Heres a pic of us playin to 15,000 at the Big Valley jamboree the other day. And gettin jiggy by a lake near Ottawa.

One month in Canada and I’ve finally worked up the courage to drive. It’s not just that our vehicle of choice – a two tonne Chevrolet conversion van with a 350 V8 donk – has no power steering and pulls like a river, its that I’m frankly terrified of heaving to and finding myself in the wrong lane headed straight for a semi-trailer. I’ve done it before, in Toronto in a hire car and aged two years in five seconds.

But after four weeks of steering from the passenger seat I’ve acclimatised my mind to the idea that what’s wrong is right – I might run for Council when I get home.

After Curtis – that’s the Chevy, pulled us effortlessly over the Rockies, playing three shows on the way, he pulled into a Chevrolet parts shop in Calgary, and having previously flicked off a busted windscreen wiper a few k’s back, promptly expired. He needed a new starter motor, (split), a new battery, (cracked and bubbling) and a new alternator (completely dead).

But after these requisites were fulfilled he was back into the fray, and he’s now hauled us over 5,000 k’s, the equivalent of Sydney to Perth and then up to Port Hedland. After our experiences with Toyota vans, Curtis has become sainted, shrined and fetished – my mate Pedro from Bellingen is starting up a ‘Bring Curtis Home’ lobby group.

We’re now in Kitchener, presumably named after the mental bastard who sent Anzacs to needless deaths, but so far no-one’s tried to shoot us. They sure stare at us funny though – and they can’t understand our accents too well. It’s all in the vowels – our ‘a’ is their ‘i’ and our ‘e’ is anybody’s guess – thus Michael becomes either ‘Marco’ and Mick becomes Mike. Go figure, or, if you prefer, do the math.
They stare because, admittedly, we look like a band – funny hats, outrageous beards, outmoded or as we would put it, ‘timeless’ flared trousers. A guy actually collared us today in a carpark and asked us where we were from.

“I knew it,” he grinned. “You don’t look like you’re from here. Only an Australian would dress like you guys. Four denkam!”

Gigs have been mostly good and always well received – even in the wings and ribs restaurant where the promoter neglected to tell us there was no PA and we had to improvise, McGyver-like with amps and a mike stand made from gaffa tape, a coathanger and ockie strap – we played to about 10 people and sold nearly as many cds.

And in the big music cities -  Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Saskatoon we’ve been received like royalty. Canada is certainly ripe for a country rock and roll invasion – we’re getting major station radio airplay, TV time and our music is being used solely to promote two big festivals – we got promoted to second headliner at Ness Creek after our Saskatoon debut.

We’re getting return bookings too – enthusiastic publicans sweeping all aside to ensure we play their venues again – we even got rebooked after supporting a karaoke night.

We’ve been camping the last few days, saturated by heavy rains, inadequately prepared for elements or even outdoors, but unperturbed. I’ve personally spotted a bear, raccoon, several elk, deer, gophers, squirrels and a chipmunk with Tourettes.

Two more shows out here in rural Ontario, then we roll into Toronto for our NXNE showcase – a big deal.
A couple more city gigs then we’re being flown back to Edmonton for the North Country Fair, variously described as Woodford meets Nimbin Mardi Grass and Return of the Grateful Dead. Thence up into Quebec where we have a show in Ottawa and we’re going to visit Montreal even though we could’nt get a gig there – this bastion of French chique is supposedly impregnable to first-timers, maybe next year.
Then we start the long drive back West, with several more festivals and heaps more pub and club dates. I’ll try and write another bulletin but for updates feel free to check out www.myspace.com/countryrockandroll

Check out this review – from Rob Slack,  a journo in Sault Ste Marie

The Re-Mains hate the fucking Eagles. Fingernails  on a chalkboard, 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 it’s my favourite scene in all of filmdom. With their vapid, dead fish-eye Southern Californian stares and their ability to make James Taylor sound like The Minutemen by comparison, the fucking Eagles represent that makes me crazy and crazy 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 Perpetrator are given The Order of Canada. I will call that world Austin World and I will live their 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. The 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 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 ten 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. It’s 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. Day 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 on 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 means (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

