Hello Friends,
I recently met with Australian blues artist Geoff Achison prior to his only show in New York on his current tour, a solo acoustic gig at Terra Blues. I've been a big fan of Achison ever since discovering him in Melbourne. His live performances showcase Achison's rare verve and passion for music, and are always immensely enjoyable. I'd been looking forward to sitting down with him a while, and our discussion went as follows:
(D: Daniel, G: Geoff)
D: Geoff, let's dig right in. Your playing style is both original and technically proficient. According to your bio, you're a self taught guitarist. Walk us through your growth and development as a guitarist.
G: Oh man... right in 30 seconds? I started playing when I was about ten. I did get some lessons early on, my dad met a guy down at the local pub, his name was Jon McCann. He played a bit of guitar; I went to him for a dollar a lesson, maybe half a dozen times. He showed me how to tune the guitar, what the notes were, and how to form chords, and I took it from there. Somewhere in my mid teens I was playing with my dad's dance band, and that gave me a good grounding with how to play songs with a group, we were doing waltzes and foxtrots at Saturday night dances. I guess I was around sixteen or seventeen when I heard my first blues record and that just... shaped my life from then on, that was the sound. And I grew up in an area where that music was rarely, if ever, heard. So I was a bit of an anomaly, you know being a young lad that wanted to play American blues music rather than the top 40 pop music of the day.
In my early twenties I moved to Melbourne, which is the big city; I was a country lad. That was the town, and it still is, if you want to make a living as a musician. If you want a good live scene and a good variety of music, Melbourne's the place to be. Yeah, so I moved there in my early twenties, and after a bit of a slow start, and a couple of false starts, I eventually landed myself a full time gig as a blues guitar player with a guy called Dutch Tilders. I played in his band for about six years. After that, I just went off out on my own, put my own band together, writing my own material. We did discover that there was very little interest in the record industry for an original roots music act, so we formed our own record label and we just made a habit out of that. After doing the first one or two titles, ever since we just put the money on the table ourselves, and recorded and released them under our own steam. So, I've made a living out of it for a couple of decades. That's really all I wanted to achieve out of it, to make a living being a musician.
D: Seems to be working pretty well for you. I'd imagine you found some benefit to being an independent musician as opposed to joining a label.
G: It's like anything, there's pros and cons. But for somebody in my position, I guess because of the kind of music I play and the approach I've had to it, there's not many record labels that are too interested in doing that. Sometimes I have craved having some sort of professional team to help me out with production and direction and so on. We've just had to figure it out ourselves. But you know, I've made over a dozen records, and they've all sold. Some of the titles we've sold out of, because we're a small label, and once we press a few thousand, 4 or 5 thousand sometimes, we occasionally sell out.
But when you're independent all that money is in your control. The production cost is lower, your overheads are lower, and the number of people you have to disperse that money to is much less. For the most part we manage the money ourselves, a lot of it goes back in so you can create the next title. You have to run it like a small business and be sensible about it; put the money in the bank, do your accounting, know what's gone out and what's coming in and then talk about what you're going to do with it. But for the most part, it's worked out.
D: Great. You said you just took a few lessons briefly right in the beginning. Can you read music?
G: No.
D: Interesting. That brings me to my next question. There are lots of great musicians that can't read music and aren't trained, and lots of great ones that are trained. Do you feel untrained musicians are more creative generally, since they aren't learning from a set of musical "rules", as opposed to trained musicians being stronger technically but less adept on the creative end?
G: I don't agree with that at all. You've either got an aptitude for the instrument or you don't. I think if you're fortunate and you have the right teacher, they'll get the best out of what abilities you have. I know some musicians that have a fantastic comprehension of theory and can read really well, but aren't especially creative. And vice versa. And then I know other musicians, these are the guys I'm really amazed by, who are amazingly creative but also have studied and have great understanding of theory and can read music, guys in my band back home. And they get all the big gigs, TV gigs and theater gigs, and they can do that stuff, but then they love to go to a jazz club or do gigs in my band, where there's a lot of room for self expression. I'm good at being in my band. I'm good at being up there with a guitar and sort of playing what I feel like, but I've really got to work hard if I'm playing somebody else's music and being asked to do a particular role in a band. That's hard work for me. I don't think there's any argument, it's just different parts. It's like saying a guitar player is better than a saxophone player. It just depends on what your aptitude was and how your path went.
D: Cool. I've seen you perform both as an electric guitarist in a full band and in this sort of setting as a solo acoustic player. Did you always do both, always incorporate the solo aspect, or did that grow over time?
