DAVE'S DIARY - 14 JUNE 2004 - LESLIE AVRIL
SUPERWOMAN LESLIE SINGS OF TRASHY WOMEN
"The ticking of the clock is what every woman hears/ The ticking of the clock is what every woman fears/ I have to make a choice before the key turns in the lock/ I can't escape the ticking of the clock." - Ticking Of The Clock - Leslie Avril-Greg Macainsh.
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Leslie
Avril is no overnight sensation. Leslie has recorded three solo albums on labels diverse as Larrikin and ABC. |
LESLIE'S LIVE LIQUID LUNCH BOX
Avril was
a popular Nu Country FM DJ whose Live Liquid Lunch Box was a highlight
of her career at the fire gutted Beer Can Hill studio in Northcote.
She is also one of the unlucky radio country's unsung heroines.
She graduated from jazz, rock and blues to country with The Blue Healers
- featuring Dingoes guitarist Chris Stockley - and featured on eighties
album New Country and the soundtrack of the movie Ricky And
Pete.
Ms Avril landed six songs in ABC series Something In The Air that
also featured cameo roles by leading actor and fellow Nu Country DJ and
Reel Country host Peter Hosking - the long time producer and director
of Nu Country TV.
DISCOGRAPHY
| Leslie's
1994 debut solo disc, Champagne & Desolation, gave her
national community radio exposure. Ms Avril wrote Desert Sky and Lay Your Burdens Down with latter day international chart topping expatriate Australasian Keith Urban and Heather Field - both songs were reprised on Leslie Live in 1996. Leslie also wrote Firewoman with Ms Field and James Gillard - bassist husband of Shanley Del. And Wayne Burt, who penned Looking Everywhere for Leslie's debut, wrote the evocative real life war refrain Billy Came Back for the live disc. |
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That album,
recorded at the Central Club Hotel in Richmond in 1996, was acclaimed
for Carnival Of Soul - penned by Mondo Rock and Blue Hearts guitarist
Randy Bulpin, renowned for slide guitar on New Yorker Scott McClatchy's
second disc Redemption.
Bulpin worked in Mondo Rock with Daddy Cool co-founder and Nu Country
member Ross Wilson whose Rockabilly Woman tune segued into Peter
Lillee's I Want To Sing A Johnny Cash Song, also recorded by Nu
Country cartoonist Fred Negro's band Shonky Tonk.
The live disc featured former High Rise Bombers bassist Paul Gadsby who
penned I Want You Back on Leslie's debut disc.
Leslie wrote her signature song Superwoman with Gillard and Field
who shared a house with Rick Price.
Rick penned a song with the same title with Melinda Schneider for her
second album Happy Tears.
COWBOY IN MY BED
Ms Avril
created a storm by exposing the work experience of a Nu Country volunteer
as the source of the title track of her 1998 album Cowboy In My Bed.
Former Skyhooks bassist and Nu Country member Greg Macainsh - joined Avril
to write the title track, What I Used To Get Up To and highly personal
career song and feminine anthem, Ticking Of The Clock.
Cowboy In My Bed also featured another Wilson song Some Of These
Blues, Macainsh song Fatter Than Texas, Russell Morris's Far
From The Storm & Good News Bad by former Dingoes guitarist
and latter day producer Kerryn Tolhurst.
Tolhurst, who produced Americana artist Bruce Henderson and recorded with
other acts including the Health & Happiness Show, was also at the
helm of two albums by dynamic Melbourne singer-songwriter Cyndi Boste.
Co-producers Greg Macainsh and Chris Corr hired Sam Lemann (guitars),
James Black (piano), Garret Costigan (pedal steel), Gary Young (drums)
and Paul Gadsby (bass).
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In
2000 she was nominated in the Top 10 for Golden Guitar for Female
Vocalist of the Year at the Australian Country Music Awards in Tamworth
and was a dual finalist at Kyneton in the Victorian Awards for Album
of the Year and best Female Vocalist. "I first performed this role at Eltham High in the 70's and was understudy for Julie at the most recent productions at Monsalvat in Eltham," Leslie revealed. |
Avril was also one of the headliners at the recent Whittlesea Country Music Festival and returns to Tamworth in January.