Past Event
Amarillo, James Kenyon and Mick Daley
22nd Apr 2017
Presenter: Amarillo
Website: https://www.facebook.com/amarillobandmelbourne/
Event Duration: 180 minutes
After releasing and launching their albums on the same day last year, Amarillo and James Kenyon come together for a double headline show, to launch new singles and celebrate World Record Store Day on Saturday 22nd April at the Bella Union.
Amarillo is a Melbourne-based band formed in 2013 as a vehicle for Jac Tonks and Nick O’Mara’s songwriting.
Nick O’Mara is a founding member and songwriter in alt country favourites Raised By Eagles. A renowned local guitarist he has lent his skills on stage with Chris Altmann, Mick Thomas, Dan Parsons, and Hayward Williams to name a few. Jac Tonks is a songwriter, vocalist, and guitar player. Trent McKenzie joins them on bass, with Ralf Rehak on drums.
Their 2016 release ‘Eyes Still Fixed’ received 4 star reviews in both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, Music Mainline called it a “quietly powerful and significant collection…” it was listed as one of the top albums of 2016 in Rhythms Magazine, and single ‘All I Can See’ one of RN’s top 50 tracks of 2016.
New L.P ’Eyes Still Fixed’ was written mostly on the road; in motel rooms across the top end, the Northern Territory and Western Australia, and scrawled on notebooks in trains across Spain and France. ‘Eyes Still Fixed’ touches on lyrical themes of friendship and love, isolation and distance, family and the irreversible loss of home.
The album was recorded with Shane O’Mara at his Yikesville studio, and produced by Shane and Amarillo. With layered acoustic and electric guitars on some tracks, and sparser instrumentation on others the album is song focused with the band steering their sound towards Jac and Nick’s shared love of jangly English pop - xtc, The Sundays, Johnny Marr - with a dose of Americana, showcasing Jac’s lyrical voice and Nick’s 1940’s Australian Maxim lap steel guitar and love of Stones era Ry Cooder.
Amarillo’s self-titled EP, launched in 2014, won them supports with the likes of Charlie Parr during his visit to Australia, a run of shows with Mick Thomas (Weddings, Parties, Anything) and shows around Melbourne and in the Northern Territory and Western Australia. 2015 saw them playing shows in Barcelona and New York.
James Kenyon is one of Australia’s standout songwriters to emerge in 2016 after the release of his album ‘Imagine you are Driving’.
Produced by Nick Huggins, Imagine you are Driving received four star reviews in both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. Timber & Steel’s calls him ‘Australia’s most underrated songwriter’, while Radio National’s Inside Sleeve said ‘placing him amongst song-writers such as Paul Kelly and Don Walker is no exaggeration.’
Kenyon’s songs evoke the great Australian road trip and traverse love, loss, desperation and redemption, sometimes describing scenes in bright detail, the next moment zooming out to widescreen with broad choruses and walls of harmony.
Kenyon’s music has been described as ‘a burning highway dreamscape of atmospheric energy and composure’, and has one him fans throughout Australia and New Zealand, where he plays music festivals (Swagger, Mullum, Nannup) and tours regularly with classically trained musicians Matt Dixon (pedal steel) and Luke Richardson (double bass).
Kenyon has been shortlisted for the Vanda & Young Song Contest, received a The Age award and supported Marlon Williams, Jordie Lane, Liz Stringer and many others.
Sydney based shouter Mick Daley has been in the country rock and roll game for 16 years. After forming The Re-Mains in Nimbin NSW he took the band on multiple tours of every festival, outback dive and rodeo throughout Australia, hammered Canada on three tours and ate his way through Europe. Now with the Corporate Raiders he’s released two albums and still hates John Howard.