DAVE HOLE QUERY

[BassHarper@xxxxxxx]

On Jul 9, Glenn Pearl stated the following:

I'm way behind, and this might've been posted already, but Junior Wells will
be at the House of Rules (er...
I mean Blues) in New Orleans on Sunday, July 16th.  Opening the show is Dave
Hole (anyone ever hear of
him?).

Read on, Glenn.  The following article by George Hansen appeared in the
Chicago Blues, Winter 1993
edition:

"As Australian Dave Hole makes himself familiar with the United States,
criss-crossing the country on a
frantic nine-week tour, blues/rock fans are eagerly meeting him.  And Hole
introduces himself in a hurry.

The guitar wonder takes the stage and immediately fires up the crowd with his
over-the-top slide attack. 
Although Aussies are generally known for being laid back, on stage Hole is
anything but.  His in-your-face
guitar attack combines rock and blues in a fashion not recently heard.

The press he has received before even playing a lick in the United States has
been astonishing.  Guitar
Player, Spin, Guitar World, Billboard and Audio all have offered rave
reviews.  Alligator Records has
released two CDs, including the recent Working Overtime.

Starting with a gig in Madison, Wisconsin, Hole is spending the last two
months of 1993 playing shows
from Slim's in San Francisco to Skipper's Smokehouse in Tampa.

'They've got us on a tough one, yeah.  We've got nine weeks of pretty much
one nighters with a lot of
driving, but we'll survive,' Hole says.  'I'm really looking forward to the
playing, the performance, playing to
people all over America.  It's gonna be an experience for me.'

Judging by the crowds' reaction at his first three shows, the public is going
to be sorry when the man from
down under returns home.  Actually, this is Hole's second trip to the United
States, but on the first he was
strictly a tourist.  Among other clubs, he checked out B.L.U.E.S., the
legendary Chicago North Side
haunt, where Lonnie Brooks was playing to a packed house.

'It was great.  It was rockin' that night, yeah.  It was jampacked in there.'

During his month in the states, Hole acted like any other self-respecting
blues fan, traveling from Austin to
New Orleans and through Mississippi.  He did all the blues tourist things,
even checking out the grave of
Robert Johnson.

'My impression (of the United States) is more based on when I was here before
because I was here for a
month.  I think it's a phenomenal country, all Americans know this.  And it's
like a whole heap of countries
rolled into one.  If you go down to Louisiana, it doesn't seem like the same
country as California or
Chicago or whatever.  Every part seems to have its own characteristics, which
is the wonderful thing
about the country.  It has got a uniformity of language and so on, so it's
really quite fascinating.  Y'see, in
Australia, it's all pretty much the same;  they think that they're different,
but they're not.  America, also,
has a lot more history than Australia has.  Australia is only 200 years old
and while America's not much
older, we have only cities around, or rather right on the coasts.  It's a
little more hospitable in the cities.'

The obvious question arises.  How does a man from down under become
proficient in music born in the
Mississippi Delta?  Hole actually began playing rock and roll two decades
ago.

'Well, actually, I've been playing for over 20 years and I got into it with a
high school band, sort of the
usual way.  We formed a rock band.  I'd only been doing the rock band thing
for three or four months and
was just starting to learn and one of the other guitar players in the band
sort of stumbled across a Muddy
Waters record and we got a hold of Howlin' Wolf and others and very quickly
turned into a blues band and
that was really it.

'There weren't many blues players comin' through.  In fact, Sonny Terry and
Brownie McGhee were the
only blues players that I'd seen for many, many years.  We had our locals, on
any caliber, players in
Perth, but they weren't the Real McCoy.  It was all done from records.'

Hole's musical upbringing was very similar to any kid who grew up in any
suburb in the United States.

'I was originally influenced by the Rolling Stones and that was how we
discovered Muddy Waters and
others like Jimmy Reed, who they were covering and people like that.  Eric
Clapton, Peter Green, John
Mayall; that was very influential to me.  The Yardbirds, by virtue of Clapton
and Jeff Beck, the Animals. 
As a blues band, we did covers of their songs which were covers of covers.'

Hole developed an over-the-top slide style, using conventional chrome slides
and occasionally using a
home-made glass slide from a wine bottle.

'The best glass slides I've got off a famous Australian wine, which they put
in really thick glass and, for
bottle-neck, this is the one that I really like.  It's quite expensive, so
you don't want to lose 'em too often.'

As for his guitar, he prefers to play the Gibson 345 or 355 Stereo, although
he has also played
Stratocasters and Les Pauls.  Between searing guitar-heavy songs, Hole mixes
things up with a little
acoustic action.

'I've always played electric.  It's only been in the last couple of years
that I've been playing acoustic.  The
funny reason that I've done it is because I thought it'd be nice to have some
acoustic sounds instead of
just electric (on the albums),' he said.  'I've bought myself a Guild.  I
don't know what it is, it's a new one,
y'know, and it's really quite nice.  I'm not an expert on acoustic guitars.
 As a matter of fact, one of the
things that I'm trying to do in between shows here is to get to music shops
to try and score myself
something.'

Dave Hole's first American tour is succeeding in quickly gaining new fans;
unfortunately, it probably will be
a long time before those fans get a chance to see him again.  Unless they are
willing to take a trip down
under."

Looks like he did make it back - sooner than he expected!
- Danny Wilson (BassHarp)