The Re-Mains

THE RE-MAINS / Live Review - City Tavern, Tamworth
January, 2005

I BOUGHT a T-shirt, I never buy a T-shirt. It may have been the ridiculous heat. It may have been that I felt obliged to drink rum. It was probably that this band, a talented group of misfits committed to worshipping the country rock and roll gods, is so darn tooting worth wearing. The opening night of the Tamworth Country Music Festival is traditionally quiet, crowds build up over the week to a packed crescendo on the final weekend. Like many of the town's pubs the city has a car park-sized marquee out the back for the festival. The crowd was neither big nor outlandish, like The Re-Mains would be accustomed to, but it was mighty appreciative. I was blown away. The banjo player seemed oblivious to his surrounds, twanging away like Keith Richards with straw in his mouth, singer-guitarist Mick Daley copped Tim Rogers comparisons and the rest of the players, pedal steel and guitar, bass and drums, not to mention guest fiddle and Hammond players, were nothing short of hot. Now I'm part of that irritating brigade that wears musical allegiances on their chest in pride.

Michael Gadd, Newcastle Herald
- Newcastle Herald

THE RE-MAINS / Field Conditions
July, 2005

Tucked mid-way through the Re-Mains third album is 'Free At Last', a song pleading for Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Jews alike to give up their fundamentalist fantasies. So say all of us. It's a song that illustrates the very real world the Re-Mains live and want to reveal in their songs, which musically straddles rock and roll. That part of the group's work is illustrated by 'Black Asprin', a rock and roll thumper with echoes of Creedence Clearwater Revival on the way to the Dingoes and Australian Crawl. In the middle of the rock singer Mick Daley calls for some 'steel', the country music staple. But that quickly makes way for boogie woogie piano. The Re-Mains earlier work drew comparisons to American alt-rock heroes Wilco and Uncle Tupelo, which is very nice, but I'm betting there's a rich vein of Australian influence here. Cold Chisel's Don Walker has exposed his country heart in latter years. The Re-Mains walk that tightrope with pride and skill.
(Tom Jellet, Weekend Australian)

The Re-Mains - Field Conditions
Wednesday, 8 June 2005
Reporter: Jarrod Watt


Not long ago that most Australian of musicians John Williamson made criticism of some modern country music artists as 'rock and roll with a cowboy hat.' The Re-mains are the kind of band who'd take that criticism with a steely look, drain their pot of beer, upend it on the bar and reply "...so?"

There's more than just banjo-pluckin', pedal-steel slidin' country roots mixing with a rock'n'roll heart in this band - it's got the impassioned firebrand call to arms of modern Australian folk music, born amidst forest blockades and general rebel-rousing amongst the downtrodden.

It's joyous, rollicking music that's an aural incarnation of bouncing around the vinyl bench-seat of an olden Holden travelling an old dirt road; the banjo-mandolin playing of Shaun Butcher is a standout throughout this band's third full-length album - and the songwriting shows an introspection and maturity born of thousands of kilometres of touring the East Coast, Red Heart and far West of Australia.

Upon the song White Dress the focus is on unrequited love and opportunity missed for an economic victim/vagrant, but it's the lyricism such as "She was wearin' a white dress/She was tryin' to impress/Somebody at the DSS" that makes the song breathe and come alive; upon My Friend the Bushranger we get a taste of what could only be described as 'Aussie Rural Gothic' - Nick Cave had to go to Berlin to find his Gothic-country inspiration; it sounds like the Re-mains drove in to Boorowa and Beaudesert for theirs.

For absolute toe-tapping Australiana-destined-for-classic-status one cannot go further than the song I Want Every Make of Holden Ever Made - if you have ever owned or driven a pre-1980 model there's a verse for you - yet despite the excellent musicianship and Mick Daly's strong vocals, somehow the production of this album could have been better, allowing the band into our loungerooms rather than just in our speakers.

Overall, a great album - country music for people who like their lyrics earthy and real, and like the band to rock out once in a while.


THE RE-MAINS / Field Conditions
August, 2005

They added a hyphen for historians to distinguish them from the Barry-Holly Tashian band of the same name who supported The Beatles on their 1966 US tour. And, of course, four decades down the lost highway the Aussie country rockers sound nothing like their namesakes on this, their fourth release. he NSW north coast quintet writes, sings and performs about and beyond life in the city limits. Albury reared singer Mick Daley sets the rocky mood on his autobiographical entree song Out Singing The Blues and the vitriolic He Died With His Boots On. But the band tempers angst with melancholia on his metaphoric Horse and banjo-mandolin player Shaun Butcher tunes Roberts Road and Stoked laced by Lee Ivins pedal steel.
But The Re-Mains are no one-trick ponies galloping blinkered down the dead-end ravine that claims so many. Perhaps the pinnacle is Daley's peace anthem Free At Last, an evocative plea for truth in religion-and-greed-fuelled modern wars it's a sibling song of Boy Howardy fear parody Letterbomb.

