Up in your grillz
Thoughts after rocking a cellar in Sydney one Sunday afternoon
We were coming from Melbourne to Sydney for Clares sister, Helens birthday and as is our way , we thought we might as well put in a low key gig the day after the party. Just a Sunday afternoon show. We play in Sydney a few times a year, usually more than Melbourne, and also usually go out to regional centres nearby after or before a Sydney show.
Maddeningly, there is nowhere to play in the 878 kilometres between Melbourne and Sydney. Nowhere. Don’t tell me there is, because if it was so we would have played it. Albury is the big town just over the border and we did a few shows there perhaps twenty five years ago. There was a hotel – which burned down - and another which was lovely as it seemed to be run by teenagers but somebody must have found that out and quickly stopped all the fun.
Wangaratta, Yarrawonga. Nothing. Yes, Beechworth has some live events but you’d want to play in Sydney on a Friday or a Saturday so somewhere in between – on the way to or from the big city – would have to be prepared for a week night or a Sunday night show. So thats it. Nowhere. Forget it.
We arrived at the venue at 1pm on a bright Sunday and the place was in a dark underground room. It looked great to me, like a venue in Germany in 1986. A great, dank rock’n’roll cellar.
We rehearsed with our Sydney bass player Greg Thorsby as we had thrown a dozen songs at him in a list that he had never heard let alone played before. It was to be a low key Sunday afternoon show and I thought we could stretch out and play some imponderables. To us as well as whoever was going to turn up. If anybody came, they would be getting a taste of what we had been up to in the years post our 90s mainstream window of heat/exposure.
Sydney show, Sunday afternoon March 23rd 2025. Greg Thorsby on bass, Clare Moore on drums, Dave Graney on guitar and vocals. Photo by Bleddyn Butcher.
We usually are aware of a few songs people want to hear and are happy to play them. Some I find a bit tiresome if we play them too much but not many. If thats the case I focus on the dynamic changes more than anything, or we try them in a different tempo. I still stand by pretty much everything we have recorded and released and am glad that a few escaped into the public realm and people want to hear them.
I also consider myself firstly to be a singer songwriter. I know a lot of people consider me to be firstly an entertainer. By that I mean, not playing a guitar and singing and striking poses as I did in the 90s. But I got bored with that in 1997 and wanted to play my songs with a guitar, as more of a part of the music within a band.
All these things are going through my mind when we travel to do a show. I am thinking that people are going to be coming along wanting something and I won’t be able to give them exactly that. I can give them something like it and thats the best I can ever do. If I worried about it too much I’d drive myself crazy and get terrifically bored in the process.
At this show there was no real dressing room as such so after we soundchecked I wandered upstairs to the bar. A couple were smiling at me and I said hello. They had seen me play 30 years ago on the Gold Coast and they were back again, this time with their now adult children in tow. I apologised to the children – a teenage girl and a young man in his twenties with his partner – for dragging them to the pub, if indirectly. Myself and the parents laughed. I explained that they might hear one or two familiar notes but it wouldn’t be exactly the same.
When I play I am very close to the audience. I mean I see them up close and I usually talk to them at some point. I used to think it was like being a country singer and yes, it really is. Like a classic honky tonk singer in a dusty bar but I’m playing songs with flash chords and lithe grooves at generally fast tempos with a lyrical flow that is all mine. I was born country but my mind wandered- and keeps wandering. So I go out to play with Clare by my side, both secure in all the performing and sonic chops we have cooked up and still hold together and we rock the house. In Melbourne we play with Stu Thomas and Stuart Perera and its an amazing brew that we have cooked up over 25 years. We rehearse once before our rare Melbourne shows (strangely we have played two already this year) and decide on tempo and harmonies and songs. Last time I called up two songs from 2003 and it was played brilliantly at the first run through. Amazing to have a band with such muscle and mind memory for the chords and beats. In Melbourne I have no concerns about the audience as I know the mistLY are such a strong unit that it will win anyone over. The sophistication and surety of the playing as a combo is rich and intense. No one else can do it. We generally get the least support in Melbourne. It takes the most work and energy to put on a show there.
photos of Dave Graney and the mistLY 2024 by Amber Schmidt
Everywhere else Clare and I get in the van and play as a trio with another bass player. We do some shows with Clare on keys, vibes, melodica and rhythm machine and myself on acoustic and electric guitars. If the room is right we love to play two sets of songs that suit that approach. Some of these rooms have a real acoustic piano that Clare can play as well. Those shows are great for us to play as well. Bookshops, small theatres, small clubs and anything else that doesn’t suit a drumkit and band sound.
