Noel Mengel writes beautifully about IN A MISTLY in the online magazine MUSIC TRUST.
an excerpt.. “Graney and Moore have made about 45 albums together, and this is their sixth credited to Dave Graney and Clare Moore. That is a Slim Dusty-level of dedication to the craft when you consider the usual shelf life for a recording artist. And the more I play In a Mistly, the more I think this is one of the best records they have ever made".
Thanks Noel.
We are playing some shows soon, starting in Castlemaine at the Taproom- Shedshaker Brewery on Saturday January 14th.
Then its a trip to Western Australia for the first time in a couple of years where Clare Moore and I will bejoined by Martyn Casey on bass to play the following venues.
Friday February 10th at Lyrics Underground at Lyrics Lane in Maylands, Perth. Presented by the Perth Folk and Roots Club who will be playing an opening set.
Then Saturday February 11th at the Vault in Kalamunda, Perth and
Sunday February 12th at the Duke of George in Fremantle.
We then fly to Queensland and hook up with Adele Pickvance who will play bass with us at these venues...
Thursday February 16th we play at Mos Desert Clubhouse in Burleigh Heads.
Friday February 17th at the Hotel Eltham in Eltham (Lismore).
Saturday February 18th we play the Citadel in Murwillumbah.
We are endeavouring to play music from In A Mistly at these shows so we need to make some rock action and drama with bass, drums and guitar. We will be playing other material from our back catalogue as well.
On Saturday afternoon February 25th Clare Moore and I play an opening set for Dog Trumpet at the Northcote Social Club. We will be on quite early.
Thursday March 23rd we play our Melbourne In A Mistly album launch at the Nightcat in Johnston st Fitzroy. We played every Wednesday night in 1999 at 8pm at this venue in one of the first things we did in our post Coral Snakes period. Mick Medew and Ursula will be coming down from Brisbane to open the show as a way to launch their album Love Is Calling in Melbourne as well.
Friday March 31st we play Smiths in Canberra.
Saturday April 1st we launch In A Mistly in Sydney at the Great Club in Marrickville.
I made a clip for a track from In A Mistly.Its for VELVETS MC. The song is about a music act being like a club or a gang and people join up, even for a band thats been inactive for many decades. members can take on all the attitudes and live through the narrative of the band. They know what happens.
Stuff like "Maybe this is the Australian condition for many artists: a small scene that can’t see the true dimensions of its biggest fish; all of us way too close to appreciate one another properly when we are here for the long game."
Thanks Mark.
I was writing about this kind of feeling or sense of a tight and clammy situation back in 1998 for The Dave Graney Show album on a song called Am I Wearing Something Of Yours?
you don't know what I've been doing
you're too close
you don't know what I've done
I was doin' it to you
you can't know it but I've finished
I've moved on
you don't have enough room
to put me in the picture
am I wearing something of yours?
And again in 2012 on We Need A Champion from You've Been In My Mind.
someone who can see us
we’re so close
we can’t see each other
we’re knockin’ each other up
we need help
someone from outside
oh we’re blind and full of badness
bad blood, bad sweat
makin’ some bad scenes for the hell of it
we need a champion
we ain't got no slack
we ain't got no scratch
we ain't got no rope
we ain't got no background
we ain't got no time
we ain't got no depth
we ain't got no height
we ain't got no room
we're so close we can't see each other
you don't know what I'm doin'
what if I could do it to you?
whatever it was that you were wantin me to do?
we need a champion
Otherwise, we spent ten days in Sydney over Christmas. It was a bit of a shock to drive up the Hume Highway and be bothered by so many other cars on the same track. I mean, this is usually OUR highway. us and a few dozen truckers. All the service stations were full of families with kids and dogs. Especially the stations with electric vehicle charging stations as the families had to cool their heels for a few hours while their batteries were "filled". This meant that there were a lot of kids high on junk food sugar runing around everywhere. It was horrible!
In Sydney we did what most people did, ate and talked and rested and generally forget about deadlines and projects (if you were me) and read books and watched tv.
I tried several episodes of MAYANS MC which is an offshoot of Sons Of Anarchy. It was pretty dull and turgid stuff. A lot of incredibly fit and ripped tough guys who do nothing but drink beer and smoke cigarettes in between bouts of psychotic violence which is all justified as its about their family. Tedious Yankee shit. Loads of incomprehensible, slow dialogue with these wounded, morose men. I wrote a song about the kind of blinkered silliness in 2014 for FEARFUL WIGGINGS. It was called LOOK INTO MY SHADES. I recorded it quite quickly but feel I need to have another look at it.
look into my shades, babe
travel over the surface
travel those smooth black desert sands
I am mean, babe
I am mean and I have been hurt
I’ve got a right, babe
I’ve got a right to be wrong
it’s not you, babe
it’s nothin’ to do with you
someone is gonna pay, babe
someone is gonna pay
I am gonna lay waste to someone’s little world
I am at war, babe
I'm a man on a mission
I am out to destroy something
anything
I've been wandering the earth, babe
darkness everywhere
devastation, baby
devastation,solitude
it feels so funny to be talking to you
I built myself a surface so wide
no one would ever get around
But otherwise, the favoured holiday viewing was more Murder, She Wrote and Columbo. The latter being annoyingly not on any streaming platforms.
We have also been catching Hip Hop Evolution via Netflix. The early episodes on the pioneering djs and then the MCs was pretty thrilling. Stayed in thatgroove with RUN DMC and then Schooly D and the birth of Gangsta Rap. Lots of regional variation. Ice T still sounding pretty unconvincing to me. Just not a very good - or attractive - voice.
Same goes for Q Tip from the Jungle Brothers. He has a big rep which he carries hard with every word he spoke. Just seemed like a small guy, like some lightweight from the local indie rock world.
Shock G from the Digital Underground was just so human and so likeable. His tears came flooding when he talked of Tupacs descent into rage and madness and then his terrible death. Awful.
Schooly D ruled, as did the Wu.
Still got some episodes to go - maybe even another series. But eventually we will get to the hip hop equivalent of Grunge or New Rock or Oasis or Cold Play or Arcade Fire or the Flaming Lips. I'll have turned it off by then. It was a brilliant planet though.
We also caught the 2022 Bowie film Moonage Daydream. A friend in Sydney played it in her garage onto a large screen and a bunch of us sat in deckchairs.
It was quite a nice mix or edit of noted art movies and images that informed a lot of twentieth century progressive music. Just normal underworld stuff. If you'd been paying attention. Would have been a lot richer if the director had just widened the aperture to include David Bowies actual peers and contemporaries. People like Marc Bolan, Bryan Ferry, Vince Taylor, the Pretty Things, Slade, Scott Walker, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Ian Hunter, Mick Jagger, The Legendary Stardust Cowboy, Kraftwek, Syd Barrett, Lulu. The director had also made the Chicago 10 movie which was a fine thing but a little research into that political scene of the late 60s USA showed up a lot of radical women who were also involved in the demonstrations and subsequent trial. The removal of all of them from that films story diminished that too.
Clare Moore and I did this podcast interview late last year. It was for the Unfiltered and Undiscovered Podcast which might give you a clue as to our weird standing in the Australian Music Scene. Some days we are "icons" and "legends" and other days we are yet to be filtered and discovered. As befits that loose but jittery time of year (the end times) it was quite a loopy but fun talk. We didn't expect it to be actually filmed but here's how it turned out.
I'm still hoping to get my book of lyrics out in the first half of 2023. Its being edited at the moment.
THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT Collected lyrics 1980-2023.