Beyond the bar room bravado of the Butcher penned Motherlode, replete with Johnny Cash name check, Glenyss Raes violin is the oasis in tempo changes of Karaoke Caravan. The uranium metaphor in Black Aspirin swirls in a sea of guitars and Ed Matzeniks rollicking honky tonk piano and segues into mixed messages on romping Thank You Mr Ellis and spirited finale Dont Go Back. he Re-Mains arent The Tractors sonically or vocally but exude suffice soul and roughage to elevate them above our barren bar band badlands.
David Dawson, Beat Magazine

- Weekend Australian

THE RE-MAINS / Field Conditions ****1/2
July, 2005

Not that anyone these days could possibly confuse this band with the 60s garage band from Boston of the same name, but the path's been cleared for The Re-Mains, a boot-scootin' band from fuck-knows-where, Australia. Well, this certainly isn't garage, but more like a shed with an old tractor and a restorable FC Holden with a sticker on the back window proclaiming 'Honk If You Love Country Music'. Field Conditions shows a band with a less-than-discreet love of the genre riding pleasantly past city lines. With Mick Daley's voice at times resembling Wall of Voodoo's Stan Ridgeway, his lyrics are distinctly Australian, without having to be flag-waving and patriotic. A song like 'I Want Every Make Of Holden Ever Made' proves you can rhyme something with "balustrade" and is most definitely the standout on this consistently toe-tapping album. With moping pedal steel and claw-hammer plucked banjo, The Re-mains sound like a well-oiled touring machine, with material that sounds well tested down dirt tracks and cattle grids. It's a record to dig your heels into, hard to fault and worth investigating.

Donat Tahiraj, Time Off Magazine
- Time Off Magazine

THE RE-MAINS / Field Conditions
August, 2005

A lot of musicians, young ones specifically, are drawn into the established and heavily stylised beauty that can be country music, and the results of this exploration are becoming increasingly interesting. Though the idiosyncratic style guide is often followed a little too closely for the music to be a derivation, in the case of someone like The Re-Mains, enough of the stereotype is left at the door to allow a few more freaks to join the party. The essentials abound - the twang, the slang and the attitude - but force is not the power of The Re-Mains... subtlety is. A rich rock 'n' roll heritage that has grown and evolved as we know it (through the timeline that gave birth to heavy metal, punk, funk and all the other 'unks) is present within The Re-Mains take on country music, be it intentional or otherwise. Mind you, it would be a musician in a world where punk, metal and so on already exist and not have them at least a mild subconscious consideration. The end result is fascinating, because The Re-Main sound like country music as one would describe it to an alien, but are different enough for the aficionado to notice there's a few of them exotic spices in that thar possum stew.
Mike Wafer, XPress Magazine, WA
- XPress Magazine, WA

THE RE-MAINS / Field Conditions
August, 2005

Currently on tour in Australia, the Re-Mains prove that you don't have to be from south of the Mason-Dixie line to successfully mix country, rockabilly and full tilt banjo-delic rock. Hailing from Northern NSW, these guys have laid down 15 tracks that reinforce their title as Australias' 'outlaw country rock and roll renegades'. This album, their third release, covers all forms of the country genre. From swampy southern feel good ('Motherlode', 'I Want Every Make Of Holden Ever Made') through to twangy pedal steel drenched alt-country sagas ('Horse', 'White Dress'). They also visit the occasional country-pop fast paced ballad on their single 'Quit Singing The Blues'. Compared to the likes of Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Byrds, The Re-Mains are fast gaining a fierce reputation for providing quality music and putting on some pretty raucous shows. If you like your country music straight from the coal face with real earthy lyrics then The Re-Mains are for you.

