Kristy Cox and Jerry Salley on tour - October/November

South Australian bluegrass singer-songwriter Kristy Cox now makes her home in Nashville, where she has worked with the esteemed artist Jerry Salley. The pair is touring many parts of Australia soon, and I spoke to Kristy about the tour, her life in Nashville and how she balances music and business. 

You are bringing this new show to Australia with Jerry Salley, and it’s different to what you’ve done before because if you were playing in Tamworth, for example, you have a band with you. How did you start to conceive of this you – because it’s a set show, you have stories, you have songs?

I’ve been working with Jerry Salley for about nine years – I’m getting old [laughs]. I started working with him when I recorded Breaking New Ground, and he’s just such an incredible songwriter and an incredible storyteller. An artist, singer, performer. Why he’s not a superstar I don’t know. He’s come back to Tamworth a couple of times with me and done the bluegrass shows but I really, really wanted to do a tour with him and show him Australia, where I come from, and more than just Sydney and Tamworth – I wanted to show him Victoria and South Australia, and right up the coast of Queensland and everywhere in between. And I really wanted to show the Australian audiences what the real Jerry Salley is about. You can hear his songs with Reba McEntire and other people singing them, but to see him do it and him tell you the stories behind how he wrote the songs and why he wrote the songs is really an eye-opener. And nobody ever leaves a Jerry Salley show without being completely gobsmacked at his talents. It was just one of those things where I wanted to bring him over and show a guy who’s influenced me so much in my music the place that I come from.

Did you work up to asking him – wondering, ‘Will he say no? What will it be?’ – or did it just come into your head one day and you asked?

I was trying to work out who to tour with in Australia and these days it’s hard to just go out and tour by yourself. And I had a new album and I knew I wanted to tour during that time of the year but I couldn’t think of who I wanted to tour with. There was a bunch of artists and we talked, and there’s so many people I’ve love to work with on the road, but schedules and everything didn’t work, and my husband said, ‘Hey, you should talk to Jerry and see if he’d like to go over and tour with you.’ And straightaway I said, ‘Yep, this is why none of the other ideas have worked – this is exactly what I’m meant to do.’ And I called Jerry and said, ‘Hey, would you like to go to Australia for five weeks and drive 4000 miles? It’ll be great fun, I promise!’ [Laughs] And he said, ‘Yes, I would love to.’ So it was good – it was literally just one phone call, and the next day the flights were booked and we started booking in the tour dates.

Are you doing that booking yourself?

I do most of it myself. It’s a big job.

So how do you choose? It’s one thing to say, ‘This is the town we’re going to’, but within that town there might be five pubs where you could play. Are you going to places you’ve been before?

Some of them I have, some of them are brand new. Some of them are places that Rebecca Lee Nye, who’s opening for us, suggested. Some of them I’d just really like to play in a place and I’d put it out on Facebook and say, ‘Hey, who’d like to hold a house concert?’ or ‘Who has a suggestion for somewhere to play here?’ We start in Victoria then head all the way up to Brisbane then down to Tamworth, then down across to Mildura, up to the Prairie Hotel in Parachilna on the border of the outback, down to Adelaide and then we send Jerry on his merry way.

And do you want to tour at that time of year because it’s warmer, for one thing, but also because it’s coming into Christmas and then you can be home around that time, to see your family?

I already had booked in the Cruisin’ Country in November and I knew that touring after that would be almost impossible with Christmas – December for touring is never really a good idea unless you’re doing a Christmas show. I knew I wanted to do quite an extensive tour – I think we’re doing 25 dates – so we’re starting a good five weeks before the Adelaide show, which is going to be a huge show. I’m really looking forward to that. And then I’ll do the cruise then I’ll go home and it will be five weeks of spending time with my family and letting them see Adelaide, my daughter, who they haven’t seen for a few months, and then go to Tamworth and head home [to Nashville]. So we’ll be home for four months and I’m excited.

Have you done Cruisin’ Country before?

I have not. I hope I don’t get boat sick [laughs]. It is something I’ve wanted to do, so when they asked me I said, ‘Yes!’

