Hello friend,

I thought I should expand on my last message. You see I was on my way out to a country town I’d never been to before to hopefully finish a song I’m wrestling with. I called ahead and rented a caravan in a park two miles from town.

I walk in each day along the highway on the steady downward gradient past the motel strip. Out of all the neon signs my favourite is the bright red Mathew Flinders Motor Inn complete with a cartoon illustration of the ship Investigator he circumnavigated Australia in. The town holds a lot of promise from this angle, all the buildings bunched up like that, snug in the lap of the surrounding range.

There are so many flies you can catch one in a swat without even trying. The giant half-court sized Australian flag next to the Chinese Restaurant gives the main street a sense of majesty, that is when it can find ample breeze to lift it. The mini clock tower at the furthest end of the Main street is another stately feature until you get close and find it’s hands have long been amputated, just a blank timeless face.

I’m starting to recognize other faces around town though, like characters in a play. The librarian runs the projector at the film night in the Centerlink Hall. The jolly cafe owner and his pregnant wife prefer a burger from the fish shop down the road than their own fare. I keep seeing the same cab driver doing laps of the town block, the car doors displaying the company logo Satellite Taxis. The plural isn’t fooling anyone.

I eat lunch in the old-fashioned tearooms. It’s all lace doilies, dark oak wood and white bread. I like listening to the people talk, the way their conversations are as stark and honest as the architecture. Having a coffee at the cafe I overhear a table of ladies engage with the expectant co-owner as she tends their table.

”How’s the baby coming along?”
”Oh fine”
”We were just all saying you look a little pale. Is everything okay?”
”The doctor says everything is normal. I’m feeling good.”
”Are you sure? You could be anaemic?”

Sledgehammer honesty.

Last night it was minus 1 in the caravan. I put on as many clothes as I could and huddled under the thin blanket shivering like a car that won’t start but slept nonetheless.

In the morning a teenaged boy brings me another two blankets and asks if he can come in. He’s home on holidays and I’m guessing prolifically bored by the way he’s been riding his BMX round and round my van for the past few days. He’s spotted me playing guitar and wants to talk about it.

”I’m trying to start a band,” he tells me, “My best friend is the drummer. You might have seen him, he slept over last night.”

“No, I missed him,” I confess, which led to a tiny bit of uncomfortable silence. But then I add, “Do you have your own songs?”

Yeah, that’s what I wanted to ask you he stared earnestly, How do you make up words? I tried a few times but not much luck.

I thought about it, about my days staring at the wall, other frustratingly procrastinating, with no tools or methods available to employ. It’s all still a mystery.

”When you know please come and tell me,” I was telling the truth, “Lyrics are the hardest thing.”

”What’s Lyrics?”

There is wood-grained laminex covering most surfaces so I like to imagine I’m living in a room carved inside a tree. I’ll stay here now and hope the song I’ve been waiting for will find me. And if not I’ll try and look for it in my own way, the only way I know. How will I do this? By daydreaming.

And that is also the reason I’ve never been good at cricket. It is not a game for daydreamers.

See you back in Sydney next week.

There is silver flashing inside and outside of the bus. Behind and diagonally to my right a young Aboriginal girl sits by the window next to her mother. Her fluorescent pink jacket stretches across her round stomach. She’s got an Instamatic film camera and is studying the passing scenery with a careful discerning eye, like she’s reading serious literature. She considers an approaching dry mangy hill littered with dead white trees. She gets an angle through the eyepiece and snaps, the flash illuminating us fellow passengers for a second. I feel I should tell her that the light reflecting back off the bus window will probably ruin her photos. But after twenty minutes of constant shooting I realize she can’t possibly have any film in the camera. My heart warms at this.

Outside, far off to our left a storm is creeping across the plain. The grey mass is strobing every few moments. It’s the middle of the day.

I hear the effervescent crack of a drink can being opened. Directly across from me a woman drinks a coke in a stubby-cooler that says ’Go Aussie Go!’ She has platinum blonde hair, a bedazzled denim jacket and rings like miniature mansions built on her knuckles. She’s reading a novel about a courtroom drama. I cast her as an aging Country and Western Star.

In my headphones John Lennon implores me to check out a woman called Polythene Pam, who is attractive despite her masculine looks.

The storm is nearly on us. Lightning during the day is even more spectacular. It’s like God has cracked the shell of the world with a giant teaspoon.

The worst thing is the tedium.
Where are the screams and metal twisting and building collapses that go with other catastrophes?
At least it would kill time to watch something burn down.
It feels like some kind of major disaster but there is no sound, just a massive yawning silence.
Silence as big as a whale.
The biggest whale you could imagine, bloated on krill.

It’s just one thought but how can the largest mammal get that way being such a picky eater?
But soon the others come back.
So heavy to make the head loll,
That burst through the door of the control room and say, We’ll take it from here fellas.
And not just the head.
Your whole body is weighed down into the bed long after the alarm.
Well it’s not the blankets keeping you there you idiot, they weigh less than a watermelon.
Roll one into a ball and see.
Into the shape of a watermelon.
Seat it next to a real one, pick one up and then the other.
Shape and size has nothing to do with heaviness, it’s the many particles that make it.
And there’s always too many of them to remember names and birth dates.

There’s no way to weigh this though, only in the days and weeks and months that it’s taking.
I think of all the other wonderful ways we should waste a life.
Knitting.
Fly Fishing at dawn.
Learning to order food in Creole.
I’ve never done any of these but I miss them, somehow.

August 2009

I’m the impostor.

But it’s been a while since I’ve felt like this. I can sense the hairs spring up on the back of my neck like an army that had been buried in the sand, waiting. It’s only the first song too, ‘Chasing the Sheep is best Left to Shepherds’ and its baroque gallop urges me to beat my fists in the air and headbang. It digs me in the ribs and says COME ON. Around me everyone looks on stoically, not a head movement in sight. We’re a study group. I’m an island in a sea of mannequins. Am I missing the point?

I’d found Nyman inadvertently through Peter Greenway films while a pretentious high school student. Although not really understanding the greater themes, mortality by way of morality and the Renaissance aesthetic, it was probably just the cloak-and-dagger violence and nudity. We used to swap VHS tapes on Fridays.

”Ok I’ve got ‘Two Thousand Maniacs’ and ‘Blood Feast’. Whadda ya got?”
 “The Draughtsman’s Contract”
 “What the hell is that?”
“British Arthouse”
 “Um…”
 “It’s a period piece. Funny costumes.”
 “Maybe I’ll just…”
 “There’s boobs and people die”
 “I guess I’ll take it”

I didn’t realise at the time but the soundtracks of these films had seeped into me, and years later I recognised a tune somewhere and joined the dots and bought as much of it as I could find. I mostly listened to it on tiny earphones travelling here and there. It had a way of making the places I was going seem more important. My fellow passengers became low paid extras. Now Michael Nyman is in Australia and performing with his 11-piece band and I’m going.

On the way to Brisbane I’d stopped in at the farm to cook my Nan dinner and do some chores around her house. In my rush out the door I’d forgotten to bring anything for later that might constitute ‘theatre attire.’ I had only the old jeans, flannelette shirt and work boots I was already wearing, a fashion standard that could only match a good lawn mowing at best.

”You’re not wearing those to the concert?” she asked looking at the state of the jeans, different areas of my leg showing through the rips. The seat had nearly fallen out of them completely.
”I have to, there’s no choice now.”
”That’s bloody terrible. I’ll worry about that all night now,” she lay back on the lounge as if she couldn’t bear look any longer. I pondered what a great simple life it must be when a stranger’s fashion opinions could keep you awake. Old people worry about a few weeds in the garden, meanwhile our whole planet warms up ready to pop.

I helped fill in a few blank boxes on her crossword. She couldn’t leave it alone.
 “I hope you don’t have an accident on the way.”
“Don’t worry about me, I drive slow,” I reassured her.
 “…Imagine what they’d think of you if you had to go to hospital dressed like that.”
Remember, our planet could explode at any second.

Thankfully by the time dinner was cooked she’d forgotten all about it and was now concerned at how successfully I’d boiled the broccoli. It needed to contain none of its original goodness and dissolve as soon as it hit the tongue.
 “What do you think about that Michael Jackson dying?” she asked me for the forth time this week. I wondered if I even had an opinion.
 “It was sad,” I answered again, supposing it probably is, “He had a strange life.” I realised this would be in the top percentage of most cliched answers given by anyone asked the same question.
The weekly celebrity gossip magazines, her glossy windows to the outside world, would have informed Nan of this. She knew all about this person Michael Jackson but I’m sure if I asked what her favourite track off ‘Thriller’ was she’d just look at me and say ”Hey?” I thought of her alone in the house on 450 acres in southeast QLD following the loves and diets of these fictitious characters from another universe. I know for sure she’s never seen a Jenifer Aniston movie.

I arrive at the QPAC theatre without having had to be wheeled into Accident and Emergency underdressed. I forget about my rags, and everything else as I rejoice in my padded seat. They play all my favourites.

