Playground
Around 2 years old, Moogerah Dam, SE Qld circa 1969/70 - photo by Ron Ivin
I have no idea what it is, but sometimes when I see a kid’s playground, I have this deep, buried sadness well up inside me. I’ve tried to rationalise this every time it happens, but I can’t make any connection with a negative experience or any sort of notion that I missed out on something as a child. Its a lonely feeling. Perhaps it’s some kind of lost childhood synapse firing off. Regardless, it can be consuming and I mostly turn away and make sure I move onto something else. The same thing happens now and then when I see children enjoying a shopping centre ride - horsies, carousels, cars, dinosaurs and so on - their parents standing there, watching and enjoying. I cannot put a finger on why it makes me feel like I’m far away in a different time, where something just isn’t working out. As a kid I certainly did plenty of amusing myself. I was never idle. I liked my toys and the evolving learning and knowledge experience that came with them. I’m acutely aware and grateful of how lucky I was to have a childhood experience free of the things that plague millions of other kids across the planet. I know you don’t think too hard about social injustice and inequality when you’re that young, but the experiences you do have certainly enter your system and become part of who and what you are. >>>> I find this sadness confusing. It doesn’t always happen, like if I’m too distracted or too busy to tune-in, but when I do, there’s no escaping it. Maybe it’s because nowadays kids are indoors a lot more than was the norm for my generation in the 1970s, when playgrounds were part of the tool-set, even the less exciting ones. You’d go there on your treadly with footy cards flapping in the spokes. You’d race Matchbox cars down the slippery dip. You’d stage a phase of the latest street war from confines of the sandpit. Even in the screaming heat of Christmas holidays this would go on. They were dangerous places too, but getting a toe crushed from a wayward maneuverer on a see-saw was part of the act. today, these places are often deserted. Maybe that’s all it is… just feeling bad for the playgrounds. >>>> I wonder if anyone else thinks like this. Let me know. >>>> The above picture was taken somewhere around here. >>>> If only I could realise what I feel as music without personal conventions corrupting the idea. Classical types would just write it on paper, straight out of their heads.
The Super Dynamic Resophonic 3.8
Triptych of the unique SDR 3.8, Wistow, SA Jan 2025 - photos by the luthier, Andy Rasheed.
For the last decade, I’ve been visiting Adelaide Hills artisan, photographer and musician, Andy Rasheed. On each of these sojourns, I’d investigate his latest experiments with musical instruments, notably his unorthodox and innovative acoustic steel guitars. Each time there’d be a new angle, a different way of approaching the bold voice of conventional resonator guitars. His idea is universal - converting the energy of a vibrating string into the highest excitment of air molecules possible. Doing this acoustically has and will likely always have limitations. Richard Wagner, for instance, felt this during his career and bolstered the members of his orchestras towards a hundred members - with dramatic results, but the amplication factor of a lone acoustic instrument will always hit a wall at some point. Trumpets are pretty loud… pipe organs are much louder - but the guitar, outside of its electrical cohort, remains a tad hamstrung. The physics dictate this. The old-time resonator guitars were born out of this dilemma and in the process, a stonking, metallic voice we’ve come to associate with blues and rootsy stylings, carved out a particular niche, along with scores of visionary players. >>>> Halfway through 2024, Andy had me try out a tri-cone design he’d been developing and straight away, I knew it was right for me. I suppose it was the warmer tone and closer resemblance to a regular acoustic guitar timbre, but as a musician certain things speak to you. It’s all about hearing the potential. So I went away and thought about it for a fortnight. Andy’s instruments had all been 25.5” scale, the same as most Fender guitars. I realised I wanted familiarity tempered with challenge. To that end, (and with a little consultation from peers with sacred knowledge and others in possession of sacred talismans) I came back at Andy with this: A 24” scale, 8 strings, a 70 to 77mm string spacing borrowed from my 1963 Maton Slivertone double-neck steel, all this tuned up to a taut open E chord with extension notes on either side of the standard 6 string arrangement. The depth of the body was to taper from the tail back up towards the neck. This would throw a new set of unique specifications onto an already highly individual design. A few months later and a Christmas/New Year spell in SA later, the end result is a thing to behold. Acoustically, it barks like a freshly washed blue heeler. It should be noted that the back of the instrument has a braced soundboard overlaid with a perforated back plate that allows all the acoustic surfaces to vibrate freely. A normal acoustic lap-steel has it’s back deadened by default. Not so with the SDR 3.8. Aircraft-grade birch ply is incorporated throughout, New Guinean rosewood for the neck and gorgeous plank of arcacia forms the fretboard, the lines for intonation being slivers of sycamore. I embarked on a solid research program to determine what pickups I will add to this machine and thus bring it to a stage-ready state. Anyone who has tried to amplify resonator guitars will know how much of a challenge this can be, but I think I’m ready to proceed with a combination of magnetic, microphonic and piezo contact type transducers. The ordering of components from several corners of the globe is underway with the covid-transformed, global-shipping phenomena doing it’s best to slow it all up. Watch this space. >>>> This is my second custom-ordered guitar, the first being an indiviually-specced Maton Mastersound electric 6-stringer during that brief but fun-filled early salvo of Country Rock ‘n’ Roll from the Re-mains. The name SDR 3.8 was settled on after realising that more suitable monikers, “The Dominator”, “The Growler” and “The Punisher” were already taken. Andy’s company is called Small Drum Revolution. I reasoned this could also be an acronym for “Super Dynamic Resophonic”. Pinching domestic sound-system coding and applying a “3” for the number of resonator cones and an “8” for the number of strings filled out the label. I’ll write another entry when the instrument is fully kitted up with it’s compliment of 5 pickups. >>>> Until then, take a look at this interview Andy shot with me just after I took the guitar away. Also linked are the relevant pages for Small Drum Revolution and the other various activities of a maker who truly cares about his craft and who deserves to be given custom. Thank you Andy. There is more to come.
Twilight of the Titans
Rochelle Bowles, myself and Peter Toose RIP - Masala - Circa 1996, Lismore NSW.
