CW Stoneking: Electric Boogaloo (Interview)

CW Stoneking is an Australian musician whose sound is steeped in early blues, doo-wop, calypso and African beats. His new album, Goin’ Boogaloo has just been released. It’s the follow-up to his 2008 album, Jungle Blues and his first to feature his own electric guitar playing. CW Stoneking has booked a five-date New Zealand tour beginning Wednesday, November 5th at Auckland’s Tuning Fork. The 13th Floor’s Marty Duda spoke to CW Stoneking recently and discussed the unique recording technique used to make Goin’ Boogaloo.

Listen to the interview with CW Stoneking here:

Or, read a transcription of the interview here:

MD: You’ve been to New Zealand before, you played here a few years back, is that right?

CW: I have but not really. I came and did one show by myself. This is the first time really to come do anything much. I played at Jazz Festival once, I had a bunch of like 70 year olds heckling me.

MD: Do you remember much about your first time over here or?

CW: Yeah. I remember it was good, it was, you know. I had a friend from, a dude I knew years and years ago in Melbourne and he had a bar in Wellington, they were having a birthday party in the bar or something, so he bought me over to do a show.

MD: Gotcha. Okay. Now from what I understand, the engineer who worked on your most recent album was a Kiwi as well. Is that right?

CW: Well sorta. I think he wasn’t, well he’s not from New Zealand but yeah he has been living there for a while, I think he just only come back to Australia this year. So yeah, a fellow called Alex Bennett.

MD: Alex Bennett, I see. And I know that the album was recorded differently than the way you worked in the past. You had everybody kind of playing the room together live with just one or two microphones. Was it difficult to find an engineer who could work with those conditions?

CW: No, that’s sort of this guy’s speciality, is doing it very simple. But having said that, I didn’t plan to do it quite that simple, I thought we were going to use a four track machine, but unfortunately the four track machine broke down a couple of days before we got there. So we got hooked on a eight track machine for a while, but then we actually ended up just wilting down to two microphones anyhow because I was preferring  the sound of my guitar through my vocal microphone instead of close mic-ing it and then I decided I’d bring the bass, the double bass, up next to that mic as well. Once we witling down to two, we switched over to a different tape machine which was an old Ampex out of Capitol Records there. It sounded better, it was a better sounding tape machine. So then we began doing all the band tracks, we just, just to keep it all in one machine and simple, we just did that, even now it’s like, you know, four girl singers and everything else happening as well.

MD: Musically is it a more satisfying way of working than previously?

CW: Well, it’s satisfying for me because the mixers, we only had to push two sliders instead of like, you know, maybe 40 tracks and stuff like my last record.

MD: Right.

CW: So I was kind of pretty much out of energy for anything other than like singing the tunes and that was it.

MD: Right, I gotcha.

CW: I didn’t want to muck around with the technicals of the audio so much, I put all my effort into the songs this time round.

MD: Well I mean that’s the way that records were made, you know, 50, 60, 70 years ago, with one microphone and everybody playing together. So not surprising that it worked.

CW: I think it’s a good way to do it, like, you know, a record like that ideally I think you’d probably do it after you’ve done a tour and you’re like red hot and tight.

MD: Right.

CW: Not necessarily just, you know, form a brand new band over a month or something with a few rehearsals and go, that’s probably not the best way. But I think we got it over the line, I think it’s all right.

MD: And from what I read, it took a while to get the album made. I mean, I know once you decided on everything it was just a couple of days, but why did it take so long up until that point to get it made?

CW: It was just a combination of things. I had to teach myself how to pay the electric guitar and that took quite a while and also I was sort of interested in other styles but I didn’t really know how to, I wanted to, rock a bit more but didn’t really know how to do that in a way that I would find pleasing in the long run.

MD: Right.

CW: So that was something and, lots of reasons. I tried to make no songs about the jungle, I didn’t want to just be a one trick pony all the time, here comes the dude talking about the jungle.

MD: Right.

CW: So that made up about 3 years just avoiding that. Of course as you can see theres a couple jungle songs on there.

MD: Right, well fair enough.

CW: And, yeah.

MD: What made you decide to want to add the electric guitar to your repertoire?

CW: Well because, what did I wanna do. I was a bit, I wanted to play music more I think, you know, I had the horn band and they were such great horn players and stuff. Once I got used to having that band, like, thinking I was making like Jungle Blues, it was quite fun for me to, you know, make up these sort of marches and stuff….. all this sort of stuff and know that they would be big and fat and sounding likewhatever. But then I started to think I was being a bit lazy myself, musically, you know, on my instrument, I was just clumping away in the background there with my old thing. So I wanted to challenge myself a bit. I thought if I’m going to make up tunes, why not put that on the guitar, it’s a different way to play the guitar now that I sort of have this insight in the…

MD: And were there any guitar players that you were using as kind of examples of what you wanted to sound like?

