great live performance from 2011 - look out for "you've been in my mind"

This is a clip from a show we did at the South Melbourne Town Hall, in the Old Council Chambers, in July 2011. It was at the end of a  long series of live shows and a rare hook up with Mark Fitzgibbon on piano. We like to play in different rooms. This was a show as part of the Melbourne Cabaret Festival, an annual event curated by a couple of great guys who used to run the Butterfly Club, which is a cute room right next door to this Town Hall. We did a few "narrative type shows there. Hour long series of songs around a theme and a story. All my songs to start with. "Point Blank" was me, Clare on vibes and Mark on the stand up piano there. No mic, just singing into the tiny room.
Then we did  a sequel "live in hell" which had me, Clare on a small drum kit, Stu Thomas on a  fuzz bass through a tiny amp and Stuart Perera on nylon string guitar. That had songs on a  them , my own and covers of Roxy Music, the Fall, Elvis and the Doors.
Then we did "MC Bits" which was me on guitar and singing and Mark Fitzzgibbon on piano. Songs of mine and others by Suicide, Bert Jansch, Hoagy Carmichael, Kevin Ayers and Robyn Hitchcock. Oh, and  run through "the blind mans penis" by John Trubee.We did these mainly at the Butterfly Club but also at the Adelaide Festival theatre and the Sydney Opera House. FRom 2007-2010.

This show was just us bringing our rock songs into a  different environment. Playing very quietly. Not many people came. We enjoyed ourselves greatly. You have to do different things if you're a musician.

Gina Robertson filmed it and the sound is great, because of the volume we are playing at.





Mark is now in Shanghai where he has been playing in a jazz band five nights a week at the same hotel since this performance happened.

a few words about the mistLY

Stuart Perera plays guitar in our band, the mistLY. He was born in '77, the year I pretty much thought about playing music. We had another guitar player Bill Miller (who hasn’t played with us for seven years) had  a number one record with his band , the Ferrets in the same year. We had no trouble talking about musical ideas  because we all like playing music. Its like solving a series of problems, or walking across some abstract plane that keeps changing as you set each foot down. Some times its like a 3 dimensional field and you can see where the notes and the beats fall before it happens. Other times its like a fogged battlefield. Does that make us diggers! Cripes!

Bill went off for a walk a while ago. 2005. He was “gonna be some time”. Actually I started to play more guitar and there wasn’t the room or the moolah.

Clare Moore and I have played music together the whole way. Since 1978. We have shared our terrestrial life as well. We get to run out on that abstract field and we are fully manifest there. We know that. We don't talk about it much , we just know it. The band is completed by our bass player Stuart Thomas and, sometimes , our jazz fellow traveller. Mark Fitzgibbon. (He is full of talk, spending so much of his time in a completely abstract, instrumental world. He loves to talk of the indignities that come your way as you live a musical life. Each outrage is documented and recast to his new audience, us, in even grizzler detail.) Mark has been living in Shanghai for the last year or so, playing piano in a  jazz band five nights a week.

Stu Thomas plays in the Surrealists with Kim Salmon. He also plays his own music with the Stu Thomas Paradox and with Jane Dust and the Giant Hoopoes (who also feature Clare Moore).

Anyway, we all meet up, like the Wild Bunch and deal with whatever spotfire or situation I have gotten us into. Its not like a band where the experience has all been shared. We all came by a different route. We've all been up and we've all been down. We like to play in this field, this area we know how to operate in. Its like being a pro gambler or a fighter I guess, only the stoned will know. Memory doesn't have much to do with it. We've had to make up some other way to speak with each other. We can't just refer to past battle plans and victories or defeats. Its always been new. We have to go over the top together.

Stuart Perera has played on every album since “the Dave Graney Show” in 1998 the year that broke on us after we finished playing with the Coral Snakes. It was my idea to finish that scene and start again. I needed to do it. Stuart was playing at a  VCA jazz youth concert and I asked him to play for us. I was lucky, . He also plays around Melbourne clubs very regularly in a funk outfit. He is highly match fit. Not at all indie either.

Adele Pickvance played bass on that Dave Graney Show cd and several that followed. She left to rejoin the Go Betweens. Stu Thomas has played with us since 2004 and made his recorded debut on “keepin’ it unreal” in 2006.

