Gigs at the Tamworth Country Music Festival, 2012 - NEWS

We’ve got four shows at the Courthouse and one on the Council’s Peel St stage, altogether a riproaring week for country rock and roll devotees, with Den hanrahan across the road at the Albert. Regrettably, most of our usual compatriots – the Junes, the Dust Radio Band, the Dennis Boys, are noticeable by their absence this year, reflecting the poor judgement of Tamworth publicans in preferring endless covers bands playing Copperhead Road to the true pulse of fearless original music – the stuff that keeps music alive. Pay heed to the dwindling crowds, oh publicans, and learn something.

Jan 25th, The Courthouse Front Bar, 6.30pm

Jan 26th, The Courthouse Front Bar, 9.30pm

Jan 27th, The Courthouse Front Bar, 6.30pm

Jan 28th, The Courthouse Front Bar, 9.30pm

and the Council Peel St stage, Jan 27, 2pm

The genesis of ‘Courage … and Shuffle the Cards’, released in Canada, 2011 - NEWS

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founding member, Shaun Butcher, aka Uncle Burnin Love the banjo kid, had already fled (and was later to return) and been replaced by Phil Daniel, who added keyboards and some mandolin to the band’s musical arsenal.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.

The Emu has landed - NEWS

We’re in Calgary. Couple of days rehearsal before an avalanche of shows and driving across the West begins.

Up ahead … - NEWS

Greetings brethren, herein a minor newsletter pertaining to The Re-Mains upcoming events.

This Saturday night the 7^th we’re at the Lennox Point Hotel, scene of numerous triumphs and minor debacles over the years, this lineup featuring Frisky, UBL, Sideshow and CP Pyledriver. At some point in the next few weeks we’re going to be recording with CP out at Goonengerry again, to make up the 2011 Canadian touring album.

May 14^th I’m scooting out to Broken Hill and beyond to rendezvous with the Lonely Horse Band, well actually Hull, to play the White Cliffs Festival. Tonchi Mcintosh being otherwise busy somewhere suitably outback we’ll reprise some of the songs from our 2008 album made in situ, plus various other Lonely Horse Band songs about remote outback towns.

The following week I play some joint in Mudgee with Den Hanrahan (aka Hank Denfield) on our ‘Solo Fight All Country Rock And Roll Wants To See Tour’, which then takes in Mazstock on May 21 at the Lismore Italo Club, where the Re-Mains are also playing on a bill with Kim Salmon, the New Christs, Leadfinger and other local luminaries of the lubricious and laical Australian rock scene. That line-up will comprise Leigh Ivin on pedal steel and electric guitar, preparing for his first Canadian tour, as well as a couple of extremely winsome hula-hoop dancers, Captain Freedom on harmonica and Filthy Dave Ranken on trombone and expletives. And on the Sunday Hank plays the afternoon recovery show at the Balcony Bash, which will also feature Butter Your Buns, the Live Karaoke Inhuman Jukebox Ensemble. Afterwards Hank and I head south to play the Sando, Newtown on Wednesday 25^th, the Front Café in Canberra on the 26^th, Tattersalls Pub in Tocumwal on the 27^th, the Piping Hot Chicken Shop in Oceangrove, with the impossibly effervescent Sarah Carroll, on the 28^th and on Sunday arvo the 29^th, The Retreat in Brunswick. On this tour Hank and I will battle it out with onstage duets on our favourite songs and in the van with our ever-enlarging road-warrior yarns.

On Thursday 4^th June we play the SCU Bar, a specially arranged extravaganza with hay bales and other assorted paraphernalia to indicate that we are a country rock and roll band, and our last show is a fund-raiser – for us – to go some way toward offsetting our prodigious expenses in Canada. Date uncertain as yet, probably late June before our flights in time for a 30^th June show in Nanton, Alberta.

Related upcoming shows - NEWS

May 14 – The Lonely Horse Band, White Cliffs Hotel

May 19 – Mick Daley and Den Hanrahan, Mudgee

May 22 – Mick Daley and Den Hanrahan, Italo Club Balcony Bash, Lismore

May 25 – Mick Daley and Den Hanrahan, The Sando, Newtown

May 26 – Mick Daley and Den Hanrahan, The Front Cafe, Canberra

May 28 – Mick Daley and Den Hanrahan, The Piping Hot Chicken Shop, Oceangrove

May 29 – Mick Daley and Den Hanrahan, The Retreat, Brunswick

We’re back from Canada

Shows upcoming -

Sat Oct 1st – Ballina Country Music Festival – at the Henry Rous Hotel,  5-7pm

Sun Oct 2nd – Ballina CMF – at the Shaws Bay Hotel, 5.30 -8pm

Fri, Nov 11 – Supporting X and the Ups and Downs , at Lennox Pt Hotel

Sat, Nov 12 – Supporting the Huxton Creepers, at the Byron Bay Brewery

Fri, Dec 30 – Woodford Festival – Blues Stage, 3.50pm

Sun, Jan 1st 2012, Woodford Festival, Blues Stage, 6.15pm