Why can't I be you?

Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

— Maurice Sendak

I wonder whether young Jim was Catholic. It seems a peculiarly religious thing to do. I hope he was an older kid, performing the ritual deliberately, and not a toddler. Maurice doesn't say.

Reading this, I was reminded - in the undisciplined way such thoughts often are - of one of my favourite Cure songs: Why Can't I Be You?

Robert Smith can barely express what he feels for his beloved, a longing so intense that notions of possession or even just intimacy are exceeded until nothing short of complete identification - the total abrogation of physical and psychic barriers - will do.

You're so gorgeous, I'll do anything!
I'll kiss you from your feet to where your head begins
You're so perfect, You're so right as rain
You make me, make me, make me
Make me hungry again

Everything you do is irresistible
Everything you do is simply kissable
Why can't i be you?

Tom Waits, an aesthetic credo

"What I do is kind of abstract. I break a lot of eggs. And I leave the shell in there. Texture is everything." Tom Waits

Pete's arsenal

Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam describing Pete Townshend's guitar playing:

He's got a lot of weapons in his arsenal. He can play beautifully, he can do finger-picking, he can slash and burn away... And then he can solo until this guitar - really, you just think the guitar wants to be rescued.

I spent a couple of evenings in intimate contact with 'Amazing Journey: The Story of The Who' on DVD, and it was very satisfying. I've had the riff from 'Won't Get Fooled Again' on continuous replay in my head ever since.


Certain quotes begged to written down. This is Pete trying to describe his early guitar playing, all adolescent gesture and fingers-down-the-blackboard feedback:

[My] electric style was this slabby machine gun style, kind of a post-war, macho, male, don't-interrupt-me kind of noise.

Which I think is as good a description of rock 'n' roll as I've ever heard.

Subterranean palindromes

I love this. Weird Al Yankovic doing D. A. Pennebaker's film of Bob Dylan's 'Subterranean Homesick Blues' - completely in palindromes. I like to think Bob would approve.

Chris Smither at the Corner

I had the privilege of catching Chris Smither at the Corner Hotel on Monday night, together with Anna, who I had previously made a convert, and Greg who had never heard of the man, but who is now an acolyte.

I first saw him at Port Fairy four or five years ago. As the saying goes, I was ‘blown away’, a reaction I’ve seen replicated in others I’ve introduced to his music. I have yet to meet anyone who has not responded to Chris Smither when confronted with a CD thrust underneath their nose by me.

He has the sort of face that’s often described as ‘lived-in’. It’s not so much lived-in, as in need of renovation; the kind of thing real estate agents describe as ‘a handy-man’s dream’.

I mean no disrespect to the master (just the opposite), but he has the sort of face on which life has not been kind. This gives his music a special kind of intensity in live performance.

Smither’s voice has aged like mahogany. He has that enviable deep timbre that suggests life deeply lived.

I’ve become slightly obsessed with his version of Lightnin’ Hopkins’ ‘Blues in the Bottle’ on the most recent album, hearing its perfect stark intensity in my head in the most unlikely of circumstances.

Blues in the bottle
Blues in the bottle
Stopper in my hand, doggone my bad luck soul.
Stopper in my hand.
Pour the blues out of the bottle,
Pour ‘em into the man.

It doesn’t hurt to have the biographical detail of his difficulties with alcohol in one’s mind while hearing this, which must have been hard indeed. Hard enough to keep him out of the recording studio for a decade.

The song is restless but familiar at the same time, possibly because it’s in E flat. My understanding of harmony is shaky, but it seems to rattle around just outside of resolution, in that beautifully fluid and melodic picking style Smither has. The ears and body sense that the melody is homeless, seeking home, perfectly complementing its bleak lyric.

The song ‘Origin of Species’ is a highlight of the album, and has been getting some attention around the internet. I heard that Rolling Stone magazine named it one of the songs of 2006. Chris was nonplussed. “Who knew they were listening?” he said the other day on radio.

It’s a tiny masterpiece of concision and satirical edge in these days when a significant lobby group are demanding that a form of superstition be taught in our schools as science.

