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April 2002
Greetings post USA! Things are hotting up here as I prepare for recording the album and the MFTCC album gets ready for release.
USA TOUR
Three weeks of airport security checks jet lag, hotels, dry Texan heat to New England snow, foreign power adaptors, music venues, beefy roll ups, searching for a skerrick of news in USA Today! And ruining my credit card at Amoeba Records. Travelling with Phil Wales was a delight and the exhausting trip was made easier by his excellent Eric Cartman impersonations. A wonderful travelling companion is Phil, not to mention a wonderfully impressionistic guitar player who knows the value of when not to play. On our travels we met some great people, played with some great bands and unfortunately had way too little time to explore any city apart from Los Angeles. Would have loved to have had extra days in San Francisco, New York, Boston and Toronto but it was very much airport to hotel to gig to bar to hotel back to airport again. My favourite gigs were Cafe Largo and the Knitting Factory in New York where we played with the wonderful Sarah Shannon from Velocity Girl, (honourable mention to the intimate Boston gig in front of thirty people on a snowy Monday). These two gigs seemed the best organised and the ones where the sound and lay out of the venues worked best for the kind of show we were putting on. At Largo, Lisa Germano, Ian Hunter, Neil Finn and Flanagan (the venue proprietor who sang the most beautiful Scottish lament a la Dick Gaughn) all sang tunes; it was quite a night. I appeared on the Mike Ballard show in Toronto and played a solo version of Kerosene; strange but fun. I want to thank the various sound mixers and acquaintance who assisted us on the trip. Especially Rik and Karen who took Chris Gough, my manager, and myself out to the Joshua Tree National Park for some overdue R & R at the end of the trip; quite an amazing high desert landscape. I hope to get back across the Pacific in a few months time to take advantage of any inroads we may have made and now that we have worked out who is who at Nettwerk to keep working the Act of Free Choice record.
Oh and by the way, if anyone feels the urge to approach your local US college or public radio station to get them a copy of Act of Free Choice and find the right presenters whose playlist might be conducive to playing tracks off the album, that be greatly appreciated. The whole Nettwerk thing is a little behind the eight ball in that regard and we need all the help we can get: ahhh showbusiness! We can send off CDs from to here to the stations or to yourselves if you've sacrificed your copy!
NEW ALBUM
We head in to Gary Beers' studio, Mangrove, at the end of April to record the album with Nick Littlemore and Christian Scallan. I have arranged for the fabulous Bart Willoughby of No Fixed Address to fly down from Brisbane and duet my version of his song, 'Message for Young and Old'. This is quite an honour for me. No Fixed Address were one of the first bands I ever saw. If you can get hold of it, the award winning doco Wrong Side of the Road documents their cross-Australia tour and the racism they encountered and deflected along the way. I've also been in contact with Kate Noonan (George), Amanda Brown (ex Go Betweens), and Rebecca Coseboom (Halou) about contributing some vocals on the new record, which is all quite exciting for me. Have been doing final lyric and arrangement fix ups to the material and culling the songlist down to a workable 15 or 16 tunes for the beginning of recording. Chris, Nick and I are getting together in the Enormodome at the end of this week to go through the arrangements and already recorded material to nut out what shall be kept and what needs to be redone. I plan to use Michael Barker on drums and percussion again and of course Phil Wales will do the bulk of the guitar work. As we are recording the album near Gosford, I shall be drawing on some Sydney musicians for guest spots.
The new Cake record, Curious, has been mastered, artwork locked off.
The track listing is as follows
It's All In the Way
I Guess It Don't Get Much Better Than This
Leave (if you want to)
Weep
I Like It Like This
The Mangrove Song
Muckheap
Swirl
The Kilana Stringband Song
Malolo
The Boat Song
Kelly Kwalik Country
Curious
More Heart Than Me
(Note: You can buy Curious here.)
The tour is June/July in Australia and will be released in time for the opening Athenaeum theatre show on June 22. We're also playing the metro (Sydney), Powerhouse (Brisbane) Gov Hindmarsh (Adelaide), Salamanca Theatre (Hobart), Fly by Night (Perth), Tillys (Canberra) and that little music theatre in Katoomba, Blue Mountains.
Chris Gough and I are proposing to set up our own label (a long held dream of mine), have it distributed by EMI and release a whole range of projects through it. Whilst in early days of negotiating, things seem promising and it will be a perfect way of releasing soundtracks plus NDW, Cake, maybe even the solo record and other related goodies; ie John Phillips' record, the West Papuan CD, hidden gems; shall keep you informed.
NDW will more than likely reform for next February's West Papuan benefits in Melbourne and Sydney. The book, to be titled Papua Merdeka (freedom) is in progress and the long list of bands interested is eclectic, and exciting.
Imax film
'Australia; Land Beyond Time' was mixed on Thursday. Sounded great. Will be launched in Melbourne then New York in June I think. Exact dates will be posted when available.
The latest issue (April 2002) of New Internationalist magazine features West Papua. There are half a dozen articles and a very well laid out background briefing to their struggle. Thoroughly recommended.
Great start to the year by the Demons aka Melbourne Football Club. Stephen Powell was the missing link!
Have been listening to
Boards of Canada: Geodaddi
Patti Smith: Higher Learning
The Douglas Fir: the vinyl singles archive
Halou: Wiser from San Francisco on Nettwerk. Really cool; the title track is a corker
Neil Halstead (how close to Nick Drake is this!)
Departure Lounge: Too Late to Die Young and Jetlag (an instrumental collection)
Badly Drawn Boy: About a Boy soundtrack
Stephin Merrick: Eban and Charley soundtrack
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