hello all

righto, been a couple of months so i thought i owed it to the cyber world to top up this
blog account with some musings.

some good news. even though i haven't played a live show since 1987 i have been pretty busy.

just found out i made the top 125 for the Vanda & Young song comp with a track of mine called Paralysed !! may not sound like reason to celebrate but given there were 3200 songs entered that puts me in the top 4% of entries with i reckon its a reasonable effort. shux.
so, it means i have a 1/125 chance of winning the comp...hmmm ...send out the positive vibrations one and all.

also been recording a fair bit with a couple of newies to be posted very soon indeed

talksoon

lov gbx

orrite

i need to connect with this facility. come clean. its saturday 4.15pm. im sitting at my dinner table/desk/useful ledge, i can hear the strange muted spluttering of a kettle just getting its shit together for my earl grey tea and ,,,and im thinking to m'self...  - im going to stop spending countless hours looking aimlessly at wrong utube videos (when elephants attack, worlds worst cycling accidents and the occasional glance at short snippets of adult entertainment...), and direct my attentions to writing...something...anything. cos i like writing but it does require a huge amount of concentration. i also wanted to tell anyone who might be interested what the hell im up to. ..and what ive been doing.

last night i saw the doco TYSON. its brilliance lay in his (mike's) honesty and candidness, i thought id take a leaf out of James Toback's book.

firstly, i am still  musician, i have a (brilliant) record on the way...ive just been having a breather...i really needed one. music can be a tough game...and last year i learnt first hand. basically i spent the entirety of 2008 working really hard with Universal Music on putting a record together and at the final hurdle it didnt happen. Myriad reasons, i wont bore u, but the upshot was that, only a few months away from spending a month with my favourite band (The Cardinals) tracking my record, the whole thing tanked and there was nothing i could do. i needed to clear my head.!! bigtime/

this year has been so terrific. back in my home town of sydney, i love her sweet, sunny open minded disposition. ive played a few shows, written a lot and spent time on other things--i did a commercial a few months back which helped me survived ($$) and opened up a whole new world id never entertained.

so now. the record...is on its way. bit of luck ill be in the studio in Oct. its going to be lush, layered, epic and beautiful with lots of slide guitars and catchy swagger...and hopefully - in parts - catchy enough even to prompt radio dj's to fucking play it. im quiiiietly confident. so yeah, thanks for baring with me through this lean year of inaction on my part. see y'll soon.

gbx

Dear World Friendship Network (WFN);

I would like to invite all of you to a very special evening, and for a change it doesn't involve me serenading you with forlorn tales put to guitar based music. It's more to do with photography. Some of you may know in a past life I was a fully fledged & fired-up photographer. But, over the last 5 or so years, with music having stolen my heart and visa card, I haven't had the time to do much...until now. Yes, I am staging a photographic exhibition!! Who would have thought!? It's called RECOLLECTIONS, and its basically just that - a little group of (biggish, framed colour and B/W) images taken from all over the place between '99 and '09. I reckon it's going to be quite good. I'll also be sharing the space/opening with a brilliant young painter whose name is Aaron Kinnane, his show is fantastic so in the event that my photographs don't get you going,
his paintings are sure to.

I'd love all of you to come to the opening night and after party at the Fringe Bar for extended revelries into the night. To entice you further, on opening night at the gallery we'll be handing out FREE stubbies of chilled VIC Bitter and a selection of local wines.
You just can't lose.

It's at: CHARLES HEWITT GALLERY
 FRIDAY 7th AUGUST / 6.30 (ish) -9 (ish) / 335 SOUTH DOWLING ST DARLINGHURST, 100 meterhttp://www.charleshewitt.com.aus up the road from the BEAUCHAMP HOTEL (Oxford St) SYDNEY.
www.charleshewitt.com.au

So, bring your truck, bring your trailor, bring your wife, bring your iPhone.

Hope to see u

PS - Stay tuned for music news, new record on the way i promise.

GBx

georgebyrne.com
georgebyrnephotography.com

...just posted it...again! too much reverb on the vox on the 1st mix. hope u's all like it.
also just found out M.Higgins has released this track!...toolate.

later
gbx

hi australia and surrounding territories

today im going to record a cover of the song 'more than this' by roxy music.

the reason for this is because I love this song so much I don't know what to do with myself.

ill try and post it tonight for some feedback

later

gbzx

George Byrne & The Cardinals - Story / Songs / Pix.

Hi there, happy 09 and all that…I just wanted to write a bit on the experiences I had with different people, producers and bands while I was OS + post some of the new material I tracked. Oh and the more feedback the better..

