Blues, jazz, heart songs, tunes old and new , deep and wide like a big river rolling thru the dry land, winding its way across time and space…traditional sounds revitalized, re-interpreted, re-organized, re-newed….The Mississippi Sheiks becoming Melbourne’s New Sheiks….. swingin’ along on a train from the old southern state of Alabamy to the bars of Fitzroy and Brunswick all through the working week…and then comes a’ Sunday from Duke with sanctified feeling and soulful yearnings on a fiddle filled with feeling played by a gal from the western plains way across that lazy river…I hear the bowed strings of the big old bass a talkin’ to me by the man who leads the band…I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade into the big parade….the sounds of the New Orleans’ glorious New World past echoing down the street in east Brunswick, Archangel Eamon bringing down the walls of time on a golden horn tempered in the southern sun. and oh…all my love in vain…. The age old cry ….the fundamental things apply ….as time goes by….. and a plaintive creole fiddle tune, a deep African blues from the kid with the horn a’busking at Circular Quay now a playin’ in the minor key for you and me ….. “if the river was whiskey and I was a diving duck” sang Sleepy John from Brownsville, Texas stompin his foot and makin’ everybody cry and laugh now a late night west Melb barroom holler from a new southern queen of the blues…. A stomp , a dance , a ritual of notes, a piano pounding and a drummer sounding out a ‘we can do anything' tempo….The New Sheiks….new music , new variations on the themes of an old , old troubled world….a world that can still lift itself up off the floor and dance …. A voice down here in Melbourne town that defiantly cries out …. “Listen to this….too good to miss…”
Andrew Baylor, East Brunswick, February 2012.
credits
released April 27, 2020
Musicians:
Leigh Barker – Double Bass
Alastair McGrath-Kerr – Drums
Matt Boden – Piano
Eamon McNelis – Cornet
Don Stewart – Trombone
Heather Stewart – Vocals and Violin
Recording Information
Tracks 4-8 recorded at CIT studios in Canberra, ACT by Mark Webber, on November the third 2011. Tracks 1-3 and 9 recorded live at 'Jazz at the Loft' (in a secret doctor's consulting suite, somewhere in the northern suburbs of Canberra....) by Tony Hunter (courtesy of Artsound FM) also on November the third 2011. Yes that was a very long day. We had Vietnamese food. Track 10 recorded on a 'Zoom H2' at the Pinsent Hotel, underneath the piano, at the 2011 Wangaratta Jazz Festival, at about 10pm on saturday night...
All mixing by Jem Savage (Rare Jem Studio).
Produced and Mixed by Jem and Leigh.
Mastered by Philip Rex (Paper Mache Studio)
Album graphic design by Hetty Kate Pakenham (Pixels at Dawn)
Photography by Tadryn Gregory
Thanks
Jem and Phil, the A-team from Kew
Hetty for the great design and layout
The band, the band, the band. Thank you band.
Ben Gillespie, Mark Sutton, Greg Stott, Adrian Jackson, Serge Carnovale, Michel Nader, Jeremy and Megg, Christine from Babushka, Graeme Cook, Matthew Hunt, Hobart Jazz Club, Helen Lindsay, Jazzgroove Association, Doreen and the Illawarra Jazz Club, Ben Marston, Luke Sweeting, Andy Butler, Mark Webber, Dan Mclean, Tony Hunter, 'Capital Folk', Chris Scroggy, the Camelot Lounge, and the Cope St Parade! What a bloody great tour that was!
My Parents, for making everything possible, over and over again. My Wife, for another amazing year in our lives together.
This CD dedicated to Tom Vincent and Marc Meader, for the swing.
Barking Mad Music is a boutique production company based in
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Our fearless lead singer since 2010 Heather Stewart... with guitar maestro Lucas Montagnier, the other hero of guitar poetics in Paris.... Barking Mad Music