PJ DUNNAGE TAKES ON THE 'DEVIL MAN'

PJ Dunnage, long time local percussionist and Sapphire fm community radio personality,  began his PBGB Shed journey back in July. Thus far he has banged his gongs on two PBGB songs, which you can listen to by scrolling down to the previous two posts below.

We PBGB Shedders pride ourselves on presenting our own songs. So when PJ wandered into The Shed he knew we'd be after any any originals he might have up his sleeve.

He was well prepared. He straight up introduced us to the Devil Man.  

We jumped onto it........sussing out the right groove and sounds. 

We liked it right off the bat, especially when PJ stepped up to the microphone and growled out his lyrics. Yassir ! ........great stuff PJ !

Wasn't long before we had the basics down and the recorder on.

What you hear HERE is pretty well what came out on the day. 

The guitar part on Devil Man comes courtesy of Phil Munro. Phil is another recent and very welcome PBGB Shedder. Phil hails from nearby Tura Beach, and first poked his head in the Shed door in late August.  Devil Man is Phil's debut as a PBGB Shedder.

Nice work Phil.........welcome aboard !!

We're pretty stoked with our cut of Devil Man, and hope you dig it as much as we do.

It's a great debut PJ............more like that please !! 

PJ Dunnage wrote the lyrics, sang, and played percussion

Phil Munro played the guitar

Neil Porter played the bass and did all the production work

Mick Nadin played the harp

Pete played the drums

IT'S TIME TO LET GO

When Steve Conn and PJ Dunnage turned up in The PBGB Shed a few weeks back, we had already been fiddling about with a set of lyrics Mick had presented under the title "Time To Let Go"

PJ and Steve brought a fresh approach and some different possibilities , so we took the song back to tors and approached it from a fresh angle.

Fast forward a couple of weeks and we thought we just might have the bare bones in place. Mick re-recorded his lyrics and added a harp track. Neil added an electric guitar track, and voila!

HERE it is. Time To Let Go. Hope you like it.

Mick Nadin wrote the lyrics, sang, and played harp

Neil Porter played electric guitar and did the production work

Steve Conn played acoustic guitar

Louise Nadin played bass

PJ Dunnage played percussion

Pete played the drums

TRY AS YOU MIGHT, YOU "CAN'T TURN BACK THE CLOCK"

A cuppla weeks back two likely lads wanderered into the PBGB Shed.

One was PJ Dunnage, a local percussionist known around the traps as a fine percussionist and general music hound.

The other was Steve Conn, a mate of Louise and Mick's from Metung, that gorgeous seaside hamlet a couple of hours down the highway. Turns out Steve is up here, close to Pambula Beach, for a few weeks holiday. Great !

Steve set up his pedal box and peeled off a tasty  Latinish melody with some cool chords that caught our attention. Wasn't long before we figured we had something we were keen to sink our teeth into. 

Mick, as always, had a clutch of lyrics in his bag, and soon had a set of lyrics aligned with Steve's melody.

PJ settled into the groove and added some tasty perx. Things were sounding good !

The next time we got together we decided to spend the afternoon trying to cut what had become "Can't Turn Back The Clock".

A couple of hours later, THIS was down, done, dusted.

We're stoked. A neat little number with a fine groove.

Welcome aboard the good ship PBGB Steve and PJ !!

You can read all about PJ and Steve's musical adventures to date by clicking on 'the Musos' tab at the top of the page, then scrolling to their names.

Mick Nadin wrote the lyrics and sang

Louise Nadin played bass

Neil Porter played guitar and did the production work

Steve Conn brought the music and played guitar

PJ Dunnage played percussion

Pete played the drums.

SEEMS LIKE THEY DON'T CARE

We had been kicking 'They Don't Care' around for a couple of weeks over the Christmas / New Year period. Trying out different feels to see what might work.

Graham Brown had brought the lyrics in and we were just jamming. Messin' about.

At one point Pete pointed to a knob on John's keyboard and asked John what it was for. John pointed out that when twiddled, the knob produced an eerie bending sound. John twiddled it, and as he was doing so Pete started banging on the drums and kicked into a beat we had been thinking was about right for the song. 

