Tex

by Tex Perkins

  The script is essentially based around the song selection which serves the narrative. We weaved dialogue in and around the songs. As it went on we slowly whittled the original outline down to the show that it ultimately became. I’d throw in gags here and there to lighten it up when I thought it needed it.

  In the early days of the show the band was the RocKwiz guys. So Pete Luscombe on drums, James Black and Ash Naylor on guitars, and Steve Hadley on double bass. Those guys were the Tennessee Four and so that was really, really good band right there. They worked with us through the construction of the show and did the first season at the Athenaeum Theatre in 2009 and I give them a lot of credit for getting it to where we needed it to be. But after that the B team of Dave Folley, Shane Riley and Matt Walker became the A Team, and have been with the show ever since.

  We had Rachel Tidd playing June and she carries most of the real serious weight of the show. I do more the vibes and anecdotal stuff, and she’s more the nuts and bolts, which is important in a show like this and in making it work as well as it does. She’s the newsreader, the straight person, who delivers all the dry facts that have to be in there – and then I throw in the ‘and then Johnny fucked up’ bits. So I sort of get it easy in that department.

  Backstage before a Man in Black show with Rachel Tidd.

  The show was intended to be reverential but also have a tongue-in-cheek side to it, and I think it works in that way. It’s a show after all and people want to be entertained. It’s almost like a music-driven spoken-word documentary.

  I don’t try to totally be Johnny Cash – anytime I had to quote him, sure, I’d do an impression of his voice but without overdoing it. I wanted the audience to feel like it was being delivered directly from Cash’s perspective, but I also wanted to make sure they didn’t feel like they were sitting in class getting a history lesson.

  Of course it’s a fine line of keeping that balance between being Tex Perkins and then Tex Perkins being Johnny Cash. There’s times I’ll just use my own voice and other times I definitely sound more like him. Certainly there’s big parts of the show when I inhabit him. Doing a show like this is a bit like the way Cash sings a song like ‘A Boy Named Sue’. Essentially it’s a cover version because the song was written by Shel Silverstein, but the way he sings it, he totally owns it and it’s his song. You can’t imagine anyone else singing it.

  The show does what it has to in order to be a Johnny Cash show – it goes back to the Sun Records stuff and there’s a lot from that era as they’re the songs that most people know. And there’s a lot of the prison stuff as well. But then we include a version of ‘Hurt’, the song written by Nine Inch Nails that he covered on one of the American Recordings albums. It’s a great song – his cover eclipses the original. So when it gets to me, I’m doing a cover of a cover. Likewise, his version of Nick Lowe’s ‘The Beast In Me’ is also great for the narrative.

  I managed to persuade the producers to include other things that I love that most people don’t know. I love his version of the song ‘Bad News’ which is just plain weird and unlike anything else he ever recorded.

  I don’t think anyone expected the show to be as popular as it was. It just kept rolling on and getting bigger and bigger. We did a couple of weeks at the Athenaeum which was the initial season. That was something like 12 shows in a row and I remember thinking to myself, ‘How am I going to keep THIS up?’ Then they booked SEVEN WEEKS at the Twelfth Night Theatre in Brisbane. They just kept adding shows. In Brisbane we had Monday off but we’d do two shows on a Sunday or Saturday so it was still seven shows a week. I have to admit I went a little insane. Doing a show about someone who was out of it a lot gave me the right to BE out of it a lot. If I stumbled or messed up in any way, it just looked like I was ‘being Johnny’. (Hey Joaquin Phoenix, I’m still here too!) In the end we did hundreds of shows right around the country.

  Can you imagine?

  Doing Brisbane at that stage was good because of course my family came – and it was nice that I was in a show that wasn’t loud, in-your-face rock’n’ roll with people yelling abuse at me. They could come and see it and be comfortable and have a seat, instead of standing tentatively in a sweaty pub or dingy nightclub.

