From Lynda:

Apologies for taking so long to write about the Tuesday night Vanguard show - the first in a series of shows at the Vanguard, as Russell Crowe and his accomplished band become the Vanguard's "artists in residence" for the month of December, and presumably into January as well - but the combination of a thought-provoking show and the aftereffects of the unexpected pleasure that is Cooper's Stout has made for slow going on the writing front today. But an afternoon spent out on the balcony watching the rain pelt the palm trees (I grew up with palm trees, and being around them again feels a little like coming home) and tap dance across the pool has done wonders for both thought-process clarity and aftereffect-alleviation. More and more, I'm finding that Australia is an excellent place for the acquisition of clarity, if maybe also an equally excellent place for the inducement of aftereffects.

Australia is apparently also an excellent place for the maturation of a new band, perhaps better to say the emergence (or "evolution") of a new band from the disparate elements of other bands, musical metamorphosis and transmutation via artistic alchemy. Perhaps the "philosopher's stone" is as indigenous to Australia as is the opal. This does seem to be the kind of place where the possible strides on confident feet across firm ground beneath a sunny sky, the perfect place to be fearless enough to set one's hand and heart toward turning that which is into that which can be.

Chief among the repertoire of most-often-asked questions I hear, second only to the question of economics (which was asked last night by two very nice men who both play the same instrument with comparably consummate skill, though each got a different answer to that same question) is the question that asks for the why and the wherefore of seeing shows, especially long strings of shows by the same band; out of all the possible responses with their differing truth content, it is the fascination with all of the permutations of the possible that comes the closest to being an answer for those who ask to get an answer. There are some combinations of elements within which the potential reactions come close to being unlimited, especially when the most potent catalyst comes along; being able to witness that process of the possible made tangible - especially when it can be seen from the beginning - is a little like being witness to an act of creation taking place again and again and again each night, no six-day limits on this endeavour; if being able to witness the possible coming into being before my eyes were ever to lose its capacity to inspire wonder and awe, something precious would have slipped away, leaving a smaller, quieter, and ultimately sadder world behind in its absence.

When the trajectory of the possible is swift and steep, all the more cause for that wonder and awe. The show at Grand Central in Melbourne was good; the show at the Vanguard in Sydney was better. There was even more confidence, more authority, more command and more flair, and with this show, it was all present from the opening chord to the closing chorus. This band is indeed maturing/evolving - maybe best to say they are growing "by leap and bound" since there is so much noticeable progress to be seen from the one show to the next - and if they keep up this confident pace toward the possible, the need to answer at least one of those most-frequently-asked questions might happily disappear in the face of the patently self-evident answer.

The Vanguard is an unexpectedly classy little place, its exterior unprepossessing in the midst of a Newtown street lined with an intriguing hodgepodge of multi-ethnic cuisine, food markets, secondhand bookstores, and businesses celebrating alternative lifestyles.

But once you go inside, the narrow and softly lighted venue feels like a cosily intimate (capacity less than 200, with the main floor mostly filled with dinner tables and the GA seating/standing area near the rear and upstairs) jazz club, especially with that discordantly concordant pink-and-green bedecked stage. That tiny stage, I should add. When I first saw that stage the night before this show, it was clear that it was going to be a challenge working out a set-up that could accommodate all seven band members, but the brief glimpse I got of that set-up taking place the next day showed me that Russell has the good sense to trust the best person to do the job of putting his stage in proper order. Sure enough, they would wind up configured differently from how it was at Grand Central, and sure enough, it would all work out beautifully.

What also worked out beautifully was the dinner. Once we were told that barramundi is a kind of cod, that was all we needed to know; finding out it is absolutely delicious was simply the bonus, almost as much of a bonus as the Cooper's discovery. The ambiance was impeccable, the food was wonderful, and we even had excellent company at the next table - Angela from the lovely town of Dildo (yes, you read that right), Newfoundland, and her Australian hubby were next to us, she in her custom-made Great Big Sea shirt which would get a smile and a wink from Alan later on in the show. The opener - a cool-jazz singer-songwriter from Brisbane named Mark Sholtez, who was accompanied by Bruce, an skilled guitarist who would be a perfect pairing with Newfoundland's consummate instrumentalist Duane Andrews - sang some well-written originals and pleasantly mellow cover songs, all of which went down well as accompaniment to the baked chocolate custard slathered in whipped cream, as well as to yet another Cooper's stout.

