Early in 2002, when Dan Warner was living in
New York with guitar player Kevin Garant, one
of Dan's old musician mates from home,
Mick Thomas, came over from Australia to play
a tour of the north-east. Mick is a well renowned and celebrated song-writer from Dan's home town. Melbourne is a
temperate city of about three million people
tucked away in the south-east corner of
mainland Australia...it's a bit like an Antipodean
Boston.
Mick was playing solo by this time, but for
about 15 years up to the late 90s he had
fronted one of Australia's largest cult acts,
Weddings Parties Anything. The Weds had had
a couple of big hits a ways back and pulled
huge crowds whenever and wherever they
played. And although the music is a little
different, the WPA juggernaut is similar to that
of the Grateful Dead in the States. Wedheads,
Deadheads, same thing. And like Hunter's and
Garcia's songs, in the deep deep south pacific
you're born with Mick Thomas's songs running
through your veins, they're simply part of the
big story down there in Oz.
Dan's and Mick's connection goes back a fair
way as well. When asked about that association
Dan answers with, "Mick was the only successful
musician ever to give us a go when we were
starting out. Mick always gave us supports with
the Weds, even when he knew we weren't
worth many punters. We toured nationally with
them a couple of times." Officially apprenticed.
The early band that Dan is talking about is his first serious original band, The Warner Brothers. The band started out as a rockabilly/country/rock 'n' roll bar band and played anything from Sid King, Wanda Jackson and Eddie Cochrane to Hank, Commander Cody and Little Feat, to Dylan/Neil, and relevant Aussie stuff (The Dingoes, Richard Clapton, Axiom, The Loved Ones, Cold Chisel...) The Warner Brothers played this sort of
material in local pubs (The Albion Inn, The Riverside Hotel, The John Barleycorn...all gone now) for a good four or five years before releasing their first independent record, Talking In Your Sleep, in 1992.
The band had grown out of a duo act that Dan had formed in the mid 80s with guitarist, James Stewart, after the demise of James's bands The Absolute Zeroes and The Hepileptiks. Til that point Dan had mainly been into folk/rock artists...particularly Neil Young and Dylan...it was James Stewart who first introduced Dan to purer American country music. Dan's and James's first long-term residency at the Beehive Hotel in West Hawthorn was a regular Friday night riot - Dan playing acoustic and singing and James playing electric and providing the solos. Dan's brother describes, 'people possessed by music and alcohol, usually
sedate people standing on tables yawping barbarically, spitting beer across the room at various crazies.'
In the latter part of the Beehive residency, James Carden and Mal McBeath were added on drums and bass respectively and The Warner Brothers were away.
A few years later, the resulting album, Talking In Your Sleep, was arguably one of Australia's first urban/alternative country releases. During the making of the record the band changed drummers, the new recruit being Carl Pannuzzo from local blues band Checkerboard Lounge.
Although Dan wrote some early songs for the band, 'Up to your Old Tricks' and 'Circus Boy' in particular, James Stewart was the main songwriter of the band in the early days. James wrote the two stand-out singles from the first album, 'Stuck in Melbourne' and 'Brunswick St Girl', both of which remain favourites of Melbourne music purveyors. 'Stuck in Melbourne' gained The Warner Brothers their first national airplay and not long after the release of the album the band toured nationally in Australia with Michelle Shocked.
The recognition was double-edged. Time/Warner decided they were unhappy about a band calling themselves The Warner Brothers. The band resisted as long as they could , but after the legal situation turned nasty, the band was forced to change their name to Overnight Jones, the name the suggestion of fellow Melbourne musician, Paul Cumming.
To publicise the new name the band released a five-track EP, Not
Brothers Anymore. The EP featured two new songs from a forthcoming album and live songs, recorded at The Great Britain Hotel in Richmond.
Funnily enough, in order to help publicise the name change, the
band's good friend, Mick Thomas, appeared singing the lead vocal
on the last track. The fact that Mick sings on the EP, and that only 500 were ever pressed, has made Not Brothers Anymore Overnight Jones' most sought after release. Once again the band gained national airplay with James Stewart's new song, 'Head Over Heels'. Months later the band signed with Polygram records. In the years that followed, Overnight Jones released one album with Mercury Records, My Private Train.
During the 90s, Dan & Al MacInnes played several long-term residencies at, some now
defunct, legendary Melbourne venues - including
four years at The Great Britain, seven years on a
Sunday at The Punters Club in Brunswick Street and
four years on a Tuesday night in the front bar of
The Corner Hotel in Richmond.
Dan and Al's residencies became such a part of Melbourne music life that,
when Dan moved to the US in 2000, The Corner
Hotel renamed its front bar, 'The Dan Warner Room'.
"Al and I recorded at several studios around town to
try and capture the sound that we seemed to get so
easily live. We just couldn't get it onto tape.
In desperation we even miked up the PA at The
Corner one afternoon. We also did a couple of
sessions at Mick Thomas's studio. One of the songs
we recorded there, 'Sunny Day', ended up on Isle of
Hop, the Dan & Al record."
|
