2nd Feb 2007, Lanfranchi's, Sydney, Australia (Dazed and Confused review)
| C.W. Stoneking sold his soul to the devil on Balmain point. That's my best guess because there is some serious voodoo hocus pocus present in this man - a thirtysomething anglo-Australian who sounds like he's channelled the spirit of a 1920s New Orleans blues man with his dirty hokum, muttering asides and demonic guitar skills.
Born in the Australian outback town of Katherine, C.W. moved to the Sydney suburb of Balmain at 11, starting his first band at 13 after discovering the blues via Blind Willie McTell and Memphis Minnie. He moved through a variety of blues and zydeco outfits, a trail of untimely deaths of band members following after him- all making for deliciously dark lyrical fodder. Cut to Lan Franchis - a rare gem amongst Sydney's stale live venues, it's a warehouse/venue/hippy haven where punters are sprawled across the floors on cushions for C.W. Stoneking and his Primitive Horn Orchestra's alt-country support, Rand & Holland. When C.W. finally mounts the homemade milk-crate stage, the crowd are still lounging. It's only when his motley band of brass players join him and raise the tone a notch that they finally get off their lazy inner-city asses and begin to bop to the raucous ragtime fest. A strange and captivating character, C.W. towers over us in traditional southern garb - wide-leg black pants, wide brimmed black preachers hat and a crisp white shirt- soon soaked with sweat in the balmy night. His round boyish face belies his most unusual attribute - a speaking voice reminiscent of an 80-year-old Aboriginal man who's done time in the deep South (American), probably a result of a childhood spent at Papunya, where his Californian parents taught at the Aboriginal settlement school. When C.W. sings, he sounds like a sharecropper; when he talks, like a toothless veteran propped up in the corner of an RSL club. His mouth barely moving when he sings, he elicits a deep throaty drawl, like a bullfrog, croaking with the weight of many whiskies. A consummate entertainer, in between hokum, hillbilly and calypso renditions C.W. tells tales of his outback antics to an enraptured audience. Any possibility of songs becoming samey was alleviated by their call for a dance-off, inducing some unique experimental jives from the joyful crowd. And the tiny fragile creature from the audience who joined him to sing the duet, You Took My Thing And Put It In Your Place, and proceeded to steal the show with her red wine stained lips and delightful warbling voice, which an astounded C.W. called, a 1920s Cindy Lauper. One of those rare and magical gigs, it could have been the grimy floorboards of a New Orleans speakeasy which our hot-shoe shuffles were polishing- with the hot, heavy air, cheap drinks and smoking (illegal in most Sydney venues)- the crowd lapping up the time travelling performers, sweat n all. Millie Ross - Dazed and Confused |
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