  The previous time my mother had come to see me perform it was with the Beasts. That was a mistake, as the abuse I copped from the Brisbane pieces of shit was astounding. Everything was directed towards me and there was a lot of abuse – ‘WANKER!’ – and my mother was in the audience. In other circumstances I’d be giving it back to the crowd but on this night I didn’t say a word. I held my tongue and hoped her earplugs were thick ones.

  When I was starting to do all this there was absolutely no encouragement from my family, not that I needed it. But it’s the usual thing – as soon as I was achieving some kind success it was all ownership. That’s our boy. But that’s fine. My relationship with my mother has always been great and still is. I love my mum, full stop. Simple as that. She’s 86 now. There was at least 10 years of, ‘Oh, Greg’, but then she saw me on television once with The Cruel Sea in the early ’90s and suddenly the refrain changed to, ‘That’s my son!’

  When my mother did finally embrace the idea that her son was in show business there was an ABC radio show in Brisbane that she used to listen to. She was listening one day and someone called in and mentioned The Cruel Sea and the radio host uttered the immortal words, ‘Who’s The Cruel Sea?’ Well, my mother got on the phone and set him straight. She couldn’t help herself. She had to fill him in on who Tex Perkins was and who The Cruel Sea were and all their wonderful achievements.

  Anyway, the radio show’s producer kept her number and whenever there was a quiet moment on his show the host would go, ‘Well, I might give Mrs Perkins a call and see what she’s up to.’ This went on for years.

  Before you ask, my parents really never called me Tex. It was either ‘Greg’ or ‘darling’. At some stage I was aware of my dad referring to me as Tex to other people but he didn’t address me directly that way. When he was talking to other people it was simpler for him to use Tex so people knew who he was talking about.

  Now here I am performing as Johnny Cash maybe 15 years since that Beasts Of Bourbon show where I copped all that abuse, so it’s really nice for them to be able to come to this. And for Dad to be there this time too. They came – as parents do – to the Sunday matinee. In fact, they came five times and it brought the old fella to tears.

  Dad wasn’t a Johnny Cash fan per se, the music he related to came from before World War II. He had that album of Marty Robbins Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs, although I suspect that was because Mum had joined one of those record clubs where when you signed up you got 10 records for ten dollars and she’d told Dad to pick one and he’d seen Gunfighter Ballads and pointed at it in the catalogue. But he did like the record and Johnny Cash isn’t too far from that.

  When I came in to ‘The Theatre World’ I realised it was very different from what I’d done before. There were people for EVERY job – and it seemed to me there were people employed for jobs that didn’t exist, or certainly jobs that didn’t require multiple people to do them. There was a lighting designer, a lighting operator AND a lighting director. Really?

  But slowly people would get screwed and not get paid and then they’d disappear from the crew and we’d hear all these rumours of disgruntlement. It was like the producers and crew were having their own cannibal war.

  I’d come in at the beginning and basically made the show what it was but of course I didn’t have ownership of it. Eventually it was just me, Rachel, the band and the front-of-house guy and a stage tech. We’d go into theatres for a season and aside from the existing staff at the theatre it was just us. We’d gone from this crazily over-populated world to virtually no one.

  As things progressed the relationship with management became distant. As the show went on, we didn’t see the producers that much anymore. It really became our show and we refined and changed it whenever
we felt it necessary.

  Then I decided to take a break from it.

  A year or two later the Sydney Festival popped up and asked if I’d like to use Parramatta Jail as the venue for a Johnny Cash-prison style show. They thought it was a great idea if we did a Cash show there. They called it Far From Folsom. And it’s expanded from those shows to be one that I do in old prisons right around the country.

  This show takes the Folsom Prison shows as a context. It’s like we try to imagine what would happen if Johnny Cash came and played at whatever prison it is. That allows us a little more freedom as we’re not recreating a specific show, we’re using it more as a template. It’s more about creating the vibe of what a Johnny Cash show in a prison might have been like. And at those gigs he played a certain kind of show – the outlaw songs, the strange funny songs, the more fucked-up stuff and less of the romantic and religious ones.

