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Byron Shire
March 27, 2024

The suave Mr Don Walker

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Don-Walker

After a blazing good show last year, Don Walker & The Suave Fucks return to Mullumbimby to reprise the magic. The enigmatic Mr Walker’s been busy since last September, what with the sellout Cold Chisel tour, Tex, Don and Charlie gigs and recently accepting the Ted Albert Award for Outstanding Services to Australian Music for Cold Chisel.

The Don has been in our midst, recording some tracks for the upcoming Tex, Don and Charlie album with producer Christian Pyle in his Federal studio. It was a very productive experience. ‘He’s a great engineer,’ said Walker, who relishes those stints in the studio with Tex and Charlie.

‘We only do it every dozen years,’ says Don. ‘The first time I did it I thought that you could right up other people and make all different types of albums. But then I thought No. Otherwise you’d finish up being a bit of a tart. So I just kept my collaborations to Tex and Charlie and the very occasional Cold Chisel reunion.’

So what’s the secret to the magic of the trinity of T, D & C?

‘I think a lot of it is that we work together rarely. Tex and Charlie work together a lot more regularly, and they bicker like a couple of old housewives, but really because we work together rarely we have never had a fight, so there is no baggage, and the basis is that for some unlikely reason, when it’s just the three of us in a lounge room like Charlie’s and we play some rudimentary instruments, it sounds good and it really surprise us. We get together and play a song and we think that sounds good. I am easy to please but Tex and Charlie are much harder to please and hardcore about what they do, and it seems to please them. It was a treat to really workshop some beautiful songs; I am talking about Tex’s songs. He’s one of Australia’s great songwriters.’

As it turns out, Don Walker ain’t too bad either. Playing with the Suave Fucks, this is another collaboration where the music of the man comes to the fore, backed up by some pretty impressive players.

‘It’s not just me and a toy piano,’ jokes Don. ‘They are six of the best musicians around.

‘We have two guitar players; Glenn Anna – he is the main go-to guitarist in the country music scene, and he’s a handy jazz player. Roy Payne plays guitar and baritone, and he is well known for rockabilly. And Hamish Stuart playing drums – he’s all over the jazz word in Sydney. Michael Vidal playing bass, he’s been everywhere, he’s rockabilly – recorded with Slim Dusty and holds the record, as far as we can ascertain, for being the only bass player who has appeared live on TV playing his bass dressed only in Glad Wrap. It’s not something Michael likes to be reminded of. Gareth Costigan playing pedal steel. Gareth is yet to be experience the clingwrap, but there’s still time.

‘They are an extraordinary band. I am usually standing up there thinking how lucky I am to be on stage with them. It’s an evolution – Garrett’s been there constantly – 25 years. Six years ago I was working with someone else who was playing drums, so I rang Hamish – we have known each other for 30 years, but we always got on very well after hours. So the band kind of just evolved.’

Finding his way musically wasn’t plain sailing for Walker once he’d stepped out of the shadow of the iconic Cold Chisel.

‘It was very hard. I came out of Cold Chisel. All my instincts were that I was in a band, and the only real band as an ‘adult’ was Cold Chisel, so I tried to sing like Jim or Ian and tried to use my knowledge of writing in that context and that could never work. I had to find a way that I sing. That took a long time, maybe seven years of making sometimes quite ugly-sounding music to find something that is utterly different.’

Walker is characteristically wry. I ask about what the fan expectations were. He says:

‘By the time I found my voice they were long gone. The fans that is.’

So what was the turning point for Walker?

‘I was trying to make records and make a hit, and I was receiving money from major record companies and I was trying to do something that wasn’t just the fashion of the moment but also trying to satisfy the company; if someone gives me money I want to give that back. The result was that neither made money for them or for me, then at a certain point there was a liberating moment when I said I am not going to do the major record company thing or take money from people, I am going back to making music frugally, and let that find its right level. Tex and Charlie had a lot to do with that liberation. We went into a studio with Tony Cohen and we made a record in two days, and driving back to Sydney listening to a cassette I thought “this is amazing!” I couldn’t make this record with thousands of dollars and six months!’

So it’s about prioritising integrity over capital?

‘Integrity can be over-rated,’ laughs Don. ‘A lot of people screw themselves up trying to maintain their integrity. It has a price, and you should always have in mind what would I sell out for. I value my integrity very highly. This highly.’

So it’s less about the integrity and more about the feeling. Music has to be fun.

‘That’s where it has to come from – there is no sense of doing it unless it’s moment-to-moment fun and unless there is a lot of fun in the songs that you are doing and in the lyrics. For this new project Tex has written some songs and there are some lines that are flatout so funny! For your mental health you need to be around people who can make you laugh. And with Tex and Charlie that is the case, and it’s the case with the Suave Fucks as well!’

I tell Don I loved his book, Shots. A dark whiskey-tinged beat-poet-styled journey that tasted exactly like inner-city Sydney at about 3am. Is he going to write more?

‘I do want to write more. Since then I have just been waiting for it to happen. This year I realise you have to sit there with a blank piece of paper and actually not get up until you write something.

‘Music is easy. Words are difficult. I spend a lot of time working on the words.’

Don Walker and the Suave Fucks supported by Claire Anne Taylor – at Club Mullum – Mullumbimby Ex-Services on Saturday 11 June. Show starts at 7.30pm.

Tickets at the club.

 

 

 

 

 


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