Ross Hossack takes a deep breath before explaining how six school friends with a shared interest in 60s psyche dived into deeper, darker musical waters to emerge at the forefront of the current prog revival. “The band really came out of us all being musical obsessives,” the Diagonal keyboardist says. “We’d bump into one another in record shops, poring over the same sections, or go round to each others’ houses with a stack of records.

“At first it was the big names like Yes and Van Der Graff Generator, but over the last couple of years, especially with the way the internet has opened up your ability to research, we’ve gone further into the more obscure stuff – Eastern European, Italian and French, all sorts.”

Prog is a dangerous elixir. You start off thinking you can handle a little King Crimson, then before you know it you’re nursing a Magma addiction. In their voyage of musical discovery, Diagonal traversed roads young men have not navigated for generations, like classical and even that most maligned of genres, jazz rock (see boxout).
It’s all the more surprising, then, to discover that the Brighton-based band’s self-titled debut album was produced by Liam Watson, the analogue guru better known for twiddling knobs for garage bands.

“We recorded a single at Toe Rag last year and got a feel for each other,” says Ross. “We didn’t know what it would be like working in a stripped-back analogue studio. But we enjoyed it, so we went back and did the album there. Liam’s great. He was really really enthusiastic about everything.”

That debut album is an essential purchase for anyone curious about the direction 21st-century prog is taking, but tracks like the 11-minute Semi-Permeable Men-Brain (on this month’s CD) beg the question: do Diagonal have a concept album up their sleeve?

“Actually we did sit down about a year ago and tried to come up with an elaborate concept track,” Ross chuckles. It was going to be ridiculously long – a good 25 minutes – and it involved… dragons.

“Eventually we just looked at each other in the practice room and decided, ‘This isn’t really us’. But I admire any band who can do that sort of thing. It’s like any art, isn’t it? It’s always good to lose yourself and go off on a bit of a fantasy.” WS

For more info go to the Diagonal Myspace.

FOR FANS OF:

“A lot of jazz rock is really intense,” says Ross. “I don’t think you can just jump straight in without building up to it. Certainly the first port of call for me was Mahavishnu Orchestra’s The Inner Mounting Flame. It’s brilliant. I think a lot of people can listen to it. It’s a good starting point if you want to discover jazz rock.”

WORDS: Will Simpson

“The first thing that people say to us is never: ‘I like your music,’ but ‘I like your hair, mate’,” says Caimbo frontman Leo Robarts, laughing at the absurdity. Well, there’s certainly no denying it – Robarts and his bandmates are blessed with the sort of healthy, flowing locks you’re more likely to see in shampoo ads than on the heads of rock bands. One magazine has already written about the band and used the somewhat ambiguous headline ‘Hair rock returns!’ Caimbo, though, are taking this as a compliment.

“I think it’s cool,” guitarist Piers Mortimer says chirpily. “It makes us stand out from everyone else who’s out there. At the moment, you see loads of bands with that short pretentious indie style rather than the free-flowing 60s thing we’ve got.”
Piers and Leo first met Ali Sloane (bass) and Dave Cullin (drums) at boarding school, and the band was eventually named after a slang word they invented for their home town of Cambridge. But with their unashamedly American sound the four-piece already look set to move on to larger venues than the Fenland pub circuit they currently frequent.
“We all grew up on The Police, U2, The Cult and that kind of stuff,” Mortimer explains. “I was a huge Bon Jovi fan as a kid. We’ve always loved that kind of… I don’t want to say ‘stadium rock’, but that big sound that people associate with America. But that’s not a bad thing. I’m quite enjoying the fact that people think we sound American.”
The group went over to their spiritual home of Los Angeles to mix their debut album, Electric Dreams, with Pearl Jam producer Tim Palmer. And, as Mortimer explains, they managed to find time to road-test the songs on the locals.
“We were walking along Venice Beach one day and got talking to these guys who run this massive hat stall. They asked us if they could play our CD over their system. Luckily we had a copy on us. By about track three this huge crowd had gathered. There were a whole load of tramps dancing, a guy in a business suit, and even a guy on a skateboard who had no arms and legs. It was totally surreal. We really should have filmed it for a video.”
Caimbo might be influenced by their 80s antecedents but Electric Dreams pulls off the neat trick of sounding like it could only have been recorded in 2008. “That’s very important,” Mortimer insists. “If you don’t sound modern then people will instantly compare you to someone else.”
“We don’t want to sound like a museum piece,” Robarts adds, “but we were all always going to play classic rock cos that’s what we were brought up on and that’s what we love.”