But once the first few recorded notes of Weather With You were heard, the chocolate custard and even the Cooper's were mostly forgotten. It was time for the Main Event.

Set List

Weight Of A Man
How Did We Get From Saying I Love You
Land Of The Second Chance
Mickey
Worst In The World
Swept Away Bayou
Raewyn
Miss My Mind
Mr. Harris
Things Have Got To Change
Memorial Day
What Do You Want Me To Forget
One Good Year
Another Girl
Testify

Encore
My Hand, My Heart
Breathless
Folsom
Easy And Free
Molly Malone

Where Grand Central had started out a little low-key, this show hit its full stride early and maintained the pace throughout, and, once again, the music was played with accomplished skill and polished precision. As they were coming to the end of How Did We Get and the sound was so rich and full, Stewart playing the horn and Stuart the keyboards and Bones' bass part making the floor pulsate, and then Russell and Alan started singing, and it suddenly occurred to me that if I had just walked in off the street, not having a clue about Russell Crowe or Alan Doyle or any of the histories of the other musicians on that stage, if I had simply been walking down a street and heard the muffled sound of their music, I would have been drawn in by how good that music sounded. And once I did come in, what would have closed the deal for me would be the emotional honesty and the poignant courage of the lyrics of so many of the My Hand, My Heart songs. Add all of the energy of the interaction between the players during the performance, especially the way they smile at one another when they know they have just played it flawlessly - most of all what is clearly the genuine affection and inarguably the palpable electricity between Russell and Alan, who are a pair both matched and matchless - and that would be all that was needed to win my attention, respect, enthusiasm, and support.

Not to say that there isn't even more to appreciate, and chief among that "more" are Russell's storytelling skills and his penchant for the quotable quote. As intro to Land Of The Second Chance, Russell once again told the tale - and when Russell tells a tale, he tells it with his whole body, his face and hands and posture all playing expressively supporting roles - of how he met Mario at Bill & Tony's, doing dual duty as himself and also as an exquisitely-accented Mario, adding in new details from the previous show's version of the story, and then capping it off with the perfectly succcinct summation: "And then we put Mario's life story to the chorus we had already written."

Before going into the next song, Russell peered up into the bright stagelights (which seemed even brighter given the contrast with how dimly lit it was offstage), and asked it those lights could be turned down to make it possible for them to actually see their crowd, getting agreement from Alan whose "I feel like a moose" comment was certainly appreciated by the two Newfoundlanders up front; the stage lights gradually went down (after Stewart added "a little more, please?"), and much of the distancing barrier that divides the world into those who are on stage and those who are not on stage was dissolved, creating a greater feeling of closeness and sharing and intimacy. It also made it rather hard to read the set list, and when Russell peered down at his list and asked "What are we gonna do next?" they wound up inadvertently changing the order by doing Mickey ahead of Worst In The World. Or maybe it wasn't the lack of light; maybe Russell was just eager and impatient to go into some more of his storytelling nonpareil, with it now being all about Mickey, a man who has done most everything - been abused, been involved in armed robberies, as well as in drugs and organised crimes and who, by all rights, "should have died 50 fucking times". Again, it was time to play another role as Russell became Mickey, speaking in Jerseyesque gangster-ese about how the song's main character had been "involved" on two major rock artists' CDs in the 70s ("involved" as in being the coke dealer) and who once told Russell (with this all being said in that perfect accent, an expression of unrepentant mischief on his face), "Yeah, I put four houses, 2 boats, a Cadillac, and a motorcycle up my fucking nose." Having brought Mickey to life for us, it was now time to sing about a man who squarely faces who and what he has been and will be.