  People love coming inside an old jail and seeing entertainment that is conceptually linked to that location. It’s pretty irresistible. To go into these places and learn of the stories, myths and legends of all these incredible locations is really interesting to me. We even played Port Arthur. Like Johnny’s original shows, performing there was almost like a kind of cleansing. Bringing a fresh spirit to a place usually associated with misery and tragedy.

  Of course some people think any kind of tribute show is uncool and being involved in one compromises one’s credibility. Fuck ’em. At the end of the day, this is entertainment, I’m an entertainer, and I’m only too happy to enter-fucking-tain you.

  I still do all these other things but I’m very grateful to be able to sing some Cash and make a little at the same time.

  My other, other family, I love these people: Shane Riley, Rachel Tidd, Perko, Dave Foley, Steve Hadley and Matt Walker.

  TEX PERKINS & THE BAND OF GOLD

  TEX PERKINS & THE BAND OF GOLD / 2010

  This album grew out of a hundred sound checks during The Man In Black run of shows. For our own enjoyment, we would learn and record an old country tune (anything that wasn’t Johnny Cash) each sound check. Rachel Tidd is so great to sing with so we chose songs that lent themselves to a verse-swapping duet style. Steve Hadley wasted no time getting us into a recording studio. Songs by Guy Clarke, Townes Van Zandt, Kris Kristofferson and Porter Wagner were a joy to sing and before we knew it we had an album.

  RECORD LABEL: Inertia Music

  CORE BAND MEMBERS: Tex Perkins (vocals), Rachel Tidd (vocals), Shane Reilly (guitars), Shannon Bourke (guitar), Steve Hadley (bass), Dave Foley (drums).

  T’N’T

  Us rock guys are a funny lot.

  T and I got first and second prize in the international pouting championships 2006.

  We’re very supportive of each other a lot of the time and sincerely wish each other well. But deep down a simmering jealousy takes hold if one of us ‘does well’. We just can’t help it.

  I’ve known Tim Rogers for a long time and as much as we were, and are, great friends, we have always been, and still are, rivals. I think that’s the dynamic and it works fine as we both understand that this is the situation. Both of us would like a little of what we think the other has and they don’t . . . whatever that is.

  Tim’s a naturally competitive person rather than a collaborative person. When we started working together he hadn’t really written with other people before. He was very much a ‘this is MY baby’ kind of guy. Which is fair enough – he’s that good.

  So when we got together to do the T’n’T project, that was the first time he really allowed himself to do any sort of sharing of a creative platform. I know You Am I songs are delivered fully formed to the other guys in the band.

  The T’n’T (that’s Tim’n’Tex in case you haven’t cottoned on yet) album just grew out of the fact that we were spending time together. Sometime in early 2005 I was asked by Andy Kent of You Am I to guest vocal at an APRA awards or ARIA or something as they were inducting The Easybeats into the Hall Of Fame. I could sing any number of tunes, I chose ‘St Louis’.

  The rumour mill, the grapevine and gossip columns were overloaded at the time with talk of a series of meltdowns from Tim, the most notorious involving Missy Higgins and a staircase. When I met the band for rehearsals the night before, Tim was in good form and the band sounded great but when we finished, it was on!

  We reconvened at the hotel bar where everyone involved in the awards was staying. Tim was amazing, spreading his drunken charm all over the place. From brazenly but casually wooing Delta Goodrem’s mum, to buying drinks for everyone and charging them to another band’s room number, he was on fire. I thought, if this is a meltdown, then it looks pretty good to me. I wanted in.

  We woke up the next afternoon next to each other in my hotel bed, with the worst hangovers either of us had had for a month. Okay, a week.

  After that we were a couple. Seriously, it was like a platonic gay relationship. I loved the guy, but I didn’t want to stick it in him. We just wanted to be around each other. And I think the people that were usually around him were tiring of all the drama, so I stepped in and was there for him at the right time.

