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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.

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!”

Pictured above, some of the Tomkins Guitar gang at the Sheraton Hotel,

left to right: Bob Howe, Sharnee Fenwick, Paula Bowman (Jetty Road),

Tracy Killeen, Lee Bowman and Julian Sammut (Jetty Road),

Allan Tomkins, Sandra Humphries, Henry Czerwonka.

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!

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!

www.lespaulfilm.com

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!

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!

 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 

You can read Frank’s words here…

More photos - Canterbury Country site is here…