Modern bluesmen Ash Grunwald is currently touring the country supporting his newest single, 'River', which is lifted from his forthcoming artist album scheduled for release in September, 2015.
A veteran of the touring circuit, Ash has had the good fortune to share stage with a host of brilliant musicians. Here, Ash selects the top five bands/ musicians he has supported during his career.
James Brown
This must have been maybe 2007, at the Derwent Entertainment Centre in Hobart. Opening for James Brown, or Mr Brown as we were instructed to call him – no joke, it was on all of the backline cases: ‘Mr Brown’ not James Brown – was amazing and such a huge honour. It was the last time he toured Australia and although I heard people say on tour it wasn’t much good I thought it was absolutely amazing – he put on such a good show.Although he looked pretty tired on stage he still killed it dancing, even better than his back-up singers/ dancers, and I remember him doing a big speech in the middle of his set and I couldn’t work out anything he was saying; I thought I was pretty good at deciphering jive talk! I did manage to say hi to him, but we didn’t really speak.
Jack Johnson
This was at the end of 2010, Jack smashed that tour to smithereens with the biggest crowd being probably about 20,000 in Sydney. As always he was an absolute lord, the most humble guy you’ll ever meet, mega friendly, had his family on the road with him, just doing his thing being mega cruisey.The proceeds of that tour, which would have been squillions, went into a fund for environmental charities which I think is absolutely amazing.
The Black Keys
I did three shows with The Black keys on their 2009 tour. They were the biggest band doing the bluesy things that I knew of at the time and it’s always been a pretty rare thing to ever find, especially in recent times. That was long before they blew up; even from the first time I heard them I was like: 'what are these dudes doing being so well known and doing this bluesy music that I love'.It was weird that they were so popular. Now, they are 20 times bigger and playing stadium shows. It’s inspiring to me that such cool and bluesy music is becoming mainstream, although they never used the 'B' word in their interviews because it's such a curse in publicity terms! I still love them, I can now say I love a mainstream band!
Bo Diddley
There isn’t much really to say about this, it’s just so cool to say I’ve supported Bo Diddley. It was at the Prince Of Wales in Melbourne and he played a lot in the tuning of open c, which I play a lot in too, it was something I never really thought about!He was playing his famous square guitar and just being a general lord! The crowd loved it, but for the legend he was it didn’t actually seem like a massive crowd, which can often be the case for legends like that, even James Brown only had a crowd of 2,500, which was a shame considering that Shannon Noll was playing back-to-back shows at the same venue that same week, which I guess mean he was pulling 10,000 people!
Xavier Rudd
Xavier took me on a whole US tour last year; it was good of him and we are really good friends as well so it was cool to hang out on that level and see what he does when he’s on tour. We had a ball! The other good thing about going on tour with a mate is I was staying in his bus and that was really cool too!It was an eye-opening experience; those shows made me realise I could have a career in the US! The crowds really blew me away because of how much blues music is a part of American musical heritage; they treated the deeper blues songs with an almost spiritual reverence, no matter the demographic, even the hippie crowds!
Ash Grunwald Tour Dates
Fri 19 Jun - The Triffid (Brisbane)Thu 2 Jul - Byron Theatre
Fri 3 Jul - Byron Theatre
Sat 4 Jul - Bello Winter Music Festival
