Author Archive for Stephen McKenzie

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21
Nov
10

SCALA, November 18

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: Gigs

Jet Ward was in town for a gig at the Wheatsheaf on Saturday, and some beardy character decided to organise another show for her on Thursday, the day of her arrival. We got asked to play the final slot in the resulting SCALA night, and said why yes of course anything to get people to listen to us for a friend.

SCALA has been at many venues over the years, but the current one is pretty good. SCALA is now at “Higher Ground” which is in the building of the old “Night Train” theater restaurant on Light Square. Do you know in the twenty years I have lived in Adelaide I never actually got around to going to the Night Train? Or, jumping off the Morphett Street bridge into oncoming traffic? Or, drinking bleach? Time just slips through your fingers doesn’t it?

Anyway we did a “banjo only” show which meant that seeing as we only did ten songs I decided to only bring one instrument. The crowd was generally appreciative and it was a good set up for our upcoming gigs in December.

You say you’ve not heard of SCALA? What do you think the name means?

hugs,

S.

10
Oct
10

The Folk Centre

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: CD Stuff, Gigs and Luker and Southern news

Our CD (self titled) was launched on October 9th 2010, at the Folk Centre, which is on George Street in Thebarton.

You know that funny old-looking place on the corner of South Road and George St, just north of the Henley Beach Road junction, that you always drive past and wonder what it is? Well, that’s not the Folk Centre. That’s actually some church building. The Folk Centre is the building next door that looks like  an old RSL hall.

Basically playing there goes like this:

You arrive at sunset, and park in the spot reserved for the Rector, and then you go in the hall and the sound guy is already there setting up, and you say hello to him and he seems nice.

Then you muck around for a while with hard plastic chairs and old style trestle tables and you try to estimate how many people are going to show up, and you notice how big the place actually is, and you try not to imagine it full of line dancers.

Then you talk to the lady on the door who has one of those old fashioned cash register boxes with numbers on dials, and a grey plastic “ka ching” handle, and a float of two shillings sixpence in case a lot of people come.

Then you stand around for a bit looking at all the names of the past presidents of the SA Folk Federation, random banners from lots of community organizations, posters of famous people from Ireland who have also played here, etc, and those little pennants that tell you who came third in the local darts tournament in 1967.

Then, a couple of old people show up and ask you when the Bingo game starts and you have to tell them that it isn’t a Bingo night, it’s a folk concert. They seem not to mind.

Then more people show up, and you play. The stage is large and the sound is good and people sit quietly drinking wine and listening to you.

Then, they all leave, and you are left to pack up all the trestle tables again.

That’s how it goes.

(OK some of that isn’t true. Especially the part about packing up the trestle tables. The staff did that.)

We sold some CDs but there’s a few left. Check out the CD sample page.

28
Aug
10

The Wine Incident

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: Gigs and Luker and Southern news

Wheatsheaf Hotel, August 27, and our first major gig. We were pretty good, I think. I love the Wheatty too. All fireplaces and tasty beer and polished floors and they know how to look after you right.

So, we’re in the middle of a slow number with me supporting Em with quiet plinking on the banjo and there’s this weird “splash” noise in front of us, and we both think that somehow the ceiling has sprung a leak and water is gushing down onto the floor.

The noise stopped so we kept playing, and wondered what the hell just happened (because we couldn’t really see).

Later, friends told us the following account:

One of the families that were there to see the other band (The Heggarties) were sitting right up front and talking, which can be a little rude, but isn’t out of keeping with what happens at that venue pretty often. They were approached by a couple of women who wanted them to shut up because they liked our playing, and the family said no, because they weren’t the only ones talking.

The next think anyone knows one of the women has grabbed the family’s bottle of wine, poured it all over the floor in a giant cascade and then stormed out, leaving the family, also, wondering what the hell just happened.

This is the kind of passion we inspire in people. ;)

21
Jun
10

The recording process

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: CD Stuff, Luker and Southern news and Recording Talk

Recording for the debut CD occurred between about December 2009 and June 2010. We had about six sessions all up, all of them at my house. The standard day went something like this:

Emma gets to my house at about 10 after driving all the way from Salisbury and we immediately nip out the back to smoke her rolling tobbacco, drink tea, gossip, and talk about all the things we aren’t doing yet. Then we set up and select tunes to work on. Arrangement conversations go like this: “What about we do the whole thing twice and then stop?” “No, how about we do that twiddly bit twice and them come straight into the loud bit?” “You mean the A-part?” “I don’t know, why don’t you just nod at me?” “OK.”