In the ongoing sequence of mourning the slow fade of musical era’s, it’s impossible to not say something about the passage of the trailblazers that headed up said eras. Yeah, there’s ample rock stars passing on - and I’m fearing for a few to come - but just yesterday it was time for Zakir Hussien, an indisputable spearhead of modern Hindustani Classical Music. It’s funny how this happens, but I’d been thinking about an album I made in 1996 with two of my university peers, Rochelle Bowles and the late Peter Toose, a project directly addressed by the music of Hussain, and the next day, he was gone. >>>> Ever since I started playing guitar, I’d been dabbling with the DADGAD tuning, trying to cop the acoustic stylings of Jimmy Page. The tuning was popularised by British prog-folkies such as Davey Graham, who inspired by a trip to Morocco and the sounds of the Oud, brought the influences back home and established the tuning as a Celtic standard. The sonarity of this tuning keep things open-ended and suspended, lending mystery to folkish whimsy, but it also has a foot or two in the territory of Indian Classical harmony by default. When you use this tuning, ideas seem to pour out… or at least they do when you make the effort. Whatever the case, I love the sound of it, and once I met up with Rochelle, a tabla devotee, travelling many times to India to shore up her commitment, a circle became complete in my musical development and inspired me to go further and deeper. The rhythms, the precision and the endurance grew during that period, leading to a situation today where I consider that perhaps, I can’t play like that anymore. I remember being in the studio, putting it all together, honing the performance, walking the tightrope. When you have three musicians all pushing in the same direction, doing what they do best, the synergy kicks in and you end up well further down the track. The Titans strode across the earth, the rest of us in their thrall. Thank god it happened, giving rise to precious troves of art and culture. >>>> So I thank Rochelle and Pete for going on that brief but inspirational traipse in the footprints of Zakir Hussain et al. Maybe I should try to play this way again before I can’t. I’m pretty sure this doesn’t sound like funambulism, but here’s Pivot, an instrumental we came up with for that album known simply as “Masala”. I remember the onset of RSI trying to get it down. Great times. I seemed to have so much energy then. That energy is still in my head, but it’s pensive in the physical world and I wish I knew why.
Why so glum?
7-string fretless “Orchid” and LYRA 8 Organismic Synthesiser - 11th Dec 2024
What is it about the Dark Matter? Increasingly, whenever reaching for something original or new, I know I’m going to pick the shadowy, veiled, desolated option. My brother is basically the same - I recognise it in most of his output, and more recently, we’ve been “jamming”, and heading in the very same direction each time, but we were not reared as dour/bleak bohemians. I suppose it’s a bit like an interview I saw with Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi, where he explained that the brooding music they were creating was “fun” and that it “made the hairs stand up on the back of your hands.” Yep, it is fun, and I’ve been trying to figure out ways of making it happen more readily and more often. >>>> For years I imagined it would be interesting to have a fretless guitar. This would enable violin-like glissandi and slurring not possible on a regular guitar. It would also feed into the steel guitar intonation I already do. After years of thinking about it, I’ve finally gotten one together. It’s a 7-string Ibanez thrasher’s budget model, de-fretted, slots filled with a pale veneer and a hard danish oil finish, along with a beautiful, free-hand painted orchid concept on the body by Janine Bailey-Cooper, gold on black. It sounds exactly as I imagined, slippery, edgy and fluid, strung up with a very “jazz” set of flat wounds. It’s fantastic with an Ebow, totally geared for the strange and unpredictable. >>>> In addition to this, my brother visited mid year, bringing with his a brand new LYRA 8 synthesiser from the SOMA company. They make an array of unconventional instruments that tap into the chaos and entropy inherent in much of life. Within 30 seconds of fooling with the LYRA 8, I knew I would have to own one. Since Glendyn really wished he’d bought one in a darker green, we quickly made a deal and the new synth was mine. >>>> The Lyra 8 has eight oscillators that need to be manually tuned across a wide and somewhat touchy range. Each of those voices can then be manipulated in a variety of ways, each of the those being a journey deeper into the void. It’s almost impossible to generate the same sound with this unit twice. It’s excels with the addition of spatial treatments - modulated reverbs and delays help to create otherworldly soundscapes that mesmerise and inspire. It’s fascinating how modern tech can put into anyone’s hands the capabilities and potential of bygone sophisticated musical laboratories. Rock ‘n’ Roll might be just about dead, but this is interesting for now.
Have a listen to this basic mix - Lyra Orchids
We’re driving in the shade…
Coolgardie Railway Yard, Western Australia
Once again, out with the Desert Stars, and once again, flooded with thought provoking stuff. Every time I get together with these fellas, it’s a cause to assess one’s way of thinking and usually a time to suspend personal norms to some degree. I have to, otherwise it wouldn’t work. There’s methods of reasoning, areas of knowledge and interpersonal juristictions that I’ll never completely understand much less be informed of. So yeah. It’s a fascinating ride regardless of how it turns out. >>>> We’re here running down the latest batch of Jay Minning’s songs. They have some interesting titles… Boulder Bronx Street, Ukiry Wiru (Good Ganja), Ngura Kutta (Gotta go Home), Ngura Wiruka (It’s a Good Place) and also Rock ‘n’ Roll Traveller. See the thread? The latter is a fierce, rambling jam of a song that I’m encouraging them to stretch out on a little and keep hammering home. It smacks of another fine desert anthem. >>>> The recurring themes are the sense of place and country that we often hear of, but may perhaps always be remote from. Sure we have our homes, but the Indigenous connection to these places is on another level altogether, just like we’re told. Other themes are certain recreations, hardship and love. Nothing alien there. >>>> We’ve been graciously accommodated by Drew Goddard of the WA-based progressive-metal act, Karnivool. He has a deal with Coolgardie folk that’s resulting in the old historic railway station being given over to act as a rehersal and recording studio for whatever work needs a place to flourish. It’s an atmosheric facility, opened in 1896 but over and done with by 1971. An old steam engine with 1st and 2nd class carriages in tow sits along the platform, inexorably returning to the earth. The track is only as long as the train. A corrugated iron-clad roof covers many high-ceilinged rooms, economically ornate wood and masonary work and creaking jarrah-planked floors. A loose mix of musical gear is found across three spacious rooms, with about about one power-point in each. Extension cords are a currency. Various mattresses, blankets and foam tiles cut down the acoustic shine. Quite the racket can be made without drawing too much fire, though, I’m informed , the Coolgardie township is all aboard. >>>> Outside, there’s a white picketed fence running out from either end of the station building. Jay told me he painted that fence and other parts of the station when he was doing time. Derek Coleman, erstwhile lead guitarist and shaman, told me how he played amongst the same engine and carriges when he was only knee high. The other band members, Justin Curry and Ashley Franks, they also have their stories, in and out of Coolgardie, as kids, as young men, and now. Always the stories. I guess they own the place. >>>> It’d be easy to say what a wonderful treat it is, to be out here, preparing for an artistic statement by Indigenous men, via a genre whose days seem utterly numbered. End times, again. For sure, elements of this endeavour are quite the gift - the stillness that accompanies the vastness, the absolute nature of the environment, the passive wonder of what went before and will come next, but it’s also incredibly stark, harsh and uncompromising. I see that in these fellas more and more every time we meet. They embody a series of truths that I can easily fly away from, back to wherever I need to be. It’s a privilege, essentially, to have this exchange. It’s good to have these kind of friends and it’s an honour to be trusted by them. I’ll always be back. Besides, we have an album to make. >>>> Mid-year, on the short tour we undertook with my own band, driving around the base of Mt. Warning, NSW Nth Coast, on the way to Brisbane, Derek noted with understated wonder, “We’re driving in the shade.” Yeah, we sure were. Out here, nobody is ever doing that.