Check out Caimbo’s Myspace.

Like Caimbo? Check out our other tips for the top in our introducings section!

WORDS: DAVE LING
 
Shinedown might just be the best band you’ve never heard of. The Jacksonville, Florida-based five-piece’s irresistible mixture of propulsive rock guitars and soaring choruses made them an instant hit in the US, where their 2003 debut album Leave A Whisper sold a million copies. Now they’re focusing on Britain.

So-called ‘modern rock’ bands are 10-a-cent in the US, but the overwhelming quality of Shinedown’s third, current album The Sound Of Madness leaves Seether, Fuel, Saliva, Puddle Of Mudd and even Staind – the fellow post-grungers they’re most often referenced to – eating their dust.

“Modern rock, hard rock, metal… I won’t put Shinedown into a category,” protests singer Brent Smith. “We’re a great arena rock band, we play rock’n’roll, period.” Smith is from the Deep South, although his band grew up on Iron Maiden, AC/DC, Journey, Kansas, James Brown, and even soul and R&B. In 2004 Shinedown released a version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Simple Man as a single. Indeed their earliest gigs were at the Freebird Live, a Jacksonville beach club owned by original Skynyrd singer Ronnie Van Zant’s widow, Judy. “That Southern influence could be heard on the first two albums, but it’s not as apparent on the new one,” Smith says.

Last year, in a particularly messy split, guitarist Jasin Todd and bassist Brad Stewart were sacked, with just Smith and drummer Barry Kerch remaining from their original line-up. However, it was something of a coup that Shinedown’s new blood included Nick Perri, a former guitarist with Classic Rock favourites Silvertide. “I’ve known Nick for almost six years, and it was our incredibly good fortune that he’d just stopped working with [ex-Jane’s Addiction singer] Perry Farrell in Satellite Party when all our internal shit went down,” Smith explains.

Last year, they got a taste of old school rock’n’roll excess – and a lesson in, um, hygiene – when they opened for Van Halen. “Edward watched us from the side of the stage every night,” says Smith. “Once, he thought I didn’t wash my hands in the bathroom. He pissed all over our deli tray, stubbed out his cigarette in a piece of turkey and handed it to me. I laughed for days afterwards.”

Shinedown’s next  UK dates are in January, commencing at London’s Underworld on the 21st. And if appearing in a basement beneath a pub in Camden sounds insalubrious after The Sound Of Madness smashed its way into the US chart chart at No. 8, Smith isn’t complaining. “It’s our first domestic release in Britain,” he says. “And although our very first record was extremely successful, we toured it for 24 months straight – 500-odd shows – so we’re not afraid of hard work. It’s like starting from scratch again, but we’ve no problem with that.”
 

The Sound Of Madness is out now on Atlantic Records.
For more info, visit www.shinedown.com.

 
FOR FANS OF…
 
“The album that changed my life was Led Zeppelin IV,” says Shinedown drummer Barry Kerch. “All I can say is When The Levee Breaks – Bonham’s groove is just too much. He made me the drummer I am today. Also, Stairway To Heaven. How can you not like it? Even if it has been overplayed on the radio. There is a reason – it’s good!

“Yeah, that did feel pretty good,” recalls 18-year-old Oli Brown of his transition from school bus to tour bus. “School didn’t go well for me. The guitar came into my life and I stopped trying. It was an easy decision not to go to university. Everything I need to know, I can learn on the road.”

Classic Rock joins Brown in his new classroom ­a Transit van racing towards Chislehurst, where tonight his three-piece band will air debut album Open Road for the blues aficionados with their ears to the ground. Brown is likeable and modest; patently unaware of his talent and how far it could take him; wary that purists might dismiss him as a kid from Norwich, but not trying to pretend he¹s anything else.

