An Evening With Tex, Don and Charlie
Three of Australia’s most esteemed rock musicians, Tex Perkins, Don Walker and Charlie Owen, return to Darwin this month playing music from their latest album You Don’t Know Lonely. Pianist Don Walker, perhaps best known for his work with Cold Chisel, spoke to Off The Leash about the upcoming tour.
The new album You Don’t Know Lonely is dark, gruff and melancholy, but it also feels like the darkness is a bit tongue in cheek at times. How does the album feel to you? Is it fun to perform?
We haven’t performed any of these songs in public yet, only between ourselves in Charlie’s house, and recording in studios. I don’t think it’s any darker than ordinary life, and like ordinary life it’s leavened with a bit of humour. For me, it’s always enjoyable playing with Tex and Charlie, and with Garrett Costigan, and anyone else we’ve had along with us over the years.
The Cruel Sea, Beasts of Bourbon, Cold Chisel – Tex, Don and Charlie were born out of some of the most rocking acts in Australian music in the 80s and 90s. How does a Tex, Don and Charlie tour compare to the touring days with those bands?
Well, what we do together now is more like a concert than a rock show. The first show I played with Tex and Charlie, after spending my youth playing in Cold Chisel, was in a theatre. We walked out onstage and the crowd was utterly silent, and I thought ‘Jesus, they’re listening!’ and a wave of panic swept over me. I’m used to it now. But I have to be careful, because if I make a mistake they will hear it. I mostly hedge my bets by playing nothing at all unless I really have to risk it.
Is there a great Darwin or Top End gig from over the years that you will always remember?
Cold Chisel played in the Botanical Gardens for the first time around 1980, and the whole hill was packed with people from communities out in the bush and from down along the coast and from the islands, dancing and picking flowers off the trees. It was beautiful. A more innocent time in some ways. We broke the attendance record that Rolf Harris had set 10 years before.
See the event listing.