Experience #1 – Jon Graboff and the Cardinals.

While in NY I was lucky enough to meet and work with a feller called Jon Graboff, who plays pedal steel in a terrific band called The Cardinals (Ryan Adams). When I arrived in NY he was in the throws of recording The Cardinals most recent offering ‘Cardinology’ so he was pretty flat-out, but eventually we managed to catch up for a beer a few times, talk about music and work out if getting together and recording something would work. To be honest the whole situation was quite surreal, there I was in NY, kicking around trying to get things going and all of a sudden I’m looking at the possibility of hitting the studio with one of my all-time favourite bands (minus Cardinals drummer Brad Pemberton who was away at the time) backing me on couple of my own tunes! It was spectacular, and – with Universals help - it ended up happening. We booked two days at Electric Lady Studio’s (the house that Jimi Hendrix built) in the heart of the West Village, agreed on a few songs of mine to have a look at and away we went. When I got the studio on day one I was a little petrified, Jon had arrived early to put things in place and so it was just Gus (engineer), Jon and I hanging out until the rest of the fella’s showed up. Wandering around Electric Lady I realised it was the real deal – Led Zep / Bowie / Dylan had all recorded there and the place had a real buzz, hard to describe. It was also typical NY, I realized I’d walked past the place 100 times, just a nondescript grey curtain and a tiny little sign, but once you walked in it unraveled as if you’d just walked into the TARDIS. At around 1pm the rest band showed up and the place was suddenly alive with activity - guitars and drums everywhere. After a few rounds of classic rock’n’roll tales (led by big Dennis Diken) we all crouched around a laptop for a quick listen to my demos (intense experience), Jon then passed around the chord charts and we all filed in to the studio. Once the band started playing and we were recording it truly was an extraordinary experience, the best analogy I’ve come up with is that is was like getting on the back of a beautifully tuned high-octane Harley, the band just roared to life and I just hung on for the ride. I was having so much fun I would often have to force myself not to laugh and forget what the hell I was doing. Nervous as I was to begin with the band were the most professional and yet down to earth, affable people I had ever had the pleasure or working with and after not long I was able to relax and enjoy the process. We ended up recording two tracks – ‘Isabel’ (with new Graboff arrangement) and ‘I Wish’, both tracks were recorded live with minimal over dubs.

Playing with me on these tunes are:
Jon Graboff – Guitar and Pedal Steel (Cardinals)
Neil Casal – Guitars and Vox (Cardinals)
Chris Feinstein – Bass (Cardinals)
Glen Patscha – Keys (Ollebelle)
Dennis Diken – Drums & Percussion (Smithereens)
& me on acoustic and vocals.

So yeah, that’s about it I’ll stop rattling on, I hope you dig the tunes, looking forward to your feedback and any Q’s lemme know. Oh and keep in mind the mixes are very rough.

More stories / music / mis-haps, soonish.

Later

gbhqx

Good Afternoon World

Orrite so as promised I have a couple of new tunes up on the old page, hope you like em. The first one is called 'She's Everywhere', it's a song I recorded in Portland Oregon a few weeks back with Nic Johns & Mathew Morgan. Keep in mind it's just a demo & a very rough mix! The other track - 'See How They Run' - is a song I co-wrote and recorded with Megan Washington a while back. I love it, hope you do too. Check her out too, she's a little prodigy (she's on my page). Few more tracks on the way too...

More news soon

Gbzx

hi there

i posted a new track today, a live version of neil young's allberquerque. we tracked this little while back at the Espi in melbourne. twasa great night. hope you like and - to all NY fans - my apologies for fucking up the lyrics..!~i had a smile on my face the whole time. i got the first verse wrong then the second didn't make sense then i just started free-styling, tapping into some higher force, with very mixed results.

oh and hi5 world - go obama

talk soon

gbx

NY’s good-bye gift

So my tenure in NY has come to an end, sad but true, but as I sit here at gate 29A in LAX I am feeling the odd pang of excitement at the thought of getting back and taking the reigns of my existence in Melbourne. It’s always weird to getting home when you’ve been away, things always feel as though they’ve shifted a little, people change, it's kinda fascinating i reckon.

Right, so here I’m going to offer you an excerpt of a diary entry (my first in 5 years) I made – purely out of boredom - yesterday during my trip back to Australia. It started as piece of writing designed to record an amazing moment I’d had in the subway the morning I left, then it grew.

It picks up the morning after my last night in the city (which was long and better off - remaining - private).

