Shy Tone

As far as the history of rock’n’roll (& related forms) goes: Link Wray tried it, James Brown recorded most of his best stuff with at least two, and Beefheart also used two drummers regularly.... And, in free jazz, much of Coleman & Coltrane’s best work did the same. Plus, two of the best of the late 70s/early 80s - The Fall & Tav Falco’s Panther Burns - recorded much of their best stuff w/more than one drummer...

I saw the Fall at the time, but - more importantly - Panther Burns’ first album was recorded w/drummers from a Mississippi hill country fife & drum band...and those guys are amazing!

Just this year, the only album ever completely devoted to that music “Travelling Through the Jungle” [Testament] - was finally reissued w/extra tracks...and I got my long-anticipated first in-depth listen to the stuff. And, if rock’n’roll didn’t begin last century - or before - then I don’t know what else to call it...cause it sure ain’t jazz. Or blues.

Hell, just about every time I’ve tried to play it to blues fans, they tell me to get that shit off...in no uncertain terms.

What we need to remember is that these people aren’t looking for any kind of exotic “tribal” kick...they’re just playing dance music. And...so are we - most of the time.

What we’ve found is that having three guitarists & three drummers gives an independence to both sections of the band...

So...interplay and synchronisation happen all over the place. When we start playing, it’s now pretty rare for the thing - whatever it is - to fail to gel...

Once two or three people lock into something...the rest of the band takes off around them - but, that doesn’t mean that they’ll be the backbone of the piece throughout.

Listening & responding is more important and, if something else comes up (and it usually does on longer tracks), then the interplay reconfigures to include it...so we often end up in completely unanticipated places.

Without at least two drummers & two top-line instruments, I don’t think we’d get the kind of interplay we do...or, at least, it would be much more difficult to sustain.

Anyway, it also allows us to play responsive dance music for audiences that prefer sitting upon floors....

The origins of rock’n’roll - in all cases - are in live musics which responded to dancers (and vice versa). Without a large band playing open forms, such music would now be mostly pretty much impossible, given the audiences we face...except that, what we’ve done is to incorporate the dancers’ role within the band dynamic itself.

But, hell...if we could just get some real dancers - then we could genuinely take off...

JW: You call yourself a blues band, yet you’re hardly one in the sensibilities of most people...why do you define yourselves in this way?

SE: I’m sitting here & writing this - listening to “Genius Plus Jazz Equals Soul” - and, some things strike me as obvious.

Sure, we think we’re a blues band...but not in the way that Rollins thinks he’s in a blues band...

To us, what we do is have a little fun...and what we choose to have a little fun with is what we feel follows some of the aesthetic of early blues - open-ended & modal throughout...

I think that what you (probably) mean about most people is related to the 12 bar blues. For us, though, it’s more about a big beat, a nice rhythm, and maybe some real old blues changes.

But, it ain’t just the changes, to be sure...

Hear Brother Ray hit & slap at those keys...he’s playing organ & he’s giving it more than most blues bands... And, organ’s not even a percussive instrument.

We just like to get in there & root about. Beat it/Hit it/Make it work!

Who needs six strings for the whole gig?

Blues...yeah, it’s percussive dance music, and we hit guitars & drums & mandolins - we jump up & down,

dance in our chairs.

If you can sit still...and listen to Brother Ray in fine form, then all my words ain’t gonna tell you nothing new...

JW: Can you explain what you see as the origins of rock’n’roll?

DMK: Dunno quite where to start here. Well...defined really loosely, it could take in anything from the Master Musicians on...to any other genuinely archaic tradition of collective improvisational rhythmic music.

More narrowly, I’d trace it to the confluence of Black, Amerindian & White rhythmic, melodic & timbral traditions during the early 18th century, especially in the military bands of colonial America...

The only positions available to Blacks & Amerindians in the militias were as scouts & musicians - and the latter were in considerably less danger of having their arses shot off. Plus, the key military music for small militias was made by fife & drum bands & the continuity between these & post-Civil War outfits seems obvious.