CW: There’s a few, there’s a few different things I sort of did on the guitar. Some of it I just found by accident, like I bought this Jazz Master Guitar years back because they said they had no sustain and that’s why I was sorta… audio, you know, one of the sound things I like are the old National guitars that I played before that is they don’t sustain. Making a switch to electric, that was one of the big things that I struggle with, it’s so present and sustained. So I got this thing, they have this whammy bar on it and so I start playing with that and that got me thinking about imitating a Hawaiian guitar, you can slur up and down into your chords and things like that. So I couldn’t say there was a particular player for that but, you know, I like the vibe of the thing.

MD: Right.

CW: Charlie Christian, I heard playing a song called Swing To Bop which is him in Minton’s in New York, like a jam out and somebody must have recorded it.

MD: Yeah.

CW: And I really like that, I can’t say I got anywhere close to, I took some of the more simpler aspects of that sort of sound a bit for some of my lead playing. But, yeah a few different things, some of it is still, like I say, influenced by the horns and I think about like Count Basie’s band opening up in Swing Brother Swing for Billie Holiday or something. Make those sort of sounds with chords high up the neck.

MD: I was listening to your track Goin’ Back South and I was wondering if you listen to many vocal groups from the 40s and 50s like The Ravens or The Ink Spots and people like that.

CW: Yeah, totally because that tune sort of reminds me of, those sort of things, Mills Brothers or Cats & The Fiddle

MD: Yeah.

CW: Yes, I did. Those are one of the musics I like, yeah that’s the sort of vibe, that’s a bit like a Doo-Wop…

MD: Kind of pre-Doo-Wop, Doo-Wop.

CW: If we had more time.

MD: What is it that draws you to the music of that era? Is there something that connects with you on a personal level that gets you excited about this sound?

CW: I sort of just ended up where I’m at. I guess I sort of got started because I got into the whole Blues, you know, I was sort of listening you know, when I was 18 or something, I was one to keep on playing music with all my friends, so when they had jobs and everything and I ended up hooking up with these old guys playing Blues anyway, through them I found lots of records. I was kind of interested in a musically, like I just loved the old and the early sort of Blues guitar style and Acoustic guitar and things so I spent a lot doing that and most of the singing, so many different characters there, everyone sounds so unique, their voices and, you know, break the rules in all their own special ways and that.

MD: Right.

CW: And I guess it’s kind of just played on from that but I don’t know. I used to like, like the singing groups when I was a kid, that was some of the first music my dad used to play lots of that. So that was some of the first music I liked, records like those Mills Brothers or somebody or even up to like the girl bands, yeah The Shirelles and all that I liked.

MD: Right.

CW: Even The Four Seasons, you know, man, talk about different altogether.

MD: Well they’re started Doo-Wop as well so I guess it’s not that much of a stretch.

CW: Yeah.

MD: And you mentioned the girl groups. I know that you have 2 sets of sisters playing on the album, you have Vika and Linda and Paul Kelly’s daughters. What did you tell them what they were going to be kind of in for when you signed them up to sing on your record?

CW: Well, I didn’t have to really tell them anything.  The way that it came about is I was trying to find some, I saw these African youth choirs singing, they just had, I was just like oh my god they are the sound of the voice I want, you know, and it’s just like very unaffected, like it didn’t have any sort of pop music sensibility at all, it’s just like powerful singing, but sort of a bit childlike in a way in its unaffectedness. I sort of, you hear that sound a lot on old gospel records, you know.

MD: Right.

CW: Blind Willie Johnson’s Offsider or some field recording or you’d hear it in the Caribbean field recording, It’s just that plain non-pop style of singing that you hear. Anyway I couldn’t manage to nail anybody down so I wrote to Paul Kelly and described as best I could and he sent an email back pretty quick saying, ‘oh yes, my daughters could do that’, which, of course, you know, would make you a bit suspicious.

MD: Sure yeah.

CW: I asked him anybody else as well, just in case and he also said Vika and Linda. So anyhow, I scheduled like a rehearsal with them, separately. Vika and Linda came first and they sounded good and then, they sound good and they’re very quick to work all the bits out and stuff. Then the next day the Kelly girls was almost like…I was like alright I’ll check it out and they came and they sounded great too.

MD: Right.

CW: Totally different, but they have that real young sound.

Listen to The Zombie from Goin’ Boogaloo here:

MD: Well, it reminded me of, I don’t know if you’re familiar with a duo called Patience and Prudence from back in the 50s, you know, that kind of very innocent, like you say, young sound to their vocals.

