Fearful Wiggings track by track - in concert tour and new clip

Was very pleased and honoured for FEARFUL WIGGINGS to get "album of the week" on Triple R in Melbourne last week. This is what they said, also the best review the cd has had so far as well!

 "The latest installment from iconic Melbourne musician (and Triple R broadcaster!) Dave Graney is as compelling and unique as ever. On this record we hear the distinctive vocals and poetically concise lyricism Dave is known for presented in new and ever more expressive sonic form. Throughout the course of the album Dave Graney and partner Clare Moore explore everything from sparse folk, jazz, to adventurous art pop, all with a richly textured ambience."
Simon Winkler - Triple R 

 Here is a track by track guide to the album.

A woman skinnies a  man up

There was a conversation with my cousin Garry, who’s a stock and station agent in South East Sth Australia. He often says funny things. He was describing how a friend behaved when a woman was around. “She skinnied him up…” The music is a kind of boogie that I’d been goofing off on for years. No bass. I saw a documentary about the Californian country singer Buck Owens and he said he hardly used any bass on his trademark “Bakersfield sound” country records so as to give more room for the vocals. I love the sound of 60s country and where the voice sits, way out front, so that was  a big thing in my approach to the whole album.

  

Everything was legendary with Robert

A mutated Bo Diddley beat with acoustic and electric guitars and bass xylophone. This is the single. The music sounded like  a tv theme tune to me, which is to say , I thought it was high quality and really catchy. It’s like a Ray Davies type of a  song as far as the lyrics go. 

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How Can You get Out of London?

The second line is “how can you get London out?” We lived there for five years and had to leave suddenly. A kind of a “what if?” shadow life runs through my mind occasionally . “What if we’d stayed there?”  I love to read books about London. It’s in my mind a lot. The music is a kind of Latin groove, again. Clares voice has no reverb. Dry and straight like those British folk records I’ve been immersed in for years.

Country Roads, unwinding

Aside from London, I am obsessed with country roads and down beat country towns. They’re disappearing, really. Just villages with old people and a few antiques shops.  I know, I do a lot of driving. Clare plays the vibes on this track. it was finished very early in the piece. Just fell into a sweet spot pretty easily.

A fellow called Heath Britton came up to me after a solo gig in Adelaide and said he had some footage of the drive between Mt Gambier and Adelaide. He kindly sent it to me and I used it for this clip. It was sent on a disc at 4X the speed and I only used the part of the drive between Mt Gambier and Millicent.


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Flower of the earth

I got very ill in Paris in 2008 and almost coughed my lungs up on a metro train and then on the street. Thought I was popping my cork. A lot of blood can scare you. When it’s coming out of you. I had been trying to learn French and read, slowly, a  lot of old books. One was French Vietnamese poetry and there was this proverb saying “ man is the flower of the earth”. I thought that was a wonderful thing to be said at a time when the persons country was being “bombed into the stone age” by the Yanks. A lot of bad French grammar in the lyrics of this song.  I wanted to say “Man!Woman! like Eric Burdon did in the New Animals. I pulled the beat together and liked the groove of the chords. Augmented or diminished chords. Kind of a “cha cha cha” feel in the bass line. Like all those great 30s feels that a lot of classic disco had.

Fearful Wiggings

Nick Harper played guitar on this song. He’s a UK singer and player. Son Of Roy harper. I’d been listening to all this UK folk and he grew up totally IN that world. He got in touch once because he liked some of my songs and even played one at his gigs. He asked me to sing a song on his 2013 album , “Riven”. In return , I asked him to play on a couple of mine. An amazing guitarist. I’ve never met him in the flesh. Hopefully some time this year. The lyrics of this song are very personal. It was originally called “the ballad of Graney and Moore”. That was either a bit too high flown  or a bit too rootsy or earthy.

I’m the Stranger in Town

Sadly, I have realized that this is how I have lived my life. As if I was just passing through – or if I was set to leave at any moment. Like the songs says “silly – I know”

The music is a bit of a groove I’d been mucking around on for ages. Didn’t want it to sound too straight and “bluesy” so I asked Clare to play it half time as if it was a hip hop track,. Just one mic on the drums.  There’s cicadas on it. I needed a lonely sound and walked onto my deck with a ZOOM and took them from my own yard. Summer sounds.

