Turn It On

Having just gotten off a plane from a Canada plunged into minus-15 degrees the night before, Melbourne blues and roots nice guy Ash Grunwald says he's felt better. “I'm a little bit jetlagged, a little bit sick!” he sniffles. “That's alright, I'm having a nice little wine. That will cheer me up.”

Grunwald is back on Aussie turf following a lengthy tour of the Rockies, a home to many of his fans, expats and Canadian natives alike. Despite touring there several times in the past, Grunwald says he made monumental inroads with the locals on this latest visit.

“It's probably the best tour I've done of Canada,” he enthuses. “You've gotta go [to countries] a few years before it starts to go the way you really want it to go, in terms of getting people there. There's plenty of Aussies over there and they know me and come to my gigs, but it's great getting the actual Canadians into it as well.”

More than a decade ago Grunwald was playing the kind of blues he loves, harking back to godfathers Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf. It's surprising then that he's remained fairly absent from the US. But Grunwald says sometimes choosing a tour destination is like choosing from a holiday brochure, a habit he admits he intends to change.

“I've always been of the opinion that [touring] has to be about a good lifestyle,” he explains. “I wanted to go snowboarding so went to Canada and then thought, 'What's Japan like? Wait, let's go to Europe!' I've spent the last decade having an absolute ball. But I think now, especially with this last Canadian tour, you get a bit more ambitious. And I just think maybe the next decade can be spent getting more on the international blues map, and that specifically means the US because that's the home of it.”

Before considering another long-haul flight back to North America, however, Grunwald will hit up a stack of local venues on this next round of touring. One stop on the 19-date extravaganza will be at the Gold Coast's Bleach* Festival at Burleigh Heads, a show that will indulge the blues man's penchant for music and surf. But he's no stranger to the area, having competed in last year's single-fin surf comp at Burleigh.

“That was the hardest thing I've ever done,” he admits. “In front of the whole headland, commentators were yelling, 'It's Ash Grunwald! I wonder how he surfs! He's paddling for this wave!' And I'm like, 'Don't fuck it up'. So it was pretty harrowing. It was really amazing to surf Burleigh, though. If I could only not care about other people I would do it every year.”

Surfing aside, the tour is sure to be a much different experience than his previous one with The Living End's Scott Owen and Chris Strachan. The two rockers were the prize additions on last year's album Gargantua, and Grunwald admits sharing his long-time one-man-band stage with them required some practice.

“And not only that, just practising in general!” he laughs. “Tightening up like that has made a huge difference to the solo show now. I feel at the moment like some weird switch has just flicked and I'm having a ball, just absolutely loving playing.”

That reinvigorated love affair with music is also inspiring thoughts on a new album. Having fused his trademark stomp-box sound with other genres these past few releases, such as rock in The Living End collaboration, electro on 2010's Hot Mama Vibes, and hip hop on 2008's Fish Out Of Water, Grunwald says he feels it's time to return to his roots, so to speak, although he's always grateful if a muse visits during the tricky songwriting process.

“It's all artistic and enjoyable work but it is work,” he stresses. “It usually starts with just one great idea, which is just one second in the individual song, and then I work backwards from there. I threatened on the last couple of albums to go back to my roots, and I put it on Facebook and everyone was like, 'Yeah do that!' I think the flavour I'm thinking of is like the live flavour, like make it big and a wall of amps kind of vibe and a solo vibe, but played live, raw and rootsy, almost like Aussie pub roots, so it has that full circle feeling.”