News

Rock Blues from the raw heart
Cafe Society Magazine feature article, September 2000

It's midnight in Balmain, and a gaggle of punters crowd into the back bar of The Bridge Hotel to get their weekly fix of Dave Tice & Mark Evans. Eventually the powerfully calm and controlled figure of Dave Tice takes to the tiny stage with the assurance of an old soldier and caressing his pear-bodied instrument like a woman or weapon he never wants to lose, gives the crowd the hard-edged Blues that they came for. Dave's been playing Thursday nights at The Bridge for two and a half years now, along with other gigs across the country, and has a loyal following of fans, some of whom have followed him from his early days in seminal Australian rock band Buffalo, through The Bishops in the UK, then the Headhunters back in Oz, before forming his own bands The Dave Tice Band and Tice & Evans. It was this history of consistently pleasing audiences over the world that led Full Moon records to approach Dave about recording his eleventh album 'Lay Down With Dogs'. "I was hired by Full Moon records to do the vocals on the Bar Kings album." Dave explains to me in the beer garden a few nights later, "after that they me asked if I wanted to do an album myself. "I knew from our consultations that I was pushing the boundaries of the Rock Œn¹ Blues brief, but I wanted to do that. It's a matter of how far you can push the boundaries before it starts to get silly. You can't be continually hanging over the precipice, but you got to be rolling close to the edge as much as you can. Otherwise you just get static, you don't go anywhere, rolling down the middle of the road."

His eyes grow fixed as an old storyteller as he adds with a husky smirk, "Sure there might be some dangerous critters out there behind the bushes but you should go and check them out now and again," then leans back and lets his voice growl into a friendly laughter. It's been a long time between drinks since a teenage Dave Tice persuaded his father to buy him a cheap guitar after seeing the early Rolling Stones on TV, first in country England and then at the hostel in Queensland where the family lived after immigrating to Australia. "The Stones had all these girls throwing themselves at them, I thought I'll have some of that. Later we were listening to Cream and that first Hendrix album, they were really blues. I'd started researching where this stuff had come from, got into Muddy Waters, Howlin'Wolf, Sonny Terry. The main influence was a guy called Paul Butterfield. He was very influential. There was quite a Blues in scene in Brisbane based around The Red Orb and The Primitive Coffee lounge, bands from then, like The Purple Hearts, were very important in terms of what¹s happened since." It wasn't long before Dave teamed up pal Pete Wells and other friends to form the first of many bands. By 1970 Dave and the band had made a name for themselves and decided to move down to Sydney. "We thought there's only so far you could go in Brisbane," recalls Dave, "so we loaded up the Valiant and the HO, and headed down towards the Big Smoke." Their first experience of Sydney was moving into the Plaza Hotel in Kings Cross, building filled with musicians and working girls. Half the band got homesick, so Dave and Pete found a new lineup and formed Buffalo. They began gigging and soon became the first non-English band signed to the Vertigo label, making them stablemates of contemporaries Black Sabbath who they supported on their Australian tour. As RAM magazine said in 1976: "Buffalo are the most powerful raw rock band in Australia." Their first album Dead Forever, the title of which came from a disembodied response at a seance, went Gold, and has recently been reissued along with their other discs, showing the continued popularity of the group. Eventually Buffalo broke up, Pete Wells forming Rose Tattoo and Dave Becoming lead singer with the Count Dave and Bishops in the UK.

In the Eighties, Dave returned to Australia. He began to jam with fellow musicians in Bondi ‹ "the neighbours used to complain so we asked a local pub if we could rehearse there." Eventually that rehearsal time became a popular gig that spawned The Headhunters, whose album released through Oz Bike magazine is still a much sought after item amongst Rock 'n' Blues aficionados. While the Headhunters are no more, Dave has wasted no time in keeping himself performance fit: "I love performing, I'm still surprised I get paid for it. When someone asks me to do something and they pay me for it that¹s a great compliment. That's something I think a lot of performers forget." For Dave playing music is a labour of love. "The Blues is something that comes from the heart; it¹s something that speaks to people on a very basic level. A lot of bands place their themes on the large political pictures, the big global issues, but I think that the important issues for everybody are much smaller than that -‹ the relationships between them, the struggles to make the rent. "The struggles to survive, they drag you down. That's why I think people respond on a really visceral level. I think Mark and I can really effect people, we can remove them from thinking about their problems with the rent, lift them out of that somehow. I do it for myself when I play, I forget about all those everyday problems. In the Eighties, Dave returned to Australia. He began to jam with fellow musicians in Bondi ‹ "the neighbours used to complain so we asked a local pub if we could rehearse there." Eventually that rehearsal time became a popular gig that spawned The Headhunters, whose album released through Oz Bike magazine is still a much sought after item amongst Rock 'n' Blues aficionados. While the Headhunters are no more, Dave has wasted no time in keeping himself performance fit: "I love performing, I'm still surprised I get paid for it. When someone asks me to do something and they pay me for it that¹s a great compliment. That's something I think a lot of performers forget." For Dave playing music is a labour of love. "The Blues is something that comes from the heart; it¹s something that speaks to people on a very basic level. A lot of bands place their themes on the large political pictures, the big global issues, but I think that the important issues for everybody are much smaller than that -‹ the relationships between them, the struggles to make the rent. "The struggles to survive, they drag you down. That¹s why I think people respond on a really visceral level.

Dave and Mark at Chameleon Cafe

Dave relaxes at the Chameleon Cafe

I think Mark and I can really effect people, we can remove them from thinking about their problems with the rent, lift them out of that somehow. I do it for myself when I play, I forget about all those everyday problems. I can even raise a tear in my eye by singing a song about the breakdown of a relationship, or all those problems in life. If you¹re going through it yourself, and we all do, you¹ve got to be able to find a way to express that. If I can have that kind of effect on myself I've got a chance of helping those people who are in the same room at the same time, helping them feel that." Lay Down With The Dogs features guest spots from many of the musicians Dave has played with over the years, including slick slide from Pete Wells as well as Mal Eastick, Steve Edmonds, and Dave¹s Thursday night cohort, Mark Evans, originally a member of AC/DC. "I'm very proud of this album, it's an opportunity to express myself individually rather than in a band or a guest spot." I wish him luck as he moves towards the guitar awaiting patiently upon the stage. "Luck?' says Dave as he turns with a smirk,"luck is for those who need it." You can purchase "Lay Down With Dogs" online at fullmoon.com.au Also, Glen A. Baker's Raven Records have released a Buffalo compilation CD.

Benito Di Fonzo