Concerts Over The (Bowen) Years

You’d probably expect that relocating to Bowen would have meant that any significant concert action would be likely to involve travel, and, to an extent you'd be right.

Since March 1984 I've travelled to Townsville, Proserpine, Home Hill, Brisbane and Byron Bay to catch concerts but from the time I decided not to head over to the Milton to catch The Models I've been aware that the odd significant performer has made his or her way through Bowen.

Some of them mightn't have been significant at the time they passed through. There was a comment from Nicole Kidman when she was in town for the filming of Australia that her husband had played the Denison many years ago, though I'm not likely to have been hurrying off to catch Mr Urban in concert, and I seem to recall comments that Phil and Tommy Emmanuel spent some time here when they were much younger.

Many of the name acts that pass through are, predictably, well past their heyday or cardboard replicas of some well-known outfit. There have probably been dozens, if not hundreds of acts proclaiming themselves to be The Drifters and I was inveigled into rolling along to the Denison in the mid-eighties to catch one of them. While a good time was had by all, it wasn't the sort of show that went down in the memory bank labelled as legendary.

My reluctance to catch The Models at the Milton probably resulted from the fact that going out on a Thursday night has unfortunate ramifications when it comes to backing up for work on Friday and the fact that there was no one nudging me in the ribs pushing me. I seem to recall buying and enjoying a ten-inch EP by the band in the early eighties, but when I went looking for concrete evidence to support the dodgy brain cells it wasn't where I expected to find it.

Predictably, visits to pubs on weekends accounted for most, but not all, of the live music experiences over the years.

A Friday night out at the QB to catch Johnno's Blues Band gave me a chance to catch up with Ric Montgomery, who'd been a key figure in Barabbas, and while an evening of full-ahead heads down boogie makes for a good night out at the end of the working week it's not the sort of thing that you file away under great and memorable musical experiences.

Towards the end of my time in Townsville there was an up-and-coming bunch of high school kids gigging around the traps as The Spliffs, and I had a couple of chances to catch them live in Bowen before they headed off to try to crack the big time in the south.

My intro to the band came through the bass player, who I first encountered as a high school student picking up pocket money working in Wavelength Records, and while you won't find The Spliffs inextricably ensconced in the Rock Hall Of Fame they were successful enough to put John Watson (the aforementioned bass player) into a career in journalism and management which in turn led to managing Silverchair and Missy Higgins.

Most live music in Bowen over the past twenty years has, taken the form of a solo artist or a duo playing over the top of some variant of the prerecorded rhythm section. Not my preferred option, to be brutally frank about it, but then again the economics of the thing probably mitigate against a four or five-piece's long term survival. In those circumstances things come back to the quality of the performer and while most practitioners have been forgettable, there have been a couple of exceptions to the rule.

I was firmly ensconced in the public bar at the Grandview one Friday night when my next door neighbour (the Wombat) sought me out to let me know that the bloke singing in the Dining Room had a more gravelly voice than yours, Hughesy and this was obviously something that needed to be checked out.

I'd seen the pre-gig promo material in the foyer, but, to be quite honest, a combo called Topsy and The Bear didn't seem too promising, which explained why I was in the public bar.

Finding a vacant table in the Dining Room what was on offer first off was restrained dinner music until the kitchen closed, and it wasn't until I had a chance to have a yarn to the bloke in question that I realized we were in the presence of one of the legendary figures of Australian rock.

The Bear turned out to be none other than Barrie McAskill, formerly of Levi Smith's Clefs and Topsy was his missus, Jan. They were in the process of doing the caravan around Australia thing, and were currently based in Airlie Beach.

While my enthusiasm wasn't widely shared among my friends and acquaintances they picked up a fair bit of work in Bowen - enough to ensure I fronted for most gigs to take the opportunity to chat to someone who'd been in the middle of the action back in the heyday of the late sixties.

Levi Smith's Clefs changed line-ups about as often as some people change their minds, and there was a tendency for everyone else to head off on their own tangent leaving Barrie to recruit a new crew. Some of the more memorable offshoots included Tully, who I'd caught back in 1971, and Fraternity which was, of course, where Bon Scott of AccaDacca fame first rose to prominence.

Much of the volatility resulted from long term residencies at Whisky A Go Go and Chequers in Sydney. While there were aspects of the yearlong six nights a week party that would have appealed, at the same time it's hardly surprising to find that people felt the need, from time to time, to move on.