Eve told Adam, “Snakes! I've had' em!
Let’s get outta here.
We'll raise our family someplace outta town.”
They left the garden just in time
with the landlord cussin', right behind.
They headed east and finally settled down.

One thing led to another... a bunch of sons, one killed his brother
they kicked him out with nothin' but his clothes.
But the human race survives 'cause the brothers all found wives.
Where they came from ain't nobody knows.

Then came the flood, go figure,
just like New Orleans, only bigger
no one who couldn't swim would make it through
the lucky ones were on a boat,
think circus, then make it float
and hope nobody pulls the plug on you

how they fed that crowd is a mystery,
it ain't down in the history.
It's a cinch they didn't live on cakes and jam.
But lions don't eat cabbage, and in spite of that old adage
I've never seen one lie down with a lamb.

Charlie Darwin looked so far into the way things are
he caught a glimpse of God's unfolding plan
God said "I'll make some DNA, they'll use it any way they want
from paramecium right up to man.
They'll have sex, and mix up sections of their code;
they'll have mutations.
The whole thing works like clockwork over time.
I'll just sit back in the shade while everyone gets laid
that's what I call intelligent design."

Yes, you and your cat named Felix
are both wrapped up in that double helix
it's what we call intelligent design.

In a couple of short verses, he goes from a potted history of Creation, notes the silliness of the story, name checks Hurricane Katrina, Charles Darwin, wraps up evolution in a couple of lines and gives the listener a sense of its ineffable mystery. He also manages to include the word “paramecium”, which is surely its first ever appearance in a song. And to top it all off: a punchline!

‘Leave the Light On’ is a brilliant album, stretching Chris’ usual mode of solo acoustic guitar and voice in satisfying ways, with vocal harmonies and David Goodrich’s slide guitar.

Here’s an idea I wish Chris would consider: A Smither album with Daniel Lanois as producer, with his eclecticism and his mysterious sense of mood and unorthodox sonority. That I’d like to hear.

Playing the Guitar, 1910-15

Wandering about this morning and this image stopped me in my tracks.


This is from a little online exhibition called “Real Photo Postcards: African Americans”.

One would guess from the period that he is a blues man, but I suppose this is just an assumption. He appears to be playing in an open tuning, which was common in the blues.

One thing is certain though, with his highly dignified air and sartorial authority, he is no penny-a-time street singer. No Robert Johnson, in other words, with his natty threads and cigarette dangling insolently from his pursed lip.

The guitar, for one thing, is in good condition. It would have been an inexpensive model, the sort of thing that could be ordered through the mail. Without it, he could have passed for a Minister or mid-level businessman.

A curious detail is the date, given as 1910-15. This was a good five years before jazz and blues began to be commercially recorded, though plenty of men and women who looked like this (and a good deal worse) could be found all over the southern United States plying their trade by this time. It’s interesting, but portraits of musicians look almost identical to this right up until about 1940.

Port Fairy 2007

Another Port Fairy Folk Festival under our belts, and we emerged achy, dirty and sunburned, but inspired. So the tradition of having at least one camping disaster was continued this year (when the air bed went down and I slept on the ground one night), there were no episodes of flooding, no sleeping in the car, no vital pieces of equipment left home. I count that a success. Here I offer some random impressions.

A billboard ad spotted on the highway somewhere after Colac: “We get chickens pregnant!”

The shower truck was a step above the usual Army style canvas partitions, which was a nice surprise. I think this might have made an impression on the men, who were better behaved as a result. Usually I’m reminded of a nature documentary with Rhinos at the waterhole, belching and farting. This time I didn’t mind showering with other men so much.

Joe Camilleri and the Black Sorrows - sounded at times like Van Morrison some time in the late 70s, but I miss that big sound the band had in its best days.

Jeff Lang - There are good guitar players, and very good guitar players, and then there’s outer space. Jeff Lang orbits somewhere around Saturn.

