Happy Hour Harmonica Podcast

Jim Conway interview

• Neil Warren • Season 1 • Episode 55

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Jim Conway joins me on episode 55.
Jim is an Australian harmonica player who rose to fame at the age of 19 in the jug band: The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, with the first two albums from the band receiving gold record status. Jim also played kazoo with Captain Matchbox to great effect. The band evolved into the Conway Brothers act, before Jim decided he couldn’t continue after being diagnosed with MS.
But it wasn’t long before he felt the music calling him again and he joined The Backsliders, a blues band which he was a member of for seventeen years. He then went on to form a band under his own name, Jim Conway’s Big Wheel.
As well as some notable recordings as a session musician, including some film work, Jim also enjoyed the the great honour of touring Australia with Brownie McGhee in the late 1980s.

Links:
https://www.thecountryblues.com/artist-reviews/jim-conway/

Videos:
The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band:
Mobile Line: https://youtu.be/eJ2wBc2tXXs
Your Feet’s Too Big: https://youtu.be/7uWT3aQZjDA
I Can’t Dance (I’ve Got Ants In My Pants):
https://youtu.be/Zy4jV6B08M0

Playing chromatic with Captain Matchbox:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qk7c_mqAQEY

Conway Brothers Hiccups Orchestra - Dinosaur Songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgnOIKclEvw

Playing I Wish You Would with The Backsliders:
https://youtu.be/TRZ_nNn7i14

Sydney Paralympics Opening Ceremony:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LRPn-pJkas

Documentary film on Jim:
https://youtu.be/wiq_fQ0XU-E

Podcast website:
https://www.harmonicahappyhour.com

Donations:
If you want to make a voluntary donation to help support the running costs of the podcast then please use this link (or visit the podcast website link above):
https://paypal.me/harmonicahappyhour?locale.x=en_GB

Spotify Playlist:
Also check out the Spotify Playlist, which contains most of the songs discussed in the podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5QC6RF2VTfs4iPuasJBqwT?si=M-j3IkiISeefhR7ybm9qIQ

Podcast sponsors:
This podcast is sponsored by SEYDEL harmonicas - visit the oldest harmonica factory in the world at www.seydel1847.com  or on Facebook or Instagram at SEYDEL HARMONICAS
and Blows Me Away Productions: http://www.blowsmeaway.com/

Support the show

SPEAKER_06:

Jim Conway joins me on episode 55. Jim is an Australian harmonica player who rose to fame at the age of 19 in the jug band, the Captain Matchbox Whoopie Band, with the first two albums from the band receiving gold record status. Jim also played kazoo with Captain Matchbox to great effect. The band evolved into the Conway Brothers Act before Jim decided he couldn't continue after being diagnosed with MS. But it wasn't long before he felt the music calling him again and he joined the Backsliders, a blues band which he was a member of for 17 years. He then went on to form a band under his own name, Jim Conway's Big Wheel. As well as some notable recordings as a session musician, including some film work, Jim also enjoyed the great honour of touring Australia with Brownie McGee in the late 1980s. Hello Jim Conway and welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_00:

Hello Neil, it's a pleasure to be here.

SPEAKER_06:

Great to speak to you down in Australia. So I believe you're in Sydney, Australia, yep?

SPEAKER_00:

That's

SPEAKER_06:

correct. Were you born in Sydney?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's weird. I was born in Sydney, grew up in Melbourne, then moved back to Sydney as an adult. Basically split my time between Sydney and Melbourne.

SPEAKER_06:

And so how did you get into playing the harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

We had a blues club at my local high school in Victoria. I had an immediate love for the blues and that caused my brother and me to to start up a jug band at high school. Jug band was called the Jelly Bean Jug

SPEAKER_03:

Band.

SPEAKER_00:

It was sort of sounding okay from the very start. And my brother-in-law at the time played a bit of harmonica. He showed me how to bend a note. And from that time on, it was like it just came really naturally to me. My mother insisted that I work quite hard at it, but I just remember it just being a natural thing to me.

SPEAKER_06:

What sort of age did you start playing the harmonica? 16. Your grandfather was quite a renowned organ player.

SPEAKER_00:

He was like a pop star. in his day. He was a theatre organist at the State Theatre in Sydney, which was in those days the equivalent of a pop star. He was very famous. I only remember him as an old man, of course. And he was a very fine organist. He had to work out how to play the Wurlitzer organ, the Wurlitzer theatre organ, which was kind of mechanical, not electronic like today.

SPEAKER_06:

I understand he made the music for one of the first movies made in Australia.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, it was called Pearls and Savages. and it was indeed just as silent movies became sound movies i think before that he used to actually play the music in the background then movies started to include sound

SPEAKER_06:

was he influential at all in you in your harmonica journey it sounds like he was maybe a bit late for that was it

SPEAKER_00:

no uh really we didn't he wouldn't have approved i know his sister came to hear us play once uh this was after he died and she blamed us long after that for her oncoming deafness that it was so loud that she went deaf. That was not really true. It's just she wanted to blame us. The music we played, it was kind of jazz based, but it was not the kind of music my grandfather would have liked.

SPEAKER_06:

Was this your father's father?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that was my father's father. But both my mother's brothers were trained as opera singers. One of them became a popular singer and the other one ended up teaching at the Manchester College of Music teaching opera. And he was also So a very world-renowned opera singer.