This is the first such concert I’ve ever been to. Not a lyric in sight. I know it’s technically incorrect to call it ‘Classical’ as that only happened for a short while after 1750 or so. Wherever this music comes from I’m new to it’s machinery but it’s still all a string of melodies and rhythms that’s threaded in one ear and comes out the other rubbing over the brain as it goes and you either like it or hate it, understanding or not.

Some songs make me think of scribbling feverishly with a feathered quill, stopping every few bars to re-ink. Others attack me in a swarm of angry insects.

After an hour or so I do end up sliding back in my chair, blending with my seated allies. I’m letting go of the outward body movement and the energy rush has found its way inside. My eyes and ears are doing their job but can’t take all the credit. It’s beyond that now. My soul is swishing about like a friendly ghost. I can understand something completely but don’t ask me to explain it.

When the last note rings off most of the audience give a standing ovation. Although unmoving through the performance this is how we will best express our enjoyment and appreciation. We’ll clap three feet higher than in the chair.

This is an interview conducted on the last night of 3 shows in London, July 2008. We sat high up in the Gallery of the Cadogan Hall while the stage was being prepared for soundcheck. As the tour was to promote the latest Magentic Fields album ‘Distortion’ we spoke mainly about that…

Darren Hanlon: We’re talking to Stephin Merritt at the end of the Distortion European Tour. How are you feeling about going home?

Stephin Merritt: I am relieved, I hate touring, I hate playing live, I hate live music. This is all a terrible mistake.

DH: Right. So you’re in a nightmare.

SM: I’m going to wake up from this nightmare tomorrow in London, far from my own bed. The next day I will wake up from this nightmare again in New York. And the following day I will wake up from this nightmare again in Los Angeles.

DH: And then it’ll all be some distant memory. I just thought I’d ask you some questions. The instrumental song ‘Threeway.’ Some night I’ve been jamming along offstage (SM looks alarmed)…so no one can hear me of course. The riff sounds complex but is so easy to play. It’s almost like a finger exercise for a guitar player as well, like ‘Wipeout.’

SM: It’s like a finger exercise specifically for a bass player because you can play the whole thing on the bass.

DH: Of course, you only need 4 strings.

SM: Or a ukulele

DH: So I think you were saying with this song you had 2 separate pieces of music that you didn’t write together that you’d perform at soundchecks.

SM: Right. I had 2 different instrumental pieces of music that used cycles of 3. So I stuck them together and shouted ‘threeway’ once a minute and made it 3 minutes long.

DH: And decided it would all be about group sex. So there’s a lot of thinking behind that song.

SM: Yes (chuckles)

DH: The next question is for the song ‘California Girls.’ I’d actually written in a note book after touring the US once that over there the word ’squirrel’ would be a good rhyme for ‘girl’ the way you guys say it (squirls). And you used this in that song. Are you worried if Australians, or even Brits, cover that song it’ll sound weird?

SH: Oh, please say both words.

DH: Squirrels, girls

SM: Squeerels?…Squeerels, gurls. Yes, those words sound nothing alike in your accent. They almost rhyme in my accent.(he practises these words for a while)I make it a little like it might almost be two syllables but it’s only one syllable. (he practises some more)
It’s a near-rhyme. It’ll pass.

DH: see that wouldn’t work either; pass, mass

SM: Mass, parse? Right (laughs)

DH: which makes me think there should be rhyming dictionaries for different dialects.

SM: well there are. They’ve just carefully concealed their origins. But if you look at what rhymes in various rhyming dictionaries you can tell where they’re from. I have the best rhyming Dictionary the ‘Clement Wood’ but it’s definitely not my accent

DH: British?

SM: British. I’m always fining things that don’t seem to rhyme.

DH: So if you were in a British pub overhearing conversation you might get some different ideas for lyrics just by listening to accents?

SM: Yes but I’d have to make sure they were sung by people with those accents. In fact when Amelia Fletcher sang ‘Looking for love in the hall of Mirrors’ on the first 6ths album I had been picturing ‘mirrors’ to be sung to rhyme with ‘appears’, a one syllable word as some people pronounce it. And I thought she’d be one of those people. But not at all, she actually has quite a posh accent and great annunciation.

DH: I actually thought that might be intentional. The rhythm of that line is really nice because you expect it to be one syllable.

SM: Right. When I sing it there’s also two syllables and I always feel kind of awkward. Where am I going to end this syllable?

DH: Ok moving on. ‘Zombie Boy.’ Probably the only Pedonecrophiliac anthem.

SM: No, I’m sure there must be a death metal band out there…

DH: …who’ve touched on the subject…

SM: I know Alice Cooper has touched on Necrophilia. But not Pedonecraphilia. But not to be outdone. He’ll probably hear mine and come up with something more shocking.

DH: Add a beastiality component in there as well. I’m guessing you’ve watched a lot of zombie movies in your time.

SM: maybe 20.

DH: That song particularly reminds me of this zombie film I saw years ago. It was actually set in Haiti and the zombies were tribal cannibals. They obviously hadn’t shot enough footage for a full length feature so they’ve edited in stock nature footage. You could tell it was completely different film stock.

SM: Hmm, that sounds Italian

DH: Yeah, I think it was overdubbed. Is there one particular zombie film this song is based on?

SM: No…I feel like Italian movies of the 70s of that genre went out of their way to do something that had not been done in a movie before. So tasteless that it had not been done in a movie before, or couldn’t have been done, and could never be done in an American movie. Like in Cannibal Holocaust you see actual animals being tortured

DH: That could be it! Zombie Holocaust?

SM: It could be so difficult. Italian movies would have their titles changed by distributors. They release them a few times with different titles.

DH: That could be it though. It was so bad.

SM: Cannibal Holocaust is shocking enough but no one thinks to call it bad. You can’t tell where the documentary aspect of it ends and the fiction aspects begins. It’s all about film exploitation.

DH: So then you’re a massive movie fan but the small screen has almost no effect on you. I asked you about the ‘Office’ one of the biggest British comedies ever and…

SM: I’ve never seen it. I don’t have a television. That said I have seen on other peoples television some recent shows. The Dog Whisperer for example.

DH: A pet help show?

SM: A particularly good pet help show. Though being an American television show it doesn’t actually mention the existence of urine or deffication. So that number one canine difficulty is ignored.

DH: A canine difficulty that exists in most European cities we’ve been travelling to.

SM: Uh huh.

DH: Ok ‘The Nuns Litany.’ There’s a line in there where she waits for her mother to die before she experiences any new vices. Is there anything that you would edit or think twice about putting in a song knowing you own mother might hear it?

SM: I suppose if I was going to write an expose about Tibetan Buddhism I would want to do it particularly accurately for fear that my mother would jump down my throat for inaccuracies. But other than that I don’t think I could possibly shock my mother. My mother can shock me and I can’t shock her. My mother was not shocked by ‘Zombie Boy.’

DH: I have a vision of you sitting down playing her your new album. Did she react to ‘Distortion’ at all? Has she heard it?

SM: She heard and early version that had more harshness while it was still being mixed and she considered it completely unlistenable. She was surprised when it came out that it was a lot more listenable than when she heard it.. (thinking)I guess there is a way to shock my mother: unrelenting screeching feedback.

DH: (laughs) In a room where she can’t escape. You seem impervious to praise or criticism. I know you refuse to read any reviews on your live shows or albums. Was there a specific point in your career where something triggered this decision?

SM: I’m sorry I don’t remember.

DH: I remember the one for me was when they said I was a midget circus freak who didn’t stop talking.

SM: With any encounters with the British press I’m painfully reminded that they are completely free to make up quotes. They will quote me as saying anything they want.

DH: It’s sometimes weird when they quote you as saying a slang word you’d never use.

SM: Or never heard of. I’ve actually had that happen to me in America too but only with unprofessional journalists.

DH: So with you ear problems, the discomfort you seem to have with noise. I took a photo of you guys from side of stage and you heard the shutter and looked around even though you had your earplug in. It made me think that the shutter sound might be in a similar register to applause. And it cut through. Is the audience clapping extremely painful?

SM: I probably only had one ear plug in. I’m not totally deaf in the right ear I’m just really imbalanced between the two ears.

DH: But you were in the middle of a song! I thought ‘my god he can hear that’

SM: laughs

DH: Is this degenerative? Could this mean the end of touring for you guys?

SM: They are getting worse. This has meant the end of touring so much because we have to impose these ridiculous constraints.

DH: Have you ever asked the audience not to clap?

SM: Yes, it didn’t work.

DH: Maybe you should distribute mittens before a show.

SM: We’ve discussed that. Or noise makers that are actually very soft. Dried leaves.

DH: When we first met years ago and we went guitar shopping in Sydney you gave me some advice on songwriting. When I mentioned I wasn’t as prolific as I’d like you suggested treat it like a crossword where keep working by filling in the blanks.

SM: Yes, if I know there’s going to be a certain number of lines I place that number of dots going down the left hand margin so I can see where the lines are going to be.

DH: Do you have any other methods you use? I guess when you have such a high output you need to have some kind of framework…

SM: Oh I don’t think I have a high output at all.

DH: Really? That day you wrote a song on the guitar in the shop!