Lurching out to Mildura through a surprisingly green Victoria the van was starting to demonstrate signs of being unwell. The occasional shudder and cough boded ill but the prospect of some genuine coalface action helped to ignore it.
The Sandbar at Mildura was a good show, the hotel was sumptuous – well, better than a swag. We got away early and made for Pinnaroo, just over the South Australian border. By the time we got there an unsettling whine had set in somewhere deep in the bowels of the engine.
The show that night was way out in the drought-afflicted badlands and freezing cold, but made up for by Margaritas and scantily clad barmaids – it was a fancy dress party.
On the way home the van demonstrated that it either had some crossover strain of mutant mechano-equine flu or was in drastic trouble. It got us back to our beds in the Roadhouse, courtesy of Lewis, our properly spoken English host who woke up at 6 to cook us breakfast despite his prodigious consumption of beer, margaritas and black label bourbon at the shindig.
By now we had serious problems. The van was gulping oil feverishly and beginning to fart LPG – though it runs on dual fuel, we were only using the petrol. A smoking ban was swiftly ordered.
We struggled across Victoria for the next day, made it back to HQ in the late evening exhausted, strained. But we’d made it. NRMA and insurance would get us home and a new engine for the van, and we could finish this run. It’s tough at the coalface.
Next week, if we make it back, we play the Lismore show on the 18th and 19th. Stay tuned.

At the Tote - pics by Tim Chuma

By Wanda de Verelle at the Gold Coast Rodeo

Mick with guiding light, mentor, record company boss and beer guzzler Mick Thomas

A flawed grand design, The Leyland P-76 was emblematic of Seventies excess. Imagining Shakespeare’s tragic cuckold Othello hooning the main street of Everytown in this dodgy chariot put Re-Mains songwriter, Mick Daley, in mind of the monochromatic vision of John Howard.

“If you’re alive you’re political,” says Daley. “And what Howard’s doing to the soul of this country needs at least a few songs to hit back – my part in the war on error.”

‘Othello’s P-76’ is the first track of The Re-Mains forthcoming album, ‘Vregedonomy’ currently recording in the band’s home hills of far northern NSW, between Nimbin and Byron Bay.

Christian Pyle, the brains behind ACRE, the Brisbane band that had several charting songs in the early Oughties, is producer for this, The Re-Mains fourth album.

He’s taking a different tack to the band’s traditional full-tilt country rock and roll, investing more time and technology in creating a shorter, more concise and considered album that’s culled a potential 30 tunes down to 12 finely honed tracks.

“Christian’s an expert at paring my epic Dylanesque sagas down to tight, explosive songs that have all the power of country rock and roll in a leaner format,” says Daley.

“There’s more keys – Phil, our banjo-slinger plays a mean Hammond organ, and with a different line-up to our last records a racy sound that’s a few miles down the road from our last, live album.”

That record, the live ‘Love’s Last Stand’ was recorded in a mud-brick hall on the North Coast of NSW. Rolling Stone magazine awarded it four stars and it received universal acclaim from musical peers, blues legend Chris Wilson declaring it to be ‘the best live album produced in Australia - ever.’

Though the line-up has changed, the band’s reputation has only been enhanced by cracking shows at top venues in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Tamworth and Byron Bay.
In July 2007 they embarked on a 6-week national tour that was rudely interrupted by a collision with a cow near Tennant Creek, NT. Drummer Grant Bedford and guitarist Dave Ramsey both suffered serious injury and the touring van was a write-off but four weeks later the band, calling on a reliable pool of replacements, was playing shows at popular Sydney and Hunter Valley venues.

Recording the rest of ‘Vregedonomy’ has been postponed till Ramsey and Bedford are back on their feet, but meanwhile, with a new van the full band is touring to Melbourne and rural Victoria in October.

Benefit gigs in Byron Bay, Melbourne, Tamworth, Canberra and Sydney have been put together by a distinguished cast including Mick Thomas, Tex Perkins, Chris Wilson, Acre, Sara Tindley, The Detonators, Sarah Carroll and Suzannah Espie and Jimmy Willing.

They raised enough cash to pay the injured band members prodigious medical bills and get the band back on the road and back into the studio.

‘Vregedonomy’ is expected to be completed by 2008. Meanwhile ‘Othello’s P-76’ is a taste of the battered but unbowed Re-mains, post-prang.