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There is no higher praise for a songwriter than having a song covered by another artist, and recently I was paid that huge compliment when one of New Zealand's best-selling country acts Dennis Marsh included my "Somewhere in New Zealand Tonight" on his new album.
I must admit when Dennis and Yvonne emailed the final mix a couple of months ago it brought a few tears to the eyes. It's difficult to describe the feeling, I guess it's pride. All songwriters have those special compositions that they hold dear to their hearts, and "Somewhere in New Zealand Tonight" is one of those for me. Kind of like one of your children without the early mornings.
In the liner notes on Dennis' CD 'Land of the Long White Cloud' he writes, "I can identify with 'every scratch on this guitar tells a story'." For me it's the "So let the St Joseph's Maori Girls keep singing" line. I grew up in the Napier suburb of Tamatea, only a few k's away from Greenmeadows, where the St Joseph's Maori Girls' College was rebuilt after the 1931 earthquake, so the chorus always gets me thinking about home.
For a time in the mid-1980s our family would travel to the college on the second and fourth Sunday of the month to pick up Gisborne's Lesley Pahuru, a boarder at the school, and take her to the Napier City Country Music Club nights. She was a quiet girl but had a big singing voice, in true Gisborne fashion. She was great mates with Camille Te Nahu.
Dennis' recording of "Somewhere in New Zealand Tonight" is the third time I've had a song covered and it's a real buzz every time. Kevin Greaves covered "Rachel" in Nashville for his 'Long Haired Country Boys' album a few years back and Wollongong's Darryl Apps covered "Here Comes Friday" with Michael Fix a couple of years ago, but I think that CD's yet to come out.
So, thanks to Dennis for doing such a great job of the song.
Here in Brisbane my band the Tallboys is disbanding at the end of July. Our final gig is Friday July 25 at, appropriately enough, Easts Leagues Club. Easts has been more or less our home base since 2004 and has witnessed many varied Tallboys line-ups. I'm pleased to say the current version of the band has been fairly stable this year.
It's just time for a change and my inclusion in the Smokin' Crawdads equation has been a catalyst in the decision. It's a wearing task being the person who takes the bookings, deals with the agents, books the band, books the band again, chases up the payments and tries to coordinate a rehearsal. You can visit the Smokin' Crawdads' web site from the link on the Heroes and Friends page.
Check out the blogs on my MySpace site for some meandering through my memory hard drive. Recent subjects have been visits to the Java Jive Cafe by two musicians who played major roles in some important 20th-century releases, and a late 1980s stoush with the Hastings branch of the Slim Whitman Fan Club. You can navigate to my MySpace site by clicking the link in the index.
And be sure to catch one of the final Tallboys gigs and come and say gidday.
Glen
For as long as I remember, I was always fascinated by songs. I had no idea what brought about their existence, but it was always the song rather than the singer that excited me.
For all I knew, these three-minute jewels came from some song god somewhere who distributed his collection to whoever was putting out music. What’s more, his wares were in short supply. The song god had so little product he had to give away the likes of “Yesterday” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love” over and over again.
By the time I could read, I was drawn to the parenthetically imprisoned words on the back covers and labels of my parents’ John Hore-heavy record collection. Records by John Hore (now John Grenell), Maria Dallas, Ken Lemon, and Glen Campbell, Freddy Fender and Kenny Rogers were scattered with one-word names like Williams, Webb, Owens, Tillis and Russell. What did it mean?
Perhaps there was no song god. Perhaps there were people who actually made these songs up. Indeed there were. By tracking backwards from these records, one discovered Hank Williams, Jimmy Webb, Buck Owens, Mel Tillis, Bobby Russell, etc. These people were songwriters. So too were Johnny Cash and Roger Miller. Almost every song on their albums had their own names in brackets beside the song titles.
I thought if these people could do it, why couldn’t there be a parenthetically imprisoned “Moffatt” on the back of album covers? By age 10, I decided I should write songs too. I’d kind of been doing it already to that point -- all kids do -- substituting established hit song lyrics with terms for bodily functions that have a similar rhyme. You can imagine what became of Elvis Presley’s “A Mess of Blues”.
Discarding my homage to Smurfs, “The Smurf Song”, my first real song where the lyrics and music were my own was a tribute to Elvis called “Graceland to Heaven”. It’s laughable now, but in 1981 it was like a light going on in my brain. Never mind that I’d missed the Elvis tribute-song market by a good four years.
I continued writing songs sparingly for the next couple of years without any real purpose until my eyes were well and truly opened when I bought Ritchie Pickett and the Inlaws’ 'Gone For Water' LP. It was the last track, “Yes, We’ll Leave the Lights On”, written by Ritchie Pickett and Alan Badger, that did it.
