hall are wont to press more toward the rock ‘n’ roll side of things here, OGM keep it tight within the blues tradition, keeping to that blueprint that’s proven itself over and over again and will keep doing so until the end of time.

Where OGM differ again though, and where they show they have something new to offer, is in the delivery, and it’s showcased to perfection on 40 Nickels For A Bag Of Chips, the duo’s second record. All instrumental, this is a dance record, this is charged and ready to roll, this is subtle skill set to speed and the results will singe the eyebrows off your face and warm your winter blues. Guitarist, C.R Humphrey teams up this time with Junior Kimbrough’s son, Kinney, on drums and I defy you not to put this on at your next party and have the place heaving to these finely crafted trancey blues grooves. Word on the street is these cats are heading our way later this year too, so I suggest you educate yourself with 40 Nickels…, find their debut, Sound Like Somethin’ Fell Off The House, and get ready to dance.

Samuel J. Fell

(published in August issue of Rhythms Magazine, alternate version to run in Australian Guitar)

Record Review - Geoff Achison

2011-07-19T07:41:00.000+10:00

GEOFF ACHISON

Live At Burrinja Café

Jupiter 2 Records

What is perhaps most surprising about Live At Burrinja Café, the latest from Melbourne blues-based guitar slinger Geoff Achison, is that it stands as his first ever live acoustic release. Over the past two decades he’s released a number of live cuts, as well as a couple of all acoustic records, but never a combination of the two – this makes Live At Burrinja Café a welcome addition to the Achison canon then, not least of all because of the quality of playing contained within.

Solo acoustic is as naked as a musician can get, but this is where Achison excels. Showcasing a wide variety of originals and covers (JJ Cale’s ‘The End Of The Line’ and the Allman Brothers’ ‘Whipping Post’ amongst them), all to a tee soaked in the subtle six-string trickery/mastery Achison is famous for, this is a set which reeks of realism and honesty, it’s like you’re right there.

Samuel J. Fell

(unpublished)

An Old Way Of Doing Things

2011-07-19T07:37:00.002+10:00

Published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 20th July 2011

Gomez

For the past 14 years, British indie rockers Gomez have weaved their infectious tunes into the tapestry of the global music scene, garnering along the way an adoring, and ever growing, fanbase. They’ve filled a niche occupied by very few, and as time has gone by, their canon has grown, their music has expanded and they’ve matured as musicians and people, and yet they’ve never lost that gleeful edge to their music that is so evident after even a cursory listen to either their records or their live shows.

These days, little has changed. The five members of the band no longer share a house, as they once did, but are scattered around the globe – some in the US, some still in the UK – and they are of course, older and wiser, but aside from that, Gomez is still Gomez, and this is something that’ll remain as constant as their music is uplifting and free. This month the band will release its seventh studio record, Whatever’s On Your Mind, and yes, it reeks of the ethos they’ve spent the past decade and a half adhering to. But despite the fact little has changed there, there are some key differences, ones which have contributed mightily to how this record has turned out.

Firstly, as mentioned, the five members of Gomez no longer reside in the same city, let along the same country or hemisphere, and as such, Whatever’s On Your Mind came about in quite a different fashion, helped in no small amount by the continuous growth of technology, as guitarist Ian Ball explains. “Well, this is the best way of us working to be honest,” he says simply, the band writing the entire record remotely, posting ideas, lyrics and music online and via email to each other. “On the last album [A New Tide, 2009], the song that everybody liked the most was the ‘Airstream Driver’ song, and that was written in this fashion… and we thought, ‘Lets just do a whole album like that’, because it’s really good to work like that.

“And the main reason is, as you can imagine, in any kind of collective and creative environment, I mean, can you imagine five people sitting together in a room? ‘OK, now we’re going to try this’, ‘No, lets try this’, ‘I don’t like that’, ‘Well fuck you’,” Ball goes on with a laugh. “So it’s difficult, it’s really difficult, and we’ve never been the kind of band that sits around a campfire writing songs, it’s always been someone will come up with an idea then they’ll go to the pub with someone else and flesh it out. So this is the same principle, it’s just a lot more effective because you have a lot of time to formulate your idea, a lot of freedom.”

So perhaps not that much has changed then, the addition of writing via the web just an extension of what the band have done in the past whilst living in the same country. However, as Ball says, the band members found it an extremely effective way of writing, the result of such a decision garnering a collection of around fifty songs – not necessarily full songs, but parts of – ideas flowing in from the five members, slowly but surely forming the base for what would eventually become Whatever’s On Your Mind.

