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Love, loss and life goes on have been great themes for songs for millenia! This one is in that vein, with an acoustic guitar bed track by Augie, lead guitar lines from Jerry and chorus vocals from the delightful Dunhams. Jerry has a cool history, having been on the road with Aussie blues band Chain for years before I acquired him from Chain bass player Dirk DuBois in August 1995. This happened the week that the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia passed away, hence the nickname. For Fender afficionados, Jerry is an all original '72 Stratocater with a 3 bolt neck, three grey-bottom staggered pole pickups and a nice light weight, unlike many Fenders of that era.
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I've been keen to record some of the great vintage guitars in the Zone of Tone for a while, and also capture some of my songwriting on those guitars over the years. The result is "oneZone": a sampler of songs and vintage instruments, recorded at ArtSound Studios in Canberra. All tracks were recorded in one or two takes, then in some cases I'd add additional vocal and guitar parts. We tried to keep the sound clean and live, and used valve mics extensively. Many thanks to Peter (and Tony) for sound engineering and to Mark at Carbon Creative for the cover layout and 'guitar mandala' image.
Leo Kottke calls this Duane Allman instrumental the 'greatest guitar instrumental ever written' and it is indeed a truly lovely song. I remember learning it back in the 1970s, have played it ever since and it always seems to resonate for audiences. I like to play it in open D tuning on 'Midge', the little DeGruchy which is modelled on an early Martin 016 design. This guitar has brazilian rosewood back and sides - wood that was over 60 years old before Bryan DeGruchy used it to build the guitar at Belair in the Adelaide hills, South Australia, in 1984. Bryan has since then become one of Australia's most respected acoustic guitar makers.
I first heard this song played by Jorma Kaukonen but it's origins are lost in the mists of country blues / ragtime tradition from the early part of the 20th century. Here my favourite old Gibson LG3 flat-top 'Augie' provides one finger style voice, while the other slide voice comes from a circa 1930 Harmony 'Roy Smeck Professional'played lap-style. Apart from the 'airplane bridge' fitted in honour of the 1928 Lindberg crossing of the Atlantic, 'Roy' features an amazing curly mahogany back and sides and very bright tone. Roy Smeck, the 'Wizard of the Strings', endorsed models for Harmony and Gibson and made the world's first 'music clip'in 1926:
There's just one guitar track here - Augie - and the song introduces the acoustic bass sounds of 'Levon' - a circa 1960 carved top Levin 18" wide jazz box whose broken neck I replaced with a Fender style bass neck in an experiment that went better than expected. Levon's bass tones captured on a valve mic got recording engineer Peter Richens quite enthused. This song leads off the album's ten original tunes. I like to play it early in a live set to invoke the power of music into the room. In Kenny Werner's words: “It’s about taming your mind, to become a reflecting pool that the music goes through."
Some years back we lived in the Adelaide Hills not far from the main line from Adelaide, and every night we could hear one or two trains echoing up the valley. This song has its origins in those sounds, together with the archetypal feeling of riding an express from one world to another... Here we have Stella the 1933 National Style 0 supported by the bass sounds of Levon, and extra chorus vocals from the inimitable 'Rev' Trev Dunham. For more info about the style and sound of the charismatic metal-bodied National resonator guitars I can recommend: 
This song was inspired during a trip to the Blues Festival at Narooma on the NSW south coast of Australia and the ambience of The Quarterdeck - a great restaurant that operates in an old boathouse built over the water. One of the many beautiful places in this beautiful part of the world. Here Ted the 1958 Gibson ES125 joins the rhythm section of Augie and Levon and we aim for a rhythm that would suit a barefoot spanish dancer in the moonlight by the water. Photo: marina at The Quarterdeck.
In March 2006 my wife Gill and I spent a weekend at Sydney's Coogee Beach, soaking up some late summer sun and spending almost all Sunday walking the path along the coast from Coogee north to Bondi and back. This song comes from that weekend and is dedicated accordingly! Here we feature one of my favourite instruments - a c.1952 Gibson Consolette steel guitar providing the coastal atmosphere in Cm6 tuning. Among the many interesting features of this guitar are that the 'fretboards' of the two 8 string necks are painted in the gold paint used for Les Paul DeLuxes at that time. This instrument got its nickname from 'Hilt Taylor' - a previous owner's name I guess - etched into the body. Kath and Josie Dunham provide the chorus vocals on this one.
Played on Augie with 'drop D' tuning. Dating from 1955 Augie is a great example of Gibson's 'fabulous flat-top' guitar making in this era. The missing finish on Augie's top is some sanded-out writing that reads: "Augie - yeah man!". The steel guitar here is from Hilt. This song reflects on the choices we make every day that will impact on us and our children, and was one of several songs written during the time I spent working at Orana School in Canberra. 
Blues is 'home base' music for me and this one has emerged as a favourite song on the more blues orientated side of the repertoire I do. The story is based on a late night encounter while packing up after a gig. The city is sleeping and a mysterious stranger walks out of the shadows into the light at the back of the hotel... While the groove is a tribute to John Lee Hooker, the guitar fills are a dialogue between Ted (standard tuning) and Hilt (steel guitar in E tuning). Ted is a 1958 Gibson ES125, Gibson's 'entry level' jazz box with the great sounding P90 pickup. Ted acquired his nickname in honour of Ted McCarthy, a strong influence on Gibson during their golden era of the late 1950s.
Shining Bright was inspired by the 17th century Japanese zen poet Ryokan, much of whose work reads like blues lyrics to me, and someone I discovered when Gill and I were in Japan in 1990. This is a sparse track with Stella solo.
By and By takes up a country feel and was inspired by the landscape around Lake George north of Canberra, where you might see paragliders overhead. The standard rhythm track of Augie and Levon with Jerry at the end, plus Trev, Kath and Josie on the choruses.
The final track Night Ride is a duet for two slide guitars - Stella and Roy, with the latter played lap style - to take us out into the sunset.