the breadmakers

GRAHAM STAPLETON
Blogger and punter
Mermaid Beach, Queensland, Australia

Now, I'm just a punter, not someone you'd all know, but I like my music and you've probably noticed me posting or commenting here or elsewhere, so here's my top 10 of 2020 in no particular order.

1. MONDAY EVENING GUNK
A real breath of fresh air for people locked down over the world, great conversations, reviews, and live music streaming to the masses for free, and enjoyed by the few lucky people that could attend the shows.

2. OUTTA SPACE PRESENTS
There must be something in the water on the Central CVoast of NSW, 'cause Milly D'Alton and Adam Brzowski and crew have released some great LP"s and 7"s through their label OUTTA SPACE PRESENTSthis year. I've gotta head down to Woy Woy and check out their new venue Link & Pinas well sometime.

3. VINNIE'S DIVE BAR
Ha! Who woulda thought in the rundown Crackhead Central of Southport, Queensland, here'd be Resch’s Silver Bullets at a discounted rate (if you know, you know). Wish they still had draught on tap though. Anyway, probably one of the first venues in Australia to welcome back live music, and they've really been "thinking out of the box" by recently opening a record and other merch store in the venue, so grab some cool vinyl whenever you pop in.

1 Scott Boland’s Hat Trick
We’ll get to music in a minute, but we have to start off with the greatest moment in the history of sport. Such a legend he even opened the batting on Boxing Day. Just name the Junction Ovel after him now.

2 Phil MacDougall’s 45th Anniversary Bash
A wonderful day at the Tote to celebrate Melbourne’s greatest rock n roll soldier. Phil’s PBS program, “Sunglasses After Dark”, is still essential listening every week and I still love that after all this time ,his passion for music, new and old, has never changed.

_{The Breadmakers.}

It took an express airmail consignment of his favourite tipple Calimocho - that'd be cheap red wine and cola, for the uninitiated - before we at The I-94 Bar persuaded RAFA SUNEN to take on this assignment. The mission for the singer from Los Chicos, Spain's premier party punk-country-garage-soul band, was to pin down members of Melbourne's R&B garage veterans The Breadmakers and interrogate them about their new album, "The Breadmakers".

Los Chicos have toured Australia many times and anyone who's seen them will know that keeping Rafa still long enough for him to fire off a few questions was half the challenge. Digging up members of the shady crew called The Breadmakers - in a fit state to undergo questioning - was the other.

The Breadmakers - The Breadmakers (Soundflat Records)

The Breadmakers are a Melbourne institution in a town that has plenty of them. They’ve been peddling their authentic brand of rhythm and blues around the Victorian capital, its environs and various parts of the world since 1989, and their seventh album sounds as fresh as any of its six predecessors.

R&B. Everybody’s on the correct page regarding R&B, right? The term’s been appropriated by the global music machine in recent decades, and applied to bland, largely soul-less genre of soft pap that permeates the airwaves like an insidious virus.

Gold Foil Fever - The Vibrajets (Off the Hip)

So much goodness over just five songs. Warm, fat guitars permeate this predominantly instrumental record like honeybees holed up in in an old hive. 

The Vibrajets are Melbourne-based and include past or current members of The Stems, The Shimmys, The Futuras and The Breadmakers - which should tell you most of what you need to know. This 12-inch 45 is their second piece of recorded output, not so hot on the heels of a mono single four years ago. The Vibrajets sound owes its origins as much to the Chet Atkins as “Apache”.

The vintage sound of Sammy-lou Croissant and Julian Matthews’ guitars are all over rumbling opener “Greasy 186”, one of a brace of originals. The shaking cover of Long John Hunter’s “El Paso Rock” reeks of Tecate beer and Tequila chasers. Lick, sip, suck!

It was with great sadness that Melbourne cult retro band The Breadmakers learned of the passing of their old pal, Graeme Thomas, of the Preston Records studio and label, in November last year.

Thomas  was hugely influential to just about any roots, rockabilly or rock ‘n’ roll musician in Melbourne in the 1980s and 90s – and it was no different for the young Breadmakers. They’d heard some of the amazing recordings that Graeme had made in his home-built studio that sounded exactly like they had come out of the ’50 and ‘60s and asked him to record them too.

Graeme was a musical perfectionist, and taught the band so much about getting the sounds they liked in the studio. He could make his studio sound like Sun Studios in Memphis, or just about any other vintage studio by moving microphones, changing amplifiers and rearranging a few baffles.

Graeme once offered to truck in enough soil to completely cover the studio floor so that he could get the sound of the Fortune Records Studio from Detroit Michigan, which famously had a dirt floor.

Lonesome Sundown – The Breadmakers (Soundflat)

“Lonesome Sundown” is the ninth album for Australian rhythm ‘n’ blues ravers The Breadmakers and if you’re reading this outside Melbourne, Japan or Europe, you’ve probably never heard of them.

The Breadmakers have their origins in Victorian bands like Shutdown66, Cracked Jaffers and The Puritans and if there was a trademark available on the word “retro” they’d have dibs on it. They’ve been cranking up their valve amps to celebrate the roots of R ‘n’ B since 1989.

It’s not as if they haven’t done their share of touring, visiting Europe and Japan and well as most Australian capitals, but in these times of bands finding it hard to make ends meet when they go on the road, they’re stop at home types these days. “Lonesome Sundown” is on German label Soundflat so the international profile is there for those in the know. But these guys should be household names.