Live Interviews - Bluesfest '12 - Rhythms Q&A Sessions

My interviews with various artists on the Cavanbah Stage for the Rhythms Q&A Sessions at Bluesfest, 2012.

Backsliders 
(Dom Turner, Rob Hurst, Ian Collard)

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Blue King Brown
(Natalie Pa'apa'a)

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Ray Beadle

SJF with Ray Beadle

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SJF interviewing the Round Mountain Girls

Round Mountain Girls
(Chris Eaton, Chris Brooker, Rex Carter, Chris Willoughby, Rabbit Robinson)

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Live Interviews - Bluesfest '12 - Rhythms Q&A Sessions

My interviews with various artists on the Cavanbah Stage for the Rhythms Q&A Sessions at Bluesfest, 2012.

SJF interviewing Dallas Frasca

Dallas Frasca

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Marshall O'Kell performs prior to being interviewed by SJF

Marshall O'Kell

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SJF interviewing Ashleigh Mannix

Ashleigh Mannix

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Kim Churchill

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Soul Country For Young Men

Published in the EG section of The Age, Friday 6th April.
For online version, click here.

Justin Townes Earle

Like the cosmos itself, Justin Townes Earle is ever-changing.  Like the eternal troubadour, he’s always wandering, he’s always searching; eerily thin and wreathed in cigarette smoke, he’s a musical chameleon born of country melancholy but striving to find an answer in as many styles as he can, the common thread being his incredible songwriting and love for music in general.

Tracking his recorded output thus far, one can chart these changes.  Debut EP Yuma (’07) signalled his intent, a stripped back folky affair with more than a hint of the country music he’d have grown up with, something which leaked heavily into debut LP The Good Life (’08) and next offering, Midnight At The Movies (’09), mixing effortlessly with a honky tonk rumble.  The following year, Earle released Harlem River Blues, a record with bluesy roots but with a heavy gospel overtone, which leads to where we find him now, reigniting his love of Memphis soul on fifth release, Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now.

“Well, it’s a soul influenced record, it’s as much a soul record as Midnight At The Movies was a country record, it has all the trappings of soul music,” Earle drawls, and it shows in the upbeat ‘Memphis In The Rain’, the horn-laden ‘Baby’s Got A Bad Idea’, the shimmering organ-laced ‘Down On The Lower East Side’.  “I think it’s the same thing that drew me to country music,” Earle then says on the appeal to him of soul music.

“It’s very similar music, its roots are in the church and it came out of the church and got mixed with people’s everyday lives, it got a bit dirtier.  On Harlem River Blues what I was trying to do was show the connection between the Carter Family and the Staple Singers.  With this record, what I was kinda messin’ with was the difference between Stax and… rock ‘n’ roll, the growth of rock ‘n’ roll and soul music.”

By rock ‘n’ roll, Earle seems to mean the early variations of the form, illustrated best on the aforementioned ‘Baby’s Got A Bad Idea’, which is easily the most upbeat track on Nothing’s…. It’s the dewy sweet soul strains that shine the brightest however, culminating in a record which Earle has been quoted as saying will affect him artistically forever.

“It was a monumental thing to be a part of,” he relates fondly.  “You’re just doing this thing, and then all of a sudden you have this great track… it’s a breathtaking thing when it happens, you’ve just gotta stop and realise how fuckin’ cool that is.”

The cover of the record, as has been the case with all his releases save for Yuma, shows Earle with an unidentified female in the background, something he explains with a laugh.  “The photographer I work with… when we shot The Good Life, he said, ‘You need a thing’… and we’re both James Bond fans, so we thought, ‘Lets have Bond girls’, so we just had a girl on every cover.  This may be the last one though.”

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.justintownesearle.com/

A Bolt From The Blues

Published in the EG section of The Age (Friday March 30)
For online version, click here.

Kenny Wayne Shepherd

“I’d probably be behind the wheel of a race car,” states Kenny Wayne Shepherd emphatically when asked where he’d be if he’d never heard the blues growing up.  “I love automobiles, so I always felt if I wasn’t doing music, I’d be doing something with cars.”  It’s almost the quintessential childhood answer to the ‘What do you want to be when you grow up’ question – a race car driver, or a blues/rock guitar shredder.  Not an easy choice.

Luckily for himself perhaps, and certainly for fans of modern electric blues, the now 35-year-old Shepherd made the right decision.  Despite his young age (compared to the giants of the genre like Buddy Guy, BB King, Taj Mahal, Keb’ Mo’, Joe Louis Walker et al), Shepherd is a much respected player, and indeed, interpreter of this oldest of forms.

“Yeah, the blues is in everything I do, it’s the foundation of all my music,” he concurs, and he needn’t say more than that, as it shows – from debut record Ledbetter Heights (released in 1995 when Shepherd was just 18), to ‘Blue On Black’ the song on which he properly rose to prominence in 1997, to now releasing his sixth record, How I Go, Shepherd wears it, proudly, on his sleeve.

Having said that, How I Go, released late last year, sees this omnipresent guitarist in a state of flux.  Yes, the blues forms a base from which this music launches, but overall, the album is more considered, more mature perhaps – less shred, more thought.  “Yeah, I think so,” he muses.  “I mean, I’ve been touring and recording for two decades now and with that comes a bit of maturity.”

“It’s more [me broadening my songwriting and arranging] skills, and production skills,” Shepherd expands.  “I was really involved in this album, it’s the first one where I’ve been actually listed as a co-producer.”  He goes on to say that being “so immersed” in the record saw it move from him “constantly soloing” to “playing the right notes at the right time”, less flash, so to speak.  Playing the producer role was obviously a cathartic moment for him.

