The Southern Australian Hill Country Blues of THE NEW SAVAGES - In My Time Of Dying

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These fellows from Melbourne, Australia contacted me and wanted me to listen to their new ep. Why not? I'll try anything ... twice.

Then I look at the song list, and I think, WTF? Are these all covers? Why? Why would you do covers?

As it turns out, The New Savages don't actually play covers. They play a sort of original...cover...hybrid with fragments, elements, grooves, and textures of the original combined with ghosts of other songs that is then stretched a little, molded, and finessed into some rare memory, some blues song that your blood knows, and your body reacts to knowing.

The New Savages seem to like playing with your sense of the familiar. Musically, their songs are akin to the original but more suggestive of, than overtly so. For example, in the case of the song Smokestack Lightning, constructing a song that is at once cover, still seemingly (and yet) Howlin' Wolf's Smokestack Lightning and at the same time an original work. The New Savages take the song and deconstruct it down to drones, spank it with drums and guitar, then sing whole and fragmented found lyrics through the middle including the Wolf's legendary... smokestack liiiiightning...ahhhooooow!!! as a partial medley of new original lyrics, but utilizing suggestions of other old blues standards ...maybe a line from Who Do You Love or some such, turning the song into something you could swear you've heard before ...somewhere ....a soundtrack, a late night drive, flippin' the dial 'til you find some far off blues station playing something that fades in and out a little, it's almost that one song...but... it's...different...it's droning, dream-like, yet solid punching dirty blues, or maybe dirty dreams of blues music. As the man said, "you can call it what you want to." It's their blues, their new savage blues.

Here's my track by track run-down :: 

In My Time Of Dying is a well-picked guitar string strung along a north Mississippi river bend, and thrummed into a rambling Australian drone death boogie.

I'm A Kingbee could be a leftover Jon Spencer Blues Explosion or 20Miles track. But it's not. It's better.

Smokestack Lightning suits singer/guitarist Milan Milutinovic's dispassionate ghost of Morrison vocal stylings, his guitar at once Junior Kimbrough-like by way of Kenny Brown via Andy King and onward ...slashing, driving, smoking on down the line. Drummer Nathan is a powerhouse and a hard-listening foil for the guitarist.

My Babe is a high-steppin', tambo-slappin' boogie down Main Street Melbourne.

For You I'm No Good is a haunted, post-apocalyptic field holler, and

Crawling King Snake is done in a trancey big city basement club heavy-weight Junior Kimbrough-style...it lurches, swaggers and staggers like a zombie of love, careening, careering, 'til exhausted it passes out under the Mississippi stars that hang over Australia.



It's a blues sound filtered down the muddy Mississippi, and across the radio waves to Melbourne, A.u. It sounds at times like it could be some lost sixties, seventies blues/hardrock mashup but thankfully lacking any sort of kitch blues wink, like a fringed leather vest, or platform shoes. Rather, it's just good old-fashioned, semi-raw, modern trance blues done with its own style and flavour.

Look, these dudes aren't exactly inventing a new wheel here, but what they are doing is keeping this music alive by challenging it, by inverting the wheel, so to speak. By making these southern Australian juke grooves, these drone blues hybrid covers, they arent just pokin' the blues dog with a stick, they make that dog get up and run.

The two make a tough team, Milan Milutinovic - vocals guitar, and Nathan Power on the traps. It takes a special drummer to lock deep into that Junior Kimbrough-esque groove and to subtly work with the guitarist to enable him to do his thing, to decipher the tranced-out hill-country blues grooves that Junior left here for us to learn. They support each other well. You'll find an interview below, but right now lets' get taste of what they're about ::

I talked with Milan, the guitarist and singer, and Nathan, the drummer for Melbourne, Australia duo The New Savages::

RS:: So I gotta know...why covers? Not that there's anything wrong with covers, and you do a really cool almost reimagining of each original. Blues history is built on covers. Whats the story? 

Milan: Most of the music I write starts with a cover actually, that gets transformed into something else. I think blues is a really interesting genre because to me the concept of originals vs covers in blues is kind of a spectrum, rather than an either/or. What I really find fascinating about the blues is that it has this great sense of tradition because artists are constantly borrowing heavily from one another. On one hand I would like to take a great pride in calling myself a songwriter, but at the same time I wouldn’t call blues artists songwriters. A good blues to me almost has this unwritten quality about it, almost like its just the essence of a feeling rather than a structured idea/story. Junior Kimbrough is particularly good at that. 