SPEAKER_06:

Oh, you've definitely got it in the blood then.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, well, that was John Cameron. And there might be some people who still remember him.

SPEAKER_06:

So I see you started playing the harmonica around 16. So what were you listening to back then? Who were your sort of first influences when you started?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, I'd have to say the Memphis Jug Band.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_00:

Amy Nixon playing with Sleepy John Estes. At the same time I was listening to Junior Wells, I would have to say that Junior Wells was one of the biggest influences. Even though I was more of an acoustic blues player, I was so flabbergasted with the sounds that Junior Wells made. I had that album that just about everyone you've interviewed puts down as a strongly influential album, Hoodoo Man Blues.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_00:

That hour had a huge effect on me. But also in those days I was listening to the Love and Spoonful, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. and the Jim Queskin Jug Band, which also had a big influence on our Jug

SPEAKER_05:

Band. It's

SPEAKER_06:

interesting to see how blues spread around the world. So, you know, what was the blues scene like in Australia back then and even today?

SPEAKER_00:

well in those days it was small but enthusiastic like I said there was a blues club at high school that same high school you'll be interested to know also spawned Kylie Minogue but much later yeah there was definitely interest in blues at my high school I just loved it from the start never imagined that I would be a player let alone a professional player eventually

SPEAKER_06:

yeah fantastic you've never played with Kylie Minogue I take

SPEAKER_00:

it no never even even met her. She's too famous for me to meet.

SPEAKER_06:

So you mentioned the Jug Band there. So I think the Jelly Bean Jug Band was your first band. So I think at this time, Jug Bands were really popular in Australia, yeah? So this was the reason for the forming of the Jug Band, was it?

SPEAKER_00:

I couldn't say they were popular until the band, the Jelly Bean Jug Band that we started morphed into just got a new name, really. At some stage, a couple of years later, we called it the Captain Matchbox Whoopie Band.

SPEAKER_04:

Hey hello mama hello mama

SPEAKER_03:

¶¶

SPEAKER_00:

At that stage, we were just a bunch of goofy boys being kind of goofy on stage, making people laugh, as well as playing some pretty interesting blues-based music.

SPEAKER_06:

So were you part of the jug bands becoming popular in Australia then, with this Capture Match, Dick?

SPEAKER_00:

I would say that there was a jug band before us, but we were conceivably the jug band that popularised it. Our first album, well, our first two albums, went gold and sold 40,000 copies. Which is a lot of records for a jug band in Australia. So all I can say is that I think it was the Captain Matchbox Whoopie band that popularized it because it was not only good music, but it was good to watch. It was funny. We were funny.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, I've watched some of the YouTube clips from you playing back in the early 70s in the band and recommend everyone to listen to watch them because they are fantastic. Really great. And some great playing from you on there as well. Some really nice, long sections of harmonica too so you're very instrumental in the sound weren't you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah well harmonica was always instrumental in jug bands I guess because really it started out in the poor rural parts of America people used improvised instruments like a jug for a bass a harmonica instead of a trumpet or and a banjo because you could make one of those at home there's a great recording of Gus Cannon someone asking him how did you get your first banjo and Gus Cannon who was in the one of the great original jug band players when asked about his first banjo said I made it out of an old biscuit tin and a guitar neck you know it's like they couldn't afford to buy the expensive instruments they could afford maybe to buy a catalogue guitar like a cheap guitar and this is Roebuck catalogue the original jug players were just incredible musicians

SPEAKER_06:

yeah maybe shows as well isn't it that all this obsession we have with buying gear isn't so important they were able to make noises out of homemade instruments and implements.

SPEAKER_00:

But I also have to say I was a notably good kazoo player. I kind of revolutionized kazoo playing. I don't quite know why, and I don't know that it's something I should be proud of, but my brother says that I should be proud of my kazoo playing because I used to sort of screech in the upper register, and it sounded like a clarinet or a very high trumpet, and it really cut through.¦

SPEAKER_06:

Again, a very instrumental part of the sound of the band, isn't it, the kazoo?

SPEAKER_00:

It was then. Do

SPEAKER_06:

you see that as having some similarities to the harmonica playing or not?

SPEAKER_00:

It's just something I did because people played kazoos in jug bands. It depends on your approach to the harmonica. The harmonica was sometimes when I was playing first position, it was taking the place of a clarinet in a trad jazz band. Maybe the kazoo was the trumpet. Again, improvised instruments.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, but very effective, as you say. So you interchange between the harmonica and the kazoo in the band?

SPEAKER_00:

That's correct, yeah. I sang a couple of songs in the band. But my brother was a much better singer than me, still is. He's got a great voice, particularly good for that jug band stuff. So I let him do most of the singing. And he was a great front man. I was a good side man. And I would get a few laughs by making sideways looks at him. But really, he was the front man of the band.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, and I think from what I've seen, a real entertainer, yeah. He was a jug band, this kind of vaudeville kind of approach, these kind of theatrical kind of different genres of entertainment. He was really steeped in that, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And of course, I loved the vaudeville side of things. But what happened for me, but this is after 20 years, was that the musical side of things entered strongly as well. And it tended to kind of dominate the sound. And we moved further and further away from the kind of blues thing that I so loved. But my brother became more and more attracted to vaudeville music hall and that's where we we differed really because to be honest i really just wanted to play the harmonica

