Introducing C.W. Stoneking
A voice for the new "Hard Times" - a musical breadline that will feed your soul.
UPDATE : CW STONEKING WINS ARIA AWARD for BEST BLUES & ROOTS ALBUM 2009.
The inimitable C.W. Stoneking – guitar & tenor banjo player, singer/songwriter and raconteur – after the release of his internationally acclaimed debut album King returned with a new collection of original tunes, Jungle Blues in 2009. Inspired in part by his amazing experiences as a survivor of a shipwreck off Africa’s West Coast, it draws on the blues of the Southern U.S.A., calypso music of Trinidad, jungle jazz of the 1920s, and hillbilly music of the 1930s for a musical journey into a heart of darkness.
C.W.’s band the Primitive The Horn Orchestra featuring trumpet, trombone, clarinet, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, sousaphone, piano, harmonium, and double bass. There is the unmistakable drumming of Jim White (Dirty Three, Cat Power), and the traditional African percussion and touches of orchestral timpani drums on Jungle Blues.
C.W.’s is not only a musician – he plays steel bodied resophonic guitar and tenor banjo - but as a lyricist / composer / arranger of the highest order. ‘Jungle Blues’ invokes the tale of a poor shipwrecked soul, stranded in the jungles of darkest Africa. What follows are hair-raising tales that will haunt your dreams, voodoo tunes evoking heat and madness, and memorable scenes of spiders as big as your fist and snakes that hang down like vines…There’s a calypso-styled, black magic murder ballad ‘The Love Me Or Die’, and the lonesome lament of ‘Jailhouse Blues’, as well as the creeping dread of ‘I Heard the Marchin of the Drum’. C.W.'s wife (and physical theatre performance artist) Kirsty Fraser makes a guest appearance as lead singer, too, (gone are the risqué double entendres of King Hokum) ‘Housebound Blues’, a blues dirge of domestic misery and discontent. The musical depth of field and richness of atmospheres makes Jungle Blues a truly immersive and vivid experience.
The inimitable C.W. Stoneking – guitar & tenor banjo player, singer/songwriter and raconteur – after the release of his internationally acclaimed debut album King returned with a new collection of original tunes, Jungle Blues in 2009. Inspired in part by his amazing experiences as a survivor of a shipwreck off Africa’s West Coast, it draws on the blues of the Southern U.S.A., calypso music of Trinidad, jungle jazz of the 1920s, and hillbilly music of the 1930s for a musical journey into a heart of darkness.
C.W.’s band the Primitive The Horn Orchestra featuring trumpet, trombone, clarinet, alto, tenor, and baritone saxophones, sousaphone, piano, harmonium, and double bass. There is the unmistakable drumming of Jim White (Dirty Three, Cat Power), and the traditional African percussion and touches of orchestral timpani drums on Jungle Blues.
C.W.’s is not only a musician – he plays steel bodied resophonic guitar and tenor banjo - but as a lyricist / composer / arranger of the highest order. ‘Jungle Blues’ invokes the tale of a poor shipwrecked soul, stranded in the jungles of darkest Africa. What follows are hair-raising tales that will haunt your dreams, voodoo tunes evoking heat and madness, and memorable scenes of spiders as big as your fist and snakes that hang down like vines…There’s a calypso-styled, black magic murder ballad ‘The Love Me Or Die’, and the lonesome lament of ‘Jailhouse Blues’, as well as the creeping dread of ‘I Heard the Marchin of the Drum’. C.W.'s wife (and physical theatre performance artist) Kirsty Fraser makes a guest appearance as lead singer, too, (gone are the risqué double entendres of King Hokum) ‘Housebound Blues’, a blues dirge of domestic misery and discontent. The musical depth of field and richness of atmospheres makes Jungle Blues a truly immersive and vivid experience.
C.W. Stoneking's recordings and live shows have attracted steadily escalating praise and attention from critics and audiences internationally. In 2007 he toured the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, England and Ireland, promoting the European release of King Hokum (on Voodoo Rhythm Records), as well supporting now legendary Seasick Steve and playing sold out headline shows across Australia, and a national tour supporting Paul Kelly.
