Legendary Australian singer-songwriter Don Walker will be taking to the stage with his band at The Imperial Hotel Eumundi on Friday 19 May, the first performance in the ‘Lighting in a Clear Blue Sky’ Australian East Coast Tour.
They will be supported by Melody Moko for what will be a seated show.
Don Walker is renowned as one of Australia’s best songwriters. With Cold Chisel, he wrote Saturday Night, Cheap Wine, Standing on the Outside, Four Walls and Khe Sahn along with many others, and co-wrote Flame Trees.
He then recorded and toured, initially under the name Catfish; and with Tex, Don and Charlie (with Tex Perkins and Charlie Owen) writing songs like Sitting At A Bar and Harry Was A Bad Bugger; and penned songs for many, including Slim Dusty’s Looking Forward, Looking Back.
Over the years Walker’s songs have been recorded by many, including Jeff Lang, Mick Harvey, Troy Cassar-Daley, Jimmy Little, Jimmy Barnes, Ian Moss, Anne Kirkpatrick and Missy Higgins.
‘Lighting in a Clear Blue Sky’ (to be released on 5 May) is Don Walker’s fourth solo album and his first studio album in 10 years.
A solo effort as deep as the ocean and as dark as the night, with big bright flashes of musical lightning. It’s wondrous and tragic. It’s melancholic. It’s reflective. It’s dirty and bluesy and blue. Honest as a bee sting.
Recorded in Victoria over two days, it features long-time bandmates and creative collaborators Garrett Costigan on pedal steel; Michael Vidale on bass; Hamish Stuart on drums and the late, great guitarist Roydon Payne, to whom Walker has dedicated the album. They were joined on backing vocals by the Harmonettes, Amanda Roff, Erica Dunn and Brigitte Hart.
Internationally acclaimed author, Trent Dalton, says it best, “The man’s music lives in me like myth. It resides in the same place in my brain where Buddy Holly’s last flight lives; or John’s big bite of Yoko’s apple; or Robert Johnson’s great Delta devil deal. Rosaline. Breakfast at Sweethearts. Standing on the Outside. Choirgirl. Saturday Night.”
“’I’ve got the song we’ll need to live,’ he sings on the very first line of the very first song. Turns out he’s got a whole album of them. Every one of them nourishing and sustaining; restorative and resurrective. He’s been listening again. And now, for the first time in years – like a fork of white lightning charged to split through your clear blue sky – the incomparable Don Walker is about to speak,” says Dalton.
Doors open at 8pm.
TICKETS: $60 (+booking fee) through Oztix. 18+ event