SM: Did I? I don’t remember

DH: That’s why you bought it. I had the exact same guitar I was trying to sell

SM: A Country Gentleman?

DH: Yeah, I had one and you said (in deep Merritt baritone) ‘why would I deprive you of a guitar?.’ But it’s ok I sold it a week later. But yeah, you wrote a song on the guitar in the shop and I said the guitar is overpriced and you said ‘well what is a song worth?’

SM: well I guess that depends if the song gets published or not.

DH: do you still use that guitar?

SM: Yeah I think I used it as the rhythm guitar on Distortion

DH: Well I think I know the answer to this question and a lot of people ask me this question when they hear I’m coming on tour with you guys. Do you think you’ll ever come back to Australia?

SM: I can’t see any reason not to come back to Australia if I can’t be cryogenically frozen.

DH: So when there’s a few more huge leaps in the science world first they’ll fix your ear problem and then freeze you Han Solo style…

SM: Hopefully less painful then Han Solo… and there I’ll be. I’d also like to go to New Zealand. I’ve never been to New Zealand.

DH: Me neither. And I have less of an excuse. (at the time of interview this was still true)

SM: well it’s still an excuse. There’s an ocean between. They want me for soundcheck now.

CLICK

Most of the songs on this ‘Pointing Rayguns At Pagans’ album were written to the instructions of, “we need another song next week. Don’t worry about it too much, it’s just a B-side.”

Now if I don’t have some album off-cast lying around I have to reply, “Ok, so now I’ll go off and try and write a shit song.”

That’s the thing you see, B-sides are often branded as second rate, sonic misfits. I feel bad for them. For me though I’m not usually one for having fully completed spares lying around staring up puppy-eyed begging to be given a home. The few ideas I have I generally bash around until I get something I’m happy with to use. So therefore most of the songs on Pointing Ray Guns at Pagans were written quickly.

I think that’s why I’m strangely fond of them. I never had to play them over and over until any affection I might have felt for them had worn off. And probably the judicious part of my brain that would normally send a bad rhyme or clunky phrase straight to hell was turned off. These are at least honest and instinctual.

Yes, listening back to them now I’d have changed so many things. It’s lucky I didn’t get the time.

Some notes:

ELECTRIC SKELETON

During the few years after finishing Uni and living In Lismore I had no money. Once when I asked someone on a date I fretted that an expensive dinner or even a movie ticket was stretching it. I made her some soup and commented that this favorable weather we’re having was too good to waste. I suggested she might want to just walk around the town. We strolled past the crowded pubs as they were about to close, throught the alleys behind the shops and then climbed up onto the train bridge that spanned the Richmond river, careful not to meet the 11:50 XPT from Murwulimbah. All night we both had a strange feeling of being watched. I thought I kept seeing someone duck around corners as I’d turn to survey. Later in the early hours of the morning when we retraced our steps back to the house we kept finding little messages painted in broad strokes in blue paint. There were even arrows pointing to places we’d been. I realised the colour looked familiar. When I got home I checked the laundry and the tin of regular blue house paint we’d kept there was gone.

AND THE DAYS WERE JUST PACKED
and
LIGHTS

Recorded in Athens GA, with some of the Elephant 6 locals, on a lot of interesting old equipment. But it’s the Atari 2600 in the lounge room I remember most. I hope you don’t feel ripped off that these songs available on the Hiccups EP for so long are included here. That EP is close to selling out and won’t be repressed. I wanted to keep them alive. A lot of the wonderful keyboard melodies are the work of Bree Van Reyk.

ELI WALLACH

Was never happy with the original version. In fact if I ever knew the man himself would hear it I’d have put a lot more work into it. I’m so relieved he does seem really flattered though. This new version is heaps better sounding with more of a synth-pop bed recorded on a snow heavy day in an old pencil factory in Brooklyn.

Claudia Gonson from the Magnetic Fields came in to sing backups. I’d always cringed a bit at the line ‘I want adventure in my pocket’ as it doesn’t rhyme with ‘Wallach’ and seems really cheesy. When I told Claudia this she suggested calling Stephin Merritt, lyric doctor.

He spouted out a string of rhymes, “colic, frolic, vitriolic, metabolic, bucolic, Jackson Pollock, hmm….what about ‘He could slay them all with his left bollock?.’”

“not sure that’d work” I replied.

“what’s the original line?” he asked

When I told him the phone went quiet.

“Sometimes extended passages of instrumental music can be very pleasing” was his polite way of saying he thought it sucked too.

I tried for hours to think of something but kept coming back to the old line. In the end I left it be and something in me felt guilty I’d ever thought of changing it. You’ve gotta learn to love your awkward children too.

MY LIFE A BLUR

My greatest anxiety put to music. My parents fell in love at 18 and remain so. My name was written on my dads 21st birthday card. It worries me sometimes that I’m still unconnected and floating like a balloon with no string attached. Nothing in cement.

Recorded in Portland, at Type Foundry. We were sitting around waiting on a session drummer when the engineer Adam Selzer said well I might as well give it a go and proceeded to deliver one of my favorite drum takes I’ve been a party to.

PINBALL MILLIONAIRE

Old 50s song I found and added a verse to. It’s the story of my life. If I’m in a new town and feel threatened or uneasy all I need to do is find a machine. Even knowing where one is that I can get to is comfort enough.

THE PERFECT DAY

Recorded on 4-track with the same backing vocalist from the original 80s version (by Fischer Z), Jennie Cruse. Whenever I play in her hometown of Brighton, UK we sing it live together. Last time she even dragged alone John Watts who wrote the song. He sat at the bar in a sharp black suit and bowler hat and I was so nervous I had to sing the song looking at the floor feeling underdressed.

YES, THERE IS A SLIGHT CHANCE HE MIGHT ACTUALLY FAIL

Another great drum track played by the engineer. Tomas Hakava was so obsessed with the Beatles that not only did he have in the studio an exact Ringo Starr Black Oyster Pearl Ludwig drum kit but also the Lark cigarette packet the Beatle kept on the snare to deaden the sound. Any other packet of cigarettes doesn’t sound right he told me.

THE LOAF

Too long, too much reading of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Christmas Murder Ballad. Not a popular genre.

FUNPARK FUGITIVES

My first official recording. I couldn’t find a band. Seriously, I asked every musician I met. The girl singing on this is Rebecca Yudale, a stranger who came to look for a room in this crappy house* where I lived in for a while in Newtown. She mentioned she’d sung a bit in the past and then politely declined the room. A week or so later she was sitting in the cheap Leichhardt recording studio singing with me. We even did a couple of shows together but I’ve since lost contact with her.

TWO DAYS IN A FOREIGN CITY

There’s only been one restaurant where the food and service was so bad I felt it would be a crime to exchange money for it. We were eating Mexican in central London. I guess we could’ve done the grownup thing and confronted the waiter. Instead she went to the bathroom and then shuffled out the door while the coat check had their back turned. I pretended I was on the phone and needed to be outside to hear properly. Once free we ran like hell. The note we left on the table said ‘Sorry, We just couldn’t bring ourselves to pay for this.’

VIDEO PARTY SLEEPOVER

Rebel Anthem for those who can’t get off the couch.

NOTES ON LEAVING

Another 4-track backed by members of M Wards band in return for accommodation in my house for a few days. There’s a line that implies that you can’t whistle and smile at the same time, a statement Mike Coykendall made while we were walking around Petersham. I’d like to clarify that you can in fact give the impression of a smile if your one of those who whistle through their teeth. It also makes you look like a maniac.

*seriously, this place was dump. And it’s still standing! I actually lived in a room outside past the laundry and it seemed to be the most structurally sound part of the house. Mind you, there was a considerable gap under my door so once when I came home from tour I found a stray cat had made a nest out of my blankets and was living on my bed. It tried to kill me.

Another day we walked in and noticed the four legs of the bed upstairs had fallen through the downstairs ceiling and were poking into our kitchen. A few weeks later we came home and our front door was gone. Some thieves (with the help of termites) had busted in and stolen a lot of electrical equipment, none of which worked. We were happy as it saved us dumping it ourselves.

I first met Cory while recording some songs in Portland a while back. The session required piano and trumpets and the engineer said he knew someone who could do both proficiently. We heard a rumble in the parking lot and from an upstairs window witnessed Cory arrive in his A Team van (in which he’d toured the whole US multiple times, as his transport and accommodation) He walked in, put a couple of beers in the fridge and greeted us cheerfully. Looking more lumberjack than maestro he placed his little moleskin notebook/sketchpad on the music flap and tested the keys. “nicely out of tune”….The songs came easy to him and his playing sounded gentle and old world; to put it in a MySpace pigeon-hole ‘’sentimental/showtunes”.

I’d written a few of the songs for ‘Fingertips and Mountaintops’ leaning in that direction so it seemed fated that I’d met him and that he was available to fly over to Australia and play on the recordings. He understood my ambiguous motivations for the feelings needed for the song Manilla NSW.

Me: You’re an uptight primary school teacher

Cory: Uptight?

