Stormcellar Band Home Page

Firstly thank you.

I've experienced a remarkable outpouring of sympathy and affection from Cellar Dwellers all over the world.

To borrow from Dad's dark sense of humour, he's the one who's dead, I'm just fine :-) 

Ok.

Fine-ish.

And now to some moments.

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When Dad had to give up his car, it was a big deal. It was a sign that things had really reached a point where there was no going back.

I got into it and turned the key, crying.

As the CD player started up, 'Hired Guns & Borrowed Glory' came on. As I switched CD's, I couldn't get away from our music.

5 CD's were Stormcellar albums. The 6th was the Dubliners. 

I chose the Dubliners and I sang along to old well worn sea shanties as I drove.

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When I had cleaned his flat out, I found his last guitar, cleaned it, and Mr Wizard played it for the first time in possibly 2 decades. Moments later,  Paul spontaneously played the melody for what would become 'Chase the dragon' just a few minutes after I shot this video.

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When we got to the US in 2016 to make Defiance, I'd brought 'Chase the dragon' with us.

It became our story, Mark's story, Rick Lyons Story, Dad's story, and my story. I wrote about it:

Chasing the Dragon:

The brass catches were strong enough that I had to wrench them aside with a screwdriver. The fretboard was clean, save for the scratches worn in by repetitions of ‘House of the Rising Sun’.

In a cupboard for thirty years, it had avoided the worst of the excesses of smoking in bed, the stench of tobacco that lacquered everything.

Sons bring their fathers guitars into the workshop occasionally. The greatest sin, a young fool who’s drilled a hole in an old classic. I just wanted it to be restrung, cleaned and returned to service. Dad would have approved.

‘Don’t let monkey-boy guitarists play it’ cautioned Anthony, adding ‘Rosie’s alright tho’.

But Mr Wizard got to it first.

‘What’s that?”  I asked as he finished a piece I thought I knew, but couldn’t quite put my finger on. Maybe some lost ballad from the 80’s, back when this guitar was six months old.

‘Dunno’ he said.

I got the phone out to record.

Mr Wizard wanted it to be a song for Dad, about Vietnam. “We’ll call it ‘chasing the dragon’” he said, which just made me think of the bio on Mark Hunter on my shelf.

I was a bit reluctant. I’d asked Dad about music and his ‘Nam experiences and his reply had surprised me. ‘Galveston’ he’d said.

‘Galveston? That old thing with the guy with the hair?’

‘I clean my gun and think of Galveston’ he replied and changed the subject.

So, many years later, I walked to the other room and found the track online and listened again.

Galveston, oh Galveston, I am so afraid of dying.

Ah.

I understood this instantly because I was the one who knew the secrets. Phrases scattered across decades.

Learning that alcohol cannot supress the memory, but it can sever the bonds of history; How the fearlessness you earned, crouched with your back against a tree, the Sergeant screaming for you to go forward, came home with you and ate the rest of your world.

My world too.

Maybe we could make it about something else.

I spent weeks listening to the recording, the game I make of trying to turn Mr Wizard’s place-holder words into a sentence. It’s like a stream of consciousness thing for him and echolalia for me. Is that the way we hear truth, how we write it down?

‘Well I went to town, I need the sound, another day of low slinkin’ round. I left this town I left around hanging ‘round the kind of people I should not be, hanging ‘round’

The song followed us to Indiana.

‘Larry’s more of a rhythm player, he normally gets involved during the construction phase of the song’ AJ told us when we asked about guest musicians.

‘ok, we have two unfinished pieces with us, we’ll bring them in tomorrow’ I said with unconscious optimism.

By 11pm, homesickness had helped me out. I knew the chorus hook and took it into to Mr Wizard, in the room he was sharing with Rosie. ‘This is It’, I told him. I was crying, but I was crying a lot those days anyway.

‘You don’t know just what I’d give, to be with you tonight’

Sitting between Bill and Mac in the kitchen, I filled in the blanks as Mac talked of truck driving across the US, ‘living in full tilt boogie’ he explained. Mac was also telling Bill that Bill was a good man. ‘And you know this comes straight from the heart’ he said, and it did.

