Know When To Hold 'Em

As calendar years go, 2014 has been very kind (so far) to Henry Wagons, chock full of travel, adventure and, of course, music. In May, his country-laced, Melbourne-based ensemble Wagons released their ambitious sixth album Acid Rain & Sugar Cane to almost universal acclaim, and the bold grandeur of that record also translated exceptionally well into the band’s stage show. They’ve exploited this positive flow-on effect in the live realm to its fullest potential both at home and abroad – it just seems to have been win after win for the affable songwriter this year – and now he and his ragtag troupe are going to strike while the iron is hot and squeeze in one last run of shows while the cards are still falling in their favour.

I don’t know whether the quality of the shows has improved or it’s people are drinking more at our shows, but whatever the reason is that people are still enjoying watching us I’m happy for it.

“The response has been really good for a kind of weird direction for us and a weird album, so I’m really happy that people have gone on this left-hand turn with us,” Wagons marvels of the recent good fortune. “I’m really happy with how the album’s been received, and the live shows have been great fun. The transition from album to the stage was really, really fun: just because the way of we recorded it live it translated to the stage in a really transparent way, and we got to keep that energy going through to the live show. I’m glad people are responding. I don’t know whether the quality of the shows has improved or it’s people are drinking more at our shows, but whatever the reason is that people are still enjoying watching us I’m happy for it.”

Given the relative bombast and grandeur of the new songs, Wagons is pleased that it’s slotted in quite seamlessly with the old Wagons material from a playing perspective.

“I’m a guy who likes to keep people guessing, and I like taking people on strange twists and turns and having these kinds of songs in the arsenal just adds to the dynamic of the show,” he smiles. “Being able to rock out for a few songs and then pull out [The Wayfaring Strangers’ cover and long-time Wagons live fave] Willie Nelson somehow works, strangely. It’s actually been really good. In darkened corners and cavernous dark venues the new material works really well – in that throbbing club environment – but it also translates to the festival stage really well because there’s a definite thumping pulse behind it all. So it’s translating well, and I think there’s a reason why we’re still touring pretty hard this long after the album.

“At the same time, it’s sort of resonating in the sense that I’m noticing people commenting on the album more than ever before. I love to get out and chat to people after the show, and people are usually just talking about the show and talking about what an endearing cockhead I am usually – there’s always a double-edged compliment in there – but people are mentioning the album more and more, saying, ‘I actually enjoyed listening to your album’. And to my horror I hadn’t realised that that had been absent in the past, it made me realise, ‘Oh shit, maybe we’ve been making pieces of crap for the last fifteen years and now we’ve finally made a good artistic work!’ That’s refreshing, perhaps people are drinking a bit more and talking a bit more too, but people seem to have been commenting a bit more on the album after the show which has been nice.”

That’s an interesting development, given that conventional wisdom would have us believe that albums are supposedly losing force as a construct given the recent rise in popularity of streaming and singles as a musical medium.

“I’m really proud of this record as an ‘album’, and sure I’ll post a video clip or mention a new single, but I’ve always tried to keep it within the context of a whole album, trying to grapple at a piece of history and trying to keep it alive,” Wagons ponders. “So luckily the people that have been coming to the shows seem to have heard the whole album and are talking about it. I think it’s good, who knows how much longer that will last. The vinyl resurgence – the new vinyl revolution – definitely helps, and maybe because we’ve got a bit of a throwback sound people like me are trying to strive for another decade – there’s a common social filter and everyone that’s coming to our shows is somehow nostalgic for the past.”

Our guitarist [Richie Blaze] ... doesn’t tour very often because he’s a neurologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital! So he’s letting people’s brains atrophy in Melbourne a month at a time and hitting the road with us for a little bit.

And Henry and his band have been busy this year spreading the Wagons word overseas as well as circumnavigating the country in an endless loop.

“We had probably our most successful trip overseas – mostly to Canada, and a little bit to the States as well – and that was incredibly exciting to be over there and touring and playing in front of big festival crowds and that kind of thing,” he enthuses. “Also our guitarist who is always on the albums – Richie Blaze, who’s been on every single every Wagons record – has been able to tour with us year, and he doesn’t tour very often because he’s a neurologist at the Royal Melbourne Hospital! So he’s letting people’s brains atrophy in Melbourne a month at a time and hitting the road with us for a little bit. He’s actually on a year of research this year, so he’s actually done more touring both locally and overseas than ever before, so he’s having a good year, I think. He’s loving it, he’s having a great time. He’s constantly on a computer making world-breaking discoveries about the right cortex, but he always closes the MacBook when it’s time for soundcheck.”