No long explanations needed for the song that got them back on track with the set list order: "La, la, la, la, la...it's a long fucking story - and it's all self-explanatory," which does seem a very apt intro to Worst In The World. By now, Russell was well (and deservedly) into rock-star mode, both the hip swivel and the the hair shake coming into play (Alan has the flip and Russell the shake - there is something about flying hair that somehow invariably manages to raise the temperature in the room a few degrees). He introduced Swept Away Bayou as the song requiring audience participation, but it's the harmonies the give this one so much impact. Another moving recounting of the story of the writing of Raewyn, as well as what I thought was the quote of the evening:

"This is the first song Alan and I wrote together. This is why we decided to write a second song."

My own favourite song written by Russell and Alan is Weight Of A Man, and I also love it when they do the rockers - Testify and Worst In The World and the like - most especially the ones where Alan gets to set the acoustic down and take the type of guitar he was meant to play into his hands. I love the fullness of their sound, instrumentally and vocally, and the skill with which it has been arranged and is played But for all of that, I still believe the single most powerful moment of their shows so far may very well be when it is just Russell and Alan standing side by side during Raewyn, each with his eyes closed tightly, Russell's hands wrapped around the mic stand, Alan's fingers moving with with gentle precision on the guitar strings, both singing with so much emotion, their voices a seamless blend - together, the two of them express and embody the song's mixture of grief and hope, and the open, unapologetic and ultimately vulnerable passion they put into their first song written together is touching and moving to an extent that makes me so thankful for that decision to write the second song, and all of the others that have followed and that I hope will follow. From the first time I ever saw Alan, he has always been an artist who writes from the heart and who performs from the heart, no "I'm too cool and/or too self-protective to let on that to have written this song and to be able to perform it to this audience is something that means the world to me" for Alan, and the way he wears his heart on his sleeve has been what I love the most about the kind of writer and performer he is; there is an emotional honesty in his songs that comes from an emotional honesty in the writer and the performer, and that emotional honesty the heart and soul of the art, at least to my own tastes. More and more, what I see when I see Russell next to Alan on stage is a doubling of that emotional honesty, a kinship of artistic creation and interpretation. It might not be everyone's cup of tea - for some, "cool" will always be the highest expression, and some are drawn to the distant, the disdainful, even the disparaging - but to me, it's looking as if the man who does this better than most any other I've come across has found a like-minded brother in arts.

Another thing I have definitely enjoyed in these shows is how, to paraphrase that other Preacher, there is a time to sit back and be quietly moved and a time to stand up and be loudly thrilled, a time to dance and a time to sing, a time to laugh and a time to cry, and this show moves through those different moods and modes like a play moving through each scene and act; it is a show that tells a story of sorts - it has a beginning, a middle, and an end - that works to bring about a wide range of emotional responses in the audience. At a time when so many bands wind up playing most if not all of their shows within a narrower range (usually because the majority of their fans balk at accepting those changes in mood and mode, preferring the "pure and uncomplicated" experience instead - thus the "make me happy" show and the "wallow in angst" show and the "be pissed at the world" show), the feel of these shows is more like savouring a richly varied multi-course meal as opposed to dining on a meal comprised of separate courses all made up of one single food item.

Miss My Mind and Mr. Harris follow directly after Raewyn and together they do create their own distinct mood for this particular chapter of the evening's story, reflective and thoughtful and moving. The story about Richard Harris in the midst of Mr. Harris was even better this time, with more detail and description, and even more power when they went back into the final harmonies - the song is a tour de force piece of performance art. Once one has hit a peak, it's time to change gears, and this is exactly what they do; as Russell said, "Now it's time to do some toe-tapping stuff," and the segue to Things Have Got To Change (done at a point when the emotional direction of the set is also changing) is a perfect example of the right way to put together a set list. Memorial Day follows, and I'll have to admit that so far this is the one song in their set that's not quite doing it for me, maybe largely because so far they've struggled with getting the lead vocal clear enough; I only know what Russell's singing because I looked it up online - the lyrics are almost impossible to make out from hearing it sung, which is a shame since they are good lyrics and they deserve to be heard.