Me: Yeah, you always dreamed a life on stage, touring as concert pianist. Your father, coming from a working class background, felt a capricious existence in the arts held no long term security and forced you to into something more stable. Now, years later, you”re too old to learn new tricks. Instead you feel imprisoned in a music room teaching arpeggios to them who might as well be monkeys. Although at times when rote playing the most pedestrian pieces you’re transported to your parallel thwarted fantasy life and unbridled emotion creeps into the music.

Cory: Got it

The first day Cory arrived in Australia I picked him up at the Sydney International and told him we were going to collect a piano I’d found on ebay. He had to come with me to the upper classes of the North Shore and help me lift it out of this mansion where it had lived neglected until now, with it’’s owner, an American lawyers wife who told us her husband would sue if we left any marks on walls or scratched her polished cedar floor boards or marble walkway. I worried that Cory imagined he’d stepped jetlagged into a removalist nightmare as he sat in the back of the van trying hard to steady a heavy unrestrained object that could possibly squash him if I took a corner to sharp.

It made it in one piece back to our place and for the next few days Cory and the new piano became inseparable. If I left him alone in the house for a day I”d come home and he’d written and recorded (on my 4-track) entire songs. He’s a fast worker. Once in the kitchen I overheard him play a melody that to me sounded at the same time uplifting and melancholy, like any good 80’s power ballad. I asked him what it was and he said he just made it up. He said “you can have it if you want”. Wow, inspired player and song philanthropist, what a guy! This melody grew into my first real collaboration and became the song ‘Old Dream’.

6. Vege bar, Melbourne:

Most of my friends down there don’t go there anymore as it’s been around
forever and they’re sick of it, plus there’s so many culinary delights in
Melbourne to choose from. I still go there partly out of nostalgia and
partly cause i do like the food! it’s part of tradition when I visit
Melbourne. Crouchy lets me borrow a music mag from Polyester and i sit
there for hours and always order the tofu burger on a wholemeal bun with a
protein pumper soy drink with bee pollen. I bet you’re all so blown
away by this information.
I also like the way the sun streams in of an afternoon

5. Swedish farmhouse, Southern Sweden;

For the life of me I can’t remember the name of the place but it belongs to
the father of a friend of mine. It’s completely remote and self sufficient.
I’ve stayed out there now a few times in winter and summer. In summer we
spent a day chopping wood with which we had to fill a shed for the coming
winter. On breaks we rode our bikes to the forest to pick wild berries and
return to work with stained fingers. I spent the best New Years Eve of my life
here. We were snowed in and melted little blocks of metal in a frying pan.
We then threw it into a bucket of cold water and the shape that it formed when it solidified
would tell our future for the coming year. Later on I brought the tone of the night down a little by running nude in the snow.

4. various old pubs, Oxford UK;

I lived in Oxford with my girlfriend for 7 months a while back. As she and my flat mates worked all day I spent a lot of hours in different pubs reading writing and overhearing the debates of opinionated students. I wrote a song called ”Fire-Engine” about all that. my favorite pub was the Angel and Greyhound which had a bar billiards table (an antiquated pub game which would be complicated to explain…google it!) where my friends and I had many championship tournaments. Next would be the pub next door the Half Moon, which never seemed to be open but would have random traditional folk music nights where you felt like you were in a tavern from Lord of the Rings. It seemed like the kind of place where the old man with the pipe at
the end of the bar would warn you about werewolves. The White Horse had a
ceiling so low even I had to bend down to get in. they have the strongest
cider there and in the 16th century they found in the attic what they
believed to be a witches broomstick.

3. River Gums caravan park, Manilla NSW;

This is a beautiful place
I’ve found on my quest for ”the ultimate
secluded picturesque comfortable retreat for songwriters”. A friend and I
just visited recently and the park hosts David and Lee took us out to the
monday night RSL line-dancing class. The club is run and consists of 70+
year old widows who still want to dance even though they have no partners.
As sad as this sounds it was the most fun night i’d had in ages. I found
out that i was the only male who’d ever joined the class. One lady called Mavis,
the oldest of the group at 87, said that I was light on my feet and would make a
good ballroom dancer.

2. Random Cocktail bar, Chinatown, San Francisco;

This features in my song Wrong Turn. I stumbled upon this place on my
first trip overseas when i was 22. It’s tiny and only seems to be peopled by grumpy old Chinese men playing Bingo-Pinball machines. I’d never even heard of such machines. Unlike
conventional Pinball machines they have holes in the playing field and you
can win money or credits. I played them for a while and even won a few quarters. When I got home I fantasized about it for ages thinking
maybe I’d just dreamed it up. When I went back years later i spent a whole
day trying to find it. The only clue I had to go on was that it had a sign
written on the awning that read ‘where good friends and girls meet’ which is funny because I’ve never seen a girl in there and couldn’t imagine any wanting to be in there especially if they wanted to meet someone.

1. My Family Farm, Wolvi Qld;

I’ve been hanging out here since i was born…and before! Maybe I was even
conceived here but i really don’t wanna go there. It’s 450 acres bordering
the rainforest and was settled and cleared by my ancestors. It’s probably
the most special place to me. It’s where I learned to ride horses and motor
bikes, and the palatial cubby house (complete with watchtower) my cousin and
I built still stands, although the termites have moved in.
My Nan still lives there and when visiting her I think I may end up there
too..

HOLD ON
A simple song about missing your loved one. I guess the other thing is that the title has two meanings… Hold on as in keep it together, or hold on and wait for me.

THE PEOPLE WHO WAVE AT TRAINS
I really wanted to have the voice of an old woman on this song. The kind of voice I remember from primary school church service when the nuns would sing with fragile vibrato from vocal chords warn from the strain of a lifetime of hymns. I went in search but had no luck until I remembered that Lenka (from Decoder Ring) has one of those voices from another era even though she’’s still in her 20s. The vocals on this were one of the last things recorded for the album back in Sydney and I had such a bittersweet feeling of sadness and relief to be almost finished… but pure joy to be surrounded by good friends all singing together. Myself, Bree, Lenka, Lee Hillam (Sea Life Park) and David Trump. Lee had Bebe, her new baby along who sat quietly perched on her back through the whole thing until Lenkas solo came up where he decided to have a go himself. If you listen closely with headphones you can just make out Bebes first vocal take.

HAPPINESS IS A CHEMICAL
The only song on the album recorded from the Portland sessions. It was a real buzz to play with Jesse Sandoval (the Shins) who said it was a good experiment for him to record a song in an hour or so as his band usually spend a lot more time fine tuning theirs. He said it was also a revelation to try the best organic chips that my catering budget allowed as he’d never had them before (Lundberg Santa Fe BBQ). And for me, just being in Portland to hang out and record with Adam Selzer had the Dopamine and Serotonin levels at a peak. Love those chemicals!

ELBOWS
No explanation needed really. A wrap party for a film, a lot of free drinks, a blurry and lonely songwriter, a beautiful famous actress. Whichever combination produced the lightning bolt that hit me, this song wrote itself. (But she was actually wearing jeans. I just needed to say ‘that dress’ to loosely rhyme with ‘actress’)

MANILLA NSW
Australian country towns are dying, not even considering the climate change issues. For the past 50 years or so local industry has been pushed out to the cities and their once strong economies are in decline. Most towns had their own cordial and soft drink factories, dairies, a working train stations, drive-in theatres, banks just to name a few things. There weren’t as many reasons for the kids to leave home to find work. But hey, this isn’t just a political song. It’’s a postcard tribute to a place I spent barely 4 days in, lying in a caravan waking up to corellas carousing by the river and walking round the streets all day with a constant smile on my face. Smiling to be out of a city and to drink beer with weird locals. Smiling for a breath of fresh air.

The recording of this song was the hardest. We tried it first and last. We were even packing up the gear when Anthony our engineer suggested we run in and have another go (the version that made it to the final). I sang it through an old 1950’s RCA mic that was lying round the theatre. As I sang I could feel the dust enter my lungs as i took each breath. I think Cory’s piano playing achieved the right balance between vaudeville and school assembly national anthem.

ROMANCE IS DEAFENING
A tale of loss and regret set in the wild west. Everything and everyone is a reminder of his lost love and he feels like turning them all into Swiss cheese. But luckily at the last minute a voice from the clouds (narrated by James Earl Jones), If you can’t find your gun, just break off a branch and pretend that it’s one….

THE OSTRACISM OF VINNY LALOR
Vinny Lalor lived in the township of Pomona in the 1940s, and attended a school dance in the very hall we recorded this album in. Shy and unassuming but always deep thinking she sat on a chair against the wall watching the townsfolk swirl around the dance floor or huddle on the edges in their little coteries. She didn’t understand them nor them her. She might as well have come from Pluto (even though she read that the planets surface gets down to -235C so therefore would be unable to spawn any life form). After the dance a local half-witted pimpled lad walked her home and awkwardly delivered her first kiss. At school on Monday out of embarrassment he refused to even speak to her and the other class mates ridiculed her. As harmless as it may sound the situation spiraled out of control and inexorably led to tragedy. I can’t think about this album with out thinking about Vinny Lalor.