“We put limitations on it though, where we had to get two songs each into this magic bucket in the sky for three months straight,” Ball explains. “So it was a concerted working period… and if you put something up in the bucket and nobody liked it, who cares, it stays in the bucket. And the things that people started to work on, started to exchange ideas on, obviously became the album, without anyone saying a word to each other.” This is perhaps where it gets a bit grey; it seems writing remotely suited the band down to the ground, but the total lack of human contact? Surely not a good thing when it comes to crafting something as deeply personal as music.

“No, I don’t think so at all,” Ball exclaims. “I mean, certainly the way we’ve always worked, we’ve always used technology to help us as much as we can, it didn’t take any of the humanity out of it at all. It was just like, we all had the same ‘tape player’, we were just all sending it to virtual tape. So I don’t think so, I think the whole idea of the computer as a soulless thing is probably flipped on its head, most people live their entire lives on there, so it was cool, it was a real good way of doing things.”

It certainly worked for the band; they came out of the process with ten solid tracks, the bounce and the fun and the faint commercial edge prevalent all the way through, as is their MO. However, despite the online format utilised whilst creating the album, they did of course need to convene at some point in order to record, as they did over two ten day stretches in the States, a time when the human element was once again introduced.

“It was really great when we finally got together,” Ball smiles. “Most of the songs [then] changed quite considerably when we first got together. The first few days, there was a lot of whittling and narrowing down and combining this song with that song, as you can imagine. And then when we had chosen the songs we were gonna record, it’d be like, ‘Well lets get into a room and record it and if it works, we’ll go with that’, but most of the time it was getting the map of the song perfect and then recording that, it was full on pre-production so when we got to the actual recording, we didn’t have to think anymore. It was great, there was a lot of cool interaction between everybody.”

Another core difference in the making of Whatever’s On Your Mind was that it stands as the first record the band have produced themselves since 2001’s, In Our Gun. Yes, they did recruit long-time friend Sam Farrar to lend a hand, but production duties were almost all down to Gomez. “Well we’d kinda done all the producing ourselves before we even got to the studio,” Ball says on this decision. “We didn’t need anybody to come in, a new brain. We just needed someone there to see if what we had was any good, and Sam was the obvious choice, we’ve known him for so long.”

So with Whatever’s On Your Mind, Gomez have undergone some changes, but they’ve also stayed the same. No mean feat, but one the band have embraced and made their own, the result being as strong an album as any of their earlier material, and one which will see them continue to go from strength to strength, garnering new fans along the way, continuing to expand and grow. Just listening to Ball speak about this record is indication enough that the five of them are still enjoying the process, Whatever’s On Your Mind backing that to the hilt, and beyond.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.gomeztheband.com/

http://www.myspace.com/gomez

Record Review - Gillian Welch

2011-07-12T15:22:00.001+10:00

GILLIAN WELCH

The Harrow & the Harvest

Acony Records / Shock

David Rawlings, musical partner of country/folk enchantress Gillian Welch, was recently quoted as saying, “When is the new Gillian Welch album going to come out? On the happiest day of my life!” Today then, is a very happy day for Rawlings, as it is for the rest of us, as finally after an eight year wait, we have The Harrow & the Harvest, the new record from Welch, and one of the most sublime records you’ll hear all year.

Listening to The Harrow & the Harvest is like looking closely at a desert landscape; it’s so stark and sparse, and yet is so eerily beautiful that you can’t properly comprehend how it came about. And then, amongst the simplicity, are little pockets of hidden gold which may have been obscured by shadow on the original listen, but after a bit of movement, come to the fore and shine with a lustre not seen in modern music. For this is an album from a time long gone, made in 2011, and its simple elegance is breathtaking.

The main reasons for this lie in the vocal harmonising of Welch and Rawlings. The instrumentation – guitar, banjo, harmonica – is merely an accompaniment to the vocalising, two voices wrapping around your brain as one making these uncomplicated songs resonate with a subtle force that belies their seeming simplicity.

Whether via the back-porch Appalachia of ‘Six White Horses’, the steady, lowdown gallop of ‘The Way It Goes’ or the country/folk tear-stained cheek of ‘The Way The Whole Thing Ends’, The Harrow & the Harvest takes you to a place you mightn’t have known existed – a place where music is real, played by real people, for real reasons. This is why this record is so strong. And so beautiful.