G: Um... I guess I have always done both. My first instrument was an acoustic guitar, so for the first five years I played acoustic. I got an electric guitar when I was fifteen, and that was a big deal. For that first five years all I had was this little cheap-ass acoustic guitar. So I put a lot of time in with the box style, and my first experience with electricity was a little pick up that you stuck on the top of the guitar. My parents, they did buy me an amplifier when i was thirteen for Christmas, and then I was searching around under the tree for the electric guitar that went with it, but my folks couldn't afford that. So I had this little ten watt Princeton amp and this little bug. And I guess the guy in guitar shop told them "Well if he gets the amplifier, all he's got to do is stick this on the acoustic guitar and presto! He's got an electric guitar." But once I got the electric guitar, I don't think I touched the acoustic for quite some time. That's really what I wanted, like any teenage kid that's into guitar; you want to rock. You wanna turn it up to 11 and make noise.
I guess I really got serious about acoustic guitar after I saw my old boss Dutch Tilders play. He's an acoustic guitar finger style player, and he was the first guy that I saw play acoustic guitar in a way that I thought was really cool and amazing. And I thought, "Well if I could make an acoustic guitar sound like that, that's what I want to do." So it opened up another side of my playing. Then I got offered some acoustic gigs later down the track... that's the best way to learn anything. If you're offered a gig, just say yes. That's the best advice I give to any young players. Whatever the gig is, say yes. Nobody offers you the gig if they don't think you're capable. Even if you're freaking out inside, just say yes, and you'll figure it out.
D: That's good advice. So I wanted to ask you about your most recent album, One Ticket One Ride. While this album is blues based, it contains some pretty strong elements of jazz and funk. In my opinion, it sounded like you featured these genres more than you had in past albums. Was this a conscious decision?
G: No, not really. Very little of what I've recorded has been a conscious decision to do this or that. It's usually a product of the circumstances I find myself in and the people I'm surrounded by. That album was recorded whilst living in Atlanta and just hanging out with some very funky dudes. And we're all into that kind of thing. I guess we're into... I don't know if roots music is the best term because that to me encompasses all forms of jazz and blues and funk and soul and... just good, funky organic music. I love the music community that I became involved in in Atlanta, there's a lot of cross pollination of musicians sitting in with different bands, I had a lot of different dudes coming and playing with my bands, doing my material. Likewise, I was often being called up and asked "Hey I've got a gig at such and such Friday night, are you free, can you come and be in my band for the night?" So I've gone and played in the bass players band, the guy that'd been my bass player one night, I'd go and play in his band the next week and do his material, and just sit back there and do his stuff. And maybe he was more jazzy than me, but we've still got that common thread.
D: Constant exploration.
G: Yeah, exploration and self expression. And it's just a true exchange of ideas. Yonrico Scott, who I got to know quite well, so he's come and played in my band quite a lot but then as it turned out as he's doing stuff with the Yonrico Scott Band, which has kind of got a floating membership. And this is... I guess a solution to the dilemma that a musician finds themselves in when they're on the road a lot, maybe with some main gig that they've got or a succession of different bands. They've got this personal project going on, but you can't have a band in your hometown just waiting for you to come back. So the solution is that you develop a network of different players that you enjoy working with. In the same way, we'd book a tour and then make the calls to see who was available to put the lineup together. And I was getting calls for that too. Rico's a good examples because so he'd come and do a gig with Geoff and the Souldiggers and do my material, my kind of blues, funk rock. Then a couple of times I've gone and played in Yonrico's band, which is just kind of a freaky ass jazz outfit, which I really enjoy. That was the kind of thing he asked me to do that but inside I'm just going... going out of my mind. How am I gonna play this shit?! But nobody asks you if they don't think you're capable. So you've just gotta turn up and do it.
D: That kind of leads into my next question... As you mentioned, you moved to Georgia to tour the states for what, two years?
G: Yeah, it was two years we lived here.
D: How did you find living and touring in the US compared to doing that in Australia?
G: Believe it or not, I spent a lot more time on the road here. Even though Australia's got a reputation for being a big country with a lot of miles, and that's true, but we've also got a lot fewer places to go so far as people touring as musicians. There's not that many big cities, you can count all the major cities on less than two hands, you don't need all ten fingers to count em. So we would go on tour now and again and do some big miles, but I think we'd maybe organize a month on the road maybe twice a year if we were lucky, and then maybe drive a couple of hours every now and again. But over here, in the states, I was on the road constantly. This is a big country as well, but there's just so many more cities. And I gotta say, it was a great way to see the country, I really enjoyed it. It was like living the dream for me, as a young blues fan from a little country town on the other side of the world, who was crazy about Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, Ray Charles, all the soul artists. And there I am in my own band driving on the other side of the road visiting all these places down in the south, and we'd drive all the way up to here to New York City... it was like magic land for me. I loved it.