Era’s End
Liddel Power Station (decommisioned) with Bayswater active behind, Hunter Valley, NSW.
I find it difficult to imagine a dazzling future for traditional musicians. I mean those operating within the paradigm we associate with that era of popular music… you know, the good-ole stuff we grew up with. I see it disappearing faster than I’d ever imagined. I’d say straight-up , I’m not exactly being stopped in my tracks, but the shape of things has changed and I don’t see how the practice can stay completely healthy, let alone return to any version of former glory. It simply has to change, or just stop existing as some would like it to. Of course, COVID had a hand in banging a few nails into this coffin… even though venues were already on their knees. In Sydney, the lock-out laws a few years earlier did a power of good for property investors, many of them off-shore, that just fed into the after-hours ghost town we see today. It’s awful. Even Kings Cross is a corpse. When younger acts talk about a tour, they usually mean going away for a couple of shows over the weekend. There’s just very little cache left. Kids at school talk about the gigs they are gonna do when they are set loose in society, but what exactly will be left to do? House concerts? I’m still grateful for Melbourne though. >>>> Naturally, things evolve. They have to. Liddel Power Station is decommissioned now, a casualty of the advancing renewable power market, the big players in the game deciding to let it slide into obsolescence. I’ve traveled past this place more times than I care to imagine. As a kid it was like some kind of powerful symbol. I used to stop now and then to listen to it rumbling away, sending out all it’s volts, many of which I thoroughly enjoyed using. But I’m happy for that to fall silent. There’s other way of skinning a cat. Day by day, those ways are arriving and taking the place of the old. Bring that on. >>>> My brother bought a Tesla last year, the more humble Model Y, yet the performance of that thing is insane. There’s little doubt it’s the future of motoring, but I’d be loath to take one out into some serious bush. Sure enough, something will arrive to take care of that side of things, but I wish I could say the same thing about playing live music on a stage in front of interested people. Several large scale festivals have bitten the dust, the overheads simply being too much and the number of ready punters seemingly too few. Let’s not even discuss the prospect of recorded music. Daniel Ek refers to that as “content”. He also reckons it costs us peanuts to produce. Insulting at best, but it’s a lie. If Metallica’s Lars Ulrich seemed petty and enraged at Napster a number of years back, I’m assuming he has his ducks in a row with Spotify and Tidal and ——- insert your favoured music app here ——-- . My own group struggles to pull together a decent run of shows today that would’ve have been a cakewalk 15 years ago. I just think it’s end-times for this era. The sun is setting on it. It’s hard to see it any other way. >>>> See you at a gig soon.
Ilkurlka Desert Stars Sessions Part 3
The Desert Stars - Derek Coleman, Justin Curry, Ashley Franks and Jay Minning @ Ilkurlka Roundhouse, 17 June 2024
The band themselves are in many ways aligned with that of countless others; an assemblage of individuals that coalesce around a central goal, an artistic mission and desire to be fulfilled by the the act of making glorious noise. The Desert Stars heritage emanated listening to a hodge-podge of cassettes and CDs - classic ‘70s and ‘80s pop to hard rock and proto-metal, absorbed the same way anyone else did of that era - pre-YouTube, pre-internet anything and a complete absence of methods formal or regimented. They specialise a somewhat scarce variety of hard rock - I say this to identify them apart from from the more ubiquitous desert reggae and ska, pop, RnB and hip-hop artists. Vintage and direct, their repertoire has a niche legacy quality layered over with localised tales and ideology, both in Pitjantjatjara and English. Each member possesses an identifiable approach and it’s the sum of these parts that drew me to the Tjuntjuntjara rec hall in 2016. >>>>> The song that best illustrates this for me is also the same one they were running down at the time, Ananguku. Based around one riff, and in my favourite key of “A”, it has everything you need from rock music - uplifting power, a groove and message of unity and self affirmation - the right to dance all over your troubles and be at one with who you are. The version I went on to capture later that year can be heard here - The song mines the boogie of old AC/DC, the power-chord punch of the Who and the self-affirming anthems of Kiss. >>>>> Jay Minning creates these songs internally and authentically. His right hand has an enviable, natural swing that underpins the group’s core sound. He is an emerging elder who will in time become a ceremonial leader. He creates ideologically and from the heart, working stories and concepts that Jay himself is often confronted by. Ashley Franks’ urgent and metronomic drumming had many seasoned east coast musicians in his thrall on the Gravel Road film shows. He’s a family man, sincere and in love with music. His grandfather fled the Maralinga atomic tests in the ‘50s, Ashley speaking poignantly of this in the film. He’s been performing live since childhood. Justin Curry locks things down on his trusty black P-bass, his firm yet restless down-strokes hark back to any amount of ‘80s pub shows, ones that Justin never attended, simply channeling that pulsing clout. He works in Kalgoorlie and around the shire, moving about. He also does a rockin’ Elvis impersonation. Derek Coleman on lead guitar is an enigma. He almost surfs the strings, floating from one part to the next in stream of blues-infused licks. He grew up on the streets of Ceduna, SA. He has this unbelievable way of bringing all manner of things into his sphere, as if a witch doctor. >>>>> Like most proper bands, the Desert Stars operate with a synergy that wouldn’t happen the same way if apart. While Australian pub-rock is the catalyst, the desert is their muse. It affords a plateau they inhabit with exclusivity - a realm that those outside get to peer at, rather than see in full. They aren’t consumed with the kind of paraphernalia that has other musicians chasing down elusive and expensive sounds and equipment. They plug in and go, tuning by ear. The repertoire Jay provides is a continuation of oral tradition, stories and dreaming that reveal as much as they hold close. >>>>> It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years since I met the band, but when I did, me curious, and they, shy and aloof, I’d have not really expected to be documenting any continuing adventures today. This work has a way of getting under one’s skin, and right now, I can’t really conceive of what fuels the impetus to work onward, despite frequent wash-outs and mysterious trammels. I can’t tell if it’s the multitudes of unknowns or the overwhelming peace when the noise dies down. But luckily, the Desert Stars continue to invite me back. I climb into the same aero-van a week after arriving, overnighting at Kal, then fly the tarnished Q-brand home, like a returning sailor.
