by Ara Jansen  30 August 2010

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/entertainment/a/-/entertainment/7847529/wilson-takes-nashville-reality-check/

Australian music icon Ross Wilson hits WA this week in support of his new album, I Come In Peace, playing Wednesday, September 1, at Oceanus On The Beach in City Beach; Secret Harbour Golf Club on Thursday, September 2; and The Fly By Night Club on Friday, September 3. BOB GORDON reports. 

While the rest of us have been stupefying by the day in a Federal Election soap opera, Ross Wilson has been in the lap of paradise.

As he picks up his phone Wilson is soaking up the serenity of Gili Trawangan, an island east of Bali and west of Lombok.

“It’s not bad,” he laughs. “I only had to think about that for a couple of minutes. Mind you it’s hot here, I’m pretty damn sweaty. And I was walking down the beach the other day and some local guys were having a strum. I felt a bit of an itch to go over and join them.”

Never fear, Wilson will scratch his musical itch with shows in WA this week, touring in support of his new album, I Come In Peace. Some 40 years in the game, Wilson is still commanding attention with new material.

“Yeah I wouldn’t mind a few more reviews,” he qualifies, “but the ones we’ve had have been extremely positive. They all think it’s good and I like it... which is the main thing. But we’ve been sharing it around and the final spot on the national tour is Perth.”

The leader of Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock has what you’d call a musical life rather than merely a music career. He writes songs that end up on his albums rather than having to write songs for his albums.

“I write the songs so that they do reflect how I feel and what I believe,” he says, simply. “You just put them out and hope that people relate to it. And I think they are, the ones that have heard it.”

I Come In Peace was recorded in Nashville with Aussie ex-pat, Mark Moffitt, and a cool team of local sessioneers. Recording was done over two days and most songs nailed in two takes.

“One of the things about me, Ross Wilson, is that people have some kind of idea about who they think I am and what I’ve done and what I sound like,” says Wilson. “That includes musicians, so I was finding that sometimes they were second-guessing what they thought I required. So I thought I’d go somewhere distant and a step up. A progression. I mean, my recordings are progressions and I particularly want them to be going up, quality-wise.

“So Mark Moffitt got these guys who are touring when they aren’t in the studio and in the studio when they aren’t touring and they didn’t have any idea who I was (laughs). They would just get the songs and go in and play them, without any preconceived ideas about who I am or what I might want. I’m incredibly happy with the results. It’s still Ross Wilson, but it’s got a whole other kind of flavour to it. It’s untainted by preconceptions.”

It’s been a pleasure to hit the road with it to boot...

“It’s worked out great because the guys who I tour with, who are also excellent musicians – are playing really, really well because the standard of the album,” Wilson says. “Everybody’s lifting their game, including me.

“That’s the whole point, if you’re talking about careers, it’s the old ‘how do I improve?’. In music, the only way you can improve, is by playing with people who are either as good as you or better than you. You can learn something.”

It’s a salient point, given the heritage circuit that many, say, ’80s-era artists roll with in this country. Given that timeline, if Wilson had taken that approach, he would have been doing that in the ’80s.

“Well people are under a lot of pressure, whether it’s from audiences or whoever about that,” he reflects. “I mean, I’m not silly, of course I play the songs I like from those different periods, whether it’s Daddy Cool or Mondo Rock. There’s some great songs that I will still play every night and enjoy doing that. But if you are an artist you want to keep on evolving.

“When I was young I wrote about certain things, now I’m older I want to write about different things. And you pick up stuff along the way and you want to use it.  You can’t just rely on that old stuff all the time. There’s a time and place for all of that, but I’m taking this album very seriously and I’m out there and touring it around there in every state. I want people to hear it.”

As time passes though, things don’t have to be so black and white as they once were. Wilson still tours with Mondo Rock when the time and the chemistry is right.

