MICHAEL MENAGER
(Interviewed by Thomas Hilton)
1. Hello Michael, how are you? I am excited to be talking with such a fantastic musician and songwriter from over in Australia. It is amazing how music can bring us together. Let’s start off by travelling back in time. What are some of your earliest musical memories and what was it that first pushed you towards pursuing this passion of yours?
A very early musical memory is listening to a trio of street musicians (mariachis) in Ensenada, México in the late 1950s. The song was the traditional “El Rancho Grande,” performed on guitar, bajo sesto and trumpet. Unforgettable, even across all of these years. My very first exposure to unrecorded music. Live, wild, smiling men with dark mustachios, wearing rainbow coloured serapes and wide-brimmed straw sombreros.
More musical memories from the mid to late 50s, when I was a primary school kid listening to Top 40 shows on AM radio around the LA area. There was the seismic shift that erupted when Elvis Presley came onto the scene echoing music that the
unknown black bluesmen of the south and the industrial northeast had been performing for years. And then there were the cool, harmony and saxophone driven “Doo-Wop” groups, such as The Coasters and their classic tune “Yakkity Yak” – a song which, along with Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” surely ranks as one of the ultimate statements of teenaged angst. At the same time there was Richie Valens with “La Bamba”– a trailblazer for many crossover tunes to come. And of course those unforgettable, immortal definers of rock n’roll: Chuck Berry and “Maybelline,” and Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”. All of There was the seismic shift that erupted when Elvis Presley came onto the scene echoing music
that the unknown black bluesmen of the south and the industrial northeast had been performing for years. And then there were the cool, harmony and saxophone driven “Doo-Wop” groups, such as The Coasters and their classic tune “Yakkity Yak” – a song which, along with Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” surely ranks as one of the ultimate statements of teenaged angst. At the same time there was Richie Valens with “La Bamba”– a trailblazer for many crossover tunes to come. And of course those unforgettable, immortal definers of rock n’roll: Chuck Berry and “Maybelline,” and Buddy Holly’s “Peggy Sue”. All of these songs came on the tip of a great wave that’s still breaking to this day, even as I write.
A genuine musical “epiphany moment” came to me in the form of a set of lyrics and a certain unusual, free-wheeling feel that drew me into completely new territory:
And take me disappearing
Through the smoke-rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of Time
Far Past the frozen leaves
The haunted, frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach
Of crazy sorrow
The year was 1965 and the song was Bob Dylan’s “Mr Tambourine Man.” An abbreviated cover by The Byrds had been on the charts for awhile. But one day (maybe it was on KFWB Los Angeles, my preferred station at the time) some DJ played Dylan singing the original. I was in my ’51 Chevrolet Deluxe Coupe, heading east on the San Bernardino Freeway. I couldn’t stand it: I pulled over into the right hand emergency lane and just sat there in disbelief. But soon enough I started believing. One man and one guitar – with the Muse of Poetry whispering (or howling) in his ear – could achieve the unimaginable!
2. And now, let’s take a leap forward to the present day and your impeccable solo output. I am really drawn in by your impressive songwriting and songcraft. How do you approach this part of your creative process? Are you drawn to themes or topics in particular? Perhaps coming from a personal, observational, or even fictional perspective?
Let me begin by making a more general statement about where my working orders come from, music-wise. I like to be useful to others as often as I can be, and in as many ways as possible. Sometimes this can be done simply by passing along useful information - tips, insights and so forth. Most of the time, that’s where my songs start.
I may have had a thought about something - some aspect of our human condition, perhaps - and suddenly a certain way of looking at it, of examining it, of evaluating responses to it, becomes clear to me. “Aha,” I might say to myself, “there’s an angle on life that I haven’t noticed before!” And I start to think about passing it along.How I make it into a song - the groove I choose, the words, the characters, the situation, actual or fictional - is by sticking closely to, staying in touch with, that original thought or insight. With the aim of representing it in the best way that I can, sharing it through a story and a feel that gives a listener access to it - to this same thought or insight that was valuable to me.
Sometimes I hear from a listener that they’ve used one of my songs to help them get through something - grief, disappointment, or some roadblock or other - and that’s the best feedback I can possibly get. That’s when I most feel, “Yes - whatever it took to get that song out there, it was all worth it!”
