Each Saturday at 10.45pm (AEST), Bob Howe (a.k.a. Big Bob from Bondi) chats with John Nutting on ABC Radio to deliver the Saturday Night Country Gig Guide, relayed across 60 stations nationally, plus the world via the Web and Radio Australia…
Memories of days gone by…
It was the early seventies and it seemed like SLIM DUSTY and REG LINDSAY were the twin peaks of Australian country music. Slim of course, favoured the traditional path and in doing so, took the bush ballad style to an all-time high. Reg on the other hand, while by no means ignoring that same heritage, pursued a more modern sound which was influenced by the American style of country that was emanating from Nashville at the time. He was one of our first (perhaps the first) to record an album utilising their best players at the R.C.A. Studios, released as ‘Reg Lindsay in Nashville’ and produced by ex-pat musical giant Bill Walker. The sad passing of Reg Lindsay has reminded us that although he was highly-regarded overseas, he ultimately chose to concentrate on his career in Australia.
From a technological point-of-view, our local recording scene was just coming into its own and by the mid-seventies was starting to rival the overseas facilities. Pat Aulton had produced Reg’s biggest hit Armstrong (1971) at Festival Records in Pyrmont, most likely on a four-track tape recorder. In 1974 the company upgraded their studio and now boasted a 24-track facility with the latest English-made Neve mixing console. Studio A was so advanced at that time that it attracted many visiting overseas stars and gained a world-class reputation. It would have been inconceivable back then to imagine that one day recordings would be made on small computers and that a software company (Universal Audio) would sell a computer-based version of the mighty Neve desk at a tiny fraction of the original price!
On 25th May 1976, producer Martin Erdman was at the controls at Studio A, and his task was to record some tracks for a new Reg Lindsay album…songs that would sit alongside four recordings left over from the previous Nashville album. Pee Wee Clark from Reg’s band was there on pedal steel, along session men Milton Saunders on piano and from the jazz-rock fusion band Crossfire, Greg Lyon on bass, and Doug Gallacher on drums. 
For reasons that are lost in history, there was no guitar player and at the last minute, someone thought of the fresh-faced teenager who worked in the PR office around the other side of the building. but who always seemed more interested in what was going on in the studio. That dear reader, was how I got called to play my first professional studio session. When it came time to record Reg’s composition Johnny Foster (The Old-Time Travellin’ Showman), I played the finger-picking part on my Japanese ‘imitation’ guitar. This was back when ‘copy’ guitars looked good but sounded average. Reg said,
“…Here, try this one…”
as he handed me his black 1938 Gibson acoustic to play! The album was released as The Travelin’ Man in August of 1976 and featured a very elaborate cover (for country music at the time) with a leather-look printed background and an insert sleeve with photos of Reg’s career to date. I know he was proud that the local tracks did indeed match up to the overseas recordings.
In this age of mobile phones and the internet, it is hard to imagine how popular Citizen’s Band Radio was at the time. Recognising the trend, Reg co-wrote a song entitled just that, C.B Radio, and I was called back for another session on October 16th. Festival Records not only had a studio in their building, but also a pressing plant. Such was the rush to release this track as a single, it was in the shops exactly one week later! Although I would only play one live show with Reg (and his niece Anne Kirkpatrick) that year, a couple of years later I joined his band The Overnighters to tour with his show and also play on over 40 episodes of the Logie award-winning TV show Reg Lindsay’s Country Homestead. We can only hope that some of Reg’s television legacy will get released again one day. There were 156 hours of the Brisbane shows recorded, not to mention the earlier Adelaide shows. Somewhere there in the vault, is probably the most comprehensive visual history of a golden era of Australian country music.
Until next time, happy surfing!
Go ahead and yodel…you know you want to!
Local western music fans may fondly remember Wylie & The Wild West visiting our shores late last century. WYLIE GUSTAFSEN, “the coolest cowpoke around”, later went on to have his biggest hit with perhaps his shortest recording “…Yahooooooo!” We’re talking about the trademark Yahoo! Yodel here, which immediately identifies the internet company of the same name. Last month we were visited by 13 year old TAYLOR WARE from Nashville (pictured left), who won theYahoo! Yodel Challenge at age nine. Taylor came to Australia to promote the new Yahoo!7 website and the ‘ODEL TO THE YODEL’ site dedicated to…well, you know what. Taylor yodelled her way into American hearts last year on America’s Got Talent and she created a stir at appearances in Sydney and Melbourne during her trip Down Under. ‘Odel to the Yodel’ features a how to yodel demo from Taylor, video of Wylie yodelling while playing his Australian Tomkins bass guitar, and information on the health benefits of yodelling from our own Dr. Timothy J Sharp (a.k.a. Dr. Happy). “Starting your day with a yodel is great because it opens up the lungs, relieves stress, awakens the soul and opens you up for the possibility of the day,” says Dr Happy. Can’t argue with that!