“That’s right I do do some Mondo Rock gigs,” he says. “I love playing with that band, but I don’t want to play with them all the time. But it’s fun when we do. Mondo Rock is going to play with Roxy Music in February on the east coast and it’s gonna be a great gig. It’ll be a fantastic double bill that kicks arse. But on the other hand I’ve got my other life going where I keep on pushing forward. That’s where I want to be, that’s more satisfying.”

And this is why Ross Wilson’s songs stretch across time and change, whether it be Daddy Cool’s Eagle Rock or Mondo Rock’s Cool World. There’s more in them than you first thought because as he does now, he was pushing forward then.

“I’ve got a commercial ear, but it doesn’t mean that the song is trivial,” he says. “I shape my songs so that they sound like pop songs but they actually might have extra meaning and a certain depth to them.  They’re like miniatures; they don’t have a massive ending, or go on too long.

“I grew up listening to pop and rock and something like Daddy Cool was a reaction to something like the progressive rock scene, which I’d also been part of. But that was overblown and my thing was to be concise. Have one idea in each song and get it over with pretty quick (laughs).”

http://www.australianmusician.com.au/articles/1154-ross-wilson

Ross Wilson had been working on this collection of tunes for the album ‘I Come In Peace’ for some time, thought they were kind of special and was awaiting the right opportunity to record them. Friend, producer and ex-pat Australian Mark Moffat had made a niche of himself in the studio world of Nashville, Tennessee and suggested to Wilson that he could put together a pretty useful bunch of guys to do the tracks justice. Wilson also wanted to approach the recording as anonymously as possible. "No preconceptions, no history, none of this legend stuff," he told me. So Nashville fit the bill perfectly.

Wilson was not only impressed by the Nashville session guys' work ethic, but also their 'plug in and play' efficiency. "They'd just listen to the songs and see where they'd take them," explained Ross. "We cut all the basic tracks in two days. They basically spent about an hour per song, which is unbelievable. They have these number charts. It's a different way of doing it and some country artists here are doing it now. So it doesn't matter what the key is, 'one' is the root note and he'd (band leader Buddy Highett) write minor key symbols and other esoteric symbols on there. I swear, they'd look at these numbers, they'd walk out and come back and they are all playing their parts. I'm going ... what? I'm just thinking how did they do that?"

The album is a mixture of narrative ballads, country swing, R n' B and some uptempo tracks, not too dissimilar in style to Mondo Rock. It's the latter tunes such as the title track and first single ‘I Come In Peace’, which really leap out of the car stereo speakers thanks to Moffat's sonic attention to detail. "I came back to Australia and the early mixes had come back some time ago of  'I Come In Peace', 'Land of Contentment' and 'Hell of a Time', because they were absolutely finished and I didn't want to muck around with them," said Wilson.  "Then I went off and did the 'Five Decades of Cool' thing and put it on the backburner.  We started back on some tracks he sent some over and they weren't quite how I heard them. I think maybe he was mixing them in a way he thought I might like to hear them, like stuff we had done in the past. I emailed him back with some points, and from that point onwards they were much more natural sounding. He really went to town on a  couple of things with depth of field and I thought it sounded great." 

It's not just the quality of songs and the recording result that Wilson is proud of with his new album 'I Come In Peace', but also the lyrical content and even the way songs blend into each other to form a story. For example, there's one character who keeps reappearing in songs at different stages of his life, perhaps part biographical, part observational. "The guy in 'Fishin On A Rainy Day' is the guy from 'Land of Contentment' going out into the bay and there's a vague suggestion that he might float out through the heads and never come back again," Ross explains. "Same with 'Old Country Road', he's still stuck where he was in the beginning. Then it starts to move into acceptance I guess, with 'Love's Journey."