“When I started playing at 16,” he says, “I didn¹t even try to understand the lineage of the blues. I was just interested in playing solos. But I was taken out to America in the summer of 2005 by a band called Blinddog Smokin’ and they gave me my wings. Those guys sat me down every night ­ for two months and taught me all about the blues. They’d also tell me things to avoid.”

And he’s had other mentors: “Robben Ford was fantastic. At the end of our tour together he told me what I should be doing with my playing. John Mayall gave me advice. Walter Trout sat me down for two hours. Every musician I meet, I¹ll ask questions.”

Open Road suggests Brown isn’t about to become an identikit 12-bar bore. Witness the Hendrix grooves of Shade Of Grey and the dirty funk of Psycho.

“I try to get across different styles,” he says, “and I haven’t had purists yelling at me yet. Who’s the Psycho? She’s a disturbing girl who watched me while I was asleep. I’m not trying to attract these women!”

Touring Europe with Blues Caravan in January then returning to the UK for an extensive headline tour in March, as Oli points out, the album is really just a trimming to the main event: the gig.

“For me, blues can¹t come across on a CD,” he concludes. “I¹d be very disappointed if my show wasn¹t better than the album. It’s something you’ve got to see live. It’s got to feel personal.”

Open Road is out now on Ruf Records.

For fans of:

“Right now, I’m listening to Joe Bonamassa’s You And Me,” says Oli Brown. “I just love his approach to playing and he has such a great, soulful voice. He’s new to me ­ a friend passed the CD on to me ­ but he sounds fantastic, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he influences me in the future.”

Words: Ian Fortnam

Abandon all preconceptions, for Rose Kemp’s singularly passionate muse bears no resemblance whatsoever to the folk-infused traditionalism practised by her parents Steeleye Span’s Maddy Prior and Rick Kemp. Though retaining the socio-political urgency of folk’s lyrics and inheriting her mother’s spine-tinglingly powerful vocal clarity, Rose combines drone dynamics with rock crescendos to stunning effect.

Her latest solo album Unholy Majesty, produced and mixed by Foo Fighters/Biffy Clyro sonic architect Chris Sheldon, combines enigmatic lyrics (“It’s important to me that people take their own experience and project it onto the basic canvas of what I’ve written”) with hypnotic repetition (the influence of Black Sabbath and drone artists like Earth and Om). Climactic closer The Unholy, an ever-evolving beast of a composition that – in its studio incarnation – stretches toward ten minutes, encapsulates Rose Kemp’s singular talent perfectly. Its denuded solo fragility gradually metamorphosing toward an extended band coda that simply will not let up, it’ll leave you emotionally exhausted.

In her early teens Rose sang, toured and wrote with her parents in a number of projects (including Steeleye Span). It was a natural consequence of growing up on the road rather than a concerted effort by her folks to recruit her into the family business.

“I certainly wasn’t taken to stage school and made to dress up in red sequins and dance,” says Rose of her ‘showbiz’ upbringing. “Sometimes I’d be in the studio with my dad and he’d say, ‘Do you think we should have the snare louder?’ That kind of thing. It was just natural. I wasn’t dragged to festivals, ceilidhs and barn dances every five minutes. I don’t suppose they even noticed my ambitions at first they were always busy getting on with their own careers. One day I just said, ‘I wanna be a songwriter’ and they said, ‘That’s very nice, dear’. And that’s what I did.”

Once Bristol-based Rose finally entered the music business, she didn’t much like what she saw: “Money, and the lack of it, is killing music. The wonderful music business of which my parents spoke to me as a child is sadly gone. I hoped to be earning enough money to work in a studio where I could actually reach the potential of my talent and have the chance to have a string section and do all the things that are in my head, but those times are gone. People are writing crap just to get signed. It does upset me, as it upsets anyone who lives through music and lives for music.”