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Je est un Autre

A line Arthur Rimbaud wrote in a letter to a friend when he was seventeen years old. “I is another”. Translated differently sometimes but this has the correct clunky meaning. “I” is the person who is thinking “me” up and fronting it to “you”. Just me on twelve string guitar and some buried keys. 

Look into my shades

When I was coughing up blood in Paris in 2008 I had to see a doctor with x rays of my lungs. He came out all dressed in denim. The denim jacket slung over his shoulders. He had longish grey hair and mirror shades on, as he stared at the X-rays and waved me off with a  happy go lucky smile and shake of his head.  I went around the corner to have a coffee and was heaving up more blood into a bin five minutes later. The Doctor with the shades image stayed with me. The song is kind of an Isaac Hayes rap. A wounded, macho man groaning about his ills. The music is a lot of chordal work, stacks upon stacks of chords, set against a Bo Diddley beat. No bass until the last minute. 

I know you can’t see me

This is the purest moment of the session I did with Lisa Gerrard. She worked on the vocal eq for a long time. The reverb and it’s stereo pan. Just guitar and vocal and Lisa doing some ambient singing way in the distance. I can’t thank her enough for inspiration and fire. 

Everything is perfect in it’s beginning

This was all recorded at our studio. Funny, discordant guitar chords. I’d demo’d this a couple of years ago. Hard to get a  beat to the irregular timing. I figured something out with a hip hop boombox. Kind of prog chords in the chorus. Monstrous distorted guitars and some slide too. Lots of guitars. Clare hates too many guitars, but this was my album.

The lyrics are kind of proverbial. When things begin, they contain their end, so they’re perfect.

The Old Docklands Wheel

I wanted to write a really, really DOWN Downbeat song. Lots of music isn’t heavy enough for me. It’s too cute. Or shallow. I want things to be really heavy or sad if they’re gonna try for those depths. So this is a relentlessly downward spiralling song. A spiky, discordant folk blues song. Mentions “the artist Schiele”. It goes down and down and then falls a bit further. Then the singer notes, outside the window, “the old Docklands Wheel”…Melbourne people would understand...

This song is graced by the guitar stylings of Nick Harper too. He’s a demon.

I was there

Almost a duet with Clare Moore. We’ve been musicians for a long time. Some times we hear and watch people talking about situations and events that we were at and they’re talking about a completely different scenario. It’s become mythic. You can’t challenge myths. I’m trusting this could be a common feeling. That’s what you have to do when you write songs- trust that things and “vibes” you have deep within you could be common to others.

https://itunes.apple.com/au/album/fearful-wiggings/id844777824

The album is also available in digital - or with a  physical cd as well- from Bandcamp...
 http://davegraney1.bandcamp.com/album/fearful-wiggings

We're playing in a different style and tempo, many different songs from the past and in some DIFFERENT kinds of venues.

“In Concert” tour by Dave Graney 2014 – 

June 6th - lunchtime performance at Basement Discs - Block Place in the city of Melbourne
 

June 12^th Bridge Hotel - Castlemaine w/ teeth and tongue

June 20^th City Band Hall Mt Gambier w/ local band of brothers Blue Valentine 
 

June 21 and 22 Wheatsheaf Hotel, Adelaide 

saturday tickets here 

sunday (afternoon/evening) tickets here

June 27^th Royal Exchange, Newcastle - 

June 28^th Milton theatre, Milton NSW -w/ the Glammarays

tickets here

June 29^th the Bunker, Coogee - NSW

July 3^rd  Camelot, Marrickville - NSW w/ the Glammarays

tickets here

July 4^th  Smiths Alternative Bookshop Canberra -     

July 5^th  Rad, Wollongong NSW w/ Justin Frew's Loose Intentions

July 6^th  Six String Brewery Central Coast - NSW

tickets here

July 11th SS&A club - ALBURY NSW

July 12^th Deans Martian Café , Deans Marsh VIC

July 18^th Brisbane – Beetle Bar – July 18^{th QLD}

July 19^th Solbar, Maroochydore, QLD

July 20^th Byron Bay – The Great Northern 

July 26th - THE TOFF IN TOWN - Melbourne w/ the GlammaRays  

August 22nd the Happy Yess - DARWIN

MORE DATES TO FOLLOW.....Hope to see you there!