Tendrils/Tex Perkins & The Dark Horses @ the Annandale
Hotel, Sydney
Saturday February 24, 2001
Tonight provided a delightful double dose of Charlie Owen: first as one half
of Tendrils (with Melbourne rawk prodigy Joel Silbersher) and then as a significant
strut in the musical machinery that underpins Tex Perkins' idiosyncratic country/blues
cabaret.
One thing that trying to get photos at gigs has done for me, is to make me
acutely aware of the lighting. Tonight it was singularly inept - seemingly
solely concerned with highlighting whomever sat on the chair at centre stage,
while consigning the rest of the hard working cast to virtual invisibility
and banishment into the outer darkness. Who hired this guy and why? Charlie
Owen in particular should never, ever be left in darkness at the side of the
stage! In fact, ideally he should be floodlit on a pedestal, preferably in
the middle of a major city square where foreign tourists can take superb souvenir
snaps to go with the rest of their collection of Australian national treasures
and teachers can bring their hordes of recalcitrant students on cheap school
outings to make sketches and read the commemorative plaque outlining the extent
of his enormous talent and detailing the lengthy chronicle of his illustrious
career (I guess it would have to be either a big plaque or very small script).
But
even if we could barely discern Charlie out in the nether reaches of the gloom,
at least there was no trouble hearing his magnificent musicianship. There
have been two "Tendrils" albums: a duo recording called "Tendrils" by Charlie
Owen and Joel Silbersher and an album called "Soaking Red" credited to the
band Tendrils (this must drive librarians and cataloguers nuts!). With the
exception of a cover of "Night Comes In", the duo album involved the two of
them writing every song, either together or separately, and playing every
instrument except for a couple of tracks where they had ring-ins playing the
drums. The Tendrils album involved the two of them writing every song, either
together or separately, and playing every instrument except for one song on
which Dirty Three drummer Jim White played drums (though naturally when he
toured with them he played on many more songs). I hope that this helps to
make clear the difference between the two albums and their corresponding line-ups.
Tonight it was pared all the way back to the bare bones: just the two of them,
with Joel switching backwards and forwards between an acoustic six string
and a Gibson Les Paul, while Charlie stuck to his dependable Fender, sharing
a little of their musical magic with the crowd while running though some of
the highlights from each of those albums. Since Joel does almost all of the
singing, he got to sit on the throne while Charlie hovered in the shadows
by his side, but there was no doubting by anyone present that his guitar was
every bit as important to the songs as Joel's vocals.
While the set was all too brief (but then anything less than the combined
running times of those two albums, plus a generous bonus percentage to allow
for the inevitable improvisation and expansion, would be too brief in my book),
it was nevertheless a welcome reminder and all too rare taste of the original
and imaginative music that comes into being when these two musicians are completely
free to pursue their own distinctive visions together; Joel's haunted and
haunting vocals being goaded on by Charlie's conspiratorial guitar work (though
Joel's no slouch on the guitar either) into an emotional and poignant package
that made the following set by Tex Perkins seem positively bright and buoyant
by comparison.
After Tendrils left the stage, there was the inevitable 20 minute wait during
the changeover, except that this time there was nothing to be changed over,
since everyone's equipment was already there on the stage. When the band finally
emerged (or, in the case of Joel and Charlie, re-emerged), Tex was in a bright
and unusually effusive mood. He started off by asking the audience to settle
a question that had originated in the band room ("What was Jonah Louie's first
hit?") and this got such a good response that for a considerable time thereafter
he marked the breaks after each song with a new question, each of which got
prompt, if sometimes unexpected, responses from the audience (e.g. Q: What
was ABBA's first hit? A: Who cares!).
When
he finally lost interest in being a quiz master, he turned instead to introducing
unexpected cover songs, to the mock horror of the band and to a lesser extent
the audience; his announcement that "This next song was made famous by Kermit
the Frog", even forcing Joel and Murray Patterson into the embarrassed admission
that they didn't know the chords to "Rainbow Connection" (no such admission
from Charlie though; if he didn't know it, he was probably justifiably confident
that he could fake his way through it by improvising as he went along). Once
again, the audience took it all too far; when Tex later announced that the
next number would be "Hotel California", it got such a cheer that he could
be barely stifle a shocked expression and rather than call the audience's
bluff, immediately made it clear that he was only joking.
I guess the official promotional period for the new album must be over now.
While we still got a good selection from that album (with "Fine Mess" being
one of the standout performances of the night), the set was also peppered
with older songs, even reaching all the way back to the Beasts' "Low Road"
album and pulling out an earnest rendition of "Can't Say No". It was not just
Tex's mood that had lightened; vocally it sounded like he might have spent
a lot of time gargling with honey since his previous trip up to Sydney. The
smoky barroom vocal tone has mellowed to become more of an undertone, still
present but now almost buried under some very smooth deliveries, as he continued
on his quest to stake out a fresh musical quarter acre all his own, presumably
on higher ground above the traditional country/swamp (so you can still see
it from the front porch), but with added soul subsuming the psychobilly of
the seasons past. Taking this into account with his song writing and his growing
musicianship on the guitar, if he doesn't watch it, people will start labeling
him an all round entertainer... -
John McPharlin
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