So the big Adelaide show is ‘Nashville Comes to Adelaide’. Catherine Britt’s on that and a few other artists – have you pulled that line-up together?

This will be the third year that we’ve run that show. My husband, Travis List, and I came up with the concept – it was ‘Nashville Comes to Gawler’ but it’s now Adelaide, we’ve moved venues into the city to be in a more central location. We both grew up in Adelaide and live in Nashville, and we wanted to give back to the country music community that gave us so much growing up, by bringing them a show that features artists who have either lived in Nashville, worked in Nashville, and give them the sounds of Broadway, basically – show them the music that we hear in Nashville. Bring them artists who might now tour in their area. I know it will be the first time in a while that a lot of the acts from that show have played in Adelaide, and Jerry’s never been to Adelaide. It’s a huge line-up – we haven’t had that many acts before, we’ve always had three acts and now we have six, so it’s going to be really good.

And you have Mike Carr, who’s going to perform as himself rather than as Buddy Goode.

He will be doing a little bit of Buddy Goode. He’s actually compering the night, so it’s going to be a whole lot of fun. We had Pete Denahy last year and the crowd really enjoyed having that comedy element to the start of the show. This year we thought Mike Carr would be perfect, so we contacted him and said, ‘Do Buddy Goode and Mike Carr feel like coming to Adelaide?’ He’s doing the Prairie Hotel with us the night before as well. I haven’t worked with Mike before, so I’m really looking forward to that.

You’re organising this tour … It sounds like you have an entrepreneurial or managerial side to you as well as the creative side. Do you find that they’re in balance – are you able to do as much creative work as you want or does that administration sometimes take over?

It definitely does. I have a law degree in my other life so I’m very much a control freak and I like to be very hands on with everything I do. Of course I’m a singer and an artist and a songwriter at the same time. I still play every day, I still sing every day, I still gig nearly every weekend and travel to festivals and play, but very much Monday to Friday, nine to five, my music hat comes on and my business hat comes on, and I think that’s really important for an artist. Not every artist has that business mindset, but if you don’t then you have to have to someone working with you who does, because they call it the music business for a reason: it is a business, and you have to have a business mentality to it. Unfortunately the songs and the talent and the music should be enough but it’s just not [laughs].

It’s great if you can do it yourself, particularly if you can find that balance.

I think the biggest challenge I have is sleeping and turning off. I don’t turn off very much. My husband is very much the same way – he’s very entrepreneurial – and we’re constantly thinking of tour ideas, show ideas. We love putting on shows – that’s one of the things that we’d love to do more of. We’d love to find different artists who, one, we want to work with but, two, we think would make a really great show, and put it on and take the risk and put it out there and see what happens. We’ve done quite a few at Tamworth – we’re doing four shows this next Tamworth, and it’s going to be the biggest we’ve ever done. Sometimes I think, Am I biting off more than I can chew? And the only way you know is if you get out there and give it a go.

Living in Nashville, I would think, supports you having those two sides to your life because it is Music City and very much an industry town. Has the city influenced you business wise as well as music wise?

Not as much, I don’t think. The industry thing, the size that it is here, allows me to spend my days not working a day job and working on my career. There’s plenty of work here and there’s plenty of things that inspire you. That’s the big thing, being in Nashville: every day I’m inspired to do more and I’m inspired to be better. Being surrounded by music constantly, I never get tired, I never get bored, and I’m constantly challenged. You can walk into any bar and the lady serving you a drink might be the best singer you’ve ever heard. So you’re constantly surrounded by people who challenge you to be better because you have to be. And I think that in Australia, that’s something that I needed – I needed to be challenged. I was getting way too comfortable working my nine-to-give day job and earning really good money, and I thought, If I don’t get out of here I can see myself going, ‘Well, this is just too easy to be a normal person who doesn’t make music’ – not that there’s anything wrong with that at all! But it just wasn’t for me. I needed to play music and I needed to be challenged, and Nashville gives me that outlet.

You obviously knew yourself well enough to know that if you got to 50 years of age and you hadn’t pursued that, you were going to be regretful.