Ilkurlka Desert Stars Sessions Part 2
Ilkurlka trig station, WA - 16 June 2024
Driving - Jay expounds on male places, female places, everybody's places. And there's other places like our greenrooms – the place where business stays. We need those. >>>> A huge bird suddenly lifts off from beside the road, tucks it's stocky legs up like an undercarriage and gradually flaps upward and along. I reflex think it's some fashion of eagle, but know it can't be. “Bush turkey”, says Jay. It's the second one I've seen in my life… the other was standing, like a little dinosaur, roadside somewhere on the Stuart Highway on a Re-mains tour. Bustard. “Better than real turkey”, he reckons. It heaves off into the spinifex. I didn't realise they flew. >>>> The road is madly rutted, corrugated, sand-drifted and beset with relentless hazard - washouts, gidgee spikes and camel bones. Like anywhere, you look ahead, but with a particular sand-blasted focus. The track will certainly come to bite should you forget where you really are. Slower, then faster, follow the track, or don't quite. Power back, up the dune and over, no brakes down the other side. It’s baffling how much grief can be dished out to these vehicles. Now that the LandCruiser is no longer built, what will take it’s place? I’d be all for an EV doing it, but what could put up with this abuse? I'd try to describe what it's like, but let's say it'd eviscerate most ARB customers. The corpses are innumerable - they dissolve now by the roadside. There’s one I've been watching over the last twelve years, an XF ute. Lost ordnance. Every community sports an open-air mausoleum. Ferric oxide to the future. >>>> Time is as nebulous as it’s said to be. Out here it leans long and longer, short and shorter. What you're supposed to do within that time, however drawn-out or brief, appears entirely variable, exchangable or irrelevent. I’m gleaning there's an ontological divergence for people here, of course, and that it's cyclic, or that events come in and out of relevance, like spokes branching out from a personal hub, out to the rim. And the wheel turns this way and that. >>>> The flies. If they were to all drop dead in a flash - globally, aside from missing the ones immediately bothering you... would you notice? Would the world know? Would it shift planetary orbit? >>>> The Dogs. They're everywhere, part of society and thought of as family. They are loved and given skin names. There might be more dogs in Tjuntjuntjara than people. They come and go as they choose, moving about the streets and houses on their own business. Squabbles break out, then quell. The variety is stupendous! Everything from bristle-haired-greyhounded hunting beasts to corgi/dingo infusions to teacup miniatures back up to mastiff-blueys, all talking to each other. The Gravel Road documentary featured Bolt, the kangaroo-wraith. That dog lived by the sword and so died the same way at the hands of another. I swear Bolt was in front of me again the other day, but his name was Rocky, and he was traipsing the dirt-streets with Angel. >>>> At Ilkurlka, I can wander about in the moonlight without worry. There's a camel here and there, sometimes dingoes. They howled last night a few times, an arresting sound at first, yet ultimately so familiar. But while the band is here with me, I can't really walk off without it being remarked upon or ushering in a distinct air of concern. Jay worries the Mamu will get me. Fires throws shadow that would reveal the Mamu. Not to be confused with indigenous peoples of FNQ and particular to the eastern regions of the Western Desert, the Mamu are terrible, soul-destroying, devouring and spiritually corrosive monsters. Mamu refers to the dark forces, or the various forms in which they manifest. Through all the missionary interventions, the displacement, the Maralinga atomic testing refugees and the general dissolution of these people, the Mamu endures – They want human flesh, especially babies. They leave no tracks and only come at night. They are always near. Mamu equates to the Christian Satan. Lights are left on at night. People stay close in the dark, sleeping in rows like sardines. The Mamu do not speak, but they listen for your name. Night terrors afforded an established culture unto itself.
Ilkurlka Desert Stars Sessions Part 1
Looking back west - the road to Tjuntjuntjara, WA
The four flight shuttle to the remotest facility on dry land began at the crack of sparrows, from the Motherland to the strip-malled aero-park on the mudflats of Moreton. Them Virgins don't know my preferences, so I'm snug between two enormous buggers on a 737 that has no USB charging. Devilry and risk. The window is shuttered and five hours to go. I wanna look at the land. All the centre. I've never flown this route and I feel deprived. The five year old aspirant flyer hasn’t gone anywhere. Perth's fly-mall will offer it's twenty dollar toasties and doubtless Kalgoorlie will display it's ongoing menace, owned by those that dig down, down, deeper and down. The super pit and sediment slurry. The red-dirt road vectors are rooster-tailed by three to five linked road trains. High fences, corrugated ironed, hospitalised and lingerie barred. Flouro itinerant FIFO militants. But I'm for the dunes, the sharp grasses and the profound quiet. That is, till we start work. >>>> A rock band's worth of backline sits plastic-wrapped on a pallet in the Tjuntjuntjara tyre shed. A Toyota will take it north with the food, swags and a couple of Desert Stars. Apparently the WAGs are coming, too. There's ten songs or so to investigate. Rock ‘n’ roll travellers. Gidgee wood riffs that throw sparks when sawn. Spinifex verse and dreams readying for the winds to fling them away. Sinewy lead-lines willing to snake and slide as they go. Fills tumble as do dry weeds. No drinks. The roads are closed, by the rains, so nobody is coming from anywhere outside of Ilkurlka, so tourists can only dream - the plans of more intrepid motor-nomads in tatters. And for me/us/them, plenty of things might not work out. It’s the very nature of it, although I like to think - One take-off = One landing. >>>> The cafe’s playlist is running a completely worthy ‘70s soul shakedown. Even Dr. John the Night Tripper stuck his head up. The toastie was $20. There’s even a terminal here just for Gina Rinehart’s worker bees. >>>> It's a round-up gig. One's here, one's there, another is over that way. One's coming in on Friday. Planes, taxis and LandCruisers. The Desert Stars can light a fire in seconds, as if with a glance. Food appears then disappears. Things happen as if it's the first and last time. >>>> Dawn comes early in the east of WA, late in the west of SA. The border goes almost entirely straight from the north to the south. When it was laid out, one group started up north and headed south. The other did it in reverse. Where they met, at surveyor generals corner, where SA turns into the NT, they were only 127 meters out latitudinally. The GNSS station at Ilkurlka wouldnt stand for that today. Last time I was with the band I ate roo tail on that spot. It wasn't their country, but it felt right. This time it is their place. And they can see where they are going. >>>> I met Jay outside a short stay place well into nightfall. He’s just been released from hospital after a pneumonia check-up. We’re very near the Boulder Camp - yells and crys split the relative still. Jay and everyone around notices the Toyota I’m driving, just a white single-cab which might as well be sign-posted in gold - It belongs to one alleged Mr. Baird. Everyone knows him. Jay guides me to find Justin, the bassist and mechanic. We drove out to Kurrawang, a christian community. Only the dogs were home, but via text we found him back in Boulder and thus we met at at the BP on the outskirts. Yep, he’s coming… but in two days time. Plans change. >>>> Aboard the aero-caravan, first in the squalling rain, then within a half hour into clear air, Jay informs me the yellow sand is the Great Victoria Desert. Insanely, straight lines of caucasian contruction continually scribe the sight below, pausing briefly sometimes, but always picking up again. They're always looking for something. Yet throughout it all are places where no person may have ever stood, so much as sleep. >>>> Later on descent I see the junction we took north on day one of the Gravel Road Tour in Sept 2018 ... just fine traces in the sprawl. Tjunttjuntjara lies ahead.