Rs:: Milan, you aren't suggesting that there aren't any blues songwriters, because Willy Dixon and countless others might like to have a word. But rather perhaps that Blues as a culture and style has an incestuous relationship with itself, that it often feeds on itself for themes, lyrics, etc?

Milan:: Great question Rick, hope this answer sheds some light. You are right in me saying that there are no blues songwriters was a bit much - I definitely wouldn’t deny that Willie Dixon was a great songwriter, and there are many others. But I do think there is a strain of blues that I would say is almost not written, it just is. But I say this only in the highest praise - whenever I work on my own music I’m trying my best to be as unconscious of the creative process as possible.

RS:: Tell me about Nathan, your drummer. How'd you two get together? I'm betting it took no time to figure out you were a good match. Nathan has the kind of controlled looseness that you might find in a jazz outfit. Does he come from a jazz background? What is it about him and the way he plays that works for you?

Milan:: We actually met after I posted an ad online looking for a
drummer. The first few seconds of the first jam we had left a pretty profound effect on my memory - I told him to follow me and I started playing In My Time of Dyin’ and he just played it like we’d rehearsed it 20 times before, and he played it exactly as I’d been imagining it in my mind ever since I first did that number. I’d played with so many drummers before - some of whom were really good too but they never quite had the magic combination of the light touch and loose groove that Nathan has. 

He comes from a jazz background with a wealth of listening and playing experience that I don’t have, and really adds so much perspective to the way we think about our music. He is a proper learned musician whereas I can barely hear a chord change half the time. 

We also work really well together because we are both very like minded people. We are both very creatively focused people with a willingness to tackle the very much entrepreneurial challenges of playing in a successful independent band. Nathan is the kind of guy who will call up a booker 5 times in a week just to finally get him on the phone to have a chat about putting us on for a night - that’s the kind of asset you really do need to have to build a career for yourself in the 2015 music industry.

RS:: That's a fact. As with all things it's a matter of balance. One the mover, one the shaker.

How long have you been playing? What got you started? Did you like the blues right off, or did you have to search for That Sound that worked for you?

Milan:: I was a bit of a late starter actually, I think I was 17 or so, during the school holidays right before my final high school year I started playing. I remember a good friend of mine, playing guitar to me, he was playing Midnight Rambler by the Stones and I was just struck real hard - I thought wow that sounded great and I just thought wow I could do that. 

It was just one of those moments you have in life where everything seems to make sense, and I was just thrust by self belief for some reason into dedicating all my time and focus to music. I’m 23 now and looking back 6 years ago I honestly don’t know how I just decided to drop everything else - my parents went crazy.

The first kinds of blues I heard were british blues - like Cream and Led Zeppelin. It’s pretty funny, but I used to think blues was white people’s music until I heard about Howlin’ Wolf and then it started to click for me. The deeper I dug I found about hill country stuff like Jessie Mae Hemphill and it just blew me away. I think as an artist you are always searching for ‘That Sound’ and trying to bring something new to your friends and the community around you.

RS:: That's a trip to most people i'd imagine, to think of the blues as white people's music, but then country music was/can be blues, too.

I'm hearing tones of The Gun Club in your stuff. Are they an
influence, too? Anybody else in modern day alt-blues or whatever, or any other brand of music that you are digging? Are you a reader? If so, what are you reading these days..and are there any books on the blues you recommend?

Milan:: Never heard of them actually. There’s a great guy over in America called Mississippi Gabe Carter who I dig and count as an influence on our style. He’s about as blues as they come but he’s definitely got his own style and is very modern. 

I do like to read a lot, mostly 20th century history. Dictators, communism and two world wars, what a century! Blows my mind sometimes that Alan Lomax naively wanted to move to the USSR around the same time of Stalin’s purges, to live in a socialist paradise. Good thing he stayed in America and discovered Muddy Waters instead.

There’s a great biography on Son House which I have a hard copy of called Preachin’ The Blues by Daniel Beaumont, which I would recommend to anyone interested in learning more about the blues, especially when it was just beginning to be recorded. The book gives a good insight on the recorded music industry just as it was in its infancy and the life of Son House, it also concentrates a lot on his good friend Charley Patton. 

The Part Of The Spiel In Which We Give The Drummer Some:: 

RS:: Talking with Nathan Power (drummer in The New Savages):: Tell me about playing with Milan. How'd you get together and what was your first jam like?