It’s also forgotten these days that military bands of all sizes were amongst the most popular outfits for providing dance music in pre-modern times...Along with a parallel mixing process in the string band tradition, this is where we can start...but the latter - considered in isolation - doesn’t really tell the whole story - especially if (like folklorists & musicologists) you aren’t looking for, and don’t like, rock’n’roll.

After the Civil War - during the Reconstruction era - aside from electing mostly Black legislatures in some states, there emerged a serious barbeque culture for a while, w/thousands of people turning up to huge outdoor parties for drinking & dancing...

And, prior to the emergence of the slow drag - the dance that defined the blues - the dance music of all races in the USA was much more closely akin...mid-tempo to fast - and often had a hell of a lot more in common w/rock’n’roll than most later blues, country & jazz forms...

So, the story of rock’n’roll (as defined by its finest moments) - and how else can you evaluate a form? - is (maybe) more one of rediscovery than any real kind of invention that we can document.

Leaving aside the accidents of fashion & narrow forms - say the straightjackets of 12 bar blues or verse/chorus pop - I’d say that it’s about time that the best descriptive term (by far) in real dance music was rescued from the marketing arms of the music industry.

JW: Do you find it easy to play the same song twice?

SE: Well Julian, I’ve just come back from the kitchen - after a few long cold ones - and I’m full of dancing...and there’s more than one sort of dancing, and more than one kind of way to play the same song.

Take some of the modern jazz guys from the fifties...go on, take Monk. Listen to him play “Tea for Two”...

Now, that’s a song we all know but, if you hear him play it, he makes it swing. Swings it on one note. Ask some of these guys w/cloth ears & they won’t even be able to pick the song...but, if you listen, it’s there in every note Monk plays.

We don’t play jazz, really, but that’s kind of a way of explaining how we play the songs...or, maybe it’d be better to call them pieces. And, what it is’ll be there, everytime we play it...because the other times’re in there. Maybe even the next time’s in there. In some way, the essence of the song is in there every time.

People don’t need me to explain it all - bit by bit - they need to sit back & let it work on them...that’s what we do, and it works for us.

JW: Tell us about some of the strange musical contraptions you use...

SE: To answer this one, we’ve got to go all the way back to the Civil War...sorry - that was a couple of pages ago - but our approach is almost as old. Ain’t it great to have roots?

The first thing was the mandolin...hot-rodded w/a couple of nasty little pickups, to sound better than most guitar set-ups goin’ around: poor thing never knew what hit it.

Amps...you get the smallest valve one you can find - no later than 1966 - and you whack it up w/the kind of tremelo & overload that stops just short of emitting its own signal - then...put it through another valve amp & maybe some old fuzzbox...and then you just wait for the crackle to call you up - the kind that sounds so good you just wanna hear it ring...

remind uncle lou, if you ever meet him

And, then...there’s David’s baby, a long thin streak of timber, strung loose w/fencing wire + a banjo pickup...called the aeolian bastard.

For some things, there’s just no accounting...but - hell - if you’re in town, and you get the chance, you have my blessing...

We call them harps - the manufacturers stick w/harmonicas - and David’s got one attached to an old carbon mic from a telephone & an I-knew-Moses-when-he-was-a-boy-type horn speaker, and

...if the harps in Heaven sounded this good & evil then I might just stop sinning...

Me, now...well I’ve got the mattock.

Yep...pick-axe handle, four wound strings, whammy bar, cheap acoustic guitar pickup, and no technique...

And, then there’s my current pet: the nine string. Just a crappy pawnshop guitar w/nice pickups. Then we meet and, coupla drunken nights later, she’s carrying three extra strings...as well as one of the nicest rock’n’roll pickups around.

Broadcaster bridge beauty, that is...just pack fulla gunning...