Winter is ( mercifully) coming
North Tamworth, NSW - 25 5 2024
This is my favourite time of the year. Some may complain about the frosty mornings, but Australia just isn’t a cold place. It’s the complete opposite. No matter how chilly things might seem for a couple of months, the deathrays of our summers are only moments away. I feel like doing things in winter, and you can do these things without having to be wreathed in a glaze of sweat. Some events I’m looking forward to are the last leg of the Gravel Road film tour, this time taking in my own town of Tamworth as the kick-off, then moving up to the still flood-recovering Lismore where I attended four fun-filled years at uni. From there it’s to the city I’ll think I’ll never understand, that being Brisbane, then onto the Gold Coast, that place where residential towers are sunken in to the shifting sands. It’s happening this time not only as the film + Q & A followed by a performance from the Desert Stars, but also including my band of 22 years, the blessed Re-mains. The documentary was of course based on the pairing of our eastern-state sensibilities crashing headlong with that of those traditional fellas from the ultra-remote Spinifex Lands of WA. We’ll doubtless have a time of it. After that, I’m flying out to the Ilkurlka Roadhouse to meet up with the Desert Stars again, but this time to begin pre-production of their third album. It’s a four boarding pass mission to get out there - three domestic carrier routes and one charter leg. 1000’s of Ks. I aim to swag it on the red sands and emerge every morning to the frost-encrusted grit meeting the sharp tussocks of pale green. And to the profound quiet. To be hundreds of miles from anywhere is a treat. Once it gets under your fingers, it’s near impossible to scrape it out. It’s at odds with the my apparent polar DNA, but you can’t argue with your own emotions. It’s strange to consider it, but that image above I’ve been looking at since i was born. Some things dont change much. But AI can write a song and you can listen to it, although Sarah Carroll released a hymn this week that a plagarism bot can’t even pretend it dreamt of it. Meta AI told me that I was an original member of the Screaming Jets till I injected the words “steel guitar” into the equation. It then told me who I really was. Man, that was a relief.
Electrical Guitar Part 2
The old shredder - made of so many disparate parts - 1988 to current.
So many guitars… but going right back, I was sort of forced to make them. Or I wanted to. Or something along those lines. My fathers do-it-yourself, depression-era DNA is in there somewhere, but “parts-castering” was something I ended up doing from the outset. Like so many others. It’s funny to think how little I knew as I did this, and now some 40 years along, the instruments I like best are unmodified and put together by reputable and very well-known guitar manufacturers. I tried more seriously in senior high school, building a fairly elaborate but flawed Telecaster meets Alemic type affair. I still have it - it’s ridiculously heavy and fairly “hard” sounding, but the restoration work I carried out after 30 years of neglect was worth it. But that guitar was usurped by the one pictured above. It began life a sky-blue Japanese strat copy with “Session” on the headstock. You can see it like this two posts ago. I bought it from a flatmate in 1988 and immediately began to modify it. Anyone reading this who knows about this kind of malarky can see what became of it, but I’d say the only original parts are the body, the neck plate and screws, the output jack hardware and perhaps one or two of the control pots. The fretboard was scalloped using various sizes of dry-cell batteries wrapped in sandpaper one day when I was bored in my Prahran share-house. It still gets a play, but only ever in the studio and only ever for stunt work. But it had fun. >>> There’s a kind of global community, predominantly male, who believe in the application of the guitar acquistion formula - N + 1 (number of guitars you have, plus one) - and I’ve certainly been guilty. I reckon that urge for me is nearing it’s end as I not only contemplate which ones I’m going to part with, but also which ones I’m not going to bother acquiring. It feels awkward to admit that there’s 34 of them, most within a cat-swing of where I’m sitting. It’s crazy. They’ve taken over my life. When I go out and play, it’s pretty much going to be the same four (give or take a couple) that come with me. There’s the special niche guitars for recording or particular gigs - 12 strings, baritones, nashville tuning, dobro, pedal steel, guitar synths - but I’d say there’s a case to lose around ten of them. Does anyone wanna buy some nice guitars? >>> It’s all about keeping the ball in the air - the instruments, studio toys, musical tools… writing these blogs. Following the muse. It’s whatever is around the next corner and what you make of it when you see it. You pick up the tools and set about doing something.
PFFF - 2024
41 degrees on day 2 @ PFFF 2024
I just played the Port Fairy Folk Festival for the sixth time. The first, in 1997, there was a frost on the ground. The next four times, I know I definitely wore beanies and various jackets. This time, the second day hit 41 deg. >>> Of all those times, only one of them wasn’t at the behest of Sarah Carroll and/or the late Chris Wilson. They’ve given me so much; including me in things that enormously boosted my confidence and experience, such as my inclusion in the backing band for the great US telecaster-twanger, Bill Kirchen. Playing with Chris was always a little like climbing on the back of a rocket… you went for a ride to somewhere… and immediately. Vale Chris - I do love you. Sarah has included me on every recording of hers since the time we met at Woodford in 2003 and who knows how many shows we’ve done now. She’s one of my best friends. One has to learn her songs ‘cause they always contain smart twists and turns. She’s got a killer right arm. In the band this year was Shannon Bourne, another dear friend and simply one of the most unique and talented guitar players I know of. He does things I barely understand. We share many similar threads of humour… usually geek with a quirky twist. We had exactly the same ideas that second day of the festival, lying in the aircon’d motel room till sundown. “Spose we should head in eh?” “Yeah, man.” The rhythm section was Fenn and George, Sarah and Chris’s sons. I have to stop and think what I write now as it could go on and on. I’ve said to my immediate peers, that as good as what I know you are, the Carroll-Wilson brothers will wipe the floor with you. I mean this in complete goodwill, but they amaze me. Of course, it’s written into their DNA - Fenn, the working man’s working man, richly immense in his baritone voice. His guitar chords come out of the ether, of his own design. George, hilarious, mercurial and by turns explosively joyous and deft. He could play a toothbrush and it’d stand up. I mentioned to Sarah a few years ago that it was as if one minute Fenn was clutching a soccer ball and George a toy dalek, and the next they were the greatest rock ‘n’ roll musicians on earth. I say this as not only somebody sharing the stage with them, but also as an audience member at Fenn’s solo shows at the festival, both of which were brooding, sophisticated and uplifting. >>> Later on I listened to Graham Nash. He played “Love the One You’re With”. He also played “Ohio”. It’s something to hear the likes of him, or Judy Collins, talk about buying a vase for Joni Mitchell at an op-shop, then driving back to Laurel Canyon to cook dinner. But that was their life. It makes a change from somebody rambling via the internet. >>> Here’s a little clip Sarah captured as we were prepping for the shows. Pity the dogs wern’t allowed to come. https://fb.watch/qW-YRnU4zp/
Serendipitous Longevity
Jono, Simon and me - Jan 1989, Grafton NSW.