SPEAKER_06:

so going back to the start of this band so i think you were 19 when when you had the first hit which is my canary has lines under his eyes is

SPEAKER_00:

it no my canary's got circles under its eyes

SPEAKER_06:

so were you then launched into you know from being kind of you know unknown into being at least semi-famous what you were appearing on television making you know television appearances and

SPEAKER_00:

Well, semi-famous is the operative word. I never was searching for fame. I just was having a great time playing. But really, things took off in a way that you wouldn't expect a jug band to take off. And we became quite popular in the 70s and turned into a touring band that went on, well, for at least 20 years I played with my brother and beyond. Yeah,

SPEAKER_06:

so talking to various people on the podcast you hear that some of them kind of got that break when they were quite young yet and then suddenly they were propelled to like you say kind of semi-fame famous for a harmonica player right so you know i did that feel you know you just you just went along with the ride i guess

SPEAKER_00:

well we just had a great time and we we had fun touring i mean some of the guys in the early band who were really really great players but they didn't like the lifestyle whereas my brother and i embraced the lifestyle so we kept touring and reforming the band if some of the guys decided they didn't want to be going on tour and living that lifestyle. So we kept reinventing the band, but it was always in the same

SPEAKER_06:

flavour. Yeah, how many members did you have in the band usually?

SPEAKER_00:

Six or seven. And if you look at, for instance, the Jim Quest and Jug Band, who had some very great players in them, they often had that number of people in the band. And there was another jug band in America called the Even Dozen Jug Band. And I imagine they had a dozen people in the band. Again, some really great players in that band.

SPEAKER_06:

And where were you touring? Were you around Australia or beyond?

SPEAKER_00:

All around Australia, everywhere in Australia. Australia is a very big country, if people don't realise.

SPEAKER_06:

And before this, I think you were working as a film editor, weren't you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I trained as a film editor. And I got to work on some Australian feature films in the 1970s. Then I I actually, after the Captain Matchbox Whoopie Band split up, I went to London and I ended up working for the BBC as an assistant editor. But I eventually came home because my heart was stuck on being a musician rather than a film editor. And I had several times when I had to make the choice between working in the film industry and being in bands, and I always chose to be in bands.

SPEAKER_06:

Very good decision. So, yeah, it's worth it's out great for you so you guys released i think three albums was it

SPEAKER_00:

i think it was four smoke drones was the first one and that was uh it was fully acoustic so That was the band where some people decided they didn't want to follow the lifestyle. So when we reformed the band, we got electric bass in the band, which may or may not have been a mistake because it suddenly went from being an acoustic jug band to being something slightly different. But that was good too. We actually had the Australian equivalent of a gold record hanging on my office wall from the record we made after that, which was Wangaratta Wahine. But for my money, the real, true Jug Band sound was in the original Captain Matchbox Whoopie Band, which was the Smoke Dreams album.

SPEAKER_06:

So when you recorded these albums, were you in, certainly for the first one at least, Smoke Dreams, were you

SPEAKER_00:

in a fully professional studio? And suddenly this hot club of France element came into the jug band. So it became kind of a very hot jug band. And I think that was partly why it was so successful.

SPEAKER_06:

Were you then trying to play, you know, kind of gypsy jazz style harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

No, I just discovered the kind of playing fast squeaky harp worked in the context of what we created.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, so a lot of high-end stuff played by you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, first position. It wasn't only first position. I played second position as well. You know, some pretty heart-wrenching kind of long notes and things like that in second position. But the first position stuff was kind of... and the way I played the first position stuff was the way I played it. I wasn't trying to play like anyone else. Like many of your other interviewees, I was highly influenced by Jimmy Reed. When I heard Jimmy Reed, that's how I worked out to play first position. And then I developed my own style of jug band playing from, first of all, working out Jimmy Reed's playing.

SPEAKER_06:

And you mentioned you did listen to some of the jug bands earlier on as well. Were there some of those players that you were influenced by? So they did play quite a lot of first position stuff too, didn't they?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, they did. And of course, later on, I was influenced by Dee Ford Bailey and quite a number of people like Jazz Gillum, quite a number of people who were on that Harmonica Blues album. But before I heard those people, I'd already developed my own first position style. And I can't tell you where that came from. It just came from the ether, really. It just happened. I didn't try and sound like anyone else. but I did develop a style that suited the music.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, it's interesting because obviously most blues players, you know, work in second position mainly. So do you think you kind of really learnt your chops more in first position earlier on and has that influenced your sound quite a lot?

SPEAKER_00:

I wouldn't say that. I would say more that because we were a jug band, the first position really cut through in the jug band because it was like a five or six piece band right at the beginning. We were making quite a lot of noise acoustically and the first position kind of cut through the sound of an acoustic band. But certainly the second position drove the band as well. It was both really.

SPEAKER_06:

So you went on, you had a good, certainly a successful time through the 70s with these guys and you did a, jumping ahead a little bit, you did a Reignited 2 with them in 2011.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, we did. What happened was that my brother had a band that played his kind of music and then I had a band that I called my own and well that was my brother's band was the National Junk Band which was kind of carrying on the tradition of the Junk Band and I at that stage started my own band called Jim Conway's Big Wheel and that was more melodic and it initially started out to be a jump blues band but it somehow evolved into just a band that played music that I liked so there was blues, jump blues and even country sounding stuff we brought in players from from my brother's band, my brother Mick's band, the National Drunk Band, and my band, Jim Conway's Big Wheel, and we played the old Captain Matchbox repertoire.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_06:

Great, and was that really popular? Did you do a bit of a tour and get a lot of audiences?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, we did the East Coast Blues Festival, which is a big blues festival in Sydney, and we did the Port Ferry Folk Festival. We did quite a number of popular festivals around Australia.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, so people remembered the band, did they, from the 70s when it came out?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes.