Yes, definitely. And Trav and I say to each other all the time, ‘What’s the worst that could happen – we pack everything up and go home? We get jobs?’ It’s nice to still have Australia and we both still call it home, and we go back there four months of the year because we need some Aussie in our life. We need good coffee and pies and stuff, and we need some sense of humour and sarcasm. We miss that.

As you mentioned, you have a daughter – have you started her on an instrument yet?

Not yet, though. She does like to play my guitar, which kind of scares me because it’s worth a lot of money [laughs] but she kind of just strums it three or four times then stops and applauds herself – she hasn’t quite understood that that’s not quite the way it works. It’s very cute.

I presume she’ll be on the road with you.

Yes – my little girl has done eight international flights now and she’s very accustomed to travelling. I think her first flight she was six weeks old – we came back to America from Australia. Every gig I’ve done since I had her she’s either been with me at the show or in a hotel room behind the venue. She’s been everywhere and I think I have the opposite issue: she finds it really hard to stay home. She gets very bored very easily. She likes to be out and about and with people, socialising and listening to music. I’m raising a nice little honky tonk girl, I’ve noticed. She loves it. So she’ll be on the road the whole six weeks. I did have to be mindful booking in the gigs that we weren’t any further than about a seven-hour drive because she can’t handle the car for much longer than that. She’ll be at every show with a smile on her face – or asleep.

If someone’s reading this thinking, I don’t know about bluegrass – it’s not a genre I’ve ever been interested in, what would you say about bluegrass to entice someone to come to the shows?

Come to the show! [Laughs] Bluegrass is one of those things where I’m yet to see anybody who hasn’t enjoyed themselves at a show. The stories and the songs are incredible, and the energy of the music’s great. It’s like that with country music as well. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard, ‘I don’t like country music but I really like you.’ That just tells me that they haven’t listened to any country music. Come to the show with open ears and an open mind and I promise you that you’ll walk out loving bluegrass music. Jerry Salley’s there – he’s the best! [laughs]

kristycox.com

Kristy Cox and Jerry Salley on tour:

Thursday, 13th October 2016

Private House Concert – Bittern VIC
BOOKINGS: http://www.trybooking.com/138823

Friday, 14th October 2016
Patchewollock Music Festival – Patchewollock – VIC
BOOKINGS: FREE SHOW http://www.patchewollockmusicfestival.com.au/

Saturday, 15th October 2016
Kilmany Hall, Kilmany – VIC – 6pm
BOOKINGS: Phone Sue on 0409 954092

Sunday, 16th October 2016
Bluegrass with Jerry Salley with special guests Billy Bridge and Rebecca Lee Nye – AUSTRALIAN TOUR
Caravan Music Club- Oakleigh – VIC – 3pm
BOOKINGS: http://www.caravanmusic.com.au/gigs/kristy-cox-jerry-salley-us/

Monday, 17th October 2016
 Special guests Billy Bridge and Rebecca Lee Nye – 
Star Hotel- Yackandandah – VIC – 7pm
BOOKINGS: +61 2 6027 1493

Tuesday, 18th October 2016

Private Event – Canberra ACT

Thursday, 20th October 2016

RSM Club – Casino NSW – 7:30pm 
BOOKINGS: https://www.proticket.com.au/Events/Details/4442

Friday, 21st – Sunday 23rd October, 2016
Dorrigo Bluegrass Festival
Dorrigo, NSW 
BOOKINGS: http://www.dorrigofolkbluegrass.com.au/

Tuesday, 25th October, 2016
Plainlands Hotel, Plainland, QLD – 8pm
BOOKINGS: http://www.plainlandhotel.com/

Thursday, 27th October, 2016
The Pub, Tamworth, NSW – 8pm
BOOKINGS: http://tickets.oztix.com.au/default.aspx?Event=65544

Friday, 28th October, 2016
Bluegrass with Jerry Salley – AUSTRALIAN TOUR
The Abbey, Canberra, ACT – 8pm
BOOKINGS: https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=65302

Sunday, 30th October, 2016
Rooty Hill RSL, Rooty Hill, NSW – 2pm
BOOKINGS: FREE SHOW