FIRE ENGINE
I’ve always been a huge Dear Nora fan after playing a gig with them in Portland back in 2000. To me Katys voice is timeless, wistful, haunting and somehow nostalgically American (when she sings it evokes the soundtrack to ‘Hair’). When she agreed to sing for this album I set out to create a song that was simple yet melodically interesting to get her range. It was so much fun to write for another voice and from the point of view of a female. When the recording came back I listened to it over and over amazed that it even existed.

Now the subject of the song itself is still a mystery as I didn’t plan it. It came out of the 7 months I spent in Oxford last year. Oxford in the autumn is so unbelievably beautiful down by the river that you constantly feel you”re underdressed for the occasion. The afternoon light hangs low for hours and filters through the mist and everything feels trapped in a painting; strolling lovers, ducks avoiding the college rowing elevens, punting tourists and the 800 year old university spires poking above the tree line. After dark you can go to an old ale house to hang back in the corner and listen to the students philosophizing and flirting with each other. You can see a girl being subjected to both, cornered by a dashing young wordsworth in a vest. She doesn’t know whether to punch him or kiss him.

FINGERTIPS AND MOUNTAINTOPS
Someone said that songwriters have one song and keep writing it over and over. I’m not sure if that’s true (and lucky for people who hate squash…the game and the song) but this is an example of a common theme of mine. I seem to get inspiration by visualizing myself as a crusader for friends in trouble. I see myself as a cross between the Dalai Lama and the Phantom. It always nice idea to write for a audience of just one. Hopefully it’ll cheer them up and still be a good song others will like.

COUCH SURFING
Since I became a full time musician it’s been somewhat of a necessity to not have a house for certain periods of time. So therefore to survive you must rely on the kindness of friends. this song was written during a time I was house sitting in Melbourne and was having nightmares about leaving it and heading back out into the unknown. As I can see it this song came about for three reasons;
1. As a thank you to those friends who over the years had graciously allowed me to outstay my welcome
2. An addiction to reading Ben Lees blog where I stumbled upon a section where he”d decided to become a citizen of the world and not have a house
3. I thought it would be funny to have a surf-guitar song about couch surfing.

DON’T BOGART MY HEART
I first heard the term to ‘Bogart’ something while watching 90’s teen smash Reality Bites and then on a song from the Easy Rider soundtrack “Don’t Bogart that Joint”. Here’s a definition from answerbag.com:

Ah, how soon we forget the intricacies of 60s drug culture. The selfish connotation comes from hogging a marijuana cigarette. Someone who kept the joint in their mouth, hanging from their lip like Bogey, would be bogarting the joint. Instead of bogarting, one should pass it on to another. The term can be used for hoarding items other than pot.

When I realised Bogart rhymed with Heart I couldn’t help myself.

OLD DREAM
Quiet love
Love that whispers not screams
Love that doesn’t need to tell the world
Love that doesn’t even need the word ‘Love’
Love that watches the other while they sleep
Love that lives in short stories not novels
Love that still wonders even though they saw the other that morning and will see them again in the afternoon

This weekend I’ve been invited to play at the Grant McLennon tribute night as part of the Valley Fiesta in Brisbane. I’m honored to have been asked in the first place, being a huge fan and still in a state of disbelief when I listen to his songs and think that he’s in the sky now. His songs gave me a sense of place growing up in rural Queensland, being sung by another Queenslander. Although it’s set in another town Cattle and Cane will always remind me of childhood, wide verandas and humidity. A re-listen to Streets of Your Town and it’s a school kids visit to Brisbane, the big smoke. I see old men in shorts and long socks drinking longnecks on the front steps.
So yeah, I didn’t know Grant McLennon but I count my blessings that I got to meet him a few weeks before his death. I just wanted to tell you about it. In hindsight it seems like fate.

I’d just landed in Sydney.
By the time the cab had sped off I realised he’d dropped me 4 city blocks from my destination and charged me extra for his troubles. I cursed him and tried to balance all my worldly belongings on parts of my body to make the trek across town. It had been a fairly average week and I’d got back to Sydney early to move into a new house only to find that the real estate had put us back by 3 days so I was homeless. Had offers of a few couches but needed privacy to get some work done so I booked into a cheap hotel near Hyde Park.

I sweated my way up Goulburn St carrying 2 backpacks, a guitar, amp, and 3 bags of vinyl records. Every few 100ms I’d have to drop everything and just kick a bin or something. When I got level with the Civic Hotel I was ready to collapse and decided to go in and ask if I could leave half of my load there and come back later to retrieve it. They kindly agreed and when I came back I noticed someone waving at me from the bar. It was an old friend from Brisbane, Adele who had been playing bass for the Go-Betweens for the last few years. She asked if I wanted to join her and her company for a drink. I sure needed one and was happy to find that her friend was Grant McLennan. My day was brightened considerably although I was embarrassed to know they”d both watched me from their table struggle along with my gear like an ‘angry turtle’.

The Go-Betweens were in town for an awards ceremony and they were in good spirits. After a while Adele left to get ready and I convinced Grant to hang round for a few more beers. It’s always a bit of a worry meeting your heroes but I was pleasantly surprised by our conversation that afternoon.

Of course our common ground was music and I was surprised to learn he was a voracious music listener. He seemed honestly excited by a lot of new things that were happening. He mentioned Holly Throsby, New Buffalo, the Shins, Calexico and I must have blushed when he told me he had my records too.
Here was a guy who’d spent his whole life in the music industry and seemed to be completely free of bitterness. I didn’t think it possible.

We talked about songwriting and he said he was just going through a purple patch. He had enough songs for nearly 2 new records and he felt he was in a good place creatively. I on the other hand was stuck on a song and was staring down the deadline of recording dates for a new album so we compared our different processes for getting things done.

When it swung back to the awards he was attending later I expressed my confusion over the genre labelling we have in this country (and maybe everywhere else). I told him I thought it great the Go-Betweens finally got an Aria last year but why did it have to be in the ‘Adult Contemporary’ section (along with his friends Architecture in Helsinki) when the ‘Independent Artists’ category sounds more easy listening MOR than anything to my ears.
Grant agreed but replied graciously with “I don’t think I’m adult contemporary, but I do think I’m a contemporary adult, Darren”

Soon enough after we’d exhausted the topics of Queensland and our favourite actresses he had to go get ready too. We hugged and he said, now go write a good song Darren

And hopefully I did

Darren Hanlon, an Australian singer-songwriter, came to our attention early this spring. His work wasn’t something that we heard on our radio (yet!) but rather got wind of through a friend who saw this Aussie perform live. At that gig he played a nice little ditty about our favorite sport. The song, (There’s Not Enough Songs About) Squash is, you guessed it, about the sport with the four walls and a ball. And here, we spend a few minutes getting to know the man behind the guitar and racquet.

1. Let’s get to this right away: do you actually play squash?

Darren Hanlon: Yes, I try to play at least twice a week with my old flatmate.

2. For how long have you played, how did you get introduced to the game, and how good are you?

DH: Well, I discovered the game through my ex-girlfriend who is a nurse. When we moved to Sydney I lived with her for a month in the nurses quarters in Camperdown, Sydney. They had an old squash court there for the nurses to use. We played a few times and I loved it. Being a big fan of pinball machines it seemed to me the closest thing to human pinball there is.

After we broke up I moved to a sharehouse where there lived a sporty guy who played, so we kept going over to the old court and pretended to be nurses so we could play. It had now become a bit derelict, a ghost court, with bits of the wall falling away. It seemed to be always unlocked so you could go there anytime and turn the lights on and play.

I’ve now been playing for five years and gotten marginally better to become an average player. I’m still playing with that old flatmate (Curtis) and I have had to develop strategies to beat him as he’s a superior player to me. I have more stamina. I let him win a few rounds then I drive it home when he’s exhausted. Just lately I executed my first hit off the back wall to win a point!

3. Why did you write the song about squash?

DH: Once or twice I’d take my guitar down to the court to play while I was waiting for my turn. The acoustics in there are great to play in, almost like a church. Once I was just mucking around and sang that line there’s not enough songs about squash and then later thought I could actually get a whole song of it. I forgot about it until a friend’s band (the Secrets) asked me to write a song for them so I resurrected the idea, finished the song and gave it to them. After that I decided to sneak it into my set for a couple of shows, and people started requesting it all the time so I decided to record it on the last album, Little Chills.

4. Some could construe the song (There’s Not Enough Songs About) Squash as sarcastic, or as an ode. Tell us, which is it?

DH: It’s definitely an ode.

5. Are you a big fan of the game of squash to watch, or are you just a player? I.e., do you follow all the pro tour matches? Do you have a favorite professional player?

DH: I must admit that I know nothing of the professional game. My love is purely recreational. But I’d really like to learn. Maybe I should be reading your magazine!

