On the road with Lonely Boys
Stolen instruments, a lack of transport, a remote location — it’s all par for the course in the life of Lonely Boys, but it hasn’t stopped them taking the music world by storm
RAINBOW St is to Ngukurr what Mitchell St is to Darwin, I’m told. I’ve no reason to doubt it, only Rainbow St seems louder.
ABBA booms from a house at one end, techno from a residence at the other. Someone inside the house behind us is riffing on an electric guitar. It’s 1pm on Friday and the volume only goes north from here.
In the absence of much else to do, and in reaction, or pre-emption, of remote Aboriginal community trauma, music on Rainbow St is more than a hobby.
In a stroke of luck I’ve run into Hubert Rami. Before television made it here, 640km from Darwin, Hubert was the “black Hendrix” to peers who had no reason at that time to believe Jimi, the great American guitarist, was anything but a white man.
With others like Freddy Patterson and Keith and John Rogers, Hubert pioneered the rock and blues musicianship of southeast Arnhem Land, learning by ear and sight from travelling rockers such as Johnny O’Keefe and guitarist Tony Joyce. Future guitarists here would learn rote from mail order cassettes and, later, videos.
Bands Yugul and Broken English became first and second generation Ngukurr acts. Members were heroes from Rainbow St to Groote Eylandt.
Hubert still plays on his outstation, his style now more “subtle” than his thrashing rock days, says Skinnyfish Music creative director Michael Hohnen.
“These phenomenal guitarists spread out through competition with each other,” he says. “South-east Arnhem Land doesn’t have a big profile in Darwin like North East Arnhem Land and the Tiwis. It may be that it’s so remote. It does go under the radar, but it’s a culture that’s been going on for several generations and it’s exciting.”
I’m on Rainbow St to find the third generation, Ngukurr’s hottest act, Lonely Boys, a six-piece guitar-inspired rock and punk outfit tapping into mainstream markets after almost two decades on the bush beat.
THERE
is a rising buzz for Tiwi Islands outfit B2M at the Saturday night Barunga Festival main stage, but nothing rowdy, nothing dangerous. It is unexpected then when MC Myf Warhurst politely warns the audience not to jump the barrier during the next act, Lonely Boys, or the show will be over immediately.
Tonight the boys are on. Frontman Kasley Daniels prowls and swaggers across the stage in a long sleeve shirt and beanie. He speaks limited English, but his presence is a language. He adds traditional dance moves among contemporary rock and roll theatrics, pointing, chest-slapping, leaning into the heaving front row about to break Myf’s commandment. He is the coolest man in Barunga.
His brother Dylan slaps the keyboard, expressionless because the riffs he devised with Kasley are the most natural things in the world.
Hubert’s nephew and lead guitarist Bert Rami may have equals, but no-one on this planet can out do him on a solo.
On Rainbow St weeks after Barunga I ask Bert how, without lessons, he learned his musical scales, those fretboard patterns over which his thick fingers burn.
“I don’t know no scales,” he says. “I just know how to play guitar.”
Rhythm guitarist Winston Foster Joshua was a petrol sniffer before joining the Lonely Boys. He got himself clean for his son, who has Down syndrome. The music saved him. Ben Mangi is the most recent member to join. His traditional vocals and didgeridoo add a tribal edge.
Kasley’s and Dylan’s cousin, Ambrose Daniels, formed the Lonely Boys out of kids who would wander into Ngukurr’s occasional music workshops. He is the band’s spokesman, its heart and soul and bass.
“There was a bit of a gang problem here, so we formed the coolest gang — Lonely Boys,” he says. “We didn’t use our fist, like street violence. We want to show young people a pathway. It’s better doing music or football or basketball.
“I always talk to young people: try to start a band or team. Try something that makes your family proud of what you’re doing. Old people come up to us: keep going, you’re doing a good thing.”
The sound, a hybrid of punk, rock and metal, is unlike any other band at Barunga. Lonely Boys melodies are more sophisticated. The sound unique. For Drop it Down,
Girl, the band’s second single, the crowd forms a ring in which rapturous young fans flail and dance. I’M on Rainbow St with Skinnyfish’s Mark Grose, who’s driven from Darwin to get the band for the next evening’s Na- tional Indigenous Music Awards, just in case. Cars are coveted in Ngukurr and transport can’t be assumed, he says.