Next thing you know everybody joined in and we ended up taking the song through to it's conclusion. We all had a good laugh.

Neil happened to have the recorder going though and we decided to play it back. We thought it sounded pretty good.

What you hear HERE is pretty much what came out. Neil took it home and did a little bit of this and that, and there it was.

Credits

Graham Brown wrote the lyrics

Mick Nadin - vocals

John Drews - keyboards

Louise Nadin - bass

Pete Reid - drums

Neil Porter  - guitars, recording and production

SHE'S FINE, SO FINE, SHE'S MINE ALL MINE

Sometimes songs come together at lightning speed in the PBGB Shed. Such was the case with "She's Fine".

Pete had cobbled together a set of very simple lyrics that were about nothing more than the lightheaded feeling a fella gets when being deliriously happy with his girlfriend. Pete had in mind a suitably simple feel that just bounces right along.

On a single afternoon we had tried it out for probably less than an hour and were really enjoying the spontaneity of the way it was coming together while still so fresh.

Anyway, we turned on the recorder and ran it through. We had such limited expectation that it was ready to record that Pete didn't even sing into a mic. But we liked what we heard and decided to add Pete's vocal lines and the handclaps later. 

Bit of fiddling by Neil, and that was that !  So Fine !

Have a listen by clicking HERE

Pete wrote the lyrics, played the drums, and sang the up-front vocals

John Drews played the piano

Neil Porter played the guitar, added backing vocals and did the production work

Mick Nadin played the harp and added backing vocals

Louise Nadin played the bass

What a fun piece ! Hope ya like it !

Manny Aigner returns to The PBGB Shed to play 'The Waiting Game'

Followers of the PBGB zeitgeist will be familiar with Manny Aigner's fine guitar style. Manny was a welcome PBGB Shed regular for over five years before pulling up stumps and moving to The Netherlands in early 2023.

You can have a listen back to the thirty or so songs Manny has played on with PBGB by going to The Musos tab above, and hitting on Manny's name.

Anyway, come early December 2025, Manny let us know that he would be back in the district for a few weeks over Christmas / January and that he'd like to pay a visit to The Shed.

Great !

Christmas is always a bit turbulent in The Shed but we figured we could do our best to get at least one of Manny's new songs recorded and posted on our website. 

What with various people coming and going 'The Waiting Game' came together over a few weeks, with bits and pieces put together when the right people were about.

It was a lot of fun. Great to see Manny again and very pleased he hasn't lost any of his chops.

Thanks Manny.  Great to see you again.  Hope you like how The Waiting Game ended up! 

Have a listen to The Waiting Game, by clicking HERE

Manny wrote the music and played guitars

Graham Brown wrote the lyrics and played the tambourine

Mick Nadin sang the words

Neil Porter played the bass and did the production work

Pete played the drums and added some backing vocals 

'JUMP START' - PBGB HONOURS THE RHYTHM AND BLUES PIONEERS BEHIND THE RISE OF ROCK AND ROLL

Cosimo Matassa at the J and M studio desk, 

New Orleans, 1947 - 

"three microphones going straight to the wax".

Pete continues to be fascinated by the global seismic shift that accompanied the acceptance by white American teenagers of the fantastic Rhythm and Blues ( previously known as Race Music )  being pounded out by black musicians down in the Deep South of the USA in the late 1940s and early 1950s.

History tells us that the first recordings of the small combo 'jump music' that sparked the white teen music revolution came out of Cosimo Mattassa's studio in New Orleans. Cosimo's 'studio' was no more than a small room in the back of the Mattassa family store. And yes, as quoted in Jump Start, the studio only had three microphones to capture the magic. No tape, cut straight onto wax.

When it became clear that white teenagers actually wanted to buy such "jungle music", bigger record labels started recording white,  inanely sanitised cover versions. White djs called that Rock and Roll. Of course they outsold the original versions by a huge margin and less than a handful of the black R and B musicians were accepted by white America.

