April Residency Sunday Afternoons 4-6pm at the Croxton Bandroom Front bar

GUEST on April 1st Thomas Hugh Vecera
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84058

GUEST April 8th Lisa Crawley
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84059

GUESTS April 15th THE ROUTINES
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84060

GUEST April 22nd Anna Smyrk
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84057

GUEST April 29th ???????
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84061

This run of shows starts this Sunday.  April 1st at 4pm. Special guest is Thomas Hugh Vecera.
We met Thomas when he opened for us a the Grand Hotel in Mornington last month.

Hey I've kept to the 5/2 diet and have lost about 4.5 kilos. Basically cut bread from my diet and not a  lot of meat. Been cooking a  lot. and reading books.

I loved Electric Eden, from Rob Young,  a fantastic doorstopping tome about "visionary British folk music". Absolute lifes work of research and opining. I loved it.

I try to alternate fiction with non fiction in reading. I also read the new novel from Peter Carey called A Long Way From Home. This was quite riveting and kept gathering energy as it went on. I loved it.

I am now part way into How the Dead Live by Will Self. I have started a couple of his books before and had to stop as they didn't really grab me. And I rarely stop books or films once I dive in.

After our trip to Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast we came back to Melbourne and continued our 2018 theme of very varied and interesting shows.

On March 11th we played ona  Sunday early afternoon in a  beautiful garen at the side of the old world colonial gentlemens crib that is the Geelong Club. We played from 2pm in the late summer sunshine. A lovely place to play.

The next week we played with Psuedo Echo at PALMS in the Crown Casino area of Melbourne.
This was a deluxe theatre situation, like playing at the Arts Centre.

Psuedo Echo had  a big hit in Australia with a version of Funky Town in the 80s.

They were led by Brian Canham who played a Les Paul guitar at PALMS , with no amplifier, just pedals straight into the PA. He was flanked by a guy on Keytar playing the bass lines and another guy on a Keytar playing the synth lines.  A woman at the back sang backing vocals and there was a guy on drums.  They had a perfect, pristine 80s sound that a lot of modern young bands would kill for. They put on a  totally pro show. They did their hits and also covered "Send me An Angel" by Real Life and "Nutbush City Limits" by Ike and Tina Turner.

A great show.

We played a rockn'roll set into the theatre , must've sounded like the Allman Brothers in contrast to that slick, contained 80s sound. It was sprawling and epic.

The next week we were to play at the opening of the new sports hub at Upwey Oval. It had not rained in Melbourne for 45 days and friends of ours in Monbulk, further into the hills, were buying water as they  lived with water tanks filled by rain.

The day of the opening it poured with rain, it pelted down! We were to be first on at 12:30 as we had a show to do in town. The stage was soaked and water was pouring in from the roof.  We were going to play as a duo with guitar through an amp and also with the vibes but it wasn't safe to have too much electricity on the wet stage.
We made show with my acoustic and Clare singing and playing percussion. Matt Walker played harmonica on a  couple of songs. As we played our last tune, teh rain eased up and teh rest of teh day went ahead without a hitch.

Matt did a  set of his own.

We then drove into town and played a private party for a man turninga  significant age ata  pub in Collingwood. He had asked for a set of songs predominantly from the very early period of Dave raney and the Coral Snakes / White Buffaloes. We made show for 90 minutes. the first songs we played were "You're too hip, baby", "rock'n'roll is hwere I hide", "feelin Kinda sporty" and "the stars". It was great to play that stuff all in  a  rush.

 

Clare Moore plays drums, vibes , keys, melodica, percussion and sings in the mistLY. There's also Harry Howard and the NDE and the Dames and Charlie Marshall and the Curious Minds and THE ROUTINES. She manages all logistics and admin for us and for her involvement in all of the above.TCB!
Theres also the film and tv composition. She bites her tongue when old friends ask if she still plays music...
She has a 1960s Gretsch kit for recording and a Tama kit for touring. Her vibes set is a small 1950s jazz set from Boosey and Hawkes. Her keyboard is the classic 90s Ensoniq Mr61 .
Oh, and she is contemptuous of guitar playing and laments the many hours lost in studios getting guitar sounds. "They're always too loud!" She picked up this Les Paul at a party and played Eric Claptons LAYLA just for a stir and walked out.
Come see us play the first of our Sunday afternoon shows this coming weekend at the Croxton Park Hotel 607 high st thornbury. 4-6 pm. We are there every Sunday in April. Special guest this week Thomas Hugh Vecera

