Tex Perkins ProfileThe singular Tex Perkins continues his musical role-playing, moving from inhabiting Johnny Cash to taking on the works of the similarly talented and troubled Lee Hazlewood, with necessary yin to that yang provided by Justine Clarke — more recognised as a children's entertainer, but with the talent to channel the pout, sass and fragility of Nancy Sinatra — often the muse for Hazlewood's richly coloured songs.
Martha Marlow had the fairly thankless job of 'music to find your seats by' for an audience who had organised babysitters for a night out. She does a perfectly adequate line in Joni Mitchell folkish ebb and flow, but knows the crowd is waiting for the main event.
With a craftsman band including Even's Ash Naylor and drummer Gus Agars handling Hazlewood's idiosyncratic arrangements, the singers gave life to words of love — and love gone (or going) wrong. Perkins does the dark croon as effortlessly as ever, but throws in some smartarse when things get too serious — mugging Sugar Town's trombone solo, wondering about Elusive Dream's kid left in Alaska, or cajoling Clarke to simply say "fuck" to explain the emotions behind the classic These Boots Are Made For Walking. Somewhere, Big Ted was having an infarction. She's quite fabulous — and not just for the interval change of frock. She coos and flirts through Ladybird, then is all threat and warning for Lightning's Girl. And the girl can frug.
But Some Velvet Morning is the centrepiece. Keyboardist Cameron Bruce recreates its odd collision of country melodrama and baroque interruptions as Tex and Justine emotionally parry. And then straight to the eternal relationship middle-finger-raising of Jackson. If you didn't know the sometimes tender — and sometimes quite creepy — dynamic between the original artists, you at least left with curiosity about some extraordinary tunes.
