Dorrigo is featuring heavily in my personal orbit these days – been up there quite a bit recently with the Re-mains and my other outfit – the Lonely Horse Band. On Friday night the Re-Mains landed for a raucous evening accompanied by a group of quality control officials – who proceeded, literally, to tear the place a new bistro. Several locals also made the trek up from Bellingen, including Pete Bufo, one-time Australian Beef Week Show stalwart. The scenes at the Top Pub rooms later that evening were remarkable for their lurid consistency, the quality control officials being sticklers for decorum and proper procedure. Next weekend I return to the scene of the grime to play the Dorrigo Bluegrass Festival with the Lonely Horse Band. Readers of this column might be aware we did a songwriting project there a couple of months ago and came up with an album that we’ll be playing. On the Sunday I rendezvous with The Re-mains for a 1pm show at the Coaching Station in Nymboida, owned by one Russell Crowe, who is well known for his insistence on quality control.
Category: Journalism
Column 28th Sept ’09
Watching latest Country Music videos and amazed at how many songs tick all the boxes my mate Geri reckons a modern country song requires. Lyrical content must include references to parents, god, the weather, and optionally, trains. These and an Eighties-rock guitar solo, slow-mo trudging through gold-tinted paddocks and emotion as expressed through twitching jaw-muscles seem to indicate an industry whose reference points began and ended with Tom Cruise’s acting methods circa Top Gun. At least it ain’t emo yet.
Meanwhile The Re-mains visited Angourie last weekend for a private bash that turned into a block party the likes of which probably hasn’t been seen since, well people stopped acknowledging their neighbours and building gated estates all over the Coast. Cowboy hats and boots were de rigeur and there was some particularly spirited hogslappin’ and chawspittin’ in play. Not that I really know what that is, but the flying straw and dust kinda puts you in mind of such downhome phrases when you’re cleaning the dust out of your guitar. And wishing you could have made a video from the ensuing shenanigans. All that was missing was god and a train.
Flying out – May 30 ’09
Notwithstanding terrorist onslaughts, an on-board pandemic or simply being turned back at the border for being unbelievably scruffy, by the time you read this we’ll be in Vancouver and about to play our first show of the tour at the Railway Club. Tom Jones will be calm and unruffled after his first class upgrade, waited on hand and foot by vivacious hosties, and spoilt for the rest of the trip, marked as it will inevitably be, by a distinct lack of such courtesy aboard Curtis, out trusty V8 Chevy van.
The rest of us, flying cattle class, will have a few days to iron out the kinks, get the bus registered, buy amps, strings and the usual geegaws, and gawp at the crackheads shuffling about like zombies through the streets of this egalitarian and decidedly urbane city, perched on the skirt of the Rockies and with the Pacific Ocean heaving politely to starboard.
It’s Shaun and Al’s first overseas jaunt, and features two seriously big festivals, and a heap of great venues all over this enormous nation. We’re touring with Dr Joey Only’s Outlaw Band through British Columbia and Alberta, the Secretaries in Alberta and Manitoba, and the Bush Pilots in Ontario. All in all, a massive undertaking. Wish us luck.
Vancouver – June 6
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 jolly, 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.
Roaming B.C. – June 16
We’ve been roaming the wilds of northern British Columbia for over a week now. Epic grandeur abounds – gargantuan mountains rearing on all sides, we’ve been crisscrossing the mighty Fraser River as it loops across the province, makings its way down to Vancouver. Yestarday we came to its source, Moose Lake, a massive body of water folded in between dignified peaks, marbled in snow, topped by their own cloud formations. We’ve seen bear, moose, and plenty of other wild animals, particularly in the Zoo at Fort St James.
This bar well deserves the title, from the outside it looks like a derelict building. Inside, stuffed wolves, cougars and mountain goats glare at the patrons, a rogues gallery whose antics caused the bar to be given the honorific of ‘bar where you’re most likely to have your ear bitten off” in a BC magazine. Joey Only, the punk-rock country redneck we’ve been touring with, knows them all and they treated us kindly, engaging in a blood sport known locally as ‘dancing’ – to us it looked like a rabid pack of werewolves fighting to see who gets to rush the stage first.
We’re on the trail of Aurora Jane out here, she toured recently through these parts and played the Dunster Music festival last year. Yesterday we dropped into the site, a gorgeous setting directly under the mountains, encircled by the looping river.
Mick Daley - Musician and Author. 