Live, he is intense and wound very tight. Concentration and bursts of energy. He plays a very dark folk blues, with distinct Australian accents, like the murder ballad which began with the sunset from the Westgate Bridge and ended with a dark deed in an inner city terrace. There is paradoxically nothing showy about him (apart from the snappy three piece suit). The virtuosity always follows the peaks and troughs of the song. He has a pianistic finger picking style, which comes in and around a chord instead of simply stating it outright, so the harmonies suggest themselves impressionistically, like a Coltrane solo.

His approach is the opposite of traditionalist. He is restless and experimental, extending the sonic possibilities of the guitar, playing the top notes, tapping the bridge pickup, non-Western scales. At one point in a song he describes the Indian Pacific railway by singing into the sound hole, his voice through the pickup sounding like it’s coming out of a cave.

He uses a sampler ‘live’ – that is, he appears to sample while playing, then plays the sample back without interrupting the song and plays over the top of it. I have seen this attempted before, but rarely with this artistry.


He looks like a Mississippi river boat card sharp in a three piece suit, with a very impressive beard.

Lisa Miller – smooth, soulful pop sound. Her voice is likeable and light, but with enough of an edge to make it interesting and affecting. Songs are often the sort of things you might overhear coming out of a window and they hold you until they’re done.

Duck Musique – Boisterous swing, like Django and Grappelli and the Quintet of the Hot Club of France. Great to hear real gypsy guitar.

Chris Wilson – The master of sharp, rhythmic blues harmonica, playing in a couple of different settings during the festival. I went to his workshop and was thrilled when a frail Jim Conway rolled up to the stage in his wheelchair. A few hefty blokes got him up on the stage of the Port Fairy Cricket Club house, and what followed was a short hour tutorial from two of the best in the business.

Mick Thomas and the Sure Thing – Idiosyncratic songs from experience. Every song had a story. ‘Tommy didn’t want you’ was a song to Mick’s guitar. He explained that he got it cheap from the Maton factory after it had been built for Tommy Emmanuel and he didn’t like it. Very Irish, the Gaelic never far away.

Lil’ Fi – Easy to disparage after she comes on like k. d. laing in her early days, with purple hair, but she plays a rollocking barrelhouse blues style. I was quite surprised when I attended a Sunday morning gospel session and she revealed a beautiful, soulful voice that isn’t really in evidence in her usual act. She should bring it out more.

Fiona Boyes – Joyful, hearty blues, with a great finger picked electric guitar style. Not exactly subtle. I’ve seen her several times before, but never with a band, and it made for a nice change, with other aspects of her musical personality to the forefront.

Bamada, featuring Habib Koite – Long, modal West African explorations in unorthodox time signatures. Several members play guitar and bass upside down, one left-handed with the strings the ‘wrong’ way up, the other right-handed with strings the same way. Open, pentatonic tunings. The bass player had decorated his instrument with African motifs in black insulation tape.

Eric Bibb – Doesn’t sound like he’s quoting anybody, but has this way of playing and singing that makes you believe him, like it’s coming from the source. With Danny Thompson’s lovely melodic double bass.

Nick Charles – I went to a workshop with him on fingerpicking. He is an inspiring teacher, very generous. Played his fantastic arrangement for solo guitar of ‘I Get a Kick Out of You’.

Scared Weird Little Guys – Very funny as always. Best bits were their musical mash-ups, of which the highlight was ‘Waltzing Matilda’ as sung by Eminem.

That 1966 vibe

My fingers were still smarting this morning after spending several hours last night sitting in with Perico, my friend Colin’s band.

I was sweaty-palmed beforehand, but once we got going, it was exhilarating in a way only playing music with other people can be. I was trying to remember how long it has been since I played with a real band and the best I could do was 1989, which is one of those facts I don’t like to admit out loud, so sad does it seem to me.

The experience was fascinating, apart from everything else. They are a tight unit, who rehearse every week and play around the place on a regular basis, and I was an interloper of uncertain talent. What seems clear to me now is that bands have sometimes very distinct personalities that only manifest when they play together. Put another element into the mix and you get another alloy altogether. That was what it was like.