Monday, 31st October, 2016
 Special guests Allan Caswell and Rebecca Lee Nye
Hotel Blue, Katoomba, NSW – 8pm
BOOKINGS: allan@allancaswell.com 

Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016
Goldmines Hotel – Bendigo, VIC
BOOKINGS: https://www.trybooking.com/LXXW

Thursday, November 3rd, 2016
Mildura Victoria – Details TBA
BOOKINGS: TBA

Friday, November 4th, 2016
Nashville Comes to The Outback
Prairie Hotel, Parachilna, SA – 8pm
BOOKINGS: 1800 331 473

Saturday, November 5th, 2016
Nashville Comes to Adelaide
Norwood Town Hall – Norwood, SA – 8pm
BOOKINGS: https://www.trybooking.com/195750

Album review: Victim or the Heroine by Katie Brianna

When Katie Brianna released her debut album, Dark Side of the Morning, in mid-2013 I wrote, ‘Dark Side of the Morning is a debut album that promises much about its creator - and because she has taken her time to craft it and release it, I have every confidence that it is the first step in a long career. I genuinely cannot wait to see what she comes up with next.’

The next release has come, and Victim or the Heroine lives up to that early promise, as well as demonstrating that Brianna has matured as a singer and songwriter. While she has moved further away from country music convention, that in itself suggests that she has asked questions of herself, especially when it comes to the best way to deploy her extraordinary voice. She has taken the emotion and storytelling of country music and found a style that allows her to relax when appropriate, to let her voice float above the song – where it belongs, given its often ethereal quality. Yet this is also an album that is rooted in reality: love isn’t perfect, wrong turns are taken in life, and some days are melancholy.

Shane Nicholson produced the album; his ability to discern what’s at the core of an artist and their work, and to never lose that in the work of creating an album, is an exceptional skill. Only Brianna and Nicholson know if he’s the one responsible for making the instruments the supporting cast to Brianna’s leading turn (even though the studio band included Glen Hannah and Matt Fell). This puts more pressure on her – to make the lyrics and the vocals the best they can be – but she is worthy of the responsibility and the attention.

So I’ve taken three paragraphs to come to this conclusion: this is just a bloody lovely album. Brianna is impossible to ignore – not that anyone would want to – and somehow she combines dreaminess with a consciousness that is anchored in everyday life. Which makes Victim or the Heroine a salve and an escape, and a fitting second album for an important artist. 

Victim or the Heroine is out now through MGM Distribution.

www.katiebrianna.com

Single release: 'Just a Boy' by Tobias

Sunshine Coast singer-songwriter Tobias has released 'Just a Boy', a single from his forthcoming second album, Alive, which will be released on 4 November. The song evokes his childhood in a simple yet moving way, his voice suggesting happy memories but with a catch: they are, of course, memories and whatever happiness they hold is long gone.

Watch the video for 'Just a Boy' below.





tobiasmusic.com.au

Single release: 'Doing it Again' by Hat Fitz and Cara

That inimitable duo Hat Fitz and Cara have a new album, After the Rain, in the works for early 2017 and they've released the single 'Doing it Again' to keep their fans happy in the meantime. This is a fine up-tempo track with Cara on lead vocals, and you can listen to it on Bandcamp.

www.hatfitzandcara.com

Single release: 'Deepwater' by Jen Mize

American-born Sunshine Coast resident Jen Mize has released 'Deepwater', a single from her upcoming album Warnings & Wisdom, which will be released on 29 September and was produced by Shane Nicholson. Mize's voice has incredible power on this track that she wrote about 'returning home at the end of this life, and the beauty and piece that can come from that'.

Listen to the song on Soundcloud or watch the video below.






www.jenmize.com

Single release: 'Vice' by Miranda Lambert

Miranda Lambert's single 'Vice' was released in July. In the past I haven't felt the need to cover her work here - there's a lot of American country music that doesn't get covered here. Except the song is so good - so well written, so perfectly sung, Lambert's voice sounding vulnerable and brave and tired - that it's impossible to ignore, and even more impossible to forget. So, in honour of the fact that it's been hanging around in my head since July, here's the video.



www.mirandalambert.com

Nimbin Roots Festival: women in docs

One noteworthy act at this weekend's Nimbin Roots Festival is women in docs, who have a dedicated fan base around the country thanks to their sublime harmonies and great songwriting. I had a chat to Chanel Lucas from women in docs (on the right in the photo) to ask about her Nimbin preparation and what she's looking forward to.