SPEAKER_06:

So the Jug Band, did that morph into the Conway Brothers?

SPEAKER_00:

It did, and the Conway Brothers Conway Brothers, by this stage, my brother had moved to Sydney too, and I was already in Sydney. I decided to get back together with him. And that's when we started the Conway Brothers, which was really a continuation of what we'd done before, but in a different city. And there was a burgeoning cabaret scene in Sydney, and we took advantage of that. And that Conway Brothers eventually ended up appearing at the Edinburgh Festival.

UNKNOWN:

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00:

We were one of the first acts to appear in the Spiegel tent, which at that stage was set up in London and then moved on to the Edinburgh Festival. And we travelled with it to the Edinburgh Festival.

SPEAKER_06:

So you did a tour around the UK at this time as well, did you?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, we did.

SPEAKER_06:

So Conway Brothers Hiccup Orchestra, is

SPEAKER_00:

that it? Yeah, my brother always loved silly names and we just kept inventing more and more silly names. But Intent, it was really... a continuation of the same kind of silliness.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, so this was still a jug band then?

SPEAKER_00:

It was something else, but it was where, if the jug band had continued, where the jug band would have ended up, if you like.

SPEAKER_06:

So one album I found with this band is an album of dinosaur songs, which is a kind of children's album.

SPEAKER_04:

The evolution shuffle You can even see it now Come on out and take a How

SPEAKER_06:

did that one come about?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, my brother became a very popular children's performer and probably as a result of that album. This guy had written a whole lot of children's songs and he wanted us to record the songs for him. So we were paid to record those songs that that guy had written.

SPEAKER_06:

So I think you were playing in the Conway Brothers until 1988. You then joined a band which you were in for a long time, which is a more of a full-on blues band called the I

SPEAKER_00:

was diagnosed with MS in about 1983. I continued to try and continue the kind of comedy style of music. I found myself to be less and less funny, if you like, and I just didn't feel like being funny anymore. And so I thought it might be time to retire. So by about 1988, I just said, look, I don't think I can do this anymore. I can't be funny anymore. So I left my brother's band and lo and behold, almost immediately was asked to join the Backsliders, which was a three-piece acoustic band with a percussion, including washboard. And it was a kind of raucous acoustic blues band. And I thought, oh, that's all right. I they were only playing sunday nights or sunday afternoons at that stage and i thought that's a nice way to retire uh lo and behold i ended up staying in the backsliders for 17 years and touring to major festivals around australia again so there was no escape

SPEAKER_06:

great but uh yeah so a good time with those guys as well so again more of a you know more of a full-on blues band this one

SPEAKER_00:

well when you say full-on it was acoustic but it was specifically blues bay But, you know, more country blues than Chicago blues. We didn't have amplifiers or anything. It was all acoustic guitars. And I played acoustic harmonica. And the backsliders became, again, surprisingly popular. And I think we played the East Coast Blues Festival, which I think I explained before is quite an important blues festival in Australia. Many American artists want to play at that one. We played that 13 times.

SPEAKER_06:

Before you joined, they weren't particularly well known, were they not? It rose more to prominence.

SPEAKER_00:

No, that's right. I have to say that the harmonica player that I replaced was very good. He and I were probably the most appropriate harmonica player for that band but he fell out of favour with the band for reasons I never really understood and they asked me to replace him.

SPEAKER_06:

So I mean did you have some you know some fame from your previous exploits that you think that helped raise the band's profile?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh yes I do I do think it helped a lot and it also helped build up the band and build up the band's popularity to the point the Port Fairy Folk Festival we would get 2,000 people come to our shows and they would have to close the tent no more people because the tent only held 2,000 people. Yeah, and I think some of that was to do with my popularity from playing with Captain Matchbox.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. So what about moving from a jug band with, like you say, maybe like six members down to playing in a trio?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, the trio was beautiful for me because it gave me a lot of space to fill without overplaying. I much of my time I've spent trying not to fight with other instruments, if you like. But when you've only got one guitar player and he's singing as well, that leaves a lot of room for the harmonica, but as a kind of structural instrument and not just a solo instrument. In the Jug Band, we had banjos and two guitars, lots of stuff going on. But in the backsliders, there was a guitar, me, a percussionist, and a vocalist. And it was pretty raucous, and the percussionist was very entertaining because of the way he carried on on stage. So that was a large part of our popularity. And Peter Burgess was the percussionist, and he was brilliant as an entertainer.

SPEAKER_06:

Talking through something, so the first album you made with them called... Sitting on a Million is a really great album and certainly one of my favorites, having listened through a lot of your

SPEAKER_03:

music.

SPEAKER_06:

Is that one you're proud of?

SPEAKER_00:

I'm particularly proud of that because I and a guitar player friend of mine produced that album. And I think it was possibly the biggest selling Backsliders album because it appealed to a folk music audience more than a kind of rock audience. And that was really strong. And I got a chance to make some creative decisions which really enhanced the acoustic nature of the band. One of the decisions I made was there would be no electric instruments on that recording. I don't know if that was a particularly popular decision with the guitar player in the band, but I think that put us in our own genre in that sense.

