Tex Perkins - The Man in Black

Mon 31st Aug, 2009 in Features

Tex Perkins exudes an aura and astute authority as both man and musician. He’s carried himself in this manner for the past 27 years in the music business. Admired by all and sundry. Fellow musicians and critics alike respect him, for he is an artist who demands your strict attention with a guttural vocal mixed with latter day soul and harmonious twang.

He’s lived the wild days of youth ( Tex Deadly and the Dum-Dums, Thug and Salamander Jim); before the rise of the Beasts Of Bourbon; fronted ARIA award wining surf rock ensemble The Cruel Sea; collaborated with Don Walker and long time right hand men Charlie Owen and Joel Silbersher. Then there’s The Dark Horses; the solo career (and with James Cruickshank); and finally the ham-it-up period with Tim Rogers in T n’ T and sticking it up Universal Music Australia by leading an array of white suited men through the history of some of the shittiest songs every recorded with the LadyBoyz.

Perkins has built a reputation for being the definitive troubadour and creatively active musician who moves through many guises. Over his career he’s been venomous, visceral, loving, a heartbreaker when he wants to be, fusing country, rock, surf and everything in between. And now Tex Perkins & The Tennessee Four bring their The Man In Black: The Johnny Cash Story to the bright city lights of Melbourne, promising “Two hours of Cash’s magnificent music interwoven with the story of his rise to stardom, his fight for survival and his eventual redemption. The show explores his relationships – with hardened prisoners to the beautiful June Carter and lots in between.”

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. So where did the concept and idea come about for this opportunity? “It was in March of this year and the proposal just came out of the blue!” he admits. “I never knew anything about it but was then in contact with a couple of producers, Simon Myers and Andrew Barker who work in theatre and television. The idea for The Man In Black was looking to be similar to the Looking Through A Glass Onion the John Lennon/John Waters shows or concept.”

With Perkins a Cash fan from way back, what were his first thoughts? “Well, yes!” he laughs. “It’s a total blessing really for me because for family reasons I wanted to come to Melbourne so I wanted to work on a project that was going to get us here and that’s exactly what it did. So I was like, – œBring the family to Melbourne for three months. Tick. Get paid. Tick. Sing a whole lot of Johnny Cash songs. Tick, tick, tick! And the Saints were on a winning streak, so I’ve seen plenty of wins!” confesses the diehard St Kilda fan.

Perkins very first band, almost 30 years ago now, was Gary Coleman’s Lack of a Soul. Labeled as cowpunk or psychobilly, the great man admits to the unit performing, – œa 16 year olds version of country’ music that moulded a type of rockabilly and Johnny Cash music. “We used to do half a dozen of Johnny’s songs, and his style was where I started, but me being a restless creative type I quickly moved on from my Johnny roots and have been trying not to sing like him for all these years. Then someone’s come along and served me up the opportunity to go back and sing like him again,” he laughs.

So it begs the question, how does an artist find their own voice when it’s inevitable they’ll start out for a few years singing like their idols? “Well, that’s the thing,” Perkins gears up to explain. “I can do a lot of things with my voice whether it be the Captain Beefheart, Tom Waits, Howlin’ Wolf thing, to the gravelly kind of bluesy thing and in the latter years I’ve been really able to get hold of my falsetto… that real Curtis Mayfield soul falsetto,” he laughs.

Admitting to being “really pleased with the little muscle that hangs at the bottom of his neck”, Perkins considers the Johnny Cash vocal to be a breeze to recreate. “Johnny’s so easy for me because my voice sits natural, so to do his voice all I have to do is maybe roll my r’s a little extra.”

“The Man In Black will in some way be a live documentary of his hits. There’s like 22 songs placed in order so there’s a narrative that I share with Rachel Tidd who plays the June Carter Cash role,” he tells. “The producers and myself were debating whether or not this is an impersonation performance, and it kind of really is because we want to honour his sound as much as possible. I see no reason to start putting my own spin on it,” he respectfully acknowledges. “The producers don’t want this to seem like a tribute show, but I’ve never seen a tribute show, so I’m not sure what the difference is?” he jests.