3. In 2023, you released a simply unforgettable LP in the form of Line in the Water. This was my introduction to your music, so I look back on it especially fondly. What are your memories from writing, recording and releasing this set, and is there anything that you would edit or change with the benefit of hindsight?
Heath Cullen and I recorded Line In The Water during some of the darkest days of the world pandemic. The time was June/July 2020 (deepest winter here in the southern hemisphere) and the way through the calamity that was then enveloping the world was not yet clear.
At the beginning of 2020, fierce bushfires had raged through our part of the country; my house was in the path of a wind-driven blaze that swept down Tantawangalo Mountain from the southern tablelands and torched native animals, trees and anything else that was in its path. Fortunately the wind had trickled down by the time the fire got to my place: the flames passed by on two sides, burning everything else but sparing the house and covered garden.
And then, only weeks later, at a time when our region was still in the grip of fire driven trauma, Covid descended.
One part of my plan for June and July 2020 had been to record an album in Scotland with a trusted and talented friend, a wayfaring American who’s lived and worked up there for some time now. He’d already dived into the demos I’d sent him, he’d even enlisted a local fiddler as a session player … everything was on the go. But of course it all went out the window with the travel restrictions that came with the pandemic. And at that point I suppose you could say that I was at a loss.
One thing was, I’d been determined to have a different producer than Heath Cullen (celebrated Australian singer/songwriter and instrumentalist) for this new project of mine. Heath is a neighbour and a friend, that’s for sure, and those things won’t change anytime soon. He’s also produced two wonderful albums of my songs - Clean Exif (2014), and Not The Express (2016) - in masterful fashion, and it’s always been a friendly deal, i.e. with him doing far more work and attending to far more detail than I could possibly afford to pay him for. So while Heath might have come to mind after the disappointment of cancelling the Scottish gambit, there was no way in the world I was going to ask him to go down that kind of narrow budgetary pathway with me again. I just couldn’t do it.
And then, out of the blue, there was a phone call - I don’t know, one day in April or May. It was Heath, just checking in.
“Hey, I know you’re bummed about the Scotland thing falling through. But I’ve been thinking … I know you’ve been isolating, so have I … Well, you know, we could make that record together here, in my home studio, just the two of us. I’ve got enough gear for the job, we could make it all work.”
I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing - I hadn’t asked him, he was offering!
So that was the beginning of Line In The Water. We needed to work at night and into the early hours - Heath’s studio is in a part of his house that fronts a road with cattle and farm traffic running up and down it from dawn until dusk on most days. And we worked very sparsely and simply, especially on the initial tracking, with Heath keeping time on bass or drums and me delivering the vocals and backing myself with electric or acoustic guitar.
And now I’ll let you in on a little secret - available to Aldora Records only. If you check the CD cover or the LP sleeve of the new album, you’ll notice a credit that reads like this:
LINE IN THE WATER
performed by Michael Menager
with The Devil’s Creek Rounders: Rusty Lavonne,
Bess Maloney, Heath Cullen & Slim Fitz
So the secret is just this: because of all the limitations that were upon us at the time, calling in session players was out of the question. However Heath Cullen (for those of you who don’t know him already) is an all-rounder if ever there was one. Therefore, like a skilled tapestry maker, he was able to pull out exactly the right skein of yarn of the right colour and at the right time, and then weave it seamlessly into the design we were creating. On drums and bass (as already mentioned) and, where necessary, on electric or acoustic guitar, resonator or banjo (or perhaps
even fiddle or mandolin) there was Heath Cullen : illustrating, punctuating, colouring-in as needed.
But all his work notwithstanding, when the time came to put our signatures onto the finished project, Heath decided to spread the credits amongst a group of alter egos that he created for himself. That’s right, folks: Rusty Lavonne, Bess Malone and Slim Fitz are all emanations of the same remarkably talented guy - a tall, stringy dude with his own particular sense of humour.
Looking back, would I change anything about how and under what circumstances this record was made? Would I edit, delete, patch-in or otherwise? I’ll answer that question in this way.