Most albums we have made have include about 40% of material recorded and played completely at our Ponderosa studio by Clare Moore and myself. The rest we have gone into a bigger room/ studio and laid down tracks with our band.

For this new album “you’ve been in my mind”, like last years “re recordings album “rock’n’roll is where I hide”, we went and put the whole album down in a big room at Soundpark sthudios in Melbourne. All in the room together, with minimal overdubs, only vocals and percussion.

Its always been a thing with us to have a band. The music sounds best with a collective feel and energy. A unit that is locked in together. Someone could write a book about holding a band together. It might be a bit tedious for some but you consider say, Duke Ellington who had 16 of the greatest, (and they all knew it) players in the world of jazz. They rode trains and buses and planes and reassembled on stages together for 40 years! He apparently never sacked anybody. He just sat someone down next to them playing the same instrument. At the beginning of a show they would do a fanfare, a blast of notes. Everybody had to have their own note. Players  would call out , “get off my fuckin’ note!”

We also like to have a band because our songs need instrumentation and dynamics. We don’t really believe that everything can be boiled down to a single element of an acoustic guitar. I once saw Prince do an acoustic set on cable tv. It was so throwaway as he knew it was NOT what it was supposed to sound like. Nothing else was revealed. Its the same with songs by August Darnell (Kid Creole). The tunes are simple but the rhythms and melodies are nuanced and sophisticated and need the voices and voicings of a couple of keys players, guitar and percussion as well as drums and bass and vocals to bring it to life.

Occasionally we play a show with a keyboard player. Mark Fitzgibbon, a  jazz powerhouse, played with us on “HASHISH and LIQUOR” in 2005 and then on “WE WUZ CURIOUS” in 2008. He’s been involved in the  narrative shows, “POINT BLANK” ,”LIVE IN HELL” and “MC BITS”.

Mark was living in Perth for 2009. That year we had the pleasure of playing with  ADAM RUDEGEAIR who plays with his own jazz trio as well as with HENRY MANETTA AND THE TRIP.

Clare Moore has recorded and played with the latter as well as with JANE DUST AND THE GIANT HOOPOES   (who also feature Stu Thomas on bass) and  THE DAMES ( with Kaye Louise Patterson and Rosie Westbrook).

Dave Graney and Clare Moore also played with  SALMON,a seven guitar/two drummer hard rock orchestra devised by Kim Salmon very occasionally during 2007-2009 and also as bass and drums with HARRY HOWARDS N.D.E. The NDE have an album out in 2012 called “Near Death Experience “ On Spooky Records.

Stu Thomas has his band THE STU THOMAS PARADOX.

We like to play a  pretty upbeat set when we appear. Not much room for ballads.

Our new cd is called “You’ve been in my mind”. Its 12 tracks recorded in two days and mixed by myself over a longer period . Its out on June 22nd. On Cockaigne through Fuse.

Its a guitar jamming pop rock album.The songs are real strong.Written and played together over a  long period. 

I play a Music Man copy 12 string electric through my solid state Fender amp. Stuart Perera plays a sold bodied Rickenbacker througha  small Laney valve amp.

Clare Moore plays her Gretsch kit which she bought in London in 1983. Stu Thomas plays a Fender P bass through an Avalon pre amp into the desk.

It’s the first bunch of new songs I’ve recorded with the mistLY (as a unit with Stu Thomas and Stuart Perera featuring) sing “ we wuz curious” in 2008 (and that was the first album Stu Thomas played on). The last set of new songs of mine that came out was “knock yourself out” in 2009. That was billed as a solo set though Clare wrote half of the songs and played on most and Stu and Stuart guested on many,

Live dates

Thursday 19^th July Lizottes- Kincumber

Friday 20^th July – Lizottes – Newcastle

Saturday 21^st July – Notes, Newtown

Sunday 22^nd July – Lizottes Dee Why

Friday 27^th July – the Regal Ballroom – high st Northcote with Matt Walker and Adele and Glenn (Go Betweens/Custard)

New album , "you've been in my mind" due in June- meanwhile sag and bloom

This article appears in the May edition of the Melbourne Review. Demands of space led to  cuts and edits. Also the subject material could have wandered occasionally into areas of specificity that casual readers might have been offended by. This is the full whack....

I wanted a sound for my electric guitar but was a little cheesed at how everybody talks about the same shit in that area. I have attitudes that have been formed over the years that affected my approach.