I went into it with a clutch of songs I thought we could try out, not knowing of course which might gel. As is the case with these things, the results were surprising. I thought I would be proactive, since they were looking to me for direction as to where we might go. So I started out with distinct feelings about tempo, feel, and bits or arrangement. But these were only starting points, as songs began to seem like they were too slow, or fast, and the band spontaneously created something unpredictable.

What came out was frequently mellow and open, bordering on the psychedelic, as we stretched out on songs like ‘Norwegian Wood’. It wasn’t until later that I realised there was a good reason for this. That song, for example: obviously it was inspired by Indian music, and I know John Lennon used to play it around the D chord shape with a capo on the second fret. I discovered a while ago that if you place the capo across five strings, but not the sixth, you get a fake Drop D tuning, with the low E string making an effective drone. Place another guitar and bass on top, playing around with the E tonality, and you get a distinct 1966 vibe happening.

Without meaning to, several of the other songs we played had open or unresolved chords, like The Church’s ‘Under the Milky Way’, Neil Young’s ‘Harvest Moon’ and Tom Waits’ ‘Hold On’.

Music as therapy indeed.

Dizzy's to close

I was really saddened this morning to hear that Melbourne's best jazz venue, Dizzy's Jazz Club in Richmond, is to close.

No doubt the folks at Bennett's Lane would claim that title for their own Melbourne institution, but for my money, Dizzy's is just about the perfect setting to hear live music in this city.

To begin with, it is housed in the eccentric Richmond Post Office building, a bit of Edwardian whimsy on Swan Street. The band room is roughly circular, meaning that it was virtually impossible to get a bad seat and you're never too far from a drink, as the bar stretches across the far wall. The acoustics are extremely good, and it has a democratic, unpretentious feel.


Apparently, it was not down to bad numbers on the door, but rapacious new landlords. I sincerely hope they can get something settled to the satisfaction of all parties.

The final show will be at 9pm, Saturday, October 21, featuring Dizzy's regulars in a jam session led by directors Roger Clark & Steve Sedergreen. We are told that a new venue is a possibility.

Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

I woke up this morning with the glorious song 'Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before' by The Smiths floating round in my head. My consciousness settled on the lines:

Nothing's changed - I still love you,
Oh, I still love you
Only slightly - only slightly less
Than I used to.

Which has got to be one of the most withering put-downs in all popular music.

The title, I've always thought, is a witty rejoiner to those who claimed all Smiths songs sounded the same.

It also contains the lines:

I was delayed, I was way-laid.
An emergency stop - I smelt the last ten seconds of life,
I crashed down on the crossbar.
And the pain was enough to make a shy, bald, buddhist reflect
And plan a mass murder.
Who said I'd lied to her ?

Oh, who said I'd lied because I never? I never!
Who said I'd lied because I never?

Morrissey, here's to you.

Pinocoteca

People have asked to see some of my pictures from Italy. I'm happy to put them up but a little concerned to know how I should do it without making it possible for people to rip them off without permission or attribution. I might put the whole lot up on Flickr when I work out how to do it properly.

Until then, I'm putting some here as relatively low-res files that can be viewed perfectly well on the screen.

They were taken on a small point-and-shoot digital camera. Hope you like them.









If anyone is interested where these were taken, I'm happy to provide details.

Far Rite Records

I’m going out to get my copy of ‘Folk Songs of the Far Right Wing’ out now on Far Rite Records.

My favorite is possibly “Yes! We Have No Bandanas” by the Sleeper Cells.

It’s by Dean Opperman.

Miles and Coltrane

I couldn't resist this. We've seen it before but it remains great and I just wanted to see it on my site: Miles Davis and a configuration of the 'Kind of Blue' band with an extended brass section featuring John Coltrane. Would this be 1960? 1961?

Coltrane's solo is particularly stunning.



It's striking how little mind anybody seems to be paying to the fact that they're on television. It could be a rehearsal for all the difference it makes, as Miles and others stand around chatting, smoking, waiting their turn.

Eight minutes and 22 seconds of glory.

Sublime Patsy Cline

It's not 'Crazy', but it's still the sublime Patsy Cline.

This is for Jessie.

