Travellin' Man

14 August 2014 | 4:35 pm | Michael Smith

I just had a suspicion of the US, but the audience is absolutely fantastic

More Ash Grunwald More Ash Grunwald
Fifteen years or so into his career, surfing bluesman Ash Grunwald has suddenly found himself something of an overnight sensation in the US, recently winning the LA Music Critics’ Best International Act Award. “It’s all good,” Grunwald self-effacingly suggests with a chuckle, on the line from Vancouver, Canada. “In America now, I’ve got a license to work hard and start the process over again. [America] is something I’ve avoided for very many years, but it is an exciting thing to be – I dunno, it sounds daggy to say it in Australia, but participating in the same scene that Hendrix, Howlin’ Wolf, you know, whoever, most of the guys I look up to – there’s a handful of… there are many amazing Australian acts that I look up to, but most of the primary influences are from the US, and when you step onto a stage or see where they’ve been, I mean probably my best thing in that sense was playing in the Fillmore in San Francisco. You think, ‘Wow!’ From the first note that you play, you’re joining in on a story that started a long time ago and involved all of your heroes and now you’re a very small part of that story. That’s amazing.”

Though Grunwald has made the occasional foray over to Europe and the UK, and has played Canada often, he’d never really considered making any kind of concerted effort to break into the US. His “conversion” and recent successes there were down to being invited by long-time buddy Xavier Rudd to open for him on his latest 28-date American tour.

“It was really cool, a great hook-up – I was really, really touched and humbled at the response. Ironically enough, being somebody who is left-leaning, I just had a suspicion of the US, but the audience is absolutely fantastic and the places that we went were amazing, and [there were] very forward-thinking people in most of those places. I guess we were playing Xavier’s audience but you’ve got that thing in America that there are just so many people there that there are a hell of a lot of left-leaning progressive people, good people, not just rednecks. We played in Austin, Texas, and Nashville, Brooklyn, LA, Atlanta, Georgia, Seattle… You know, we sort of went all over the place. Colorado was fantastic; we played in Denver and Boulder. I saw machine guns in a pawnbroker’s in Kentucky and freaked out – big machine guns, Uzis, handguns, little pink ones for the ladies – radical! Canada has been building really nicely – I did a couple of really nice festivals and I just really love the people over here. There are people over here living self-sufficiently, just living the dream life. The beauty can’t be described of these places and then you go play a festival for these beautiful, just really genuine alternative people.”

It looks like Grunwald will be recording his next album in the US, and it’ll see a return to his earlier, pre-experimental records, so, having been to the “source”, he’s taking his own music back to where he started.

Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter