Playing Adelaide at the Wheaty August 10-12th

The last couple of shows we've done have been pretty cool. Just the way I like it, off the beaten track.
In Ballarat - which we always dread returning to - we arrived at the gig and it was situated just as you arrived on the very outskirts of the town. Just past the phony mediaval pile that is Kryal Castle and in behind the Mills vintage clothing sheds. Just a little bit further into a  little redeveloped industrial area through a gate to the MINI GOLF setup.... Clare and I loaded our gear in through some doors past some people playing mini glof. The rooms were and corridors were dark and seemed to be decorated with castoffs from Kryal Castle. Suits of armour and axes and shields here and there. One room seemed to have some actual dummies in there playing golf to make it look busier. It felt good to be in a real showbiz environment.
The actual room we were playing in was fantastically well set up with a raised area for the audience and then a sunken area for other tables and a stage with excellent PA and gear. All very well put together and brand new. The woman running it was a total pro and the night went swimmingly, despite it being an early taste of the bitterly cold, wild and windy winter we are coping with here in Victoria. It was being run as a "cabaret" room and is the sort of space Melbourne could do with a few more of. (Melbourne has nothing like it). Here is a story about it from a Ballarat paper last November.
I guess it's the sort of room I really like to play. Almost like a club you see in pre rock n roll movies with the adult audience mostly sitting at tables but free to move around or stand if they like. Strangely, we seem to find them more in regional centres than big cities. Maybe its a vestige of that thing from my parents generation where people in country towns made their own scenes?
(As long as they don't bang on about food more than the music - there is a hierarchy I hold to. Sometimes we square off backstage with kitchen staff and its like rival gangs in West Side Story)
 
There were people there who had tree changed from Melbourne and others who had seen us play in the late 80s/ very early 90s. A really great night.

 pic by Clare Moore from the drum booth

We then had a few days recording in at Soundpark, which I have to say is one of my favourite studios I've been in. Others have had a more flash surface and all the great theatre and sense of occasion that pre digital recording sessions came with, but Soundpark has its crazy vibe. Idge owns and runs the place and he's a regular guy, a rock'n'roll slacker (in style) with a room full of lovingly collected mics, vintage preamps, guitar amps and drums. Like a mad professor, he can pull the sounds so quickly. So you mightn't have the theatre but you get down to recording pretty quickly as he knows his world intimately. He'd also come along to some of the Croxton shows in April and May so he knew the material we were going to put down.

 

Stu Thomas

So we recorded ULTRAKEEF, Is That What You Did? (two versions) Baby I Wish I'd Been A Better Pop Star, Where's My Buzz?  (two versions) and re-crecorded versions of Song Of Life (because it sounded different with a full band playing) and a song from 1998 called Your Masters which we have been enjoying playing recently and which has lyrical content about the Australian aspirational phantom voters which seems more and more apt today.

 Stuart Perera

I am pretty sure the album will not appear until early next year as there are a few more songs I want to get down and don't want to rush anything. I think it might be a bit of a sprawler. I hope so. Different versions of songs , some with the mistLY and some just myself and Clare Moore.

Here is a clip the Wheeler centre put up from the event at the Atheneum recently. Tied in with an exhibition from GOMA NYC at the Arts Centre, it involved a lot of people talking about New York City. We were there to close the show. Stu Thomas was unavailable but Bryan Colechin stepped in on bass.




The other gig we did that was out of the way was a 6pm Tuesday night gig in the outer Eastern Melbourne suburb of Croydon. This is an area our train line goes through that we refer to as "the badlands". Ringwood, Bayswater, Croydon. An occasional trip to that are convinces you to never go back - usually. Just a whiff of suspician about people arguing in the street in the middle of the day. Ice, booze etc. Generally no place to stroll as its a few unplanned streets hemmed in by fast flowing freeways. Otherwise, a kind of trapped, dormitory area. But we'd seen Henry Wagons do a gig there and were glad to try it ourselves. A room full of people inside a craft brewery/wine cellar in a back street just off of the main drag. They served a beautiful feast of slow cooked meat (though we only had a salad) and we made show for two sets. Again it was a seated audience (a couple walked out early - still got it....) and people were seeing us who had known our music for decades. Had a  wonderful night. I hope the venue continues.


I read Alice in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass recfently and totally enjoyed it. Mainly read it because I got this edition with beautiful illustrations. It was like a dream of a perfect, carefree childhood. A psychedelic masterpiece in two parts.

Since then I've been reading Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing. Oh, is she hardcore! This one is the story of her parents. She writes a novella of their separate lives - if the First World War didn't happen. (She begins by saying how that war destroyed both of them and through them, affected her as well.
Such a lesson in lives. I had never been brought to ideas so closely and intimately of a world of young women - a generation - with no men to partner with. because they were mostly killed. And the ones who returned being so damaged, physically and mentally. It really fucking hit me because we live in such a time and country where they preach the JOYS of that WAR every fucking year! Sanctimonious fuckheads still going to Europe to dig up bones and bring them back. Fucking forget it people! It was shit . And for nothing! Just so people could live in a world run by idiots like you!

Oh I've got to try and rise above the daily barrage of Trumpian neo liberal shit we get buried under every day. I know I'm not alone in that though. Doris' book is so good in the story of people trying to do good as well, building better civic life for the community - IN PEACETIME.


We have some shows coming up and I'm doing some events at the Melbourne Writers Festival.

Actually, speaking of shows. I'd love to find a small cafe to play in every so often. Just me and my amp. I put a mic into it as well as my guitar.  I did a spot at Pascalle Burtons poetry book launch last night and I loved the sound. Also great just to be in a  room on my own terms, just me and an amp. Jonathan Richman style. If you know of a place in Melbourne, tell me.

Dave Graney and the mistLY play ADELAIDE at the Wheatsheaf Hotel August 10th/11th/12th - BOOK HERE

Dave Graney and the mistLY play the FYREFLY (Newmarket Hotel) St Kilda August 17th.

Dave Graney has three events at the Melbourne Writers Festival. 

August 25th with Andrew P Street, Christopher Hollow and Jenny Valentish at the Mission To Seafarers in Port Melbourne.
September 1st - 1pm at ACMI Cinema 1 with comedian and memoirist Hung Le (violin) and literary fiction author John Tesarsch (cello) – discuss the influence of music on their writing, with live performances. Hosted by Lee Kofman.
September 1st - 7pm
Dave Graney At the Mission To Seafarers in Port Melbourne. Dave Graney performs selected readings from the works of controversial genius John Cowper Powys – described by critics as both ‘the only novelist in English comparable to Dostoyevsky’ and ‘a tedious, long-winded bore.’

September 2nd,9th, 16th and 30th we will be back in the front room of the Croxton Bandroom.Tickets here (choose a date) 

October 11th Dave Graney and the mistLY play at Coogee Diggers.NSW
October 12th Dave Graney and the mistLY play LazyBones in Sydney, NSW.
October 13th Dave Graney and the mistLY play Hardys Bay Club in NSW.
October 14th Dave Graney and the mistLY Smiths Alternative in Canberra

November 9th Dave Graney and Clare Moore will be playing the Bison Bar in Nambour, QLD.
Nov 10th and Nov 11th Dave Graney and Clare Moore play the Junk Bar in Brisbane, Qld.