KIM SINH & DOM TURNER ‘Two days in Hanoi’ – December, 2011 – Australian Release

Nationally acclaimed Vietnamese master musician, Kim Sinh has become something of a cult figure among guitarists, particularly after slide-guitar guru, Ry Cooder recorded with him in the 1990’s. Born in 1930 in Hanoi, Kim went blind at the age of 3 months. He began following popular music groups from the age of eight, learning a variety of stringed instruments in the process including Hawaiian slide guitar. Kim became interested in a form of Vietnamese theatre called ‘Cai Luong’, a musical genre that started in the 1920s and combines traditional southern Vietnamese folk tunes with theatre. Kim Sinh is as a ‘Cai Luong’ innovator, having developed a unique approach that does for Vietnamese theatre as ‘Bebop’ does for ‘Jazz’: improvisational single-note lines that criss-cross through a base that is traditional in structure yet infinitely modern in the end result.

In September of 2008, much respected Australian guitarist and ARIA nominee (Backsliders), Dom Turner, whose Mississippi tinged blues and over-driven steel guitar playing is well known on the national circuit, travelled to Hanoi Vietnam to record with Kim Sinh. Although essentially a 2 day project, it was the culmination of years of planning stretching back to 2005 when, the pair met as part of an Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Radio National project featuring an interview and musical collaboration. The interview and recording took place in the Hanoi Hilton Hotel and the program aired on the ABC ‘Music Deli’ radio program in November of that year.

Two Days in Hanoi was literally recorded in an intense, 2 day improvisational session at Studio Kien Quyet, in one of Hanoi’s typical French influenced terrace houses in the backstreets of a suburb called Dong Da. This long awaiting album is a musical blend of Kim’s singular Hawaiian influenced ’Cai Luong’ and Dom’s blues soaked guitar and vocals. Two Days In Hanoi is now being released through Fuse Music Australia. The project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts and funding and advisory body.

Videos Links:
Kim Sinh Dom Turner play tunes in Hanoi
Kim Sinh Cải lương music
Kim Sinh and Dom Turner collaboration in Hanoi

Interviews through:
CHRISTINE TAYLOR PUBLICITY & EVENTS MANAGEMENT
Tel: +61 2 4782 5867 (m) 0416521587 ctaylorpublicity@bigpond.com

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• Video feature: Live set from The Backsliders or
• Watch the live video of songs from Starvation Box on Youtube.

Rob Hirst & Dom Turner collaborate on “Joseph Roe Saving the Kimberley”. Buy Joseph Roe – Single by Rob Hirst & Dom Turner on iTunes now – Single for just $2.19.

Australia’s favourite blues group bring their ‘delta blues wall of sound’ to East Coast venues and festivals with new album: Starvation Box

Praise for Backsliders:
“Without dispute the best blues band in Australia. Their material is impeccable and their musicianship is a wonder to behold.”
Sydney Morning Herald

“Australia’s top blues act…”
Rhythms Magazine

“Move over Jon Spencer, Dom Turner’s blues explosion has come of age.”

Drum Media

Fans of blistering live blues music take note: Australia’s foremost, iconic blues group Backsliders are about to release a stunning new CD and hit the road for a string of live Australian east coast dates.

Named by Doug Mulray in 2003 as “the best acoustic blues band in the country”, and with an abundance of career awards including ‘Band of the Year’ (Rolling Stone), ‘Best Live Australian Blues Act’ (Blues on Air Magazine) and ‘Blues Album of the Year’ (Rhythms Magazine), Backsliders are leaders and virtual pioneers in their own genre: the ‘delta-blues wall of sound’.

Live in concert, the band are a force to be reckoned with, fiercely blending an amped up authentic, original blues style, along with their evocative, unplugged ‘deep south’ acoustic delta blues mode. Backsliders feature guitarist/ vocalist, founding member and key songwriter Dom Turner plus drum and percussion virtuoso Rob Hirst (Midnight Oil, Ghostwriters etc). The band have notched up 25 years experience serving up the finest, meanest acoustic-based blues, starting out before “blues and roots” was a well-known term in the Australian music industry.

The new 2011 Backsliders album, Starvation Box, will be released via Fuse Records on August 12, available in all good record stores and online. Recorded in another former Midnight Oil member Jim Moginie’s studio, Oceanic Studios on Sydney’s northern beaches, Starvation Box is an affectionate nod the band’s past heroes containing five covers of past greats including Lead Belly, Robert Johnson and blues mandolin elder statesman and another key Backsliders influence, Yank Rachell.

The album title itself is based on the story that Lead Belly’s father Wes used to call his son’s guitar a starvation box, “coz you ain’t gonna make no money outta that thing!” After Lead Belly’s death, The Weavers went on to make a good income from his song “Goodnight, Irene”, so his father was partly right.

Many of the album’s original tracks follow the theme of paying tribute to musical heroes: “Failed Preacher Blues” is about the ‘Father of the Delta Blues’ Charlie Patton, for example, and “Bowie County” also mentions Lead Belly and the famous jail where he served time and escaped under an alias ‘Walter Boyd’!

On this run of concerts, Dom Turner and Rob Hirst will play as a 3-piece, alternately joined by two of Australia’s supreme and most creative harmonica players; the legendary Brod Smith (Dingoes, Brod Smith’s Big Combo) and ARIA award-winning harmonica guru Ian Collard (Collard, Greens & Gravy). Each of these blues-harp masters colour the Backsliders sound with a fiery display of guts and melody – you never know who will play on each night – but you can be sure that both pack a punch.

Fans can expect to hear a mixture of classic favourites from the band’s healthy back catalogue as well as the sublime cuts from Starvation Box. Make sure you come to a show and find out why the Sydney Morning Herald says “the Backsliders are the rarest of blues bands” and why Drum Media proclaims they deliver “contemporary roots music at its best!”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrsRXhbSM1s