Amanda Brown and Eight Guitars
Image: Amanda Brown. Image: supplied
Amanda Brown’s new album Eight Guitars is a different way of celebrating an array of musicians she has worked with and admires.
The eight track album of Brown’s originals, with the exception of the cover of Steve Kilbey’s “Unguarded Moment”, is one of exceptional depth and etherial beauty that features not only Brown’s musical talents on acoustic guitar, keyboards and percussion, but also a guest guitarist on each of the other seven tracks.
“I am old friends with pretty much all of the guitarists, except for Daniel Champagne, who I have not known as long as the others,” Amanda Brown said.
The featured guitarists are a wish list of Australia’s best musicians including Brendan Gallagher (Karma County), Shane O’Mara (Rebeccas’s Empire), Bruce Reid (current Dragon), Kirin J Callinan (Genesis Owusu), Danny Widdicombe (Bernard Fanning) Damien Lane and Daniel Champagne.
“Working wth Amanda is pretty casual, it’s like ‘here’s what we’ve got and what are you going to do?’” Brendan Gallagher, contributing guitarist said.
“She let’s someone come up with what is best for the project.”
“I did give them a brief of what to play in a general way but I also wanted them to be able to choose their own adventures and let them contribute their own creativity as well,” Brown said.
Like so many projects of recent times, Eight Guitars started life as a Covid project.
Despite Covid lockdowns and working remotely for much of the recording the approach to the album was conventional.
“They started recording some of the tracks remotely and then sent them to me,” Brown said.
“Some of these tracks were retained as skeletons of the songs and the only thing unconventional was that the rhythm tracks were the last things to be recorded.”
The rhythm section of Hamish Stuart on drums and Jonathan Zwartz on bass are a highly respected team of crack musicians who have worked with Brown on many of her film scores.
Three film clips accompany the album, including “Freedom Song”, which sees Brown reunited with film director Marcelle Lunam, who helped give Brown and Lindy Morrison’s Cleopatra Wong project its distinctive look.
The clip features a parachutist in a park near where Brown lives taking off into the wind during the lockdown.
“The parachutist taking off from the ground seemed like an apt metaphor at the time,” Brown said.
On Friday June 30, Brown and all of the guitarists, with the exception of Danny Widdicombe who has a prior engagement, will be onstage at the City Recital Hall for a special night to celebrate Eight Guitars.
On the night Widdicombe will be replaced by former Triffids steel guitarist ‘Evil’ Graham Lee.
“There are going to be a lot of people on stage — maybe not all at the same time — and it’s going to be a very unique arts festival style show,” Brown said.
Amanda Brown’s Eight Guitars will be supported by Rob Snarski and Lindy Morrison’s SnarskiCircusLindyBand.
June 30
City Recital Hall, 2 Angel Place, Sydney
