Night Of The Wolverine 30th Anniversary Tour starting this week

 Donna McRae asked if she could use some new technology at Deakin University to do a clip for Night Of The Wolverine a couple of months ago and the finished film was pretty great!

 

It was a project for her students and herself as much as anything I guess. I just said at the beginning that it might be difficult for any band involvement as Robin Casinader lives in Canberra (his image appears in the clip on a  billboard) and that I would not be able to mime to the song. (Also that the band doesnt really exist as a full time thing) For other reasons I wasn't really comfortable trying to mime it and thought it would suit it more if I just appeared in it as a cameo. Like a wandering presence. Its all Donnas ideas. I just suggested a nightclub scene after hours or - when it was explained what was possible with the Virtual Studio technology- some sort of downbeat neon streetscape like Francis Ford Coppolas One From The Heart. 

Here is a link to an interview Donna did with Filmink about the production.

We were invited into the Friday Review on ABC Melbourne with Brian Nankervis and Jacinta Parsons. Robin Casinader flew down from Canberra for the afternoon to do the session. We played two songs, Mogambo and I'm Just Havin' One O' Those Lives live to air and did and interview. The sound was excellent and it was great to see that beautiful ABC studio still being used. Unfortunately the audio is already unavailable from the ABC site.

 

 

More shots from behind the scenes at the video shoot.

 

CAST:

Dave Graney

Clare Moore

Rod Hayward

Liana Samson Piniata

Willow Wakefield-Trump

 

 

CREW

Donna McRae  - Director

Ben Bellette – Director of Photography

Hannah Jennings – 1^st assistant camera

Martin Andersen – 2^nd assistant camera

Josh Fernandez-  Gaffer

Luca Bizzarri – Grip

Will Jones – Lighting assistant

Doug Bicker -  Virtual Production assistant

Nicole Zhang -  Playback/Production Assistant

Téa Mancini – Set dresser

Donna McRae - Editor

Courtney Palser – Colourist

 

DEAKIN:

Laurie Meade – Coordinator of Post Production & Workflows

Matthew Skarajew – Coordinator, Digital Technologies

Adi Ringma – Technical Officer

Nick Donaldson–  Unreal Operator

Kimberly Potts – Wardrobe and Standby wardrobe

Mark Lasky-Davison – Technical Officer

Matt Haycroft – Technical Officer

 

 

It was also Margret Roadknights 80th birthday last week so Guy Blackman and Ben from Chapter Music organized a lunch at a restaurant on Chapel street.

Tour starts this week in Canberra. The Night Of The Wolverine double vinyl album and my lyric book will be available at all shows. In Melbourne they can also be gotten at Greville and Rocksteady Records and at Redeye in Sydney. 

Its also available mail order via our Bandcamp site.

Friday 28 July – The Street Theatre, Canberra ACT
Tickets

Saturday 29 July – Blue Mountains Theatre, Springwood NSW
Tickets

Thursday 3 August – The Factory Theatre, Marrickville NSW
Tickets

Friday 4 August - The Imperial, Eumundi QLD
Tickets

Saturday 5 August – The Old Museum, Brisbane QLD
Tickets

Sunday 6 August – HOTA, Surfers Paradise QLD
Tickets

Friday 11 August – The Royal Oak, Launceston TAS
Tickets

Saturday 12 August – Gnomon Room, Ulverstone TAS
Tickets

Sunday 13 August – The Palais Theatre, Franklin TAS
Tickets

****NEW MELBOURNE SHOW ADDED****
Thursday 17 August - The Gershwin Room , Esplanade Hotel, St Kilda.
Tickets

Friday 18 August – The Corner, Richmond VIC
******SOLD OUT****

Saturday 19 August - The Gov, Adelaide SA
Tickets

Friday 25 August – The Heritage, Bulli NSW
Tickets

Saturday 26 August – Drifter’s Wharf, Gosford NSW
Tickets 

davegraney.com

Lyrics Book Launch was a party

 Thank you to everybody who came to the One Star Gallery and Lounge to the launch of my lyrics book.
The book was self published and I got the design together with the help of Simon Strong.

