It’s days like this I could retire from the internet

The Queen

“My whole life is a soap opera.” – Tammy Wynette

49 Goodbyes

My Better Half / Sydney, February 2013  – Courtesy of Post To Wire

When I’m in Australia, I sing in a harmony duo called 49 Goodbyes with a beautiful soul named Courtney Botfield. She looks like a cross between Kate Bush and Linda Ronstadt and has the most lovely, fragile soprano voice you ever heard. We are dear friends and musical sisters and when I think about all the joy she’s brought to my life I could melt with happiness.

I sound over the top, I know. But I am over the top. I’m an enthusiast. Besides all that, when you move eight thousand or so miles away from the people you love, you learn how lucky you are. True friends are solid gold.

Courtney and I met on the internet. She had placed an ad on a music website. If I’d known at the time how close we’d become I would have saved it. It went something like this:

Emmylou Looking For Gram 

I’m an ethereal choir girl looking for someone to sing harmonies with. I like Emmylou Harris and Gram Parsons, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young. I play a little bit of guitar and also the piano accordion.

I wrote back immediately.

I’m not Gram Parsons. I love Emmylou Harris and Linda Ronstadt. I’m a terrible guitar player but I sing like a very sad, possibly drunk bird. I think this makes me more like Gram than I’d like to admit. Let’s meet up. 

We met in a cafe in Sydney’s inner west and clicked immediately. We started singing together. We rehearsed in her apartment in the lovely beachside suburb of Bronte. We sung a thousand Neil Young songs and drank wine and worked up a set-list of the saddest songs we could possibly think of. We collided with undying affection for the slow, melancholy ones and never apologised for it.

In the four or so years since our first email exchange, we have recorded songs, toured Australia, performed on ABC Radio, cried together watching Emmylou Harris at the State Theatre, agreed on the enduring attractiveness of Kris Kristofferson, sung harmonies with Cathy Guthrie and Amy Nelson (Folk Uke) and worked out a retirement plan that involves matching pastel rinses for our hair, endless cups of tea and ruthless games of Bridge. I like this retirement plan very much.

This past February, when I was back in Australia for a heartbeat, we recorded a new EP at a studio in Melbourne called The Backlot.  It’s a collection of covers we both adore. We sung all the songs in one session and did all the vocals as one take wonders. If you’ve ever wondered how to record harmony singing, that’s the best way to do it. There are other ways of course but when you’re bending a note and eyeballing one of your favourite people in the world and knowing that they know exactly where you’re going to wind up, it’s  just about the most lovely thing ever.

Because of my wanderlust, we’re not sure when we are going to release this EP and truth be told, we haven’t mastered it yet as there’s talk of adding some extra instruments here and there. Still, we wanted to share a little of what we have so far.

And so…

Here’s 49 Goodbyes singing ‘Dreaming My Dreams’, which was written by Roger Miller and has been recorded almost a million times, most famously by Waylon Jennings.

And here’s the 49 Goodbyes version of ‘Please Be With Me’, which is a C. Scott Boyer song. It was recorded by Eric Clapton and that’s how most people know it, however my affections lie with the Cowboy version which came first. And this one of course.

Hearty thanks to Mark D’Angelo from The Backlot in Melbourne and also to guitarist Andrew Wrigglesworth from the fabulous duo The Weeping Willows, who learned all these songs in the studio on the day.

And to Courtney – can’t wait to sing harmonies together again soon. Preferably on a beach somewhere.

Will keep the blog up to date with details about the upcoming duo EP as well as my soon-to-be-recorded solo one, which has no covers, just my songs. In the meantime, the old 49 Goodbyes EP splits the difference and can be downloaded for free here.

 

 

Hardly Strictly Hits

I’m delighted to share that I’m singing old country songs at The 5 Spot this Wednesday with my friend Bob Lanphier. Our set-list isn’t actually that old. It’s just that what counts for country these days… you know what I mean. So we’ll be re-working Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, Tom T. Hall, Buddy Holly and Neil Young.