By April/May 2008, C.W. was enthralling audiences across the U.S.A., from Texas, to Louisiana, Mississippi, New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, with his authentic and unique take on old-time blues styles. In September 2008 (& again in August 2009) C.W. returned to the United States for an eight night residency in Los Angeles with an alternative Primitive Horn Orchestra made up of American players, creating a huge buzz in the local scene. C.W. also performed a string of shows in New York City alongside some of the great-unsung heroes of modern ‘old-time’ original music, again making great waves in front of rapidly growing audiences and through word of mouth amongst fellow musicians alike.
C.W. Stoneking is a 34 year old, first generation Australian of American-descent. He was born in Katherine, the top end of Australia's Northern Territory to Californian hippie father and Australian mother who met at a music festival and spent his childhood growing up in Central Australia, Sydney and rural Victoria. His parents separated and he grew up with his father who taught school at the Aboriginal community of Papunya. His father is Billy Marshall Stoneking, American/Australian poet, playwright and filmmaker. CW's ancestry is as eclectic as his music. His father describes himself as the only son of a wandering West Virginia couple.
"My maternal grandfather was Robert Lindsay Robey, the Appalachian photographer; on my father's side, Charles Sylvester, a quarter-blood Iroquois."
He has played music since childhood, has travelled the world from Egypt, to New Orleans (where he worked as a hoodoo doctor’s assistant) to Trinidad, where he learned about Calypso music. He has lived in isolated farmhouses working as a handyman, and been involved in and survived a shipwreck, spending time in Africa, and touring internationally as a recording artist, both as a solo performer and with his band, the Primitive Horn Orchestra.
CW moved to Balmain, rural Victoria and finally to Melbourne in the mid-1990s, honing his sound and personae along the way. C.W. and his wife Kirsty Fraser, have two young sons Atticus (yes, as in Atticus Finch, the virtuous lawyer in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird) and Ishmael (narrator of the 1851 novel Moby Dick).
By April/May 2008, C.W. was enthralling audiences across the U.S.A., from Texas, to Louisiana, Mississippi, New York City, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, with his authentic and unique take on old-time blues styles. In September 2008 (& again in August 2009) C.W. returned to the United States for an eight night residency in Los Angeles with an alternative Primitive Horn Orchestra made up of American players, creating a huge buzz in the local scene. C.W. also performed a string of shows in New York City alongside some of the great-unsung heroes of modern ‘old-time’ original music, again making great waves in front of rapidly growing audiences and through word of mouth amongst fellow musicians alike.
C.W. Stoneking is a 34 year old, first generation Australian of American-descent. He was born in Katherine, the top end of Australia's Northern Territory to Californian hippie father and Australian mother who met at a music festival and spent his childhood growing up in Central Australia, Sydney and rural Victoria. His parents separated and he grew up with his father who taught school at the Aboriginal community of Papunya. His father is Billy Marshall Stoneking, American/Australian poet, playwright and filmmaker. CW's ancestry is as eclectic as his music. His father describes himself as the only son of a wandering West Virginia couple.
"My maternal grandfather was Robert Lindsay Robey, the Appalachian photographer; on my father's side, Charles Sylvester, a quarter-blood Iroquois."
He has played music since childhood, has travelled the world from Egypt, to New Orleans (where he worked as a hoodoo doctor’s assistant) to Trinidad, where he learned about Calypso music. He has lived in isolated farmhouses working as a handyman, and been involved in and survived a shipwreck, spending time in Africa, and touring internationally as a recording artist, both as a solo performer and with his band, the Primitive Horn Orchestra.
CW moved to Balmain, rural Victoria and finally to Melbourne in the mid-1990s, honing his sound and personae along the way. C.W. and his wife Kirsty Fraser, have two young sons Atticus (yes, as in Atticus Finch, the virtuous lawyer in Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird) and Ishmael (narrator of the 1851 novel Moby Dick).
"Some people think ‘authentic’ means tradition. I think it means it has plentya soul and true intention and meanin’ in the words. People might think I sound like an old record, but there’s another type of realness, the real thing beyond that, which is the difference between someone playin’ nostalgia and somethin’ that people can get into. Havin’ soul and doin’ it the proper way goes down through time. That’s why I like that old music. It doesn’ sound old to me." - CW STONEKING
http://www.myspace,com/cwstoneking
http://cwstoneking.com
http://www.myspace,com/cwstoneking
http://cwstoneking.com