Sometimes, for some good reason, it’s necessary to re-direct the course of flowing water. But at other times it’s better just to sit there, gazing at the stream and marvelling at how perfectly beautiful it is, meandering over and around those rock faces exactly like it’s supposed to.
And it’s in this light that I hold Line In The Water - in wonderment and gratitude that it came about as it did, far beyond anything I ever could have planned or asked for.
4. It is a pearl of a record from top to bottom, but I would like to pick out two personal favourites. Let’s go for ‘High Water Ahead’ and ‘Baby, I Can Change’. For each, what is the story behind the song, and can you remember the moment it came to be? Did anything in particular inspire them and what do they mean to you as the writer?
Stuart Coupe, my Australian publicist, chose “High Water Ahead” as the very first single to come out at the beginning of the pre-release campaign for Line In The Water. Stuart asked me to write something brief about the song that he could send out, along with a link, to the radio presenters, print media people and so forth that were on his correspondents’ list. Here’s what I gave him:
Heading to the USA in 2017, one year into a Presidency that was already widening the cracks in the American social system, a certain image occurred to me: high water ahead, shallow water behind. Things that had gone unseen and unreported; situations that only African Americans, migrants and the urban and rural poor encountered - shallow water, carelessly overlooked. Yet high waters were starting to roar in the distance, even back then - and somehow we’d need to find our way through them.
So I’ll rest my case for “High Water Ahead” right there. Except to underline the song’s reminder that, in these times, wisdom, good will and comradeship are more precious than ever:
You’ve got to know just who your friends are
you’ve got to keep them close in mind
with high water ahead
and shallow water behind.
Whenever I perform “Baby I Can Change” at a concert, I introduce it with a disclaimer that goes something like this:
“Hearing this song, you might get the impression that I’ve arrived at a certain state of consciousness about relating to women - but I want to make it clear that the “change” that the song alludes to is a work in progress rather that a finished product. So this makes it a song of aspiration, not actuality.”
Fortunately for me, I’ve been close to some outspoken women in my time. Maybe not outspoken in a public sense, but with me personally - for example, regarding my habits of not paying attention, not picking up on cues - there have been no holds barred.
Such feedback has been hard to take sometimes - I‘ve wanted to just keep on going like I’ve always gone, with the same old assumptions I’ve always had. To keep taking the easy way out.
But listening - really listening - to what women are saying these days about how the world is for them, and about what they face walking through it every day: that represents a conscious choice to stop and to take stock. To try to create a way of being together that’s fair, equitable and safe.
That's a big package - but the status quo of gender relations is based in inequality, and it’s just not working any more (if it ever actually did.) Some old habits die hard - yet die they must, so that something new can be born.
But there’s a message in the bottle
and lots of stars out on the plains
and they’ve all told me what they need to
they’ve told me that I need to change
that we have crossed the final boundary:
the die is cast, it’s time for change.
5. Previously, if you travel back to 2016, you released another stellar album called Not the Express. I have just discovered this outing on Bandcamp, but it has made a strong impression already. How do you reflect on this set as a whole now, and how would you say you have grown and evolved as an artist since its initial release?
Somewhere or other, I read a comment of Bob Dylan’s to the effect that he never listens to his old albums. Not that he doesn’t still perform some of the songs from those albums at his concerts - because in this sense, songs never grow old, they continually morph, develop, evolve as the vital, living things that they are.
So in some aspect, Not The Express is still very much “alive” for me - especially in the form of the songs on the album that still circulate through my performing repertoire. A certain creative inspiration brought these songs into existence, and a similar inspiration has me revisit them from time to time, and in some ways re-
create them: because in whatever context I play them, solo or with my band, they never come out exactly the same.
In terms of my own growth/evolution as a songwriter, I definitely see Not The Express as a kind of significant signpost on the road behind me. The idea of recording in a studio in Burbank, California with someone of the calibre and experience of Jim Keltner on percussion was absolutely daunting to me at the time. Thankfully I had Heath, also the producer, hanging in with me in the recording room on guitars, along with Matt Nightingale, another gifted Australian musician, on upright bass, both of them providing me with the grounding that I needed as we put down the album’s 10 tracks in just two days.