pic Barry Douglas

Stuart Perera has been playing with us since he joined in 1998. He has played this left handed Rickenbacker all the way. The blazing Rickenbacker. The longest association with myself and Clare Moore of all. We can draw on so many songs when we make show. A great guy and an amazing player. The most highly educated character we've ever played with . He drove a Morris Minor van at first and then upgraded to a Bedford, which he actually lived in for several years, while working nights. He also pimps the Bedford out to tv productions and ads, it notably starred as INXS early tour van , for which they totally primped and styled it up.

Stu Thomas has been playing bass in the mistLY since 2004. He plays a Fender P bass and sometimes, a Burns baritone for that plunky 60s Scott Walker sound. He also plays in Kim Salmons Surrealists and performs solo as The Stu Thomas Paradox. He did an amazing Lee Hazlewood show a few years ago and will be doing that again soon in Melbourne. He does the deep cuts of Lee.
This Sunday is the beginning of our afternoon residency in the front room of the Croxton Park Hotel. 4-6 pm every Sunday for all of April. Previewing new material and focusing on specific albums we have done.

APRIL MELBOURNE RESIDENCY - DAVE GRANEY AND THE MISTLY IN THE EXCELLENT FRONT ROOM OF THE CROXTON PARK HOTEL.
Every Sunday in April from 4-6pm. presenting different albums weekly and previewing new material.
Book here - choose your Sunday

Saturday April 28th - Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes play Dashville-GUMBALL festival in NSW.
Dave Graney and the mistLY play ADELAIDE at the Wheatsheaf Hotel August 10th/11th/12th - BOOK HERE

davegraney.com

Intense February-looking forward to Sundays in April at the Croxton

February was an intense month. Driving, playing, playing all kinds of different setups, instrumentation  and repertoire. And then driving and playing some more.

Then there were some clear skies and we made our way back from Adelaide to Melbourne (usually takes us about 10 hours. Roughly 800ks) . We drove, of course, but it seemed like a short hop to me after the previous week. With a days rest we did a show with the mistLY in Mornington (stretched out to a two hour set) and then I did  a solo spot in inner city Melbourne.

Three days later we drove to Geelong where I did a WORKSHY book event at the wonderful Dome room in the Regional library. About 250 people turned out for this night. A spectacular, brand new room with an orange ceiling of acoustic shells.

We stayed in Geelong that night and then drove toward Melbourne and took the ring road to the airport. We parked our van in plenty of time to make the flight at one of the off site parking places and got in the parking companys' 12 seater van to go to the airport. I had my acoustic guitar and my Ibanez archtop in a flight case I'd borrowed from Matt Walker and some cases which carried clothes, books and Clares' keyboard.

We pulled up at the airport, there was one other person in the van and the driver went to get us our bags. Only he wasn't able to open the door - it refused to budge. We stood there while he huffed and puffed and kicked and pushed the door and we did some heaving of our own. Another driver had a go and then we waited for his boss to come and he charged at it as well. No luck. All the luggage was between the door and a steel, wire cage that kept it snugly in the back of the twelve seater. Tight as a drum from floor to ceiling. The boss took to the cage from the inside with a set of bolt cutters while Clare went to the check-in counter.  Eventually the boss had the door open and came out from inside the van with blood on his hands and t shirt, apologizing profusely. All three of us had missed the flight but luckily the airline was feeling generous and we made the next one.

We arrived in Brisbane where we picked up a car and drove to our hotel.
In the late afternoon I did a WORKSHY book event at a great shop called AVID READERS in the West End. A great turnout of people and the interviewer was Leanee de Souza and she was excellent.
They recorded the event and you can hear it here.




The next morning I went to the ABC offices in Brisbane and did an interview with Sarah Kanowski for the Conversation Hour. This is heard all over Australia - except for Melbourne. It was all revolving aound my book WORKSHY and she was an amazingly good interviewer. Usually, I feel like I'm on trial in these sorts of situations. I don't mean to say that I'm scared or anything, more that I am being asked to prove why I should be there. She was very generous and had read both of my books and heard a lot of mys music- especially post Coral Snakes . It was great!