While searching the web for yodels I found a wealth of material at YouTube (of course) including a surprisingly fast yodel from Jewel and vintage clips of our own FRANK IFIELD, plus elsewhere, local talents MARY SCHNEIDER, JOHANNA HEMARA, and globetrotter WAYNE HORSBURGH who has not one, but two websites.
MARTINA McBRIDE came to visit us once briefly (see Cowboys In Cyberspace - December 1999) and has continued to be a major star ever since, plus a Grammy winner and four-time CMA Female Vocalist of the Year. Back then, at a small promotional appearance, the sheer power of her voice was amazing to hear in person, but her new live DVD may be the first chance for many to realise why she is one of the top female touring acts in America. MARTINA McBRIDE: LIVE IN CONCERT is 98 minutes of live concert recorded last September at Moline, Illinois’ I Wireless Center, for the series PBS’ Great Performances. The hits are there: A Broken Wing, Independence Day, This One’s For The Girls; fan favourites such as Over the Rainbow and Pat Benatar’s Hit Me With Your Best Shot; plus a lovely segment of classics from her Timeless album, (I Never Promised You A) Rose Garden, You Ain’t Woman Enough To Take My Man and Help Me Make It Through The Night. The DVD is packaged with an eight-song live CD that includes two songs not included in the video - From The Ashes and Whatever You Say. This is a big concert, but filmed with just the right subtlety to capture all the action without dizzy camera cuts. Martina is stunning…mesmerising…what are you waiting for?
Available through Sony BMG Music Entertainment 88697283382
Bob talked to Barbara Morison on 2SER 107.3 FM about this month’s column and more…
Until next time, happy surfing!
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3rd July 2008: MELINDA SCHNEIDER launched her stunning new album
‘Be Yourself’ at Sydney’s City Tattersalls Club. The excited capacity crowd was treated to a brilliant performance of the new songs by Melinda and her band, confirming her status as a world-class artist. Pictured above, Melinda with Angela Bishop, Lizzi Dayney, Tammy McIntosh and Dianna Corcoran.
Can you teach an old dog new tricks?
Cowboys In Cyberspace is just back from a week in Nashville, Tennessee, coinciding with the excitement of the 4-day CMA Music Festival, which the majority of people still refer to by its former name of Fan Fair. With an average daily attendance of 52,000 and temperatures hovering in the mid-to-high nineties, it was a hot time in Twang Town. You couldn’t walk down the main street with out tripping over Australians and Keith Urban made a surprise appearance at the Friday stadium show, performing a seven-song mini-concert, leaping from the stage to walk around LP Field and finally autographing and handing his guitar to an overwhelmed fan. Here’s hoping it wasn’t his Australian custom-made Tomkins guitar! I was in Nashville hosting nine Tomkins Guitars Showcases that featured Travis List, Sharnee Fenwick, Tracy Killeen, Sandra Humphries and Jetty Road, plus surprise guests that included Audrey Auld and Wayne Horsburgh. More than one young local guitar picker said to me, “…we love your playing…we dig those old skool guitar licks…” to which I replied, “…thanks, but they were new when I got ‘em!”
My highlight for the week, as a spectator, was Marty Stuart’s Late Night Jam at the Ryman Auditorium - over four hours of non-stop musical magic from 10pm to nearly 2.30am - raising money for MusiCARES who provide a safety net of critical assistance for music people in times of need (much like our own Support Act Limited, Australia’s Music Industry Benevolent Fund). This was Marty’s seventh annual Late Night Jam and for the first time it was an official CMA Music Festival event. Guests included the legends (feisty Charlie Daniels, the gorgeous Connie Smith, former Johnny Cash drummer W.S. ‘Fluke’ Holland), contemporary stars (John Rich, Gretchen Wilson, Kathy Mattea), bluegrass bands, up-and-coming talent and much more. Songwriters featured strongly including surprise guest Mel Tillis who sang Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love To Town and Kostas, who performed Ain’t That Lonely Yet and Blame It On Your Heart. The man who came close to stealing the show was veteran songwriter Dallas Frazier, who gave us not only If My Heart Had Windows and Elvira, but also the classic There Goes My Everything – as close to a perfect country song as you will ever hear.
