the Urban Artist Group presents...

All around this old globe as I've tramped and I've trod
has the hollow bone moon shone its eye from up above,
from south shore to north shore, like an old familiar friend,
from east until west as I wandered without end...

So let us now tell you some tales
from these journeys and travails...
Let us play you some songs
from 'neath the watchful old eye of the hollow bone moon.

We shall begin at the beginning...

-Peter Reid

Occasionally there comes along a piece of art which transports one from his or her present location in the universe to someplace else altogether. For me, that has been the case in quite a few instances. But very few artistic projects have taken me as far or to such strange places as Melbourne, Australia's Pete & the Tar Gang and their debut release, Songs of the Hollow Bone Moon.

          With twenty-three tracks, Songs of the Hollow Bone Moon is constructed of more than just songs in the sense that most records are. Unlike most albums, Songs of the Hollow Bone Moon is a book of short stories, an exercise in modern poetics, and a collection of experimental songwriting compositions, all fused together into one sizable endeavor. And all of it goes to show that Peter Reid, the ringmaster for this ragtag troupe of musical deviants and strange thespians, has a way of weaving intricate stories and wonderfully bizarre pieces of original music into one tremendous web of plot, character development, poetry, and sound.

          What's more, the atmosphere of Pete & the Tar Gang's concept album is such that this review should be accompanied by a pack of cigarettes and a generous glass of rum. It should also be experienced over a backdrop of old-timey settings, aged sea-going vessels with creaky boards and barnacle-covered hulls, bottles of liquor, the wonderful smell of used book stores, dark forests, damsels in distress, ramshackle barns, campfires, big cities, remote mountainous regions, bizarre creatures, episodes of madness, and long desolate roads. Keeping that in mind, dim the lights, sit back and relax, and I will introduce you to: Pete & the Tar Gang.

          During our recent interview, I asked Peter Reid to go down the list and introduce us to the Tar Gang, each and each. This is what he had to say...

          Hmm...

          Well, first, there's Renato---the original Tar member. He is a man of many and varied talents. He can play any instrument, curse at you in Sicilian, and lives on a diet of coffee and tobacco. He can do all of this simultaneously.
          Then there is Jean Macarthur. Jean has a curious penchant for creating wondrous aural oddities out of objects you'd find at a tip or in everyday life.
          Next, there is Kirri---a slick dame with a curious twitch, who can win your soul with her violinery, or just as quickly steal it away with a slice to the throat from her razor bow.
          Occasionally we also have on board Will, Carla, and Sean. Will is a man of ivory dexterity, though he is oft troubled by the burden of living in the shadow of his famous pirate grandfather, Captain Morgan. Thus, he hits the bottle even harder than the rest of us...ironically, with Captain Morgan brand rum. Carla is a deadpan drummer with narcolepsy. I've witnessed her fall asleep at the station before, but miraculously she kept on playing. It's like a breathing reflex. Sean is our escaped pet monkey. Originally he escaped from his parents, as he disliked the way they forced him to saw firewood for them on a daily basis. He learnt to play a fine saw out of it, though!
          Lastly in the Tar Gang, we have the infamous Tar Pit Men's Choir: men of enigmatic origin. I can't tell you anymore than that...

          Oh, and there's me, Pete. And I'm just a regular, boy next door type of guy.

          Somehow I feel that Pete is anything but "a regular, boy next door type of guy." In fact, I suspect he is the exact opposite. Modesty is admirable, of course; but anyone who can write and arrange all of the stories he has, narrating them on the recording and then helping to compose the music that surrounds them, is clearly a tremendously talented and interesting young man. I mean, Pete & the Tar Gang's Songs of the Hollow Bone Moon was his vision materialized into a solid masterpiece. Needless to say, it took all of the members for it to turn out the way it did. Each Tar guy and Tar gal had his and her part in the writing and development of Songs of the Hollow Bone Moon, and each of those parts was important in its own way. It was what Pete said next, though, that really shed some light on the subject of why things turned out the way they did...hell, on why Pete & the Tar Gang is what it is.

