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Doug Mansfield and the Dust Devils -
Interviews/Articles -
Eastmen, Judy, 1998, 'Doug Mansfield and the Dust Devils - Devil Drive', Beat Magazine.
For those who haven't stumbled across them in Fitzroy's Standard Hotel during their long-term Sunday afternoon residency or heard their debut You can never go Home, Doug Mansfield and his Dust Devils (Jack Coleman - bass, Bruce Kane - drums, Nick del Ray - guitar, Gerard Rowan - pedal steel) play a honky tonk brand of country; the music of tears, beers and pubs. To give you an idea their signature tune 'One More Beer' features the wonderful lines 'I sing for my supper I drink for my dinner, I ain't good for much just a filthy old sinner. The only good tucker that I can afford is a microwave pie from a convenience store, so I'll buy one more beer...'
They've recently vacated their Standard bar stools and headed out the door for the other side of town and beyond to festivals, from the Tamworth country music festival to Kyneton to Portland to Williamstown. The eye of the Dust Devils, Doug Mansfield, reported to Beat on the band's recent activities and future plans.
How was it playing at Tamworth and how did you go down with the audiences up there?
'Pubs was mainly what we went for. We played a little place called the Tudor, which is a pretty good little pub and we also did a couple of shows at one of the leagues clubs, which was quite different for us. [laughs] The leagues club was very funny because it's like an audience that's there all day - well they seemed to be - I assume that they come and go though. Three long sets they like there, and half the time you're playing to people who're queuing up for the big acts - like the Kernaghans and that - who play the big room next door, so it's a funny gig, a good gig, but nothing like I'd been used to before. The people cruise from one place to another, so if you play like 3 sets, which is what we'd normally do, you'll have a bunch of people there for a set and you'll say "we'll be back in 15 minutes" and they leave [laughs] and then a new bunch of people come in, so a high rotation of audience. But by the end of the week we were getting a few to stay for more than one set, which was good.'
How was it playing to audiences that may not have been familiar with your stuff?
'A few of them came along 'cause they'd seen us on Country Music Television - which I think we're still being shown on... A few came on the strength of that. We got a few from word of mouth, but you know, I wouldn't say we were well known up there by any stretch of the imagination. There's so many bands up there! I think there were 600 acts, ranging from your Kernaghans and Slim Dustys down to people you would never have heard of ever'.
That's the thing with festivals, isn't it? You really have to sift through it and work out what you're going to get to.
'Yeah, well we've done a few other ones; a couple of ah not country music festivals, just general festivals, and they're a bit different actually. There's not one festival that's the same as one another... At Tamworth everything's all over the place. You sit there with the paper and see there's 90 acts on between lunchtime and midnight and you kind of go "well I wouldn't mind seeing them, where are they? It's huge'.
You have to almost do some fitness training before it!
'Yeah! Well we were all pretty tuckered out by the end of it all and it was so hot to. It was 40 degrees C or more just about every day we were there and the pub wasn't air conditioned abd we were playing upstairs... I was going through about three shirts a show at one stage, it was so hot'.
What's this I hear about a gig at Pentridge?
'Oh, that was a while ago. It was the last show by anyone there. It was in B Divison, it used to be the notorious division out there... We were sort of in a shelter shed where they do their exercise, so we were surrounded by exercise equipment and the prisoners were in the exercise yard in front of us, so it was very strange'.
And Jack (Coleman) was popular?
'Jack was very popular, yeah. I think a couple of them thought he was a bit of a pretty boy, you know? So I think he's going to be on the straight and narrow for a few years!... They wanted him to dance. I don't know if you've seen Jack but he doesn't dance!!'
You have a couple of songs, selected for television's 'Good Guys, Bad Guys', how did that come about?
'Oh, I just got a phone call from a joint in Port Melbourne called Mana Music, who I think place music in films and tv shows. I guess they're a bit like a publisher or a producer where someone comes along and says "well we've got this show and we want some music here and some music there, what can you recommend?" and Good Guys, Bad Guys has pretty much exclusively Australian music which is good.'
What is it about country music and the country and the country that attracts you, as a boy from the inner city?
'Basically, I think it's music that's about ordinary people but I don't mean 'ordinary' in the perjorative sense. It's music and about ordinary people, not about um heros. It's stuff that people can relate to. People within the country music industry have different ideas about what's country music. Some people think it's about the country and some people do stuff that's pretty much exclusively that but I think that's just a form of country music - bluegrass. We basically do honky tonk, which is the bar room side of it - the tear and beer kind of stuff. Certainly from a writing point of view I don't feel qualified to write songs about life on the land'.
What about the Texas music tradition? I notice you have links on your web page to quite a few, such as Townes van Zandt, Steve Earle, Junior Brown.
'Lot's of good musicians come out of Texas. I think it's probably because it's so big, in terms of population. Probably got the same amount of people in Texas as live in Australia. When you look at it in that sense, you'd expect a fair bit of music to come out'.
They seem to have more than their fair share of storytellers though.
'Yeah, they're particularly good wordsmiths. It's quite amazing and I think it's because there's probably a bit of tradition of it. Like Steve Earle [being] a big fan of Townes van Zandt and people like that. They seem to feed off each other a bit in terms of learning the craft'.