The Museum of Bad Album Covers

Every so often you come across something that neatly encapsulates everything that is good about the internet. Such a site is the Museum of Bad Album Covers.

We’re not just talking Herb Albert and His Tijuana Brass bad, or even Village People bad. We’re talking high voltage, off the scale, river deep mountain high, turn the amp up to eleven bad. We’re talking stuff like this:

They got up that morning, had a shave and a shower, got dressed and looked at themselves in the mirror and thought "You know Sven, you are one bitchin' motherf***er!". Now, at what point was the mistake made? I'm not sure.

What's with the shoe? And why in God's name is it brown?

Is there a poo theme developing here? Is he going down or is he coming out?

Lordy. Where to begin? I'm not sure which is worse: what the woman's up to on the cover or the possibility that it's an album of ventriloquism. Note the clever pun: Dick and Willie - are you with me?

About as funny a police photo of a murder scene, which it strongly resembles.

New from Nietszche records! (Is this an alcoholic hallucination?)

"What is happening to the poor man at the front daddy?"

John Wayne Gacey's Greatest Hits.

Nirvana's first line-up.

"Not the foetus in the rubbish bin AGAIN?!" New on the Vatican Label.

The folks at Bad Album Covers invite votes on the top ten worst covers in their collection. The winner was a cover of such wrong-headed awfulness, such offensive stupidity, that I’m afraid I can’t bring myself to put it up here. Suffice to say that it is "Virgin Killer" by The Scorpions, for which someone at RCA records should have been sacked and quite possibly prosecuted. I’ll link to it here.

More at Show and Tell.

To those who stand up

The other night I heard of the death of Rosa Parks, the woman who famously would not give up her seat to a white man on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955. She was 92.

"It's a cliché to say she was the mother of the civil rights movement, but she really was," said Julian Bond, chairman of the board of the NAACP. "She set in motion a movement that hasn't ended."

She was a 42-year-old seamstress and a member of the NAACP when she was jailed for her act of defiance and fined $14. She said in 1992, “The real reason of my not standing up was I felt that I had a right to be treated as any other passenger. We had endured that kind of treatment for too long."

Her arrest triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system organized by Martin Luther King. It led to a Supreme Court decision that discrimination on public transport was unconstitutional. The movement culminated in the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

All day I had the Neville Brothers song going through my head:

Thank you Miss Rosa, you are the spark,
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.
Thank you Miss Rosa you are the spark,
You started our freedom movement
Thank you Sister Rosa Parks.

This feeling persisted with me all day, and then I stayed up to watch the documentary ‘Excellent Cadavers’ on SBS.

Through the eyes of journalist Alexander Stille, it investigated the ongoing power of the mafia and the relationship between Cosa Nostra and the Italian politicians of the 70s, 80s and 90s. This is a bit of an obsession with me at the moment, as I’m re-reading Peter Robb’s ‘Midnight in Sicily’, a book I treasure, and I will be travelling in Italy soon and will visit as much of Sicily as I can.

I was deeply moved by the story of the heroic anti-mafia magistrates Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two others who stood up against genuine evil despite the fact that they were both certain they would not survive the experience.


After his friend Falcone’s sensational death when the Corleonese blew up 400 METRES of freeway in order to make sure he was dead, a colleague of Borsellino’s begged him to slow down and take a break from his relentless workload. The magistrate explained that he had to work like this, as he had so little time left. He was right. He was killed by a car bomb in 1992 on the orders of this piece of filth:


I was depressed to hear that the current Prime Minister, the billionaire Silvio Berlusconi, is busy dismantling much of the anti-mafia legislation that Falcone, Borsellino and so many others, like the police captain Carlo Dalla Chiesa, literally gave their lives to enact.

But here’s to those who stand up.

Alison Wedding at Dizzy's

Sometimes when you think you should go out, but you're feeling a little bit tired and could quite easily just get a video, you really should listen to your inner teenager and go out. I'm glad I did on Saturday night, otherwise I would never have seen and heard the wonderful Alison Wedding at Dizzy's.