So my current feelings about Not The Express are not so much for the album as a work of art in its entirety - as a kind of snapshot in time, as many albums can be. Nowadays I remember it more as a pretty intense testing ground for what was going to prove to be strongest in me - my commitment to and belief in my songs, or my self-doubt?
Photo: from L to R, Ben Tolliday [Engineer]; Jim Keltner [percussion]; Heath Cullen [guitars] and Matt Nightingale [upright bass] Heritage Studio, Burbank CA, June 2016.
6. As you well know, I love the Menager sound and your approach to making music. Blues, Americana, folk, country, rock and roll, it is all in there. How would you say this style of yours came about, what goes into it for you, and who are some of your biggest influences and inspirations as an artist?
Some years back I was doing some hanging around with a great Texas Blues guitar player named Neale Farnell. I remember sitting with him in his garage studio in Mebourne, in front of his big old recording console, and listening to track after track of “The Greats,” from the 1920s and 30s onwards. He knew that I wanted to learn from him, but he also said to me many times, in all sincerity, “Man, you’ve got
to be able to hear what you want to play before you can play it!” And then he’d hand me another compilation tape that he’d made up for me, which I’d take home and listen to and then, sometimes, get to work engraving one or two of the songs onto my memory bank.
So it’s no big secret: listening is where it’s at. You can get the notes, you can get the tabs and the backing tracks, but you’ve got to listen to the Mississippi John Hurts, The Sister Rosetta Tharpes, The Howlin’ Wolves of this world to latch onto that one most vital, indefinable element: feel. You know when it’s there, and you know when it’s not, and it makes an awfully big difference either way.
Luckily, growing up in California at the time that I did, I came across lots of good chances to listen. Once I got to hear Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb and Bukka White each play a set on the same night in a small concert room in Berkeley; over in San Francisco at Bill Graham’s Fillmore Auditorium some friends and I once caught Chuck Berry passing through town and had a bit of a chat with him during his break.
There was a magical night of listening to Doc and Merle Watson play at the Troubadour in Los Angeles, and Joan Baez in concert at the Cat’s Pajamas up in Pasadena. And one day back in the Bay Area, on my home ground in Berkeley, I walked into Lundberg’s Guitar Shop to buy a set of strings and there was Taj Mahal, sitting on a wooden barrel in the corner, with his banjo on his knee.
So a lot - an awful lot - has gone into my musical hopper, over a number of years. Sometimes my listening could have been better: more single-pointed, more focused - but nevertheless the impressions are there, a multitude of them, coming in from right, left and centre in the course of my creative process, serving my mood at the time or the mood I wish to create.
The great Spanish painter Francisco Goya’s last words are said to have been Aun aprendo - “I’m still learning.” And my musical life continues to be like that - still learning, still listening, still absorbing - it’s there evident in everything I do, and my hope is that this will always be so.
7. A broad question to finish. We have been through such a unique time in history over the last few years. Both politically and within society, and that is before you throw in the pandemic. How have the last several years impacted on you personally and as an artist? How do you think this time has changed the music industry, both for the good and the bad? I am curious to hear your insights.
In a way, my answer to this question spills over from what I’ve written above about the making of my album Not The Express.
The entire era you refer to (and one that in some sense still goes on) was, if nothing else, a real-life proving ground for everything that we stand for, everything we aspire to and hold dear. In times like the ones we’ve recently passed through, especially for independent musicians such as myself, it’s about keeping your music alive where it matters most - inside you, inside your heart and soul. When all the venues are shut down, that’s where the performance can continue, uninterrupted.
I mean, if you saw the world ending all around you, tumbling down upon itself, would you throw your song away, and go running - or would you turn and face the situation with that same song, the one that you’ve made and the one that you’ll stand by, no matter what?
OK, this may sound pretty dramatic - but imagine being in New York in 2020, with all that was going on at that time, not knowing if you were going to get out of it alive - yet still holding on to your song, like a lifeline, all the way through to the other side?
We’ve already had a whiff of bad times, and maybe more a-coming; so let’s look to our values and keep on cultivating our gardens, no matter what the weather.
Or, in the words of The Reverend Gary Davis, let us “Gather up some riches that the rain won’t rust.”
