The Backsliders @ The GovernorHindmarsh, Adelaide (12/11/09)

Wed 18th Nov, 2009 in Gig Reviews

For over 20 years (nearly 10 in their current permutation) the Blues duo of Aussie slide guitar god Dom Turner and drummer-cum-percussionist of Midnight Oil fame Rob Hirst have been polluting many a juke-joint and shotgun shack (well ‘Pub’ in the Australian context) with their loud, rough and tumble take on Blues Delta and otherwise. The success of this endeavour has been unique to the Sliders as they have a built up a following devoted enough to rise them above the commercial and critical languor usually (and unfairly) suffered by bluesmen in Oz. While they took their time to get going, perhaps due to the oppressive heat, and they seemed to lose the modest if attentive crowd at particular points, The Backsliders finally started running up the tempo and the volume near the end of the night, and truly proved why overly modest press junkets can rightfully use the term ‘Wall of Sound” in reference to their thumping and wailing.

It was a relatively inauspicious start to the night, handed down to us little Blueslings through the solo musings of Adelaide’s Patron of the Blues Sweet Baby James. In this town, you can see this consistent if not dazzling performer most nights of the weeks, doing the Pub tours, playing for free, for beers and in between. It dished up a platter of smart Acoustic Blues without getting lowdown and dirty at all until Ian Collard the harmonica player of choice to accompany the Sliders came out for a song. After James suggested that his entire view of the Harmonica and its potential changed on seeing this man perform years ago at a Blues Festival, the crowd assumed this was going to be something a little special. And it was. A rip-roaring guitar-solo-on-harmonica was spat forth with the fervour and passion (and skill) that this most beautiful and expressive of instruments deserves. This little duet was the kinda thing I came for and it lifted my personal journey to a more appropriate apex before the Sliders graced the stage.

Like James before them, The Backsliders started with much less than a bang. In fact my previous (and highly enjoyable) live adventures compered by the Backsliders have been unrelentingly loud and noisy, full of the dissonance and flare that can make such modern electric blues sound so genuine and fucked up. This time out, reservation was the name of the game. The heat may have played its wildish card on the energy of the night, but I thought it would add to the authenticity, I mean, it seems like a perfect idea, beads of thick sweat running down your forehead while being blown away but rustic Mississippi Delta Blues. But early on songs like “Evil Cloud” that roll and tumble with a sinister shuffle, came off as a little tired, without the impact these guys can so easily generate. This relaxed demeanour was better suited to songs that soon followed like Vietnam People a beautiful acoustic elegy about the wonders of Vietnam as filtered by the philanthropic and humanitarian Dom Turner. It lifted for a second witg the literate and humorous Fuck You, Shock Jock from their second most recent album Left Field Holler (of which much of the gig was taken) as the crowd could laugh at the demureness of his attitude but jive to the looseness of his shambolic slide. All during this Collard was busting out some of the most aggressive, flexible, limber and let’s face it spectacular harmonica you’re gonna hear. Whether it be solo wailing over the top of a concrete bed of heavy blues, or adding the texture and the rumble that enlarges the Slider’s sound he consistently made his harmonica sound as dexterous and electric as a Cream era Clapton guitar solo. Perhaps this was most obvious on one of the Sliders more classic tracks _Thinkin’ Man’s Drinkin Man’ which gave the crowd its first piece-o’-real-juicy blues to munch on.

What shortly followed was a quick foray into a double cover salvo of Bob Dylan’s Ballad of Hollis Brown which was given a haunting back-alley in the country feel that Dylan’s straight out Mid-Western protest original never had and the Stones’ Gimme Shelter which probably didn’t work as well, maybe only because the original is masterwork of different sounds, impassioned vocals and 7 or 8 amphetamine fuelled rock converts creating one of the sixties best one song offerings. It seemed to kick it all in though and then we started to get what we want. An entirely seated crowd in a for once, spacious Gov started to jive around in their seats and feel the heat in every good way as The Sliders launched into Robert Johnson’s Preachin’ Blues which stole the crowd.

These guys take their minimalism of materials and manufacture a tornado of twisted Bluesy wash. Rob Hirst even gets a little visually and aurally funky as proven when he did his ‘percussion thing’ playing a drum solo with seemingly every single object that could make a sound on stage. The encore kept it all soaring upwards peaking with the mellow vocal refrain of “Today’s the day you’re gonna drift away”. And that’s what the crowd did, after near two hours of gig, an hour of which was wholly satisfying, we drifted away, bluesed up and a little lost, finally catching what we paid for, that “Delta Blues Wall Of Sound”.