Basically I’m a singer. For the first couple of decades as a performer I liked to stand there at the mic and sing. I didn’t want to be stuffing around with a guitar. In the Moodists, Steve Miller had a Fender twin and Mick Turner had a small Marshall combo. They were pretty intuitive as to what they played. Somehow we arranged our one chord boogies by ear.

I should also say the Moodists were operating in the post punk scene. Guitar heroes were few . These were ours. Johnny Thunders, Steve Jones, Keith Levene, Tom Verlaine, Robert Quine, Lou Reed, Poison Ivy, Bryan Gregory, Kid Congo, Rowland Howard.

Later, after the Moodists, I wanted to be a singer songwriter in a 70s kind of way as that was the music I was tuning into.  That’s what I’ve done ever since.  I wrote songs on an acoustic guitar but usually turned them over to my band, which pretty much always had a piano, bass, guitar and drums. The guitar was always pretty trebly and clean and played with the piano. Rod Hayward and Malcolm Ross in the Coral Snakes on guitars (always Fenders) and Louis Vause and Robin Casinader on keys. The guitar didn’t have to be the central part of the sound. We always had the vocals and the rhythm section front and square. Influences from r&b I guess. I had an acoustic guitar I bought from Robert Forster from the Go betweens. A Fender acoustic. Twenty pounds it cost me. Some time in the late 80s I started to do some acoustic shows. The beginning of the vogue for all things “unplugged” I guess. I bought some crappy Ovation style copy from Dean street in London. Scratched out some performances that way. It was just a  cheap way to get around.

Some time in the late 90s, after the Coral Snakes period, I started to play electric guitar. Got myself a Harmony semi acoustic .  I should say that during this period we had started to use a lot of harmony singing and of course the sound on stage had to be controlled a lot. The volume of the guitar is always an issue with lots of open mics around. So we were always wanting the guitar amp to be at a  lower volume.

I had started to think hard about textures and sound and production and wanted to get a small combo with no piano and clean sounding guitars. A beat group. Stuart Perera played guitar, a left handed solid  body Rickenbacker. He put it through a Laney combo and still does. Billy Miller played guitar with us as well. A strat through a  Roland Jazz Chorus. I liked it all pretty loose. I played a bit of guitar then one day I put it down and found that Bill and Stuart did not know how any of my songs actually went! We had been playing songs from that songbook for a couple of years! The band needed me to play the chords!

So I have kept playing the guitar and have brought  all these attitudes to the situation. Low volume, loud lead vocal, harmonies etc.

I am also by nature a contrarian and a cheapskate. If I had tens of thousands of dollars to throw about I would not buy a guitar and an amp, I would buy a  car or something. Fix something in my house.

When I was a kid I loved those dudes like Hound dog Taylor and they all had  the cheapest gear. Punk bands like the Buzzcocks proudly had Tesco (supermarket) guitars and the Subway Sect played Fender Squires.

I also always tune out when people start to rave about “warm valve sounds”. I know, from experience, that its all true but  there are other sounds.  I mean Neil Young and The Foo Fighters might record on tape and the like but they are millionaires. End of story.

The Moodists did a reunion gig in 2005 and the young new rock sound engineer was telling our guitarist, who had his own sound and was an original gangster, to “dial some mids in”. I had to tell the young cat that the ideal sound was not always Bon Jovi or Aerosmith, this was the sound we had. Steve turned all the treble on his amp up and there it was, that spindly, loud, reverbed out Fender twin sound. The kid put his earplugs in.

That was a  reunion gig. I’d been putting out my own albums for more than 20 years in between Moodists shows. By now I had some other references for guitar sounds that I loved. Jerry Garcia, Jorma Kaukonen, John Cippolina, Ike Turner, Gatemouth Brown, Grant Green, Duane Allman, Ed King. Lots of people. American rock and jazz I guess.

So that’s where my attitude towards the sound I was looking for came in. I can’t wipe all that away from my sensibility. That’s how I ended up buying  $120 solid state Fender combo amp from ebay. It was covered in disgusting grey felt stuff. I had it replaced with Marshall tolex. (the hard black vinyl type material on those amps). Marshall people are not fender people. I was fooling with the material already. The amp had a  beautiful clean sound which is what I wanted. Only it was piercingly loud and trebley. The volume was at “1” and it was overpowering.

