I was initially slightly suspicious of CW Stoneking and his "time wormhole". I was expecting to hear another artist in thrall to the past but not doing as good a job as the originals. But by the end of his appearance on the podcast I was won over. He's good, isn't he?!

I think I may have to search out his album tomorrow whilst I'm on my lunch break...

Edit: Either I've unknowingly ingested un soupçon of the old lysergic acid diethylamide, or you've done something darn clever with that photo. Nice work...

That was a very special gig.

it helped drown out some tedious* QPR fans on the train back south yesterday evening.
* is there any other kind.

not often you hear a song as a story and are listening to hear how it turns out

and,like the podcast team, have a chuckle at the end

good one

he's just sold a CD

I've come across C.W. a few times, even shared a few festival bills with him, and to be honest he sets my bullshit detector twitching more than anyone in recent years.
There's nothing wrong with having a schtick, nothing wrong with sounding like a bloke on an old scratched record from the twenties, but the whole thing screams of artifice to me...and what's with all the stuff about Africa?..gimme a break.

about Fraser's "Keep the 4th of November free" teaser?
If it is a gig then it falls on a Thursday which is a bit of a bugger if you don't work or live within London commuting distance.

The Word magazine is released concurrently in the year 1928 - a feat made possible by a footpath through space-time that runs along the back of the building where the magazine is published. The dual photograph above was achieved by messieurs Ellen, Hepworth, Lewry & Stoneking taking a bracing five-minute stroll back to the late 1920s and adopting an identical pose in front of a camera from that period. As you can see, the exterior of the building has changed little during the intervening 82 years.

The 1920s incarnation of The Word typically includes a pop-up centrefold in which cardboard caricatures of bands with records under review can be made to box with each other for the title of Album of the Month. The magazine takes a more fiery editorial tone than its mellower, modern-day counterpart: A continual debate rages regarding the identity of the fifth species of beetle discovered during a royal expedition by fellows of the University of Liverpool to the remote South Western provinces of Papua New Guinea. It seems that a numbering error made during the cataloguing of unknown specimens taken from the region has resulted in confusion over the order in which each was discovered. The argument regarding the 5th beetle in line has been especially ferocious and the catalyst for numerous duels, with the notable casualties of these affairs of honour duly recorded in the magazine’s obituary pages.

Word staff travel back to 1928 on a weekly rota to work on the publication. Studies of historical documents from the period reveal that Mr Ellen is considered quite the dandy around town but has unfortunately acquired an inscrutable arch nemesis. Mr Hepworth is known to fire records he dislikes from a brass cannon mounted on the roof of The Word offices. In the latest issue he proudly claims to have winged the editor of a rival publication with one well aimed blast. Kate Mossman has launch a crusade to tidy up the dawn chorus in Islington. Her avian elocution lessons are aimed at training wild birds to chirp in key. Fellow bird lover, Fraser Lewry, is hailed as the inventor of the Pheasant Abacus – a combined adding machine / pie making contraption which has become the toast of the city’s financial quarter and the nearby Smithfields meat market. The bank of England is said to own five. Harrison’s Select Brogues for highwaymen come in varying shades of neon. Their appeal is not limited to the criminal classes and they are worn by many discerning gentlemen and ladies.

CW Stoneking is not from 1928. Unlike the staff of The Word he has spent very little time living in that decade. He’s probably never punched a lion either.

There’s a dreary question of authenticity that hangs around certain genres of music. In the case of the Blues, authenticity is all about whether you’ve led a life worthy of the material. Of course it’s all nonsense and doesn’t really matter. The background of an artist is just local colour. It’s the performance that counts.

It’s like the first time I heard Skeleton Key by The Coral. Deep down in my heart I knew that the band weren’t really psychedelic pirates and never would be, no matter how much I closed my eyes and wished that it was so. I really liked the song and still do.

It wouldn’t bother me if CW Stoneking turned out to be the Duke of Norfolk. In fact I would be delighted if that turned out to be the case. I enjoyed what I’ve heard of his music enough to spend most of this morning trekking across a huge swathe of Southend-on-Sea searching for a copy of Jungle Blues; to no avail, sadly. My best hope had closed for the bank holiday. It doesn’t matter. I’ll get it another day.

less if he was born in 1928, 1958 or 1988. What I saw at the Windmill on Friday was a cracking show that ticked all the right boxes for me: great showmanship, some belting tunes and a fantastic atmosphere that is rare to find in many gigs in London these days.
I'm told the album will be in the shops this week and I for one will be paying hard cash for a copy.

..artifice is the foundation that rock music is built on. The only thing that matters is if you buy into it or not.
I can see why CW impresses the pundits (and punters) of the rainy old UK, he is after all radically different to almost anything you've seen, even Seasick Steve sounds space-age compared to him.
His assertion, however, that only he was interested in exploring pre-war blues when he came up in Sydney and Melbourne is false. CW would have been well aware of artists like The Backsliders, Dutch Tilders etc..and Captain Matchbox were exploring the same semi-vaudeville hokum side of blues as far back as the 70s.
Two things bother me about Stoneking; The first is the tone of his singing voice, which he has obviously arrived at from endlessly playing old recordings, but it is the very limitations of the recordings which make the voice sound like that..all midrange and no top and bottom end.It's the sound of a mynah bird.
The other is his accent. I don't know how an American who spent his first 10 years growing up in Papunyal would sound, but I imagine by now they would be using a fairly normal Aussie accent, not the "I'm different, me" patois he now uses that sounds about as convincing as Madonnas English effort.
Enjoy him anyway..jeez it's gotta be better than Coldplay.