Where to now for you and the Dust Devils?
'I guess in the lst six or twelve months we sort of decided that to keep the band going and recording, we needed to get out a bit more than we were. I've never really chased work terribly much because when I first formed the band, the guys were all in three or four other bands each and well I was just one of their bands that they played in. But for a while now it's been sort of the main band for most of them...'
Have you been reluctant to record given it's been a couple of years now since You Can Never go Home came out?
'Um, no not reluctant. It's more the financial thing of doing it properly. It's getting to the stage when we probably should do something fairly soon, but whether we'll just do songs as we write them and see if we've got an album, or write madly and seek out the budget for an album... I'll probably do it a bit piecemeal. I'll try putting down a few tracks and if I'm happy with them, I'll work on getting some more done, 'cause I'd like to have something out before the end of the year... Let me see, we've got about six or seven we could do straight away if we wanted to, and there's a bunch of others that might be good or might not be'... If the Dust Devils' debut disc is any indication, we can expect an emotional toe tapper of a follow-up that examines the everyday lives and loves of your average bar fly - hey, that could be you - with plenty of wit. Why not grab your partner or grab your beer, whichever is closest and head south to St.Kilda for some entertainment Dust Devils style.
Kate, 1996, 'Doug Mansfield and The Dust Devils - You can Never Go Home', Punter's Club Form Guide, Issue 34, p 29
If witty urban country is what you're after, this CD is for you. 'You can Never Go Home' begins and ends with songs dedicated to alcohol and pub life that will strike a familiar chord in us all.
Doug Mansfield takes an insightful look at domestic life with songs such as 'Sticky Wicket', 'My House is Leaving Home' and 'Buckle Bunny Bride', where political correctness is thrown out of the window - it's allowed, it's country!
'Messin' Around sees Lisa Miller joining Doug on Vocals - could they be Melbourne's answer to Nancy and Lee? 'The Ballad of Steve Miller (Handsome Dude)' is an ode to the boss featuring no less than The Australian Blokes Choir, while 'The Girl who cleans the Ashtrays' features hilarious lyrics delivered with the utmost sincerity.
Doug Mansfield really hits the nail on the head in 'Dustburger Boogie', a commentary on the club scene, but it is the fine musicianship of the Dust Devils, featuring most notably Adam Gare on fiddle and Gerard Rowan on pedal steel, and the production of Evil Graham Lee, that has successfully brought Mansfield's songs to life and onto CD for us all to enjoy.
Dawson, David, 1999, 'Doug Mansfield and The Dust Devils - Trouble follows me', Beat Magazine
Play this often and you're transported to the accessible ambience of the wool sheds or shire halls of your youth. Not contrived Australiana by repatriated rockers or putrid punkers re-inventing themselves - just a bunch of suburban musos placidly picking and grinning their way through a somnolent songbook.
A dab of nostalgia in "Tullamarine" and "Faded Photographs", lachrymose lava in "Please Explain", sweet solace, embroidered by the Git chorale in "City Station" (? [Jody Bell?]), and a booze inflated cushion in "Counting the Kisses". Then there's a raw refry of Jr Brown's "I Hung it up" in "I Got it Wrong".
Hang on a second. There's also a seismic splash from the cheating embryo of "The Doulton Bar", punctuated by the stark message of "White Out (My Name)" to the idyllic imagery of finale tune "Hippy Trail".
Git your fangs into the title track - it's dedicated to latter day Texan dance hall doctor, Cornell Hurd, but there's more than a little vitriol dripping from the singer's self deprecatory cloak. "Did a little flirting with the record company, told me I would be a star as soon as I signed the deal/when the crap had hit the fan, it landed right on me/I don't follow trouble, trouble follows me."
Equally realistic is the televisual vignette "She Dances on Tables" - one of many updates of veteran honky tonker Gary Stewart's Hollywood or Larry Gatlin's Penny Annie. Robbie Fulks and Kieran Kane have also remodelled the components of the faded femme fatale but this is a timely end of millenium capsule.
Song sequencing is effective. The segue from Texas penned "White Collar Redneck" to Gerard Rowan-Diney Phillips Tex-Mex treat, "Half Price Margarita Night", to a rollicking realism in "Standard Time" - a snapshot of daily dreaming against the backdrop of a Fitzroy song factory - is sheer joy.
The imagery of Paint me a Picture (Leave out the Blues) - a theme also used by Troy Cassar Daley - is a perfect entree to the nostalgia of "Faded Photographs" and "Tullamarine".
Mansfield has an uncanny ability to write and sing of traditional country subjects without plunging in the quinine quicksand and credibility crevices that have claimed so many peers. The Gardenvale gaucho may not have the vocal vibrance of the studio enhanced hunks but he has one rare quality - peerless production by Andy Parsons enriched by plentiful pedal steel by Rowan, fiddle and mandolin by Adam Gare and tasteful guitar work by Nick Grant.
Mansfield also has a world weary warmth akin to an old time showman; and unlike the pre-fabricated urban flame throwers his star shows no sign of fading. The singer draws deep from an old well but his spring filter fuels a rich oasis in the formulaic fog of the chart chaff.
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