Pre-Order IN A MISTLY via Apple Music here.
Pre-Order IN A MISTLY as a Compact Disc and/or digitally via Bandcamp here.
A great early review of IN A MISTLY by Bob Osborne here.
As any players know, its very hard to get peoples eyes and ears onto things in 2022. And as you human beings know, we are constantly addressed, messaged and insulted by creepy A.I. type apps that think they know what we want. In 2022.
So this space here is not occupied by a robot and they aren't writing the words either. The whole show its a part of is very human too. Learning instruments over many years, playing shows, highs, lows and the different rooms and the shifty technology and the songs and the players. All pulling a person and the artist and the work in different directions.
Hey, I'm not being a sook I'm just noting the pressure points and the energy sources. Where the action is and where the reactions come from. Is it all good, like they say? On the street? I'm sure you've heard that said. It's even made it into the name of a tv character. "It's all good, man. " Saul Goodman.
I digress.
I made this film this morning on a whim. Surrounded here in this room by decomposing tech. Typing this into an old computer that barely hangs on with the last OS I updated it with. I don't wanna ever update it again! Yes, I mention a few things in the clip. Four track cassette recorder, a double live Grateful Dead cassette. (Just stopping to put that on). It's Without A Net from about 1990, given to me by Chris Walsh and Kate Jarrett for a long bus ride from Melbourne to Adelaide, who I'm sure thought it amusing that I listened to the Dead. Jerry sounds great. Brent Myland on keys. I think he soon passed and Bruce Hornsby sat in for a while - even though he was having his own AM hits at the time.
The cassette sat with some CDs. Illinois Jacquet and the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Things have sat in the corners of this room for years.
But here we are with another album to bring out. Yes, we are very happy with it. A rock album.
Clare and I have played so much this year as a duo and look forward to more in 2023. We will be looking at playing where we can with Stu and Stuart as well to play the music of this album properly.
There are so many people out there playing at the moment. Its crowded. We won't be doing anything until the new year. Perhaps one more at a charity event in the hills Oct 30th.
I did a talk at Belgrave Library last Saturday and had a wonderful time. I didn't write anything as I fully expected nobody to show up at 11am on a Saturday morning. Pleasantly surprised by 30 people doing just that.
The previous week we had played in Portland in a lovely arts centre, an event which had been booked in 2019 and postponed three times.
The country is full of these great little arts centres that are so rarely used. A great shame.
About 60 or 70 people in a room that could fit 100. Beautiful sound.
What sort of people? One fellow up the front in a Ramones t shirt who was there after the show with albums going back to the Moodists for us to sign. Another who also only spoke of the Moodists. Also a loud business man type who had called out "Princeland" when I asked for any requests. I thought that strange as it was an article I had written for the Griffith Review years ago about a failed attempt to forge a new breakaway state with Victorian towns Portland, Warrnambool, Port Fairy and South Australian towns Mount Gambier and Robe. But yes, a lengthy article in a magazine. He came to talk with me after the show and talked about it. He knew nothing about my music, even after sitting through 90 minutes of it. He had previously lived in Melbourne but had lived in the Portland area for a decade. After a while he said in ironic tones that he would leave me to "all your fans". I knew it was a great turnout for a live event in an area that doesn't really have much music going through - so people just aren't in the habit of even thinking about attending an event - but he perhaps had some outdated idea of what a crowd of people at a live gig should be. Some idea from the last time he went to a show; in the 80's or I suppose. So he mocked me, reflexively. (Isn't it a bummer how much of your mind is filled with the negative encounters in your day?) The performance had been really enjoyable and the requests people asked us to play were for deep cuts from stranger albums. ( I say stranger because they are probably all strange but some are stranger than others)
Portland is a pretty town and has a lovely harbour area that is still half industrial with it being used for the Alcoa smelting plant as well as local farming produce.
The next day I attended a High School reunion 100 Kilometres away in Mount Gambier. I was of course, full of repidation as probably were most attendees but I thought that fate had drawn me so close that I should show up.
We drove to Mt Gambier on a beautiful, sunny day and I went to pay my respects to my parents grave site and then drove over the hill to the Catholic school I had been in for my primary years and where my brothers and father had gone to be beaten up as well. It used to be strictly for poor Catholics and a large portion of them being from Lebanese, Italian and East European backgrounds. Thanks to Australia's mad funding of private schools it is now the premiere place for education and is many times the size it was. It still has a beautiful natural ampitheatre for sports events, a field which is surrounded by hills on each side, as if in a small, dormant volcano. I travel with a football everywhere. Doesn't everybody?
(We did athletics on this field. The teams were Champagnat - green- Lavalla - yellow, Tenison -red - and Moorak - blue)
We then drifted over to McDonald Park, home of the East Gambier Football club where again, my father and brothers had all spent many years running about on in joyous play.
We then drove out of town again for about 20 k's to visit old friends and who had said we could stay at their place. They lived in a stone house they had built themselves over 35 years. They had bought the plot of land and, while working and studying in Mt gambier, lived in a tin shed with no power and a kerosene lamp for light. The man worked in the forest and one day saw "a reef" of sandstone which he started to take home from work in a trailer and they would spend weekends splitting the big stones with chisels. They used this lovely, smooth rock to build the house. The place was built so well! What an achievement!
They drove us into the hotel where the reunion was being held. I was wearing a mask, as were my friends, but no one else at the party did so. I took it off for photos.
It was a very pleasant evening. the women were much easier to talk to, or had more to say, or were able to talk to more people, than the men. Like most groups I guess. Women live longer because they are better at being sociable.
I was able to apologize to a couple of people who had I had been horrible to which was the main thing I wanted to do. It was a reunion for people who started high school, not the ones who'd finished.
There were some funny conversations. One woman was a bit tipsy and carrying on as if I was a total pop star and her friend was non plussed and looked at me and said "what, are you some kind of musician or something?" to which the other laughed loudly and said "It's Dave Graney!" to which the non plussed one said "Who? Sorry, I don't even remember him from school so why would I know anything else!" Fair enough!
I drifted off and tried to engage a quartet of blokes. One just yelled, "get that mask off!" To which I said, "no, thats not gonna happen." and that was it. Then I stood there while they told me a story of how they had met and learned they were related. I drifted off quite soon. In the photo below, one woman seems to have two heads...
Most of my friends in those days were either through my football club and went to other schools or were from a year above me but it was a very enjoyable night.
Leon came along, he was a friend from that older year but we had been great friends and shared many great times listening to music out in the bush and drinking loads of beer and smoking weed. All that classic rock n roll teen stuff. The sort of people I drifted towards and away from my football mates. It was great to catch up with him, as well as Debbie and Bouch, with whom we stayed at their beautiful house.
We came back to Melbourne and while making a trip to the local shops, I ran across the Victorian Chief Health Officer and was able to thank him for his and his teams continuing hard work during this pandemic.
We then stayed for a week down the coast near Geelong.