I purposely didn’t do much research before talking to you because I thought you could tell me: what have the women in docs been doing?

Since we’ve seen you last in Tamworth last year we’ve finished off touring our album around Australia and since then we’ve been working on a new album, so we’re trying to write songs and record some stuff, which is a bit challenging for us because Roz is in Cairns and I’m in Brisbane, so we just get together when we can. We do a lot of stuff on the internet.

Before the most recent album you had a bit of a break, so now it seems like you’re in a purple patch, may we say, or you’ve got a creative wind underneath you?

[laughs] Maybe. I think we’ve just started developing new ways to collaborate, which is making it a lot easier. Because initially we lived in the same city we were used to getting together face to face, so I think it’s just taken us a while to learn how to collaborate on songs and we’re just starting to get there with that. It’s a lot easier with Dropbox and all the tools we’ve got – social media, chat rooms.

In terms of face to face, Skype offers you that capability – do you find that you tend to still like seeing each other or is it okay to send stuff back and forth.

We get together whenever one of us is nearby. So if Roz is in Brisbane on a trip for work we will always get together, and if I’m up north I’ll try to make a point to go and see her. Because really the best way to collaborate on songwriting is to be together. But long term we send ideas back and forth, especially in the editing process. One of us might say, ‘I’ve changed the bridge a bit, what do you think about this?’ and the other person will listen to it and reply. So once we get to editing it’s a lot easier.

Given that such a big part of the two of you working together is your harmonies, do you sort out the harmonising when you’re recording or is it something you work into the songwriting?

We do it at exactly the same time as the song’s being written. Both of us are singing and playing as we write, and if one person comes up with an idea and they’re sending it through – say Roz is sending something on Dropbox or Google Drive, I will record my harmonies or bass playing, whatever it is, over the top of it and send it back. So it happens at the same time because it is so integral to the women in docs style. Whereas our individual work that we do with other bands or other projects, there’s not the same focus on the harmonies.

And it’s a focus because it works so beautifully – now having seen you play live, it seems so … I don’t want to say ‘effortless’ because those things are never effortless, so I’ll say it seems very natural. When you first started to sing together, did it feel natural or has it taken a lot of working together to get to that point?

As soon as we started playing together we naturally sang harmonies to each other. And we first started playing together in rock bands in Townsville and that was the one thing that people commented on: ‘Wow, I’ve never seen a rock band with so many harmonies.’ And that was part of the motivation to then ditch the rock band and focus on the more acoustic instruments and on our harmony songwriting. Also when we first started women in docs it was the same year as the Indigo Girls, who were super popular then. And bands like Tiddas, out of Melbourne. Which we weren’t aware of until we started touring. So we were already doing what was becoming popular without having any connection to Melbourne or Sydney or Brisbane. So it was like there was this kind of national movement that happened without anyone realising [laughs]. It was weird.

I remember reading something authoritative a while ago talking about how humans respond instinctually to harmonic voices – which is why people go crazy over the Beatles and ABBA, I guess. And One Direction. But I don’t think it ever goes out of fashion, what you’re doing.

It’s a tricky one. We did a gig in Melbourne during the last album tour and one of the young guys we played with came up to us and said, ‘That was really good – really ’90s sounding.’ [laughs] I don’t know – is it timeless? I’m not sure. But I think that doing lots of harmonies is a particular sound and there’s a lot of room when you’ve got multiple voices and multiple harmonies to create different moods or different themes within the song that you don’t have as a solo singer.

So this new album you’re working on, are you working to a deadline?