Another little quirk of this album is its subtle Australianess. Not many artists attempt to be colloquial in their songs, but when Wilson name checks Victoria's Patterson Lakes and Sorrento in the track  'Fishin' On A  Rainy Day', it actually fits, and without a whiff of tokenism. Apart from a few songwriters such as Mick Thomas, Paul Kelly and Shane Howard, there aren't many others brave enough to try. Whereas the Americans don't seem to have a problem with it. "It's a challenge to be comfortable with the names of the places around you where you live," said Ross. "I think it's sometimes hard to fit Nar Nar Goon into a song (laughs). We've got funny names. But the Americans do it with Wicheta and stuff. The same question has occurred to me. I don't know. Country artists seem to be able to do it better than we do."

One of Wilson's most underestimated talents, is his ability to conjure a sweet sound out of the humble harmonica, no matter which genre he chooses to play it in. "I kind of made it a mission to continue using the harmonica in non-blues settings.The harmonica is used to excess in blues music ... well I'm trying to find other ways to use it.  A lot of people copy the masters like Little Walter, but they are single note players. Like Howlin' Wolf, I blend it in with chords. I use chords and single notes with a bit more of a rhythmic approach rather than showing off and playing endless tirades of single notes."

Anyone who has seen Ross live will also know he doesn't mind an occasional strum as well, and in recent years has aligned himself with Gibson brand of acoustic guitars.

"I use a Emmy Lou Harris acoustic which is terrific because I don't like the really big bodied ones and I have little fingers. I don't like the giant Gibsons as much, even though they sound great. So they brought this model out and it's a bit more feminine. It's smaller and I can get my hands around it. You can plug it in and I'm getting really good results with that on the semi acoustic shows I do.  I also play a Les Paul Junior, one pickup, two knobs which is always nice and simple. Set and forget."

The album I Come In Peace is now out and more than anything, Ross is proud of the fact that some mainstream FM radios stations have come to their senses, and are playing new material from one of our most treasured 'classic hits' artists, a feat he had been constantly told would be impossible for an artist if his ilk to achieve.
"I'm proud that 'I Come In Peace' is getting airplay because I am the first dude of my age that it's happened to. It's been so ageist. When I started doing some modern tracks around 2000 and stuck them on the 'Now Listen' compilation as bonus tracks. there's one song 'Same As Me' and I just love it to death. I was saying to the people I was with at the time, I have to get this out there. They said to me, they won't play it Ross. So I said what about we do a video to go with it and they just kept saying they will not play it. Anyway I didn't do it and I am really annoyed that I didn't. So this time I had a good track, did a really good video and it's getting some action. I just wanted to go back to playing the game on the level playing field. A modern, well recorded album and I am out there plugging' away. So some stations have picked it up, and even if that's all, then I feel vindicated  that I am the first 'older' dude getting airplay for his new material."

GEAR BOX;
Ross plays an Emmy Lou Harris model acoustic/ electric Gibson guitar and Les Paul Junior electric.

ROSS WILSON



I Come In Peace (Shock)

It’d be a safe bet that if you ever visited Ross Wilson’s house there’d be a room, and inside that room there’d be a desk with a locked drawer and, finally, inside that drawer, a cassette tape holding a killer song or two. 

Great songwriters always have a stunning song lying around and sometimes they keep them close to their chest for a long time. The song needs to peculate and then the stars have to align and then they’ll record it. Once it’s recorded, there’s no guarantee you’ll hear it. We need more radio stations in Australia playing more music  -  music aimed at adults. While our culture celebrates youth to the enth degree, there are people out there over 30 making great records. And, lets face it, it’s the people over 30 and 40 and 50 that actually buy CD’s. 

Now, back to Ross. Recorded in Nashville with ex-pat Mark Moffatt, Wilson has recorded a tough, bright album full of well written/taut songs. Wilson’s linage includes not only his solo work, but also his tenure with Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock. He knows a good tune and there’s a swag here. The title track is a co-write with Rick Brewster from The Angels. Hearing Wilson’s vocals on the title songs outtro, he sounds like a man possessed. There’s a zest in the playing. After the initial sessions, Wilson re-cut some vocals in Melbourne after road testing the songs live. The experiment worked. Elsewhere he’s written with the gifted, though not widely known, Melbourne based writer Eris O’Brien. 

