Winter update or Bob Dylan’s fifteen thousandth reboot - NEWS
Winter has not been a feature of my life for some years, in fact almost since the inception of The Re-mains we’ve found cause to be largely absent from it, whether in the Northern Territory, far north Queensland or Canada. But this year, as the band takes a hiatus from touring and I’m at Uni, here we are. Freezing…..
We’ve launched the new album, Inland Sea in Maitland, Sydney, Yamba and Federal and next weekend, in Lennox Head and Nymboida. It’s selling well and getting radio play at various places…..
The band is an eclectic beast, as always. With Shaun in semi-retirement, Tom Jones wintering in Darwin, Al Fisk tinkering in Sydney, CP (Christian Pyle) reprising his role on guitar and Darren Bridge the new bassplayer, it’s all new sets and relocating the sound…..
Last weekend we played Lennox Head, Nymboida and a party near Alstonville. The band was in furious form and still recovering.
Saturday night I’m playing solo at the Tatts in Lismore, opening for a band called the Little Stevies who are apparently making waves in the folk scene.
In August I’m going south, to Goologong, where my mate Balfe aka Mush aka Craig Lawler (see his review of Inland Sea) and his beau, Josephine live, to rendezvous with the Lonely Horse Band for a week of songwriting on the ever contentious and lively issue of bushrangers, of which there are the ghosts and legacy of plenty in that region.
August sees The Thoughtful Hussars return into action on the 26th, charging like the Light Brigade into the Gollan Hotel, where, supported by Captain Freedom, we’ll be playing a few new tunes and anticipating Dylanfest with a few run-throughs.
On the 28th, The Re-Mains play in Brissie at The Old Museum, a venerable venue managed by the manager of Bang Bang Boss Kelly, a banjo-swinging mob from that part of the world who are launching an album of their own.
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In September a long awaited return to Darwin looks likely, with the return of Leigh Ivin to the band. We’ve been in discussion for a while about the possibility of recording some of the vast back catalogue of unrecorded country rock and roll classics (well, they’re classic to us – Country Rock and Roll is Number One, Coalface Annie, Sharks, Return to Lizard County, Beef Week Queen, Same Road … the list is exhaustive), and playing some reunion shows, culminating in a short stint at Tamworth Country Music Festival next year. A Darwin/NT run will be the first of these – looks like an interesting time.
In October I’m playing Dylanfest at Coraki Hotel. Part of Darren Bridge’s growing musical empire, Dylanfest will be a celebration of the works of the great man (Dylan, not Bridge) by a variety of local and visiting outfits including Mick Hart, the man whose constant circumnavigations of the globe resemble those of Bob himself – and Hart did in fact support Dylan on one European leg of his never-ending tour a few years back…..
The band I’m putting together for this festival will be known as The Antiquarian Filibuster and will feature the aforesaid impresario Darren Bridge on bass guitar, and on loan from Invisible Friend, Brendan Drinkwater on drums and Michael ‘Whitey’ White on electric piano and organ. ….
I’m stoked to have this all-star lineup, as I’m really quite chuffed to be able to play a full set of Dylan songs at a proper festival. Dylan was personally responsible for lodging in my head the notion that I too, could write surreal and stream-of-consciousness narratives, whack a guitar and tootle on a harmonica and get paid for it and I’m returning the favour with renditions of Idiot Wind, Tangled Up in Blue, Jokerman, Sweetheart Like You, Just Like A Woman, I Want You, Lay Lady Lay, Mozambique, Oh Sister and possibly Series of Dreams…..
This will be part of a busy month in which I am also supposed to be completing my thesis for Honours in Media. At the start of the month I’m playing Gibbostock in Nundle, a celebration of another great and strange man, Gibbo. That’s on the 2nd. These events are usually recreations of Nymagee Outback Music Festival in miniature, only with freezing cold instead of blinding heat as the central theme…..
ON the 24th The Re-Mains, or a version of the band, will be playing Big Sunday at Tyalgum, in cahoots with Gleny Rae Virus and Den Hanrahan. These shows will also possibly feature the return of Leigh Ivin…..
In November we’re on the bill of a small festival in Nymboida, again at the Coaching Station, owned by one Russell Crowe. His Museum of Interesting Things, on the site of this venerable building, holds a number of interesting props from such movies as Gladiator, Romper Stomper and Robin Hood, not to mention some of Johnny Cash’s gold records…..