The launch was set up with a casual suggestion to Katy Beale and Mick Harvey. Its a great, flexible space that perfectly suited this kind of affair.

 

Doors opened at 6pm and I stood around as people started to fill the place. There was no hiding out in a backstage room (though there was one available) as this was to be a very casual soiree.

I hadn't really prepared anything to read out as its a lyrics book (though with many annotations and notes in regard to song chords and structures and production) and I just thought I'd wait and see who turned up - if anybody! I had my Crate acoustic amp with both my guitar and mic plugged into it, ready to make show.

 

People arrived on a very wintry Thursday evening, coming from work and home. By car and tram and foot. Wine and beer were served and chairs were lined up  for an attentive audience. 

The place was full with about 70 people so I started at 7pm. I thanked everybody and told them what the book was and about the design and that it was lyrics from 1980-2023 with no images, only text and was 374 pages in total. Book design is based on a classic French Éditions Gallimard NRF form of paperback.

I mentioned that I'd written about how I got my tone of voice in my 2011 book 1001 Australian Nights and mentioned my blue collar and regional town background. I was explaining how I found it difficult to howl songs starting with "I" like my heroes did so easily. How "I" as an unreliable narrator of my own story or self but felt the pressure of the particular moment of the music scene I was immersed within to write my own words and to fashion them from my own environment. I had found this difficult also because all the sounds and images we liked were from the UK or USA.

Then I read out the words to How I Wrote Elastic Man by The Fall as if to illustrate the way that Mark E Smith - in his post punk META stance - opened up so many new ways of expression for me - and I'm sure for others as well. It didn't have to be all "I - I - I" it could be also a kind of meta eye view of your own situation (even as you were doing it). A kind of pulp reportage. 

I'm eternally grateful
To my past influences
But they will not free me
I am not diseased
All the people ask me
How I wrote "Elastic Man"

Life should be full of strangeness
Like a rich painting
But it gets worse day by day
I'm a potential DJ
A creeping wreck
A mental wretch
Everybody asks me
How I wrote "Elastic Man"

His soul hurts though it's well filled up
The praise received is mentally sent back
Or taken apart
The Observer magazine just about sums him up
E.g. self-satisfied, smug

I'm living a fake
People say, "You are entitled to and great."
But I haven't wrote for 90 days
I'll get a good deal and I'll go away
Away from the empty brains that ask
How I wrote "Elastic Man"

His last work was "Space Mystery" in the Daily Mail,
An article in Leather Thighs
The only thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes
So I'm resigned to bed
I keep bottles and comics stuffed by its head
Fuck it, let the beard grow
I'm too tired,
I'll do it tomorrow
The fridge is sparse
But in the town
They'll stop me in the shops
Verily they'll track me down
Touch my shoulder and ignore my dumb mission
And sick red faced smile
And they will ask me
And they will ask me
How I wrote "Elastic Man"

 

 I mentioned how crude the music was but how great and Marks voice so harsh and sometimes unintelligible but also great.

I then picked up my guitar and went through the chords and the lyics of some of my songs.

 I got into Death By A Thousand Sucks from 2000's Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye and the title track of Heroic Blues from 2001. 

 

"death by a thousand sucks
you know what I'm talkin about
you know mate, that guy would give a dogs arse heartburn "

 

I went through the chords of Heroic Blues but should have explained how we recorded it on a digital Zoom hand held device at a soundcheck in Tarwin Lower. A big, empty room we could improvise into while the sound of women washing dishes in the kitchen added a melancholy, empty ambience to the space. I meant to explain how this was a kind of production and presentation that was integral to the song as much as the chords and the improvisation. It was an improvised field recording. 

"I'm standin in a bar
singin my songs
theres six people hangin around
they've got nowhere else to go
I'm a hero, thats what I do"

 

 I played parts of Lt Colonel Cavalry from THE DAVE GRANEY SHOW album (1999).