It’s going to be SADCORE. I’m really looking forward to it. Come along if you can!  BYO valium, the bar has gin. Trust me, I’ve checked. We play a 30 minute or so set, then the all star line-up afterward includes Robert Ellis, Bobby Bare Jr and Jim Lauderdale.

Did I ever tell you I really love Nashville? Yeah, some days I really love Nashville.

Bobby Bare Jr – Sad Smile (From the acoustic EP A Storm, A Tree)

Robert Ellis – All Men Are Liars (Nick Lowe cover)

Jim Lauderdale – El Dorado (From his collaboration with Robert Hunter, Patchwork River)

On Finding On Photography

Nostalgia / May 2013

“It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia.”

                                                                                                           – Susan Sontag, 1977.

I’m a nostalgic kind of gal. I like old songs and old clothes. I live in record bins and second-hand clothes racks. It’s a throwback to my youth, where I couldn’t really afford anything else. It’s fashionable now of course. Vintage. But I don’t recall it being fashionable when I was growing up.

We lived in a three bedroom house in Wagga Wagga, a time and a place I am not in the least bit nostalgic for. But it comes to mind often enough. There’s something about the South that’s eerily familiar. At least, closer to my upbringing than the years I spent in Sydney. It’s the pace. The politeness. And the feeling of being landlocked. My kingdom for a quick dip in the ocean. Any ocean.

Last week I called a friend of mine in Sydney and I could hear waves in the background. Later, I was watching an interview with The Go-Between’s Robert Forster about the song ‘Dive For Your Memory’. He was very satisfied with the chord progression. Apparently, it came to him while he was staying in an apartment that had views of Bondi Beach.

If the cliffs were any closer

If the water wasn’t so bad 

I’d dive for your memory 

On the rocks and the sand

I found the Sontag book I’m pictured with –  On Photography – in a giant Nashville book supermarket called McKay’s. It was $1.50. Normally, I’d write bookstore but McKay’s is all fluorescent lights and yellowing paperbacks and aisle after aisle of grey linoleum, so it doesn’t exactly evoke the romanticism that bookstore implies. Still, the inside sleeve of the book reads:

For Dan

From Claire –

– love –

Christmas ’78

The Go-Betweens – Dive For Your Memory

The Loveless Café

No Vacancy / Nashville, May 2013

Out on Highway 100, on the outskirts of Nashville, there’s a popular tourist destination called The Loveless Café.  It’s been there for more than 60 years, serving up old school Southern fare with a side of homey charm and a chance of heart failure. In other words, it’s delicious. Like everyone who has ever been there before, I recommend the biscuits.

I went to The Loveless last week with a friend of mine who is making a music clip with my assistance. Read: I’m the point and shoot girl. Since my only formal training in this regard has been a 30 minute art class shooting passing cars on the street outside my school too many years ago, I guess you could say we’re re-defining low-budget here. But what I lack in skills, I make up for in… I don’t know actually. Dumb jokes and an almost painful optimism, is probably the most likely answer.

I’m very fond of The Loveless Café. It has many charms. There are red checkered table cloths and waitresses named Tammy and ugly paintings on the wall and head shots of country stars in cheap picture frames, which is something I have an enduring affection for.

I love it when Nashville presents itself like I imagined Nashville would.

Pheromones From Outer Space

Anna Fisher: Space mother via Mystic Medusa

A few stints in America ago, I met up with my friend Yvonne in San Francisco for a three day music festival called Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. I’d been squandering my savings in an apartment in New York that September and was about to experiment with an extended stint in Nashville, so I went via California because… Well, because my desires almost always over-run whatever might be the sensible option, geographic or otherwise.

Mox, as I like to call her, had been in Mexico writing songs in a style she calls ‘The Valium Blues’. Her voice is a lovely, seductive alto. When teamed with sad lyrics and slow twelve bar progressions – ah – it’s a wild combination. Later, in Tennessee I filmed her singing one of her low-fi heartbreakers in the yard of our vacation apartment in a pink jumpsuit, all sad and sultry. And she recorded me singing the Carter Family song, ‘I Never Will Marry’ in a vintage thrift-store wedding dress, heart-on-lace-sleeve. One of us is cool obviously and the other of us is nothing if not ridiculous.