I was sent this pic by a recently reaccquainted long-lost friend who just happened to have it at hand, and even more bizarrely, just happened to still have it. I told her she’d sent me a wonderful thing, as it shows a 20 year old me with two of my dearest friends, all within the first 48 hours of knowing each other. It’s January 1989 and the location is some church hall in Grafton, NSW. We were attending Camp Creative, one of those worthy things kids get sent off to in the holidays, and where the likes of us went to find uses for the wellspring of creativity bubbling up inside us. I remember it perfectly well - getting off the XPT from Sydney, overnight, sitting bleary-eyed in the shuttle bus clutching a clothing bag, a Gallien-Kruger 250ML amp and that Fender strat copy in an awkward bundle, then turning around to see this knoll of tightly curled locks atop a lean, Bonds singlet-clad frame silhouetted in the glare through the back window. This morphed into the 17 year old whiz-kid drummer, Simon Cox from Sydney’s North Shore. “Do you like Led Zeppelin?” “Yeah!” “I’m into Steve Vai and Satriani too.“ “So am I, that stuff is unreal!” You can see where this is headed. >>> Probably only an hour or so later, we would’ve encountered Jono Young direct from the commune of Bundagen, NSW. He was there to do art, but he also had the will to play bass. And away we went. We started a little trio during those first couple of days, subsequently playing the same 6 or 7 tunes a few times over at a steamy Grafton pub. Ostensibly, the three of us were part of a “big band”, the name they give to a jazzy ensemble with about 10 to 20 members. Simon was OK, having been schooled by jazz greats from the outset, but for 12 bar/rock slouches like myself, the array of chords in the average jazz band guitar chart represented a steep education. The saxes and brass got all the solos. The thing is, you came away expanded and more disciplined. You got handed tools you wouldn’t find a use for till years later. >>> But getting back to the point, these two guys changed my life - like my world tripled in size. The people I became associated with, because of them, taught me so much - the worlds of alternative-living, high art and culture, the upper middle-class realms, all manner of literature, film, food - things I honestly doubt I’d’ve ever encountered had I not stumbled across these guys. I’d burn through thousands of words detailing who I was led to and what we ended up doing. >>> Simon and I formed an eclectic little trio with another cohort which we called Anacrusis. We played nimble, rocked-up power-trio instrumentals and did all manner of parties, band comps, random gigs and few recordings. Just great fun. I ended up at university on the back of the connex I made during this time and I know it was there that I finally worked out what I could acutally do - and not do. >>> I still have rich interactions with Jono and Simon. Mr Young is a fine aesthete who is one of most resourcefully creative people I know, hewing practical and beautiful artworks out of found objects and materials. He’s always got some enterprise going on and he remains a loyal friend. Simon and I did a freeform gig a year ago with another musical luminary from those days gone by. By and large, it was the same as it was 35 years ago in that Grafton pub, albeit more informed, with a greater lexicon from which to draw, no doubt, but the intent was identical. With the magic of tech and the www, here’s that recent set of moments - (thank you Jyoti Cessna for this footage and the upload) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpGGZDvZq20 >>> I just love the fact that I still love it. And viva Simon and Jono. X
T C M F 2024
Busker #251 and the Accordion Walker - Peel St, Tamworth, Jan 2024.
It’s all over. It was my 22nd consecutive home town country music jamboree, being a performer at all but one. It was very hot, as usual - the deathly photons casting daytime activities as a glaring din - the night being a period of relief. But this year I was more of an observer than usual. The Re-mains played two shows, the first at the Tamworth Hotel, on day one of the festival was certainly one of our worst in many years, a misstep that caught us off-guard. It could be put down to lack of prep and a reliance on the laws of expectancy, but the fact is, you get that. What it meant was that the next gig would likely be the reciprocal, and this turned out to be the case with our slot at the revamped Nundle Rocks shindig being a cracker of a show, one of our best in years. Everything just flowed. But that was it for us. Gone are the days of fielding 8 to 10 back-to-back dates that blur into incoherence and ringing ears. But it’s very nice to know the goods are still there, if not the impetus. The only other time I played was at Andrew Clermont’s Supper Club, where I sheepishly joined the jazz and blues cats on the first live outing of my 12 string pedal steel. It was curious to see the heads of George Washing Machine, Anthony Walmsley and Robbie Long turn at the sound of my likely misplaced application of that potentially heady instrument, but who knows. It worked in my mind, but those guys know so many chords and manage to place them where there are usually only three. >>>> By and large, for ten straight days, I manned the guitar-repairing/stringing station at Capitol Music, Tamworth’s only music shop (when I was a kid there were 4 or 5). That kept me out of the solar flares and other trouble while allowing me to keep some kinda finger on the festival pulse. It can get interesting and sometimes quite funny in there. >>>> Elsewhere I took in the big council run stage for a few nights, once to see Freddie Bailey rip out some killer solos on his new Oopeg endorsement axe, another time to listen to some authentic black-fella country from the Kimberley region, another time to take in some mainstream country stuff, then finally another time to see/hear who got to take out the big Toyota-sponsored “Star Maker” contest. A cowboy looking chap took the top gong with his slightly intense stage demeanor and a voice that seemed ill-at-ease with his surroundings. He wore a denim shirt emblazoned with various other sponsors names, not the least of them being Wrangler. It struck me at some point during this festival that a lot of what constitutes mainstream “country” - at least to me - comes across like rock music for people who don’t want the oomph of the real thing. A lot of artists use backing-tracks, biggish guitars, rock n roll drums and a style of presentation that says bold and brash, but always, it stays nice and goodly. Hey, good luck to them. It’s better than blowing peoples brains out in some theatre of war, but it’s another planet as far as I’m concerned. I need the visceral. >>>> Down Peel St is the other thing - where dreams are woven and put out to trial in the screeching heat. The contenders range from cashed-up nil-talents with all the graphic artwork, slick merch and powerful PA systems, to the folks with a crappy guitar and the iron-will to busk for funds to actually make it back home. Busker #251 shown above was one of those guys. I rather enjoyed his variable takes on Johnny Cash classics on a guitar I repaired for him a few days earlier. Some other moustachioed and croc-wearing fellas liked him too. The Accordion Walker really wanted in on the action, but, ignored, he ambled off into the camping gear shop, still playing. Earlier, he thumbed an electric piano in Capitol Music while I strung up another guitar. He said he might buy it for the right price. He told me I was sitting in his chair. I have no idea what he meant.