On a self-righteous roll, Rose sets her sights on post-X Factor plasticity. “People that have worked with me in the past have said, ‘Unless you’ve got an image that already works, fits a template that we know has a success rate, we can’t work with you’. And that doesn’t wash with me. The people that I work with accept that I’m gonna do whatever the hell I wanna damn do. A lot people want success more than they want to make a difference to the history of music, but that’s never gonna be the way I work.”

PURPLE ROSE

The one key ingredient of her music that gives Rose Kemp “joy every day” is prog.
And her first step on the progressive path?
“Burn by Deep Purple. Others like Gong, Tangerine Dream, Can, Henry Cow, Crimson, Goblin, Van Der Graaf came later, but Deep Purple started it all. I’ve got everything they’ve ever made, a whole section of my vinyl is Purple, but I’d have to say Burn. Given they’ve done some wonderful, wonderful work, that’s the one that started it all for me.”

Jazz rock, or fusion, was the last gasp of jazz, the final surge of energy and creative power before lapsing into the hideous heritage industry that it has become today. Jazz rock is pretty hard to define. For bands like the Mahavishnu Orchestra it involved hard rock structures but with complex, improvisational elements.

Rock and jazz have a few ancestors in common – the blues, even ragtime – but it wasn’t until the mid-60s that the two converged in what came to be known as jazz rock/fusion. Bands like The Grateful Dead, The Byrds and The Doors cited jazzers such as John Coltrane as major influences (listen to The Doors’ Light My Fire back to back with Coltrane’s Ole), although jazz fans and musicians tended to regard most rock as inferior.

By 1967, rock had become more creative, and for the first time jazz artists began to take influences from the likes of Jimi Hendrix, James Brown, The Beatles and Sly & The Family Stone. There were also commercial considerations: jazz had waned as the dominant form of popular music.

It was a two-way street: rock artists like Jeff Beck, Ginger Baker and the late, great Tommy Bolin wanted to stretch themselves as musicians, and acceptance by the jazz fraternity was like passing the cycling proficiency test. Had he lived, there’s little doubt that Hendrix would have followed the logical course set by his Band Of Gypsies and become a jazz-rock star.

From roughly 1967 until the mid-80s, the intermarriage of jazz and rock produced some of the most stunning, original and mesmerising music of the 20th century (to be fair, it also produced more than its fair share of unlistenable toss.) Much of what we know as progressive rock – Yes, ELP, post-Red King Crimson – was essentially jazz rock lite. Today we can still hear the influence of the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Miles Davis in bands as diverse as Tool, Mastodon and The Mars Volta.

Don’t fear the jazzer, dive right in. (Tommy Udo)

Essential – The Classics

MAHAVISHNU ORCHESTRA
Birds Of Fire
CBS, 1972
“A person would be a moron not to appreciate [John] McLaughlin’s technique,” Frank Zappa once said. “The guy has certainly found out how to operate a guitar as
if it were a machine-gun.”
Birds Of Fire was the Mahavishnu Orchestra at their absolute best, a multi-ingredient fusion – jazz, rock, blues, Celtic folk, Indian classical – churned out at an amazing breakneck speed.
John McLaughlin’s guitar work was staggering, and keyboard player Jan Hammer and violinist Jerry Goodman were also virtuosos. The seemingly telepathic interplay and improvisation is a joy to hear.

JEFF BECK
Wired
CBS, 1976
Beck was one of the few rockers to make the transition to jazz. His 1976 masterpiece Wired – particularly his cover of Charles Mingus’s Goodbye Pork Pie Hat – is one of the few albums you could describe as jaw-dropping and mean it.
Entirely instrumental, and at just under 35 minutes comparatively short, Wired is an album that passes in a blur of high-speed funk, ultra-heavy technoflash guitar solos and thrilling power chords. Yes, it’s Beck shamelessly showing off, but it’s hardly self-indulgent.
It’s like a shopping list of musical ideas and directions, each of which could have spawned an entire album in its own right. Marvellous.