SPEAKER_06:

So what does it mean to produce an album? What does that involve?

SPEAKER_00:

You have to discover what is the essence of the band and be true to that essence. I think that was really what it was about. And the arrangements were already there. So I didn't really have to change the arrangements or do a great deal of changing. But what I wanted to do was capture the sound of the band that made it popular. Creole Bell, I always loved that song. And I particularly enjoyed playing it because our arrangement of it was quite different to what you might have heard before. I've noticed that you ask many harmonica players about whether they use special tunings and what harps they like to play. I've noticed that many people don't say, I like to play a high G. What I played on that particular song worked because I played a high G on that song in second position. If I were to play a low G on that song, I would never have come up with that way of playing that riff.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, I think the high G is a really good secret weapon, isn't it? Exactly that, because it's so low in the mix, isn't it? And then playing that high one, it's definitely a harmonica worth having in your arsenal, isn't it? So another album you produced for those was Hellhound in 1991.

SPEAKER_00:

It was another studio album. In the same studio as Sitting on a Million, it was just a bit different for political reasons within the band.

SPEAKER_06:

A song you recorded on the Hellhound album was Wish You Would. It had Billy Boy Arnold on it a few episodes ago, and it's a great song. I've got a nice clip of you playing that live with another harmonica player called Chris Wilson on YouTube, which I've got a link to.

UNKNOWN:

Hello.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, Chris Wilson was a very good friend of mine. Unfortunately, he died a year or so ago. He was a phenomenal vocalist and a legendary Australian blues man. But I met him through the Backsliders, where we did some collaborative shows together on that. We became lifelong friends as a consequence of meeting at that time. We did quite a number of shows together with the Backsliders. The sad part is that Chris's life ended way too short.

SPEAKER_06:

An album you did do was another one with those guys was Live at the Royal in 92 and a song on there I picked out was Georgia Rag. This is a good example of your country style of harmonica.

SPEAKER_00:

I had played quite a lot of country style harmonica with singer-songwriters and the like. So my country style of playing was quite developed because all of the time I was playing, I was doing session work as well. And so I had to be versatile and able to play lots of different styles. My love was in playing blues, but I played quite a lot of country style. And I must say, I loved playing singer-songwriter types songs and country style songs.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah and I think Charlie McCoy is someone you've been influenced by for that style.

SPEAKER_00:

One of the first songs I learnt when I was learning to play the harmonica was Candyman and at that stage I had no idea who played the harmonica on Roy Orbison's Candyman. It's only much later that I found out it was actually Charlie McCoy. And I became a huge fan of Charlie McCoy later on. But that riff that he plays on Candyman was one of the first riffs that I ever learned on the harmonica. And that riff is also quite similar to a riff that we played in the first jug band that we had, which was Going to German. It's a kind of descending, melodic, line that's not unlike that riff that Charlie McCoy plays in Candyman.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, and I think you're right, isn't it? That kind of country style harmonica is often in demand for session work, isn't it? You hear a lot of that kind of style. You know, it's very popular, isn't it, to play that. So it's good to be able to play that style as well.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it's, you know, a diatonic scale rather than a blues scale. It's as simple as that.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. An album in 99 you did with those guys is Poverty Deluxe, which was nominated for for best blues and roots album. Yes. This is a bit less straight up blues, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, what happened was after quite a while of the Backsliders playing Lead Belly songs, Robert Johnson songs and Fred McDowell songs, The guitar player in the band had written one or two songs, and I said, they're good songs. Why don't we try writing more songs for the band? And he jumped at the opportunity, and suddenly much of the material we were playing was original material, but also combined with the best of the traditional stuff that we were doing.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, the song on this album is Jack. We've got some high-end playing there.

UNKNOWN:

.

SPEAKER_06:

So it's just going back to the first position playing that you were talking about earlier on.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, but that was another one where I don't know where that riff came from. It's not like I could say, you know, because it's a much more modern song, but I don't know where that riff came from. It's like the Creole Bell riff. It just came from the ether. I'm kind of proud of that because it wasn't like I was channeling someone else. I was channeling Jim Conway.

SPEAKER_06:

And another thing which is noticeable on some of your recordings is that you often have quite a strong effect on the album. So the song White Cross is quite heavily, there's kind of a heavy reverb on those and you do a good growl on those.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03:

So

SPEAKER_06:

is that something you'd like to use?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, when you say effect, I didn't use... I mean, I used reverb, of course. But any of those effects that you hear... They're actually physical effects. If I'm doing a growl, it's because I'm doing, I'm closing off in my epiglottis. That's kind of sound. Or flutter toning, like, that's not stuff that weren't electronic effects. I never used electronic effects apart from reverb. Oh, that's really

SPEAKER_06:

interesting because you definitely get a sound that, you know, sounds like using electronic effects. So yeah, it's really interesting that. So it's all just done. There's no effects added. It's all acoustic. You playing yeah

SPEAKER_00:

yes everything I do in the backslides is acoustic and apart from reverb yeah which is natural in a recording studio it's all me just adding an effect like flutter tanging or yeah That sound, snoring effect.

SPEAKER_06:

And then the album Hanoi in 2002 won you guys an award for best blues and roots album. So this is definitely not a blues album, right? This is the sort of self-produced songs again, is it?