The next night I met two of the stars of the Late Night Jam - WSM and Grand Ole Opry announcer Eddie Stubbs (pictured below, with me) who was broadcasting from the back of Ernest Tubb’s Record Shop and his special guest Miss Connie Smith. Eddie and Miss Connie were delighted to learn they had Australian fans listening to Marty’s show live via the internet. Eddie sure knows his stuff, having previously been a member of the Johnson Mountain Boys and playing fiddle for Kitty Wells and Johnnie Wright. WSM Radio is still one of the best places to hear real country music. One of the best places to see and hear traditional country music downtown is Robert’s Western World, voted #1 Best Honky Tonk Club in The Nashville Scene. As their slogan says…Burgers, Boots and Beer!
Bob talked to Barbara Morison on 2SER 107.3 FM about this month’s column and more…
Until next time, happy surfing!
Somewhere there’s music, how faint the tune?
Australian balladeer GRAHAM RODGER was on the radio the other day using the quaint expression, “…going down to the local Record Bar…” and it got me thinking about records. First up, I’m unashamedly nostalgic for the days of vinyl when getting a new LP record was a far more significant event than opening a new CD seems to be now. RICHARD THOMPSON, or at least the character in his song Don’t Sit On My Jimmy Shands, feels the same about 78s (“…You just can’t get the shellac since the war…they don’t make them like that anymore”), although I’m yet to meet anyone personally who laments the demise of the wax cylinder!
So once upon a time, a record was exactly that…a record of a moment, a performance captured forever in time. Before multi-tracking, it had to be done in one take, with everyone playing and/or singing at once and a mistake meant starting from the beginning again (or leaving it in). For a brilliant documentary that details the invention of overdubbing, seek out the DVD entitled Les Paul: Chasing Sound which details the great man’s career and also shows him playing up a storm in his nineties!
Thanks to Les Paul’s ingenuity, technology allows someone like me, for better or for worse, to play practically all the instruments on my own CD albums. My youngest fan Amy is convinced I can do this for real, despite her mother’s explanations, because after all she can actually hear me doing it on the CD! I suppose one might argue that a modern record is often a group of tiny recordings; disparate moments stacked together to become a new recollection of an event that might have been?
Pictured above: Les Paul in Baltimore 2004 -(photo by Bob Howe)
Perhaps then, a film or recording of a live concert is closer to a “record” in the truest sense of the word. No matter how many camera angles are used or creative effects, they hopefully just enhance essence of the event. PAUL KELLY – LIVE APPLES is 
one such example, newly released on DVD and filmed last September at the delightful Empire Theatre in Toowoomba, Queensland. Paul Kelly took the confronting approach of playing the entire Stolen Apples album live before continuing on with another 16 songs that included many of his hits and classics. The camera work is subtle; capturing each musical change and the intriguing images projected behind the band and the sound is crystal clear, perfectly capturing the live ambience. Stylistically the music is as eclectic as always; take The Foggy Fields of France where one guitarist (Ashley Naylor) sets up a Sun Records-style riff while the other (Dan Kelly) adds steel guitar-like sweeps that eventually erupt in a solo that conjures up the sound of a pod of demented whales…magic! The band excels throughout, but in particular watch their controlled crescendo during the frantic pleading of How to Make Gravy, surely one of the poignant ‘prison’ songs of all time. New Buffalo AKA Sally Seltmann joins them for the ‘final’ song, a cover of the Triffids’ Raining Pleasure, the only song of the concert not written or co-written by Paul Kelly. They Thought I Was Asleep from the bluegrass album Foggy Highway appears here as a solo performance during the five-song encore which ends with a romp through another classic, Dumb Things. The bonus feature is the stunning video for God Told Me To which captures the religious fanaticism of the subject in one chilling camera take that zooms slowly outwards. No edits, no overdubs!
(122 minutes) EMI 50999 2 06729 9 7
Bob talked to Barbara Morison on 2SER 107.3 FM about this month’s column and more…
Until next time, happy surfing!