Samuel J. Fell

(published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 13th July 2011)

Record Review - Tiny Ruins

2011-07-12T15:20:00.001+10:00

TINY RUINS

Some Were Meant For Sea

Spunk

Some Were Meant For Sea is the debut long-player from New Zealand-based Tiny Ruins, otherwise known as Holly Fullbrook. It’s a soft, non-assuming record, one with a dearth of hidden treasures which you, as the listener, need to search for. Not in the sense that they’re buried amongst dross, but more that this is a grower of a record, offering first up a clutch of heartfelt songs, but then after more time, little bits and pieces you might have missed before but that now add to the overall effect.

Recorded with J Walker (Machine Translations) in an old school hall in eastern Victoria, Some Were Meant For Sea is as barebones as you can get. And this adds to the feel of the record, for this isn’t something you’d play loud – it’s something you’d play when you want to listen, when you want to immerse yourself in an album and really get to the core of what the artist in question is trying to get across. As such, the sparse sound and the simple instrumentation really allow Fullbrook’s songs to come to the fore, as I’m sure she would have hoped.

There’s a risk with this record first up in that it could immediately be put into the ‘wispy vocal, little girl pop/folk’ category, but again, this is a grower and the power in the record is that it quickly transcends that and flowers into what it really is – a simple yet meaningful record from an artist with a lot to say, and a solid idea of how to say it.

Samuel J. Fell

(published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 13th July 2011)

Wonderful Stuff

2011-07-12T15:17:00.000+10:00

Published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 13th July 2011

The Wonder Stuff

To look back over UK group The Wonder Stuff’s history is almost akin to gazing over a newly deserted battlefield. Hiatus and break-up pockmark the landscape, the rubble of records long forgotten litter the ground whilst more successful albums are lauded and promoted and the smoke obscures things, wafting across the scene, pushed by the winds of time themselves. 26 years since the beginning of this rock n’ roll battle, and while it looks messy, it’s testament to the spirit of the band and its co-founder, Miles Hunt, that it’s still alive today.

“I think my little snotnosed self back then would have been appalled if you’d told him in 1987 that you’re going to be around for a quarter of a century at least,” laughs Hunt. “I think I’d have slagged my older self off, but secretly gone to a room quietly on my own and gone, ‘Wow, do I really get to make music for all that time and not go and get a job?’”

This is what Hunt has done. Along with guitarist Malcolm Treece, he’s the only remaining original member of a band which emerged from the Black Country area of England in the late ‘80s and went on to achieve global fame as the scruffy, rule-breaking kid brother of the more mainstream rock bands of the time. Straight off the bat, they released a couple of records now seen as seminal in The Eight Legged Groove Machine (’87) and Hup (’88), careered along wildly, lost members, members died, they stopped for six years beginning in ’94, they began again in 2000, leaving members by the wayside, they indulged in side-projects, they bickered a bit and they played their brand of English anti-mainstream rock n’ roll. And they’re still here.

“Now, we know what we’re doing,” Hunt muses when asked how The Wonder Stuff is different these days with all their collective wisdom and experience on board. “For example, we know what works live, from an audience point of view. We’re not trying to pedal half an album’s worth of new material on an audience who essentially just want to come there and shout along to ‘The Size Of A Cow’, ‘Circlesquare’, ‘It’s Yer Money I’m After, Baby’, you know? I guess it’s like Mick and Keith after all these years; the Stones can’t go out and not play ‘Satisfaction’, so at least at one point in the set you know you’re going to go down a storm. So it’s taken away that element of ‘this could die on its arse’, it’s nice not having that.”

Made up these days of Hunt, Treece, Hunt’s acoustic project partner Erica Nockalls on violin, bassist Mark McCarthy and drummer Fuzz Townsend (who only joined the fold late last year from Pop Will Eat Itself), The Wonder Stuff is at a solid point in its long and varied career. What helps make it so solid, is the fact that it’s no longer the main focus of its members, and this isn’t to say they don’t care, it’s more like when they are back together as The Wonder Stuff, it’s more of a fresh focus, it’s something the members want to put their all into.

