TEX PERKINS and THE FAT RUBBER BAND (vinyl)

Description

The latest thrilling incarnation of rock’n’roll master storyteller Tex Perkins and the Fat Rubber Band began with a Link Wray record. - - Perkins and his esteemed musician, songwriter, producer and bandmate Matt Walker share a mutual admiration for the American electric guitar innovator, whose iconic power chords in his signature 1950s rock’n’roll instrumentals had a profound influence on the evolution of rock guitar. The pair had countless musical conversations over the decade while hanging out backstage and on the road with Perkins’ award-winning The Man In Black - The Johnny Cash Story, with Walker playing guitar in the Tennessee Four band for the theatrical production. - - When Perkins got excited about his partner finding him a rare vinyl copy of Link Wray’s 1971 album Beans and Fatback, Walker’s response sparked a wave of creative effort that would eventually lead to the formation of the Fat Rubber Band. “There are a few albums he recorded in a chicken shed on his brother Vernon’s farm, known as the Three Track Shack Recordings - one was a self-titled album and the next called Beans and Fatback, which is a bit rarer.” “My partner Kristyna knew I was a fan of this record and she’s an eBay ninja and found a vinyl copy. After immediately hugging her and thanking her for it, I took a photo and sent it to Matt Walker. And the fateful words came back: ‘Great, let’s make an album like that.’ And that was it. We were on!” - - Throughout his four-decade career as a captivating performer, compelling songwriter and deft singer, Perkins has sought out collaborators who shared both his passion for music and challenged his creativity. - - From his first band Tex Deadly and the Dum Dums, through the fertile tension of Beasts of Bourbon and The Cruel Sea, his musical bromances with Tex, Don and Charlie and the TnT side project with Tim Rogers, and a myriad of bands - Thug, Dark Horses, The Band of Gold, The Ape and yes, the Ladyboyz - Perkins’ extraordinary adaptability has allowed him to explore and push the boundaries of traditional musical forms, from hard rock and heavy noise to country folk balladry and blues grooves. All with his unmistakable baritone and sly sense of humour. But the Fat Rubber Band was clearly meant to be, Perkins and Walker quickly swapping songs for the project, like a songwriting tennis match that perpetually returns to two. Walker offered the opening song on the debut album, the widescreen drama of Pay The Devil’s Due; Perkins answered with the plaintive blues of My Philosophy. Walker responded with the album’s fuzz-driven first single, Danger Has Been Kind, and Perkins countered with the icy, intimate Poor Simple Minded Fool. The duo road-tested their works in progress as a duo before enlisting bassist Steve Hadley, drummer Roger Bergodaz and Evan Richards on percussion to complete the Fat Rubber Band lineup and record the album’s ten tracks at Walker’s Stovepipe Studios in Victoria’s Dandenong Ranges. “At Matt’s studio, you open the studio door and nature just seeps in,” says Perkins. “We wanted it to sound rural, to smell of dirt and grass and leaves.” Even after all these decades, when you think you know that gravelly baritone inside out, Perkins finds new emotional tones in service of the Fat Rubber Band songs, vivid narratives with their characters struggling, but sometimes dancing, with the harsher and darker qualities of the human condition. It’s truly existential blues. Beneath those direct vocals and raw harmonies bubble intricately interwoven guitar conversations and unexpected percussive flourishes. “Another aspect we wanted was for the sound to be sometimes a collision and sometimes a marriage of acoustic and electric instruments. We wanted that tension between mandolins and bouzoukis meeting fuzz guitars.” “We also considered percussion to be an essential element of the sound we were after; we noticed in the recordings we loved from the 50s and 60s that often the tambourine hit, or the maracas, or whatever percussion, was just there in the mix, right alongside the vocal,” says Perkins. “The final feature of the music we wanted to pursue was harmonies, vocal harmonies. Not only did Matt and I discover that we could instinctively weave around each other’s singing, very well, but we also have three other great singers in the band, so five-part harmonies are what we get on songs like Love Long Gone and Trouble Goodbye, it can be mind-blowing... literally. It’s the end of times, existential electric country funk folk rock swamp witch blues, its way out there, but it’s here right now.” --- Kathy McCabe ---