6. How did you become a professional musician?

DH: Every step of the way it seems that things have happened by accident. After high school I’d planned to go to college to study maths. Next thing I knew I’d been accepted into Music University to study jazz, something of which I’d not planned on. I went there for three years and met a lot of the people I still work with now. I joined a band called the Simpletons who I loved at the time, and the only reason that happened was because they were borrowing my guitar leads and happened to need someone to fill in. I ended up touring and recording with them for seven years and we did some great things while still maintaining our independence in the music industry. When we split up I drifted round for a year or so. I refer to this time as my wilderness years. I thought I’d record some of the songs I was writing just for fun. I went to America to travel, and my friends started emailing me saying they were hearing my songs on the radio. I was saying are you sure? One song in particular, Falling Aeroplanes, was the one that seemed to cut through. Suddenly I had a pseudo-career. We recently released our new album Little Chills and are currently touring to promote that one.

7. Does your music pay the bills (i.e., is it your fulltime job) or do you do something else on the side? If the latter, what is your day job?

DH: It is a full time job but sometimes when I’m not touring there’s an antique shop one block from my house that lets me do the odd shift. It’s very grounding to work 9 to 5 after months of chaos. And it has heaps of old books and records to keep me entertained all day.

8. You’ve toured the US fairly recently with the Magnetic Fields. Do you have plans to come back to the States anytime soon?

DH: I’m planning to do a short tour there in august 2006.

9. When you write your songs, do you think about the lyrics first and then form music around them, or do you come up with riffs and music first and then pen some fitting words?

DH: I carry a notebook around to write lyric ideas, and when it gets full I have to force myself to finish it. Most times I have to go away to a country town to distance myself from all the distractions in my life: pinball, crosswords, friends, the telephone, the Internet, movies and even squash. I need to be thinking about the songs every waking minute to get the feelings to finish them. Sometimes it can be quite painful. I’m not the most fun person to be around when that process is happening. I become a vague freak.

Last November I traveled to Estonia as part of a Baltic tour, which included Finland and Sweden. I didn’t know what to expect but had a faint yearning to visit after seeing them win Eurovision in 2002 (every Estonian I met and mentioned this to screwed up their nose, not wanting to be known for such a spectacle. I assured them that we see the irony in the whole thing too) I was also looking forward to it as I’d be traveling with old friends Mark Manone and Stanley Paulzen. Mark who is usually the bass player in the Lucksmiths has been writing quite a few new songs lately and performing them under the working title of ‘Manone Alone’. Stanley performing as one man band Fred Astereo. Together with Nichlas our friend and Finnish tour manager, and Ben my flatmate and appointed merchandise salesman we had our own street gang.

Our contact Tauno met us at the ferry terminal and instructed us to follow him for 15mins. His accent sounded like he had said ‘please follow me for 15 miles’ but we soon cleared up the misunderstanding and over the next few days realised that to get anywhere in Estonia we had to follow Tauno for 15 mins. We walked across a frosty field past the city wall and up into the old town, tiled with shop fronts selling tourist trinkets and cheap soviet souvenirs.

At exactly 15mins Tauno stopped at a large wooden door. He swiped his card in a futuristic device and the door opened to narrow wooden staircase that lead up into a private cozy restaurant where we weren’t permitted to take photos, as instructed by a curt waitress who frowned as she took our lunch orders. This was the first of many confrontations while ordering food and we soon came to the conclusion that everyone in the hospitality and service industry in Estonia hated us.

You start to build and identikit image of people you’ve never met and been in email contact with. Tauno looked nothing like I expected. Lawyer by day, Smartly dressed and taciturn but humorously dry, he seemed to study us quietly through his glasses probably thinking we were nothing like he expected either. I hoped he liked us, especially as we were being particularly noisy and offensive, exited to be all together again in a strange country. Every now and then it looked as though Tauno would shudder silently and lower his head. At first I thought this was out of disgust until I realised he was actually laughing.

After an amazing meal of Baltic salmon we followed Tauno for 15mins to pick up the guitars we would borrow and then another 15 to his apartment. There we met another man who kept smiling at us.

My name is Armin, He said, I am your driver

He kept smiling the whole 2-hour drive to the University town of Tartu, and our first gig.

The major highway was only two lanes wide. It was eerie and every now and then you’d see a tiny floating reflector disc and as you passed it you’d realize it was attached, hanging by string, to some lone person waiting for a bus or a lift or something else. Miles from a town, alone in the middle of icy nowhere.
I asked our Armin about it and he told me that it was so cars could see them in the dark.

You know, Estonia is one place that has the most car accidents in all Europe

Really?

Silence

They call this the killing road

Silenter silence

Our eyes looked straight ahead and were unblinking in the glow of the oncoming traffic.

Some time into the journey we realized that the smell of the chemical in the windscreen washer fluid in Armans car was like olfactory candy and even when there wasn’t sleet we made him turn on the wipers to get a hit. I was definitely an addict by the end of that trip.

We asked if we could have a break at one of the wooden truck stops that interrupted the long stretches of nothing. Mark and I ran into the gift shop to get warm and a bell summoned a stone-faced lady with heavy bagged eyes. We tried to explain that we didn’t want to buy anything. She stared at us expressionless without saying anything. We felt uncomfortable and left with another bell twinkle. She hated us more than anyone she’d met.

The venue in Tartu was a loft cafe/bar/nightclub in an old building in the centre of town. It was a student hangout and everyone looked sharp and pretty. The first act was a local Estonian folk singer called Kago who sang every few songs acapella, accenting the notes with his fingers like they were long pieces of cheese from a pizza.

Later, when the place had completely filled to overflowing I started to worry that my little acoustic guitar and banjo wouldn’t cut through enough to reach the whole crowd. When Mark Manone started playing his set with Stanley on drums and the dance floor came alive I almost had an anxiety attack. Then Stanley as Fred Astereo kicked ass. My set will die a rapid death. These people don’t want to hear sensitive ballads. It’s Friday night for crying out loud. These kids wanna rock! I begged Stanley to play drums for me too, which would mean he plays in all 3 acts, approximately 3.5 hours straight. He agreed though and we rocked as much as possible given our resources. Mark ended up joining in too on second guitar. By the time we’d finished the set the crowd weren’t ready to leave so my days in one of Gympies lesser know cover bands (Electric Energy) came flooding back to me and before any of us knew it we were playing Buddy Hollys ‘Oh Boy’, the Smiths ‘Ask’ and various other classic gems. It all came to a crashing end when some guy from the audience hurtled across the stage violently knocking my microphone and launching it like a space shuttle. It actually disappeared and we couldn’t find it to play anymore if we’d wanted, seriously.

Sometime during our set the first snows had gently arrived outside and we ran out to greet it like kids. Stanley had never seen snow so he went the craziest. We smashed each other with snowballs for about an hour until Mark Hit Stanley at point balnk range and he nearly started crying.

Our hosts, who we’d just been introduced to, finally dragged us away to the waiting taxi van to take us to their parents apartment where we’d spend the night. Our snowball-lust unsated, the fight continued until our disgust at Stanley for throwing one right into the taxi as someone was paying the driver (This guilt was heightened when our taxi came for us the next day, 9hrs later, with the same driver. He hated us all).

The drive back to Tallinn was this time tinged with fear as a blizzard had hit. We had to drive slow and passed solemn traffic accidents. The lonely floating reflectors now struggling to be seen through sheets of white.

The Tallinn gig was also much the same as the night before. The crowd enthusiastic and jumping madly to the music. Manone played an awesome set and is really starting to become more confident at singing. Fred Astereo was as always entertaining. Although our hosts advised that if he were to ever come back he should bring a band. “You cannot just press play”, they told him. But from where i’m standing it looks like the Estonians want to adopt him. He would be perfect for Eurovision next year.

People had heard we’d done those cover songs last night so we did it again and even managed to bluff our way through ACDC standard ‘Shook Me All Night Long’. I guess it was our duty as Australians.

It was sad to leave. Stanley and Armin had become like a comedy duo, of which most of the material centered around the fact that the Estonian word for ‘fork’ sounded like ‘cockface’.
When Armin laughed it was out loud and he shook his head as if he couldn’t believe he was laughing at Stanley. Seeing Armin and Tauno laugh together was like some weird dance; all shaking shoulders and heads.

I really hope that Tauno, Armin and all the great people we met know how we appreciated visiting their country and grateful for the hospitality we were shown. Everyone we met through the shows were so warm and friendly and made us feel so welcome. We can”t wait for our return to see our Estonian friends again.

At the ferry terminal Stanley asked at the ticket counter if we could have a room with a spa.
The girl looked back at all of us with venom and pointed us toward the departure ramp without speaking.

I’ve talked a bit about this trip I took to Manilla, a small regional town not far from Tamworth. Those 4 glorious days spent in a Fiberglas bubble caravan from the 50s, and an alarm clock of flocks of squawking corellas at daybreak.
I went there for the solitude but so much happened that I didn’t plan on, as it always does. But that’s for another time

I planned to leave for home on Anzac day and had got up for the dawn service on the main street with the nice lady who owned the caravan park and her dad, who’s stomach kept growling through the ceremony so loud that people were giggling. This year would be the first that the hymns would not be played by a local lady on the church organ and instead on a 60 min cassette which wasn’t properly rewound. A former mayor of the town who I’d met a few days earlier invited me to the RSL where everyone was going for sausages but I decided that even if I wasn’t a vegetarian, 5am was too early for any kind of fried meat so I declined and went back to the caravan and packed and waited to hear the birds one last time.

