...As well as groups with strong country influences, such as Wilco, this period saw a “neo–folk” renaissance, with artists from Northern California like Joanna Newsom and Devendra Banhart, as well as the Fleet Foxes from Seattle. When Shanks returned to Lyttelton, folk and country music were very much living genres, rather than the nostalgia trip that many might think. After playing a few shows, Shanks and McGrath discovered they had a great rapport. McGrath remembers that “we were both kind of the same, heading towards 30, had travelled, done all this weird shit, had these other lives, and this is the time that life seems to change.”..
...They then resolved to both quit their jobs, and make the band their sole focus. “I was working as a school caretaker and also had my own little garden fix–it business … she’d just had her heart broken, didn’t really know what she was doing. Let’s not do anything else, let’s just quit everything, we’ll only play music.”
Shanks was also on board with the plan. “Only after two weeks that we said let’s do this … but we didn’t know what doing this meant, because there was no landscape for what we were doing. I barely knew how to play the banjo when we met, but I wanted to play music with him, so I told him I could.”
To make a living, they had to play. This meant The Eastern would play any show they could find – sometimes for a guarantee, sometimes for tips. “First it was for tips, then it was $50 and tips for an hour, then it was two hours, then it was four hours, then it was two or three nights, four-hour sets, and just that playing all the time, it’s a really old fashioned way to do it. Doing those bar shows, we would just play whatever songs we knew, sometimes three or four times in a row ’cause that was all we knew. We would just do whatever we could to play. Play anything, everything, ’cause we had to make money to live.”
They would play four, five, six nights a week: no mean feat in a city the size of Christchurch. There were times when they would play multiple occasions on the same day – starting in Lyttelton at the Farmer’s Market, heading into Christchurch to busk in the afternoon, before a show at a pub in the evenings.
They became professional musicians by making music their vocation; there was no better place to work a room than a room. “She wasn’t a very good banjo player, I wasn’t a very good guitar player, but in that process of just doing it, we became better and it became something good.” It was the making of the band.
As Jess says, “we really had to figure out how to put on a show that people would respond to.” While they were starting to write and perform their own songs, they also weren’t afraid to give the crowd what they wanted, peppering their sets with requests and old favourites.
With McGrath on guitar and lead vocals, and Shanks on banjo, this was the core of the Eastern – but there were many other important players who drifted in and out of the band. The Eastern was a vehicle, and in keeping with the group’s practical, industrial vibe, that vehicle was a train.
Adam explains: “the reason we do it, the reason we started it, was to escape the constrictions of the every day and to have adventures, so it was this little train that you could get on or get off, and people have got on, and then they’ve got off, and then they get on again, so we’ve had heaps of people through the band, but that’s cool, it’s always been that way.”
Some members had short trips, others longer ones; some people have got on and have never got off. Alongside McGrath and Shanks, the next constant has been Jono Hopley, on double bass. The low end is an important foundation for any band, and this was perhaps even more key in The Eastern, where there wasn’t always a dedicated drummer. Hopley has a vital cog in the group since he joined, keeping the wheels turning.
On an early tour, they were playing a show with the Ragamuffin Children. They would often ask Anita Clark from that duo to join them on fiddle, which then led to her joining the band proper. Her role on fiddle was such a key part of the Eastern’s sound that when she left the band, a replacement had to be found.
Initially, this was Flora Knight, though the band itself jokes that they’ve had “nearly as many fiddle players as Spinal Tap had drummers”. Clark has gone on to play in groups including Devilish Mary and the Holy Rollers, and Dog Power, as well as making more ethereal, experimental music under the moniker Motte.
Though the Eastern were playing shows around town, and heading off on tours round the country, they were still continuing to busk as well. One occasion was particularly fortuitous to the band – and possibly to the wider story of New Zealand music. McGrath had a regular spot in the city where he would open up his lungs and his guitar case.
“One day I went down there and Hannah was in the spot where I was busking. She was singing ‘Angel from Montgomery’ by John Prine, which I sung too. She was maybe 17 at the time and she was incredible, so I said you should come sing with us. We sung together that day, and then I said you should come sing with the band.”...to be continued... - James Dann and AudioCulture
trax:
01 Song Of The Bird With The Broken Wing 02 Crow River 03 Misty & Jimmy 04 This Is The Always 05 My Old Record 06 We're Just Trying To Make Amends 07 Lonesome Bound 08 Little Girl Blue 09 Without Any Moon 10 5X5 11 Southern Girl 12 Dusty Sun 13 Riverbend
…served by zigzagwanderer + Gaius…
...Includes songs by Buck Trail (who was from Miami) and Lennie Lacour, who later led the Lucky Four label from Chicago. - from: http://hillbillycountry.blogspot.com
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