I became obsessed with building my own sound and scoured the online guitar forums on different subjects. Needless to say, guitar folk love to talk. All very subjective and persuasive to say the least. Also, all continually searching for their own sound or more properly, one somebody else had perfected.

My experiments led me to reach for a Sansamp, which is a pedal that came out in the 80s for studio and live use, which could approximate the sound of many different amps. Unlike the modern amp modelling pedals it was not a case of switching a button it was a pedal with many variations and combinations you could muck about with. I’d had one for twelve years and hadn’t ever really gotten to the end of it. I placed it into the effects loop of my amp. This was different to plugging it into the front. I did this because  I wanted to have the sansamp “Fender tone” effecting an actual Fender amp. I then replaced the speaker with a tech21 (the maker of Sansamps) speaker, more powerful than the amp itself. The logic being the speaker would be clean sounding to the infinite. (The overdrive channel of the amp being so metallic I was going to use an overdrive pedal).  So I had a  Fender amp and cab with tech21 in the loop and at the end.

Now I had to find the right combination and sequence to put my pedals . I was intending to play 12 sstring electric and had a “Janglebox” for compression and sparkle. The guitar went into this, then into an MXR Microamp. The Microamp gave it a bit more of a clean boost. If it was before the Janglebox its subtle effect was compressed too much and it affected the overdrive pedal which came after it. (The Janglebox and Microamp were to be “on” all the time).  I then had a “tonerider American classic” overdrive pedal for a dirty sound. Lastly there was another Tech21 pedal, an XXL overdrive. This was for total fuzzed distortion.

Having sequenced the pedals I had to work out which way to power them. The sansamp needed to be reliably “on”. When the batteries run out it is sudden, don’t want that to happen at a   gig. So I thought I’d get some power to the pedals. This involved a  bit of research and, eventually, three power plugs as the Sansamp and the Janglebox both require the power lead to be positively tipped. (one male and one female) All other pedals being usually negative tipped.

While looking into this I ventured once more into the world of online opinion and critiquing of the electric guitar experience. The language was pretty amazing- occasionally. I came across the terms “sag” and “”bloom”. Using a  valve amp, there is a  kind of power compression when a note is hit hard and the amp can’t respond straight away. Being valves, they behave differently to solid state circuits. The power “sags” and then gathers and “blooms”, becoming louder and more resonant. Sag and Bloom. Like a  couple of Jewish entertainment lawyers. I was reading this stuff and really almost getting it. Then I had to investigate power further as the Janglebox was very noisy being plugged into mains power. I learned that people preferred batteries in the studio for a better sound but mains power at gigs where reliability had to be uppermost. The sound was better with batteries. New batteries? Well with that question a new rabbit hole appeared when a fellow opined that the “sweetest” sound he’d ever heard was when he used batteries that were just about to run out. Carbon batteries too, whatever they were. I left the building at this stage, happy with the sound I had been able to chase down, ready to go and play and record. Guitar and combo amp still pretty much weighing in the same. Leaving them to all their endless talk.

Post script- now I need an ABY pedal to drive two amps. 

video clip for "flash in the pantz"

I'm playing my OLP MM12 twelve string. Stuart Perera is on his solid body Rickenbacker that he's been playing since he joined us in 1998, Stu Thomas is on his P bass and Clare is playing the house kit with her cymbals and Brady snare. The songs is called "flash in the pantz". Its an edited version of the song that appears on the album. Cut from 4:49 down to 3:26. Lost half my guitar solo in the middle and all of it at the end.





The album "you've been in my mind is coming out June 15th. 12 tracks plus three demo versions of songs on the cd . The itunes version won't have those demos but will have "king of the dudes" and two remixes of oldr songs I've done. I just wanted to have another pass at them. One is "sometimes you can see yourself" from 2005's "hashish and liquor" and the other is "midnight to Dawn" which was on 2003's "the brother who lived" and also remixed for 2010's "supermodified". I never quite thought I'd gotten the right balance in the mix and I love the song.
I thought I'd concentrated too much on the vocals and not the drums. I got it bangin' this time. Also, to make it a real remix I got Henry wagons to have a  pass at a verse and he sings it out of the park!

