Always Look On The Curious Side Of Life

The Sunday Age

Sunday September 14, 2008

Peter Wilmoth

On the eve of touring his 20th album, music icon Dave Graney talks to PeterWilmoth about footy, Neighboursand life ahead of the pack."

IF YOU happen to be poking around an opportunity shop soon and spy a fastidiously dapper gent with a ClarkGable moustache and teardrop sunnies flicking through a box of longplaying records, there is every chance a moment of discovery is not far away.

Amid the slightly pungent leather jackets, the Bernard King recipe books and the Best ofWaWa Nee CDs, you may well have witnessedMelbourne's own selfstyled "King of Pop", Dave Graney, chancing upon works by David Bowie, Boz Scaggs, BadCompany, the SteveMiller Band, Little Feat, the Allman Brothers,Candi Staton or any number of acts he collects."

I have tonnes of vinyl," Graney confesses. "I picked up a boxed set of how-to-speak-Russian-and- French and a history of the '60s, narrated byWalter Cronkite on three LPs.My brother-in-law gave meall his vinyl two years ago, including 30 Grateful Dead bootlegs."

With Graney's tastes as wide as the lapels on some of the suits in which he performs, it's not a total surprise he seeks out with evangelical ardour the work of dirty denim Aussie rock acts such as Ariel and Spectrum. "My favourite thing to find is Australian rock, but it's hard to find because no one throws it away."

Graney has temporarily shelved his op shop journeys of discovery to re-enter the modern world.He has just released his 20th album, WeWuz Curious-credited to the Lurid YellowMist featuring Graney and his partner in life and music, ClareMoore.

Onthe eve of a national tour, Graney spoke about the eclectic interests in his life, with music as the centrepiece, and his sometimes wild upbringing in country South Australia.

WeWuz Curious is Graney's most autobiographical album ("Five of the 14 songs start with 'I'," he says).Much of it explores the notion of feeling like an outsider. In YouHad to be Drunk, Graney reflects on howhe coped with life growing up inMountGambier ("You had to be drunk/To put it all together in any kind of way/I dunno howyou could have walked that world otherwise"). And in IWas a Country Boy he touches on the boredom of the small town("I was an outsider looking on/ Everything was happening somewhere else")."

Every artist has a story andmystory and drama has always been a country guy coming to the city and that's what a lot of mysongs have been about," he says.

Graney says many of his teenage years in MountGambier were spent with his friends looking for things to do. "It was very boring," he says. "When I was a kid, there wasn't much to do but drink in hot cars.We were always drunk. That was our ambition ... Rock and roll formehasn't been entering a world of wildness, because life was much wilder before this."

In a way, Graney is still an outsider, working away from the comfort of what might be called the mainstream. As the music industry struggles with decliningCDsales and doubt as to where the digital world is taking it, it's a challenge for artists to connect with an audience.

It doesn't unnerve Graney. "I don't do anything except be a musician," he says."

We have a small but wide audience who somehowhear about our music. It's not on commercial radio and hasn't been on Triple J for a decade and it's not lauded by critics because I've pitched stuff over their heads."Commercial radio has, he says, been "strangling itself for a couple of decades-it's such thin gruel that comes out of it".

He has a weekly opportunity to show what can be done on community radio. Every Tuesday from 12pm- 2pm, Graney and ElizabethMcCarthy present a programfor radio 3RRR called Banana Lounge Broadcasting, playing contemporary music as well as interviews with the likes ofMickHarvey from the Bad Seeds and JoshHommefromCalifornian rock outfit Queens of the Stone Age. "I love to play local music," he says. "There is a lot of great stuff; it means sorting through piles of stuff as it's so easy to make records nowadays.

In the past, most would have been crushed early on."

Graney fears music listeners' loyalty to an artist has shifted to a passion for technology."

People love technology more than anything," he says. "People love their iPods and their technology more than any artist. It's like pet rocks in one way. It's a constant search for the best platform, the best delivery system. I'mnot interested in any technology, except the technology to record and mix music."

But his life is not all about music and hard-boiled novels by James M.Cain and Raymond Chandler. Graney finds time-a lot of time-to indulge another passion: enjoying the verbal meanderings of the crew on footballsaturated SEN, thrilling to the intensity and passion with which talkback callers prosecute their cases. "I love sports radio," he says."

I can listen to people talk rubbish about football all day ... Often I come home from a gig at 2am and some poor sad sack is calling in about what a team should do with their back line at their pathetic club. I love the anguish."

But his life in surburbanUpwey ("A dormitory full of hermits and freaks, away from the consumerist frenzy of the inner city") is also about enjoying Australian offerings on television such asNeighbours, the programon which in the late 1990s he guest-starred as himself."

I've been a big fan ofNeighbours ever since," he says. "I watch it as much as I can." Why? "It's pretty fast-moving and it's Australian."

As Graney andMoore prepare to take the Lurid YellowMist around the country, it might be time to reflect on Graney's selfassessment as it appears on the new record's cover. "Dave Graney and ClareMoore have been playing music since punk rock in the late '70s and have never put out a bad album. They have suffered from being ahead of the pack. Always."

We Wuz Curiousby the Lurid Yellow Mist, featuring Dave Graney and Clare Moore, is out on Illustrious Artists Records.

© 2008 The Sunday Age

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