Phil Edwards, www.americana-uk.com
- www.americana-uk.com

The Re-mains of the day
By Nina Rousseau
June 10, 2005
The Re-mains are not a cult. They're not a religion. They are a country rock'n'roll band with the zeal of missionaries and enough band mythologies to rival Moses.
Mick Daley and Leigh Ivin formulated the concept of country rock after playing together at an old copper mine in outback Nymagee.
They never forgot the birthplace of the band - particularly after one man was pronounced dead during their gig.
"It was hot and dusty and there was this drunken crowd of shearers who'd been speeding and tripping and drinking for days," Daley says. "We played them an Acca Dacca song and one of them dropped and had a heart attack. He was only in his mid-20s."
From an inner-city Sydney punk venue to a hard-drinking workers' pub in Tennant Creek, the Re-mains are used to their music provoking strong audience reactions. At one gig in Bourke, a woman got Daley in a headlock and insisted that her son sing with them.
"He'd just got out of jail and he was a big boy, so he ended up wailing into the mic for about half an hour," he says.
The Re-mains provide a fresh take on the homogenised sound of mainstream country music, fusing rock and punk sensibilities with pedal steel guitar and banjo. Their new album, Field Conditions, coincides with a four-month Australian tour, which kicked off this week.
"We were trying to create a kind of timeless record, something classic and enduring," says Daley, who describes their high-energy sound as "careening from banjo-delic rock onslaughts to pedal steel-drenched alt-country sagas".
The band's influences - Dylan, Neil Young, Blues Explosion, Floyd - are easily spotted but cleverly woven with down-home lyrics about Holdens, Kakadu, bushrangers and hitting the road. It's the sort of driving album that will take you from Melbourne to Cape York.
Few alt-country outfits have authentic red dirt on their sneakers but taking the pioneering sound of country rock'n'roll to the "coalface" is the philosophical crux that unifies the Re-mains.
"The coalface is the cutting edge, where the hard work needs to be done," Daley says. "We see each new town as a fresh coalface."
If other bands banged on as much about the coalface as these guys do, you'd think they were a pack of tossers, but the Re-mains are the genuine article. So dedicated are the group to doing "outback strikes" that guitarist Ivin is even going for his light-aircraft pilot's licence so, eventually, the band can fly between gigs.
"It'd be awesome to be able to drop into Alice Springs for the weekend," he says.
By taking their sound to the bush, the band has uncovered a rich seam of wildly grateful audiences.
"We had this idea that we could resurrect those band circuits that were so strong in the '70s and '80s," Daley says. "That we could tour hard and play hard in the country."
Daley laughs as he recalls a gig in a rough-nut Darwin truckers' pub.
"I thought they were going to hate us, but we had this one massive trucker in tears."
Despite the band members being scattered from Canberra to Federal on NSW's north coast, the Re-mains are a tight-knit group.
The distance makes rehearsing difficult but Ivin says it's immaterial. It all fits with the band's philosophy and ideology for things to come together when they play live.
The tracks selected for Field Conditions were chosen from a huge back catalogue.
"We've got at least three albums' worth of songs," Ivin says. "So a lot of stuff we play live is just that: live."
About 90 per cent of the album was recorded live, the rest of it over-dubbed later.
"It's more organic and believable," Ivin says. "We sound like who we are on the album."
The band have extreme faith in themselves as a group, clearly defined roles and an unshakeable belief that the music they're making is part of a bigger cultural picture.
"It's really tough at times," Daley says of life in the Re-mains, "but there's a lot of time, emotion, money and skill invested and we're not going to let artistic or personal clashes get in the way."
Radio airplay isn't a priority for the band, who are uninterested in being fresh roadkill for Triple J.
"We get lots of radio airplay on the regional ABCs, which is great," Daley says. "But it's not a priority. We want audiences who are going to stay with us. We want to make sure this lasts."

- smh.com.au

Rolling Stone Magazine
The Re-Mains
****
Love’s Last Stand
Croxton Records / MGM

Raunchy live record from hard-working heroes.

Northern NSW Country Rock & Roll hellraisers the Re-Mains hit their boozy, bluesy, slide-and-banjo laced straps on this live album, combining a rootsy twang with inner-city smarts and genuine affection for rollicking, tumbling hillbilly sounds. Authentic enough to be endearing, they keep a respectful toungue in their cheek with somngs like “You look Like Keith Richards”, and by quoting hip-hop phrases in “Folksinger Blues”.

Luke Anismoff

ABC Radio: Jarod Watt

The Re-Mains - Love's Last Stand
Talent: Leigh Ivin, Michael Ward, Mick Daley, Sam Martin, Shaun Butcher
Date of release: February 2007
Date of Review: Monday, 26 February 2007


The Re-mains - Love's Last Stand
One of the hardest-working, longest-driving country rock and roll bands in Australia give us a live album worthy of the thousands of kilometres they've driven.

Imagine a 70s Holden which has been fanged, hooned, thrashed and cruised from one of the country to the other, mainly on bad roads, never breaking down but continually having parts replaced as the long distances take their toll. This, in essence, is the story of The Re-mains.