Superior – The Albums That Helped Build the Genre

BILLY COBHAM
Spectrum
Atlantic, 1973
As the drummer with Miles Davis and the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Cobham was one of the foremost musos of his generation. Spectrum, though, is more than a bunch of difficult drum solos.
Opening with the truly amazing Quadrant 4 – which highlights the high-speed roller-coaster guitar of the young Tommy Bolin – Spectrum is all about the interplay between great musicians, crossing every boundary from hard rock to the soulful heavy funk of Red Barron. The drumming, as you’d expect, is from the realm of the angels – listen particularly to Stratus, where Cobham proves the superiority of the human over the drum machine.

RETURN TO FOREVER
Hymn Of The Seventh Galaxy
Verve, 1973
There’s some debate among aficionados as to whether this or its follow up, Romantic Warrior, is the superior RTF album. …Galaxy is a less polished album, leaner and meaner, full of high-jazz musicianship and a low-down hard-rock attitude. The inventiveness on the title track, and keyboard player and leader Chick Corea’s reworking of his own Latin-flavoured Captain Senor Mouse, are definite highlights, as is After The Cosmic Rain which showcases bass player Stanley Clarke’s propulsive style. RTF is kind of the next stage left after Yes’s Close To The Edge.

MILES DAVIS
A Tribute To Jack Johnson
CBS, 1971
Miles Davis always bragged that he could put together the best rock band ever and blow everyone away. With this album, a soundtrack for a movie about boxing champ Johnson, recorded with John McLaughlin and Billy Cobham, Miles lived up to that boast.
Two extended jams, kicking in with Right Off, McLaughlin playing heavy blues rock guitar, breaking down into moody psychedelia, James Brown-like funk and going back to bar-room rock, this is probably a clue as to how the mooted Hendrix/Miles collaboration might have sounded. A good jumping off point for Miles’s electric work.

WEATHER REPORT
Heavy Weather
CBS, 1977
Easily the most accessible jazz rock release here and the most commercially successful, Heavy Weather actually spawned the hit single (albeit a minor hit) Birdland. However, it was possibly that success that closed the book on fusion’s more creative years and gave birth to the ghastly easy-listening mutation that was jazz funk.
Regardless, this album still sounds as fresh today as it did at the time. Weather Report went straight for the jugular, delivering marvellous tunes, keeping the instrumental flash in the background, and made an album that was less jazz rock and almost jazz pop.

Good – Worth Exploring

FRANK ZAPPA
Hot Rats
Reprise, 1969
After he disbanded the Mothers Of Invention in 1969, Zappa surrounded himself with some little-known but extraordinary musicians to record what became his breakthrough album, praised or damned as the Zappa record that people who don’t like Zappa like.
From the instrumental opener Peaches En Regalia, through the scatological blues of Willy The Pimp, this album album heralded Zappa’s foray into jazz rock. While Mahavishnu and even Miles had a sort of spirituality, Zappa remained cynical, deflating the undeniable brilliance of the arrangement, writing and performance with the usual lame dirty jokes. A brilliant album nevertheless.

COLOSSEUM
Valentyne Suite
Vertigo, 1969
Colosseum’s second album finds them reaching beyond their limitations as, essentially, a Cream-influenced blues rock band and groping to create something revolutionary. The extended jazz rock jams and particularly the 15-minute title track are reminiscent of what US bands like Blood, Sweat And Tears, Chicago Transit Authority and Chase were also doing at the same time. Essentially these were the handful of bands from rock backgrounds who were able to make a convincing transition to jazz. Along with King Crimson’s In The Court Of The Crimson King, Valentyne Suite is one of the early milestones where prog rock and jazz rock met.

TONY WILLIAMS LIFETIME
Emergency
Polydor, 1969
There’s no argument that this album is seriously flawed: Williams can’t sing for toffee, and the production is truly awful. That said, the music made by then-prodigy drummer Williams and his band is pure electric hellfire. To the staid jazz establishment of the time, it must have been as shocking as Anarchy In The UK.
Emergency emphasises the rock in jazz rock, John McLaughlin’s guitar almost anticipates classic heavy metal, while Williams’s drumming veers from hostile to ecstatic joy in the space of a few beats. Years ahead of its time, this album is a slightly ragged and tattered masterpiece.