I reclined across 2 seats on the way back to Sydney as the train slowed through dusty towns holding their own Anzac parades off in the distance. A young guy got on and indicated that I was in his spot at Werris Creek where we had a layover for half an hour so I ran over to the nearest pub to try and get in on a two-up game, lost $10 then ran back. Well into the journey boredom overcame my resentment at having lost precious space and we got talking. It turns out this guy had just left NIDA as a qualified actor. We talked about films for ages and then I said that I have some ideas for movies and I’d love to make them one day. He said he did too and then it turns out that we were thinking of making the same movie! A bushranger movie. It probably doesn’t seem too coincidental but we were thinking of the same bushranger, Captain Thunderbolt. What are the chances? We both agreed that he is coolest bushranger, even though Mad Dog Morgan was okay too; he used to shoot people and then feel bad and apologize and offer to take them to hospital.
I told him I’d been formulating a plan since I was a child and my grandfather told me stories about him and that somehow our family is related to a member of Thunderbolts gang. My new friend said his Dad had told him stories too. We vowed one day to meet up and finish writing it together.

What had been spurring me on lately with the idea was how much I felt ripped off after seeing the film Ned Kelly, Australia’s most famous bushranger. I was so excited when it was released I even dressed up; I had a cardboard replica colt revolver and made a paper shopping bag helmet that I wore to the cinema for the premier. This wouldn’t have been so embarrassing if the film had been good. But of course it was terrible and historically inaccurate and I looked like a fool when the credits rolled and the lights came on.

So last week I went to see the Nick Cave written bushranger film ‘the Proposition’ and couldn’t believe how good it was. So many great actors. A few stylistic nods to Sergio Leone. The music too was spot on. It was so good I don’t think I could write anything as good as that and now don’t even feel the need to try.

So now I guess I have to focus on my film about contestants in the Big Brother house who are the only people to survive a nuclear war. I’m giving away ideas.

I knew I probably should have pre-organised a meeting spot for Nick Luca on being swamped in the overcrowded departure lounge at Kingsford Smith. I’d failed to learn from my mistake last tour where we missed each other at the terminal and on his first visit to Australia he had to find his own way to my house at dawn and wake my flatmates with our alarm volume doorbell that holds an ipod worth of nursery rhyme tunes. But the seas parted and there he was, wheeling a tiny suitcase (he taught me the ancient art of rolling clothes to fit into a smaller space) and huge keyboard, and it was like he hadn’t left. I’m glad that he’d enjoyed the last tour enough to want to leave his native Tucson to come back to Australia. And after only two rehearsals in drummer Bree Van Reyks industrial practice room we found ourselves back in a hire van with only a wonky tape deck to keep us company for the next 5 weeks.

We were heading to Canberra and I was anxious at starting it all in such an intimate room as Tilleys, where it’’s easy to see any of the early cracks that get covered over as the tour progresses. As usual in the beginnings I paced the carpark outside asking the stars if it’s really true, am I a singer and am I about to stand in front of an audience and sing? But when on stage and during the first song a pair of y-fronts landed at my feet all stage fright disappeared. Who could be nervous after that? I think the fact they”d been thrown by a man with a beard helped too.

As usual we’d chosen to take a gamble and play some out of the way towns we’d never visited scattered between the cities. Sometimes this can backfire severely.

-like the time I booked myself into a bar in Mackay, north QLD. It turned out that I was supporting a karaoke machine and it was rugby union night, when both teams come in for a post match session. ‘Falling Aeroplanes’ had just started getting a spin on JJJ and a mother had brought her children to see me. The rest of the crowd were walking no-necked nuggets whose tolerance for original sensitive pop music was zero. When the fullback came up mid song and breathed into my face, “if you don’t stop playing now the guys are gonna kill you”. I was open to his advice. I could have easily played covers to keep them happy but I kept thinking about the family who’d come to come to see me, I couldn’t let them down. Only one thing could save me. I nervously announced that for the rest of the set I’d be performing selections from the Cold Chisel back catalogue and a cheer went up. From then on they didn’t seem to notice that I was still playing all my own songs and the family went home happy. Phew, close call.

So luckily this time heading into the unknown paid off.
The community hall in Wauchope was like performing in a big cosy lounge room. The Exchange hotel Townsville was raucous mayhem with a blown fuse grand finale. And the walkabout hotel in Nhulunbuy on the Gove peninsula was the icing on the cake.

This one we’d booked knowing it was one of two hotels in town but without knowing the main attraction was it’s topless bar, and in a town full of bauxite miners this could prove disastrous. Luckily we were playing in the beer garden as the sun went down and the people up there were so nice to us, if only a little confused at why we were there in the first place. That was the last date of the tour and Nick Luca had left Bree and I in Darwin the day before to go back home and tour the States with Lucinda Williams, so it was just the two of us. It was a nice and surreal way to finish 5 weeks of chaos though: swimming in the clear surf while an appointed local monitored the beach for crocodiles, drinking vodka at a local touch football match, visiting the outlying Aboriginal communities, and just generally hanging out with Sharna and her posse of Christina, Nutrition Man and Ocean Boy.

Other highlights of the tour include:

- Climbing Hanging Rock with our Swedish support act Jens Lekmans bass player and hurry-up-erer, Terese, then making her sit through the movie about a famous picnic there when we got back to Sydney.

- Op shopping rivalry with Bree, who would even try to sneak out of the hotel rooms without waking us to grab the bargains first. My score of the tour would have to be a slightly faded navy ‘blue-light disco’ pullover made by the good people at GOTCHA, purchased in St Vincents, Tenterfield.

- Even though it wasn’t at the time, the whole touring party single filing across the railway bridge in Albury, bleary eyed as the sun came up to find the house of a fan we”d met the night before who swore black and blue he”d be awake to make us banana smoothies for our drive to Melbourne. A part of me always knew he wouldn’t.

- Even though it wasn’t at the time for some members of our touring party, the day we spent driving through rainforest in north Queensland searching for a cassowary, the large prehistoric chicken that our American travel buddies refused to believe existed. Nick Luca, who’s humour blueprint states that “if it didn’t work the first time, it should work in the next 57″, had decided the night before that everything we said from then on had to be in Dr Suess rhyme and spoken with playschool inflection eg, “A second wind? I’m on my third, we’ll never find this stupid bird.”

Nat our super hero tour manager finally snapped, “I really don’t want to have to spoil it, Let’s cut this crap. I need a toilet.” Writing all this it sounds like we’re the bloody famous five or something.

So that’s it, end of tour, end of story. Thanks to anyone who came to see the show. It wouldn’t have been the same without Jens Lekman and Terese, Nick Dalton, Holly Throsby, Sodastream, Grandview, the Zebras, the Eyes who all entertained with us. Also Crouchy, Danielle and Corbo who coordinated and merched it up. Natalie who filmed and tour managed and lastly Sandy Guillen who also came over from Tucson to help out and keep us all company.

It began when my flatmate at the time was playing a CD he’d bought that day in our lounge room while I was steaming a yam. The sound and atmosphere of the recording caught my ear so I remarked something like, “that sounds knarley dude, what is it?” He explained the band was called ‘Sun’ and the guy singing (Chris Townend) recorded it himself and ran his own studio right here in Sydney called ‘Bigjesusburger’.

So I called him the next day and within a month I was recording there myself. Chris is a very enthusiastic chap with lots of interesting ideas and theories on sound recording and lots of other topics relating to general life. The studio itself took up a whole floor of a building in Surry Hills. Chris actually lives there and shares it with his son Gabe and his pet dog Bear. Gabe is 11 and kind of looks like Harry Potter sans glasses and thinks kids should be allowed to stay up to whatever time their age is, and is therefore upset his bedtime is 9pm. He also told me the other day that grilled tomato on toast will be the food served in heaven and Asian food generally will be the only thing available in hell. Bear, on the other hand loves the leftovers from Prasits Thai takeaway on Bourke St and never failed to clean up our plates. Apart from Pad Pumpkin Bear loves to bark out the window at the mounted police passing by. Even approximating a clip-clopping horse hoof noise with your mouth makes him go crazy.

So being one of the homeless artists on Candle Records it was lucky for me that Chris let me join his family and sleep in a large warehouse type room in the south wing of the building.

It was so big and echoey in fact that if you sneezed in your sleep you’d wake yourself up 1 minute later. I”m still not sure which room Chris slept in but every morning he’d appear in the doorway and say, “Come on mate, lets go get some Muesli.”