When banjo player Shaun Butcher (aka Uncle Burnin’ Love) decided to quit the band last year the decision was made to record their final show with this lineup at the Durrumbul Hall in Mullumbimby; the performance captured is one of a band who love to play, whose musicianship has been honed in front bars up and down this continent, whose rock and roll influences marry perfectly with their plaid-shirt country swagger.

Rare are the country bands who'll drop lyrics from Grandmaster Flash, The Herd and even the old Cranky hit Australia Don't Become America before breaking out into a thumping banjo-driven instrumental dedicated to bush turkeys, but this rollicking five piece act are anything but your standard idea of country music.

Amidst the slashing lap-slide and furious banjo playing it's important to note that frontman Mick Daly is an excellent lyricist, ranging much further afield than your standard boy meets girl/let's drink rum and drive utes-type Australian country songwriting. "He always wanted to be a star football player/ But the poor guy had a build like Leo Sayer" still goes down as one of my favourite licks to sing along to in the modern bushranger tale Ballad of Wrong 'Un, while The Dirt Farmer's Gavotte is perhaps the finest drought-inspired piece of songwriting I've heard, managing to avoid cliché, patronising rural stereotypes and 'they're doin’ it hard' platitudes equally – the thrust being it's Mick talking with his Dad about the declining fortunes of the town and farm, including a humorous exchange on whether you make less money as a touring musician or a farmer.

The playing gets a bit looser, a bit louder towards the end of the album, and purists would argue there's more rock than country (which is how it should be) – but this is an excellent recorded souvenir of a classic lineup of a band that keeps on keeping on

- Luke Anismoff

The Re-Mains

I hate the fucking Eagles. Hate. Fingernails on a chalk board, a fork being dragged across a plate hate. There's a moment in The Big Lebowski when The Dude gets thrown out of a cab for saying he hates the fucking Eagles, and its my favourite scene in all of filmdom. With their vapid, dead fish-eye Southern California stares and their ability to make James Taylor sound like the Minutemen by comparison, the fucking Eagles represent everything that makes me crazy and frustrated and angst-ridden about modern mainstream country. The crap that country radio has been pumping out for the last thirty years plus has been nothing more than one long extended version of Hotel California. As Mojo Nixon once said, "Don Henley is the anti-Elvis".

Now, picture a world where the fucking Eagles never found each other, never made music for elevators and grocery stores, never defamed country rock by taking both the country and the rock out of music. Nice, isn't it.

The Re-Mains are from that alternate world. It's a world where Dead Flowers by The Rolling Stones was a mainstream hit, where Townes Van Zandt is a household name, where Uncle Tupelo never split but Son Volt and Wilco still play and record. An alternate universe where every time you turn on the radio you can hear Kris Kristofferson and Corb Lund and John Prine and The Poor Choices and Elliott Brood and Cuff The Duke and Blackie & The Rodeo Kings. Willie P. Bennett is given a state funeral and The Perpetrators are given The Order Of Canada. I will call that world Austin World and I will live there very happily, thank you very much.

The Re-Mains are the bastard children of Keith Richards and Wanda Jackson, of Jeff Tweedy and Bob Dylan. They are the war orphans left behind by Nick Cave's murder ballads, by Johnny Cash's evil seed. They are Willie Nelson's outlaw country taken home and given a cold bath and a warm beer. They are the promise fulfilled by the union of Jack White and Loretta Lynn.

And they are Australian. Of course they're from Australia. A country populated by folk who left Africa 50,000 years ago and hiked halfway around the world in only a couple of generations. A country colonized by criminals and outlaws. A country whose extremes make our extremes look like suburban fantasies provided by Sears. If kick-you-in-the-ass country rock is going to be perfected anywhere, it should be in the land of vegemite and the southern cross.

Rolling Stone Magazine, which gave The Re-Mains' Love's Last Stand four stars, describes them as "Northern NSW country rock & roll hellraisers... combining a rootsy twang with inner-city smarts and genuine affection for rollicking, tumbling hillbilly sounds." Someone else said "Think the Eels after a 10-day binge." I say The Re-Mains will kick you in the ass and leave you wanting more.

Six reasons to line-up to see The Re-Mains:

1) Ballad Of A Wrong 'un - an amazing murder song, violent and mean. With the great line "He always wanted to be a star football player/But the poor guy had a build like Leo Sayer..."

2) The Dirt Farmer's Gavotte. Its just brilliant. Fred Eaglesmith should write a song this good.

3) Othello's P76. "If everybody sang like Pavarotti then we'd all sound just the same/But everybody does their best, beats their chest, and tries and tries again..." Yeah.