Also Try

Although the best jazz rock was released between 1967 and ’77, there are a lot of paths and tangents for the explorer to follow. Jazz rock in Britain is best represented by Soft Machine’s Third (’70), with more profoundly avant-garde noises following from the likes of Henry Cow’s Unrest (’74) and cult classics like Centipede’s Septober Energy (’71). The early works of Blood, Sweat And Tears, such as Child Is Father To The Man (’68), the Buddy Miles Expressway – most notably Expressway To Your Skull (’70) – and Chicago Transit Authority’s self-titled 1969 debut represent strand of US jazz rock which came from rock bands rather than from jazzers ‘slumming’ it.
European jazz rock is where things got really weird and wonderful: Wagnerian French band Magma released several sci-fi concept albums, most notably ’73’s Mekanik Destruktiw Komandoh (which reimagined John Coltrane fronting an orchestra from Saturn), while the altogether gentler Gong fused jazz rock with late-period psychedelia on their excellent ’73 album Angel’s Egg.

Avoid

ANYTHING BY KENNY G.
Kenny G represents the dire depths to which fusion eventually sank. Flushed with and egged on by the commercial success of Weather Report’s Heavy Weather, a few jazz-rockers decided to chuck out all that scary, innovative stuff and just play some peaceful elevator music to sooth the folks after a hard day being yuppies.

The 80s really was the Dark Ages of this sort of thing, with even Miles and Herbie Hancock turning out inexplicably banal car-stereo favourites. Think Jan Hammer’s Miami Vice music: brilliant but banal. It was a long road from Bitches Brew to Kenny G, but they say that in the deep, dark past, poodles were bred as attack dogs.

Words: Philip Wilding

The Gaslight Anthem’s singer, Brian Fallon, is a man refreshingly without guile. “Oh, we’re not reinventing the wheel,” he says cheerily, “I’ve got hundreds of albums that sound like us. If it does sound like we’re different then it’s because we don’t know what we’re doing. Mistakes are OK though, I read that Springsteen was trying to sound like Van Morrison early on but couldn’t get it right, and look at his mistakes…”

The New Jersey band have been making a series of glorious mistakes since last year’s debut Sink Or Swim, and their Señor And The Queen EP released earlier this year to similar, rabid acclaim. The band’s second and strongest album, The ’59 Sound will be out by the time you read this, the title track coming from the album’s initial writing sessions. Fallon, quite rightly, thinks it might be their best song yet.

“We were aware that it sounded better than anything we’d ever done before and that everything had come up to that standard so it was exhilarating and daunting all at once.”

In the US they’ve been staples of the Warped Tour and readily compared to contemporary punk artists like The Loved Ones and Against Me!. You can see the parallels, especially with early Clash, but the latest album leans more towards early Springsteen, The Replacements and even The Hold Steady.

“I grew up on The Replacements’ Let It Be, it’s amazing,” says Fallon, “And Springsteen’s everywhere here, he did it first and best. We all tell the same stories, they’re the same streets that people like Sinatra and Bon Jovi grew up on, it hasn’t changed in 30 years.”

They might be broke, but the buzz around them is still building and they’re out playing live so often they’ve had to give up their day jobs.

“We did stuff like working in a gas station in the day and a pizzeria at night,” says Fallon, “We sold shoes, one of us was a cook.We’re a full-time band now, making less money than we did in those jobs, but I don’t care, Monday has lost all meaning to me.”

And, ultimately, we have to ask – what makes for a great anthem?

“One that says, our country’s good at this, but maybe you could help us fix this as it’s not working out, that’s my kind of anthem! Then horns at the end, horns are always good.”

• The album The ’59 Sound is out now on SideOneDummy Records.

PARK LIFE

“Springsteen’s Greetings From Asbury Park is the album where he was trying everything out, and you can hear the mistakes. It makes you feel good that even he had flaws once.”

“The first Clash album, that was a sound I’d never heard before. It sort of woke me up and made me want to get up and go. It got me started.”
“Sam Cooke’s The Man And His Music, that’s my totem musically, the album you aspire to.”