"I was a free man
like a highland prince
a fur trapper gazin into the distance
nobody bothered me with trifling details
my mind wandered the earth and the cosmos
rightin wrongs and cuttin fools down where they stood"

 Talked about the chords and how the chorus has a drone note going through four changing chords underneath, holding it at the treble end while the emotion shifts underneath.

I said that I had never had much feedback for my work as in the moribund, straight rock scene of Australia I sensed I was seen as mostly an annoying ironic presence who was not serious. Serious rock music being unreservedly grim.  

I didn't mean that I wanted to be taken seriously, I meant that I didn't take any of that seriously, only my work. My songs.

 I also played The Old Swagger and ended with Where Are You In The Underworld. Both from my most recent album, IN A MISTLY.

It was a very enjoyable night and I thank everybody who came along. You really made my night. And day.

THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT IS AVAILABLE VIA BANDCAMP.

 

Simon Grounds and Clare Moore

 

Maxine, Katy Beale, Will Hindmarsh and Kim Salmon 

 

Miles Brown in the back chugging on a beer. 

Mick Harvey checking the football scores

Friday 28 July – The Street Theatre, Canberra ACT
Tickets

Saturday 29 July – Blue Mountains Theatre, Springwood NSW
Tickets

Thursday 3 August – The Factory Theatre, Marrickville NSW
Tickets

Friday 4 August - The Imperial, Eumundi QLD
Tickets

Saturday 5 August – The Old Museum, Brisbane QLD
Tickets

Sunday 6 August – HOTA, Surfers Paradise QLD
Tickets

Friday 11 August – The Royal Oak, Launceston TAS
Tickets

Saturday 12 August – Gnomon Room, Ulverstone TAS
Tickets

Sunday 13 August – The Palais Theatre, Franklin TAS
Tickets

****NEW MELBOURNE SHOW ADDED****
Thursday 17 August - The Gershwin Room , Esplanade Hotel, St Kilda.
Tickets

Friday 18 August – The Corner, Richmond VIC
******SOLD OUT****

Saturday 19 August - The Gov, Adelaide SA
Tickets

Friday 25 August – The Heritage, Bulli NSW
Tickets

Saturday 26 August – Drifter’s Wharf, Gosford NSW
Tickets 

There He Goes With His Eye Out - Lyrics 1980-2023 - book launch

 I am launching my book of lyrics THERE HE  GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT - complete lyrics 1980-2023 Thursday night 6pm at One Star Gallery and Lounge which is run by Katy Beale and Mick Harvey at 301-303 Victoria St, West Melbourne VIC 3003.

 

Everything from the Moodists to the latest albums and beyond. Includes  some descriptions of intent as to the song or music in question and also some notes as to production approaches and chords.

Book design is based on a classic French Éditions Gallimard NRF form of paperback. All text, no images. 374 pages.

 

Thanks to Simon Strong from Ekranoplans for help in editing and formatting.



You can only get the book via our Bandcamp page.

 

I'll have my acoustic guitar with me and will be talking about my kind of songwriting and perhaps playing a few songs.  

Doors will open at 6 and I will do something at 7pm. Admission is free but books will be available. 

In other news, this was sent to our booking agent yesterday. It really floated my boat. Two kids  acting out to one of our most abstract and wilful songs, Wilco Got No Wilco from Everything Was Funny. Thank you younger generation! (Their father - who I dont know - sent it) 

 

 

I had spent what seemed like the previous two weeks in a constant battle with tech. Must be a common thing I know.

Basically always coming to these situations where you are told you need to upgrade. Hardware or software. So as o work with apps or better integrate other apps. As you know, this is a nerds daydream that we all have to live inside IRL and it rarely works smoothly or immediately.

