AL NOBLE DEBUTS WITH HIS 'RED DRESS'

PBGB Shed stalwarts Louise and Mick Nadin recently introduced us to their friend Al Noble. Al is a songwriter, singer / guitarist who hails from Vimy Ridge, near Tathra. In fact Al told us that he lost his house and much property in the recent Tathra bushfires............unfortunately, grim stories relating to those devastating fires continue to roll out.

Al tells his fire story like this................." We live on Vimy Ridge, up the road from where the fire started at Reedy Swamp. The fire had a howling North West wind behind it. It destroyed our neighbours on the ridge to the west of us then hit us, jumped the river and continued on to Tathra. I had built a studio which we have been living in while building the main house which was unfinished but destroyed. We somehow saved the studio and so still have a place to live. There is a black line a metre or so around the studio where we fought the fire. Everything else is soot and dust for miles. I had stacks of humungous beams that I'd Lucas milled from trees on the block and all my building materials, machinery, tools, workshop, surfboards, boats, cars and trailers and caravans full of family heirlooms and antiques........ all gone. Hard to throw a dart at where to start again. One foot in front of the other I suppose."

So it must have been a somewhat dazed and confused Al who wandered in to the Sapphire fm local community radio studio with a sheaf of songs under his arm and played us one of his songs. He calls it 'Red Dress', and we were impressed.

It's a pretty simple ditty, as many of the best songs are. Just ask any blues fan. And like many great blues songs it includes lyrics that tell of toil and relief...........relief as spelled S E X .

We were on to it in a flash. We put down a very simple rhythm groove with just a flourish or two, and thought it sounded pretty good just like that. Al's vocals suit the scene really well, sort of gruff and growly.

So the next time we were in The Shed, Al joined us and we turned on the recorder.

Voila !   THIS is what came out.

That was great fun thanks Al, welcome aboard the good ship PBGB!   We look forward to your next song.

You can read a bit about Al's musical journey HERE.

Allan Noble wrote Red Dress, sang it, and played Louise's acoustic guitar  ( Al's instruments all gone up in flames )

Louise Nadin played bass

Mick Nadin played  harp

Graham Brown played percussion

Pete played  drums

Neil Porter took care of the recording and production work

Nice going team !!!!