Stormcellar Band Home Page

We show we're alive when we create

it's what life does

in a time of destruction

as silly as a grin of defiance at the end

pointless, ephemeral, eternal

and each one who comes in

experiences everything for the first time

the most joy

the most pain

the most sorrow anyone has ever felt

all alone

unique and together

Other people would just write 'hey looks like we finished the album.'

I gotta stop reading all this poetry, it's starting to send me frilly.

We send our love to so many right now, some far away, some close to home. We hunker down in the stormcellar and play music and watch and watch and think.

we're pretty bummed out by the major disturbance in the Force and I feel weird about plugging a show but I guess that's at least one way of reclaiming the hallowed ground. We're going to play at Raby, Saturday 21 Nov with Stone, and at Lazybones in marrickville on fri 20th November and do what musicians do. Try and make people feel better, try and make people experience a connection. Music is a basic and fundamental human need, otherwise all our showers would be quiet, our walks down lonely roads surrounded by silence. Dammit, we're not going to be shut down by this stuff. There. Rant over. I'm bummed as hell and I still want you to go see a band, to go see live music. We can resist without hating, by simply being present. We will be and we hope you'll join us, or anyone who makes music for you, here and now.

I generally keep Politics off the set. I mean it's in your music anyway, so what else do you have to say.

But we're reactors to events. We express it in the work we do, reflecting whats around us. As Harry Manx says, 'your tears reflect the world you make'.

History staggers forward taking both tragedy and triumph in its stride. 

Our illustrated world of multimedia and 24 hour newscycles sour our mind with the constancy of slaughter.

Some we dont know about, some we value more than others, each no less a tragedy for our localised measure.

Today, in a newscycle that has made me weary, I am sadder again.

Like destroying ancient statues. Like any act of unreasonability, by any member of the human species, no matter their reasoning. 

100 people gathered together to hear music, to be connected together in a time when we're superficially in one anothers lives through the power of a Like Button.

As a great Australian philosopher once told me, summing up the breadth of the human experience.

Bugger.

Our deepest respect and love extends to the Eagles of Death Metal, to the people of Paris and France, and to all those, in whatever manner, who have come to tragedy today.

Not the first time I've posted this on the site. 

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee. 

Bugger.

You know how I can tell we're getting ready to tour? I wind up doing Tour tshirt artwork.

You know how I can tell when the next album is really getting ready to come out? 

I'm doing album artwork.

Hmmm.

Readers who have been through this before know that whatever concepts are up here may have either no bearing on, or be exactly the same as what comes out on the finished art.

You just never know.

Word came to me down the long grapevine that Millage just got inducted into the Hall of Fame.

A true gentlemen.

I hear that he's reviewing the tracks we cut together. 

It's been a big year for Millage, with a long overdue article in Living Blues, now this Induction and hot on the heels of this will be the album we've recorded with him. Millage is under represented in recording terms so this is some rare stuff indeed.

I was stoked when he was willing to record the song we wrote for him. I'd been listening to his live performance at the first Woodcox lawn party and tried to write something that was in his preferred 'feel'.

But imagine trying to write lyrics he'd find acceptable. I grew up singing 'kookaburra sits in the old gum tree', for crying out loud.

Fortunately, we'd been to the river and been 'schooled'.  

I introduced the song to him at Knux, before the show. He peered at it. Large font on the Laptop screen.

I backed off, not wanting to crowd. What would he think?

I watched him read a line, read it again, do a double take and then move on.

At one point he cracked a smile and looked around furtively to see if anyone had caught the grin. I had, but I didn't let on.

When we took him into the studio, we recorded a bunch of his originals and a few covers.

Would he be willing to try Last Man Standing? Sure, but can he work on it overnight and come back.

Argh. Could be the kiss of death.

Nope. Millage was straight up. The version we did as a guide was too fast for him. We re-recorded the track and worked on the lyrics with him until he smoothed them into his own speech patterns, made the song his.

He liked the idea behind the song and he was gonna 'brag a little'

Me too.

Congratulations Millage.