Live Review: Tex, Don & Charlie, Benny Walker

Customers, imagine a germ so virulent it can even lay low the man, the myth, the legend that is Tex Perkins.

Even his Texness admits it: "Ladies and gentlemen, I'm crook," but he adds a reasonable proviso, "but luckily this is music that suits being crook." Fair point.

And while it was never entirely clear whether Perkins' occasional, obviously pained exits from the stage were due to lurgy or lifestyle, when present he put in manfully, aided by one of the few bands that can fill in the gaps of his absences.

"You can do it, Tex!" someone unwisely barracked from the grassy slopes. "I am fucking doing it," he growled back, eliciting a wry smile from the grey eminence of Don Walker, who remained perched behind his piano for the duration.

Taronga Zoo's twilight gigs certainly aren't the location for typical rock and roll fare - with Tex, Don & Charlie's work obviously more suited for soundtracking a bar where you're being politely asked to leave at 3am than bottles of something decent and a cheese platter overlooking the harbour.

For his part, Benny Walker offers woody sun-goes-down music. But then candidly explains a head that's been known to "think a bit too much" as the bluesy Now That I Am Broken is revealed as a confessional lament. He moves from guitar to piano and onto Stay In My Arms - which someone should really offer to Sam Smith. Undercover Of My Skin then puts him somewhere near Dan Sultan territory in style and content. He's an engaging presence, particularly when he so matter-of-factly explains his fragilities.

Perkins, Walker, Owen and support team saunter on. The neon flickers on with Redheads, Gold Cards & Long Black Limousines and they settle in. Even more than 8pm Monday on the ABC, these are Australian stories: Whenever It Snows has an enervating North Queensland humidity to it. Elsewhere, A Man In Conflict With Nature might be a guy winning on the roulette or craps table - but here it's a 'bloke punting on the dishlickers at Wentworth Park'. Sure, there's still 'hookers', but they come with 'an over-catered order of sushi'.

Perkins makes another indisposed exit, and Walker trots out heat-hazed tales such as Barlow & Chambers' sordid and increasingly forgotten death in a foreign jail. While the contrast of Perkins' croon and Walker's saltbush-dry tones could be the band's trademark, a special word for the two Charlies present: Owen's guitar twangs and sighs are a voice of their own, while Charlie Drayton's rumbled heartbeats and skitters around the drum kit add some really different textures.

Harry Was A Bad Bugger is an unmade Underbelly episode. And The Healing Power Of Helpless Laughter doesn't seem to cure what ails the lead singer:  "You're supposed to clap, cheer and say 'Come back!'" Mrs Perkins' boy Greg admonishes the crowd. Suitably chastised, we do - and so does the band.

What I Done To Her retains its so-dark romance, even through Perkins' discomfort, and the rambling closing time ramble of Sitting In A Bar ends a show that will give this many-storied combo a few more anecdotes for that next long drive up the coast: "Hey, remember that night Tex Perkins was feeling so shit, but still managed to rhyme 'zoo' with 'poo'?"