Any surrendered momentum gets picked right back up again when Russell is handed his Gretsch (not the orange one tonight, this time an almost-as-gorgeous black and white one), and they tear into What Do You Want Me To Forget. During this song, I was watching Russell rocking out on his electric guitar to my left (ending the song with a quintessential rock-and-roll leap high into the air), and Dean was laying down the lead solo on his electric guitar to my right, and there was Alan in the middle, managing to make his acoustic guitar fully as sexy and cool as those two electrics on either side of him, although I was still wishing he could plug in and let loose, but since he had been on the acoustic all night in Melbourne, that didn't seem too likely to happen.

Miss My Mind was another perfectly placed pace change, followed by even more changes, all of them welcome, one of them the most welcome of all. First, Russell declared that the "ban on dancing" was officially lifted and said that to say that "I wanted to dance but I didn't because the person in front of me wasn't dancing and I didn't want to look fucking desperate to dance" was not an acceptable excuse. As a handful of us were moving up to the edge of the stage, that was when the Most Welcome Change took place - the guitar tech fellow reached down and pulled out a guitar I had already noticed was one not seen before (the rack of guitars was on the floor in front of the stage about a meter away from me, so I had ample opportunity to admire the wares), and handed it to Alan, and I promptly forgot about dancing or not dancing and even about breathing or not breathing. For those who have been seeing Russell play live, it's probably not such a unique thing to see him play the electric, but I spent from March of 2001 when I first saw Alan play to December of 2003 when I finally saw Alan play his Les Paul on a GBS stage asking why it was this man was not ever playing the electric guitar. When you have to wait such a long time to get something you want badly, finally getting that long-desired thing is even more pleasurable, which is why every time Alan wraps his hands around any electric guitar, I tend to lose track of most other details (same rationale with seeing him in that suit - probably old hat for Russell's fans, but something both new and beautiful when it comes to Alan, who looks even better in that suit, as well as in that well-fitting black shirt, than even a very fertile imagination guessed he would, though I wish he would follow Russell's lead and maybe even go one or two better when it comes to eschewing the buttoning up of that shirt. And now I have gotten myself distracted and completely lost my train of thought, much the same as what happened at the show as soon as he took possession of that guitar. They went into Another Girl, and any remnant of focus I still had left went straight out the window with that quick little pick slide Alan did. If ever anyone wants the secret to making me write shorter reports, all it would take is a few of Alan's pick slides here and there because then I wouldn't remember much else to be writing a long report about. Kind of an Achilles' heel sort of issue for me.

It was time for Testify, so it was tine for The Preacher as well. I love The Preacher so much that I think Russell should do a whole show in that character one of these days. It wound up being a fascinating demonstration of character embodiment juxtaposed with character analysis. First Russell did the part about the mural on the wall and the gold crosses that would be put up as the faithful obeyed The Preacher's exhortation to Eat For Jesus. Then he mentioned that he had been watching televangelists recently and while he wasn't saying that they should not be on the air, his opinion of the merit of their message was clear enough - with a look of derisive wonder on his face, he repeated what he had heard one such televangelist say about how people need to suppress their instinct and their feelings because instinct and feeling will only get in the way of finding God. "Can you fucking believe that?" he asked, shaking his head. "It's when you listen to your instincts and your feelings that you know that there's something else there. It's when you suppress your instincts and your feelings that you start thinking that what George Bush is doing is right." That last comment seemed to piss one American there off about equally as much as it won my own American approval.

And from there, Russell went back to character embodiment, once again becoming The Preacher, and hilariously so, now telling the tale of how it was while watching The Poseidon Adventure as a young lad that he was inspired by the courage of the man of God in that movie, but even more inspired by Shelley Winters, who was ultimately the cause of The Preacher becoming The Preacher: "I'll tell you....when the big lady went down, I got a hard on. It was that tumescence that lead me to God." By now there were one of two expressions on most of the faces I could see - wide-eyed wonder or uncontrolled laughter. Being one of the latter group, it got even funnier when Russell slipped and mentioned putting "a gold cross on the hill of Calgary". That one was immediately noticed by Alan, the two Newfoundlanders, and me and we were laughing hard while Russell was asking "What the fuck did I just say?" Alan managed to tell him between giggles and that got Russell going too, putting the blame on his close stage proximity to a Canadian. By now it was completely silly and thoroughly fun and I every time I thought about the juxtaposition of "Shelley Winters" and "tumescence" I started to laugh all over again. But then they started to play Testify and it became fast and furious and I forgot all about Shelley Winters.

