Twas a very chilly spring eve in Northcote and the Northcote social was full of varying types…sport lovers, hipsters, and muso types. Black seemed to be the general theme except for a few girls optimistically choosing summer dresses… anyhow onto the gigging part….
Junk Horses: good, loud, rollicking fun. Nice, simple swampy drums on the foxy gold drum kit, a Gibson SG for the singer and a Fender Tele adding some nice chops to build the energy. I think that was the key….Great drones and chops building away and before you know it you’re trapped in their cool, ethereal groove. Visually interesting with their orange and green milk crates supporting their small 12” speaker amps, but they didn’t stick around as Chris Russell rolled out his piggy-backed behemoth amplification for some deeper, dirtier, and darker tones…
The fancy drum kit stayed but Chris Russell and his drummer were all about dirty blues. Recommended to me by a nice chap I met in a guitar shop in Mississippi, USA they put on a great show with some simple yet cunning riffs working with the drums to keep everyone jumping. I particularly liked his rendition of Catfish Blues by Muddy Waters…Well it started like that anyway…It seemed to morph into a song more about girls and sex if that’s possible. At one point it wasn’t enough to just sing to the pretty girls… he wandered out and serenaded, slow-danced and made his feelings felt to some of those summer-dress-clad ladies. He also sang what I’m guessing was a song called Bad Motherfucker like he meant it and that went over extremely well. Behind all this was his Australian Goldentone amp from the 60s or something wired up to a Trace Elliot as the preamp. Driving that were his two (reasonably priced) Danelectro guitars. I’ve seriously never heard a Danelectro sound that good. We asked him about it after the show and he philosophically stated: ‘Someone once bought me a $2,000 bottle of wine. Well it tasted good…but it didn’t taste like $2,000.’ That says it all I guess really…
Local favourites Cherrywood, rolled onto the stage and steamed through their punk-inspired, yet friendly, irish-style, drunken and stompin sing-along tunes. The drummer certainly brushed the hell out of that snare drum. Really got the crowd moving and singing like they knew all the words. Maybe they did….Very stripped back stage with just a lone-open guitar case behind 4 gents with a bunch of acoustic instruments. I think the open guitar case was a bit of a hint…. From left-to-right it was Mandolin, Snare & Hi Hat, Guitarist, and Double-Bass. Quite a bit of banter and chatter between songs which worked well to get the crowd wanting and asking for more. My mate described it as gang-vocals whatever that is… The open guitar case trick seemed to pay off after a while though as people started to throw money. Not sure if it was before or after he said things like ‘Throw money but just not at the $310 guitar.’, and ‘Gee the dole only pays $200 a week these days’, and ‘You know I had to steal these strings.’… Hint, invitation, or plea I’m not sure…he was very excited about the $2 coin that was thrown though…Money aside, there was a nice lady who bought them a round of shots and they did put on an excellent show.
WORDS AND PIC BY ANDREW BURKE
LOVED: Chris & co’s muddy noise
HATED: The other photographer that just wouldn’t get out of the way
DRANK: Whisky
