Accidental Tourists: Tim Rogers And Cathrine Britt

hey might have been rocking hard late last year when they toured with Cold Chisel on that band's biggest and most successful Australian tour ever, but right now their sometimes mercurial and always deftly witty singer, songwriter and guitarist, frontman Tim Rogers seems to be feeling You Am I are slipping into what he's described as “a middle-aged men's club”. So he's taking the opportunity once again to step out and explore other musical and artistic avenues.

There have been excursions into theatre, scoring the Marion Potts production of Lorca's Blood Wedding and performing Sydney's Griffin Theatre production of The Story Of Mary MacLane By Herself, but right now it's his second solo album, Rogers Sings Rogerstein, recorded at Yikesville Studios in Melbourne with producer Shane O'Mara, that's got him back out on the road. Signed to new ABC Music imprint FOUR | FOUR, and having cowritten a song, Troubled Man, with Australian country artist and good friend Catherine Britt, featured on her new ABC Country album, Always Never Enough, it seemed obvious the pair should hit the road together to showcase their respective albums.

Recorded at Cedar Creek Studios in Austin, Texas, with a crack team of American country musicians and coproduced with her Australian mentor and guitar teacher Bill Chambers, Always Never Enough is Britt's fifth album. Born in Newcastle, NSW, she released her debut EP, In The Pines, produced by Chambers, in 1999, when she was still only 14, and spent six years living and working in Nashville.

The early morning call to sit on the couch in The Drum Media office in Sydney for a chat together caught Rogers feeling just a little seedy from a 4am finish at a gig in Newcastle just six hours earlier, but Britt, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed managed to discover quite a bit about her collaborator.

Catherine: So Tim, what sort of guitar are you playing on this tour?

Tim: Well, at the moment I'm playing a Godin [5th Avenue], a Canadian brand. It's got no tone at all and it's just all about rhythm, and finding the sweet spots in the chords is almost a challenge. And that's why I play. You know, that black guitar I play. I think I just got sick of hearing white guys with dreadlocks in bars singing April Sun In Cuba with these really bright guitars. I wanted to get a guitar sound like – who was the original guitarist with Muddy Waters? [Jimmy Rogers]. No Jimmy Reed, I wanted to get a sound like Jimmy Reed. And Catherine, the hundredth reason I love you is because you turn up to a show, you plug in, you get your voice to some kind of level, and you set and forget. You're the kind of person and the kind of singer who could play someone's bar mitzvah. So tell us about your guitar, that fabulous blonde Gibson J200.

Catherine: It's from an ex-lover. It's great – my good memory from that relationship is getting the guitar. I left this person while they were on tour because it wasn't working out and I took the guitar, and it's been my favourite guitar ever since. I don't know, there's something – once again it's not the best guitar in the world and I'm definitely not the best guitar player in the world but I just think that no one plays like me [chuckles].

Tim: I'm loving your rhythm at the moment, loving your guitar playing. When we play in the band together, you're really strong.

Catherine: I've never played rhythm guitar on a record. I've always had a hired gun or whatever, somebody that plays a lot better than me, but on this new album, being co-producer, my first thing was I'm playing rhythm guitar on this fucking record. I don't care if I'm not the best guitar player in the world, I wrote these songs with me and my guitar, so if you want to make a Catherine Britt record, it's me and my guitar – that's the first step. And, you know, it's not perfect, but it's me, and I think that's the most important thing about guitar playing – everybody's got their totally unique thing. Everybody plays rhythm differently. Some of my favourite guitar playing is not the best guitar playing – it's unique. Emmylou Harris, for instance, is a great rhythm guitar player – she's really good [chuckles], just as far as really steady rhythm guitar playing goes, you know?

Tim: So what was your first guitar?

Catherine: My parents bought me a really crappy nylon-string guitar, but I was obsessed. I get guitar lessons off Bill Chambers at the moment, once a week – but I cannot discipline myself to get better. When I first picked up the guitar, I swear, I never got lessons or anything and I probably should have… I probably should have got singing lessons and all that sort of stuff but I didn't – hated being told what to do – and I was just so obsessed I used to play till my fingers bled, I would not put the guitar down, and all I did was watch Bill play at gigs. I'd go out to gigs and watch where his fingers would be on the guitar or how he would play the rhythm or how the singing would go and I'd sit there in the front row and watch. And that's how I learnt to play guitar.

But that first guitar wasn't anything special. It was just… a piece of shit and then I got a Maton that was a piece of shit [laughs]. I like Matons, don't get me wrong, the right kind of Matons, but my favourite guitar I've ever had is the Gibson. And I've had heaps of different guitars but there's something really cool about that one. I've got a really good Emmylou Gibson – I've two but one's really good – they're like a mini version of the J200. Gibson in America sponsor me over there.

Tim: I got a nylon-string as well. Mum bought me a guitar when I was 13 for 'doin' ma chores'. Gut strings, you've got to work with them. They're not easy. Willie Nelson. He still plays gut string, yeah? His rhythm guitar playing is incredible. Oft and mistakenly overlooked instrument. I think I actually devolved into playing electric. I don't go through when I'm playing with this band at the moment. I play a cleaner sound; I just try and play dirtier, and be dirtier.

Catherine: I just want to be a rhythm guitar player in Tim Rogers' band – that's what I think. There's nothing better than a strong rhythm guitar player, and it's really hard actually to be a really good rhythm guitar player. I reckon it's harder than being a good guitar player.

Tim: As much as I absolutely adore Angus' playing [in AC/DC], I look straight at Malcolm. Regards rhythm players, I guess through time Keith [Richard, The Rolling Stones] is the big one, Malcolm, Lazy Lester and Slim Harpo and Jimmy Reed… Just in this particular year of just listening to a lot of R&B and soul, Slim Harpo has been really impressing me, because he's mostly unaccompanied and his rhythm playing is unique. In other years it's been the guitar player in ['80s US punk band] Minor Threat [Lyle Preslar], because I used to listen a lot of hardcore punk. This year's more…  I don't know why, it's probably just tones for me. I'm trying to slow my playing to sound like Jimmy Reed.

Catherine: All my favourite artists and stuff learnt from old black blues players, so I think a lot of my influences are very Southern blues playing. Not that I can play anything like that, but I want to, one day. I've got so much to learn when it comes to guitar playing. I just literally made it up and just looked at where people's fingers were on a guitar and went, “I guess that's a chord,” and I don't really know what I'm doing. I just play from my heart. That's all.