Graeme James is a Folkie at heart, but he’s… In the swing/ Can dig that new breed thing/ Ain’t no drag/ Papa’s got a brand-new bag.
On stage before the show starts and there is a mandolin, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, baritone ukulele, electric bass, banjo, violin, melodica, gadgets.
All this for a solo artist. The one-man band re-invented as a manic looping performance.
James has his roots in the Taranaki, and later in Palmerston North. He has a musical family and he trained in classical violin. A shoulder injury curtailed that.
Early traumatic experiences later paved the path of his musical odyssey. As a pre-teen he was strongly persuaded by father to sing Christmas carols on the street.
The trauma of that led him to an eventual revelation, and the life of an itinerant street busker.
On the street he caught an ear for what resonates with an audience large and small. Whilst he was looking for some order in life, his musical path was taking the opposite course of freedom and release.
Sometimes you must follow the devil you don’t know.
A lot of this we get from the stage as James relates his story often in tangential fashion. He is a familiar face at Kumeu Live, and the capacity audience have a clear affection for him. The farthest anyone has come tonight is from Whanganui. Makes me look like a piker, as I only drove 70 kilometres (towards a storm warning).
He is a Looper. The best of that new breed thang is Tash Sultana from Australia. She also started as a street performer in Melbourne.
Like her, he is eclectic in the styles he taps into, whilst retaining his Folk roots. Inherent musical mind is reflected in the fact he is classically trained.
He starts with an improv on-the-spot piece. A high tone mandolin riff, to a plucked fiddle, a heavy bass rhythm, a mouthed trumpet sound (I think), until the bowed violin plays Baltic or Celtic melody lines. It is Celtic.
Then bangs out a Ska to Rocksteady number with a great bass line that would make Lee Scratch Perry smile. It finishes on an Irish reel.
Amsterdam is his current single and is Folk straight up with a good tenor voice. God only knows where I’d be without you could be a nod to the Beach Boys.
James is cooking when he asks the audience to help him create a mash-up. It will be a Disco Greek Ska Sea Shanty. He borrows items to play from the audience. Some beer bottles, car keys, a comb which sounds like a plastic washboard or a fly zipper. A melodica is made to sound like an ambulance siren (Dylan played a real police siren on Highway 61 Revisited).
Finishes on what shall we do with the drunken sailor? Hi-Ho and up she rises!
He has an unreleased song called Luminous Times. This is his Luminous Times Tour.
The baritone ukulele sets the rhythm, and we hear the banjo for the first time. Simple percussive lines so it clawhammer style. He gets to do a little Springsteen falsetto vocalising.
Father Tom is cajoled onto the stage (the front of the room) as payback for the Christmas carols on the street. With acoustic guitar he sings… Come on, come on/ Babe don’t you walk away. A simple Folk Pop ditty with a Kiwi Seventies sound.
A great cover of Fatboy Slim’s Praise You, expanded of course. Starts as dance music and I’m not sure where the drum sound come from. The fiddle evokes the sound of bagpipes on windy hills. The tempo changes to a boisterous Irish reel before coming back to the dance beat.
Alive is a song addressing an epiphany in Palmerston North. Left the city with blood on my hands. The town that John Cleese described as the most depressing place he’s visited. (He also got the inspiration for Fawlty Towers from a hotel in Christchurch).
It is a joyous song, and it ends as a Folk stomp. The underlying theme being, the dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive (Full Metal Jacket).
The Times Are Changing. He gets the audience to participate in a drunken fashion and recreate the Folkie rage at a Trade Union Hall.
As is the set closer, a song of the Gold Rush times where trouble will not find me way up high.
Graeme James is on a convoluted musical pathway, and it is better he has no idea where it will take him. Leaves the mind open for ominous James Brown bass lines and jumpy Captain Beefheart rhythms. A brand new bag!
Rev. Orange Peel
Discover more from Red Raven News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.