Dis 'ere is a old dodo boid...

...whatchoo got a dodo boid fo'?


I first remember hearing music known as “The Blues” about the time my sister and I thought “One Summer” by Daryl Braithwaite was the most topsest song, ever. It was the summer of ’89 – those were the best days of…..

Sherd, of course, was into a bit of NKOTB action when not rockin’ out to Roxette. About the bluesiest I got in those days was my new Ian Moss tape. (Oh, by the way, people that tell you they had decent music taste before their teens are either lying or still have crap taste in music.)

Saturday morning. June, 1989. Two kids have been up since seven, keen as mustard to…watch Rage.
Eventually, the parents drag their sorry arses out of bed and saunter downstairs.
“Alright! Time to go!” the bearded one hollers, almost as if he wasn’t the one holding up the process in the first place.
“But, daaaaaaad! Can’t we just watch the number one song?” comes the confident, forthright reply…oh, okay…whining complaint.
“One saaahhhmaaahh, I’ll find a waaaaaay!”
Barely had the image of a dorkily grinning Daryl Braithwaite faded from the hastily killed telly than the kids were packed off to Wongabilla.

No, not an paddlepop flavour, but an equestrian centre.. As a kid, the place was pretty cool. We got to ride around on horses, the cops taught you stuff, there were other kids on horses. As an adult looking back it takes a slightly different slant. Wongabilla was run by the cops, situated next door to the prison, the rich kids went to Pony Club instead, and the horses there had names like Redeye and Ghostkiller (or something).

It wasn’t long after that I heard a bit of Robert Johnson on an interminable trip down South (which means everywhere else but Darwin to you Brisvegans). To be honest, I had been listening to some BB King, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and the like at that stage so I wasn’t that impressed with the raw scratchy recordings.

That came later, when I actually got to listen properly, rather than just waiting until it was my turn to put my Soundgarden cd on in the car.

Fast Forward ten years (geddit?) and we’re watching Michael Veitch on Sunday Arts. Accidentally, mind you. I think we were hungover, woke up late, and were flicking.

We caught the end of the program and Veitch was interviewing a strange looking white bloke called CW Stoneking. He has the weirdest accent I’ve heard in a while.

Turns out his parents were Californian, he was born in Katherine in the NT, and grew up in a community called Papunya. He’s ended up with a weird combination of an American drawl with a Territory inflection – if you don’t know what that sounds like, maybe visit Taminmin.

Anyway, he has this awesome dobro style guitar, and he closes the show with a song…

..and is like Robert Johnson reincarnated.

So when we heard he was on at Bluesfest, we had to go.

And it was absolutely brilliant. It was just him on the stage with a guitar and a banjo, and he seems to become a different person.

He engages in dialogue with himself in different personas, he mutters to himself and it sounds like the background noise you can hear in those 1930’s blues recordings, and the Dodo bird song is a classic.

He really was the highlight for me, mainly because it was the only real Delta blues type stuff on offer over the weekend. I mean, I love my electric blues stuff, and the more modern rock blues, but this sort of real blues really is the greatest.

Anyway, pictures later (I’m doing this from work :)