A quick scan of Wagon’s Facebook page shows that Henry also took the time out to enjoy Jeff Lynne’s prodigal return to legendary UK rockers ELO at their massive Hyde Park reformation in September.

“It was the first time they’d played with Jeff Lynne for 30 years!” he exclaims. “I think they announced the intent for a world tour afterwards, so I’m hoping they get out to Australia because it was an incredible show to see. Jeff Lynne’s a very anal producer and I have the utmost respect for the man. His multi-layered acoustic guitar throb is something I’ve been pining and stretching and hoping for all my life, so it was actually good to see the man back in action for the first time. I absolutely loved that. But I was in London mostly for pleasure – I sort of owed it to my family to give them a holiday after all the time I’ve spent gallivanting around. That was mostly a trip for pleasure to London.”

One of the gents partying to ELO in Wagons’ group seems to bear an uncanny resemblance to surreal funnyman Noel Fielding – Henry explains that this is no optical illusion.

“Yeah, he’s actually the godfather of my daughter Casper, funnily enough!” he laughs. “I’ve known him for years through my wife Melvis; she spent a long time working in the UK a few years back and they became really good friends then. I’ve stayed with him a lot and hung out – the great news is that he’s actually as kind and gentle and funny and great in real life as he is when you see him on TV or stage or anywhere. He’s a great guy.”

There are also tentative plans in the pipeline to return to the UK and Europe soon in a performance rather than partying capacity.

“I just found out that we got a really, really nice review in [prestigious UK music magazine] Uncut and the repercussions of that might see us broaden our horizons to take in Europe and the UK a bit more than ever before,” Wagons tells. “That’s really exciting, a little development that’s really, really fresh. I haven’t done much over there before – I’ve played in London and the UK a little bit, but all of the places I play seem to be inspired by the darkest recesses of torture chambers. I’ve played The Slaughtered Lamb and The Filthy Guillotine and The Severed Arm – they all seem to be incredibly violent names that would have me involved – but I haven’t done enough for my liking. So many of my friends have glanced over all of the architectural masterpieces of Europe while being paid and fed and watered – I’ve been told how good it is to tour Europe for all these years and I’ve been waiting for my chance. I’ve had kind of half-assed offers and approaches to tour Europe, but I want to wait until I can do it properly and have a proper springboard of some sort to go over there and hit the ground running, and this Uncut review and possibly a couple of industry cogs might well be the very thing that gets us over there, so that will be exciting.”

Interestingly, the Uncut review of Acid Rain… mentions the track Unwelcome Company – a duet with The Kills’ singer Alison Mosshart which in Australia was released on Henry’s 2012 solo album of duets, Expecting Company?. 

“Yeah, over there it’s being released with that one bonus track,” he explains. “Nothing has ever come out over there properly from Wagons before, it hasn’t even been available on iTunes – I don’t quite know why. I guess it’s one of those things that if you’re signed over there then you want to be able to offer your whole catalogue so we’ve sort of been holding onto it for a while, and that’s why we’ve essentially been absent from there. So we put Unexpected Company on there as a bonus track to sweeten the deal – the duet with noted London resident Alison. I dunno, it wasn’t my idea, chalk that up to one of the publicity masterminds perhaps, but I’m thankful for it.

"I think in a weird way this Wagons record that we’ve just done is very informed by the mood of my duets album – that duets album was my first foray into more grimy, electric kind of music in terms of electric guitars and that kind of thing, and the Wagons album is basically a band version of that feel. So I was very happy to go along with [the bonus track], because I think that song fits in with the program pretty well.”

Wagons' recent festival forays were alluded to earlier – they’ve played at a heap already this year and have plenty more on the horizon – but word on the street has it that their performance at the Melbourne leg of the Americana-based Out On The Weekend festival was something to behold.

“Yes!” Henry thunders. “It was an incredible moment, like some kind of cultural coming-of-age mark in time for Melbourne and its fascination with Americana and outlaw country-ish sounds. There were a few thousand people there coming to see a bill of mainly Nashville-based, left-of-centre country artists, and I feel like every single person who’s come to see a Wagons show over the last 15 years was there as well. It was just this coming together of vaguely twangy, hairy, counter-cultural people wearing button-down shirts and who like the occasional footstomp. I more or less knew just from my time hanging out in Nashville – I’m kind of obsessed with that town – most of the stuff coming out of there these days, and I loved it. I more or less knew everyone backstage, and there was kind of a scene thing happening – it was just great to be able to play to such a friendly audience and then hang out backstage and be able to drink whisky with so many cool dudes. And dudettes of course! Dudes is non-gender specific for me.”

