The Eastern

They bring… Backpacks full of road songs, battered acoustics and no name electrics, banjo and glockenspiel, mandolin, harmonica, foot stomps and old time singing, straight from the gut, the fist and the heart… They believe in… Kicks and sadness, heartbreak and hope, 12 bar blues and 12 round rock’n’roll, fistfights and dust, road songs and trains, justice and freedom, holding it up and putting it down, that long lonesome sound, the river rise, the gospel plow, scratches and skips, static and hum, bleeding fingers and beating hearts, pages and type, ink and lead, rain on tin, iron and wood, 33 and a third, 45, 78, boots on the floor, dirt in the cracks, guts, harmony melody and soul, thinking and walking, the road and the lines between, closed signs and flickering lights, nightfall and sunrise, Kerouac, Guthrie, the end of the golden weather and the night of the riots, sheds, collections and dreams, Strummer/Jones, Morrissey/Marr, the Hanks Chinaski and Williams, Eddie Cochran, Johnny Devlin, Memphis and myth, the south from Gore to the Cargill and back…

They’ve played everywhere man… From Nashville to Timaru and a few stops in between, C-City’s home but Lyttelton’s where the hearts is, they drink with the sailors as house band at the Wunderbar, and remember songs shouted across the booth at Sun Studios, stages in London, rebel pubs in Baltimore, street corners and union meetings in Sydney, sweatin’ out in Clarksdale, they dream of their lost homes in Shirley, Philadelphia, Portland and Brighton and hold every mile between as a place to plug in and play… Book stores, record stores, theatre stages, lounge rooms, back rooms, listening rooms, dead rooms, to no people and to lots, they’ve played everywhere and anywhere ticking off show after show offering no sign of tagging out and quitting. They play ‘cause they have too, not because they wanna see their faces in a magazine or in a video or on a chart, or to soak it up in a showcase. They’ll play because they care, about the songs about the show about the folks they meet and the hands they shake. They play like it matters, like it’s all they know how to do, ‘cause it does and it is.