“Yeah, exactly, we’re so pleased we get to spend this time together and play as a band,” Hunt concurs. “And I’m sure everyone enjoys all the other things that we do, and hopefully the passion and the life that you put into those other projects is equal to the stuff that we put into The Wonder Stuff.” Speaking of focus as well, you’d think that particularly for Hunt and Treece, one of the highlights of the band these days would be the lack of mainstream pressure, pressure which surrounded the band’s third and fourth releases, Never Loved Elvis (’91) and Construction For The Modern Idiot (’93), something which arguably caused their first split the following year.

“That’s the best thing, to be honest,” Hunt acknowledges. “I mean, it was nice and we’re very appreciative of what Polydor did for us back then, even though it seemed we were trying to hinder them most of the time. But the commercial side of things wasn’t something we ever sat with comfortably, I think that was quite obvious to anybody who met us at the time. And so to have that removed is great, the relationship is now between the members of the band and the audience as it always should have been, rather than the endless trail of promoting the records.

“Being on a major label, you spend more time being a salesman than you do as a creator,” he adds, most likely with a shake of the head. “We wanted to be creative, I wasn’t really interested in being a salesman.” These days, The Wonder Stuff are free, they’re loose, and they’re now able to concentrate on the moment, and also perhaps, just every so often, to the future. “Well, we’ve got a couple of tunes put aside for a Wonder Stuff album,” Hunt reveals. “And Malc is also working on some new stuff at the moment, so there may be a new Wonder Stuff album next year.”

“And those tracks are sounding great, very, very lively,” he goes on. “They’re lead by electric guitars rather than acoustic guitars, I tend to do everything with acoustic guitars these days. So yeah, very lively, up-tempo, amusing lyrics. So I’ve got very much half of a Wonder Stuff album sketched out in my mind already, but Malc needs to lead the way on this one…and to be honest I’ve had a difficult time motivating Malc into writing new songs.

“But in fairness to him, he’s been raising a very young family, he’s got two young kids and so has probably had his mind on more important things. So meanwhile, Erica and I are loathe to start work on a Wonder Stuff album, because essentially, it’ll sound like a Miles and Erica record and then we’ll ask Malc to come and do some guitar on it. And we don’t want to do that as a Wonder Stuff record. So I’ve just put it in Malc’s court and said, ‘When you find time, record me some stuff’, because he always gives me great stuff when he’s got time to do it. So when he throws some guitar parts at me, I’ll sit down. Basically, I need Malc to set the pace of a Wonder Stuff album otherwise it’s gonna sound like a Miles and Erica album with guest guitarist Malc Treece, which is not a Wonder Stuff album.”

It’s been 26 years thus far, and so waiting on Treece to find the time just that little bit longer, isn’t going to hurt anyone. In the meantime, The Wonder Stuff will make only their second foray Down Under later this month (“Twenty years, it’s ridiculous,” laughs Hunt), and then they’ll keep on doing their thing, interspersed as it is with solo projects, side-projects, kids and families, a veteran of the scene and a survivor to say the least. The Wonder Stuff are different these days, they’ve been changed because of what’s happened, but it’s not in the least, changed their wont to continue. Let the battle rage on.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.thewonderstuff.com/

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?

2011-07-05T17:31:00.000+10:00

Published in the July issue of Rhythms Magazine

William Elliott Whitmore, for his fifth record, lays down a modern field recording.

Early last century, along dusty rural roads and deep within cotton fields, on front porches and in juke joints, an oppressed people sang. They sang of their torment and their tumult, they sang from the heart and the soul and the blues was born and we know this because people like Alan Lomax and his father, John, were there to record these songs, during the late ‘30s and early ‘40s. These field recordings, as they became known, provided an incredibly important part of musical history, still recognised to this very day, still to be recognised in the years to come.

From those dusty roads and scorching cotton fields then, on the wings of the blues, this music has marched ever forward and informs so much of what people listen to today. Not many acknowledge this, or perhaps are even aware of it, but some are and it’s through them and their take on this music that we’re transported back to those early days, back to where it all began.

Today then, out in the backblocks of Iowa, resides one William Elliott Whitmore. Only 32 years of age, yes, and born a long time after those oppressed people overcame their plight and their oppression, bringing this music with them, but a man whose music touches so closely on that original sound, it’s almost like he’s flown forward through time, straight from 1929 to 2011. Whitmore’s latest record, his fifth, is Field Songs, and as the name suggests, this is a record as deeply rooted in that sparse-yet-strong ethos, those early field recordings, as it’s possible to be in an age of modern technology and bells and whistles.