Later that month we’re also part of a bill at a big charity do at Lismore Turf Club at which The Hoodoo Gurus are allegedly also appearing.
Stay tuned for more CRnR action.
Inland Sea Discovered - NEWS
In cahoots with our producer and sometime guitar-slinger Christian ‘Scales are for Fish’ Pyle (aka C.P.), we’ve just mastered 13 tracks for the long-awaited, much-belated and very nearly evaporated new album, Inland Sea.
It’s been three years since Love’s Last Stand, also produced by CP, was released, and in the interim Leigh Ivin left the band, Dave Ramsey joined it and was promptly almost killed by an errant outback cow, Grant Bedford also retired, hurt, and a string of other great players had a crack at country rock and roll. We toured Canada twice, played over 200 shows in both countries and released an earlier, Canadian version of Inland Sea there. But here, finally, is a collection of songs, some old now, some written in Canada, Lismore and various other timeless states.
It’s got a different vibe to the other records, there are a lot of players’ signature sounds on it – from Phil Daniel’s keys and occasional banjo, Bryson Mullholland’s eerie throat and Hammond flourishes, Scotty Dog Bennett’s righteous drum pounding, CP’s menacing guitar lines, Grant Bedford’s pre-smash drumming and Tom Jones Junior’s post-Stax bass barrages to the unmistakeable imprint of original country rock and roll banjo pioneer Shaun ‘Uncle Burnin’ Love’ Butcher’s gittar and banjo ministrations.
Inland Sea refers to the mythical body of water deep in the interior to which our convict ancestors fled, convinced that there they’d find wealth, rum and happiness – not an entirely different set of delusions to the modern country rock and roll model.
As such the songs are mostly road narratives sweated out in semi-delerium – Othello’s P-76, a haunted dirge in the wake of John Howard’s ugly reign, or This Could Be Anywhere, a ballad for the lost, somewhere in the boundless depths of Canada, or is it Grafton, NSW? Pumulwuy is the story of Australia’s indigenous Che Guevara, concerning the black leader who successfully fought the British for 15 years before treachery and lesser men brought him down. 2nd Century plots a trans-continental love affair while Left on King laments the glory days of inner-city rock. Praise Be to the Rooster follows the fallen into hallucinatory hell in a wintry rural desolation. Copper City Motel is a rock and roll explosion in the grand tradition of Gold Wig and Bye Bye Byron Bay. The dark underbelly of Nimbin rolls, bloated, to the surface in Who Shot Johnny D? and finally, we cheer up in Darn Tootin’ in Saskatchewan. There’s more riotous carry-on in Tequila and Methadone, Lismore’s white-trash anthem, and a cheery litany of country-style loss and regret in Woke Up Sad, while Your Reward stomps on iridescent adolescents and Things I Remember, Things I Forget toasts the joy of selective amnesia.
I love it. CP’s knack for unique sounds and textures has separated it from previous recordings but kept it unmistakeably in country rock and roll territory. There’s enough banjo and bare-knuckle guitar here to soothe the savage beast, but more space and time.
The prodigious procession of players created some confusion and chaos in their wake but ultimately, contributed to a fecund and edgy record. It’s dark and spooky but often sublime.
We’re releasing it at a number of venues across the country, in a more leisurely and protracted series of tours than the usual Re-Mains road onslaughts. CP is coming on the road with us for extra grunt and cynicism.
The first of these is on May 22nd at The Grand Junction Hotel in Maitland, just about our favourite pub in Australia. Home to rock-pigs, cowgirls, bullshitters, serial twitters, ladies choirs, truckies, bikers and seldom-pikers, this is one of the last bastions of the old school, low maintenance, high fidelity country rock and roll lifestyle. Room 19 is a portal into another dimension and many have taken it.
Sunday May 23 we revisit a Sydney institution – the Botany View Hotel. Our shows here are always packed, stacked and never lacking incident.
June 18 is our North Coast launch at Federal Hall. A beautiful building across the road from my old house, this place was overflowing into the street and down the road last time we played here – mind you, Tex Perkins was also on the bill. CP’s band is playing with us, as well as Doug Lord with Till The Cops Come – probably a self-fulfilling prophecy.