The song thus arranged, we write song charts down on bits of paper that look like this: A A B CH & !! and we nod wisely.

I have subsequently found these sheets of paper in my bedroom studio, and now have no idea what they mean.

Then, we do several version, and either the first or the last will be the the best. We smoke more tobacco, repeat the process on another tune, and Emma leaves for the day.

Mixing occurred mostly in June and that session basically went like this. “I like it all, except that bit I don’t like,” “I think that vocal harmony would sound better if you couldn’t actually hear it”, “That sounds good turn it up louder,” etc.

After this rigorous process was complete, I spent about a day normalizing and standardizing the EQ profiles, and we were away.

Check out the CD page for more information:

http://lukerandsouthern.wordpress.com/debut-cd/

18
Jun
10

I got AER

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: Instruments and Gear

Our musical future got brighter on this weekend with the purchase of one of these babies.

As any acoustic player will know, normal guitar amplifiers work by a process of converting your own energy into back pain, and then transforming that pain into a sound quite unlike an acoustic guitar, and which feeds back as soon as you turn the gain knob above 2.

AER take a different approach. Inside each one of their amplifiers is an army of tiny German engineers with the ability to mimic any kind of acoustic instrument you care to name. Plus they are very strict dieters and hardly weight a thing.

The banjo sounds good through this, the banjitar better. Played twice with it so far and apparently is is still a touch tinny, but nothing the mixer can’t fix.

S.

12
Apr
10

It’s Pronounced “Moron”

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: Gigs, Instruments and Gear, Luker and Southern news and Recording Talk

So one sunny day in April sees me walking down Jetty Road carrying an Irish drum made by Waltons for which I paid $7o. Since then it has been introduced into our sound and look.

My knowledge of Gaelic orthographic rules tells me that Bodhran is actually pronounced “I Don’t Know”, but a funny old Irish man with a beard and a severe head cold recently told me that it is pronounced “moron.” (Actually I’m not sure exactly what he said but he definitely used that word several times.)

Anyway its sound has been variously described as “cool”, “annoying”,” like someone playing a water tank”,” a big boomy droning sound” etc. In recording we use it as a bass note by tuning it electronically to the pitch of the song. Live, we use it advisedly, or not at all. In Ireland where the air is always moist, this type of drum apparently makes a slack wet bopping sound unless heated by the fire, but here the reverse is true and when it is dry, you have to get water on the skin otherwise it sounds like a tin can.

The before shot is what mine looked like before Emma painted it. The after shot is, well, you guessed it.

23
Mar
10

No, an Irish Banjo!

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: Gigs, Instruments and Gear and Luker and Southern news

Me and Em did a gig at the Adelaide Central Market this weekend.

It was one of those morning shows where families of shoppers drift past and smile at you and then some of them give you two dollars.

Proceeds were immediately spent on coffee and buns.

A very drunk, angry-looking chap walked up to us at one point, and said “do you know blah blah blah (insert name of song)?”

No, we don’t.

“Well do you know blah blah blah (inset name of other song).”

No, we don’t.

“What’s fucking wrong with you then?”

(Storms off scowling as though we have totally ruined his day.)

Then, another chap from the UK was trying to talk to me about banjos.

Says he: “I’m thinking of getting an Irish banjo” (p.s. I have no social skills).

Oh, that’s interesting. Is that a five-string? (Here I am, showing my ignorance of Irish banjos).

“No, an Irish banjo” (p.s. I am borderline Asperger’s).

Oh. You mean a tenor banjo, then? (Once again with the ignorance).

“No, an Irish banjo.”

I later found that while nominally, there is such a thing as an Irish banjo, it is really more a style of tuning than a type of instrument. Basically any 4 string banjo could be an Irish banjo. So I suspect this is a little like saying you want a Russian piano to help you play Rachmaninov.

For the record, my own banjo is a bastardized affair, a 5-string with the drone taken off and the 4 remaining strings tuned like the first 4 strings of a guitar, with a capo on the second fret to keep the tension OK. It isn’t ideal but it sounds decent in most conditions. I am also learning 4 string tenor banjo, properly.

