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Article published Jun 11, 2009 Geoff Achison adds a dash of Down Under to his interpretation of blues
By Steve Wildsmith of The Daily Times Staff
He stands out less and less these days, the Australian musician specializing in an American art form.
For one thing, Geoff Achison has been touring the United States for years, living here off and on over the past decade. His accent is still unmistakably Aussie, but he speaks with the ease of someone who's at home in a foreign country.
He also plays the blues with the confidence of a guy who's evolved from his early club days in Melbourne. In fact, his most recent album -- "One Ticket, One Ride" -- simmers with the self-confidence of a player determined to put his own indelible stamp on the blues.
"I remember when I moved to Melbourne, which was the city in the Australian state that I lived in and had the healthiest music scene," Achison told The Daily Times this week. "I went there because it's the place to go if you want to establish yourself, and I remember when I began playing there, nearly all of the bands and musicians in our little blues and roots music scene were largely playing covers of our favorite blue artists and musical heroes -- Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, guys like that.
"Over the twenty-something years I've been a part of it, I've seen this evolution to where we're taking the next step. We're writing our own material, introducing our own songs an writing about the things we see around us in this day and age. Gradually, bit by degree, we've changed our approach to this music form we were first inspired to play by listening to the masters."
Back in the 1990s, Achison made a name for himself as a young, hotshot guitar player or veteran bluesman Dutch Tilders. He toured with Tilders until 1994, when he formed his own band. A year later, he traveled to Memphis, where he represented Melbourne in the International Blues Challenge.
He astounded the audience, and himself, by becoming the first non-American to win the coveted Albert King Award, which won him an endorsement deal with Gibson Guitars. He brought his wife and son to live in Atlanta, establishing a home base for himself while he toured constantly, and he became part of a vibrant group of Australian expatriates making music in the Southeast.
"There are a lot more Australian musicians getting the opportunity to our over here," he said. "Tommy Emmanuel, The Greencards, Harper, Anne McCue -- there's a whole host of other musicians people seem to have heard of, and it's exciting for all of us. A lot of us are blues fans, so I guess we're part of the blues story in some way. Being from the opposite side of the world and being turned onto that sound, we're hopefully offering a different approach to it."
"One Ticket, One Ride" was recorded over time with a number of musicians Achison had wanted to work with for years. It's a hybrid, creatively speaking -- Australian ingenuity, American know-how and a product that he can use to promote himself here in the States and back home, as well as in other parts of the world.
With a voice that vibrates like the purr of a big cat, he croons and growls through a number of brawlers and bawlers, occasionally slinging down guitar licks like the Norse god Thor -- never too many to overwhelm the backbeat, but awesome in their fury and power when they are thrown down. The title track itself is a work of art -- a slithering undertone of slide guitar beneath's Achison's lead licks and vocal work that sounds like Tom Jones, if he'd grown up bare-knuckle brawling on Chicago's Southside.
In short, it's an achievement of a man who first stepped onto a stage to play the blues thousands of miles from the country in which the genre was born. It's both an homage to that genre and his interpretation of it. In other words, it's distinctively Geoff Achison.
"I'm still working on that, believe me," he said. "I'm nowhere near the musician I would like to be, in my mind. In the earlier recordings I did, I was trying to play with as much respect as possible to the great blues masters. To be honest, I wanted to sound like them.
"But as time has gone on, I'm beginning to find my own voice and my own way of approaching not only the performance, but also the writing and the recording of it all."