On Saturday night, Preston’s The End of the Line bar will transform into a legitimate juke joint, showcasing outlaw blues and country music. Topping the bill is local one-man-band Rattlin’ Bones Blackwood. With a voice lifted straight out ‘50s Tennessee, Blackwood lurks in the realm of boogie, rock’n’roll and blues music. It figures that the project’s origins were in the Dirty American South.
“The first time I played live I was living in the States,” he says. “About 20 years ago, I lived in Tennessee for three years. I started playing on the street, playing really rudimentary blues stuff with a plywood board, just tapping my foot. Then I came back home and played a whole bunch of different music for years – country, punk, pop stuff. Then I put all that aside and started getting back into the blues, which I hadn’t played for about 20 years, but always listened to and always loved.
“I started doing the one man band thing about four or five years ago, as something I could do on my own time,” he adds. “I’ve no game plan. I’m running with what I’m doing and loving it. It’s become the most successful thing I’ve ever done, purely by accident.”
Blackwood’s repertoire is something of an expedition through traditional blues and rock’n’roll music, which joins the dots between John Lee Hooker, Elvis Presley and Little Richard. However, while he stays within set stylistic parameters, he doesn’t simply imitate the past greats.
“There’s a really strong tradition in blues music to play other people’s songs, but do it your own way,” Blackwood says. “If you do someone else’s song – whether it’s a blues standard or something a bit more obscure – you definitely put your own imprint on it and intentionally change it. If I take a John Lee Hooker song, I want to completely make it my own. I might take a real basic groove or a real basic lick, but then I come up with my own guitar parts based around that.
“Doing a one man band, there’s no set song structure,” he continues. “I essentially make up the song again every time I play it. Obviously I know what I’m doing and it’s not going to all fall apart on me, but it keeps me excited while I’m playing, which I think puts across a certain edge to people listening as well.”
Over the last 12 months, word about Rattlin’ Bones Blackwood has started to spread all over the country. Last winter, he performed at Dark MOFO in Hobart and this January he completed a series of gigs at the Sydney Festival. In spite of his growing stature, Blackwood prefers to keep things down and dirty.
“It’s funny, after all these years I’m more comfortable playing on the street than in front of a set crowd,” he says. “When I went down to do Dark MOFO, I played the winter feast, which was 15 thousand people in a street and they had a PA system set up in the middle of the street. I was like, ‘Oh yes I’m home.’ It was back to where I started but just on a scale that’s ten thousand times bigger.
“Because this project came from a busking point of view, that’s definitely transferred over to getting in front of people playing live on a stage. I do try to make it a bit different every time and try to read to read the crowd to see how they’re taking it.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