You can listen back to it here. (45 minute interview)

Brisbane was very hot and humid and threatening to rain all the time.We drove to Nambour on the Sunshine Coast through some serious downpours, stopping at another ABC studio along the way.

We made show with guitar and keys in a  lovely boutique venue called the Bison Bar. Like a classic half circle bar and stage right in the lower depths of a very unprepossessing concrete shopping zone.

Had a  great time.

We then drove back through teeming rain to Brisbane. We had to pull over to the side of the Freeway a couple of times to let the squall dump it's load so we could carry on.

The next day we did a 4pm and a 7pm show at the Junk Bar in a Brisbane suburb called Ashgrove. We were doing four shows and they were all sold out a week ahead. A set of vibes was delivered and we made show with deluxe sounds and gear.

The afternoon before the Sunday shows we visited some very dear friends who took us to Ed Kuepper Park in suburban Oxley Creek. It happened due to a real local and online petition. Small and modest (?) in  a real suburban setting. You really have to travel to see it. I mean it's not in a tourist area or on many peoples' commute.

All the shows in Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast were great. Thanks to everybody who came along.

We played lots of different material, including three songs I'd written when I tuned my op-shop 1Direction guitar to an open G and started experimenting with some slide. Three songs fell out straight away. "You're All Wrong", "Hell Babe"  and a"You've Been In My Mind". The latter is of course the title for an abum we put out in 2012. In rock music it's  a "thing" to achieve that; to have a song appear with the same name of a previous album - years later. Thank you, rock universe.

We have our February single out now, "SONG OF LIFE" and I have recorded and mixed "YOU'RE ALL WRONG" to be released next. We have started rehearsing new material with the mistLY and will be previewing songs at our April residency in the front room of the Croxton Park Hotel.   

I started the year with a  real feeling of ennui in regard to the kinds of rooms that you can play and experience music in in Melbourne. I know we have more gigs than most other cities but I just didn't want to deal with the industrial/business mindset of a lot that goes on. I just wanted a different situation. I thought it would be good to ask Facebook if there were any non traditional/ non- pub rooms or places I could just play some music in. I didn't want to be dealing with high priced drinks or security or all that junk. Venues that leave it up to the artist to do all the publicity . Fuck it, I wanted to do something freaky and "for the hell of it". 

I will never, ever ask Facebook anything ever again.

People came back with all sorts of dumb ideas. People who never go out or saw us play some time in 1985 or 1994. People who thought I needed a gig because I never do any. It was a bad insight into that world. Suggestions of rooms that were just the sort of thing I wasn't looking for.

I was thinking of BYO halls and afternoon sets in cafes. Folk clubs! Jazz rooms! Loose breathing, informality, awkwardness. NO SECURITY.

I will never, ever ask Facebook anything ever again.

Then we remembered doing a  gig in the front room of the Croxton Park hotel in High st Thornbury with Harry Howard and the NDE. It was a room with brand spanking new carpet and fittings and PA. A beautifully fresh joint. 

"Yes, lets do Sunday afternoons there".

So that's what we are doing. Every Sunday in April in the front room of the Croxton park Hotel which is at 607 High Street Thornbury.

We are going to be previewing new material and revisiting songs from selected older albums each week. There will also be different opening acts each week.

GUEST on April 1st Thomas Hugh Vecera
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84058

GUEST April 8th Lisa Crawley
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84059

GUESTS April 15th THE ROUTINES
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84060

GUEST April 22nd Anna Smyrk
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84057

GUEST April 29th ???????
https://tickets.oztix.com.au/?Event=84061

March 24th - Dave Graney and Clare Moore are playing a set at 12:15 as part of the opening of the UPWEY COMMUNITY RECREATION AND SPORTS HUB.

APRIL MELBOURNE RESIDENCY - DAVE GRANEY AND THE MISTLY IN THE EXCELLENT FRONT ROOM OF THE CROXTON PARK HOTEL.
Every Sunday in April from 4-6pm. presenting different albums weekly and previewing new material.
Book here - choose your Sunday

Saturday April 28th - Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes play Dashville-GUMBALL festival in NSW.
Dave Graney and the mistLY play ADELAIDE at the Wheatsheaf Hotel August 10th/11th/12th - BOOK HERE

davegraney.com