DAVE'S DIARY - 21 JULY 2012 - PAUL GREENE CD REVIEW
2010 CD REVIEW
PAUL
GREENE
EVERYWHERE IS HOME (WHIRL-ONE STOP)
MIDDLE DISTANCE RUNNERS NEVER EASE UP
"I like to take my time when I travel/ it takes time to get to know a place/ we've got a life time ahead of us/ and a life time behind/ with the wheel in my hand/ and a song on my mind."- Ease Up - Paul Greene.
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Before Paul
Greene represented Australia at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics in the 400 metres
he often sang for his supper.
The Sydney born singer also had to finance his campaigns for the 1990
and 1994 Commonwealth Games and the World Championships in 1991 and 1995.
Greene, now 39 and holding, also ran in the 400 metres 1996 Olympic relay
team.
Although Paul traded sport for music there's still one constant - living
out of a backpack or suitcase.
And, of course, winning wide acclaim for songs that reflect his life on
the lost highway in the unlucky radio country.
So it's apt on Greene's sixth solo album, he telegraphs his message in
its title Everywhere Is Home.
OK, Paul,
wife Kate and two children hang their hats at Culburra Beach on the NSW
south coast.
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But
when he's not on the road here and overseas he travels with family
in a bus, albeit modest, compared with Willie Nelson's famed Honeysuckle
Rose. It's no surprise he kicks off with Ease Up - an inspirational tale of travel and its rewards. Ironically that song was used to quell mud wrestlers at CMC Rocks The Snowys festival at Thredbo in March, 2010. "My kids are here in the audience, too," the athlete with three and a half octave voice told offenders, "If you do that again I'll put my guitar down your throat." |
Greene's
growl worked - the combatants cleaned up their act, if not their clobber.
The singer had plenty of pub pugilism peers to guide him in stage front
crowd control.
He enjoyed a 2000 stint with Midnight Oil refugee Rob Hirst and Hoodoo
Gurus bassist Rick Grossman in the Ghost Writers
DRIFTING
"Drive down to the beach on a cloudy day/ swim out past the breakers, wish I could stay out there/ so far away from all the worry that I might leave back on the land." - Drifting - Paul Greene-Tim Forsythe.
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Greene
exploits different road metaphors in Stop Blaming Someone Else,
laced with his harmonica, and the idyllic Drifting with co-writer
Tim Forsythe on 12-string guitar. Drifting had plenty of time to ferment - he wrote it in 1994 with Forsythe at his home in the inner western Melbourne suburb of Footscray. The duo revived the song when Forsyth headed north to Greene's Red Shelf studio recording sessions and added 12-string guitar to it. Greene may have still been drifting on Might Have Arrived but takes his hand off the wheel for liberal application of harmonica for those old and young fellow travellers and lovers. |
Greene reaches
higher notes in Everybody Got A Little Love - the bottle of red
is nowhere as lethal as the anaesthetic that helps him through My,
My or a hedonistic splashdown in Wasted It.
The animal comparisons in the latter are as powerful as the return of
road imagery in Never Too Big To Fall where a departed lover deigns
to return from the city to the bush.
That vitriol is also injected in miracle seeking pleas in rollicking ruptured
romance requiem See This One Through.
It may be trite to say Greene paced himself but a tender heart beats in
the melancholic You Should Know and repentant finale Stay On
- buffer and foil for the previous angst.
Greene's music here is a vast contrast to that colour.
The multi-instrumentalist and his band The Other Colours have since released
his seventh album Behind The Stars for ABC Music after his previous
label went into receivership.
Greene also produced multiple Golden Guitarist and serial altar sprinter
James Blundell's 10th album Woolshed Creek.
Blundell, 47 and father of two, recorded the album in a studio on the
Mt Malakoff family farm at Stanthorpe near tiny Queensland town Texas.
Greene has also been writing songs with a vast cast of artists including
Tamworth Starmaker winner and former shearer Luke Dickens, former Mascot
Qantas accountant and Golden Guitarist Amber Lawrence and seasoned singer
Wendy Matthews.
CLICK HERE for Tonkgirl's Gig Guide for Greene's
tour dates.