Dizzy's is a jazz bar on Swan Street in the eccentric old Richmond Post office building, across the road from the Corner Hotel. If you've never been, you should. It's probably the best room for a small band I've ever been in. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a bad seat, and it's the kind of place that makes you feel cooler just being there. Red walls, long bar down the far end, and the bandstand nestles in a womb-like semi-circular alcove, which probably does wondrous things for the acoustics.


Alison has an amazingly supple alto voice, with a long range, and she can scat and not manage to sound like a cliche. In fact, her singing is informed by a real musician's sense of intonation and how to hang a lyric on a phrase just so. She also manages to say something with her lyrics. They're never just an excuse to show off.


Did I mention she's gorgeous? With the most American teeth I've ever seen. She has a smile that warms a whole room, and it's worn with absolute sincerity. Either that, or her polished show-biz schtick is so good, it can convince a room of jaded Melbournites that this little gig is the most fun she's had in ages.

I should also mention the band, with Dizzy's partner Roger Clark on alto sax. I can't remember seeing such an unlikely group of jazz musicians. Roger looked like he could break into "The Man From Snowy River" at any minute, with what looked like mole-skins, tucked-in shirt and R.M. Williams boots, though he played bright bop solos like Zoot Sims or Art Pepper. The band also featured Geoff Kluke, who is a virtuosic double bass player with an unfailing sense of melody, and a drummer with a strangely brittle hard-bop style that took a while to get used to, but good.

Apparently there are two albums out, which I'll be looking up very shortly. Check her out.

Acoustic heaven 2

Mainly because Dave Walker enjoyed the last one, here's the track listing for the second acoustic compilation I put together. I enjoy making the classics nestle down with some unexpected surprises:

1. Wild Honey - U2
2. Lost Cause - Beck
3. Picture of Jesus - Ben Harper with the Blind Boys of Alabama
4. Zebra - John Butler Trio
5. Alive and Brilliant - Debra Conway
6. Bigmouth Strikes Again - The Smiths
7. In Between Days - The Cure
8. Babylon - David Gray
9. Feeler - Pete Murray
10. London Still (live) - The Waifs
11. Crossroads (live) - Ash Grunwald
12. Can't Shake These Blues (live) - Chris Smither
13. Oh Death - Ralph Stanley
14. Little Martha - The Allman Brothers Band
15. Love In Vain - The Rolling Stones
16. Somebody Knocking - Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation
17. Mother Nature's Son - The Beatles
18. You Turn Me On I'm a Radio - Joni Mitchell
19. Tupelo Honey - Van Morrison

Acoustic heaven 1

Blogger seems to have dropped its bundle when it comes to posting photos. I've got a couple of postings cooling their heels in limbo until it sorts itself out, so in the meantime, I thought I'd attempt a quickie that doesn't require any pictures.

A year or two ago, a friend gave me a commercially available compilation CD called "Acoustic". It turns out there are a whole series of these. I hope I'm not offending anybody when I say that I thought they were dreadfully boring, extremely safe, and just not worth the money at all. Some of the selections were downright weird (strange sonic jumps in the track order), and a few weren't even acoustic (like Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah"). I was annoyed because, being a guitarist myself who loves acoustic instruments, I thought the whole thing was just embarrassing and sold the music short. Quicker than you can say "I can do that!" I decided to do my own. In fact I did a few of them.

For want of anything better to do, I thought I'd post the track list here. The first one is mostly older stuff. I thought of it as singer-songwritery. Later, I put down more recent, more Australian sounds. It's also quite bluesy. Thanks to iTunes, it's also possible to very precisely modulate the mood from song to song, so it's smooth, but there are enough surprises to keep you interested.

