Interview by Brett Ratner (Gibson Nashville)
A few months ago in The Amplifier, we reviewed Mystery Train by Australian blues guitarist/singer/songwriter Geoff Achison.
The CD was recorded the old fashioned way... without overdubs and an enthusiastic Achison in front of the microphone by himself with an acoustic guitar. While Achison normally wields a late '60s Les Paul in front of a live band, it was obvious, even in this stripped-down form, that he's in the same musical class as anyone here in the States.
This was confirmed at the 12th Annual International Blues Talent Competition in Memphis where Achison scored The Albert King Award for the day's most promising guitarist and also landed an endorsement deal with Gibson Montana acoustic guitars.
Achison's manager informed us that Geoff was planning a tour of the States in August, so we thought it fitting to do a quick email interview to find out what gives Geoff the blues.
1. For the past couple of decades, Australia (and New Zealand for that matter) has been home to many important pop artists and bands, from Split Enz to INXS to Olivia Newton John to Air Supply to Silverchair. Not a lot of blues artists that I can think of. What is the blues scene like in Australia?
Well it's all here mate, but not like it is in the U.S. I can tell you that we have Blues Societies, Blues venues and festivals, Blues radio shows, countless Blues bands and solo artists and even a Blues restaurant called Muddy Waters Cafe! There is a healthy interest in the music and has been for decades. My old boss, Dutch Tilders, has been playing the Blues professionally here for 35 years now. It's guys like him who have spread the gospel so to speak and helped to create the scene that we have here today. The big difference though is simply is that we get to the origins through record product, books, photos and videos of the masters. What I mean is that we don't grow up with it. Every Blues based performer here has their own story of that first chance meeting with 'that sound'. It is certainly not a part of our culture, but is slowly gaining acceptance as a viable music form.
2. What type of obstacles do you have to overcome to earn a following?
Just that! Trying to prove to people that it is a viable music form. (smiles) If I tell someone I'm a Blues player they say "Oh that's that really miserable slow stuff isn't it?" Either that or it translates as "I'm just starting out and I only know three chords!" I should point out too that whilst there are a lot of enthusiastic Blues bands here, the larger proportion are not really good at it. So It's like the venue has two bands who say it's a Blues combo and one wants to get paid and the other just wants a couple of beers or something, so the venue books the cheap act and they're awful and anyone who was there says "This is Blues? It stinks!" Now I come along and he tells me "no way I've had Blues in here before and nobody liked it." So you've really got to create your own market, run your own shows, do your own dirty laundry and work for peanuts sometimes to get yourself in front of a crowd. From there , if you are good, the rest is easy, well, relatively easy.
3. Tell me what or how music makes you feel, why you play and what inspires you to write songs.
I remember hearing Joe Cocker singing ' The Letter' on our radio and being totally mesmerised. The power of this guys voice! He had that Blues feeling. I started playing guitar when I was eleven and I was always looking for that same power, like it stayed with me. Now and again the bands I was in would put some tune in the set where I'd think "that's it - in here somewhere!" In retrospect they were the Blues, Soul and Funk tunes. When I first heard a record that was presented to me as "check this out, it's an old Blues album" it was like a curtain being lifted. I thought "well why don't people play this all the time, like it's perfect music... isn't it?" I guess the reason I play it is because it seems to me to be about people that I know and situations I've experienced. That's not to be taken literally, you take what you hear and apply it to your own space. Growing up in a working class family and looking forward to a career in the local factory making plastic bottles was a pretty simple, ordinary way of life. What this Blues music did for me was to speak of these plain and ordinary things and make them beautiful and precious. The rhythm of the machines your working on all day, the swagger a guy has on Friday night with his pockets full of pay-day looking for a babe. The train going past full of people important enough to have a destination. The girl screaming at her man for some reason you'll never know. That's where songs come from.
4. Tell me a little about your guitar technique. You are a little more "chops" oriented than most blues players. In other words, capable of playing difficult passages and licks. How do you incorporate these licks into your style without making it seem like you are "showing off."