After Barrie and Jan moved on, an encounter with the Blottoid Lottoid. jugs of rum and coke and a request for a favourite Jimmy Buffet track gave me the chance to get to know Kieran McCarthy, another wanderer who'd ended up based at Airlie.

Apart from liking a drink and a chat, Kieran had been active on the recording front. After I'd bashed his ear about various internet music related matters, including the legendary Delta Doc-o-phone, Kieran developed the habit of giving me the odd CD to pass on to some of my internet acquaintances, which seemed rather generous until I established exactly how much the things actually cost.

I'd arranged a trade with a guy in the States who had an independent music distribution agency in Connecticut, and slipped one of Kieran's albums into the package, which in turn led to a Stateside distribution deal. While it didn’t move vast quantities of product it was an interesting exercise, especially when I found out that the unit cost for a thousand disks in jewel cases was between two and three dollars.

Given the fact I never quite got around to learning to drive and a couple of other complicating factors Hughesy's experience of live music in the late eighties and throughout the nineties was almost exclusively limited to whatever was on offer around the pubs of Bowen.

If there was someone interesting playing out of town the first issue was finding out the show was happening. For the first ten years or so I was buying the Townsville Bulletin, so that wasn't a problem, but when the change of format from broadsheet to tabloid prompted a savage decline in journalistic quality I dropped out and that source of information was closed off.

If you knew someone interesting was playing Townsville and managed to get tickets the next issue was getting there. That usually involved organising a lift, which in turn meant that I needed to persuade someone I knew that the show was worth going to, which wasn't always easy.

There were additional complicating factors when it came to timing. More often than not big name Australian or overseas artists tended to play Townsville (or Mackay) in the middle of the week rather than on a weekend, so it wasn't just a matter of persuading someone that the show was worth attending, there was also the question of whether they felt like taking a day or two off work.

If they didn't, a two hour road trip after work along with a similar sojourn to get back in time for work was usually enough to consign the possibility to the too hard basket.

Of course, if the concert was happening in the Burdekin or Proserpine things weren't quite so tricky. Even though Prossie and Airlie are less than an hour down the road you don't always hear what's on offer down there, and even when you do, there's no guarantee that the event is going to be publicised well enough to draw a substantial crowd.

If you think I'm kidding, I'd point you towards my review of Harry Manx at the Proserpine Cultural Centre in 2008.

I'm not sure how I discovered that the Little River Band were playing the Home Hill Memorial Hall with special guest Warren Zevon, but it was probably through the Townsville Bulletin. Given LRB's profile it wasn't that difficult arranging a lift up, but I might have had difficulty persuading someone this Warren Zevon person was worth catching live if LRB hadn't been headlining.

As it was, we filled a van with assorted degenerates, and found ourselves in Home Hill around six thirty needing nourishment with no expectations about liquid refreshment once we'd caught a counter meal at the Malpass.

Once we were inside the hall someone noticed people heading in and out of an alcove on the other side of the hall bearing yellow cans that bore a remarkable resemblance to Queensland's preferred brand of beer. That was something that needed to be investigated, and we headed across fully expecting that the flow of liquid refreshment would be cut off once the concert started. That failed to happen when the support act hit the stage, and as his set finished, an inquiry directed at the bloke in charge produced the news that the bar would be open throughout proceedings.

We returned to the seats for the start of LRB's set with a shuttle service maintaining the flow of liquid, and while LRB were, as expected, quite polished the highlight was the half hour or so of Warren Zevon inserted into the middle of LRB.

I don't know what the Burdekin audience made of Mr Zevon, but a set that included his best known material including Excitable Boy, Roland, Reconsider Me and Lawyers, Guns And Money went down a treat with our crew which included a contingent of rugby players from the Bowen Mudcrabs, who knew how to party.

Needless to say I wasn't a well boy when it came to heading to work on the Friday morning.

I tried to persuade friends to catch Mr Zevon in Townsville on the tour that produced the Learning To Flinch live album, but a combination of Saturday golf commitments and my own cricket responsibilities effectively ruled that one out.

I didn't have the same difficulty a year or two later when Joe Cocker was playing Townsville. It was a midweek show, which would normally have ruled it out, but I was on long service leave to help out with the regional schoolboys' cricket side and the proprietors of the Frockatorium were amenable to providing transport so off we went.

There had been chances to catch Cocker in concert back in the seventies, but that was back in the days when he was drinking to what I’d label as excess, so I hadn't bothered. This show, given the substantial cleanup of the image, was quite polished (Chris Stainton on keyboards and a couple of other names I recognized) and while Cocker's voice was a little ragged, no one was inclined to complain.