Electrical Guitar Part 1
My Gibson Howard Roberts Fusion, much loved and used.
Trying to pin a date on when something first “grabbed” might seem easy enough, but I tried to figure out when the allure of the electric guitar first set in and couldn’t. Maybe it’s because I was interested in trumpet first and other things arrived by degrees, but I can recall exactly when acoustic guitar hit the radar. It was on a school excursion to the Tamworth Town Hall, a 4 block walk, to check out a performance by Alex Hood. As we sat down I noticed he had a few fretted instruments up on stage. It’s hard to describe what a 6 year old’s thinking is like, but I suppose they appeared magical, just waiting to be played. There was a classical, a banjo, a regular steel string and who knows what else, because it was mostly forgotten when he played the 12 string. I can still hear the song and the sound of that thing like it happened just the other week. I went home and made cardboard guitars for days after that. I wasn’t allowed a real guitar at the time - I kept at the trumpet which ended up ignored due to several years of Christmas-carols, then it was various keyboards - inevitable, cause that’s what Dad played, but I finally scored a real guitar when I was 16. By that time, it’s potential was obvious from years of hearing awful to brilliant rock n roll. And so it went. It’s such a lure. I can assure you there are few things more satisfying then feeling the back of your trousers flap driven by guitar amp sound pressure as you go about playing a great show. There’s simply too much to say about it. >>> One of my favourite players just passed away, Geordie Walker from Killing Joke. He wasn’t one of those mythical pillars like Beck or Page, but he was high on a list I’ve been putting together in my head, a list of players more or less unsung or not so famous. He has several flavours of big-slab-like atmospherics, but this album cut from the mid-80s is distinctive - www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhJ_uPDDFS0 - So, vale to a visionary player from a great band. >>> I came to them very late via Kiwi riff-lords Shihad, a band whose guitar quota could wipe the floor with just about anyone within their idiom. Jon Toogood and Phil Knight veer from shadowy ambiance to completely thermonuclear across their long career - just like this www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWA6YlZHXgs Jon is mondo jubilant while Phil is stoney-faced. What they conjure as a unit is something special. >>> To the late Paul Fox, once of the Ruts, a lesser known London post-punk act that fused many elements, much like the Clash. I love the revved-up electric styling on this noir-punk/rock cut from the seminal 1979 album, The Crack - www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWA6YlZHXgs - check out that diminished-flavoured solo. Just beautiful. >>> Then there’s Joni Mitchell, a legendary singer-songwriter to be sure, but her guitar playing has always got to me. She frequently hooked her acoustic guitar into various FX to bend things this way and that, but she also played electric from time to time. Her alternate tunings and rhythm approach are entirely unique and almost impossible to cop. Among the worlds best. She doesn’t really play anymore, preferring to paint, having been long discouraged by the music industry. She’s also suffered a stroke. Her intricate playing is all over her catalogue, but I chose this one - www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcTDoi9JQiY >>> I’m writing this as I try to conjure up a slightly newer way of going about playing guitar and steel… new setups and toys, less of this, more of that. I’ve just made this Part 1.
Read more about Geordie Walker >>> Read more about Paul Fox >>> Read more about Joni Mitchell, the guitar player
Summer Bloody Solstice
Tamworth, NSW - 18 Dec 2023
I’ve never enjoyed this time of year. It’s like an enemy. When I was a kid in the dying days of the school year, the classroom windows would all be open, ceiling fans would beat the soupy air, wasps would fly in and terrorise while the sweat from my left hand would stop the Bic ball-point from copying out the damn spelling list. It was the same at home, trying to do anything other than swimming progressed through a veil of sweat. But a hot day back in the 1970s was 36 deg C. Any more than that was an anomaly. Then in 1982 I’ll never forget a Christmas spent with our then extended family up in Northern NSW as the temperature climbed up to 42. I remember that figure exactly. The cars had no air-con and ran perilously close to overheating the entire time. I recall standing in a field of giant sunflowers wondering why they weren’t dead. In Tamworth at least, katabatic winds would arrive with the night and let you sleep. Then it would happen all over again. The last four years of the La Nina cycle have been a blessing, but that’s over now. It keeps me inside, away from the death-rays, but I find the whole thing obstructive for allowing anything creative or inspirational to flow. It requires some kind of strategy or nothing comes of it. Earlier today I was putting the finishing touches on a new pedal board I’ve been building especially for pedal steel, but it was a fight as the sweat kept pooling on the inside of my glasses. I got that one out of the way, but the music part will have to wait. I’ve been watching endless Scandi-noir TV and I’m envious of their muted light, their cloud cover and an entirely different kind of stark beauty. The vast Pilliga fires of the last few days account for the ashen view of Tamworth. Nonetheless, as I write this, the change has come after a fortnight of radiation and haze - rain is falling and the fires will die for now. Broken Hill on Saturday night… Adelaide the day after. Merry Christmas >>> re-mains.bandcamp.com/track/is-it-ever-gonna-rain
Yuwoah!
The Desert Stars backstage @ The Picadilly Cinema, Nth Adelaide, SA - photo by Tristan Pemberton
The Desert Stars hail from this location - but this is an inadequate way of indicating such origins. Being Spinifex men and decendants of those who fled the Maralinga atomic testing program, their perspectives on home, life and culture have little, if anything, to do with mainstream Australia. Led by the enigmatic Jay Minning, the band plays authentic ‘Strayan-tinged rock ‘n’ roll, both in and out of their Pitjantjatjara language. Jay pens the songs and lays down rhythm guitar with proper swing. Bassist Justin Currie, the straight man, pegs it to the earth. Ashley Franks drums restlessly, fills tumbling out. Derek Coleman seems to beam in from elsewhere, guitar solos bent out and back into shape, weaving through the fray. I really enjoy the lack of artifice in their performance. There’s no pastiche. Their influences come directly from various cassettes and glimpses of TV that made it to the remoteness. I produced their most recent album, Mungangka Ngaranyi? at Wingellina, 500km north of their home, Tjuntjuntjara. What an experience that was. I particularly love the anthem, Ananguku, a song that proclaims all lands in this country as Aboriginal land. We had a day off in Melbourne, so I took them on a little tour. They were bemused by the Royal Exhibition Building and thought the surrounding parklands looked like England. We wandered down Swanston St (later recognised by Jay, despite the now abundant trees, as the location for the “It’s a Long Way to the Top” video) then on to Flinders St Station and the river. The previous day, on the freeway to Castlemaine, the creeks, gullies and ancient water-worn valleys drew the most comment. By the Yarra, Jay spoke of how the river comes from the hills and wanted to know where they were. But ultimately, the main agenda was to see the MCG. Not much was said, but I shot a few pics as they took in the bronzed effigies to heroes of the game. The AFL is something of ours that permeated their culture to the core. The next day they told me it was one of the highlights of their lives. The performances were all in support of Gravel Road, a film my band, The Re-mains, appear in as tour managers/facilitators. We traipsed over 10,000km through the wilds of WA with the Desert Stars in 2018, the leg to Broome being captured by my old friend Tristan Pemberton as he sought to find a story from out of the Spinifex lands. Another film could’ve easily been born out of the leg back to Kalgoorlie, but that will have to live in our collective memories. It’s quite the experience. You receive clarity on the gulf between caucasian Australia and Indigenous people. The failure of the recent referendum makes sense. When you don’t know, maybe one day you’ll find out. I thank Fiona Pemberton for getting me out to staff Ilkurlka in 2012. That’s where all this really took off for me. I thank Ian Baird and Brad Kelly. I thank the DS for making me welcome, teaching me things I couldn’t learn any other way. And I thank the Re-mains for working so hard on the tour 5 years back.