“Well yeah, I put a lot of work into this record, and I think the end result is really good,” he says, and it is.  For not only is it more mature, it’s a mark of the continuous evolution Shepherd has always strived for, within the blues he holds so dear.  Surely far more satisfying than driving a race car.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.kennywayneshepherd.net/

Record Review - Eric Bibb

Published in the Metro section of The Sydney Morning Herald (March 23).

Eric Bibb

Deeper In The Well

DixieFrog Records / ABC Music

 

As befits his reputation as one of the finest purveyors of roots music going around, Eric Bibb delivers yet again with Deeper In The Well. It’s a record that embodies the steamy, swamp sounds of Louisiana, but still with the blues nous and folky charm he’s become known for, these years past.

Recorded in the Bayou State at fiddle player Dirk Powell’s studio, Deeper… exudes a front porch, barefoot vibe: in the sleepy shuffle of Sinner Man, the swampy Bayou Belle, the melancholy and fiddle-swept Sittin’ In A Hotel Room. Bibb and his banjo and acoustic guitar lead the charge, there are lashings of fiddle and wailing harmonica abounding and a Cajun shuffle throughout, a bit of accordion – you can almost feel the sweat, see the smiles, smell the BBQ.  A fine new addition to Bibb’s canon.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.ericbibb.com/

Record Review - Justin Townes Earle

Published in the April issue of The Big Issue.

Justin Townes Earle

Nothing’s Gonna Change The Way You Feel About Me Now

Bloodshot Records / Inertia

Yet another record from troubadour Justin Townes Earle, yet another direction change from this perpetually poignant and painfully hip artist whose tumultuous past is well documented but whose musical journey is still only just beginning to unfurl.

Of course, Nothing’s Gonna Change… is still steeped in the soft country tones he rose to prominence on, it still references the dark folk stylings of Woody Guthrie and Earle’s father, Steve, but in this instance, via a smattering of subtle horn work and a sprinkling of keys throughout, Earle tags his love of Memphis soul – extremely well.

It’s not a big, bold soul statement by any means (perhaps with the exception of the rollicking R&B of ‘Baby’s Got A Bad Idea’), but the blood of Memphis, of the south, runs deep within the majority of works here; ‘Maria’ with its shimmering organ, the horn-laden ‘Memphis In The Rain’, the Otis Redding-like ‘Look The Other Way’.

And then of course, the heart-rending title track and ‘Unfortunately, Anna’, show exactly why Earle is so good with just his voice and minimal accompaniment – yet another positive step in the evolution of Justin Townes Earle.

Samuel J. Fell


http://www.justintownesearle.com/

Salt Of The Earth

Published in Inpress Magazine (Melb) - March 14.
For online version, click here (Page 44)

Nano Stern

Chilean sensation Nano Stern has been called, “one of the most in-demand international artists on the domestic festival scene”, a statement which is verified beyond a doubt by the fact Stern will, this month, embark upon his seventh Australian tour in a little over three years.  “Yeah, well, I think even maybe more, I’ve been there under different things, so maybe like ten times or something, actually I’ve lost count,” he laughs.

It’s the fiery talent he displays on guitar, the poignant turn to his deeply meaningful lyrics, his passion for not only music, but what is right and just in this turbulent world of ours that has seen him embraced by Australian audiences – I remember seeing him at the Mullum Music Festival a couple of years ago and being mesmerised by the intricate way he’d build a song, beginning with subtle melodies before bringing it all home amidst a cavalcade of power and the aforementioned passion.

It’s all of the above which has seen Stern embraced within the boundaries of his own country especially, a place where the 26-year-old can barely walk the streets without being recognised and stopped, a place where he recently played to 180,000 people as part of a protest, and a place where his song ‘La Puta Esperanza’ has been adopted as the anthem of the ongoing protest against the Chilean government’s damming of two rivers in Patagonia – Nano Stern is the voice of a generation, much loved in his home country.

“Yeah [that means a lot to me],” Stern says of ‘La Puta Esperanza’ being taken up so wholeheartedly.  “And it’s kind of written out of the same motivation, it’s a protest, it’s a scream for reason to come to people.  And I’m glad that it’s used, I’m always authorising people to use my songs in documentary films or whatever, and of course I say yes [here], it’s an honour, a privilege to be able to help through your means of expression.”

‘La Puta Esperanza’ is the first single from Stern’s latest recording, his fifth studio album, Las Torres De Sal (which translates to The Towers Of Salt) which has already been tagged by fans and critics alike as “his strongest work yet”, something with which Stern agrees.  “Yeah, I agree,” he muses.  “And for many reasons.  I think I’ve matured a lot since the last time, things have happened in my life that gave more depth, starting with the writing, the lyrics, which unfortunately people in Australia cannot really relate too (the entire record is sung in Stern’s native tongue).

“I’ve also taken the freedom to explore different things in between the last album and this one,” he adds, “but also something which makes a huge difference is the way that we produced it.  It’s like a process – the first album I recorded everything myself, the second was pretty much the same but with some guests, on the third one it was the band playing but it was click tracked, but with this one we went hardcore and recorded old school, completely live in the studio, there is no dubbing at all.”

I’m interested to know how he found this recording process then, given it’s not something he’d done before, either by himself, or when collaborating with other artists.  “Well, it’s an actual recording, it’s not a studio magic thing,” Stern reasons.  “You can hear the music breathe a lot more, it feels more organic somehow.”

Organic is a fine way to describe Las Torres De Sal – it seems to seep from the earth itself, the music as real as the motives behind the songs contained within.  Organic is also a fine word to describe Stern’s rise to prominence here in Australia – from small beginnings to multiple tours in only a few years, and you can bet he’ll grace these shores a great deal more down the track.

Samuel J. Fell

http://www.myspace.com/nanostern