The next few years didn't produce much in the way of out-of-town action as various factors, including the construction of the Little House of Concrete and the subsequent need to pay off a mortgage restricted the travel options, but soon after 'Er Indoors emerged on the scene news that Little Feat were booked to plat the Byron Bay Bluesfest meant that a major excursion was in the pipeline.

Actually, given the various factors involved, it would have been very easy to have bundled the whole thing into the too hard basket, but the pieces fell into place nicely and we found ourselves jetting southwards on Good Friday morning.

According to the Dragon Lady and various other onlookers, that was all due to Madam's influence, and to an extent they were right. Once we'd decided that we were going, she wasn't going to be deterred by a few complications, but those matters could have proved almost prohibitively expensive if a few other factors hadn't kicked in.

For a start we needed somewhere to stay. $500 got us a room in a three-bedroom townhouse. While we might have been able to find somewhere else, lack of camping gear meant that we were probably looking down the barrel of a thousand dollar plus accommodation bill, which could have been a deterring factor.

Sharing a unit with people you'd never met may give most people serious misgivings as well, but subsequent communications revealed the other occupants would only be needing their rooms for the Friday and Saturday nights since the plan was to hit the road Sunday evening to make their way to Sydney for Monday night's Feat show at the Metro.

In other words our $500 effectively got us a week in Byron and a three bedroom unit (mostly) to ourselves.

Transport between Brisbane and Byron was another issue that looked to be cause for concern until one of Madam's acquaintances chipped in with an offer to drive us down. The Flute Player likes driving, and has been known to travel vast distances at the slightest provocation so a couple of hours from Brisbane Airport to Byron was the equivalent of a Sunday afternoon stroll in the park.

I've written about the little Feat side of the Byron Saga elsewhere, so I won't belabour those points again here. A three day pass meant we were going to be seeing plenty of other acts along the way, and while Feat were the reason I was attending there were a number of other long-term favourites on the bill as well.

We made our way back from Friday afternoon's meet and greet in time to catch Tony Joe White for a start.

Like most of my friends and acquaintances I'd dug the hell out of Polk Salad Annie in 1968 but hadn't paid too much attention to Tony Joe's output over the intervening years. I guess he's pretty much a one-trick pony (though he did write Rainy Night In Georgia) but if that guitar, stomp box and drummer take on swamp funk floats your boat he's good value live (if he wasn't he wouldn't have been booked for return gigs over the years, would he?). Personally, that's a groove that I quite like from time to time, but Madam was in the firmly unimpressed basket.

The following act, Emmylou Harris, was much more to her liking, and the presence of Buddy Miller and the funky rhythm section that operated as Spyboy meant Emmylou rocked a bit more than I'd expected, but classics from the country end of her repertoire also got an airing. Anything I'd like to hear that missed getting a guernsey could be attributed to the limitations that a one-hour festival set places on an extensive back catalogue.

But after thirty years of fandom, Friday night's highlight was Taj Mahal & the Phantom Blues Band. If you're familiar with the man's vast catalogue you'd have a fair idea of what could be on offer, and the presence of the Phantom Blues Band was a fair indication of what was likely.

No great surprises, in other words, but I enjoyed it and I can finally say that I have seen Taj Mahal.

Back at Red Devil Park mid-Saturday afternoon we walked into the middle of a good set by Joe Camilleri's Revelators, featuring a damn good take on Van Morrison's Beside You, a track that I'd always regarded as hands off territory when it comes to covering Van The Man. There's a studio version on The Adventures of the Amazing Revelators if you want to check out bassist Joe Creighton's vocal for yourself.

There may have been another act between the Revelators and Midnight Oil, but Hughesy's recollection only stretches as far as the psychobilly of Reverend Horton Heat which I enjoyed without being impressed enough to want to go out of my way to see them again.

Given Peter Garret's political career there probably won't be many more opportunities to see Midnight Oil live, and an hour-long festival set covered most bases without delving too far into the remoter corners of the band's catalogue.

There was a lengthy set-up process between Midnight Oil's set and Little Feat's first Australian appearance in twenty-six years and I spent most of it anxiously scanning the area around the agreed rendezvous for the other occupants of the town house. When it became obvious that they were somewhere backstage we headed towards the front and eventually wormed our way into a spot about three rows back in front of Kenny Gradney.

From the time the band hit the stage and kicked into a groove Hughesy was in seventh heaven, though I subsequently heard that there was substantial dissent in some sections of the crowd.