D: Getting to see where everything you had listened to was created.
G: Yeah, nearly every town you go through is a song in your record collection somewhere. It was a big deal.
D: Yeah that's... awesome. You were saying before that you pick up different musicians wherever you go. Who are some of your favorite musicians to play with?
G: Well look, I was very lucky when we started doing the recording sessions, cuz a lot of the guys on the recordings were my A list team. In a lot of ways the rhythm section that recorded a lot of it, Ted Pecchio and Tyler Greenwell, I was really keen to have those two guys in the studio, which is not a slight on any of the other bassists and drummers that I worked with. But it was those two guys as a team, cuz they've played together for so long. I first met them when they were playing together for a band called the Code Talkers, and I opened a show for them in Pittsburgh. I'd never heard of them, I didn't know who these guys were, I just knew I was doing an opening set for a band called the Code Talkers. Then I sat down and they started playing... they just blew my mind, tore me a new asshole. I couldn't even believe it. And it was the interplay between those two guys... they're out of their mind. Crazy, crazy stuff. And then I was fortunate enough to have those two guys in the band, I did a lot of touring with Tyler and another bass player called Charlie Wooten, I've worked with Charlie a lot, we became real good buddies. So I was really keen to get Charlie on there as well and I did, Charlie was able to come in and do a session for me. And I was also a big fan of the band King Johnson out of Atlanta, and I have been for many years.
Just from living in Atlanta I got to meet the guys here and there, and now and again when there were spots available the bass player Chris Long, he did gigs with me, and then I got introduced to Oliver Wood, and we did gigs together. We've actually got a show on this tour that I'm doing with Oliver. I'm still a bit starstruck when I talk to these guys. It was really, really great. Then Marcus Henderson.... all those guys I got to do gigs with here and there. And there's a lot of jam sessions that go on in Atlanta, if someones doing a gig it's like the doors always open, it's like "Hey man, swing by, bring your horn". And I just loved that community feeling. So I was really happy I got a lot of those guys on the record with me.
But there's still a lot of others. Greg Baba, he's a drummer that worked with me a lot, I didn't get him on the recording cuz I ran out of songs. He's another guy... if I start mentioning names I'll just leave somebody out cuz the network, it just grew and grew and grew. But it's something I really have enjoyed. Like I said before, it was a real dilemma when I was getting offers to come over to the states and England. But I just could not afford the cost of bringing my band over from Australia, it makes it prohibitive. So this was the solution to that dilemma. You know, just get myself there and hire some local guys. I wasn't comfortable with it at first, but the more I've done it the more I've realized what a boon this has been because of all these wonderful musicians I've got to meet and work with and create music with... everyone of them that's come in has brought a new take on the material.
D: You get to do your own music differently every time you perform.
G: Yeah that's right, and that makes it fresh. That taught me to really open my ears and not expect to hear the original recording reproduced for me.
D: Cool. Who have you been listening to recently?
G: Well... most recently Jeff Beck came to Melbourne for the second time and... I couldn't go and see it. He's been my favorite electric guitar player ever since the early days. He's enjoying a bit of a resurgence in his career at the moment, he's back on the road and he's making these wonderful records. As a consolation my wife bought me his DVD Live at Ronnie Scott's and his new studio album, so I've really been getting into that and enjoying that immensely. Somebody introduced me to a band called the Cinematic Orchestra last year and I got two of their albums, and I've just played that over and over again. And it's very different to where I've been for the past few years. This is more... I don't know how to describe it. It's almost like... chill music? I don't know if that's the right term, it's almost hypnotic, but it's real instruments, it's organic, lots of double bass laying down the grooves. It's just sort of layering it up, not wild solos, really simple themes. I've really been enjoying that... it's been interesting.
D: That about covers my questions... any last things you wanna say Geoff?
G: Well, I'm just enjoying being on the road at the moment, I still get a huge kick out of traveling and meeting people. I've got friends all over the world now. It really is the greatest way to make a living. We've had a hard couple of days just getting from one end of the world to the next and making sure you're able to bring your gear with you... But it's just the opportunity to play music in different parts of the world.. I still pinch myself that I'm able to do this and that people are happy to see me now and again. It's great.
Achison's performance post interview was great, per usual. The energy he creates in a room with just an acoustic guitar and his voice is stunning. He played a mixture of covers and originals, although the covers' only similarities to their original versions were the lyrics. Some of the standout songs were Whipping Post, Superstition, Apparatus, and Lovin' in My Baby's Eyes. Sadly, his tours in the US are far too infrequent, typically spanning only a few weeks each year. If he does come to your area, don't miss it. I guarantee non-boredom.