“The next morning I awoke with a violent jerk, thinking I was late for the plane, I wasn’t. Hung over, alone (& strangely relieved), I showered, quickly ventured out for caffeine, fruit and a bagel, finished the rest of my packing and cleaned the flat. 11:55am, I was ready to roll and vaguely on time.

As I staggered up Perry St onto 7th Ave, I felt like an overloaded Afghan camel on safari, I was struggling. My myriad bags and guitar throwing my centre of gravity off to the point that I was listing left and right depending on the angle of the pavement, not a good look in the West Village, you're likely to get yourself arrested. Finally reaching the corner of 8th Ave and 14th St, there was the subway. At the bottom of the stairs I managed to avoid the impossible task of getting through the turnstiles by ducking in behind a family (with a couple of quiet children in prams), who were being ushered through the emergency gates, in all there sirenning glory. Good start.

So for the last time, I was in, deep underground encased in the warm, dead air that fills the NYC subway. Bags stacked at my feet, sweating and a little light-headed, I stood on the edge of the platform scouring the tracks with my eyes. I had developed a strange habit of trying to spot rats scurrying around of late, but today there were none. Instead, what was brought to my attention was a little old Afro-American man in a grey over-coat standing to my left shuffling awkwardly on the spot with a small open bag at his feet with a few dollar bills and a bit of change inside it. He cut an interesting figure mainly because he appeared to be a busker but wasn’t actually doing anything but stepping back and forth and muttering a little, as if preparing himself quietly.
After 5 minutes I’d forgotten about him, there were no shortage of homeless eccentrics in this town. With no attractive women to notice (amongst the 15 or so of us waiting), I fell into a state of forced reflection as to what I was doing with my life and trying to grasp the significance of leaving NY etc. I hadn’t slept much (+ my mind was awash with the trace elements of cheap wine and poor decision making), so my reflective state wasn’t really going anywhere very interesting, but I did manage to feel a strange sense of loss and sadness about leaving NY. I.e.: what was I leaving and where was I going and why - I had no idea.
Right then, to my left, came the most bizarre sound, it was the first three words of The Beatles ‘Let It Be’, stretched out long, low, soulful and perfect. It was the mysterious busker who wasn’t busking! he’d finally mustered the desire to sing for us and my god, could this guy sing. His delivery was a little jerky and his movements and intonation suggested he may have suffered a stroke or something, but it didn’t matter. Being very partial to the great soul singers of the past, I stood completely spellbound, all I can say was that it was heart wrenchingly beautiful and probably the most impressive singing voice I have ever heard. Like a perfect cross between Donny Hathaway and Sam Cook.
So there we all sat and stood, silent & immersed, unified for that brief minute until - halfway though the 2nd verse - the inevitable happened - the E train swept in. Fighting the noise at first, the poor old singer bowed his head and accepted defeat as the screeching mass of steel stole the show snapping everyone out of what felt like a strange collective meditative state (in the hands of this most unlikely gifted soul). Amongst the clatter and desperation of getting on the train the old mans bag filled up with dollar bills (two of which were mine) and noticing my guitar he asked me what sort of music I played. Not having time to answer I touched his arm, lent towards him and said ‘you have the most beautiful voice, you have made my day’. He was very gracious and sweet and I even considered staying just to speak with him, but I didn’t, and that was that. I’ll probably never see him again.

As the train lurched I gripped the silver bar, my bags littered around me, a little dumbstruck by the voice and the song and the moment..the fact that it had to end so quickly, I thought immediately that what I’d experiences was kind of like NYC’s little passing gift, a kiss on the cheek perhaps. A moment that – for me - so perfectly personified the city with all its beauty and tragedy, humanity and humility. It was perfect.'

The End.

Hi there
just thought id drop by and update the old blog. Ever wondered about the 9/11 conspiracy theories? Only kidding, I'm not going there.

Ok so Im now in LA staying in a friends apartment downtown. and because I have no car Im kinda stuck here, which is good. I was looking forward to be isolated somewhere with nothing familiar etc, it's good for the brain. Downtown LA is a trip, hard to descride, kind of post apocalyptic...but on the up and up. I like it.

The past few weeks have been quite a trip for me. What Iv been doing over here is recording demo's with a bunch of different people as a kind of pre-production process for my next record. I can't really go onto too much more detail as of yet because the label I'm working with and I are still working things out so it's all still a little hush hush. But, what I can say is that over the past few weeks I have had the priveledge of working with some of the best muso's (including my favourite band), in the best studios on the planet. Can't wait to be able to brag wholeheartedly but for now that's all I can say!

I'll have some tunes and pics top prove it too, soon.
Stay tuned.

Gbhz