Anyway, Pete decided to try to tell the story in a three minute song.  He pays homage to as many of the heroes of the story as he can jam in...... Cosimo Matassa, Professor Longhair, Fats Domino, Huey Smith, Earl Palmer, and of course the outrageous, impossible to ignore, Little Richard.

Could PBGB really do this stuff justice ? Of course not. But it was great fun having a go. Listen to our humble attempt by clicking HERE

A wop-bop-a loo bop a lop-bam-boom !!!

Pete wrote the lyrics, sang 'em and played the drums

Neil Porter played the bass and did all the production work

John Drews played the piano

Graham Brown played the sax

JOHN DREWS AND MICK NADIN CREATE A MESS IN THE PBGB SHED

We were very pleased when John came in one day and announced he had composed a song that he hoped would provide the makings of good Shed project. This was the first song John had put together specifically for The PBGB Shed so we were all very curious to hear what he had come up with.

John played it through solo a couple of times and before long we were all tapping, strumming and generally blowing along.

Mick pulled a set of lyrics out of his bag, reckoning they could be massaged to fit the mood of John's song. Turned out they fitted just fine.

"The Mess I'm In" began to take shape.

John has all the necessaries to produce songs at home, so we agreed this would be a 'John Drews Production'. Of all the many PBGB songs produced over many years, very few have been produced by anybody other than Neil, so we were all very curious to hear what John came up with.

THIS (press to play) is what John came up with.

We're all pretty stoked about it. To us, it represents a new direction. A change. A different concept, a different style. And we are very happy to now have two producers for our songs.

The music reflects John's love of keyboard centric songs reminiscent of, say, Procol Harum and the like. Orchestral ? Film themes ?

As for the lyrics, Mick says....... "Fairly simple stuff - I was inspired by John’s comment about the amount of equipment he had been trying to organise and “the mess he was in”. That, I thought, would make a great title, and possibly a name for his new composition. I had some thoughts already written down about the nature of life and existence, but no chorus. John's comment helped me put a chorus together, and 'The Mess I’m In' was quickly knocked into shape, and is now part of PBGB Shed history. 

Beautiful team work guys !!!

We hope you like it, and like us look forward to hearing more of John's compositions and production work.

John Drews - music, keyboards, and production

Mick Nadin - lyrics and vocal

Lousie Nadin - bass

Peter Reid - drums

GRAHAM BROWN WONDERS ABOUT THE MYSTERY OF THE NEW AGE GIRL

 

It's been a while since Graham brought some lyrics into the Shed. A tad too long really.

So when he finally did we took it on board, messed around with a few melody structures and rhythms to find something we thought sounded just right.

Being a percussionist and lover of Latin styles, Graham was after something that moved in that direction.

We spent a few Seshes trying different approaches, and having John Drews on keyboards made it so much easier to get the right feel. With the appropriate level of Shedster collaboration and Neil’s production magic, we finally got it together. And (press to play HERE ) it is.

The lyrics echo that timeless situation………..boy grows up tough and leaves home searching for love. Meets the girl of his dreams, only to realise it might not last.

Hope you like it !

Graham Brown - lyrics and percussion

Mick Nadin - vocals and harmonica

Louise Nadin - bass

John Drews - keyboards

Peter Reid - drums

Neil Porter - guitar and production

"Flying High" - Neil's 7th album released.

 

You can listen HERE (FREE).

"I've been writing, recording and "publishing" my own songs since early 2005. Since then I've written and released upwards of 150 songs - initially on "MacJams" (now defunct) and more recently, I post the better ones on BandCamp. I only record my own songs, although I've collaborated on over 100 songs with others from many parts of the world ("The Cannon Porter Project" and "The Safe Hands Band") as well as nearly 150 tunes with the local "musical collective" known as "PBGB".

Even though I've "released" 6 "albums" (and 5 "EPs") on BandCamp, I had a few songs that have never really had a spot in the limelight, so I decided to put them out as a collection, with a crop of new songs from 2023/24/25.

This is that collection.

All amounts received from sales of “Flying High” will be donated to The Social Justice Advocates of the Sapphire Coast."

Neil