More than a few years ago I upgraded my OS by accident or as a result of fatigue  and my desktop workhorse went to  a black screen. A couple of days later I had it working again but it just didn't gel with the music software Protools anymore. I learned that after a certain level of OS upgrades it in fact didnt work at all and I had crossed that Rubicon. It was all kind of glitchy with the graphics but somehow hung tremulously together. Then there was the realization that the application itself had entered an era where you could no longer own it but had to subscribe.

I mixed several albums in this burning wasteland/sick, drifting spacecraft situation. Then another situation developed with someone sharing files with me and it seemed the only solution was a new computer which meant subscribing to several applications.

I went online one day and asked the internet what OS and Protools combination was the best and the answers were all to do with OS versions from the early 2000s and further back. People had audio only computers that they never took online. I learned that there were people using versions of Protools numbered 4 (the current version is about 13 or 14) and that they mixed television programs that way.

My cunning plan was to downgrade, to go back.

Last week I achieved all this. I bought a $150 Mac with OS in the early 10s (before it lost touch with Protools) and it works perfectly! No graphic glitches, just as smooth as a new contraption.

I seriously felt healthier! As if this nagging feeling of instability in my tech life was also feeding into my physical sensibilty.

 So I've been "in the studio" for the last week. Working on new material and trying out some outboard gear. Something may be out this year but definitely next.

Friday 28 July – The Street Theatre, Canberra ACT
Tickets

Saturday 29 July – Blue Mountains Theatre, Springwood NSW
Tickets

Thursday 3 August – The Factory Theatre, Marrickville NSW
Tickets

Friday 4 August - The Imperial, Eumundi QLD
Tickets

Saturday 5 August – The Old Museum, Brisbane QLD
Tickets

Sunday 6 August – HOTA, Surfers Paradise QLD
Tickets

Friday 11 August – The Royal Oak, Launceston TAS
Tickets

Saturday 12 August – Gnomon Room, Ulverstone TAS
Tickets

Sunday 13 August – The Palais Theatre, Franklin TAS
Tickets

****NEW MELBOURNE SHOW ADDED****
Thursday 17 August - The Gershwin Room , Esplanade Hotel, St Kilda.
Tickets

Friday 18 August – The Corner, Richmond VIC
******SOLD OUT****

Saturday 19 August - The Gov, Adelaide SA
Tickets

Friday 25 August – The Heritage, Bulli NSW
Tickets

Saturday 26 August – Drifter’s Wharf, Gosford NSW
Tickets 

Writing about recording Night Of The Wolverine in late 1992.

 

The following text is what I wrote about the period in late 1992 to early 1993 in my books 1001 Australian Nights and WORKSHY. 

1992. Lure of the Tropics came out at the same time as I Was the Hunter and I Was the Prey (which had been on the shelf at Fire Records in the UK for a couple of years In the meantime, with no bass player to anchor the sound and deliver the space, we did semi-acoustic turns, which we billed as Soft ‘n’ Sexy shows. We were reloading all the while. Unconsciously, I found a new way into singing and thinking about music. How to deliver it, what to stress and how to cruise. We had a notion to make a lyrical record. When it happened it happened quick.

This dark, earthbound period, full of wild dreams of flight and escape, had given me a brace of even more fantastic illusions. All the show business of Custer and Hickok and co led me to great places. Places to think on and step out into. My own eternal returning to Australia and then the Australias within that, country and city, artistic and brutal, gave me some weird notes to play around with.

Those downbeat South Australian towns like Penola and Keith and Bordertown had sung to me when I’d been living in London, never to return. “Exile is a rampart into the past.” I’d read that somewhere. Now these new songs ran fast and tight with fabled names like Wallace Beery and Ava Gardner and Terry Southern, along with those deadbeat, hopeless wide spots on the South Australian country roads.

I’d always had this kooky idea that I was following a trail. One thing leading to another. Stupid. In my hopped up showbiz Custer funk I’d read how he would lead his men into battle yelling, “Ride, you wolverines”. Then I was reading James Ellroy’s Blood on the Moon. I turned a page and there was one word in bold black: WOLVERINE. (The killer is juiced on speed and white jazz and chews his female corpses with a set of wolverine teeth).