SPEAKER_00:

The guitar player in the band became a very good songwriter and he guarded his songwriting jealously. So mostly he was not collaborative. So if we wanted to contribute songs to the band, we had to go out and create them ourselves and bring them to the band.

SPEAKER_06:

Hanoi, is that some sort of Vietnamese connection?

SPEAKER_00:

The aforementioned guitar player was a teacher in a school that taught languages and part of his job was to try and bring in students from different countries to Australia to study. So he spent quite a lot of time in Vietnam trying to attract students. So he definitely had a Vietnamese influence in his songs. And

SPEAKER_06:

then you resigned from the Backsliders in 2016. What made you make that decision?

SPEAKER_00:

the relationship with that guitar player in particular became toxic to the point that I couldn't do it anymore. But having said that, I was already in the process of setting up my own band because that relationship wasn't working. So I just set up Jim Conway's Big Wheel as an alternative to the Backsliders, but not to replace the Backsliders, but when it became too hard for me to keep working in the backsliders, I concentrated on my own band. And that went quite well for a while too.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, no, absolutely. So as you said, Big Wheel was a big success for you, wasn't it? And it was the first album in 2004, or was it? Is that Little Story, that album?

SPEAKER_00:

That's right. I just chose a whole bunch of my favourite musicians who I knew.

UNKNOWN:

MUSIC PLAYS

SPEAKER_00:

I'm not really particularly fond of guitar heroes. or even harmonica heroes. I just wanted a bunch of people who would play nicely together, and that's exactly what happened. We all played nicely together, we got on well, and we played beautiful music together, which was refreshing to me. There were no great ego problems in Jim Conway's Big Wheel, but at the end of the day, if there was a final decision to be made, I made it because it was my band. So that was nice too.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, so it's definitely got a big band feeling about it, hasn't it, Scott Horne? was that your vision for the band

SPEAKER_00:

originally I wanted to do a jump blues band But then I realized that really what I wanted to do was just play music I liked. So it became something other than a jump blues band. But whatever it was, I liked. That was enough.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, and some almost pop songs, aren't they? Some of them. And, you know, I've got that definite popular appeal around them with some nice harmonica interspersed. So, yeah, some really beautiful things there.

SPEAKER_00:

But the important thing was there were no heroes. In a way, they were all heroes because they were such great players. In another way, there were no heroes because they were all just great players who knew where to sit within a band.

SPEAKER_06:

And again, so this is under your name. This is Jim Conway's The Big Wheel, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I wasn't going to call it that, but our bass player at the time insisted that my name was stuck on there. So I said, okay, which is probably a good idea.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, so again, your name was definitely holding some weight there, helping it get some bookings, et cetera. A song I really love on the 2000... eight album is I've Been Doing Something Wrong.

SPEAKER_05:

I'd populate the planet.

UNKNOWN:

Ooh.

SPEAKER_06:

Fantastic song. Who came up with that one?

SPEAKER_00:

That was Don Hopkins. Don Hopkins is a phenomenal blues player. He played piano. He's a great vocalist. He sounds like an old blues guy. He understands the true essence of blues music. He plays piano that way. And his voice is to die for. He's got a beautiful, beautiful blues voice. And I couldn't really think of another vocalist that I would have preferred in the band. So fortunately, he was available.

SPEAKER_06:

And a lot of this song has got this kind of great, hypnotic, repetitive harmonica riff through it, with him kind of talking this kind of amusing lyric over the top

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's right. He's definitely an eccentric, but he's a highly gifted eccentric.

SPEAKER_06:

Another one on this album, you've got, you're playing some chromatic on Big Trouble.

UNKNOWN:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06:

So is the play much chromatic harmonica?

SPEAKER_00:

In the Conway Brothers, I played chromatic because the melodies kind of demanded it. But what I did was I got chromatics in all keys, which I had to kind of seek out. I played the chromatic as if it was in the key of C, but if I needed to play in a different key, like in the key of B flat or E, I would simply grab the B flat or the E chromatic. It was the only way I could get around those melodies. And I also, on the chromatic in the Conway Brothers, I used to play kind of Dory in my third position chromatic in the Conway Brothers. And when I tried to do that in Big Wheel, I don't think I ever really fully understood playing chromatic in blues. I don't think I really ever got quite comfortable with it. So I had a good go at that in Big Trouble, but I've since learned what I was doing wrong, but too late now.

SPEAKER_06:

In 2014, you decided to retire from performing.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's important because when I was touring with the Backsliders towards the end of Junior Wells days, we did a support to Junior Wells in Cairns, Cairns, Australia, which is North Queensland. And I had seen Junior Wells in Melbourne in about 1971 or 72, and it was like, this is quite extraordinary you know and it was I was completely gobsmacked I couldn't imagine I was in the same room as Junior Wells but by the time I saw him in Cairns he really wasn't anywhere near what he used to be and I think I said at the time maybe he should have given up playing years ago and And then when my health started deteriorating, I thought, I don't want people to say that about me. So I'm going to wind up before they say that about me.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, going out while you're still strong, that's a good policy. And then you played the opening ceremony at the Sydney Paralympics. Yeah. And what year was that?

SPEAKER_00:

That was the year 2000.