CW: Yeah so that’s what they are, but not very like, not penetrating singers so much, although that has a penetrating ness of its own.

MD: Right.

CW: So yeah. I put them all together and it came together. I’m quite pleased with it.

MD: Now obviously just from talking to you for a few minutes it’s obvious that you go back and listen to a lot of old music and explore that. How do you go about doing it, do you looking for old records, do you search on the internet? What is your favourite way to find old music?

CW: Well I don’t really check it out that much now, like, it’s just…what happens. I don’t have many breakthroughs I have to say, you know, I might go 5 years before I hear something to knock my socks off again. So like, when I first discovered like the old, old Calypso, I was like whoa and that kept me going for a while, I listened to a lot of that. Just once in a while, maybe I’d be driving in the car, if I go to town and there’d be a radio show and I’ll hear a track of someone I’ve never heard before and I’ll hunt them nearby. I’ve never had a record collection because I never had a car, I didn’t get my driving license till I was about 35 or something.

MD: Oh really?

CW: Yeah. So I couldn’t transport them, so I just didn’t, never bothered, I didn’t own stuff like that, I kinda had guitar and things. So eventually I bought some CDs and that but that don’t really happen anymore. I kind of listen to stuff on the net, I’m a bit lazy with playing music in the house.

MD: Right.

CW: I sort of, I check things out but I got a lot of old Blues now, I don’t really need to listen to it anymore, I could lay on my back and I could hear perfectly, like the recording, I’ve heard it so many times all over.

MD: Gotcha. And your music sounds like it’s influenced by a lot of music from all around the world. Have you done much travelling around the world?

CW: Yeah, I’ve done a bit. But most of that I think is just out of hearing music more than necessarily by the travel.

MD: Right.

CW: And I got lucky with a couple of things. Making Jungle Blues I used a percussionist, who actually plays drums on this new record and he’s actually a percussionist more than a drummer, but he, you know, spent a lot of time over in West Africa and that as a kid. He knows like all the mysteries of like the beats, you know, a person like me, you can’t latch on to the pattern, you can’t pin it down, you know what I mean, so you just got pure energy flying past your head.

MD: Sounds good.

CW: So when he played on my last record, he just played on one track and I still carry that around with me all these years and getting ready for this one.

MD: Right.

CW: Stuff like that, you know, adds some juice and you got like some jungle swingers, a little cow bell going there and it’s a different approach, you know.

MD: Yeah.

CW: I was sort of looking forward to getting on the road with these tunes and stretching that out a bit more and finding things like that. But yeah, I like pulling all those other flavours in.

MD: Right. So when you get over here to New Zealand and you’re playing, what can audiences expect? Do you expect them to kind of interact, is there kind of a dance vibe or you want people sitting and listening?

CW: Well, I don’t really know. I guess they probably gonna dance a bit.

MD: Yeah.

CW: But I don’t really what to expect from the show myself cause’ I haven’t done it yet before with all these new songs. Previously my shows have been kind of concerty, you know what I mean.

MD: Yeah.

CW: But I do have the tendency to run at the mouth a bit in-between songs and, you know, my last record was a bit more laid back. We’ve done a couple of little promo sets here and there and it certainly, it feels like it kicks pretty hard live so.

MD: Yeah, there’s some real rockers on the record.

CW: Yeah, Nah. I think it will be kind of, it’ll be interesting. I guess we’ll find out.

MD: I guess so. One more question, the first time I heard you, the person that kind of I thought of, not necessarily because he sounds like you, but it seems like he was doing something similar to you, is a guy named Leon Redbone. And I was wondering if you were similar at all with him.

CW: Yeah Leon Redbone, yeah. Yeah, my dad used to have a record of that guy and when I was a kid I remember hearing it when I was like, I listened to him for a little while, that record back when I was about probably 7 or 8 or something cause’ I knew a dude who sort of played a bit, well he played that old, timey that old Jazz songs a bit like what Leon Redbone does.

MD: Right.

CW: and he was one of the guys who got me, he sort of showed me a few things on the guitar. I had a lot of guys around like playing old Blues and that but this one guy in particular, he was really good at it, wasn’t a professional musician but he just, he was right into it, he had a kind of monastic thing for his music, you know, he drove trucks and that. But I remember going to his joint once with, he lived up in a pub near where I lived up in Sydney and he got all these suitcases full of like hand labelled cassettes tapes all old timey string bands, Blues, Jazz…

MD: Man.

CW: And he was a, yeah he was a good dude. But yeah, Leon Redbone, he kind of reminded me a bit of that guy except this dude I knew was a bit better than him I thought.

Click here for more details about CW Stoneking’s New Zealand tour.