"You've been in my mind" is a guitar jam album. Pop rock blasts with a  band totally rocking at their peak.

new album out mid June - "you've been in my mind"

you've been in my mind will be a 12 track cd.

dave graney-mostly electric 12 string guitar through his hotrodded fender solid state combo and also a  fender twin.close miked and room miked.

clare moore-gretsch drum kit and vocals.

stu thomas-fender p bass through an avalon preamp and vocals.

stuart perera-left handed solid bodied rickenbacker through his laney valve combo as well as a Vox ac30.close and room miked.

recorded by andrew "idge" hehir.

mixed by dave graney

cover by tony mahony

mastered by greg wadley

out on cockaigne in mid june

distributed by fuse music

blues negative

flash in the pantz

field record me

we need  a champion

I don't wanna know myself

cop this,sweetly

life's a dream

playin' chicken

mt gambier night

midnight cats

mistral

I'm not the guy I tried to be

The cd will also have three extra tracks.Early demo version of "cop this sweetly", " we need a  champion" and "I don't wanna know myself". All instruments played by dave graney and clare moore.

the digital version will feature other, exclusive tracks but not the three demo songs.

http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com

flash in the pantz - digital single out now

flash in the pantz is the first single from the forthcoming album by dave graney and the mistLY (aka the lurid yellow mist). The album is full of pop rock sensation, flash and drama and the mistLY fire at will with a simple but totally drilled arsenal of two electric guitars, bass and drums. And lashings of vocals. The album, “you’ve been in my mind”, will be the first set of new dave graney songs since “knock yourself out” in 2009. The album will be out in June and live dates will follow.

 “flash in the pantz is a song about being a man. I love all those songs on the subject by Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley and thought I’d add one of mine to the pile. It’s got real big chunky major chords and rolling tom toms under all the voices in the chorus. A big beat song. I heard a woman caller on sports radio dismiss a player as a “flash in the pantz” and took off from there. Like a lot of my songs it starts from somewhere stupid and goes off somewhere else. I thought, are we not all the result of a couple of people having a flash in the pantz?” dave graney


 “flash in the pantz” is a digital only single and is available now. “you’ve been in my mind” will be released digitally and on cd out on Cockaigne in June -touring nationally in July. Fuse distribution. http://www.thedavegraneyshow.com

flash in the pantz- lyrics 

I’m a man, I reach for a hammer first

and if that fails, that fails

we’ll gather up the pieces and stare at them a while

we could’ve waited but we don’t wait

we don’t wait

if it moves, bash it forward

always seems to be a good idea

flash in the pantz

I’m a man , I do the seein’

you’re lookin’ at me! I see you lookin’ at me

you don’t see me lookin’ at you

I’m a man, I do the seein’

and the lookin’

if it moves, bash it forward

always seems to be a good idea

flash in the pantz

I’m a man

I’m a  man

flash in the pantz

(dave graney)

dave graney and the mistLY
Thursday 19th July - Lizottes, Kincumber
Friday 20th July- Lizottes, Newcastle
Saturday 21st July - Notes Live, Newtown
Sunday 22nd July Lizottes Dee Why

harry howard and the NDE - "near death experience"

Harry Howard is an old friend who we started to play bass and drums with about 18 months ago. He was in Crime and the City Solution and These Immortal Souls and then Pink Stainless Tail. We knew him in Melbourne in the early 80s and then in London.
Edwina Preston plays organ and sings too.
We started working on his songs and pretty quickly we did some gigs and then an album. It was easy for us to tune in to the material. We kind of spoke the same language.











The album is called "Near Death Experience" and is out on Spooky records.




http://www.spookyrecords.com/NDE.html


You can hear some of the music via Bandcamp too.



http://harryhowardandthende.bandcamp.com/





Of course the album was written and recorded during the time when Harrys brother , Rowland, was ill and died but the title does not just allude to that experience. Harry had some health issues of his own.

Harry plays a Gretsch Astrojet through a homemade amp which is in a cabinet of bare, unvarnished wood.





Edwina plays an old organ and a Stylophone, an instrument pimped by Rolf Harris on kids tv in the 70s.










They are a formidable frontline. Clare Moore and I have the luxury of sitting up the back and just following orders.









I play a Steinberger copy bass. An instrument I acquired knowing full well it carries a serious charge of negative aesthetic power.









We are playing shows around Melbourne and , hopefully, further out over the next few months.