“Well, it was a conscious choice to not really add anything to the songs,” Whitmore tells on the sparse approach he’s taken to Field Songs, his first record played entirely on his own. “I thought, ‘I’m not gonna add a single thing’, there’s a drum you’ll hear a couple of times but that’s me, I didn’t want to add anything else, so really the idea, hopefully, is it sounds as if you’re right there with me.”

I remark to Whitmore that it does feel like this, and the addition of birds chirping in the background, the crickets and frogs you can hear behind the music, makes it feel like you’re sitting on his front porch on a summer’s evening, just watching him play. “Yeah, I guess in that way I did use some studio trickery because we went out and recorded those sounds and added them in later,” he admits with a laugh. “But it just seemed like a good way to put nature’s music with the music of man, you know? Overall, it was just a fun juxtaposition to use all these modern recording techniques to capture this old music.”

For those not so initiated with the music of Whitmore, allow me to expand. Armed with just a banjo and a guitar, this is a man who weaves tales of life as he knows it into simple yet complex blues-based patterns, perhaps not something too out of the ordinary, but it’s Whitmore’s voice that sets him apart. I’m often drawn back to the opening track of his last record, 2009’s Animals In The Dark, an a capella track, ‘Mutiny’, which, with it’s raw power, it’s gravelled sound, was just made for a field recording, and it’s captured again here, on Field Songs to a tee. This is a man immersed in this music of old, turning it his own way, and taking us back to those dusty rural roads from so long ago.

However, despite Whitmore’s strong links with the musical past, not all is as it seems. Field Songs, whilst technically a bluegrass record with a more than generous smattering of country blues, carries with it a strong punk ethos; eight tracks, just over half an hour long, simple chords, a strong lyrical message. For Whitmore though, this is merely an evolution, not something to raise one’s eyebrows over. “Well I grew up listening to a lot of country and soul music, my folks had a lot of records, but I discovered punk music a bit later, in my teens,” he explains of the punk origins.

“I’ve always related to punk music because it just doesn’t seem that distant from the blues, it’s not a big jump to go from Robert Johnson to Minor Threat,” he adds. “So it’s the same chords here, the take on the message, so as far as the song structure goes here, I was always intrigued by the punk way of doing it.” To listen to Field Songs, you’d not automatically think of the Ramones or Black Flag, but the idea is there, the fact Whitmore regularly opens for punk bands the evidence that he’s made the connection and made it well.

Overall though, whatever is informing this music (whether it be the Sex Pistols or old field recordings), the fact it’s pure is what makes it so strong. Field Songs is huge in its emptiness, one man and a banjo recorded in a small studio shack in the middle of nowhere. It’s a modern day field recording, true to its roots, but striving to move onward. “Yeah, it meanders, it’s like a river, you know? It’s a snapshot in time,” he muses. It’s a snapshot in time and it’s timeless, music recorded in a small shack that’ll last many a lifetime, just like those field recordings of old.

Samuel J. Fell

Field Songs is available now through Anti.

http://www.williamelliottwhitmore.com/

22nd Byron Bay Bluesfest - Easter Weekend, 2011

2011-07-05T09:22:00.000+10:00

Published in May issue of Rhythms Magazine
All photography by Paul Smith @ Paul Smith Images (pics not published in Rhythms Mag)

The view from above

Bluesfest 2011

Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm, Byron Bay

There was a moment this year at Bluesfest, where I literally feared for my life. If I’d known I was walking into a potentially fatal situation, I would never have done so, I’d have run for the hills, via the bar, and gone to find something soothing, like Trombone Shorty or Mavis Staples. Instead, I sat on the stage in the Rhythms Q&A tent and co-interviewed Michelle Shocked with Brian Wise.

Indeed, I should have read the signs as Shocked walked up onstage and sat down, eating her ice-cream and scowling. I should have realised when she began giving one-word answers that we were in trouble. I should have realised, as she stared at me with her cold, dead eyes, that my days were numbered. Her subsequent rant to the audience, sparked by what I thought was quite an innocent question, about how corporations were raping the world (I think she may have been referring to Rhythms there) certainly brought it home and when she stormed off stage mid-interview, I realised how close to death I had been –methinks, retrospectively, that Michelle Shocked may have missed the point. Brian and I, on the other hand, were happy to escape with our lives.