From an email Rick sent me whilst criss-crossing the ‘states delivering a UPS van, I took his destination. Rick was hoping to introduce us to his Fiancee when we played in Chicago. Finding someone who loved him for being him had changed the world. He was writing poetry again. He counted out the syllables on his fingers and nodded when I told him. ‘It works’ he said

‘Greetings from San Luis Obispo’

By 1am we were all seated around the Novak’s loungeroom, whilst our hosts slept on mattresses on the floor of their dining room. Susie went to sleep hearing us work on the song.

The following day I played ‘Every little kiss’ by Bruce Hornsby as we travelled to Indy in Clifford, our big red truck. We’d been trying to channel a Mid-Western vibe and there it was. The same theme of longing and being away from someone, travelling and yearning.

At the studio, Larry told us ‘I take my cues from the lyrics’ when we asked him how he worked. ‘Hold this bit here longer’ he said.

The desk mix of the song kept me going for the rest of the tour and brought me back full circle.

I am so afraid of dying; I know exactly what I’d give to be with you tonight.

Is this how we hear the truth? In pieces, from so many lips?

At the dark heart of the song from a guitar hidden in a cupboard, a story from a man who can no longer speak it for himself, a story told in the words of many voices, the same story.

And every good story deserves its own story.

 ---

 When i made the video, I used the images I had collected from blogging and writing all year, visually it shows a stream of consciousness in our life for a year. 

Call the De'il

as witness, dare.

Let all the pipes announce;

a soldier shakes

at heavens gate

and demands of them,

account.

As he would have liked, the first place I have posted notice of his passing is here.

Dad was a tremendous supporter, he took a heartwarming measure of pride in our achievements.

He'd always fancied himself a ringer for Johnny O'Keefe and this was his way of living vicariously.

When I first started blogging, 11 years ago, it was in part so he could read about what we were up to, whilst he was working overseas.

He had told me about letters he had received during his service in Vietnam, that all he had ever wanted to was to hear about the mundane normal things of back home.

So I wrote for him about the mundane things we did. Gigs. Travel. Problems with the PA. 

It's the way of men to be unable to say simple things other than through actions. I guess I was lucky in that I also had those more direct conversations. We'd been through too much for less honesty.

Vale, Glenn Edward Barry, Man of the valley, Fortune's Soldier.

I say with equal sadness and pride, that he went down easy; he went down free.

'Night Dad.

Our fave place to get a vegetarian burger, community and bands.

We have a 1 hour slot at EDIT: we're on at 8!

There was a downpour as we started rehearsal last night. Thunder, lightning scaling sideways across the sky.

From a Stormcellar perspective, good omens

Last night we welcomed back Carl 'Noodles' Alwert into the Bass chair for the time being, while Brother Bill takes up a learning opportunity that he's passionate about. 

My photography left a bit to be desired....

It's always been a challenge to market an intensely private band, both amusing and ironic that people who live a life on stage are not all that keen on sharing everything. But that's how it is.

In a 21st century internet age where we willingly surrender our data, it's even more ironic. Nonetheless, any time I overshare, I get 'that look' from band members, so I keep shtum :-)

We're part of the community of the band, and the community of Aussie muso's at large. When Chris Wilson passed recently, we all knew. There's a lot of sharing because everyone has worked with or jammed with someone at some point. 

Within the band itself are the interacting lives of dozens of people.

We mourn each others losses, help each other through when it's our turn in the tempest, we provide solace, company and expression. It's as much a way to get by as it is a band. And I know for Cellar Dwellers, that's not far off the mark as well.

As I think of some of the background stuff that goes on, that is not strictly mine to share, I can at least share the understanding we gain from it.

In these last 11 years we have lost beloved friends, ex members of the band, comrades in music and family. These are the natural tides of life.

It has ever been our fortune to be grateful for what we get to do, doubly blessed to understand enough to be greatful.

Humans are fragile. Life is fragile.

Every time we get to do what we do, it's an affirmation.

Today it's my turn in the storm, and tonight we will play in celebration of a long time band supporter who is coming to the end of his path.

Every time we get to do this, I am grateful, and I am fortunate to be in the company of my friends in the stormcellar.