While waiting by the side of the road for his ride to that night’s gig, Australian music icon Tex Perkins joined CW for a phone chat about his extensive career, day drinking during the pandemic, and the high fashion of corduroy.
This Saturday 16 July, Perkins and his long-time collaborator, Matt Walker, come to Tallagandra Hill Winery at Gundaroo for a one night only special. Not having been to the Canberra region since he wasn’t even sure, Perkins said it was “too damn long” between visits.
“I couldn’t even place when I was last in Canberra, I can’t even think I would have to go deep into my records to find them. It might have been 2017 with Tex, Don, and Charlie – my every 12 years project.”
Tallgandra Hill, a winery at Gundaroo, is dedicated to supporting Aussie artists in the pandemic recovery. However, Perkins said it isn’t the vineyard’s fine drops that bring him there.
“We are playing at a winery but I haven’t targeted this show so I can spend some time amongst the grapes,” he laughed.
While Perkins enjoys wine as an accompaniment to food, he tends to sticks to water, coffee, tea – preferably English breakfast – and Irish whisky, although the pandemic saw him at home, somewhere secret in the hills of NSW, partaking in daily margheritas.
“I spent a couple of years immersed in tequila during the pandemic then it started to not have any effect on me. We were everyday people margheritas, it put a spring in our steps, and it got to a point where it’s not really doing it for me anymore.”
With the world slowly re-opening, Perkins is thrilled to be back to doing what he loves, and has loved to do for the past 40-something years. Even though he was raised in a very good home, he has always been attracted to the ‘dodgy side of the tracks’, the darker side of life and the stories that go along with them. Perkins laughed as he said he blamed the Catholics, having been sent to an all-boys school in the 1970s.
“It may as well have been the 1820s it was so archaic in every way you could imagine; the free form violence to punish and correct us.”
Around Year 11, Perkins realised what was happening at the school wasn’t right on moral grounds and started to rebel against the system. Soon the school suggested it was time for him to move on and offered him an option of leaving school on an apprenticeship-like scheme.
“Becoming a crazy rebel, I was two minutes late for class and instead of getting hit with a stick-like object, I said ‘no’, and they didn’t know how to handle that.”
After an assessment, it was decided Perkins was fit for stirring trouble, art, and English. The vocational officer arranged for him to do a sign writing apprenticeship because it combined the two. Perkins laughed as he said it was all very neat and almost anal with paint and rulers, nothing creative about it.
A few odd jobs later after he was fired, it coincidentally lined up with an offer from local band The Dum Dums to travel with them, and the rest is history. Perkins says his greatest achievement in the industry is just being able to remain part of the game.
“I think I was doing music for about 10 years before I realised I had a career. It was just carefree, it was in the ‘80s, I didn’t need much money, I was a low maintenance kind of guy, rent was cheap, it was and still is a really enjoyable activity.”
Perkins recalls being obsessed with music for as long as he can remember, one of his biggest inspirations being Johnny Cash. He first heard Cash’s song A Boy Named Sue on the radio at five or six and was excited it had a word bleeped out.
“It made me aware of a different world of mud, blood and beer – if I can borrow a couple of words from the song.”
Perkins chuckled when complimented on the red velvet jacket in his promo photo, saying it may appear as velvet, but it is, in fact, corduroy, his favourite material to wear. This one in particular was made from fine corduroy – a “corduroyal” even. Noting he may have been wearing jeans at the time, but all his other pants were corduroy, which he orders from a shop in London, coming in a variety of colours.
“There’s nothing like the double corduroy outfit. Black, of course, definitely not brown,” he joked.
Joining him at Tallagandra Hill is long-time collaborator Matt Walker. The two have known each other since the 1990s when Walker would support The Cruel Sea; 12 years ago, they worked together on The Man in Black – The Johnny Cash Story, and then five years ago the pair started working as a duo in The Fat Rubber Band.
The band’s second album is in the finishing stages with Perkins saying it is quite a departure from their first, which more of a concept album inspired by Link Wray’s work recorded in his brother’s chicken shack. They wanted to create an album that didn’t have the sterile feel of a recording studio, by welcoming random, natural sounds.
“It has a kind of dirtiness to it, dirt road dirt, good honest. Not filth, good honest dirt,” Perkins laughed.
However, with the upcoming album, they felt freer to create whatever came to them. Perkins explained that he didn’t take it lightly when he says “it could be the best thing I have ever done”.
The first track of their new album is due out in November; we’ve been told to get the tissues ready for this one titled Brand-New Man.
“It’s hard to move an audience but that song seems to have an emotional impact on them, even though they’ve never heard it before,” he said.
What should the crowd expect to hear at the show? Perkins said sometimes it isn’t decided until the night, after they get a chance to read the crowd.
One of Perkins’ massive hits has made its way back to the set list after he grew tired of playing the 1994 smash, The Honeymoon is Over by his band The Cruel Sea, which has almost 12.5 million listens on Spotify.
“For a while I wouldn’t play it and it would upset people, but now, I’m quite happy to do it. We have a lot of variety in our live set, a lot of choices in my back catalogue to choose from. It ticks the box and makes people happy, and we will play it, but you just wait for the rest of the set.”
Catch Tex Perkins and his long-time collaborator Matt Walker at Tallagandra Hill this Saturday 16 July 7pm; tallagandrahill.com.au