4) Days In The Sun. 'cause it is a piece of heaven.

5) They once killed a man. Really. They played for some shearers in the Australian bush who had been a three-day speed and booze powered bender. When The Re-Mains finished their set, the crowd wanted more. And so they kicked into "A Whole Lot Of Rosie" and one of the shearers dropped dead of a heart attack. He was in his mid-twenties.

6) "Imagine a 70's Holden, which has been fanged, hooned, thrashed and cruised from one end of the country to the other, mainly on bad roads, never breaking down but continually having parts replaced as the long distances take their toll." ABC Radio had that to say about The Re-Mains and I don't really know what some of the words mean (it's like the Australians speak in code to keep the rest of the world guessing), but I think a Holden is a car.

And so it goes.

I hate the fucking Eagles. I love The Re-Mains.

Rob Slack
- Lopticulations Vol 3 Issue 2 May 2008 by Rob Slack

20 edmontonsun.canoe.ca EDMONTON SUN BIG VALLEY THURSDAY, JULY 31, 2008
Southern Cross, southern sound
SUPPLED
The Re-Mains are set to bring their own brand of Australian country rock to Big Valley on Sunday – both in the AXE songwriters’ tent in the afternoon and in the Molson Saloon.
BARB MARTOWSKI
Sun Media
It would seem that the Big Valley Jamboree has not only a reputation as a great country music festival, but for a num¬ber of other things as well.
“We’ve heard it’s really big. It’s a shame we’re not going to be there for the whole week¬end,” said Mick Daley, front man and spokes person for an Australian band called the Re-Mains.
“Some guy told us this web¬site rated it as the third best pickup place in the world – is that true?”
Well, my children, I will let you give Daley his answer per¬sonally.
The Re-Mains, currently on a cross-Canada tour, will be playing at both the AXE Song¬writers Tent and the Molson Saloon on Sunday.
It’s the band’s first visit to our fair country and they are loving it.
“It’s surpassed all expecta¬tions. The gigs have all been great and Canadians really seem to like our music. We’ve been getting fabulous recep¬tion everywhere and just incredible hospitality as well, with people inviting us to their places – inviting us to stay with them,” said Daley, sounding somewhat amazed.
“We landed in mid-May in Vancouver and came across to Toronto, so now we are going back over our footsteps. We played one show in Edmon¬ton at the Black Dog and it was a really good night.”
The band has another three weeks to go before they fly home, and so far, “It’s gone really fast. Some tours can be a bit of an ordeal, but this cer¬tainly has not been.
“In Australia the country music (radio-play) crowd is a much much bigger audi¬ence and we’ve sort of tried to break into that without much success – they don’t like long hairs and non-Christian radi¬cals.
“They are very divided in Australia. There’s definitely a straight country scene and they don’t tolerate anyone that doesn’t fit the bill, so it will be interesting to see how it goes here (Big Valley).
The music
A quick listen to their MySpace page and I don’t think they will have any prob¬lem. I especially enjoy The Dirt Farmer’s Gavotte (dance) and Ballad of a Wrong’un.
As Chris Melynchuk of Pan¬handle Productions men¬tioned, this year’s line up throughout has some serious players. The Re-Mains are no exception.
Both tunes I mentioned really showcase their ability as musicians. As wordsmiths, they are not bad either.
“We’ve got three albums and two EPs back home,” said Daley, “so we put together this compilation album, just to give a bit of a broad spec¬trum of the different music and stuff we play – we’ve been selling it on the tour and we’ve sold a lot of CDs.”
Juices flowing
Canadians may be hospita¬ble and digging the music, but they have also been inspiring.
“We’ve written a couple of songs while we’ve been here. I’ve got one called Winnipeg Girls which we’ve been play¬ing a lot and it got a great reac¬tion at Ness Creek (Saskate¬wan),” said Daley.
“It’s (the tour) been get¬ting the juices flowing. There’s another one called This Could Be Anywhere which is about driving and not sure where you are, what country you’re in, what town you’re in, what road you’re on.
“And we’re writing one called Birthday Punch Up – about getting drunk, getting excited and punching up,” he explains with a laugh. “What we tend to do sometimes.”
This tour is not a one off for the Re-Mains, but a trip to lay the groundwork for a bigger tour. “We are definitely com¬ing back next year, fuel per¬mitting.”
For those who catch the Re-Mains in the songwriters tent or who manage to be in some¬what good shape later on Sun¬day night and make it to the saloon, I think you will be in for a treat.

- Barb Martowski