They say that love’s a gentle thing 

But it’s only caused me pain 

The only man I ever loved 

Has gone on the morning train

Enough. Back to the West Coast and to Hardly Strictly Bluegrass. We made plans to meet just in time to see Cass McCombs play. It was early, perhaps 11. A long musical day ahead. But we both loved – still love –  Cass. His record Wit’s End had come out earlier in the year and I had been playing it with enthusiasm, perhaps too much enthusiasm on my radio show in Sydney.

On my way to you

Old county 

Hoping nothing’s changed

With the lovely California sun kissing our shoulders, strangely familiar eucalyptus leaves swaying in the trees, we watched Cass sing our shared favourite ‘County Line’, which in a moment of longing for another place and time last week, I found on the internet.

After this performance, we saw Jason Isbell, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, A.A. Bondy and a very special combined show from Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson. It was almost too much of good thing. But I kind of like that. Just ask Yvonne, who that day  had to deal with my consumption of an entire hash brownie for the first time in my life. I am many things: stoner is not one of them. But it was a gift from a fellow Kristofferson lover! Sharing is caring.

A few months later, after we’d both returned to our island home, Mox and I found ourselves living together in a run-down two bedroom cottage in Sydney’s inner-west. It was here that we started our fantasy acoustic duo, Pheromones From Outer Space.

The concept for the duo was simple: babes with guitars with an obscure tribute set-list that only record store clerks would truly appreciate. So we covered the aforementioned ‘County Line’, as well as Dave Rawlings’ ‘Ruby’, A.A. Bondy’s ‘I Can See The Pines Are Dancing’ and Neil Young’s ‘Vampire Blues’.

As a band, it was mostly in our heads and in our living room. But just before I moved to the USA we started busking for vinyl money on the streets of Newtown on Saturday afternoons. Despite not playing a single hit, we actually made good change.

Good times are comin’ 

I hear it everywhere I go

Good times are comin’ 

I hear it everywhere I go 

Good times are coming 

But they sure are coming slow

Since I left Sydney, Mox has joined a psychedelic band called The Wednesday Night and a B52s meets Parliament type group called Beat Club. Vibe eclectic, babe. Me? I’m singing my twang songs in Tennessee and trying to work out my record and not spend too long over-thinking the whole damn thing.

I miss Mox a lot. We write often and have just started to Skype. But it’s not quite the same as co-habitation. I miss her harmonies and her sense of the absurd and the way we’d stand in the kitchen drinking gin and reading our horoscopes, charting how we’d navigate the week ahead: gigs, romantic misadventures and inevitable trips to Saray Turkish Pizza. I know we would have talked at length about beautiful Anna Fisher in her NASA gear. Pheromones From Outer Space!

A.A. Bondy – I Can See The Pines Are Dancing

Cass McCombs – County Line

Neil Young – Vampire Blues

Welcome To 1979 & Other Audio Adventures

In the summer of my 10th year, my parents bought me a walkman. Rather, I demanded a walkman and they begrudgingly obliged. It was 1991 and I was just about to become the eldest of four daughters. In the years to come that would grow to be five daughters and two sons. Bloody Catholics.

Let not the size of my family fool you, we were Catholic in the most lapsed way possible. We were the kind who went to church at Easter and Christmas and whenever my Grandfather was in town. I’ve never asked why there were so many of us. I’m a bit repressed, you see. It’s a… You know where this is going.

Anyhow, I’m almost certain the ever-expanding brood had less to do with faith and much more to do with my parents wanting a mini-farm, kids included. After all, in addition to all of us (Lanneke, Rhiannon, Jamileh and I at this point… ) there were guinea pigs, budgerigars, dogs, cats, a couple of rabbits… Hell, we even had a pet salamander called Simone. But that’s a Gerald Durrell story for another time.