..from 1973, complete with banjo and washboard (and possibly bow-tie)
This is who I immediately thought of when I first saw him.
(Takes about a minute and a half to get going)

I have to say I'm in two minds about CW. I bought the first CD then saw him on TV a couple of times and hated it. Then I heard a radio interview in Australia (http://www.abc.net.au/local/stories/2009/04/07/2537291.htm?site=sydney) which kind of changed my mind as did the Word podcast. Interesting that we are suspicious of artifice when as Fraser says it's everywhere, most musicians and bands have some kind of story aka image.

if he doesn't.
Enough already with all this "is it real" nonsense as Fraser says Kraftwerk for example aren't robots they are just PRETENDING. Also this may be a shock to some round here but Tom Waits has been a pop star for 40 years he's not a down at heel rummy, (it's probably the reason he's moved on to hitting things and shouting he's run out strippers called Matilda to write about they can be thin on the ground at organic farmers markets.)
One of CW crimes (apart from a modicum of success) is being born in 1974 not 1934 or 54.
If he got up and said he was from Surbiton and had been to the Brit school a large proportion of posters here would be picking up stones to chuck at his stripey suit he can't win.
Oh as for judging people by the way they talk I thought Australia was meant to be a bit more egalitarian than that?

to his accent, which to those familiar with such things, contains strong elements of Aboriginal patois.

I'm guessing it's an affectation in much the same was as, say, Tim Westwood's speaking voice is.

In that respect it's certainly fake.

Tim Westwood isn't a fake he just didn't follow his dad into the church

"Critics have derided Westwood's apparent emulation of Black British pronunciation and dialect, which is claimed to be at odds with his middle class British origins".

"In interviews Sacha Baron Cohen has stated that Westwood, including his supposed fake Caribbean accent, was an inspiration for his fictional Ali G character"

...when Tim Westwood visits his parents he doesn't greet them with a hearty "Wassup?". You want middle-class kids affecting patois just get on a bus at 3.30 during term-time. It's everywhere. They are not taking GCSE French anymore apparently but they seem to speak an entirely different language (not just a few terms) with their friends than they do with their parents, in a way that previous generations haven't.
And Seasick Steve lives in Norway. Which is somewhat lacking dustbowls, boxcar johnnies, soup kitchens and dollar diners. But he is just as real as David Bowie, cos, y'know, he never actually went into space either.

reproduces an internal dialogue I was having while listening to this podcast: "I don't like this guy's stuff" "why not?" "it sounds phoney" "well, an awful lot of stuff you love, like Dylan, Jagger, Bowie, etc, is also phoney."

And there I ran out of reasons. But there must *be* a reason. How about this: we all know that, e.g., Mick Jagger is not American and that Eric Clapton is not a black guy with a history of racial oppression. But we recognise that they are imitating something that speaks deeply to them, so deeply (and here's the point) that they can use that adopted form to express something that is very real. So, the persona is not real, but what it expresses is. And maybe with CWS some of us do not hear him using a false persona to express something genuine - we just hear a false persona.

Is that it?

I listened to the podcast and part of me was saying "this is different and is the sort of thing I should like" but another part was saying "I hope this bloke stops singing soon so they can get on to the chat." I didn't feel that when Wilco Johnson and Boo Hewerdine were on. I think it was the incredibly mannered singing that just grated on me. A bit like Tom Waits and Bryan Ferry in that respect. Still, that's just me and I can see why other people love that sort of thing.

..all respect to the people that like him, but I wouldn't give a toss about the artifice really, if I actually liked what he did..after all Dylan invented a whole persona when he started, to the extent of talking like an Okie and denying his parentage.
But really..the concept album, the clothes, the studied mystique..replace Africa with hobbits, boating jackets with capes and a tin-can guitar with double-neck and its all the conventions of prog rock innit?

I drove over from Manchester to Liverpool to see him last night and it was one of the best gigs I've been to in my quarter century of gig going. Round about a 100 of us there and we were treated to a great show. After years of seeing plodding indie / rock bands, I'm all for a bit of showmanship and make believe.
For those interested, I spoke to him after the show when I got my CD signed. He said the Word podcast had been fun and he's planning to tour the UK again in January.

Difficult for someone relatively unknown to engage as interviewee on podcast. Liked his stuff though. The idea of him singing exactly like an old, old record seems interesting and novel to me - bringing to the fore a forgotten sound that becomes rediscovered anew - a new seam to mine when all the usual ones are more or less exhausted.

We arranged for him to come in not knowing what to expect. Before we started recording Mark asked his mate the question we'd been asking ourselves - "is he in character"? He assured us he was. I've interviewed a few artists like this, people who clearly assume a persona, and there's no point in saying, "this is all made up, isn't it?"

Even Richard Thompson, as self-effacing an artist as you might wish to meet, admits that the persona he projects is a different character. Some people liked the chat and not the music, others liked the music and not the chat. Either way it's interesting and, for what it's worth, his record is terrific.

..that the "persona" wouldn't bother me, if his music convinced me, which it don't.
That's obviously my problem as he seems to give pleasure to many (not all) of the above posters.
Having said that, I haven't (like one poster) spent years listening to useless indie bands...

... probably had a lot to do with jet lag to be fair.

I did like the tunes though, and he's on emusic. So a download will follow...

This guy is very good. I've read the Word feature (nice one, Rob Hughes), listened to the podcast, I've seen the gigs and now I've lived with the album for a few days. I couldn't give a hoot if he has a dodgy accent. He's a big talent.

Glad to read other unenchanted listeners. I've listened to all of the podcasts now from 176 down to 144 and its the first one where I skipped past a section. He just makes me feel that I don't get enough time to listen to all of my Tom Waits records (and there are so many more to get). I know this isn't fair, as so much music I love has obvious and heavy influences, but as this one is so out of time and step if feels unnecessary. You never know, he may come out with something that speaks to me more in the future, but I have no interest in 1928 jungle music, I prefer the 90's version!