A mature outing, there’s no cloying for modern sounds and Wilson sings about adult themes and ponders not only the Australian landscape, but also his place in it. Immediate, strong and littered with good songs, I Come In Peace is a welcome addition to an already impressive canon.

Reviewer: Sean Sennett

http://www.tommagazine.com.au/index.php?area=Albums&pg=37&subarea=188&sel=11591

"I COME IN PEACE - Ross Wilson

It's not surprising that the opening track, an instant rocker, may conjure Bob Dylan and his Modern Times record. Wilson accomplishes the same level of excellence with this collection, a rich, honest and often raw record which casts a wise middle-aged eye on rock's usual subjects and finds something beautifully simple to say about it all. Let's hope we can all rock with as much conviction in our sixties.

VERDICT: Emotive"

Kathy also has this to say in her Gig Picks column touting tonight's Basement album launch showcase:

"The dual ARIA Hall Of Fame inductee has booked in to the venerable Sydney venue to launch his 15th studio record I Come In Peace.  It's a cracker, which confirms songwriters must indeed deal with the devil because Wilson has lost none of his potency as a lyricist or music man."

Veteran Australian rocker ROSS WILSON has radio airplay and the charts firmly in his sights with his new record, I Come In Peace. ALASDAIR DUNCAN sits down with Wilson to learn all about it.

Ross Wilson has been a staple of Australian music for a long time – long enough that, last year, he was able to put on Five Decades Of Cool, an epic series of concerts in Sydney and Melbourne celebrating his years in bands like Daddy Cool and Mondo Rock. 

“I realised that, in agreeing to put on a three-hour live show, I’d bitten off a lot,” he laughs, “and I actually had some nerves at the first show, because the Palais Theatre in Melbourne is such a cavernous venue, but by the Sydney show, all that was gone, I was prowling around the stage again, drawing people in.” 

A year later, and Wilson is on the promotional trail once again for a new record, I Come In Peace. “This new album really means something to me, lyrically,” Wilson says. “The title track was written with Rick Brewster of The Angels, and it’s quite aggressive – it’s a statement about the album too, saying, hey, I come in peace, but I’m not going to roll over for anyone.

“It’s kind of a humanist thing,” Wilson continues, describing the key themes of the record. “The way I programmed it, it starts off with a couple of statements about existence, then it goes into a couple of songs about the dream, about houses in the suburbs, then it goes through disillusionment to acceptance. There are people being born on the album, people dying ... it’s about life. That’s the way I see it.”

I interviewed Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens recently, and asked how he felt about his current position as an elder statesman of Australian rock. Forster said that, for him, it didn’t feel so odd, as he’s always been something of an old man trapped in a young man’s body; I ask Wilson how he, a survivor of several decades in the business, feels now that he’s in more or less the same position.

“If I am some kind of elder statesman, I wish more young people would come to my shows,” he says, “because I don’t get a lot of them! I think this new album will start drawing them in. We’re getting a lot of airplay for it already, which is amazing. I’m certainly appreciative that I’m one of the old dudes who’d getting airplay for a new track. I Come In Peace has been added to a few networks and I’m hoping it will go from there, that I’ll be leading the vanguard. I can’t think of any other Australian rocker who’s getting airplay on a current song!”

"The title song of Ross Wilson's new album is one of 2010's great singles.  Despite its name I Come In Peace sounds menacing with its unsettling urgency. It recalls the glory days of Mondo Rock. Indeed, if this had been the follow-up to Come Said The Boy, it would be a Top 10 smash. Remarkably Wilson still seems fresh at the age of 62. And props to producer Mark Moffatt for the crisp sound.  This is adult contemporary with a real edge. Its potent mix of rock, blues, jazz and country is a neat summation of Wilson's entire career. Magic."