Back to the point: in 1991, all I wanted was a walkman and a pair of green jeans and to be allowed to watch Twin Peaks.

And so, just before my birthday, Mum and Dad went to the local electrical megastore and bought me the walkman. Correction: Mum no doubt went to the electrical store (RetroVision! The biggest retailer of electrical appliances!  I can hear the jingle…) while Dad went to the local betting agency to recoup the lost funds on a horse with good odds. Quirks of my childhood #427: the same man who bought me More To Life Than Mr Right: Stories For Young Feminists (aged 8) also taught me how to read the form guide.

Make your own luck, kid.

Funds were tight and I was two years off my first job – a paper round – so all the music I had was taped from the radio, with the exception of a mix-tape my Mum made for me. I write about it now because I still think of it often, with love and gratitude and sweet relief that she had good musical instincts, as well as a record collection time-warped in the late 1970s.

From memory, the cassette had the following songs:

Patti Smith – Because The Night

Linda Ronstadt – Alison

Elvis Costello – Watching The Detectives

Nick Lowe – (I Love The Sound of) Breaking Glass

Phoebe Snow – Every Night

The Motels – Total Control

The Divinyls – Boys In Town

And a selection of other gems.

Good times. I wish I still had that cassette, as it’s as important to me now as it was then. A reminder of where I’m from and where I’m going and how much I owe to my parents for the music I love.

Earlier this week, I went to the recording studio where I’m making my EP later this year. Appropriately enough, it’s a beautiful space in West Nashville called ‘Welcome To 1979‘. It’s an analog recording studio and I’m really excited about it. Read: terrified. But also, you know, thrilled. More news on recording soon… In the meantime, here’s a woman I discovered without any parental assistance – Emmylou Harris. This is footage of her singing the Susannah Clark song ‘I’ll Be Your San Antone Rose’ from 1979 with The Hot Band.

I don’t want to hear a sad love song

We both already know how it goes 

If tonight you’ll be my tall dark stranger 

I’ll be your San Antone Rose 

As the thunderclouds hang heavy over East Nashville

“Sometimes I get lonesome for a storm. A full blown storm where everything changes. The sky goes through four days in an hour, the trees wail, little animals skitter in the mud and everything gets dark and goes completely wild. But it is really God – playing music in his favourite cathedral in heaven – shattering stained glass – playing a gigantic organ – thundering on the keys – perfect harmony – perfect joy.” – Joan Baez

 

Still On The Road Part 2: Joshua Tree National Park, California

As a huge fan of Gram Parsons, it was a real treat to visit Joshua Tree National Park last week with my pal Chris Pickering. We drove through the desert blasting The Louvin Brothers and marveling at the beauty going by the window. Golden rocks and strange plants under a sky big and clouded and grey-blue.

Just the week before I’d sung ‘Hickory Wind’ at a show in Austin. It’s my favourite Gram song to sing and I think of him whenever I play it. Three chords, a lonesome melody and beautiful, longing lyrics.

I started out younger 
At most everything 
All the riches and pleasures 
What else could life bring 
But now when I’m lonesome 
I always pretend 
That I’m gettin’ the feel of 
Hickory Wind 

For those reading this who don’t know about Gram Parsons – head here for a better biography than I could dare to write. Else, simply know this: a visit to the Parsons shrine at Joshua Tree National Park has been long been high on my list of must-do pilgrimages.

A friend of mine once described Gram Parsons to me as “the gateway drug to country music”. He wasn’t kidding. As a woman whose love for traditional country music has seen me cross continents carrying nothing but sequin dresses, a collection of records and hope or two or three, I can testify that Gram started it.

His songs whispered, “Listen to George Jones. Buy that Tammy Wynette record. Yes, white boots with tassels are as terrific as you think they are. Emmylou Harris is the greatest singer of all-time. Sad songs are the best songs. Maybe you were a truck driver in a past life.”

I don’t pray often. But I did at Joshua Tree. A quick, silent prayer of thanks to the founder of Cosmic American Music. And then I had a shot of vodka to keep from crying. Thanks for everything, GP.