1. Blister in the Sun - Violent Femmes
2. Going Mobile - The Who
3. Carey - Joni Mitchell
4. Desolation Row - Chris Smither
5. That’s Entertainment - The Jam
6. Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want - The Smiths
7. Shelter From the Storm - Bob Dylan
8. Paris, Texas - Ry Cooder
9. Down To Zero - Joan Armatrading
10. Redemption Song - Bob Marley
11. Ruby Tuesday - Melanie
12. The Way Young Lovers Do - Van Morrison
13. Solsbury Hill - Peter Gabriel
14. Peace Piece - John McLaughlan
15. Peace Like a River - Paul Simon
16. Corrina, Corrina - Bob Dylan
17. Blackbird - The Beatles
18. Train Home - Chris Smither
19. All Along the Watchtower - Bob Dylan
20. Lull It By - Greg Brown
21. Hard Time Killing Floor - Buddy Guy

Testifyin’ Ash Grunwald

I caught Ash Grunwald at Richmond’s Corner Hotel on Sunday night.

I first heard this extraordinary talent by accident a couple of Port Fairy Folk Festivals ago when I attended a mid-morning all-star session called a ‘blues jam’, mainly in order to hear the American slide master Bob Brozman. This was my first Port Fairy and I feared that something called a folk festival might feature lots of bad poetry and middle aged men with beards. It did in fact feature bad poetry and beards, but also a stunningly diverse range of musicians that fit into the marketing categories known as ‘roots’, ‘world’ and ‘contemporary folk’ (which sounds like a tautology). This suited me fine, as, by the judicious use of the catalogue, I was able to craft myself a very nice little blues festival, which suited me just fine.

This jam consisted of a motley bunch of musicians of various shapes and sizes in a line across the front of the stage. Lots of beards and wide waist-bands. Somewhere in the line though, was a young dude with dreadlocks who looked like he’d just towelled off after a session in the local breakers. He was brandishing a Gibson 137, and I thought this was the token bar-room blues poser who was going to blow everyone off the stage with volume and phony metal attitude. Well I was wrong, brothers and sisters!

Each person called out whatever song they wanted to play and the key, and the rest followed along. When it was Ash’s turn, he called for ‘Smokestack Lightnin’’ and this voice came out of him like he was channelling a large black share-cropper from the 1920s.

This guy is young, barely 30, from Melbourne, and yet he has the most authentic blues voice I’ve ever heard emanating from an Australian. Think Howlin’ Wolf crossed with Son House in an extraverted mood.

And yet, he manages to remain himself. I’ve seen him several times since then, and I’m always struck with the ease with which he’s adopted a foreign voice and made it sound like he was born to it.

In interviews he’s careful to distance himself from the revivalists. He doesn’t want to sound like a 78 record, but instead emphasizes how no one in the history of the blues could really sound like him, since in his head, along with the Delta, is a couple of decades of hip-hop and electronica. You can hear this in the insistent doof-doof of his left foot on a stomp box, and his reliance on simple grooves to propel the song along.

If I have a criticism it’s that, when the occasion calls for it, he seems uncomfortable with the emotional power his voice can embody. On Sunday night, for instance, when a punter called for ‘Crossroads’, he couldn’t bring himself to bring the temperature down to the cold intensity the lyrics demand, and sounded like he was making excuses for it by stepping in and out of his affable down-to-earth Aussie persona during the song. Somebody should tell him he doesn’t need to, because when he’s really on, he makes you feel the despair of that last dangling line in your guts: ‘I’m standing at the crossroads / And I feel I’m sinking down...’.

I keep asking myself where he could go from here, since this one-man-groove thing he’s got going has got him through a couple of studio recordings and a live album already. A clue is in the best of his own songs and the arrangement and selection of covers, which are not by any means tied down to the canon. He throws in Tom Waits here and there, and his songs try on several different styles and moods, like ‘Dolphin Song’ which is a hilarious country style story-song.

I’d love to hear him with a long term band of his own, not just borrowed for the session, but a real sympathetic group of fellow travellers. You get a feeling for how this might sound on his guest spot with Joe Camilleri’s ‘Bakelite Radio’, which can be heard on the website: http://www.abc.net.au/dig/stories/s1401489.htm. They feature it as part of their Australian Blues Project special. Joe and the band chug along on a simple authentic Delta beat, and then Ash opens up and it sounds like someone let the Back Door Man himself in.

If he doesn't get taken by a shark in the meantime, I predict we'll hear a lot more of Ash Grunwald.