Whilst Perkins admits that there is a solid script planned for the shows, there’s also room for off-the-cuff improvisation, to personalise the sets a little more as the performers relax into the shows. Joining Perkins will be The Tennessee Four made up of Ash Naylor, most notably of Even, who will perform all the acoustic rhythm as Perkins chimes in with some token Johnny style guitar. On lead guitar we have Rockwiz maestro James Black whom Perkins admits, “really nails the Luther Perkins sound”, and then fellow Rockwiz Orchestra bandmate Peter Luscombe on drums, as well as two time Australian Rolling Stone bass player of the year, Steve Hadley.

Looking at Cash through documentaries and hearing him on old and new records, he appeared conflicted and unsettled. A man dealing with public demands, his own perfectionism and wild narcotic-induced mood swings. So when did Tex Perkins first stand up and take notice of the great man? “I was a little kiddie, about the age of five or six when I first heard Johnny Cash. I remember hearing A Boy Named Sue on the radio and thought it was a great story, and one of my earliest thoughts was wondering what the line was that they beeped out,” he says. “It turned out to be son of a bitch and I’d hear the beep and say what’s that all about Dad?

But it was when Perkins was 16 years of age that he really embraced the sound of Johnny Cash. “It was just his simplicity and delivery and everything I did musically had to have a twang to it. Thinking back, The Cramps were a reference point for us along with Johnny,” he explains. “When I got a bit older and started to realise what I loved about him, was that compared to Elvis who had this sexiness and wildness, Johnny had this authority about him like you were listening to a prophet or something – just his tone in the voice,” Perkins reflects.

“Then there is the myth of Johnny,” Perkins continues. “Looking most recently at the movie I Walk The Line, just the duality between his religion, the wild times and the addiction to drugs and the pleasures of the road, so to speak. He always toyed with the myth, fully aware of his own image with his Middle American, even bible-belting following, but fed the outlaw image through both the way he presented himself and via lyrics”. Perkins notes just one of the many self-referential Johnny Cash songs where he flippantly mentions pills and addiction. “In Starkville City Jail there’s a line, – œWell, they emptied out my pockets / took my pills and guitar picks… Elvis would never do that or sing about it and he had just as big of a problem, but he never toyed with his image.”

“Johnny Cash didn’t seem to have a problem with his problem,” Perkins muses. “Any time Cash has been portrayed in popular culture it’s always been as this legendary iconic archetypal musician who gets into music, has success, gets into drugs, goes off the rails, finds a good woman, then is saved – but it’s not really like that,” Perkins tells. “The reality is that Johnny struggled right to the end – doing drugs until he passed. There was never any true redemption from this problem he had. But for all the problems along the way, it was just his longevity in recording and being musically active that I’ve admired, and for a ratbag like me, that’s inspiring,” he explains.

On the eve of The Man In Black theatre shows Perkins will replicate Cash’s late 1960s Folsom State Prison and San Quentin gigs with two performances at Laverton’s Port Phillip Prison outside of Melbourne. Surely even big Tex is a little apprehensive? “We’re doing two prison shows,” he tells. “One for the petty thieves, and the drug dealers and who knows what the range is on the other side! So it’s a full show for the lightweights and a 45 minute performance for the other boys – they can probably only hold them back for that amount of time!” and Perkins isn’t joking about his captive audience.

“This will surely throw in another whole level of challenge to the whole process. We’ve been led to believe that the general population is looking forward to the shows and are into the idea,” he admits. “It’s pretty cool adding another level of authenticity to the whole production. We’re not just some theatre poofs recreating shows in a comfortable environment, we’re actually going to start out doing the thing that Cash did – it’s all really quite postmodern isn’t it?” he affirms.

With The Man In Black production looking ahead to a seven week Brisbane run, Perkins is steadfast to admit that this is the biggest challenge of his musical career to date. “I’ve got the self belief that I’ll nail the shows but I have to maintain the correct enthusiasm and love for the show. My biggest fear is three months from now hating Johnny Cash and never wanting to hear another fucking song of his,” he laughs. To save Perkins state of mind, he can rely on another creative release, mixing up the run with the – œBlack Cattle Dog’ shows as well as a rather interesting clause offered to him if he hits meltdown mode.

“If I’m on the verge of insanity we have something in place,” he confirms. “During my research on Johnny I looked at Joaquin Phoenix and what happened to him after he portrayed Johnny… the matted hair, dark sunglasses and one word answers… watch this space!” Perkins concludes.

Catch Tex as Johnny in The Man In Black: The Johnny Cash Story:

1st – 12th September – Athenaeum Theatre, Melbourne
14th October for a limited season – Twelfth Night Theatre, Brisbane