“Yuwa” means 'the culturally correct way of behaving'. “Yuwoah” is like saying 'I absolutely agree'. The saga goes on.
Goodbye
One side of my departed JEM S10 pedal steel case.
The strangest thing has happened - I’ve sold a guitar. Not just any guitar, but the JEM pedal steel I bought from Instrumental As Anything in Lismore over 20 years ago. I restored it, changed it’s visage from sky blue to Ford engine black and subsequently played it on everything that called for an E9 steel guitar - that’d be hundreds of gigs and countless sessions, including this one time JJJ regular that I heard on a playlist recently - www.youtube.com/watch?v=07HdnWNrP8I I deployed it on every Re-mains album except for the first EP, this track being a particular fave - https://re-mains.bandcamp.com/track/is-it-ever-gonna-rain - and more recently as a primary atmosphere generator on Of Stars and Stones - open.spotify.com/album/4CPQ5TnhCuEvVK5TLLvPgE - The JEM pedal steel is one of what I believe was only a run of 20 to 30 instruments completely scratch-built by Mr. Hoedown himself, John Minson. John was one of the main progenitors of the Tamworth Country Music Festival. He made the castings, did the machining, the design - everything. John’s wife embossed the leather that wrapped around the end-plates. Their son Lawrie is one of the few old school Tamworth musicians who still live and work out of the so-called capitol. I considered telling him about this sale but I feared it might have me change my mind. In the previous journal entry I mentioned the universal 12-string steel I’ve just acquired. After a bit of time on it’s deck, literally, I really wish I’d found one years ago - it makes so much more sense to my way of thinking. Aside from that, I have to admit there’s a secondary agenda in all this. It’s an attempt to divest from the disease of guitar ownership. It’s an ailment that can be expressed as a formula - n+1 - the number of guitars one has, plus one. Then reapply the formula. It seems a bit sad, but I have to get rid of that emotion. You just can’t take it all with you. And I know it’s going to a good place. Here’s another cut I used it on. I feel it defines it’s sound. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkoE4s2aGpM
Universal 12
My recently acquired Carter Universal 12 string pedal steel guitar
I was recently sent a Q & A session online that is being used in the promotion of a boutique festival the Re-mains are playing on the 25th of November. I found the process both informative and consolidating. A selection of the responses I made, edited, sans questions, are going to make up this journal entry. I’d like to thank Adam Barbuto, the curator of “Not Quite a Muster”, for trying this respectful method of promotion. The passion that some people still have for this branch of the arts is heartening. Here goes >>>> I loathe musical theatre. It was Dad who handed down the unwanted greatest hits LPs and from those I was unwittingly introduced to rock n roll. >>>> I'm just about to acquire a universal 12 string pedal steel – a significant step onward. I think it's going to send me in a new direction. >>>> I rate Joni Mitchell as one of the great guitarists. Anything that sidesteps the conventional wisdom interests me. I also came to love indie and alt players too, chiefly the way they eschew virtuosity for guts and soul. But, I do believe our era is drawing to a close. Something new is beginning to dominate. It's taking form. >>>> The Re-mains might have a reputation as a premiere “country-rock” act, but I feel that comes with a risk of being confused with other acts that we have little in common with. I think we really care about being authentic and being honest about our music. This makes us somewhat strange among the some of the current country-rock acts from the urban centres and others focused on “Americana” and so forth. >>>> I feel the really new and progressive music is increasingly on the outer reaches, more so than ever before and it’s tricky to put a finger on. >>>> I would personally love to see music events have less to do with the booze industry and more to do with art and culture events... just like this one were promoting. >>>> I think I would've tried to be more confident and get stuck into it a lot sooner. I would liked to have told myself that playing music I formulated myself and in cahoots with others would have value and would mean things to people. The beauty of being a musician is that unlike many other pursuits, so long as you have your basic health and a reasonable state of mind, you just get more and nuanced and capable. >>>> An all out riot erupted for reasons barely anyone could understand. The bush was on fire all around. Our bus window was smashed and quite a few nerves were seriously rattled. But we went on after that, driving the brake-less bus back 700 km and continuing in a rental, all the way to Broome and back. >>>> I think they are anti-music. The people that judge and “mentor” those shebangs largely came up in a more organic way and I feel they should be ashamed of what they are doing. It's just a construct by TV producers and unfortunately, too many people don't even realise this or even care. >>>> I pretty much stay away from rock n roll when I'm not actually doing it. I think about it instead.
Natural Tech
The lower levels of St. Valentines Peak, NW Tasmania
For the last week I’ve been wrangling a new music production system on a new laptop, with a new interface. It’s been about 14 years since my first computer-based recording set-up was fired up (yes, still a luddite) and here I am with the latest version of the same platform. Of course, the people that design this stuff have to do something for their keep and naturally, lots of things have been "changed”. I think some of it is for the better, but I’m still finding that out. Or not. I think the new version is doing a number of things automatically… things that I used to have to do as a decision to be made. I’m wondering what would happen if AI got involved. Perhaps it HAS. A soil scientist friend of mine told me years ago that we know less about the way humus - the organic component of soil - interacts with plant life, and in turn, interacts with us, than what we do about the cosmos. I can believe it. It’s looking in and looking out, but to degree that simply keeps on stretching the boundaries. What most of us are doing is somewhere in the middle, including my tech-wrangling. Nothing so extreme. It sure hasn’t much to do with creativity, no matter how hard the sell is by music tech companies. Everybody wrangles tech. It’s part of life. I’m back home now but I miss where I’ve just been. The natural world cannot be argued with nor compromised. It's something that will continue to inform us, whether we like it or not. The photo above takes me to thoughts of networks, wiring, communications and synapses. But that’s humus at work. Thanks for that thought, Mr Rob Banks.