“She sold her daddy’s farm and moved over to Sydney
Nothin’ anybody could tell her, she knew it all
38 acres of King Country lasted her six weeks
Livin’ got easy, money buys it all”
These were words about my part of the world. By golly, you could write songs about where you were from. This was a revelation, my single biggest musical influence. Later I discovered Ritchie and Alan weren’t the first ones to write about their homeland -- there was already a rich history of native songs from “Blue Smoke” to “Mackenzie and his Dog” to Fourmyula’s sublime “Otaki” -- but they were the first to affect me. And at age 13, I was well ready.
At the age of 15, I was playing in bands in Hawke’s Bay and soon came into contact with my next songwriting epiphany, in the form of Napier music stalwart Ian Turbitt. It was while gigging with Ian that it dawned on me you could actually perform your own compositions live. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of this earlier. Maybe because I had been too young to see the Inlaws live.
I’d only been in Auckland three years and I was in a real recording studio recording 'Somewhere in New Zealand Tonight' the album. Of the 12 songs, eight were mine written over the previous nine years. The other four were a tribute to some of my Kiwi music inspirations, covers of songs by Ritchie Pickett, Al Hunter, Ian Turbitt and Max Merritt.
It was a dream come true. I’d succeeded. There was the word “Moffatt” parenthetically imprisoned after a song title. I was a songwriter.
I’m anything but prolific when it comes down to it. I’ve probably completed barely 90 songs since I started writing in the mid-1980s and I’ve recorded 33 of them on my New Zealand album releases. It really goes against Tom T. Hall’s songwriting advice of “write 100 songs, throw them all out and then start writing songs”.
Why bring this up now, you ask? Because I'm in the middle of a songwriting purple patch now and just felt like shouting it out loud.
And check out the gig guide -- come say hi.
Glen
Well, the Tamworth adventure is over for another year and all that remains are the memories of great music, hard work, too much red wine on my birthday and three men living in a cramped, freshly painted converted garage with no toilet door for eight days.
I am indebted to Mick Martin for drafting me into the Smokin' Crawdads line-up for the festival for six gigs at the Fitzroy Tavern as well as six in the backing band for rising Queensland star Sinead Burgess at Wests and Diggers.
It was a wonderful opportunity to make some new friends, such as Troy Kemp, Vaughan Jones and Stuie French -- though I missed catching up with Camille Te Nahu -- as well as reuniting with old mates like Bill Chambers, Chris Haigh, Luke Austen, Geoff and Judy Wright, and the Kiwi contingent of Marian Burns, Alastair Dougal and the only man to appear on every Glen Moffatt CD thus far Gordon Joll.
Being part of a backing band, for Sinead, was a new thing for me and something I really enjoyed. I got to play second acoustic, bang a tambourine and sing harmonies like a girl. It was also a lot of work with about 30 songs to learn I'd never heard before. We put in a couple of long rehearsals last December which truly paid off.
The Crawdads were fortunate to have everybody's favourite drummer, Doug Gallacher, steering the ship at the Sinead gigs, and the work we did was evident with well-received shows in prime timeslots. Watch out for the name Sinead Burgess -- she's only 17 and has a big future.
The late-night Smokin' Crawdads gigs were an entirely different story with a chance for the band to cut loose in a real pub atmosphere. Mick performs some rocky covers and original songs and I was able to dust off some of my originals and new covers for the occasion.
Andy Tainsh on bass and Randal Terrens on keyboards round out the line-up and it was a thrill to sing harmonies with these guys. It's always a treat when a band has two lead singers and two- or three-part harmonies on top.
As a punter, the musical highlight was the Fender master class at the Southgate Inn. Imagine Troy Cassar-Daley, Brendan Radford, Rod McCormack, Stuie French, James Gillard and Hugh Curtis in a line, with Doug Gallacher behind them, singing songs, picking tunes and answering questions. Sublime.
Back in Brizzie, the Tallboys have undergone a bit of a shake-up with the departure of Michael Muchow after nearly five years. Michael released his debut EP last year and had a tilt at Star Maker this year, making the grand final, and is heading out under his own name, with my best wishes. He is another one to watch. In terms of raw talent, he's probably the best guitarist I've played with.
Coming in to replace him is Ron Delbridge, a guitarist who's done it all. He was a member of Hombre with Jerry Poulier in the 1970s and part of pop band Idol Minds with Mick Martin in the 1980s. That was before a stint as road manager for Bad Girls on a world tour taking in everywhere from New Zealand to Russia!
On a personal note, our home life will also receive a shake-up mid-year with the impending arrival of our third child.
So check out the gig guide -- God knows we'll need the money -- and come say hi.
Glen
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