Yes, I think the end of last year was the deadline [laughs]. We work at a different speed to what we used to work at because we have other things that we do. We used to do women in docs full time, we were touring nine months of the year and we were able to spend some time on it. These days we have other jobs, we have other musical projects, so it’s not that it gets left behind, it’s more that we’ve just got to be easier on ourselves in terms of deadlines. Now we’re just trying to get some good songs and once we’ve got some good songs we’ll record the album. But the plan to go into the studio is in January because we’re both on kind of a break then.

The whole nation has a break then, so that’s a good time.

Except for the festivals everyone has a little break, so it’s a good time to record.

And of course it is as women in docs that are you going to Nimbin Roots. I would imagine that you two don’t need a lot if any rehearsal time before you play together. But going to something like this, do you get together slightly early and catch up?

Yes. We either all fly in a bit earlier and make sure we’ve got time for rehearsal but also because this is how we do things now, it’s really important for all the individuals involved to be ready, so we all rehearse separately. Usually we come up with a set list, everyone rehearses beforehand then we just have a quick play-through either the day before or the morning if we’re playing that night.

I’m curious about the logistics of this kind of thing because you’re all coming from different places into a place where none of you lives, and it’s not a big town – given that you’re a band not a duo, how do you find a space to rehearse in?

You can rehearse anywhere, really. We don’t need to be plugged in to rehearse. Sometimes if we all come into a city – like if we come into Brisbane – we’ll book a rehearsal room, but if we’re coming in to a festival we’ll just find a space. So we’ll either rehearse in our motel room and drive everyone crazy or we’ll go into the park – if it’s nice weather we’ll go and sit in the park. It’s lucky that it’s not essential for us to be plugged in to rehearse.

And you just need to drive down from where you are [in Brisbane].

Yes. Usually everyone flies in to the closest city and we drive from there.

If you’re all driving together from Brisbane, isn’t it a bit like the royal family – they don’t all travel on the same plane, so why are you all in the same car? What is something happens?

[Laughs] I think maybe our drummer might be coming in a separate car, because he is also playing with Felicity Lawless.

I don’t mean to be rude but, as the drummer, is he not the most expendable member of the women in docs?

Well … we do like him. We kind of need him to be there. But if we all travelled in separate cars, where would the fun road trip be? And how would we go and find the best coffee spot? That’s kind of the fun of going to a festival.

Did you submit an audition tape or CD or something for the festival?

Yes. We’ve played together at Tamworth with Lou and with some of the other people who will be at the festival, but we applied to be part of the awards night – we still apply to be part of festivals regardless of whether you know the organisers or not. That’s the usual process with all of these festivals.

Lou seems to be incredibly good at organising things.

I think this one’s come together particular well because she’s tapped into the local community really well. I think it’s a great idea to use the bowlo – to use local businesses. And she’s really got the support of the local businesses, which I think really makes the difference with a festival and gives it longevity. Apart from the fact that instead of putting a tent up on the showgrounds and people might stop for coffee in town, it’s using venues in the town – the festival’s adding value to the local businesses. They’ve got a reason to support it and a reason to be part of it. And it makes it all-weather. I think she’s done a really great job in getting the word out there. And what a line-up – I’d buy a ticket!

It is. Is there anyone in particular you’re looking forward to seeing either in a personal or professional capacity?

I really love Paddy McHugh. He is out of Brisbane, I think. He sings sort of folk-country which has that tint of Australiana about it. A little bit of Weddings Parties Anything, a little bit of Slim Dusty. He’s telling Australian stories and sings with an Australian accent. A fabulous performer, very upbeat, really strong songwriter. So I’m looking forward to seeing him. In general I think the whole festival is quite an impressive line-up of country, roots and Australiana artists. Really diverse range of artists. So I think if people come, you’re not going to watch the same kind of music over and over again. It’s going to be a really entertaining weekend.

It must be so interesting for you as an artist to see what happens – who you meet, what results from it.

Lots of collaborations come out of these kinds of events, whether it be touring collaborations or songwriting or recording collaborations. The other good thing about playing festivals as an artist is that when we’re on tour, it’s just us, so coming to a festival is a really great connection back into our community, which is why I love playing festivals – I get to see other artists. So we’ll see what happens after this weekend – should be a good one.

Nimbin Roots Festival: 17-18 September 2016

www.nrfest.com