Ooh that's a good one, I'll do my best. You know when you're sitting around with a group of people somewhere and you've got the chair and you're trying to explain your views on some matter.Then all of a sudden you find that magic phrase You figure out where they're at and why they don't get it and WHAM! you deliver it. "Oh see what you mean, that makes sense, you're right." When I'm playing a gig I'm trying to tell people something or get them to feel a certain way. Every night is different because every crowd is different. I have my own habits and methods, as we all do, in the way we relate to other folks. When you wake up in the morning you don't know exactly what words you will speak in the course of the day, you make it up as you go. So I improvise the gig as I go along and now and then WHAM! There's that magic phrase from outta nowhere that gets the message across. Then of course it becomes part of your vocabulary and people who hear it and dig it, as part of theirs. This is why I also include quotes from artists who've inspired me. That's how it goes 'round. I'll have to own up to showing off, although I'm glad it doesn't appear that way. I'm afraid showing off is the best way to attract peoples attention to the deeper meaning. Of course there isn't always a deeper meaning, sometimes it's just bloody good fun!
5. How does playing acoustic guitar-based blues differ from fronting an electrified full band?
They are completely different animals. Even though they are both six stringed , Spanish style, conventional tuned guitars it is hard to think of them as being the same instrument. The tunes I play on acoustic are never played on the electric and vice-versa. I mean it's like physically impossible for me to do. Whilst I love the freedom of getting a whole funk groove happening on an acoustic guitar (I can change the beat, chord sequence or the whole song if need be) I really crave those moments when you're laying down some groove with a band and everybody gets into the same headspace and that third force takes over. You know like it's out of your control and it takes it's own course.
6. You are about to tour in America, how are you received in America? Do people take you seriously right off the bat, or do you really have to work a crowd to earn their respect.
Well a healthy smattering of both I guess.Say I walk into a bar on Beale St. and crawl up to the band and tell them I'm an Australian Blues musician who wants to sit in. Everybody laughs! Kinda like going to Scotland and saying "I'm a bagpipe player from Mexico." No offence meant to Mexican bagpipe players! I don't think there was anywhere the guys weren't happy for me to let me have a go and then I'm up there all nervous but finding that everyone seemed to dig it. I mean right off bat, the band would would be with me and the crowd knew what I was saying. That's what I mean about the difference between playing in Australia and the U.S. If you play Blues in Australia you've got to work a little harder because most people have never heard it before. In any case, that's how my first visit to the States went and the next time 'round I felt that I received my diploma in Memphis with the 'Albert King award' It meant to me that at least I knew I was on the right track. All of the guys who've inspired me had developed their own style. That's what I am going for. So yeah man, I love American audiences. I can dispense with selling them what kind of music it is and get on with my bit of news.
7. Tell me a little about the Gibson guitars you own and play.
I was in love with the Gibson sound from the very first note I heard. Eric Clapton's Les Paul, Freddie King's 355, Albert Kings 'Flying V'. The very first time I saw a Gibson, it was up the back of the shop covered in dust and forgotten. Everybody was into strats and whammy bars back then. Anyway she must have been there for years and I just had to have it. So I'm making plastic bottles and it gets to vacation time. They give me $600 to take a few weeks off over the Christmas. So I empty the bank, trade in the cheap Japanese copy, lose the $600 and get the girl. I also starve over Christmas! 'Goldie' remains my most coveted prize. It's about a 1968 or '69 Les Paul Gold Top deluxe. She's been a work horse her whole life and has been rebuilt a few times now. But hey, a Gibson is a forever love you know. I also have a Night Hawk, which I scored in Memphis last time round. The Night Hawk is is about the single most useful instrument I've ever played. It's great to have all those sounds on a guitar which is as playable as a 1954 custom. I've got a mate that is a mad Strat man. "Here Ray check this Night Hawk out, I think you'll like it." I didn't see it for two months!! My first port of call on this next trip will be Bozeman Montana home to the Gibson acoustic HQ to pick up a couple of Blues King Electro models. We haven't met yet but we've sent photographs to each other and I just know it's going to be a marriage made in ..... Bozeman!
8. Lastly, is blues something you only feel in the Mississippi Delta, or is it something universal that everyone can share.
It's been an interesting twentieth century. Since the 1920's the Blues has been committed to wax and distributed to all corners of the globe. It's pretty amazing really that as a youth in the early eighties, I hear something recorded on the other side of the world, before I was born and tap into the soul of a guy who has since passed away and find that it makes sense of the life I'm leading. The world gets smaller every day. In this manner we are transgressing the boundaries of distance, of time and of life's inevitability. If you could convey every idea, concept, feeling, thought, whatever in everyday conversation, there would be no need for music. It is a language of another kind which expresses those things we cannot possibly say. Notice how the less someone is allowed to speak, the more music they tend to make. The Blues is a good example.