George Clinton sees the light

There was another moment at Bluesfest this year where I wondered if perhaps I’d stumbled across another dimension, one so damn funky and hazy, that its mere existence is enough to warp minds and explode brains. Sitting in a tiny room with George Clinton, he of Parliament Funkadelic, talking about fishing as two of his band members massaged various parts of his body (knees and shoulders folks, get your minds out of the gutter). Indeed, as I walked out of his dressing room four and a half minutes later, I couldn’t be sure if it had actually happened.

There was another moment at Bluesfest this year where I raised my arms to the heavens and asked (no one in particular) if I could get a witness. A witness to the slithering, slinky groove being laid down by Robert Randolph and the Family Band who didn’t stop for a single second of their Sunday night set, swapping instruments and laying it on thick – I’d been waiting for this since 2003 and I was not disappointed. They’ve gotten bigger and better, but have still kept that spark that so endeared them to me, and many others, those eight years ago.

There was yet another moment at Bluesfest this year where we wedged ourselves as deep into the crowd as we could and watched the Blind Boys of Alabama sing their way into the hearts of one of the biggest crowds of the weekend, their age doing little to dampen their enthusiasm, their vocal range, their stamina. And with Aaron Neville stepping out to lay down a few numbers, this was the vocal-infused set of the festival, hands down.

There were also lots of little moments at Bluesfest that combined to paint a picture of grandeur, because that is of course, what Bluesfest was this year. Kim Churchill first up on the Thursday night, putting his all into it, he’s come a long way since he began, not that long ago. Bobby Long, quite nervous, but winning people over with his new school Dylan-esque songs, one to watch for sure. Louis King kick-starting the festival early on Friday, his Liars Klub backing him up and then some, the resulting fuzzed-out rockabilly blues doing wonders for early morning hangovers. And Mavis Staples, where did she find those pipes? Still winning after all these years, watching her was certainly special, particularly when she launched into ‘The Weight’ and invited one Elvis Costello, up to help her out.

Elvis Costello has never left the building

I talked to Tony Joe White about fishing too, then interviewed him on the Rhythms Q&A stage, then went and watched him play and as always, was lured into the swamp on fuzzed-out wings, impressive. Jeff Lang, always engaging, engaged me yet again, this is a man who in my book can do no wrong, and on the Sunday evening, he did just that. I saw Bob Dylan too, he was playing this year, he was a lot better than when I saw him last and his band were great. Having said that, I’m not much of an aficionado, so I’ll leave it at that.

Oh BB King, you goddamn legend, what a sight that was. But BB is an old man now, his voice is going, his guitar (whilst still sugary-sweet) is fading and even a band of that calibre couldn’t make this a set you’d honestly call mind-blowing. Still, to have seen the man in concert, to have been within 20 metres of him and Lucille, was good for me, and was almost enough to overcome what was, truly, unfortunately, a lacklustre set. I surely had the blues after seeing that.

His Bobness

And so an amazing line-up, odd moments mixed with fantastic, a true Bluesfest in every sense of the word and the meaning. The question remains though – given the line-up this year, who can they possibly get to top it? I know not the answer to that question my friends, suffice to say, this year was a winner.

Samuel J. Fell

Record Review - Tracy McNeil

2011-06-27T18:27:00.001+10:00

TRACY MCNEIL

Fire From Burning

Vitamin Records

In 2007, Canadian Tracy McNeil released her debut solo record, Room Where She Lives and then three days later, relocated to Melbourne. She brought the record with her of course, and it garnered a small amount of community radio play, not really raising too much of a blip on the extensive radar that busily covers the Melbourne music scene. Not long after this though, the following year, McNeil teamed up with Jordie Lane to form Fireside Bellows, releasing the sublime No Time To Die the same year, and her name began to spread.

Now then, three years later and with a swag of touring under her belt, we have McNeil’s second solo record, Fire From Burning, a record which has been some time in the making and a record which sees some distinct differences to how you’d have heard McNeil in the past. Room Where She Lives and No Time To Die were heavily drenched in that quiet country sound, lilting and wispy, pulling on heartstrings whilst stroking heads by firesides, whereas this new record is muscular and robust, it’s McNeil taking the same thread, but bulking it out and injecting a bit of rock in there, and this is a fine thing indeed.

