When
I was trying to think of how to describe your album for my review I was
thinking that it sounds a bit like constrained wildness, except that ‘constrained’
sounds a bit boring and it’s not at all boring. Gut there are these wild
rhythms in it. Then I was reading what you and Cara had written, just a little
bit of biography on you both, and you mentioned something about when you
started getting into acoustic, blues and folk – you loved the trance-like
motions of the guitar riffs, and I can kind of feel that in your music. It’s almost like a whirling dervish quality
to some of the songs. Could you tell me a bit about the musical influences
you’ve had leading up to this album?
Right from the start
or just this album?
I
think from the start. I’m interested in
the start.
Well, basically, I
started off because the old man, he was a travelling musician, just travels
around Western Queensland and that, and I grew up with Slim Dusty, Smoky
Dawson, Chad Morgan, all the famous country artists at that time when country
music – to me – was proper Australian country music, you know. And just grew up
with all that and sort of toured around, when I was about 15, with his band,
and then when I was out just doing the mining towns and sheep-shearing towns,
playing all that sort of stuff, mixed in with a bit of Johnny Cash and that,
and then I stumbled across a – I think it was a Beau Carter record, 1920s blues,
and I just bought it because the cover looked cool, and I listened to it and I just
went, what is this music? And then you slowed the record player down back in
them days and tried to pick what they were doing and then just sort of got into
blues that way and playing a few bluesy bands. Then in about the late ‘80s I
became a front man because I just wanted to play my own stuff and have a crack
at singing, and then I discovered jug music, which was when I started playing
banjo, when I got into bluegrass banjo to a certain level, and that sort of got
my finger-picking things adapted to the guitar. And then I just – it’s just
like an evolution roll when you’re playing music, and then I stumbled into RL
Burnside, who’s like a hill country blues player. And I got to play with him
which was incredible – open up for him, I should say. And he’s the king of
trance sort of music and just, yeah, just the old blues and just old-timey
music, [with] old bands you feel the tunes and stuff like that and it gets the
hair up on me neck, you know? When you listen to it enough, it becomes a part
of your playing.
Just
when you mentioned slowing down the record player and working out what they
were doing, were you trying to work out what they were doing from a playing
point of view or a songwriting point of view?
No. No. Definitely
guitar playing. So it’s just like you slow it down and that a way you could
learn, you could either learn off watching someone and because I didn’t have
many guitar players around that was into the stuff I was into, I just had to
learn it off record players.
And
a jug band – because there’s the odd jug band that turns up at Tamworth and
I’ve actually always been a little confused about what the jug part is but it
sounds like these are bands with banjos in and –
Oh you didn’t run
into Uncle Bob’s jug band?
Yeah,
at the Courthouse Hotel.
Yeah, well, this is
the story. I was the original member of
that band – Uncle Bob’s, they’re from up here – and back when we became a jug
band we played proper 1920s jug music, and now all they’re doing they’re just
bloody playing bloody covers and stuff with a bush bass and so they’re not
really a jug band anymore. But yeah, we were playing proper jug. Jug band music
I first – I think I ran into a guy called Gus Cannon, he’s a 1920s guy – didn’t
run into him but discovered his music.
And he used to just strap on a jug and banjo, and I saw a cover and just
loved his music, and then started my own band and I was doing banjo and jug,
and then you get a bush bass in, washboard player, harmonica and kazoos and
stuff. Jug music’s poor man’s music, because basically they couldn’t afford –
like, the tuba is a jug, the saxophone is a kazoo, washtub bass is a double
bass – it’s poor man’s music, basically.
And
you were talking about the old time kind of country music and I’m actually
hearing a bit more of it coming out of Australian artists in the past – I think
in the past year or so there’s kind of a resurgence of interest in the roots of
country music and the roots of blues, I guess as well. Are you finding that as you play around?
I don’t know. To me,
I love country music but I’m not - I hate what they’re doing, the way that
we’ve become Americanised. It’s one thing because Australia had – apart from
the Aboriginal music – our stamp on music was our Australian country music,
like I was talking about Smokey Dawson, Slim Dusty, Chad Morgan and the rest of
them. They had our own stamp on Australian country music and it was very unique
and I think we’ve gone very Americanised, just from all the video clips and all
that crap that’s around today, you know? And when I see country players, they even
talk with an American accent in between the songs. And I’m like, what are you
blokes doing? Whereas when I get into blues, I’m actually an Australian fellow
taking off American blues, you know what I mean, and making it into our own.
I
think Australian – and when I say country music, I’m actually talking more
about the singer-songwriter vein of musicians who I come across, who I think
are telling Australian stories – a lot of them are not strict country as a lot
of people would define it. They are coming from blues or other influences, but
these are definitely Australian stories and it’s the only genre of music I
think that tells Australian stories, so from a cultural point of view this
music is incredibly important – but I guess you already know that [laughs].
Yeah,
definitely.
So
because you’re a songwriter as well – it’s not just about the music you’re
playing but it’s about the stories you’re telling —do you draw those lyrics, the
songs you’re writing, from your own life or from what you see as you go around
and travel around.
Probably my own life.