JW: Any ideas on recording & production you’d like to share?

DMK: As far as what we do...it’s pretty simple, albeit time-consuming. Virtually everything these days is recorded w/live room sound using decent tapes, one or two mics & w/the dolby on.

The vocals’re about the only thing we usually overdub. Mastering is done w/the dolby off (so’s it works as a treble boost) through an old valve hi fi amp, that I use on about half the stuff to overdrive it a little...a broadband graphic from a stereo + a mono 31 band ex-PA graphic equalizer.

This means that all our stuff’s in mono...but, producing really good stereo mixes isn’t usually possible w/a home setup - unless you spend a fortune - and mono forces you to concentrate upon the guts of the sound...

the timbre

Besides, we happen to like mono!

Mastering involves experimenting - sometimes for days - to try & pull the best possible sound out. Moving back & forth between amp & both graphics gives different possibilities for adjustment...so, something’s always turning up.

Sometimes I go deaf - or blind - but them’s the breaks...

The result of all this goes into a good new hi fi cassette deck (cost me about $400), and regularly cleaned and demagnetized - that’s a hint because, if’n you don’t do this, then every deck sounds like crap after a while.

Oh...and we’ve avoided digital so far, as much as possible.

The sampling rates’re - apparently - insufficient to deliver what’s claimed, plus there’s a bunch of unreadable technical stuff that also argues they can’t up the sampling rates...so’s we’ve all been sold a pig in a poke.

Stay tuned for some new high-grade analogue system, so's they can sell all the Beatles records all over again...

JW: How do you see the role of lyrics in what you do?

SE: There’s more than one sort of vocal in our stuff. For the straight rockers, I prefer to use only two verses - any more & you start to push it - n’if you sounded as garbled as me, no-one’d pick it, anyway...

But I’m proudest of my spoken-word pieces - monologues, usually....

I guess they’re attempts to communicate the importance of the ordinary joys & sorrows we all have...our quiet reflections upon our selves, and the ways that distance or loneliness can bring a kind of stillness into our lives.

I do this through what you might call method acting. I work in the first person & speak w/the voice of someone coming out of that situation.

So...it’s a combination of the specifics of the situation, and the universalities of the emotions.

I’m really only interested in our humanity - in its many different forms - but, that’s what it’s all about. Because, if we’re not human & humane amongst ourselves, we might as well pack it in & go home....

And...I avoid multiple takes like the plague...actually, we all do. The band doesn’t do them and, if I can then pull it off in one, it enables the piece to keep its freshness & integrity

...what I don’t feel you get if you repeat things endlessly, as you lose some of the immediacy and humanity each time.

JW: How do you find Brisbane?

SE: I hop into my car & drive towards town...I loves youse all.

JW: Is it easy to get gigs?

DMK: What gigs?

SE: You know...the ones that don’t pay. Well, at least we no longer have to pay to play.

DMK: Says you! What about all those strings...

JW: Do the band members work? If so, what are your jobs?

SE: Dina designs concrete floor slabs, for an average of 637 hours per week, but is currently seeking full-time employment. I buy books w/other people’s money & stamp the date on all of them.

David is working on a good way to say everything important about music in 100 words or less...or three volumes - but, don’t mention the offshore investors [and for godsake don’t forward his home address to anyone]...

Wadley, the Mandarin Messiah, is hard at work on a new diet consisting only of seeded fruits & potato cakes.

He’s had some interest from an LA publisher...

And Greg & Bettina, soon off to the Deep South, have an interest in an antique Holden dealership in the outer suburbs.

JW: Any comments about the invisible empire’s future?

SE & DMK: Brand new luxury hour-long wonder tape blondes chew more gum now available in all good diners & indecent video retailers.

SE: We still play - infrequently - and, yes...my throat has recovered nicely from the last time I rolled around some beer-soaked carpet, in front of nobody...

And...if you know anyone - or of anything - give us a yell...we work cheap, real cheap.