**** 4/5 (Shock Records)

http://www.aircharts.com.au/air-charts/top-20-albums-100-indie

http://saxpunter.blogspot.com/2010/07/up-to-moment-ross-wilson.html?spref=fb

Well tonight we went off to the Norwood Hotel to see Ross Wilson and The Peaceniks. It's been quite a while since I've seen Ross live, about 20 years actually - which is kind of embarrassing because I rate the last time I saw him, with this other band called Mondo Rock as the best live show I have ever seen. 

What a nice surprise it was to see Ross still playing with Eric McCusker, who played lead on so many of those songs that defined a generation of music for me in that band, Mondo Rock - probably one of the most underrated bands in Australian Music history.

Ross' band was this time round, well stellar..... there were no mistakes... even small ones that I sometimes hear that other punters don't at lots of shows.... You know the ones you walk away from and go "well they weren't bad I spose" ...... What I really like about the way Ross performs is that he doesn't, there is no performance really . He just sings. There is no room for theater. He just walks up to the mic and sings.... it doesn't take long before this approach just grabs everyone in the room. There's no fancy pants effects here people, it's just the essence of Australian pub rock at it's finest and most polished. 3 songs in you just know you are in for something special.

We got a first set with lots of new tracks, a Daddy cool fav (Come Back Again) and one of my fav ever tunes "Chemistry" with Ross and Eric playing like it was 1989.

Set two saw some more new tunes including the title track to Ross' new CD "I come in Peace" and a lot of these new songs went over really well to the crowd, including me... Then the boys ripped into "Summer of 81" "Come Said the Boy" and "Cool World" but nothing better than "State of the Heart"... I knew most of the words, lots didn't . The crowd fav was of course Eagle Rock, but I'd got what I'd come for before then.... some of the new stuff and some cracker Mondo tunes. 

The ones that take you back to those great times in 1989 seeing Mondo Rock at the Lakes Resort Hotel, my best mate Damian who got me listening to Mondo Rock in the first place, Chips and Gravy on the beach esplanade after a big Saturday night, my LC Torana, real music made by real people.

Lots of people go to the movies to escape life for a couple of hours...... Screw that, tonight we were teleported back 20 years for a few moments....... Not a more fitting album title is there than "Up to the Moment" - The out of print CD of definitive Mondo Rock tunes I am still lucky enough to own.

Thank you Ross and Eric for still doing justice to those tunes that for me will last a lifetime.... and thank you for coming out tonight and tearing it up at the Norwood.

We bought the new CD, and why wouldn't you?

Ross Wilson Comes In Peace

by Paul Cashmere - July 21 2010
photo by Ros O'Gorman

Aussie music legend Ross Wilson declared peace last night in Melbourne with the release of his new album `I Come In Peace`.

The origins of ‘I Come in Peace’ date back around 8 years when Ross wrote the title track with Rick Brewster from The Angels and first performed the song at the ‘Gimme Ted’ benefit concert for Ted Mulry.

The Ross Wilson showcase at The Toff In Town in Melbourne featured a two hour show spanning 50 years of the RW career.

Wilson kicked off with his very first single ‘Louie Louie’ from 1965, released by The Pink Finks.

There was a nod to the Party Machine, as well as a slab of Daddy Cool (Bom Bom, Come Back Again, Hi Honey Ho, Eagle Rock) and Mondo Rock (Come Said The Boy, Fugitive Kind, Cool World).

Ross even performed a song he produced by never recorded, ‘Ego (Is Not A Dirty Word)’ by Skyhooks. He produced the first three Skyhooks albums “or as I like to call them, the ones with the hits,” he joked with the crowd.

Set two featured the ‘I Come In Peace’ showcase with his touring band The Peaceniks, featuring Eric McCusker (Mondo Rock) and Stuart Fraser (Noiseworks).

‘I Come In Peace’ is released this week through Shock Records.

Undercover will bring you the Ross Wilson interview and his acoustic sessions for the new Undercover TV show USessions next week.