A lot of my songs are about my exes. I’ve come home and the missus has taken
off with the kids, going through that sort of thing, being overseas for months
on end and missing your kids – that’s where I come from. But Cara is a much
more accomplished writer than I am. She can sit down – I’ll pluck a really cool
riff and then she’ll just jot down some words and I’ll say, ‘What have you got
there?’ And she’ll be just writing about someone she met, like, 20 years ago,
you know? So she’s right into that where I just get – when I’m hurting or
something, I’ll write down a song and I’ll write it in half an hour.
It
sounds like you have a very good co-writing partnership then, if you can –
somewhat seamlessly almost – you’re playing music and she’s –
There’s quite a few
arguments in the middle of it, don’t you worry.
[Laughs] Arguments over who’s right about
which direction the song will go?
Yeah. She’s a
Northern Irish bloody staunch woman and I’m an Aussie mongrel. It gets heated
up at times, don’t you worry.
And
you guys are in Queensland aren’t you?
Yes.
Whereabouts
are you?
We’re up out at a
little town called – near Kin Kin, which is K-i-n K-i-n, it’s Aboriginal for ‘land
of the black ants’, and just got a little farm up here.
So
I guess that makes touring interesting, because you’ve got to get yourself to a
major city and get out on the road, so it’s logistically probably a little bit
trickier than for people living in cities?
Yeah, I don’t mind
it. When I know I can come back to something like this and not live in the
city, I’m quite happy.
You
have some gigs coming up to support this record – will you be travelling around
the country?
We’re just going from
here down to Melbourne and back for that one, like, you’re doing all the gigs
in between Sydney, then we’ll do Sydney and Blue Mountains and that. Then we’ll do gigs in between on the way to
Melbourne. Then we’ll do a run back up,
so it’s about a four-week run.
Do
you ever get out into remote communities?
Not as much any more.
We do a little bit. We just go, like, the back way. You might do something
Dorrigo and Armidale on the way down that route. We do the coastal road but no,
nothing like I used to. I want to take Cara out one day to real Australia – as
I call it – think it’d just blow her brains out because they’ll take to her out
there like – they’re a bit scarce on Irish women.
[Laughs]
Particularly very pretty Irish women, going off the CD cover.
She’s a bloody
diamond.
[Laughs]
That’s beautiful. The main reason I asked about the remote communities is you
mentioned the Aboriginal music of Australia and a lot of indigenous people love
country – I’d say more traditional country music.
They do. Yeah.
Have
you ever had an opportunity to play with anyone in those communities?-
Not in the
communities itself. I’ve had an Aboriginal didgeridoo player trying to shoot in
on gigs. I was over in Wales in the UK just probably only six weeks ago and
there was – it was called the Black Arm Band, and they were playing over there
for the Olympics, and they were playing down the road the night after us so
they came to our gig and there was a big guy called Will and he was one of
Australia’s best didgi players, and he got up and played with us, so it
happens.
Listening
to your music and reading your story, you’re almost like a musical historian or
if we were at a university we’d call it a musical ethnologist, I guess, but it
just seems like you draw in a lot of different influences and put them all
together and it comes up with your sound.
I’m sort of stuck in
old times, like I’m very narrow minded with my openness on modern music which I
shouldn’t be. Cara has actually opened my eyes up a bit more, but if it wasn’t
late 1800s to 1950s I wouldn’t listen to it and she’s gotten me into Motown and
Soul and stuff – that’s her background, she used to front 15-piece bands in
England, doing all that sort of thing, and I never would have listened to that,
but it’s basically whatever gets the hair up on your neck musically, is for
you, it doesn’t matter what sort of music it is. And for me, old-timey stuff –
whether it’s old-timey Appalachian music or bluegrass – good bluegrass – or old
blues, old country, when it gets the hair up on my neck it just my hair up on
my neck, you know?
And
how do you find that? Because you said late 1800s to 1950s – apart from music
you heard when you were growing up, how do you actually research music from
those eras?
It was very hard in
the day because like I said, I stumbled on a record, you know, that Beau Carter,
and then I was like, man where did this come from? And when you are living
around where I was playing there wasn’t much – there’s no big record shops or
anything like that – but we’re going back in the days of vinyl, you know, and I
just basically brought every album with a black fellow on the front and that’s
fair dinkum, and a lot of it was just shit that I wouldn’t listen to. You get
home – because there was no record players where you could listen to it before
you bought it. It was like you were buying it in front of milk bars and stuff,
they used to sell them out the front of pubs and stuff out in the middle of
Queensland and then you’d jag something like Hound Dog Taylor or Elmore James
and I’ve just gone, ‘Yes’. And because you only got one record every blue moon
you’d play that record to death and really get a soaking of it, you wouldn’t
just have five records and one song here, one song there, so you’re forced to –
not forced to – but you’d listen to that one record over and over and over and
over and it was just in your head, you know? That’s basically how I went and
then I got a bit more knowhow by reading the backs of the records. They’d have
a record label that had a series of them artists like Mississippi John Hurt and
Charlie Patton and Son House and dudes like that, so then I’d specifically go
looking for these guys. I used to write them down. And then, yeah, it just went
from there basically but in this day and age you just Google anything you want
to know.
Well,
that’s true, but I think the experience you have doing that research and really
listening to those albums probably meant that it was a lot more embedded in you
than it would have been for someone who was just Googling.
Look, absolutely. I
mean, the fact that you’ve slowed the records down for starters, you get your
own style because you’re not picking exactly what you’re playing, you’re just
loving this song and you form your own style out of it. And then when you form
your style, obviously you start writing songs and it sort of stems from there.
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