          The idea for this project was very simple, in a way, explained Pete. I also work in theatre as a performer and maker, etc. Back when I was at university studying theatre and performance, midway through an absurd monologue whilst playing a psychotic policeman, the idea struck me that I wanted to translate this kind of performance (acting) into music. I had a strong urge to combine music with theatre but didn't really connect with most musical theatre, the way it was done, or the style, etc. I really wanted to explore various worlds in a musical and performance sense. Naturally, I started thinking about my many and varied wild adventures around this old globe for material and inspiration...the wild tales I'd heard, seen and experienced, and the many characters beheld. Their impressions are still as vivid as tea stains on clean white cotton...

          Later in our interview, when I asked Peter about his endeavor and what it entailed, he put it forth quite well, saying:

          Well, I suppose we're rather unique as a musical outfit. "We play music, but we're not a band," as someone once observed. We're more of a musical project, of sorts, built around the basic concept of a band, but delivered as a piece of gritty old theatre.

          Even from the first few utterances of the record's spoken Intro, the mood is set. Much like the other spoken parts preceding each song, the Intro has that scratchy, washed-out, slightly distorted sound which old vinyl records make. Another way the spoken parts could be described is: almost like old fashion talk radio broadcasts traveling the frayed wires of antiquated technology to be spat from the equally old speakers of a dust-covered stereo. Yes, there is a vintage quality to both the Tar Gang's music and Peter Reid's vocals. But there are other qualities to take into account; which is to say, the album is dark and wild, daring and adventurous, both worldly and otherworldly at the same time, marked by both confusion and clarity, sanity and madness, traditional and experimental extremes, among a host of other adjectives and contraries. Most of all, though, Songs of the Hollow Bone Moon is unquestionably a deviation from the commonplace art that we patrons typically expect to find on our plates. In this case, there is something altogether different. Not just different, but eclectic, avant-garde, poetic, endlessly creative, mysterious, artistically genius, and infinitely entertaining.

          To give a description of every song on the album would no doubt be excessive and in bad taste. To not give a description of at least a handful of the songs, however, would be in equally bad taste. Therefore, I will give you, the reader, a small morsel with which to whet your appetite, and with which to excite that secret part of you that thrills at discovering new and worthwhile things, the great new treasures hidden throughout this crazy City Earth. So, pull on your work boots and grab your shovel (figuratively speaking, of course), for this project is definitely one of those great new treasures just waiting to be found.

          "Fifty thousand years ago, mankind clambered through the snow," begins the first song on the record, which, not surprisingly, is titled "Fifty Thousand Years Ago." This particular song is presumably about humankind's primitive origins and subsequent stages of evolution. This song goes to show that Pete & the Tar Gang do as they promise. They did in fact begin at the beginning.

          The second chapter to this book of songs, so to speak, is titled "Fly Away." Without a doubt, this is one of the gentler compositions on the record, with Peter's deep, tremulous vocals accompanied by the soft wailing of violin strings, piano playing which resembles the fluttering of wings, and other such instrumentation. Building towards a strange sort of climatic ending, the song falls apart and pulls itself back together a time or two, and that only serves to make it better. What also makes it better is that one of Peter Reid's best lines of lyrics is attached to the end of the song---And the moon screams through the veil.

