WHEN Ian Moss recorded his acoustic Six Strings album in 2005, it was new ground for the Australian music Hall of Fame guitarist but close to his heart.
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“Basically, if you haven’t started off with a great song, no amount of jumping up PAs and theatrics and histrionics is gonna make your song great,” he says.
“There’s a saying that if a song’s great then it’s going to work with one bloke and an acoustic guitar … and that’s how most songs are written. Every Cold Chisel song was written by Don (Walker) on the piano, I wrote half of Bow River in my head and the rest just sitting there with an acoustic guitar.
“The genesis of every song is just one guy sitting there playing it and signing it.
“I’m no young bloke any more and my audience is … the audience has moved and and it has come back to wanting to enjoy the song and enjoy the music and that’s what it all starts with.”
For Six Strings, and the Six Strings Classic tour, Moss deconstructs Chisel’s iconic Aussie pub rock songs such as Bow River, Flame Trees, Saturday Night and My Baby, gives his solo hits Tucker’s Daughter, Such A Beautiful Thing and Telephone Booth the same treatment and throws some timeless classics drawing on his first musical love – soul and blues.
“I looked to a genre of music I really love, that’s why I do songs like Georgia On My Mind, Cry Me A River and Angel Eyes, just giving people an insight into what inspired me to do the things I do today.
The genesis of every song is just one guy sitting there playing it and signing it
- Ian Moss
“This is what I first heard and what I fell in love with.”
Moss will deliver a powerful two-hour, 10th anniversary concert in Wangaratta on Friday, August 26, highlighting his guitar skills as well as his soulful voice.
It’s a long way from his early days in the 1970s rock music scene – before RTB, alcohol-fuelled crowds and before pubs and clubs replaced stages with pokies.
Moss says the acoustic show does not skimp on big sound, it just doesn’t come with the stage-diving fans, six millions watts of PA and showers of beer.
“I can’t remember many Cold Chisel gigs, but I remember one really early in the piece where it got a bit wild and the publican freaked out and stopped everything. I don’t know where the pub was,” he recalls.
“I’m not sure if we got back on stage but someone said ‘hey mate it’s a bit wild, but look at the money they’re spending across the bar, what are you %$**&# doin?’ So the guy thought ‘OK’ and put us back on and away we went.”