Inland Sea was recorded between 2006 and 2009, interrupted by the various events described. These began with original band member Leigh Ivin leaving the band, after some initial pre-production sessions at the home of Christian Pyle, our producer, which also houses his archaic yet extremely functional and in fact sensationally inspiring studio. The fact that Leigh has now returned to the band and is touring with us brings events to a full circle. But I diverge.
His departure meant we had to enlist new members. Another founding member, Shaun Butcher, aka Uncle Burnin Love the banjo kid, had already fled (and was later to return) and been replaced by Phil Daniel, who added keyboards and some mandolin to the band’s musical arsenal. We replaced Ivin with Dave Ramsey on guitar (but no pedal steel) and set off on what was to be our most ambitious tour yet – a circumnavigation of the country.
We’d driven for four days, through Western Queensland and the Northern Territory, and had just left isolated Tennant Creek, headed for Katherine to stay at a friend’s station, due to play in Darwin the following evening. The Territory is renowned for its driving dangers – giant kangaroos roam the verges, as well as emu, pigs, goats and enormous wedge-tailed eagles, feeding on roadkill, which are liable to erupt from the verge if disturbed and smash through windscreens if they dont get altitude fast. The massive cattle stations are unfenced, sprawling across the highways. The Territory was founded by cattle barons, and they are the law – motorists are the intruders.
Just on dusk, we rounded a corner and were confronted by a huge steer, about the size of a medium-shouldered moose, ambling across the road. We had a trailer on the back and were loaded down with gear and five musicians. There was nowhere to go. Grant Bedford, the drummer was driving and he did the only thing he could, steering straight for the beast. Attempting to swerve would have been fatal, potentially flipping the van. As it was the front of the vehicle was obliterated by the exploding animal, covering us in manure and gore, smashing the steering column, legs, pelvis and stomachs of Dave and Grant in the front seats. Tom, Phil and I in the back were unharmed. We careered off the road and miraculously in between two enormous clumps of boulders – a foot to either side and we’d all be dead. That ended the tour, put Grant and Dave in hospital for six months apiece and started a run of bad luck with vehicles, gigs and associated phenomena that became known as The Curse.
In 2008 The Curse was exorcised on our first Canadian tour, in which the Chevy Van we bought, Curtis, proved an indestructible chariot, taking us all over Canada to fortune and glory. We toured again in 2009, amassing a total of 12 festivals and around 100 shows in bars, concert halls and tiny cafes. Finally, in 2009 we were able to complete the recording we’d started, as we’d been the recipients of an Australian Export Development Marketing Grant, which enabled us to pay Christian Pyle for making the record.
We’d already completed half of it, and those songs were to form the Canadian version of ‘Inland Sea’, which refers to the mythical body of water that early explorers supposed lay at the centre of our vast continent and was a metaphor for the fabled country rock and roll glory we seek. The Australian version was composed of the completed product, 15 songs in all – and ‘Courage … and Shuffle the Cards’, our 2011 release, consists of those songs that were completed – recorded, overdubbed and mastered – after our 2009 Canadian tour, supplemented by a batch of live recordings featuring the pedal steel and electric guitars of Leigh Ivin – thus all three releases leapfrog each other to replicate the full circle that the band has gone through.
In that period, Shaun Butcher, aka Uncle Burnin Love has twice left the band, the second time just before this tour, and beat a bout of bowel cancer. Sadly, his signature banjo mastery is absent from the sound of country rock and roll on this tour, but Ivin’s majestic steel and guitar work compensates for it amply. here’s a great review, written by Matt Grunland for Vancouver’s
www.earshot-online.com

Butcher, Ivin and myself formed the band in 2002, by email. I was in London, working as a journalist, Butcher in rural Bentleigh raising a family, Ivin in Sydney working as a sound engineer and rock and roll guitarist. We all had pasts in the gritty Australian rock scene, Butcher as guitarist for the notorious grunge merchants Nunbait, who toured with Nirvana, Ivin in such hard rock acts as The Thermals, myself in weird art-punk outfits such as The Bush Punk Cowboys. We all wanted to explore countrified music and threw up our electric guitars for acoustics and harmonicas, banjo and pedal steel, wrote a pile of appropriate songs and hit the road with a feral rhythm section snatched from Nimbin, Australia’s mystical hippy hamlet. The name The Re-Mains appeared in a notebook of mine at some time, I don’t remember writing it, and seemed appropriately enigmatic and portentious. It has certainly become fitting, after we’ve had more line-up changes, mishaps and melees than the Melbourne Hit Man’s Association. It was modifed with a hyphen after I received an email from Barry Tashian, frontman of the original Boston Remains who toured with the Beatles in the Sixties. The email was questioning our intentions in hijacking that moniker. I replied saying we hadn’t heard of the originals when we formed the band and adopted the hyphen immediately, promising to bill ourselves as The Australian Re-mains if we ever toured the US. Tashian (pronounced rhyming with passion), gave us his blessing after listening to a CD I sent him on which a version of Gram Parson’s Sin City was emblazoned. Tashian revealed that he’d played on the album, ‘Grievious Angel’  that the alt-country avatar had released that song on, alongside Parsons and Emmylou Harris. He liked our version and declared that we could continue to use the name. Blessed by country rock and roll royalty, one point removed from the King himself.
Country rock and roll, the brand we used to describe our music, also applies to the style of touring that The Re-mains adopted from the outset. This was to tour in the country, playing small towns and wierd venues in places exactly like Olds, as well as playing big festivals and major cities. This gives us our authentic edge, and makes us the genuine article, in our humble opinions. We have lived it to the letter in Australia for nearly ten years, playing every rodeo, outback pub, seedy city dive, festival and fiasco in the country. We’ve been continuing that fine tradition in Canada, and have played just about every venue between Vancouver and Montreal on our three Canadian tours. It’s reflected in the songs we’ve written about Canadian towns, including a new one I’m writing called ‘Back to Big River’. I’m always writing new songs about the worlds we encounter, its part of the artistic impulse that drives me to keep galvanising this band into action.

Matt