I liked that word, “wolverine”. It was like a noun and an adjective. The word recurred a lot in early white jazz cosmology. I am nothing but white jazz. I also like those film titles like The Night of the Iguana and the less dramatic Night of the Lepus (a horror flick with giant rabbits). There was also The Night of the Hunter. And Night of the Living Baseheads, from Public Enemy. I had a fantasy life which was just out of reach, but which I was probably actually living, about a heroic, rootless player. Like someone out of Willie Nelson’s song Night Life. I wrote it up in a song called Night of the Wolverine.

 

Apparently, Lenny Bruce used to put black duct tape over the hotel room window as soon as he put his bags on the bed. He liked to live in a general night-time mode. When we recorded Night of the Wolverine, it went down in a day. We mixed it on another day or two. The band was hot, a real unit, and there was some drama and inspiration. Equals energy.

The song had three parts to it. It went down in real time to tape. No digital fingering or editing. I arranged it around a template from Lou Reed’s Street Hassle. It had an opening part, then a key change part spoken by another voice ( Lou asked Bruce Springsteen, I asked Tex Perkins). Then it came home hard with a driving returning and shifting section. The first part was a musician deep into the life. The player and the mover. I’d been there before with a song called Everything Flies Away. I was back, chewing at the scenery again. I loved that life but I couldn’t have it. Not that I thought, anyway. Then it moved into an underworld theme with “if I could‘ve stayed home”, another pulp reference to the writer Horace McCoy.

Then it was a return to Lenny Bruce, who once said that he was a bum and a loser as a showbiz comic because he could always make the band (who sat behind him, in the shadows) laugh, but not the people in the audience. He struck the notes the hipsters could hear but not the mugs, the punters.

Most rock musicians have to spend their time convincing people that they have some content of interest. I was the opposite. I knew I’d put everything I’d found on my trip into some sort of order and arrangement and it was all in the songs. The textures, the temper, the tempo. I wanted people to find it but I didn’t want to stand there looking like a goog. A heavy and self-important rabbit! I got in there and made paths so people could approach the stuff. The real stuff! It was loaded. And fizzing!

 

The album was mostly recorded in one day, with Tony Cohen at the desk. He had just come from a Cruel Sea album, which had followed a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds album. He was pretty wrecked but made it to the session a mere five or six hours late. He was forgiven, as he was possessed of skills that no one else had. He had mad charisma and great ears. He wielded an editing razor to multi-track tape like a swashbuckling pirate. He had the mozz on people like us. We believed he was capable of real witchery. We were still recording onto tape and used it sparingly, having learned wisely from Stephen Cummings.

The album has a nice mellow tone to it, probably due to Tony’s ears still ringing from the two long, intense album sessions he’d completed before he walked into our room. The studio was initially AAV in South Melbourne, where so many great Australian albums had been recorded and also where I’d been hanging out with Billy Miller and Andrew Duffield. Then we moved to Atlantis, which was just up the road, in a side street that’s now underneath a part of Crown Casino. Clare and I walked home with the tapes, talking through the cobbled lanes of South Melbourne about how we’d made something really cool.

 

The album was released on Compact Disc but will be available at the shows on our Night Of The Wolverine 30^th anniversary tour in a limited edition double gatefold sleeve vinyl edition.

 

 

Friday 28 July – The Street Theatre, Canberra ACT
Tickets

Saturday 29 July – Blue Mountains Theatre, Springwood NSW
Tickets

Thursday 3 August – The Factory Theatre, Marrickville NSW
Tickets

Friday 4 August - The Imperial, Eumundi QLD
Tickets

Saturday 5 August – The Old Museum, Brisbane QLD
Tickets

Sunday 6 August – HOTA, Surfers Paradise QLD
Tickets

Friday 11 August – The Royal Oak, Launceston TAS
Tickets

Saturday 12 August – Gnomon Room, Ulverstone TAS
Tickets

Sunday 13 August – The Palais Theatre, Franklin TAS
Tickets

Friday 18 August – The Corner, Richmond VIC
Tickets

Saturday 19 August - The Gov, Adelaide SA
Tickets

Friday 25 August – The Heritage, Bulli NSW
Tickets

Saturday 26 August – Drifter’s Wharf, Gosford NSW
Tickets 

 

THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT.

