Waiting For Wagons

"I went for a big job interview. They said it was down to the last two. And I'd have been perfect for it, too. But the other candidate was Henry Wagons." – The DC3, Henry Fucking Wagons

It’s not every day MakingTheNut.com brings its readers a genuine scoop, but today is one of those days.

Yep, here’s a dinky-di, true blue, actual “you read it here first” moment for y’all.

Melbourne alt-country rockers Wagons will be back soon with a new album. And it could be as early as next year.

In the wake of the release of their 2011 Rumble, Shake and Tumble LP, Wagons have cut a swathe through live music venues across this wide brown land of ours and are now taking their signature brand of outlaw country rock to the US masses.

Before they left, I was lucky enough to elbow my way in on some of front-man Henry Wagons’ time and to my amazement, and with very little prompting, the bearded and bespectacled troubadour floored me with this little chestnut.

“I’m basically working on some new material now,” he said. “I don’t want there to be such a big gap between records this time so I’m starting to write for this new record now, so hoping to get some recording done across the summer with any luck, and hopefully a record out soon.

“It’s still very early days, you’re, in fact, the first person I’ve mentioned it to.

“With any luck it will be out in 2012. But it’s too early. I don’t know how easy the songs will come out yet. The intention is there to get something out, a fair bit darker, in the next year or two. It’s the direction of my muse, maybe. Inspired by a few nightmares I’ve been having, but nothing hugely scary.”

Wagons, the man and the band, have been making waves on the Australian music scene for the past few years – largely since the critically acclaimed 2009 release, The Rise and Fall of Goodtown.

But it’s with a decade-long history and five albums in total the boys have taken their show on the road for an extended North American tour to support the release of R,S&T in the US and Canada.

“We’re really pumped,” Henry said. “We’ve had a few reviews coming in and to see our CD available on Amazon is quite a thrill… and available at Best Buy stores, etc. etc.

“I think it’s an exciting moment for us and it’s a bit surreal. Being so far away I don’t know how many people are hearing it and hearing about it, having just come out, but I know some radio stations have added it and blogs are talking about it and I can’t wait to see.

"It’s one of those totally unknown quantities how many people are going to show up to our shows when we play. Having played around the traps a little while we’ve got a fair idea who’s going to come and watch us in each city in Australia at every gig, but a lot of these places is a totally new horizon.

“I’ll be able to tell you more about how America goes when we’re back later in the year. It’s definitely very exciting to have a real proper presence and proper release over there in the States, it’s very exciting.”

Regardless of how many punters front for the 15 shows this month, there’s no doubt they’ll remember the night they spent with Wagons for a long time to come.

Having treated myself to a couple of the band’s Hobart outings in the past 18-months, I’ll vouch for the downright memorable nature of a Wagons gig.

What’s not to like about a massed sing-along in homage to Willie Nelson, the chugging guitar riff of Drive All Night ‘Til Dawn, lyrical genius of Love Me Like I Love You or presumably Cash-inspired jailhouse number, I Blew It?

Throw in a seemingly endless supply of pelvic thrusts, heel stomps and caustic crowd banter from the frontman and you’re looking at what has to be one of the nation’s best live music acts.

Described as “big and bloody hearted”, the men of Wagons are no shy and retiring violets. Henry admits his bandmates have sometimes suffered at his own hand, but his recent solo headline national tour gave him the chance to fully express himself without fear of wounding a colleague.

“This is the first ever headlining solo tour I’ve done… I love the idea of being able to fling myself around the stage without risk of smashing my bass player in the face with the headstock of my guitar or a drummer telling me to shut-up between songs,” he said. “Each and every permutation of things that could happen on stage have happened to Wagons at some point in our 10 year history.

“Yes, I have smashed band members in the head with my guitar headstock and we always talk to each other on stage during a show.

"For good and bad we always do stuff to keep each other entertained, or in pain, to help us keep a kind of high sensation and outlook throughout the night, every night."

With a background as an English teacher, Henry is no stranger to the written word, however, he insists teaching was never destined to be his game.

“I can string a sentence or two together when it comes to answering or preparing a reading comprehension exercise and hopefully a few of those skills translate to lyric writing, too,” he said. “There’s the allusion that teachers hold the nation’s future in their grasp, but I hate to admit I never had a massive passion for teaching.

“It was always a thing to facilitate my music, so I probably wasn’t as diligent and professional as I should have been holding the future of the world in my hands.”

So while it’s not students he’s inspiring to experiment with the written word these days, he can take at least some of the credit for inspiring the DC3’s live favourite, Henry Fucking Wagons.

“People started whispering in my ear about it, basically,” he said. “The DC3 and before that, Damian Cowell, he had a band called ROOT! that were sort of like a comedy country band, and he played the song Henry Fucking Wagons and blamed me for the demise of that band and I was like ‘woah, this is pretty full on’.

“I heard the song was called Henry Fucking Wagons and I thought this is not going to be a very nice song. He’s blamed his band’s demise on me and written a song with an expletive in it so this is not going to be nice.

“Then we heard the song and it turns out to be pretty reverential, which I love, and was a welcome surprise. His old band, ROOT!, got a lot of comparisons to Wagons, not that I consider us a comedy band as such, but I can see where it was coming from and I guess he must have got sick of people comparing him unfavourably to me, and that’s what inspired him to write the song.”

Among many of Henry Wagons’ virtues extolled by the DC3 is, in fact, his facial hair.

And as we are lovers of cheek-and-chin-wear at MakingTheNut.com, it would have been remiss of me not to enquire as to the state of Henry’s beard before my time with him ran out.

“It’s a pretty solid and standard trimmed beard,” he laughed. “I’ve tried a bit of experimentation over the last couple of years, but it’s going to be the standard beard with matching headband arrangement.

“But I can’t reveal what’s in store for the upcoming record. There might be some kind of stylistic change.”

Who knows what kind of change is in store for fans when his face next adorns an album cover?

Not me!

Two scoops in a day would be just a little bit beyond the pale.