Having plenty of exposure to live recordings via Highway 95 I knew what to expect though nothing could have prepared me for Shaun Murphy's bit of microphone manipulation in the middle of It Takes A Lot To Laugh.

While I thought that the main set justified the decision to make the trip to Byron the encore was definitely the icing on the cake. Over the years I'd heard a recording of just about every incarnation of Dixie Chicken, but I'd never heard one quite like the close to thirty minute version that took the band right up to the midnight curfew.

After entertaining five-sevenths of the band at the town house for a Sunday brunch we were back again for the second Feat set on Sunday evening. While the second go didn't have quite the same je ne sais quoi as the previous night's set, I was still a very happy camper when the other occupants of the town house headed south for more shows leaving Madam and I to a leisurely Easter holiday in Byron.

Back in Bowen community radio duties ruled out anything much in the way of out of town concert activity, but when I wandered into the QB one Friday afternoon in 2003 for the regular session with The Actor, The Rod Man, the Merry Frockster and various other regulars I had little idea of the surprise lurking around the corner.

Publican Brownie called me aside with a little question.

Hughesy, he inquired, I know you're into music. I've got a chance to book this guy called Jeff Lang. Heard of him?

Bearing in mind Everything Is Still was getting fairly heavy rotation on my radio show, an affirmative response was a foregone conclusion.

But wait, there's more.

There's this other bloke, Brownie went on. Bob Brozman...

You mean, I countered, that you've got the chance to get Jeff Lang and Bob Brozman playing here? Book me two tables front and centre.

You're kidding, may or may not have been Brownie's response. That good?

By the time show time rolled around he'd managed to sell out the room, which was a good start, and we arrived on the scene to find an impressive array of guitars and other examples of the luthier's craft on display along with a drum kit which suggested the presence of one Angus Diggs.

So, for the next couple of hours we had two outstanding players working individually and playing off each other with some sympathetic percussive interaction thrown into the mix for good measure. Apart from Angus Diggs' contributions, Brozman's use of his instrument as a percussive device was, to put it mildly, jaw-dropping.

Given Bob Brozman's explanation that each number had a defined beginning and a predetermined ending but we're not sure how we're going to get there it could well have been worth catching the previous night's appearance in Airlie and the following night's gig in Townsville, but we haven't quite reached that level of fandom.

Yet.

Discussion concerning the world's top exponents of the guitar is the sort of thing that's likely to wander on into the small hours without reaching a conclusion, but I suspect Brozman and Lang are two names that'd be likely crop up in any informed discussion, and the opportunity to catch both from the front row one night in Bowen definitely qualifies as one of my greatest musical experiences.

As was the experience of catching Richard Thompson from the front row in the Tivoli early in 2006. While Brozman and Lang would possibly be chances in the aforementioned discussion, I'd have very severe doubts about the credibility of anyone who placed Thompson outside the top twenty.

Actually, if you created a list of the top hundred guitarists in acoustic and electric mode, as well as a top hundred songwriters Thompson is one of the very few individuals who'd qualify for all three lists.

Again, in hindsight, I could easily have caught multiple shows on the tour by flying south, spending a couple of days with my parents on the Gold Coast, slipping down to Byron for one show, commuting to Brisbane the following day and catching a train up to Eumundi for a third show before returning to base via the Gold Coast.

But that's with the benefit of hindsight. After an extremely frustrating hour or so trying to access the ticket sales website (tickets for the Australian Open went on sale the same morning) I ended up grabbing two, figuring that I'd find someone who could use the other one if Madam decided she wasn't interested in going.

Once she'd decided that, no, she wasn't going, I started to look for someone who'd be interested in the other ticket in what had turned out to be the front row slightly left of centre (like Hughesy's politics). My ex-flatmate Mr Dave, when offered, like just about everyone else declined, and the news that I was thinking of catching the other shows was greeted with a why bother that, at the time, I took to be an adverse comment on one or both of the other venues.

Subsequent discussion revealed that the opinion was based on other factors (He's always been a little too 'Albion' for me) but by that time, of course, it was too late to change plans and travel arrangements.

As a long-term Thompson fan (dating back to buying Henry The Human Fly from the dollar cut out bin at Woolworths in Townsville) I was expecting an outstanding performance, and RT lived up to every expectation.

Having watched and heard just about everything the man's released (down to the entire range of official bootlegs) I knew what to expect but the rapid-fire succession of great songs was tantamount to an attack with a stun gun, and explains why the man includes the odd lightener (at that stage it was Hots For The Smarts) into the set-list.