BOOK.

Dave Graney Lyrics 1980-2023.

 

 



Everything from the Moodists to the latest albums and beyond. Includes  some descriptions of intent as to the song or music in question and also some notes as to production approaches and chords.

Book design is based on a classic French Éditions Gallimard NRF form of paperback. All text, no images. 374 pages.

Thanks to Simon Strong from Ekranoplans for help in editing and formatting.



You can only get the book via our Bandcamp page.

 

Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes Night Of The Wolverine 30th anniversary tour in July-August

 

We are looking forward to the Night Of The Wolverine 30th Anniversary tour which starts July 28th in Canberra at the Street Theatre and runs through to August 26th at Gosford on the NSW central coast.

Clare Moore on drums, Rod Hayward on guitar and Robin Casinader on keys and violin. Stu Thomas will be sitting in with us on bass.
We will be playing two sets, the first being the Night Of The Wolverine album and the second filled with songs that came before and after that breakthrough (for us) record. Its a decade of licks, moves and changes compressed into a couple of hours. We will also be issuing a vinyl version of the album (It came out on Compact Disc originally). This will be a double album with gatefold sleeve.

The album should be in production this week after being remastered for vinyl production and release over the last month. A double gatefold album cover, two discs at 33RPM ( we thought of 45rpm but were advised it would not be the best to do that).  Jamie Coghill did a great job on the cover with  a collage on the inner side of the greatfoldnd more ephemeral artefacts and lyrics on an insert page. We will be making pre-orders available via our Bandcamp page when we have some finished copies. It will be available at the shows and in selected shops. 

Friday 28 July – The Street Theatre, Canberra ACT
Tickets

Saturday 29 July – Blue Mountains Theatre, Springwood NSW
Tickets

Thursday 3 August – The Factory Theatre, Marrickville NSW
Tickets

Friday 4 August - The Imperial, Eumundi QLD
Tickets

Saturday 5 August – The Old Museum, Brisbane QLD
Tickets

Sunday 6 August – HOTA, Surfers Paradise QLD
Tickets

Friday 11 August – The Royal Oak, Launceston TAS
Tickets

Saturday 12 August – Gnomon Room, Ulverstone TAS
Tickets

Sunday 13 August – The Palais Theatre, Franklin TAS
Tickets

Friday 18 August – The Corner, Richmond VIC
Tickets

Saturday 19 August - The Gov, Adelaide SA
Tickets

Friday 25 August – The Heritage, Bulli NSW
Tickets

Saturday 26 August – Drifter’s Wharf, Gosford NSW
Tickets 

 

There's also this. My comprehensive lyric book.

 

THERE HE GOES WITH HIS EYE OUT.

BOOK.

Dave Graney Lyrics 1980-2023.



Everything from the Moodists to the latest albums and beyond. Includes  some descriptions of intent as to the song or music in question and also some notes as to production approaches and chords.

Book design is based on a classic French Éditions Gallimard NRF form of paperback. All text, no images. 374 pages.

Thanks to Simon Strong from Ekranoplans for help in editing and formatting.



You can only get the book via our Bandcamp page.

 

Our shows in Perth and Fremantle went really well.  Clare Moore and I played with Marty Casey from the Bad Seeds/Trifids on bass. It was great to spend some time with him and he was well across two sets of songs we had casually asked him to see what he could do with. We also played a couple of songs from the Moodists.

(We had originally booked the shows for February but these had to be re-scheduled as we contracted Covid19 for the second time. Our bass player Stu Thomas was busy with shows for his band THE SILVERSOUND).

 

Our album In A Mistly is still great!