  We started going to football matches together. And at these times there wasn’t a lot of talk about music and careers. It had a whole other context and setting when we went to the footy.

  Tim’s a North Melbourne supporter and I’m obviously a St Kilda guy. I would go to all sorts of North Melbourne games with Tim. North vs pretty much anyone. I just like going to watch football. Some people only want to go and see their team play but for me it doesn’t matter whether it’s St Kilda playing or not. I just like good footy. Actually I just like being AT the footy. Maybe it’s the food.

  We would also enjoy going for a kick together. It’s a special little slice of bliss finding an empty park or oval on a mild autumn afternoon in Melbourne and kicking a football to one another. It’s very therapeutic – it was good for us physically but it was especially good for our mental health. And we would talk, about everything. Kick, walk and talk. No subject too personal or private. Dudes like us need dudes like us.

  It was many months before the inevitable idea of us playing together even came up (I mean we had played together quite a few times over the years, when I guested with You Am I) and looking back I think we avoided it for a while. But then we just couldn’t help ourselves and a few pub gigs were booked. At its best it was like a comedy act with two acoustic guitars. With boozy banter and beautiful ballads, we enjoyed entering each other’s musical landscape.

  Not long after that Tim was offered a very interesting gig. Every year the West Australian Symphony Orchestra does this special event where they get contemporary artists and do their songs in orchestral fashion. Tim was offered this but they wanted him to double-up with someone else. So he chose me! Thanks T.

  Before we knew it we were both working with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. Could this thing we were just starting be put in front of a 70-piece orchestra? Did they know what they were letting themselves in for? Did WE know what we were letting ourselves in for?

  Six of Tim’s songs and six of mine were chosen (by them) and orchestral scores were written to accompany them. At this stage we were both very much in the ‘can’t believe this is happening’ frame of mind and pretty much just agreed with everything they wanted to do. We were astounded that our silly little four-chord rock songs were being used as templates for these enormously complex arrangements.

  A month later we travelled to Perth to do publicity and hear the scores for the first time. We got there the night before and, of course, did some damage. So at ten o’clock in the morning we sat trembling with tears in our eyes from not only our own discomfort but the overwhelming experience of hearing our music played to us by a huge orchestra. It was breathtaking.

  I have to admit when we actually started working with the WASO it was intimidating. To get in front of that many people, in the orchestra and in the audience, required some guts, believ
e me. We knuckled down and gave good rehearsal but when we were finally out there performing . . . it was out there.

  One moment I will never forget was when I was about to sing one of my songs, the conductor steers the orchestra to my entry point and . . . I MISS MY CUE. The conductor and I share a quick glance and he turns back to the 70-piece orchestra and with a wave of his baton adds another four-bar intro. It was like turning the Queen Mary around on a dime.

  ‘Wow,’ I thought, he really saved my arse, and then I missed it again, another quick wave and . . . third time lucky, and we were away. Tim nailed his parts with no problems. No matter what else was going on he always gave good show at the gig.

  After that the next thing we jumped into was the writing and recording of an album together. My Better Half. At first we would write separately. I would throw ‘Half Of Nothing’ at him and he would throw ‘Any Old Time’ at me. But then we wrote things like ‘Everyone Hates You When You’re Popular’ and ‘Cunnilingus’ on the spot right there in the studio.

  It was a T’N’T year and a good period for it because neither of us was overloaded with commitments with our other bands, so we embarked on a tour of Europe and America. If you ever want to test a friendship or a relationship, go on a long tour together.

  Tim’s a sensitive soul and I can be an insensitive oaf sometimes. More than once I hurt Tim’s feelings without realising what I’d done. I never meant to, I’m just an idiot. His mood swings can be difficult to ride. After that tour we cooled off a bit and went our separate ways. We still see each other regularly but have been a little wary of working with each other again. But we will; it’s inevitable. He’s one of my all-time favourite musicians and one of the few true rock stars that this country has produced. Love ya, T.