you were deep inside that thought: The Mistly Players

After the show in Murwillumbah I was sitting having a cup of tea in our very nice bandroom and Dave Wray was continuing his way through his bottle of Talisker whisky. If he was dousing himself, he was not getting any more mellow. He spoke so fast he was outrunning his own mind. We were just talking of jazz people. he loved Louis Jordan and I was throwing names I’d know or heard of throughmy own investigatons into late 40s or early 50s black American music. Wynonie Harris, Lowell Fulson, T Bone Walker, Nat King Cole, Amos Milburn, Charles Brown, he could talk about any of them. And when we approached the legend of Charlie Parker it was like walking through an art gallery with an actual painter who knows all about the game and the rooms and the grifts and the original rulers. The ones who laid down the grids.

He was talking about his own playing and how he was exhausted physically from being tensed up and holding himself ready to blow as he followed my changes on the guitar. He was saying that more time to rehearse and play the songs would get him to a different level with the material. He talked of Charlie Parker hitting every note hard and clean. No sliding into or out of notes or phrases, he knew the lines and played them perfectly. He was saying how good it sounds when a horn player is there – in the groove or pocket and right there on the beat.

It had been great playing with him on sax and he and Adele had taken in and played a lot of new material in a very short time. A whirlwind weekend.

Adele Pickvance comes from a very different musical place. She started playing bass in Brisbane rooms with her father as a duo. Keyboards and bass. They got paid more as a duo. At first she was even plugged in but she stood there and learned all the notes to the songs. It was her school, where she paid her dues. She has never been phased by being on a stage. Her favourite band is Queen and she loved Paul McCartneys musical Give My Regards To Broad Street. In other words, her taste is yet to touch the bottom! (Another MCCartney album title, almost – Kisses On The Bottom). She plays in a very McCartneysque way. Ask Robyn Hitchcock! Melodic and playful and full of bounce.

She plays and records with her band Adele And The Chandeliers and does a show on ZZZin Brisbane with Ian Powne from the Stress Of Leisure called Brighten The Corners.

Here is a live clip which also feature Robert Forsters partner, Karin Baumler.

Stu Thomas introduced us to the ever expanding world of Lee Hazlewood when he did a show of Lees songs. “None of the hits- just deep album cuts”. Such amazing material. Stu’s first instrument was the trumpet and he brought that along to the Bewdy Of Speed show in 2009 when we made a mad run through Miles Davis In A Silent Way. He was great to sit and talk music with. He loved all periods of Miles, even the last electro styled ones with Marcus Miller being most of the band. Stu also loves Kiss. His generation, I guess, we could never buy into that stuff. Stu is a fearless solo performer and takes songs way out of their comfort zones . He professes a love for 60s surf instrumental sounds and loves to fuss over reverb and delay pedals. His first solo gigs I saw were all songs from biker movies. The only one I can remember is Killing For Satan. He also “finished off” a sketch of a song that either Nick Cave or Brad Pitt sang in Johnny Suede called Mamas Boy. He also sang Lee H’s Girl On Death Row and Johnny Guitar from the movie of the same name starring Joan Crawford. He did a great version of the movie theme (covered by David Bowie on Station To Station) Wild Is The Wind as well as the Bond song Thunderball. All this done mostly with vocal and a Burns Baritone guitar. Stu can really get to the jazz elements of my chord voicings and his harmony vocals are great, either the super high or super low notes.

Stu Thomas is playing in a Melbourne band called SILVERSOUND with Shane O'Mara and Andrew Tanner.

Stuart Perera has played with us since 1998 when we saw him playing in a Victorian College Of the Arts jazz band. He is still playing the same guitar, a black left handed solid body Rickenbacker. He has gone through a few different kinds of amps and at the moment has the same kind as me, a Vox MV50 head with a speaker box. These heads are 22W valve but the size of a large-ish pedal. Stu is always into making things small and compact. He lives that way too, leaving a small footprint. He is the best educated of any of us and is a very thoughtful person. A positive guy. Musically he tunes into my stuff very instinctively and his playing on In A Mistly (on four tracks) is amazing. Once, when we had Stu and Billy Miller on guitar- around 2001-2- I thought I would stop playing my guitar and just be a stand up singer again. (That’s what I did through all the music we made all through to end of the Coral Snakes period). They looked at each other sheepishly as they had to admit that neither of them actually knew the chords to any of my songs. They had just been playing licks by ear all the while.

Stu doesn’t really collect any kind of music or go to lots of shows. He is certainly not an indie rock guy. He practices guitar and plays it.

He used to play a lot around bars and clubs in Melbourne with dance bands. Again, not real rock culture outfits and the players were all from the mutli cultural world that Stuart comes from and lives in. This was one of them.

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.

Sunday April 2nd we play The Link And Pin -
18A Railway St, , Woy Woy NSW 2256

Our West Australian dates have been re-scheduled for May.

Lyric's Underground (Maylands, WA)