BACK in August Tennant Creek legends The Tableland Drifters were inducted into the Hall of Fame at the 2009 NT Indigenous Music Awards.
Now they’re in the November issue of music bible, Rolling Stone (Australia).
In an article on the Northern Territory music scene, called It’s a Long Way to the Top End, the guys from the Winanjjikari Music Centre and music project officer Jeff McLaughlin are featured.
Reports from the NT Indigenous Music Awards in late August said the Tableland Drifters, who formed back in 1985, kicked butt at Darwin’s Happy Yess Club.
Not only was the crowd at Happy Yess wild about the band’s tight set but sitting in the audience were several music industry luminaries, including journalist Barry Divola of Rolling Stone.
He was so impressed by Joe Davey, Angus Pearson and the gang from Tennant Creek that a phone interview was set up last month.
Jeff, who introduced the band at the club, told the audience that he was meant to be the band’s mentor, but he’s the one who’s learned from them.
He explains to the magazine that he was just an obnoxious guy from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland who liked funk and hard rock.
“I hated country music and lead guitar,” he said.
“Then I heard these guys. They changed my mind.”
Divola was particularly impressed by the band’s newest recruit, local teenager Angus, who according to Barry, plays guitar like a black Mark Knopfler.
“Unlike Guitar George in The Sultans of Swing, he does want to make it cry and sing, and proceeds to do so with bright, rippling runs and sighing, bending passages drawn out with skilful use of the volume knob on his cream Strat,” writes Barry.
It’s a Long Way to the Top End, by Divola, appears on page 76 of the November issue of Rolling Stone Australia, out now in all major newsagents.