One of the left-field highlights from Out On The Weekend was Nashville-based troubadour Jonny Fritz, who would be no stranger to Wagons’ fans having come out to Australia to support them on tour earlier in the year.

“Yeah, he’s amazing,” Henry agrees. “We brought him out especially to tour with him, and he’s just amazing. He’s a real throwback to that time in country music when it was all about dropping lyrical bombs every second or third line, and he’s a brilliant lyricist. And singer – you won’t hear anyone else who sounds like him – plus he’s a really lovely guy. He’s a true artiste – he’s got a beautiful artistic temperament, onstage and off. And he’s very well like wherever he goes, I love that man.”

The couple of a capella songs that Fritz throws into the mix mid-set are particularly emotive, and Wagons is happy to share the back story behind how those songs came into being.

“That’s how he started off!” he reveals. “He was telling me as we were going through one of our many long drives going up and down the east coast of Australia, he came from a small town and the only cool, alternative-style bar that welcomed non-jocks was this heavy metal/emo bar, and he’d go there and hang out. I think he worked in construction so he looked like a weird construction worker dancing his head off at this emo bar, and he was ostracised and people hated him and he’d be kicked out and wasn’t really welcome until the lead singer from one of the ‘local hero’ bands took him under his wing and thought he was amazing. They were quite popular in heavy circles and were touring around the country and they had him support, but Jonny didn’t know how to play an instrument so he’d sing old country songs a capella at metal gigs – that’s how he started, so he’s very familiar with singing a capella. And it works really, really well for him.”

The whole run is based on the feeling that we don’t want to stop playing this album quite yet

Looking forwards, this next east coast run of shows that Wagons are undertaking will have a ‘back to the future vibe’ with really old material abetting the new stuff that’s served them so well of late.

“The whole run is based on the feeling that we don’t want to stop playing this album quite yet,” Henry admits. “We were playing these new venues and bigger venues on the launch tour, and they were great – all of the venues were really successful and we loved doing it – but we had a bit of a nostalgic yearning for some of the venues that we used to play, in particular this one gig in Melbourne that we played for five years in a row; of course, the Melbourne Cup horse race is huge here in Melbourne, and we did Melbourne Cup Eve for five years in a row at the Northcote Social Club in Melbourne, which holds 300 people. It’s a horizontal room where no matter where you are you’re kinda stumbling onto the stage – even if you’re pressed up against the back wall of the room, you’re so close to the stage, it’s great. I really wanted to do that gig again and I knew that the tour was finishing up and when we thought about doing more shows I just thought, ‘Let’s do Cup Eve again at Northcote Social Club!’ Even though we did five years in a row we haven’t played there on Cup Eve for five years, so we’re pulling out some songs that we used to play five years ago for this show so it’s going to be even more schizophrenic than usual! We’re playing some even older songs mixed in with our new material, and I think we’re going to keep that theme going into the rest of the shows as well.

"The Old Museum, in Brisbane, will be fun – I played that for the solo record and really enjoyed it, so I’m glad we’re getting to do that again. And the Newtown Social Club [in Sydney] I’m hoping is like a brother of some sort of the Northcote [Social Club] in Melbourne – It’s the same people and I’m hoping it’s the same vibe – so it will be a combination of the old and the new. It’s going to be just like MONA in Hobart – old and new art aligned. We’re going to be pulling stuff out from Egyptian sarcophaguses from centuries past and combining it with contemporary works – it’s our own MONA-inspired tour! It’ll be fun. It’s like a last hurrah for the launch shows inspired by Acid Rain & Sugar Cane, before those songs become part of a bigger creative picture.”

And, looking even more forwards into the future, Wagons has already squirreled away and started working on new material for future releases.

“I’m in the midst of it now,” he reveals. “I’m slap-bang in the middle of writing two things concurrently; one of them is another solo record which I’m excited to do and which I think will be a bit more of a return to country sound, but I’ve also got big plans for a big full audio-visual representation stage show for Wagons which I’m also in the middle of writing. So I’m concurrently working on a massive, weird twist in the wagons timeline as well as a solo venture – things are very busy on the old Notepad at the moment.”