The Soda Factory, May 13
8/10
Imagine if those trying to sell Newcastle as a tourist destination had sent silverchair overseas, or those selling Sydney sent Midnight Oil, or those selling Melbourne used Hiatus Kaiyote right now. That would be much too radical when we have beaches, reefs, a rock and a bridge. We do use musicians for soft diplomacy, but to attract tourists? No, the closest we come to using art that way is the Opera House: its exterior.
Memphis gets it. Okay, so a city smaller than Adelaide has fostered the careers of Elvis Presley, BB King, Johnny Cash, Al Green, Aretha Franklin and scores more. Nonetheless, Memphis Tourism sends a contemporary hometown hero, guitarist Eric Gales, to Sydney (on his way to Blues on Broadbeach) to play a gig for travel agents.
They’re a boisterous bunch, so you need to sit close and prick your ears, because Gales is in intimate mode: singing and playing acoustic guitar, accompanied by his wife LaDonna on percussion and fellow guitarist Trevor McKay. The huge upside is hearing one of the world’s leading guitarists in a little club, when he’s usually in a concert venue or at a festival.
The downside is trying to listen through the din. If I wasn’t reviewing and driving, I’d have gargled enough drinks to tell them that they had musical royalty in the room, and should show some respect. Gales did that his own way when he introduced his rawest wound of a song, The Storm, which begins with, “How can you love what I do/But hate who I am?” That shut them up for a while; long enough so they latched on to the deep groove; long enough to hear the stingray guitar lines that should have been brought forward in the mix, but still had Gales’ trademark capacity to startle. After the plethora of guitarists to solo over music somewhere between blues and rock, Gales makes you feel like you’re a kid again, and are hearing it for the first time.
He started playing aged four, and, guided by his left-handed brother, plays a right-handed guitar left-handed (which he’s not), without reversing the string order (as Jimi Hendrix did), so the highest-pitched string is the top one rather than the bottom. This makes every downward strum like a conventional guitarist’s upstroke, and gives his rhythmic playing a distinctive bite.
Two acoustic guitars and a tambourine cooked up some wicked funk on I Want My Crown, and Gales tore apart Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile, while cheekily inserting snippets as diverse as Beethoven’s Fur Elise and Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. If that sounds wantonly showy, it’s part of Gales’ schtick, along with the string-bending, mind-bending virtuosity and soulful singing. Shame he didn’t give LaDonna a song. On You Tube you’ll find her ripping into a mighty Take Me Just as I Am. Gales brings his electric band here in November.