So enough about food. The studio itself was fantastic with heaps of cool and weird instruments especially the amazing pump organ. The desk is a valve one from the 70s called a ‘quad 8′ and was apparently used for recording heaps of soundtracks of Australian films such as ‘Mad Max’ and ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’. Many great musicians played on the record. For a start there was 3 different drummers; Bree Van Reyk from ‘The Rebel Astronauts’ played a couple (and also Vibraphone), Oren Ambarchi, ‘Sun’ drummer and experimental musician, did some one take wonders on a few and of course El Mopas Richard ‘Bon’ King makes a special appearance. El Mopa also donated Geoff Towner for most of the bass playing while Sun lent out Claire Cooper and her angelic classical harp skills and Nick Summers on pedal steel. Samatha Fonti who you may know as ‘Vicious Hairy Marys’ violinist played strings on 2 tracks while young child prodigy Jeremy Challender played piano on one. Special mention must be given to J. Walker who braved the Wollongong night train to play piano on the Kickstand song, as it seems his name has been somehow edited from the final draft of the albums art work. Sorry mate.

The Candle budget did not include a return ticket for Frida Eklund, one of two vocalists in Swedish sleepy-pop band ‘Alma’, so during my Scandinavian tour last December she recorded the vocals for ‘Cast Of Thousands’ in her friends closet in Stockholm while a little tipsy on whiskey. She drinks it so that one day she may have a voice like Janis Joplin. Sea Life Parks Lee Hillam sang the other backing vocal bits.

So all in all I had heaps of fun recording this album, especially putting down some songs that have been around for some time now. More soon….

On a recent tour of the US, drummer Bree Van Reyk and myself took a detour from our path on the greyhound bus to visit the fairytale town of pop music, Athens, Georgia. We completed three songs in three days in a fibro house by the railway tracks just on the outskirts of town by engineer Chris Bishop. Mr. Bishop couldn’t work out how to fix a hot water system but could sure get some lovely sounds. All the cold showers and microwaved cups of tea strangely added to the overall effect and organic feel of the finished product.

The upbeat circus-pop of ‘And the days were just packed’ recalls adolescent years spent trapped in small towns.

The vaudevillian ballad ‘Eli Wallach’ centres around my obsession with an 87-year-old actor of yesteryear and his most famous role as ‘the Ugly’ in the spaghetti western classic ‘the Good, the Bad and the Ugly’. It features the piano playing of local Athenian and former keyboard player of those elephant 6 heroes ‘the Olivia Tremor Control’, Peter Erchick. After a year of stalking the man, I also managed to interview my hero while on the American tour and a transcript of which appears in the liner notes of the CD.

‘Lights’ finishes off the recording with the end of a relationship suffocated with a pillow of 1940’s Hammond organ, bells and drum machine. It may leave you melancholic but hopefully also optimistic that there’s better days ahead.

So when I woke up it was 10 degrees hotter and we were surrounded by desert. The friends I’d stayed with in Los Angeles said their most vivid memory of Tucson, Arizona is driving towards it and seeing a bus pulled off to the side of the road on fire. This heat is hard on vehicles. I got to ponder this, and the reasons for me coming here to record an album, after the greyhound I was traveling on broke down under the midday sun just outside a town called ‘Quatersize’. Why am I here? Wouldn’t this have been easier in Sydney? Should I stand with all the other male passengers peering under the tail of the bus to offer my opinion of what went wrong?

I’d heard Calexico records and liked the sound. I’d heard Giant Sand records and loved the sound. Other things had appealed too; Norfolk and Western, Neko Case, Evan Dando.

I got into town 4 hours later than expected (1:30am) so I chose a hotel off a sign on the wall of the greyhound station. It sounded simple and unpretentious enough: Tucson Inn. It turned out to be in the middle of nowhere and the humongous old Vegas style neon sign worked well enough to say ‘T CS N IN’

When I got there a tall thin Chinese man wearing cowboy boots, Levis, Stetson and belt buckle to stop a cannon ball greeted me. He was boiling noodles on a camping cooker in the office and he left them to show me to my room. In the morning the mans wife told me that once upon a time it was the best hotel around before they changed the highway that ran past, and I was actually staying in the “John Waylon suite”.

“John Waylon?”

After further probing I confirmed that indeed I was staying in John Wayne’s room of choice when making the westerns in Tucson in the 50s. The room hadn’t changed since then.

The moment I stepped into Wavelab and met Craig Schumacher, the engineer and owner any anxiety I may have had melted away. He was happy that we were the first Australians to work there and I told him right away that Fosters is ‘Australian for Hoax’. The place resembled a music shop rather than a recording studio. It had a good feeling. About 20 vintage guitars decorated the walls and keyboards and organs were stacked on each other 3 and 4 high. Amps, drums, drum machines, vibraphones, megaphones& If the studio didn’t have a particular instrument that you were looking for you could borrow one from the cavernous Chicago Store (as featured in Martin Scorseses ‘Alice doesn’t live here any more’) so daunting you would leave a trail of breed crumbs to find your way out again if it wasn’t for the large green parrot that lives in the rafters and whispers “hi there” from the darkness when you’re up there looking through boxes of old guitar valves.

A few days later Bree Van Reyk arrived on another Steel Horse (as named by Bon Jovi) fresh from her journey from Sydney and the next morning we began our work. So over the following weeks we ate Burritos and Tamales, developed flip-flop tans, held daily Ms Pac-man tournaments and tried to learn the scientific names of various cactus species. I’d moved over from the Dukes favorite nest to the historic ‘Hotel Congress’ where apparently outlaw Dillenger had been captured after a fire in 1934. Being a lazy bastard he asked the firemen that rescued him to go back and carry out the bags that contained all his weapons. They soon realised it was very heavy for hand luggage and…

We even found time to visit historic Tombstone where the only shooting that goes on these days is from the cameras of tourist armies that keep the village economy afloat. We skipped the watering holes of famous legends Doc Holiday and Wyatt Earp and settled for a bar previously owned by a lesser-known and unfortunately nicknamed personality of the Wild West, ‘Big-nosed Kate’. While scouring the nostalgic-photoed walls for an incriminating profile shot of Kate we were accosted by a bored and drunk toothless local who made us dress up in period costume so we could take our own souvenir snaps. These included Bree wearing a feather boa lying on an upright piano, me standing with a shotgun, me in jail, me being hung with a noose, me dead in a coffin and because I answered “yes” when he asked if I liked a joke, me wearing a kitchen apron with a giant hand-sown penis attached to the front. With our film supplies exhausted we got the hell out of there and then went on to…

…Oh yeah, the recording. Well, it seemed to go completely smooth, no studio tantrums to speak of. It was great to work with Bree as always, as I can trust her with all things melodic as well as the drumming. Most of what you hear on the recording happened on, if not the first take, one soon after.

‘Wrong Turn’ and ‘Record Store’ bookend the album, both songs about special havens you find in a city that help define your place and identity. The recording of ‘Record Store’ most reflects the environment of Wavelab studios. A simple folk tale regaling a tiny hole-in-the-wall store where days can be wasted is whispered over a windswept desert plain.

The setting of ‘Unmade Bed’ is an overcrowded obnoxious party, trapped inside a conversation. ‘Brooklyn Bridge’ is a about the difficulties of a transcontinental relationship. There are so many songs written about New York, but this one is through the eyes of an Australian living there by circumstance.

It was great to play with the few guests we had. Nick Luca, who is known for his work with Calexico, Giant Sand and Nick Luca Trio played some piano and hung around and made us laugh with his Australian impressions that were all executed with a Simpsons-esque cockney accent. Doug McCombs from Tortoise and Brokeback commented he’d never played so many chord changes in the space of 3 minutes.

And even Craig made a mark with his signature bass-harmonica puffing. It was inspiring to work with him and his engineering skills are second only to his knowledge of secret fish taco cafes and political conspiracy. He was very happy with the George W. Bush doll we bought him for his birthday that when activated exclaimed, “We must ask ourselves, is our children being educated?” So when it was all over we were very sad to leave.

I’d also like to make special mention of Anthony The who engineered ‘A To Z’ and ‘I Wish That I Was Beautiful For You’ at Velvet Studios in Sydney before we left and managed to fit in the last minute sessions although the studio being booked almost solid by the ‘Popstars’.

I’d met Jenny Cruse through a mutual friend in Brighton in 2000. One night at a local watering hole dubiously titled ‘The Pull and Pump’ while drinking Dr Pepper cocktails, her boyfriend Simon persuaded her to ask me a question that had been playing on her mind. She timidly explained that she’d once been involved in a band in the 80s called Fischer-Z. She’d been told that their song ‘The Perfect Day’ had been a hit in Australia, and me being the only Australian she’d met was the only one to confirm the rumour.

“I know that one” I beamed and commenced to break into the first verse of the song by ‘Little Heros’ of the same name, “One perfect day, we’ll go out walking” She looked crestfallen, and demurred that it wasn’t the one. I turned red and plopped another shot of Amareto into my half beer and Coke.

Towards the end of the night we all convinced her to sing the actual song and I realised I did truly remember it. I even recalled the video clip, which had 2 girls running between houses with a suitcase (I later found out that one of them was Jenny herself).

The whole experience made me realise what a great song it was. I learnt the chorus and lyrics and the next shows I played in Brighton. Jenny got up to sing it with me and afterwards we ended up at their flat and Simon recorded it on a cassette 8-track. I’d long forgotten about the tape until I was moving house recently and playing it brought back that whole experience of my visits to Brighton and my friends there. I thought it might be worth sharing with others.