          Now, this is where things start to get a bit interesting, to say the least. "The Old Gray Man of Ben Macduie" is a perfectly calculated composition of interacting instrumentation supported by a foundation of strong piano work and skittering drums which at times keep something akin to a marching beat. According to Peter, "The Old Gray Man..." was inspired by a story of a Scottish Yeti he once read about, which makes a good deal of sense, as the song possesses a dark, ominous, and dramatic air. In fact, Peter conceded it was the "sense of foreboding" in the story that he found particularly interesting, "the eerie sense reported by people in the area that they were being watched, even though they didn't see anything, as well experiencing an inexplicable feeling of panic." "I guess I found the fear element interesting," he continued. "I find crytozoological stories interesting in themselves. To me, the Yeti, the Bigfoot, the Wildman, and so on, regardless of whether they're real or not, represent the wilder elements of ourselves, just below the surface of our selves as shaped by society, what we present to the world (and ourselves). I also find that really interesting---characters having to face parts of themselves that are innate but not necessarily appropriate, or even revealed, or seen as wild or untamed in the context of societal conventions, yet existing as a part or potentiality of everyone when you scratch the surface enough." All things considered, the music both individually and as a whole is remarkable, while, as always, Peter's storytelling and singing are absolutely brilliant.

          "A Christmas Eve," the next piece, is background music nicely arranged behind a rather dominant vocal delivery. It's a wintry piece, to be sure, with instrumentation that simulates December winds and snowfall, with piano and junk percussion and violin, until the end, when Peter passionately sings out the words, "Flame to wood!"

          Next is my favorite song on the record---"Scraggelly Anne"---which is a bluesy, experimental piece. The piano sounds like footfalls running down long, narrow, wooden stairwells, perhaps in one of the ramshackle buildings which line the "dust-blown main street" of the "woodplank town" that Scraggelly Anne is said to haunt. Overall, "Scraggelly Anne" is a somewhat dark piece of music, almost nightmarish, though not at all slow or somber. The best way I can describe the sound of this song is: the musical representation of someone creeping up behind you. It's partly like a late-night lounge song gone terribly wrong. And it's more than a little comparable to shuffling feet going to and fro, with low-end note progression and wild violin, and with junk percussion like rattlesnake tails and tin cans, until its finale, during which Peter sings out repeatedly, "Scraggelly Anne! Scraggelly Anne! Scraggelly Anne!" among fits of maniacal laughter and peculiar half-words lost in the intensity of it all.

          "The Tale of Old MacRae" is a composition with sounds that bring to mind---to my mind, at least---a smartly dressed couple waltzing through a closed down and boarded-up amusement park of funhouse mirrors and faded vestiges of long ago seasons, with strings of lights strung about overhead, and with the occasional musician turning up on the carousel that doesn't go round-and-round anymore, in a bumper car that neither drives nor bumps, at a cotton candy booth in which the pink gossamer threads of sugar are no longer spun about those white paper sticks, in one of the motionless ferris wheel compartments, and in the rows of carny games from which all the oversized stuffed animals have long since been removed. Yes, I realize it paints a rather odd picture. But, believe me when I tell you, "The Tale of Old MacRae" is a rather odd song. "So long, MacRae!"

          The stumming of an acoustic guitar and cricket bows open up the song "Road." Before long, the acoustic guitar gives way to piano and lead vocals, which sort of leapfrog over one another until the song nears its finish, where group vocals rise and fall, and where the great fingerwork on the piano gets decidedly busier. All the while, Peter sings out in his deep and altogether inimitable voice, "Road...road...road...road...road...road...ro-oh-oad... Road...road...road...road...road...road...ro-oh-oad..."

          While on the subject of Peter Reid's voice, though it is highly original, I have thus far only been able to place it beside the likes of Dameon Merkl (Bad Luck City), Nick Cave, Franz Nicolay, and Tom Waits. The Tar Gang's music, however, can only be placed beside the likes of Pete & the Tar Gang, for I cannot find anything else quite like it anywhere in the world---not in magazines, not on television, not in the worldwide web, not in any record collection that I have access to, nor at small underground venues with obscure bands on their bills. If comparisons were a must, then I would have to say that there are subtle similarities between the Tar Gang's music and that of Firewater (particularly the Man on the Burning Tightrope album), a few Decemberists songs, Nick Cave's "the Carny" and "the Curse of Millhaven," Captain Beefheart, and a few by Tom Waits (such as, but not limited to "Watch Her Disappear" and "Frank's Wild Years").