The changing face of the music industry and a blast from the past…
A few months ago ABC 702’s Richard Glover said, PETER DENAHY’s “Sort Of Dunno Nothin’ is possibly the funniest song ever written”. That, coupled with the video being shown on ABC TV’s Rage and other programs, prompted a huge number of Internet users to search out the video and song. By last month it had clocked up over 300,000 viewings on YouTube and become the #1 most downloaded song on the Australian iTunes Country Store. Comments left as a response to the video include an English teacher in Prague who has won over a non-responsive class by playing them the song, countless people identifying with the characters and the occasional teenager denying they are like that at all. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_veIGGP1Uh4
While I was browsing around YouTube I also took the opportunity to watch the SLIM DUSTY FAMILY clip of Old Purple, directed & produced by Anne Kirkpatrick’s son James Arneman. An excellent blend of new studio footage coupled with classic archive shots of Slim driving Old Purple around this great land. www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9-KxtftegQ
When I found the only footage I’ve ever seen of the band Derek and the Dominoes, I was surprised not only to find that it came from the JOHNNY CASH TV SHOW, but that their guitarist Eric Clapton also performed the song Matchbox with Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins. This inspired me to search out the 2-disc DVD set, THE BEST OF THE JOHNNY CASH TV SHOW 1960-1971. What a treasure trove this is with 66 performances selected from the 58 episodes of the show that broke musical and social boundaries when it originally screened on American television. With around 4 hours of top class material to choose from here (bring on the other 54 hours), it’s hard to pick out high points, but here goes: The landmark duet with Bob Dylan, stone country from Loretta, Tammy, Conway, Haggard and Jones, a clean-shaven Waylon Jennings with Jessi Colter on keyboards, solo performances from Neil Young and James Taylor. Biggest surprises: Johnny’s duets with Linda Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, and with Louis Armstrong who recreates his performance on the original 1930 Jimmie Rodgers record of Blue Yodel #9. Look too for glimpses of legendary Australian musical director Bill Walker. My personal highlight: A close-up shot of Mother Maybelle Carter’s hands as she plays Wildwood Flower – the touchstone of country guitar playing as we now know it. Sony BMG Music 88697 04026 9 (also available on CD)
Bob talked to Barbara Morison on 2SER 107.3 FM about this month’s column and more…
Until next time, happy surfing!
Say it and share it on the Web… There is a saying in the world of internet business that ‘Content is King’ and it refers to the notion that the most important thing about a website is that which can be found inside its pages. After all, would you spend much time or bother to revisit a site that had only a small amount of interesting material? Recently though, with the advent of the so-called ‘Web 2.0’, an argument has developed that “community” is as important, if not more so, than content. This follows the latest trends of sharing the experience of the web with like-minded users via social-networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook and YouTube, to name a few most popular examples. Even if you don’t produce content yourself, you can comment on the things you see and recommend them (or not) to your friends.
Amber Lawrence with Beccy Cole, Dianna Corcoran,
Kirsty Lee Akers and Gina Jeffreys
The talented AMBER LAWRENCE is a great example of an artist who is using the internet to great advantage for fun and also for the promotion of her music. Her official website contains all the prerequisite ingredients for fans and media alike (News, Bio, Photos, Album samples, Gig Guide) all nicely laid out and easy to navigate. Follow the links to her MySpace page and the fun continues when Amber dabbles in the art of blogging. No regular ‘Dear Diary’ entries for her though; After a couple of homemade videos, including one that documents her trip to Tamworth as a double Golden Guitar nominee, Amber has begun a series of video episodes entitled Bloggin’ Along. Even though an Oscar nomination might not be around the corner just yet, the videos have a charm and immediacy that fans will love. Meet Amber’s mum (doesn’t she look glam while doing the washing), go backstage at the Central Coast CM Festival with Chic Frontier, and for whodunit fans, solve the mystery of the cupcakes.
History will no doubt confirm PAUL KELLY as the most significant Australian singer/songwriter of his generation and a wry and insightful commentator on the localised human condition to boot. We have looked at his site before, including the wonderful research index, full of articles by, and about Paul Kelly, but now there is an incredibly generous new section to report. Each month, PAUL KELLY offers free downloads - ‘A to Z’ - so that you can collect 100 live solo versions of some of his greatest tunes! The recordings are from the last few years, when he performed a series of unique shows under the banner ‘A to Z’, whereby he sang 100 songs from his catalogue in alphabetical order over 4 nights. The month of April will offer songs beginning with ‘D’ so don’t delay and get on the bandwagon now!
Until next time, happy surfing!
The tribute concert at the Hills Centre in Sydney. On stage after the finale:
Back Row, L to R: John & Graeme Howie, Robert Edge, Jim Haynes,
Nick Erby, Graeme Connors, Johnny Chester, Lawrie Minson,
Dick Smith, John Kerr, James Blundell, John Williamson, Ray Martin
Front Row, L to R: Mary & Rita Schneider, Clair Hayes, Lorrae Desmond, Melinda Schneider, Lee Kernaghan
Thursday 13th March, at Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL Club, Frank Ifield (right) presents his 2008 International Spur Award to Kirsty Lee Akers (centre) along with Tony Page (left) of The Rotary Club of Galston who sponsor the award in conjunction with the Galston Country Music Festival.
You can read Frank’s words here…
More photos - Canterbury Country site is here…
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26th January 2008: The 2008 Toyota Country Music Festival Cavalcade made its way down Peel Street, Tamworth on Australia Day. Spot just some of the 250 stars who waved to the huge crowd. Click on the video (right) to watch… |
