DAVE'S DIARY - 29 AUGUST 2006 - CYNDI BOSTE
CYNDI BOSTE ADDS COUNTRY SOUL TO HOTEL KEW
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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.
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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
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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. Cyndi Boste at Basement Discs recently> |
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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.