WORDS: Henry Yates
When he was nine years old Cody Braun was inducted into the family business. To this day he considers himself lucky that his family were in the business of rock’n’roll. “My father was in a band called Muzzie Braun And The Boys, and me and my brothers went on the road with him,” the Reckless Kelly multi-instrumentalist recalls. “I’d grown up in rural Idaho without a TV, and by the time
I was 11 I’d already played The Tonight Show. It was definitely an education. We soon figured out the girls would wait for us if we snuck out of the hotel after our parents were asleep.”

Having tasted rock’n’roll and found it good, the die was cast for Cody and his brother Willy. “We’d been in the business so long we couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” he admits. “Sometimes we’d have plans of going to college, but we never made it a month without starting a band.

“Reckless Kelly started out as the Prairie Mutts in Oregon,” Cody continues, “but then we moved to Austin in 1996, and I guess we feel like Texans now. There’s not a better state to live in as a musician. It’s part of the culture; people bring their kids to the dance halls, and they develop a much keener sense of music than people in other states who listen to an hour of radio a day.”

It was in Austin that Reckless Kelly forged their musical identity:
a hard-drinking blend of alt.country and heads-down rock fuelled by Cody’s instrumental wizardry (he plays fiddle, mandolin and harmonica) and Willy’s muscular vocals, which sounds as vital on their new album Bulletproof as on their 1998 debut Millican. “I guess I think of us as an alternative to the shit they feed us on country radio,” Cody shrugs. “Traditional country is pretty bad right now. We don’t get played much – they tell us we’re too rock’n’roll.”

That accusation could certainly be levelled at Bulletproof. “This album is darker and more rock than stuff we’ve done in the past,” says Cody. “It’s definitely one you can stick in your car and haul ass to. There are all kinds of themes – heartbreak songs, songs about the road. There’s a song that Willy wrote about Hurricane Katrina, and one for the soldiers in Iraq (American Blood).”

Heavy stuff. But don’t hit the ‘po-faced political band’ panic button just yet. “We’re not a political band,” Cody insists. “There’s so much crap going on in the world, and we just want to give people a good time when they’re out. It’s definitely good drinking music.”

• Bulletproof is out now on Yep Roc.

STAND AND DELIVER

Cody explains the band’s name: “Willy and I couldn’t remember exactly who Ned Kelly [pictured] was, but we liked the name, so we threw Reckless Kelly in the hat. The plan was that we’d come up with a better name later but we never did. And once we realised he was an Australian bank robber from the 1800s we just thought it fitted our outlaw image really well. Do we have outlaw credentials? Well, we’ve all spent nights in the clink.”

For Touchstone guitarist Adam Hodgson, albums don’t get much more pivotal than 90125. “It transformed my way of thinking about music,” he states. “I used to be into heavy metal but when Trevor added his power chords to Yes’s music it was gold dust.”

“I’m a big fan of Elton John and Sting,” chips in keyboardist Rob Cottingham. “I’ve got a softer, more melodious side, and then you’ve got Adam, this hard rock fucker. It’s a good combination.”

“Touchstone’s music is like a mix of Yes and Van Halen,” grins Hodgson. “I like big, biblical epics. Stadium rock!”

Both Cottingham and Hodgson released solo albums before Touchstone formed. Cottingham’s was Behind The Orchard Tree; Hodgson’s was South Side Of The Sky. The two met in April 2003, compared notes and decided to form Touchstone.

“It’s taken a long time to get a proper line-up together,” says Cottingham. “There’s always been a weak link in the chain.”

After the additions of bassist Paul Moorghen and drummer Al Melville, the final piece of the jigsaw arrived in the form of singer Kim Seviour. She joined in April 2007, replacing Lis Clayden who sang on Touchstone’s 2006 Mad Hatters EP.

“Kim shares the vocals with Rob, but the idea is for her to front the band in future,” Hodgson explains.

“I stuck an advert on a website with a sultry photo of myself and got invited to audition,” Seviour reveals. “I said to my flatmate: ‘I’m going to a random industrial estate in the middle of nowhere to meet a bunch of guys I don’t know – if I don’t ring by midnight call the police!’ But it worked out fine.”