The band failed to make it to Darwin in July to accept its rock gong in the NT Song of the Year Awards for their first single
Murray Island because a cousin had pranged their vehicle while they slept in Katherine.
More recently at the Freedom Festival 50th Anniversary in Kalkaringi, their set was put over to Saturday night because only half the band had arrived by Friday.
We have arrived in Ngukurr to pick up the band about noon. After laps in the hire troopy, knocking on doors to find band members, we leave by 5pm. This is bush rock and roll.
The band has been asked to perform Warumpi Band classic Blackfella Whitefella. But there are problems: one, Kasley has lost his voice. Two, the boys are yet to rehearse. They haven’t done much practice in months, not since their instruments, stored in their rehearsal shed, were smashed up and stolen.
They still don’t know how — in which style — they will play Blackfella Whitefella. The melodic, popsy Warumpi chorus is not a natural fit with the Lonely Boys rock-allthe-way style. Ambrose is not concerned. Kasley is their Brian Wilson, the keeper of their well of melodies, riffs and ideas.
“Kasley just sits back and listens really carefully and comes up with something,” Ambrose says. “I don’t know how he does it. He’s a very creative young fellow. He’s a genius.”
Ambrose is right to be confident. At Darwin, Kasley sits and listens, then takes his ideas to the group. The chorus, When you
gonna stand up and be counted, becomes a driving, tribal, rock chant with didgeridoo and drums: Stand up … and be counted.
In the small rehearsal room at Skinnyfish’s Darwin office the sound is electric. Ambrose will take the vocals tonight for the cover. Kasley will still sing the band’s original song, The Hunter, but he must preserve what he has left of his voice.
Kasley is shy around strangers and prefers to defer questions to Ambrose.
I push on and ask Kasley if he will be able to perform. “Once I feel the music, I’ll be OK,” he says.
The bands’ Skinnyfish minder James Mangohig says Kasley’s ear for musical excellence and aberration ranks with Gurrumul.
Meanwhile Ambrose stresses over the verse lines, re-reading and committing them to memory. By show time, the lyric sheet is creased, sweaty and smudged. On stage, the lights reflecting off the page make the lines unreadable.
He misses words. The boys are far apart on stage and the intimate, powerful sound in the rehearsal room dissipates in the expanse of the Darwin Amphitheatre.
FIRST
stop on the road from Ngukurr to Darwin is the Roper Bar Store for a takeaway dinner — soft drinks and a pizza box full of chips, chicken wings and other fried morsels doused in tomato sauce and passed from front to back to front to back.
Kasley and Dylan’s mother Grace has joined us for the ride to Darwin. She has let the boys use her car so many times she’s earned a lift, she says.
She wants to use the store’s toilet, but is refused. Someone made a mess of it earlier and it has only just been cleaned.
“It’s closed now, you can blame them,” the shop worker says. “Some people give you all a bad name.”
She is, of course, talking about Aborigi- nals. The band and Grace take the insult calmly. Ambrose tells her: “Talk to them, it’s not us”. Back in the troopy, Ambrose is upset. “Because of the colour of your skin you get all the blame,” he says
We soon pass the drinking spot about 30km out of town. Like nearly every Aboriginal community, alcohol is banned in Ngukurr. Police don’t bother you out here, Ambrose says as we pass the empty clearing.
“With alcohol, they treat us like kids, like a child,” he says. “They say we’re good for nothing. We just want to be treated as people. You saw at Roper Bar. It sounded accusing to me.
“And Katherine, that is the most racist place. How they treat blackfellas there is wrong. I went in a store there one day with a Basics Card and they said ‘Is there money in there?’
“I got in a cab. Before I even clicked myself in: “You got money?” I laughed: “I said, ‘I got money. I won’t rob you’.
“What we want to do with Lonely Boys, prove them all wrong. Show them there is good in us if you give us the opportunity.”
Bush band rock is a genre in itself and Lonely Boys are pushing it to new places. They recently recorded an EP on the Gold Coast with renowned producer Forrester Savell — it was their first trip to a city other than Darwin. Their dream is to tour, to take the gifts of Rainbow St to the great cities of the south. Their first single, Mur
ray Island, was released for the Song of the Year Awards. Drop it Down, Girl will come out this week. The Hunter, which Skinnyfish expects to be the biggest of the lot, will be released in the coming months with the EP.