It's not every day you get a moment to witness the birth of a new Musical Genre Name.
I was asking local Radio Doyenne (ooh french sounding) 'Salty Dog' Dennis Trevarthen about the word Ozicana, which he used to describe the musical range of songs he had on a recent show.
Saltys taste runs to the same gamut of musical stuff that we write and play, namely, Blues, Roots, Country and Folk.
On Whiskey Talking we did styles ranging from New Orleans stuff to Shuffles to Bo Diddley beats. We followed that up with Chicago blues (little Walter on our Spacejunk EP), Spaced-out Mali-psychedelic-atmospheric stuff with Sweet Misery and Credence meets Pink Floyd on Swamp Monster. On the next album (Nuevo Retro) we tried combining Boogie and Zydeco (Can't Tax Love), Johnny Winters Rock Blues (Roscoe's Boogie) and Australiana/Folk/Alternative on our song about Ned Kelly. By Carl's chair (album 4) we'd completely lost the plot and went all Hill Billy and occasionally Country back to Jazz Blues. Don't even ask me whats coming up on the next album...well..if you've been to our gigs(or listened to the making-of-the-album videos here, you know :-)
Yep, SURPRISE! It's more of the same mix of different stuff!
Believe me, it's made writing a band description a (expletive deleted...sorry, I've been applying for festivals and summing us up in 30 words requires some literary dexterity)
Our music has been played on: Blues Stations, Country Stations, Americana Stations, Alternative Country, Rock and yes, gasp, even mainstream stations (whereforart thou, my indy credibility? for shame). So this kind of makes it hard to pigeonhole us.
After 5 albums (well, almost 5) we can play a full set of almost any of the above styles, just by cherry picking from the albums.
Neither fish nor fowl, Arthur or Martha, a band that relies on songs not solo's, what do you do...
Blessed be the Salty Dog, for he hath given us a name, that we may put in the little 'Genre' box for submission forms, that we can include in Gracenote databases, that will one day be argued about by purists debating whether this particular song or that particular band fits that particular box.
Spake the Salty:
OZICANA - Australian blues/roots/americana/
ust tell em that mixed up kid Salty coined it'
Amen. I will now pass the communion waffles. (This church has Waffles? All right!)