But I hope this guy got his “Irish” banjo, really.

Probably Ireland would be a good place to look.

The scene: A MUSIC STORE in IRELAND.

A young man enters abruptly from the street.

Young man: “Excuse me, do you have an Irish banjo.”

Attendant: “I’ll check, sir.”

The attendant looks at the back label of his only tenor banjo, which says “Made in Indonesia.” He looks again at the young man and quickly reaches a decision.

Attendant: “Why, yes sir, we do! This one is as Irish as a fat old cow! And a top of the morning to ye!”

Young Man: “Finally! A proper Irish banjo! I’ll take it!”

Attendant: “That will be nine hundred pounds sir.”

etc.

27
Nov
09

I Hope I Never

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: Gigs and Luker and Southern news

Our third ever gig was nearly our last. We played at the Gov front bar on a Thursday in late November and had more technical problems than you would think physically possible for an acoustic duo. Pick-ups, leads, strings, tuning, it all went to hell. For me anyway. (Emma was fine actually.)

Initially, we thought we were doing pretty well crowd wise, until all the diners left to go and see Tim Finn playing next door.

(Incidentally, I noted that the bar staff kept everyone in the mood for Tim by playing a lot of his brother’s music. I wonder how that feels.)

After they all left the crowd was thin and the music was quite good but the tech graemlins were having a field day. When I say it was the stuff of nightmares this is not poetic license because I actually have had several subsequent nightmares about that gig. The only good thing to come out of it was that I cracked down ruthlessly on future tech issues and have had none since.

After that, things went quiet on the Luker and Southern front for a while…

25
Sep
09

250th Anniversary of Getting Totally Shitfaced

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: Gigs and Luker and Southern news
Tags: , ,

Man, there were some drunk people at the Brecknock last night, and I really mean plastered. Dancing, whooping, walking headlong into doorways, fondling each other’s gonads and vomiting in the hall. These were people that weren’t going to be much use on grand final day. They had made their choice and Guinness was it.

For our debut show, me and Emma played two long sets and a reprise at the end, and filled about about 2 and a 1/2 hours worth with fun, listenable and sometimes danceable music, but in terms of crowd response, we really have to thank Mr and Mrs Guinness,  on that cold winter night in 1725. Without their canoodling, young Arthur would never have been born, and never have invented his dark gooey beverage in 1759, and all those people would have had no excuse for getting as drunk as they did last evening.

Or maybe they would have found another one.

Whatevs. We played pretty all right, and got good and paid. Fun show.

So, catch us next time at the Governor Hindmarsh on Thursday November 26 and please drink a lot. It’s a bar deal.

Now I’m off to spend my hard earned loot on wine in the Coonawarra,

GSS.

30
Aug
09

La Nuit de L’acoustique Toutes les Etoiles

By sjmckenzie Leave a Comment
Categories: Gigs and Luker and Southern news

We had out first ‘show’ last night at L’hôtel d’Exatorre on Rue de la Roundelle. We did a two-song intro at the end of La Nuit de L’acoustique Toutes les Etoiles, run by the ineffable Guillaume Vetu. We sounded quite good apparently.

It was an acoustic variety night so there was lots on offer. For me, the high point of the night was John Crouch’s frenetic guitar playing, although the memory is clouded by the performance of another fellow who decided that it was in everyone’s best interests if he play a ten minute didgeridoo solo, without having actually asked anyone if they agreed.

Then there was the obligatory table of “look at me” twenty-somethings who chose to sit right up the front in the music room, yelling at one another, even though they had the whole rest of the pub to themselves if they wanted a place to do that. Sound quality improved dramatically when Soursob Bob told them to – and I quote – “shut the fuck up”. I bought him a beer.

I wince with embarrassment when I recall that I used to do exactly the same thing in my early twenties and that I, also, might have had the delusion that being seen in the front bar of the Exeter on a Thursday night in winter was somehow the coolest thing ever.

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Southern Steve is…

...the online alter ego of S.J. (Steve) McKenzie.

I am an Australian guy who likes and plays lots of different styles of music, mostly for kicks.

There's samples of my own stuff here as well as lots of mp3 goodies from other bands I love; folk, punk, jazz and just whatever sounds like it has its own thing going on.

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