Nathan -NP:: - Haha. We actually met online! I answered an ad for a two piece blues band and met up with Milan for a sneaky beer. Went back to his for a jam and wasn't really sure what to expect, but when I heard his voice I was sold. 

I've tried playing a bunch of different things with him but he always tells me I gotta keep that shuffle beat for every song. 

Every time he rocks up with some new songs to rehearse I try and play something else, but he won't let me. Gotta keep that shuffle! 

Rs:: The tool! Doesn't he know the drummer is boss? I play drums in a country band, and more often than not I'm limited to shuffles. However, I love shuffles. The challenge of making something fresh and boogie out of something fairly constrained is a fun challenge. Were you a fan of blues music and Junior Kimbrough in particular before playing with Milan?

NP:: Haha it's true! To be completely honest, I wasn't into the kind of blues Milan was in to. I dig a lot of Rolling Stones/Clapton etc and their precursors, but Milan is into the oooooold stuff. Which is refreshing, cause every gig we go to, he's playing me some old shit that I've never heard before!

RS:: What kind of set do you usually play? It looks interesting. How's the suitcase-bass drum thing working out?

NP:: Haha. My main kit is an 80s Gretsch Broadkaster kit. Beautiful vintage tones. For smaller gigs I've got my suitcase kit. The whole thing fits inside the suitcase (which works as a bass drum), it means I can catch the tram to gigs or go busking pretty comfortably! And also drink beer. 

RS:: Getting back to Milan, how long have you been playing? What got you started? Did you like the blues right off, or did you have to search for That Sound that worked for you?

Milan:: I was a bit of a late starter actually, I think I was 17 or so, during the school holidays right before my final high school year I started playing. I remember a good friend of mine, playing guitar to me, he was playing Midnight Rambler by the Stones and I was just struck real hard - I thought wow that sounded great and I just thought wow I could do that. 

It was just one of those moments you have in life where everything seems to make sense, and I was just thrust by self-belief for some reason into dedicating all my time and focus to music. I’m 23 now and looking back 6 years ago I honestly don’t know how I just decided to drop everything else - my parents went crazy.

The first kinds of blues I heard were British blues - like Cream and Led Zeppelin. It’s pretty funny, but I used to think blues was white people’s music until I heard about Howlin’ Wolf and then it started to click for me. The deeper I dug I found about hill country stuff like Jessie Mae Hemphill and it just blew me away. I think as an artist you are always searching for ‘That Sound’ and trying to bring something new to your friends and the community around you.

RS:: Since I talked to Nathan about his drums and suitcase bass drum, tell me about your equipment.

Milan:: I have two guitars I play with on stage, a Gibson Les Paul 60’s studio classic and a John Lennon epiphone. The Gibson is tuned to open G and I knock off the lowest string, so it only has 5 strings. Keith Richards used to do the same thing I think from around Beggar’s Banquet or so. He banged on so hard about it in his book, and one day my low string broke and I never looked back. The epiphone is in D and has all 6 strings.

RS:: Australia has always had a cool roots music scene, and it seems like the place is rife with great alt-blues, alt-country, alt-whatever bands these days. Hows the scene? Who should we know about besides y'all?

Milan: Its really great, I’m a big fan of two local guys. Chris Russell’s Chicken Walk and Mick Dog’s Boneyard. Both of them are similar to us as a guitar/drums duo. I love being able to go down and have a beer and watch a show. It kind of feels like we’ve got a little mississippi blues of our own here sometimes.

RS:: Last couple questions for drummer Nathan Power- Milan says you're the guy that gets things done in the band. What's up for you guys in the coming year?

NP:: We just released the video! (Which is gorgeous, btw. -RS)
You can see it HERE.
And we're doing an Australian Tour over November/December, it's around 12 dates mostly up the East Coast of Australia. We'd love to get out to the US at some point, probably not till 2017 though as we gotta save up some cash!

RS:: Drummer gets the last word. What's it like playing the music you guys play? It sounds like you're having a ball.

Nathan:: This music is great fun for a drummer! All about laying down swinging grooves for Milan to play over! Gotta keep it simple but there's a lot of scope to play loud if the venue suits it.

RS:: How's the Melbourne scene?

Nathan:: There's a great live music scene in Melbourne,  particularly around the music we play. A bunch of dudes in a similar vein are TK Reeve,  Tom Dockray and Mick Dog's Boneyard.

Rick Saunders:: Thanks, guys! Good luck!