2005
On the present band The Stormwater Boys
There are a lot of old connections in this band. Jim Fisher who plays mandolin comes from Perth and he and Ian Simpson, the banjo player are in the Sensitive New Age Cowpersons. All these Perth connections weave in and out of my life. I went to WA in late 1975 with my cousin. We were going to work in the mines but I got involved in the music scene there and one of the bands I used to see was The Outlaws who were hot country bluegrass players. Jim was lead singer and the band made a big impression on me. He plays mandolin, dobro and guitar on this tour. Paul Gadsby , who was in my first band the Dots, plays upright bass and Mick Albeck plays fiddle. They are jaw-droppingly good musicians .
On the Current Australian Tour
I have been to most of the places before but some not for ten years. Broome I’d been to but Karratha, Port Hedland, Derby I hadn’t. Esperance, we hadn’t for twelve years. We did a lot in the West – Kalgoorlie, Fremantle, Perth then worked our way up – Alice Springs, Darwin, on to Cairns and then down. There were a mix of theatres . People sitting down where you could here a pin drop, beer gardens, loud pubs, we did an outdoor show on the grass at Magnetic island off Townsville. Sometimes its been a battle with noisy crowds but mostly its been pretty good. A lot of people would never have seen a bluegrass band. Audiences, used to loud snare drums and heavy bass, sometimes yelled out “turn it up” But all they have to do is turn themselves down and they’ll hear it.
The A-Z Solo Concerts
They were the opposite of a retrospective for me. I had to do some shows in the Spiegeltent in Melbourne last December and I wanted to do something special. It was always going to be mainly solo. I had one of those middle-of-the-night ideas – four nights, a hundred songs, A-Z with no repeats. Then I realised, God, I’ll have to practice, I can’t remember all those songs. It was a really good thing to do because I went back and met some of my old songs again.
I did those shows in Melbourne then Julia Holt invited me to Adelaide for the Cabaret Festival in June and I am going to do them again in Sydney in December. My idea now is to make it a regular thing, the way Weddings Parties Anything used to do their Christmas shows.
It has been a revelation because it’s given me a whole new way of working. It is the performer’s dilemma – always between the new songs you want to play and the old songs the audience want to hear. I hadn’t realised until I’d done it that this A-Z format totally short-circuits those problems. It takes it out of chronology and totally into the alphabet. It gives the audience something to play with – will I go the first night and miss Wintercoat or To her Door ? or go to more nights ?
It was hard work and I had to do a fair amount of rehearsal. For Melbourne I spent about a month. I realised the show needed some storytelling. I had to write some script. I’m not a naturally off the cuff person.
What’s next ?
More bluegrass shows in Tassie, the Gympie Muster and Tamworth in January. But this month I have to work on the score for Ray Lawrence’s new movie Jindabyne. It’s based on this Raymond Carver story that keeps following me around – So Much Water So Close to Home. I met Ray not long after he made Bliss. He asked me about the song based on the story – Everything’s Turning to White and I lent him the Carver collection. We lost touch and fourteen years later he called me and said I’ve got this movie Lantana, do you want to do the music ? Since then he has got the rights to the Carver story and the film has been shot – Jindabyne features Laura Linney, Gabriel Byrne, Leah Purcell, John Howard and Chris Haywood. I’ve seen the rough cut, it looks great. The music will be built around voices – keening, humming, women’s voices, men’s voices, lots of drone. There’s a strong landscape presence in the film and it’s going to need a really good soundtrack, so the pressure is on…
Draft for The Adelaide Review, August, 2005.