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- so rudely interrupted |
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Australia's
biggest-selling daily newspaper
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March
5, 2003.
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 Changing
his tunes
A return to music-making meant coming home in
more ways than one for Greg Quill, as LEE HOWARD
discovers.
"IT
FELT like that movie, Forgiven, where William
Munny goes and gets his guns out.'' As played by Clint Eastwood,
Munny had assumed his gunfighting days were in the past -- just
as Australian country rocker Greg Quill thought his guitar-slinging
days had passed.
"When I opened up my guitar cases after about 15 years,
when Kerryn (Tolhurst) urged me, I wasn't sure I wanted
to do anything with them,'' said Quill from Toronto on the eve
of a month-long tour with former Country Radio cohort
Tolhurst.
"I never thought I'd get my chops back. But it didn't take
long -- in fact, I think I'm playing better now than ever. Now
I regret ever having stopped.''
Stop he did, back in 1983, and one of the best and original
voices in Australian music fell silent for almost 20 years.
Quill maintained contact with Tolhurst, with whom he formed
a songwriting partnership that burned bright in the years when
Country Radio competed for attention with Daddy Cool, Spectrum
and Billy Thorpe.
Tolhurst parted ways with Country Radio after the Sunbury Festival
in 1973 to go on to form The Dingoes.
Quill was not totally lost to music -- his new career was as
a journalist at the Toronto Star, specifically in the
entertainment field.
Then, in 1999, a trip to Sydney to catch up with family was
extended to take in a few days in Melbourne, at the behest of
Tolhurst, who, though now based in New York, was producing a
number of Australian artists.
"It all started in Melbourne, Kerryn and The Dingoes guys
at Chris Stockley's place and it was fun, and it all
sparked from there,'' Quill said.
"Kerryn said, 'Let's see if we can write songs again',
and before we knew it, there were not only songs, but interesting
ones.
"Kerryn and I, we had a really unique partnership (in Country
Radio) and we didn't realise what we had.''
If the timing of the pair's latest musical collaboration, an
album entitled so rudely interrupted, meant their
brand of roots music was becoming "a favoured mode again'',
economic factors dictated it be a "two-handed'' project,
though there are some fine musicians guesting on some songs.
With the record pressed, the obvious place to reveal it to an
audience was always going to be Australia, and Melbourne specifically.
"The reason we're coming to Australia is it's where our
audience is,'' Quill said. "A lot of this album is about
feelings for home. Home is mentioned in just about every song.
"We felt we had to get grounded again, before an audience
who knew what we're singing about."
"This is a very honest record, just him and me. It's very
organic -- that's what Country Radio was and this is.''
Two special audience members for the shows will be Quill's wife,
Ellen Davidson, and daughter Kaya, 23.
"I wanted them to witness this because they've known me
as this other person (the journalist),'' Quill said. "I
really wanted them to see me and Kerryn."
"Kaya stumbled across some of my records when she was about
15 and she fell in love with them. She knows all the songs I
have written.''
The tour comes at a point when there is growing interest in
Australia's early rockers in the form of the Long Way
to the Top series of concerts, but Quill and Tolhurst
are keen not to be seen as cashing in.
"When we started to play again, we didn't want to do a
nostalgia thing. We said, `Let's do something completely new
and original','' Quill said.
"We don't want to rely on the nostalgia thing, Country
Radio and Dingoes, though we will be playing some of our favourites."
"There's a song on this album, it was the very first song
I ever recorded, before Country Radio, Fleetwood Plain.
We rearranged it and made it sound different, but it ties the
past well and truly to now. It has stood the test of time.''
Quill and Tolhurst will do a week of rehearsals before hitting
the stage at the Port Fairy Folk Festival next weekend
ahead of a CD launch on March 15 at the Big House, in
Sydney Rd, as part of the Brunswick Music Festival.
Port Fairy marks Quill's first live show in Australia since
1979, but such was the response to getting he and Tolhurst performing
again that they had to cap the number of shows, bringing the
tour to a close after a month.
But fear not that Quill will retreat to Toronto never to be
heard from again. He is hopeful the response will be so positive
a tour Down Under will be a regular event.
so rudely interrupted will be available at Quill and
Tolhurst's shows and the pair hopes a distribution deal will
see it in shops this month. |
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Copyright
©2003. HeraldSun.
Reprinted with Permission.
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