When the Covid lockdowns were lifted there were still limitations on the size of audiences that were allowed so that duo show was what we played all over the eastern and southern parts of Australia. We got in the van and made show.
After a while Clare got tired of leads and wires and connecting keyboards and interfaces with stereo or mono connections and just wanted to play the drums wherever possible. The kinds of rooms we were playing and the way people were behaving as to pre booking tickets made us shy off from the idea of taking our band everywhere as it was all too unpredictable. We worked out a way to play with a bass player in each city and somehow that has been able to keep happening. In each place its almost like a fresh band that we get to play with. In Adelaide its Q , in Brisbane its Adele Pickvance, in Sydney its Greg Thorsby and in Perth its been Marty Casey.
This Sunday afternoon we came back into the room to play and it was absolutely packed with people. We got a mad, laughing fright and Clare was suddenly saying we should perhaps do a few more familiar songs. Familiar to ourselves as well as the audience. I stood firm that we should just play it as we had laid it out. Stretch out on some weirdness going back over the last twenty five years but not really crossing much into the 90s Coral Snakes period which is what you would call our classic playlist material. Hey the room sounded terrific and we played with real bounce and fire. They were really up close and the room was hot and dark. We built up a squall and the two sets ended in a real flaming, reverberating crescendo.
NB – Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes toured Australia in 2023 with original members Rod Hayward on guitar and Robin Casinader on keys along with mistLY bass maestro Stu Thomas. We pretty much sold out 20 dates around the country playing the Night Of The Wolverine album in one set and then another set of songs from the years before and after that album. From our historical, recognized, awarded Dave Graney and the Coral Snakes period. It was a great experience. Wonderful to play with Rod and Robin again. Brilliant players. Performing in much bigger rooms - both clubs and theatres - than usual. We had never actually gotten to play most of the songs on that album when it came out as it was so quiet and our first tour to promote it nationally in 1993 was opening for Hunters and Collectors and we had to make a noise to get over and into the room. We went from six weeks of that to a similar period opening for the Cruel Sea at their peak and then our own tour. It was no time to be quiet and reflective, but we got to play that properly thirty years later. Donna McRae made a video for the title track with technology from the future too!
This year is the 30th anniversary of our most commercially successful album the Soft’n’Sexy Sound and we are thinking of doing something around that. There’ll be an announcement on that coming soon.
Sydney March 23rd 2025 - Photo by Lindy Morrison.
“Walked out of Goulburn Gaol, Clothes in a paper bag, Safari suit, Platform shoes, I got that old swagger...' He sure do and what a tonic for the senses was this killa gig from Dave Graney with Clare Moore's soft and rolling thunder and Gregory J Thorsby making nimble on the beast of four at the Chippo Hotel in Sydney this Sunday just gone. The set list couldn't be beat, 'Night Of The Wolverine,' 'Girls Are Famous', 'My Schtick Weighs A Ton', 'Warren Oates' a personal fave, this paean to Dave G's long time avatar,'Rock N Roll Is Where I Hide' (ain't that the truth for legions of us), 'I'm Gonna Release Your Soul' and moresuch from that vast and dazzling constellation. And as ever, two shows for the price of one in effect. Dave's between-song monologues, an element of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a smidgeon of an old-school Ron Barassi half-time bake and more than a swag of Lenny Bruce at his incandescent peak, albeit with that unique Lynchesque perspective that can only come from growing up in a South Australian country town. There's gotta be an album in those mindblowing observations and critiques of our unfortunate condition as a self-doomed species. And a massive thank you to Clare Moore, often co-writer but much more than that, clearly Dave's muse and inspiration for so much of that mighty body of work, a fact to which DG alluded yesterday. The venue, well the all-black basement with a stage in it recalled or perhaps triggered memories of a thousand 80s grunge pits past, packed out, but this crew deserves a better and bigger room. Dave and Clare and co, please come to Fat City again and Sydney, please be there. You'll be so glad you did.”
Thanks Mark Cornwall.