I do, however have one regret. As a long-time but largely inactive subscriber to the RT discussion list I knew that the man was including Friday On My Mind in his Thousand Years of Popular Music shows, and given the number of voices calling requests could have easily chipped in with that one. Maybe, had I been sitting anywhere other than the front row, I probably would've. RT, however, can be rather scathing when it comes to some of these matters, so discretion seemed the best course.

Of course, as soon as I was outside, I was regretting it, but there you go.

I didn't have the same problem persuading Madam to tag along when I learned that Eric Clapton was touring Australia in March 2007. A check to confirm Derek Trucks was in the touring party was enough to ensure that doubles were needed when it came to flights and hotel bookings.

Over the years there have been any number of people who've expressed the opinion that Clapton needs someone else on stage to fire off, and while you might be inclined to interpret that as a putdown, I'd counter with the suggestion that anyone with the man's experience isn't going to be turning in a bad show but will need some form of external spark if you're going to get him to fire.

I'd been aware of Derek Trucks before he landed a gig with the Allman Brothers and comments that the kid almost seemed to be channeling Duane Allman (from brother Gregg, no less) meant I had high hopes that Clapton would be firing on all cylinders and surging through the Layla end of his repertoire rather than the Wonderful Tonight extreme.

From the opening number I knew we were in for a good night since the solo in the middle of went to Trucks, D rather than Clapton, E or the third guitar-slinger on stage Doyle Bramhall III.

While Wonderful Tonight ended up collecting a guernsey, the rest of the set featured a large chunk of Layla and other Assorted Love Songs, and we walked out very happy indeed, but I can't help wondering what people hoping for the poppier end of Clapton's repertoire made of it all.

Looking back over the years there have been plenty of hard core blues fans walking out of Clapton concerts shaking their heads and wishing the man would play more blues, so I suspect that the presence of Mr Trucks (and Doyle Bramhall) was a significant influence on the set-list.

And it would be remiss of me to move on without mentioning Mia Dyson's opening set, which was classy, with some excellent guitar work and drums by an awfully familiar-looking gentleman who turned out to be Angus Diggs.

Over the next two and a half years various influences combined to limit the chances to attend concerts. While the start of 2009 looked like a prime opportunity to head south and catch some concert action, a combination of the wake of the global financial crisis and uncertainty about whether the income from my father's estate would be sufficient to cover the executor's expenses and other outgoings meant I had to (reluctantly) pass on the chance to catch Neil Young, Leonard Cohen and Jeff Beck.

By the middle of the year, those issues had been resolved and we'd just made our way back from a trip to Southport when my attention was drawn to the fact that Elvis Costello was playing Brisbane in mid-October.

The requisite bookings had been made and the tickets had arrived around the time a day or two before I discovered that Ry Cooder and Nick Lowe were also in Australian tour mode, and, predictably we were going to that show as well.

We'd just finished the logistical arrangements for that one when we learned the details of the concert that was going to open the Sound Shell that's a major feature of Bowen's Front Beach redevelopment, which was, predictably, two days after we'd booked to fly south to catch Ry.

So you can't have everything.

The trip to catch Costello produced a number of highlights apart from the concert itself, including the chance to catch up with people I hadn't seen for a long time, but the concert remained the key issue.

And thoroughly good it was.

Madam's not the biggest Elvis Costello fan, and while she enjoyed it she was also reminded that there are people who are far more obsessive than Hughesy when it comes to following their favourite artists. She'd had some experience of that from the Little Feat episode, of course, but Marcel and Tony were only chasing shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland.

Web-master JohnE from the EC Wiki had made it to shows in Adelaide, Melbourne (twice), Hobart, Canberra, Sydney (twice) and was lining up for the eighth time. Meeting him before the show the significance of news that EC had played I Throw My Toys Around in Canberra flew straight over her head, but the opinion that the tour had been one for the long term fans promised an interesting set-list.

John also rated the opening act (Shelley Harland) very highly, and while I wasn't totally awe-struck by her performance she was fairly impressive.

But it was Elvis that we were there for, and from the time he hit the stage it was obvious that we were in for a treat. I've written about the show in more detail elsewhere and won't repeat myself here.

Likewise, while the Ry Cooder show in Brisbane about a month later was a sublime experience, anything more than a passing reference hereabouts is probably something that you could classify as a duplication of effort.

We are, in other words, at the end of the backlog when it comes to Hughesy's concert reminiscences. From here on it's a much simpler process of attending the concert, writing the review and posting it over there.