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Memphis Nights & The Swamp Cats

The North-East Victorian town of Mansfield in the ’90 made the Wild West look like Harvard University. If you didn’t play local football or did a job that included a tractor, you were nothing. With all the culture of a six week old donut it was a tough time to be a musician and having the vocabulary of above grade 3 level made me an outcast. A threat and a general pain in the arse.

But I had gone to an all boys sporting boarding school so there was nothing these small minded hicks had that I hadn’t already endured. And there were others like me as well. Soon I had a guitarist, Drummer and harmonica player. We were all in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dancing with the wrong people and running from the wrong brothers, boyfriends, husbands and uncles.

I had recorded about 400 Bass/Vocal tracks on old TDK cassettes and picked the simplest ones for the band. This way we could learn them fast and the Towns folk may spare us the fire and pitchfork chase outta town.

The Swamp Cats had the fine blended sound of rusty nails, sawdust and mud! If we didn’t make small children cry we certainly came close….A fine piece of mess.

Selling home brewed beer and whiskey and playing to the cast of Bonaza crowds finally got us enough money to record this disaster-piece. We stumbled up to studio 52 in Collingwood near Melbourne like a scene from Deer Hunter, with 2 bottles of whiskey, instruments and 3 dogs and went about pretending to know what we were doing.

Mitch, our Engineer, couldn’t have been less interested. In between impressing his young friend of his sexual exploits and watching the football he didn’t even notice that 3 dogs 4 Swamp Cats were making a mess of the joint.

Mitch’s team lost (and this may have also reflected in the final mix) and we had this recording. We released it simply because we had paid for it and it seemed like a good laugh. Now bands like “The Black Keys” are doing it on purpose….Here’s a snippet of the 2001, 12 Track LP.

Find the full Album below