They barely went off before Russell and Stuart came back on (the venue had a midnight closing time and it was getting close to the Cinderella hour) to do My Hand, My Heart, The same as with Mr. Harris and Land Of The Second Chance, the story of the writing of the song - "adding my own two cents to the genre of drinking songs" - was just a bit more detailed and elaborate, the tale getting better with each successive telling. Now it was his "darling wife" to whom he told his plans for writing a song about the evils of drink, and now her response was "Good, you're maturing. It will be good for our son to have a father who's concerned about these things." No change to the "fuck off" part, or to her (quite perceptive) inability to hear any apology in the song, hearing instead a song written to be sung along to by a bunch of pissed people at the pub. The self-deprecation of the story works perfectly with the tone of the song itself, story and song once again combining to make for a very effective piece of performance art.

Breathless - which Russell called "a song that's a prayer" - was introduced by saying that when the song had been played for songwriter Nick Cave, his response was comprised of one word: "Cool." Russell and Alan exchanged a look and nodded at each other. "And that's cool," Russell said. Then they played it well enough to make the title come true, for those on and those off stage alike.

Folsom followed Breathless and became an "I can play my instrument harder than you're playing your instrument" competition, which has to be one of the best kinds of competitions around. They were all magnificent, but Alan had the winner's advantage of the blurred strum hand and that seductively curled lip, though Russell did some great rear-view shimmying and a perfectly timed and gracefully dramatic leap at the end, both of which could have earned him enough points to win with a judge who's not such a hopeless sucker for that particular particular hand and that particular lip. The segue into Easy and Free was swift, though time was taken to teach the audience its singalong lines. They didn't really go back off again. Instead, Russell said he had a question that had a one-word answer, "stay or go". While he was trying to explain how they were done now and they could just piss off instead of doing one more, the crowd was already calling out for them to stay, and then Russell said that if they were going to stay, they were going to do the best pub song ever written, and that he was going to call it that even if he might get into trouble from those with differing opinions. Molly Malone does make for a good show-ender in the way it gets most everyone to sing along, and Alan does sing it beautifully, though I have to admit that I have a persistent fondness for hearing Alan do Keep Your Hands To Yourself. Or maybe he could just play the electric on Molly Malone, perhaps do a pick slide or two or three. That might make it so no one could possibly argue against it being the best pub song ever. It would at least bring no argument from me.

Once the show came to a close, those who had to be on the go the next day cleared out quickly, and those whose purpose in life it is to linger, lingered. Those of us who choose to observe and ponder did what we do best, or at least as well as the Cooper's allowed. The first show of the Vanguard residency was done, and it had been done very well. Residencies are usually played differently from single-event shows, since in a residency it's so likely that the artists will be playing to many of the same people over the course of the run; the idea is most often to build a support base by getting people to come back, and with luck, to bring their friends with them when they do. Residencies are about building relationships, and it's going to be interesting to follow the course and the development of this one. Which is not to say that all such intellectual curiousity won't temporarily go on hiatus when the guitars are being pounded and the pick is sliding up the guitar's neck and the hips are swaying and the hair is flying and the lip is curling, maybe even more so when I hear those blended voices and see two faces filled with such open emotion. But all of those things, as distracting as they sometimes are, are still part and parcel of witnessing the possible come into being. With this group of musicians just beginning to come into the fullness of their own potential, and in this place where that which might be seems to be sought after more than it is feared, the possible is looking like a good bet. The Preacher might dust off the hymnal and come up with an "All things are possible if you'll only believe." And I just might agree with him if he did.