painted ladies

The Painted Ladies project began life as perhaps just yet another tribute album, to which I contributed a modest set of sleeve notes, and it has grown into the sprawling, monster roadshow it is today, to which to my extremely pleasant surprise I find myself an integral part as in-built MC and interlocutor.

BuY

BuY

The project was the brainchild of Luke Peacock, a member of the great country-Rockhampton band Halfway and general renegade picker on the Brisbane scene. The Bird was doing some work experience a few years ago at Brisbane Murri Country radio station 98.9FM (his father is a Torres Strait Islander), when he stumbled across a DAT burn of an album he’d never heard, only heard about, not least as he acknowledges from Buried Country. The DAT was a copy of The Loner, the album the great Aboriginal singer and songwriter Vic Simms recorded live in Bathurst Jail when he was an inmate there in 1973, and in short (and the full story is best told by Luke and Vic themselves in this item here from ABC-TV’s 7:30 Report, and/or on the Painted Ladies website per se here), Luke was so inspired that he determined, with Vic’s encouragement, to pay it some sort of tribute, get its songs out there again for a contemporary audience to hear. 

Roping in producer Rusty Hopkinson, a long-time fan of Vic’s who’d previously worked with him in his capacity as drummer with You Am I, plus roping in an all-star cast of Brisbane musicians to help out in the studio, including most notably Cairns’ favorite sons the Medics, and further roping in such stellar guests as Roger Knox, Paul Kelly, Ed Kuepper, Bunna Lawrie (father of the Medics’ Jindhu Lawrie) and Vic himself, The Painted Ladies Play Selections from The Loner was released by Plus One Records in early 2014. That this release, both on CD and gorgeous vinyl, bore sleeve notes by yours truly led to my further involvement with the project as it started to really snowball. Of course it was ironic to me that when it applied for development funding from APAM (Australian Performing Arts Market), it was one of two potential productions that owed a debt, at least in part, to Buried Country; the other was actually called Buried Country. But since that Queensland Theatre Company proposal hadn't optioned the rights on my book, it had to change its name. I was just pleased that the Ladies got through, and in September 2014, with me on board and with the beautiful limited-edition 7" single "I Wanna Bop/Hey Sheriff" out, and with the Medics as the basic house band with other guests like Roger Knox, keyboardist Dan Mansfield, fiddler Phillipa Perrott not to mention the Warm Guns Choir, the act played its debut performances at the Judith Wright Centre in Fortitude Valley as part of the Brisbane Festival. 

On stage at the Judith Wright Centre

For me, my role models were Fats Gonder, MC on James Brown’s 1963 Live at the Apollo album, Brother J. C. Crawford, ‘spiritual advisor’ and MC on the MC5’s Kick Out the Jams – and Gary Foley with the Clash at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney in 1982. We had a ball playing the two sets at the Judy, and they were so successful that the act was invited to appear at Womadelaide in March 2015 as well as the Tanks in Cairns. Those gigs are now completed too, Womadelaide with the great Buddy Knox sitting in on guitar and with Vic himself making a special guest star appearance. 'Star’ is the only word for it! “Something special is going to happen,” Myf Warhurst tweeted from side of stage. “Vic Simms singing with the Painted Ladies. Super emotional.” 

The troupe at Womadelaide: Left to right, back row - Luke Peacock, Phillipa Perrott, Tom Stewart, Kellie Lloyd, Mel Lathouras, Amy Bennett, Andy Thomson, Charles Thomas, Jhindu Lawrie, Dan Mansfield, Adrian Mauro, Yours Truly. Front row - Kahl Wallis, Vic Simms, Bunna Lawrie, Buddy Knox

For all us Ladies, the roadshow has become a beautiful millstone or rather touchstone, a sort of updated blackfella/whitefella version of Mad Dogs and Englishmen, where our raggedy band travels around offering up this great music driven by love, creativity and a sense that race relations in this country still has a ways to go: Which is shown by the on-going potency of the Vic Simms’ songs that make up the Ladies’ set, but which were written all of forty years ago…

With the album still selling and not only more gigs in the pipeline for the back half of 2015 but also an NITV broadcast of the short documentary film on the project, you shouldn’t be able to say you weren’t warned. Hey Ladies!! This is the greatest-ever travelling Murri country-rock’n’soul roadshow-cum-Vic Simms tribute band you’ve never seen – yet! For me it’s just a treat to be the meat in the sandwich between elders like Vic, Roger Knox and his son Buddy, and Bunna Lawrie, and such great young gun musicians as Luke Peacock, all the Medics and all the others who variously come and go when they can. I love youse all!