SPEAKER_06:

What an honour to play in an opening ceremony at an Olympics. And you get a really nice over a five minute song. Again, I'll put a clip on the podcast space people check out and you're playing with a another harmonica player aren't you roderick teal on that

SPEAKER_00:

yeah uh that was another person with a disability who plays a very good harmonica he's only got one arm he lives his life like he's got 10 arms so

SPEAKER_06:

So how did that song come about? Is it something you put together yourself or somebody else?

SPEAKER_00:

No, no, it was actually written by a woman. It was actually commissioned for a composer to write that song and we had to learn it. And I had to work out the best way to play it, which I eventually worked out was third position. And it was one of my rare journeys into third position.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, no, but fantastic thing to be involved in. So well done with that. And another very notable thing that you've done, Jim, is that you've toured with brownie mcgee himself through uh i think in the late 80s a few times yeah

SPEAKER_00:

yeah well what what happened was i used to play with the blues singer in melbourne a guy called dutch tildes who was the first real blues singer that i ever saw i mean he was dutch originally but he sounded like an american and he was a really phenomenal uh blues singer in the style of big bill brunsey if you like and i used to play with him quite a lot and i'd i'd done a couple of blues albums with him and we had a really strong rapport dutch introduced me to brownie mcgee because he dutch knew brownie from when brownie was touring with sunny terry what happened was we went back to brownie's motel room in melbourne and i was having a jam with brownie with brownie very much enjoyed but sunny terry rang up and complained about the noise to the management because brownie was in the room next door because as you know they didn't get on all that

SPEAKER_03:

well

SPEAKER_00:

so we had to wind it up But Brownie always remembered that. And so when Brownie came out solo, I was thinking, oh, Brownie won't remember playing with me. But my wife insisted that I go along to the basement where they were playing and introduce myself again. So I shyly went up to Brownie's dressing room and said, hi, Brownie. And Brownie took one look at me and said... Oh, I was hoping you'd turn up. And I ended up playing the whole night with him in the basement, which is a big jazz club in Melbourne, sorry, in Sydney. And then after that, when he came out the next time, I was booked to do the Australia-wide tour, which was such an

SPEAKER_01:

honour.

UNKNOWN:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00:

Interesting thing about that was before we started, I said to Brownie, well, I guess we better have a rehearsal. And he just looked at me and said, no. Like he always remembered that I could just pick up on his tunes without having to work too hard. It was quite challenging. Firstly, it would have been a big mistake for me to try and play like Sonny Terry because I'm not real good at playing like anyone else. Anyone trying to play like Sonny Terry is probably a big mistake. So I just played like me and Brownie really loved

SPEAKER_06:

it. Great. So you didn't have any feedback from, you know, the audience were expecting you to sound like Sonny Terry, then there were people quite happy.

SPEAKER_00:

No, not at all. They actually loved what I did too.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

It was the whole tour was an absolute triumph. And it was really such an honour for me to play with Brownie McGee and to tour with him. And it was a very special moment in my life.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, fantastic. Yeah, it was such great thing to be able to do so well done for that yeah and you've also been involved with some film recording as well as a film called The Riddle of the Stinson involved in a soundtrack with

SPEAKER_00:

yes that was another surprising honour for me to be asked to The Riddle of the Stinson was a telly movie made by a big Australian movie producer called Kennedy Miller and I was asked to do the music for that that was a great thing to do and I've done a few odd things

SPEAKER_06:

and there's a great documentary about you called The Jim Conway Blues, which was a TV documentary aired in Australia in 2000. So this won Best Independent Documentary at the Chicago Film Festival. So if people want any more information about, you know, background about yourself, it's a great watch. I'll put the link on again to the podcast page.

SPEAKER_00:

And there is also, in production at the moment, a Melbourne filmmaker has decided to make a documentary about the the Conway brothers making an art form, sibling rivalry.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, and you've been involved with teaching harmonica for quite a while now as well. Is that still something you do?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, no, but I'm not really reliable in a teaching context anymore. I drop harmonicas. I can't always rely on my embouchure. So I decided again that it wasn't really fair for me to teach. I can still teach, but it's slightly embarrassing for me if I keep dropping harmonicas and can't I can still play, but I can't play reliably. I can't always be sure that I'll be able to play at all.

SPEAKER_06:

In 2003, you were awarded the Centenary Medal for Contribution to the Arts in Australia there.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, that's correct. That was a surprise.

SPEAKER_06:

So the question I ask each time, the 10-minute question, if you had 10 minutes to practice, what would you spend those 10 minutes doing?

SPEAKER_00:

I've thought about this one, and I don't know what I would do, but what I would encourage other people to do, I've always said, play the song, not the instrument. So find what's appropriate for whatever song you want to play and stick to that. And sometimes if it's not a song, then find the essence of that song. Search deeply for that essence of whatever sound you're trying to make. I've noticed, for instance... When you're playing first position down the bottom of the harmonica, there is essentially one pathway that identifies first position down the bottom of the harmonica. And if you really listen deeply, you can hear that pathway and that'll point you in the right direction. And the same with third position and probably the same with second position. I guess we might call those things modes or we might call them something else, but find the essence of whatever you're trying to play. So

SPEAKER_06:

we'll move on to the last section now and talk through gear. So first of all, what's your harmonicas of choice?

SPEAKER_00:

I use exclusively these days custom marine bands, which are customised by someone I kind of invented. A friend of mine is a blacksmith and a harmonica player. I was playing with the Backsliders at a club in Sydney, and I got a phone call from a guy called Lee Sankey, who's a wonderful English harmonica

SPEAKER_02:

player. Yes.