On the 19th we roll down to Yamba to play the footy club there. Our mate Dave always puts on an unholy bash.
Melbourne, Bourke, Cobar and Nymagee dates are in the offing, as well as a possible jaunt to Darwin, where we haven’t been since the Meat Tray incident of 2007.
Pretty soon Inland Sea is going to be available for order from the website or iTunes, just as soon as we get it set up. Meanwhile we hope you’ll turn up to shows and buy one offstage, where Tom Jones will be happy to sign it in exchange for beer.
Yackandandah - NEWS
By the time you read this we’ll be soaring overhead to Yackandandah Folk Festival. Where the hell is Yackandandah? About 40 klicks from Albury, where I grew up. I used to ride my pushy out there when I didn’t feel like fighting the Leaney Lads down at the park.
A folk festival? Well, yeah, it’s not often we get asked to play them, we’re considered too rock’n’roll, but they must have liked the idea of banjo and bushranger ballads. So Tom Jones is jetting in from Darwin, Al from Sydney, while Uncle Burnin’ Love and I hotfoot it from the Gold Coast. He’s just back from a huge grunge revival festival in Sydney, where his old band, Nunbait played alongside such dirty rock outfits as The Meanies, The Hard Ons, The Hellmen and the Celibate Rifles.
So anyway, we’ll be hooking up with Truckstop Honeymoon, from New Orleans, good friends who we’ve played with a number of times, and Lucie Thorne, in Yackandandah. Good word isn’t it? Yack-an-dan-dah. Rolls off the tongue beautifully.
Railway Club - NEWS
Well here we are at the famous Railway Club in Vancouver, where a model train rolls above and all around the club all night. A raucous show, with support act Joey Only and the Outlaw Band uploading a big, bouncy crowd who are all confirmed country rock and roll addicts as of now.
In particular a large chap named Steve, a plumber by profession, who had this tale to tell;
He was at Jericho Beach, near Vancouver last summer, with his girlfriend. They went out for a swim, and returned to the beach, which was deserted. On a rock just by their towels and clothes, was a cd, which proved to be The Re-Mains compilation. There was nobody in sight. Steve duly took the cd and played it at home. It is now on high rotation on his ipod and he knew the words to all the songs on it, though as he got drunker on Red Truck Ale his diction became less articulate.
One of the bargirls was from Perth, which explained why she sounded like a Kiwi. She was last seen leaping hysterically to ‘Folksinger Blues’.
We’re soon to take possession of the Canadian version of our new album ‘Inland Sea’, impeccably recorded out at Christian Pyle’s Lot 64 studios. If last night is anything to go by, they oughta sell by the truckload over here.
February road trip - NEWS
Last night in the capital we played the tiny Phoenix Bar with Hank Denfield, aka Den Hanrahan the singin’ shearer, not to be confused with Jeff Gibson the other singin’ shearer. Uncle Burnin’ Love and Sasquatch Elliott had opted, for family and finance reasons, to fly down and meet us in Melbourne on Friday, thus avoiding the onerous three day drive and potential vehicular mishaps such as have been known to occur on this dark and lonely stretch.
Hank hasn’t played with us in a coupla years but still managed to reach into the abyss and rip out a barrage of fine steel and gittar lines to prettify up such ballads, dirges, epics and emetics as we threw at him.
At halftime the Shake Your Money Maker crew of Adam Bell, Vanessa Barbay and Rob CanCan edificated us with some exquisite psychobilly, recalling phantom yores of that dusky reverb clang when it was all over the radio.
A small but lusty mob of onlookers drank pints, cheered and even danced in the miniscule recreation area front of stage and the Reverend Al Fisk’s mum was on hand to see her son’s fifth show with the band.
Today we drive south to Melbourne, just Jones and I. Into the inferno lands.
We probably won’t play the Phoenix Bar again. like many venues in this philistine country, it’s decided bands are making too much money off their backs, making punters slake thirsts at their expense or some who-how, and have cut the dividends they’re prepared to pay. That’s what kept us away from Tamworth this year, and that’s what will kill good original music in this country. Unless people are prepared to pay for what they want, you’ll just get the desperate and the covers of those who got through in the years before the crut and the gombeen took over for ever.