The title track is a fine example of this, a song that rolls and tumbles with a finely executed, and quite raucous, guitar solo in the middle courtesy of Matt Green (who also plays with Lane), a song which coming as it does almost right at the beginning of the record, heralds something slightly out of the box for this budding and extremely talented artist. The rest of the album closes in around the title track, some slower numbers, some faster, but all to a tee stout and full of alt.country bravado and wisdom, a fantastic record from a musician only moving upward.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.myspace.com/tracymcneilmusic

(published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 1st June '11)

Record Review - Emmylou Harris

2011-06-27T18:24:00.001+10:00

EMMYLOU HARRIS

Hard Bargain

Nonesuch Records

Over the past 41 years, Emmylou Harris has eked for herself a permanent spot in the pantheon of American country artists. In 1969, she released Gliding Bird, a largely overlooked record, before dropping her major label debut a few years later, Pieces Of The Sky, quickly followed by Elite Hotel, two records which began for her the acclaimed journey that’s become her life and work. Today, Harris is at the top of her game and is regarded as one of the finest ‘real’ country artists of her time.

This here then is the latest example of such talent, Hard Bargain, laid down over four weeks in the middle of last year, seeing the light of day this month, a simple record featuring only Harris on vocals, producer/guitarist Jay Joyce and drummer/pianist, Giles Reaves. To my mind though, this is an interesting record in that it could be placed either in the ‘Classic Emmylou’ pile, or the ‘Over-produced Country Music’ pile.

The former because the songwriting is sublime, Harris’ voice as ethereal as usual, getting better with age, and over the top of some fine but sparse instrumentation, does wonders for the soul. The latter though, the over-production, really seems to wrap her voice in too much ambience making for what seems far too polished and precise, which I feel isn’t the best way to portray how Harris delivers her vocals.

Aside from that though, if you hone in on the intricate arrangements and just listen to what Harris is singing and how she sings it, then this is a fine record, my only gripe being Joyce is better suited, in this instance, to his guitar work, as opposed to his production.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.emmylouharris.com/

(published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 1st June '11)

Record Review - Belles Will Ring

2011-06-27T18:20:00.001+10:00

BELLES WILL RING

Crystal Theatre

Dot Dash / Inertia

On the edge of town, lurking in the shadows, is where you’ll find Crystal Theatre, the second full-length recording from Blue Mountains collective, Belles Will Ring, a literal headfuck of a record, as layered as a Queenslander in the depths of a southern winter, squalls of guitar noise buffeting your brain – screams, yelps and howls and a country/blues/pop nous which serves to bodily shove this record further up your mental tailpipe.

At 13 tracks, Crystal Theatre is as epic a record as you’ll hear all year, and yet you can’t imagine anything being left out – from the brief title instrumental, through to buoyant closer, ‘Pallisade Alley’, everything is precisely in place; the build and build of songs like ‘Come To The Village’ and ‘Do You Know What I See?’, the acoustic lethargica of ‘I Hear Your Voice On The Wind’ and ‘Like A Boxer’, all are there for a reason, the kicker being that you don’t know what the reason is, it just all washes over you in wave after glorious wave of guitar music, light as air and heavy as hell.

There are some surprising moments buried deep within Crystal Theatre too – the light use of horns on ‘Come North With Me Baby, Wow’ (which is then backed by some of the finest guitar on the record, which is saying something), and the harmonica on ‘Trouble In Deepwater’ which cuts deep and serves to show even more of the versatility this group is capable of. Crystal Theatre is a deep, dark summer storm of a record, set amongst the cold isolation of nowhere in particular, and this is what makes it so great, a stellar effort to be sure.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.belleswillring.com/

(published in Inpress Magazine (Melb), 1st June '11)

Record Review - Felix Riebl

2011-06-27T18:14:00.001+10:00

FELIX RIEBL

Into The Rain

Independent / MGM

Here, we see Cat Empire frontman Felix Riebl, step out into unfamiliar territory with the release of his solo debut, Into The Rain.

This unfamiliar territory seems to involve cramming as much influence into 11 songs as possible and passing them off as original. They’re not bad songs, ranging from country-esque balladry to Bad Seeds-ish intensity, but they’re songs you’ve heard before, whether you know it or not. Riebl is a fine songwriter, but here on Into The Rain, his nerves seem to have shown through and he’s obviously not comfortable enough to lay it all out on the table or step from the shadow of the songwriters he obviously holds dear. Disappointing.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.felixriebl.com/

(published in August issue of Rolling Stone)