Touchstone released their debut album Discordant Dreams this summer and have just finished a tour supporting It Bites. Their next big date is an appearance at RosFest, the US prog-rock fandango, in May 2009.

“We’ve got the coveted breakfast-time spot on Sunday morning,” Hodgson chuckles. “We’re on stage at 11am.”

Hey, there’s nothing like a hefty dollop of prog in your porridge.

• Discordant Dreams is available via www.touchstonemusic.co.uk

A TOUCH TOO MUCH
Before joining Touchstone, Kim Seviour was a karaoke queen. “I entered a competition called Karaoke Krazy, which was run by the Hungry Horse pub chain,” she recalls. “I beat more than 2,000 singers to come third in the national final. I sang Shirley Bassey’s Big Spender. There was a guy dressed as the Hungry Horse and I dragged him on stage and threw my feather boa over him. He was scared shitless.”
While working at Virgin Mobile, Seviour sang at a staff party at Richard Branson’s house. “I went on stage dressed as half Axl Rose, half Slash, wearing a kilt and waving an inflatable guitar about.”
Sheesh – does the genteel world of prog know what it’s letting itself in for?

Peddling vintage rock to a country 30 times the size of the UK but with only a third of its population is not without its challenges, says Electric Mary singer Rusty Brown. ‘‘We have a great rock’n’roll scene over here,” he explains, “but the number of people we can get to is small, and flying is so expensive.”

Guitarist Irwin Thomas and singer Rusty Brown, both veterans of Melbourne’s rock scene, met back in 2003, but it took an inspirational visit to Hendrix’s legendary Electric Lady Studios in New York, and a meeting with studio manager Mary Campbell, to motivate the affable frontman to form the band. ‘‘Man, it was amazing’’ he enthuses, ‘‘I don’t want to sound like a wanker, but when you’re in the middle of that room with so much history, you’re completely humbled.’’ And the name? ‘‘Her email address was electricmary@ blah blah, and I thought, ‘What a great name.’’’

Electric Mary were recently described in Classic Rock as “Guns N’ Roses meets Free, add Aerosmith’s pizzazz and a pinch of Tom Morello’s staccato chops, all fronted by any iron-lunged singer from rock’s golden age, and you’re getting warm”. Brown’s summary of Electric Mary is: ‘‘It’s rock’n’roll the way it used to taste.’’ And it’s difficult to argue with him on that.

Citing venerable influences – “Bad Company, Foreigner, Rainbow, Queen, Dio, anyone with singers” – Brown reserves his highest praise for Coverdale-era Deep Purple: “As soon as I heard Burn, I was like, ‘There is never going to be anything better than this’. I still play that record every two weeks. And [Purple’s] Stormbringer. I fucking love it.”

Fandom, however, barely prepared them for when they supported Whitesnake on a recent tour down under. Brown: “We’re doing the gig, when I see Coverdale watching from the side of the stage. He walks in the dressing room afterwards and says in that voice of his: ‘Fucking great show, man.’ Mate, I shit my pants.”

Welcome celebrity patronage from other notable icons has further served to up the ante. “Iron Maiden’s Adrian Smith said to me: ‘If only we’d known about you guys before we came over, you’d be doing the gig,’” Brown recalls. And “Little Steven [of Springsteen’s E Street Band] found us online and bought our record. And when he came over we went to a nightclub.”

With the support slot on the Oz leg of Judas Priest’s upcoming tour in the bag, Electric Mary’s energies are now focused on Europe. “Our job now is to try and make our way over to you,’’ Brown says, ‘‘because that’s where we need to be.”

The Definition Of Insanity EP is available at www.myspace.com/electricmary

And Finally…

Another of Electric Mary’s celebrity fans is Australian tennis hero and part-time rocker Pat Cash. “A mate called me up and said: ‘Turn on your TV.’ There was Pat Cash on some news show, wearing our ‘Definition of Insanity’ T-shirt,” Brown recalls. “How cool is that?! We’ve met now, and he’s a great dude.”