When I asked Pete about the interesting and peculiar moniker he had chosen for his endeavor, he explained...

          Back in 2006, we were struggling with the name and pretty much had a different one (or variation) for every show. We even joked that maybe we should try and have a completely different one each time, and that would have just been a thing we did. Kirri (on violin) had the idea of calling it The Good Ol' Tar Band. I liked that, but I felt it needed something more. She also introduced me to a clever system of coming up with a blues musician name. You take a disease, a fruit, and the surname of an American president. We came up with Skurvy Fig Lincoln. So, it was almost Skurvy Fig Lincoln and the Old Tar Gang. But adding Pete just seemed a lot simpler, and we also eventually changed it to just the Tar Gang. Later I was informed by a seafaring associate that a Tar is a term for a sailor who works on the decks of a ship taring ropes, hoisting sails, etc. So, that seemed very appropriate. I also later came across a page in a journal from not long before we did the naming. It had a drawing of a guitar and I'd written next to it: "...the good old tar that played of its own accord."

          To have combined such rich prose with such strangely brilliant music, I naturally assumed that Peter Reid must have quite an inclination towards literature and poetics, as well as other areas of the arts. When I inquired about this, he said...

          Ah... Well, I've certainly always enjoyed writing from an early age, and I guess it's the exploration of a world and story that has always got me going. If that sense of context is there, the rest just seems to flow naturally, and it excites me in a cohesive sort of way. I wouldn't say there has been any particular point at which I've been struck by a realization that I can do those things. Instead, I'd have to say that I've actually been more struck by a realization that I want to explore those things. A sort of itch that needs scratching, I guess.

          As I've already touched on, continued Peter, the need (or desire) to combine prose with storytelling music probably largely comes out of my background in theatre, though everything else I've done has certainly been pointed in that general direction for years, even before I did much theatre. I've always loved writing, drawing, and stories from an early age. When I do visual projects, I often want to combine them with words in some respect, too. So, I guess I'd say that the songs (to me) ultimately and just naturally suggest a certain atmosphere or narrative surrounding them. Partly that may also be just about the fact that I work best within some sense of context. If I was just doing a string of songs with no apparent relationship or running thread, I'd probably end up asking myself what the point is of doing things that have no obvious relationship or connection, and getting confused or distracted by that thought, I suspect. Probably for that same reason I've written songs that suggest that sense of story and a surrounding world.

          Lastly, when I asked Peter about his influences for the style of music he chose---that is, before I realized that it wasn't so much the style of music he chose as it was the style of music he invented for himself and his mates, the style of music that his artistic self was moved to create---he said...

          I wanted to do songs that explored various stories and worlds. I wrote the songs with a conscious (to some degree) openness to what kind of music their subject matter would naturally suggest or generate. I suppose I feel that I've more intentionally tried to be true to the songs and ideas than stray from being influenced by other musicians. I suppose it may even help that I don't really feel like a musician in the 'regular sense.' I've always approached it as a kind of acting and theatrical storytelling performance through music.

          For the most part, that is one view of Pete & the Tar Gang and their book of songs titled Songs of the Hollow Bone Moon. To my knowledge, you can only get copies of the record from the band through their live shows and their Myspace Page. If you do get your hands on it, I would suggest you try to get all you possibly can out of it, as this group of storytellers, musicians, and actors can go one of two ways after this: they will stop with the Hollow Bone Moon, or they will move forward to both write and record yet another masterpiece. Indeed, we can only hope upon hope for the latter to be the case. But...we shall see. We shall see.

So...some songs from 'neath the Hollow Bone Moon you've now heard and experienced.
Find a tale or maybe two of your own,
various happenings, travels, or dreams.
Tell this tale to a friend,
to a stranger,
just to the blowin' old breeze.

-Peter Reid