Digging In

Readers will, for the most part, be aware of the majestic sound of the Hammond B3 organ, but how many have ever seen or heard a Hohner Whammy Clavinet in full flight? You'll see and hear plenty of whammy action on the new DVD, Live At 303, from the Lachy Doley Group, a release that complements the trio's second album, Singer. Organ. Soul., led by keyboard extraordinaire, Lachlan 'Lachy' Doley.

“It's a beast! It's like being a kid, having that thing now,” Doley declares, laughing. “It was always rumoured that such a thing existed but I could never find any evidence of it until about three years ago, I was turning some searches and found this little clip of George Duke from the late '70s or 1980, and he's got like a Perspex clavinet with this bar just sticking out of the top of it and he's pushing it down and all the notes are bending. A few years later I found a place in California that's actually making them again – that was never a standard thing, it was a third party mod this guy had designed at a time when synthesisers were taking over and it just never took off.”

Anyone who's seen Doley performing, whether with his own group or in The Hands, or touring with Powderfinger, the late Billy Thorpe or Glenn Hughes, will know a Whammy Clavinet would suit his very physical approach to playing keyboards perfectly.

“I only got it about two months before we started recording the album, and Jemima Jane, the one that sounds almost country, pedal steel-ish, that was borne from me trying to work out all the things I could do on the clavinet, and then I layered it up with a bit of reverb and tremolo to make it sound a bit like… a pedal steel. So I wrote a song around that.

“My albums are always gonna be varied in styles a little but this album was definitely a bit more cohesive with the sounds… I'd been listening to a lot more Jon Lord and Deep Purple and prog stuff as well as playing a lot more blues again, so the whole album was just working out what I really love to play rather than what other people wanted me to play.”

And speaking of Deep Purple, “I got an email from Glenn [Hughes] and his management asking if I wanted to play [the late Jon Lord's] part in the classic Deep Purple song, Highway Star, for a 40th anniversary tribute to their Machine Head album.” Which, of course, he did, playing alongside Hughes, Steve Vai and Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith. No offers of a tour yet, but Doley's busy spruiking his DVD.

“On the back of the album, I really wanted to capture what we were doing live and there's this great little place in Northcote, Melbourne with probably one of the most enthusiastic crowds I have called 303, so I approached a few people.”