SPEAKER_00:

And he's saying, I've been given your number. I'd like to come and see your band. He came and saw my band. I could tell he was a really phenomenal player. He played through my rig, and he had twice the volume and twice the tone that I have. Now, I'm noted for my good tone, but he had twice the tone and twice the volume. I noted also that he was playing marine band harmonicas. And at that stage, I was playing Liasca harmonicas. And I thought, I've got to get back to playing marine band harmonicas. So I then tried to see if there was someone around that could do custom harmonicas. And I got in touch with Neil Graham, who at that stage hadn't done any customizing. So we worked on custom harmonicas together with him doing the work and sending me his experiments. And after about six months, I said, I don't know what you've done, but you've worked it out. You've nailed it. I sent him a Joe Felisco harmonica and said, can you do this? And he worked it out after six months of experimenting. He worked at it and he's now an endorsed honer customizer.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, so it's interesting that people use customized harmonicas. Clearly you think it's worthwhile using those, right? They're a lot better. And above doing it yourself as well, you think it's worth going to these people who dedicate their lives to customizing the diatonics.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I mean, just because my hands haven't worked for a long time, you know, very well, I'm not technical in that sense. But I knew that Neil Graham could do anything with metal because he was a blacksmith as well as a harmonica player and he just worked it out for himself

SPEAKER_06:

so what about any different tunings do you use

SPEAKER_00:

no i uh i've experimented with different tunings nelly always found a way of getting what i wanted out of standard cross harp or third position or first position

SPEAKER_06:

yeah what about your embouchure you were puckering tongue blocking something else

SPEAKER_00:

i would say that initially i was a lipper and I would, you know, have a lipping embouchure. But over time I've developed my tongue blocking. I would say primarily I lip block, but I now use tongue blocking much more than I used to. So it's now a combination of both.

SPEAKER_06:

So amplification wise, you've already said that you're, are you exclusively an acoustic player or do you ever use amps?

SPEAKER_00:

At one stage in the backsliders and also in Big Wheel, I started playing some of the songs through an amplifier. I had a Sunny Junior amplifier with a crystal element, a static mic. But as my hand strength decreased, I found that I wasn't getting the tone that I was originally because I really wasn't able to get the good hand seal required to get that really good amplified sound. So eventually I gave up trying to play amplified harp. But I would have kept going with it if I hadn't lost my hand strength.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. When you are playing acoustic, any particular setup, you're just using, you're standing off an acoustic mic and using that, any particular acoustic mics?

SPEAKER_00:

I used to always carry a Shure or beta 58 with me, but I wouldn't cup right round the microphone. I would play acoustically into the beta 58 and sometimes I would kind of half cup it to get a half amplified sound or to get more volume if I couldn't hear it.

SPEAKER_06:

Sure, yeah. So you would hold the mic a lot of the time, would you, or a combination of playing off it and then holding it?

SPEAKER_00:

Never. I always worked on a mic stand, and I would work off the mic or partly capping the mic, never completely enclosing

SPEAKER_06:

it. Yeah. And effects, you said you'd only ever use reverb, would you?

SPEAKER_00:

Only in the PA system and, again, in the studio. I didn't use reverb apart from that. The effects that I... have that people thought that maybe that I had some kind of effect was done inside my mouth, either flutter-tonguing or that kind of snoring sound you get when you close up your throat.

SPEAKER_06:

And what about when you've recorded albums? Have you, you know, any sort of particular effects outed afterwards then, or have you always kept it clean?

SPEAKER_00:

No, not really. Most of the effects I ever got were done with my hands. When my hands were good, it was just opening and closing my hands, making the instrument talk with opening and closing my hands. That's really my favorite effect is just the hand effects.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah, sure. And so obviously you've talked about you're not able to perform reliably now. So is the harmonica then part of your past or are you still involved musically in anything? No,

SPEAKER_00:

I'm not involved musically with anything. For physio, because it's good for my breathing, I'll explain. One of the effects of MS, which I've had for nearly 40 years, is getting overheated and getting weak when you get overheated. First of all, that was the first symptom. The next thing that happened was that my hands started getting difficult. Then I developed Bell's palsy, which is paralysis in the right-hand side of my face. Then I developed pneumonia. So there was a kind of message there that maybe something was working against me keeping on playing. But I'm pretty stubborn, so I determined then that I'll keep playing despite it. The fact that the elements were stacked up against me. So I still play, but mainly for my own pleasure and for physiotherapy.

SPEAKER_06:

Yeah. And so, you know, you still enjoy, do you still listen to harmonic music as well? Is it still something, you know, it doesn't, does it still bring you pleasure or?

SPEAKER_00:

I still love to listen to it, Namas. So I've enormously enjoyed listening to most of the interviews you've done with other harmonica players. All of them are great, and I feel incredibly honoured to be in the same programme as those

SPEAKER_06:

people. Thanks, Jim. It's very kind of you to say. So thanks so much for joining us today, Jim Conway. It's been a pleasure. Thanks so much, Jim Conway. What a great career he's had over so many years. I'd also like to thank Peter Roof for making a donation to help keep the podcast running. Thanks so much, Peter. Remember to check out the website, everybody, or monicahappyhour.com. And finally, it's over to Jim to play us out with the backsliders.