DAVE'S DIARY - 29 AUGUST 2006 - CYNDI BOSTE

CYNDI BOSTE ADDS COUNTRY SOUL TO HOTEL KEW

Australia's best-unsung heroine Cyndi Boste has been added to the Nu Country TV Hotel Kew showcase on Saturday October 7.

The pocket dynamo was one of the most popular artists to perform on Nu Country FM concerts during our radio reign from 1994-2001.

Boste also won wide exposure for her first two albums Home Truths (1999) and Push Comes To Shove (2002) that enjoyed production of former Dingoes guitarist Kerryn Tolhurst.

The latter day New York musician, who worked here with Canadian music journalist Greg Quill's Country Radio in the seventies, has also appeared in Boste's hot band on his return to Australia.

Tolhurst and Quill released their duet disc So Rudely Interrupted in 2004 in between other projects.

Cyndi co-produced her third album Scrambled Eggs - featuring live tracks from Port Fairy folk festival - with Rob Harwood.

Melbourne guitarist Craig Pilkington played trumpet when he produced her acclaimed fourth album Foothill Dandy that will be launched at the East Brunswick Club Hotel on Sunday October 1.

Support artists include Kerri Simpson and Jamie Faulkner and studio guests from her new album.

Cyndi's Hotel Kew band features guitarist Steve O'Prey, pedal steel guitarist Garrett Costigan and drummer Dave Folley.

Folley, a Nu Country TV host, also featured in Cyndi's video clip filmed by our Series #5 producer Sofie Blichfeldt.

The clip will be screened on Nu Country as a preview to our concert that also features Ruckus, Phil Younger & Country Brew, Silver String Outlaws, Queensland country singer Jason Kemp and many more.

MYSTERY GUESTS TBA

Other solo artists will be announced soon for the show that features the draw of the Lee Kernaghan Akubra for Nu Country members.

All financial members of Nu Country will be in the draw conducted by a mystery VIP.

The concert will be filmed for Series #7 of Nu Country TV that will screen on C 31 in Victoria, South Australia and New Zealand over summer.

We have picked quality artists, rarely seen in the city and inner suburbs, as a treat for viewers.

The concert starts at 6 p m at Hotel Kew - 99 High Street, Kew Junction - and is free for members.

Admission is also free for members who renew on the night or become members for the first time.

They will also be rewarded with country CDS and cassettes from our library and free admission to our Christmas party at the same venue.

All artists will also have their CDS and other merchandise on sale during the show.

Table bookings are available on Phone - 98538960 - or at www.hotelkew.com

CLICK HERE for more details on other artists from the Diary on August 23, 2006.

CYNDI BOSTE CD REVIEW

FROM FOOTHILLS TO SWAMP CITY

"Down here in Swamp City you can pull a band together/ in a couple of hours and they'll get the job done." - Swamp City - Cyndi Boste.

Cyndi Boste deserves to be a survivor in a fickle music scene that spits victims with vicarious venom.

The dynamic diva withstood vagaries of tepid taste tsars and dug deep into her psyche for 11 originals on fourth album Foothill Dandy (Soundvault).

It's no surprise the soulful singer was chosen as support on the 2005 tour by Eric Bibb and made personal sacrifices to tour Europe with Barb Waters.

Boste grew up in semi-rural foothills of the Dandenongs before heading west into the suburban cesspool where she refined her art.

Although she works in a milieu where substance is oft sacrificed for style by precious peers she remains true to her roots on an earthy disc she produced with guitarist Craig Pilkington who adds trumpet.

Not quite the Dixieland-country hybrid enjoyed by Merle Haggard or October tourist Dwight Yoakam but mines its country core with pedal steel guitarist Garrett Costigan, Gerry Hale (mandolin, fiddle, banjo) and guitarist Matt Walker guesting on lap steel.

Boste ignites energised entrée Maybe I Might - a salient signpost to artistic struggles.

Observers should never read too much into lyrics but there is credible creativity as she sings "well, I've got overdue bills, I'm in debt up to her knees/ thought this stage of life I'd be doing it with ease/ maybe I just caught some social disease/ where the powers that be are getting harder on me."

And it you're wondering why Boste doesn't share success of less talented peers with greater access to commercial radio and TV, try the next lyric.

"There's two sets of rules and some get all the breaks."

SWAMP CITY

It's a sibling of I'll Pay You Back - a biblical, biographical tale of love and artistic integrity, injected by Rob Price's harmonica.

"These days I share a home for two/ and baby makes it three/ I have to pull my weight somehow/ spare my dignity."

Please don't get the impression the chagrin-charred chanteuse is a soppy sook.

Swamp City is a powerful paean to peers talent and a sardonic slab of self-deprecation about musicians.

Boste also drives down back alleys of plundered love in All Falls Down all shades of ruptured romance in Don't Go There and I'm Alright, assertive Don't Come Crying' and melancholic finale You Serve Me Well.

Cyndi Boste at Basement Discs recently>

Equally powerful is passion primed Best Kept Secret and nostalgia soaked One Time, extolling the virtues of an idyllic youth.

Her imagery peaks in the philosophic prisoner of love tale Asleep At The Wheel that shares access but not the swing of the Texan band.

"I'm stuck here at this crossroad/ motor stalled I missed the light/ got caught asleep at the wheel of my life."

Boste proves she is the best-unsung heroine in Australian country music but, like her Alabama soundalike Marshall Chapman, she relies on roots radio and community TV for exposure.

It's criminal that Boste is not a commercial radio staple - she's in good company in our wireless ghetto.


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