Chris Wilson and Shane O’Mara are hooking up again with a different approach, writes Larry Schwartz.
CHRIS Wilson ambles along the footpath at the top end of Bourke Street, a man in black with a prized Gibson J-45 steel string acoustic in a scuffed guitar case.
He’s been writing songs with a guitar for some time. “But I didn’t play it in public,” says the singer, songwriter and blues-harp player. “I’ve done it a lot more now, solo gigs and stuff like that.”
The one-time Crown of Thorns frontman has no illusions. “I’m not going to be [Andres] Segovia,” he says over the hubbub in Pellegrini’s, where we had arranged to meet a former bandmate. “I haven’t got any pretensions to being a virtuoso.”
Not that this is of concern to Shane O’Mara, one of Australia’s most accomplished guitarists, with whom he is reunited onstage this month. “It isn’t just two guys with their guitars furiously thrashing away,” O’Mara says.
There is much laughter as they share memories including rare encounters with an elusive hero, Bob Dylan, and talk of tentative plans.
“We’re talking about maybe, dare I say, a hard blues record later in the year,” O’Mara says.
“Called, ‘I Couldn’t Give a Continental’?” Wilson suggests.
O’Mara played on Wilson’s 1992 solo album, Landlocked, then on Live at the Continental two years later and Spiderman in 2000. They have performed together on occasion since but rarely in recent years.
“When you come together after being apart so long, you realise you are way more informed and there are more options,” O’Mara says.
He is playing an electric, as well as a nylon-string guitar commonly associated with classical musicians but favoured by others from Willie Nelson to Duck Baker.
O’Mara studied classical guitar “thousands of years ago”. He has been accompanying singer-songwriter Lisa Miller but found the sound of their two steel strings “cancel each other out”. Mary Gauthier inspired him to turn to a nylon string. “She had this country picker playing nylon. The penny dropped.”
The guitarist was in Wilson’s band when he opened for Dylan, who watched their sound check on one of two cold nights at St Kilda’s Palais Theatre in April 1992.
Dylan came by later, moments after drummer Peter Luscombe stepped out to eat. “So Peter goes and gets his shawarma,” O’Mara says, “and we hear someone walking up the stairs and all of a sudden this ghost appears.”
Wilson takes up the story. “It’s Bob Dylan and he goes, ‘I really liked your band,’ and he shook our hands. Everybody was a bit gobsmacked. And then he walked out and Peter Luscombe walked in and said, ‘What’s the matter with you lot?”‘
They would meet Dylan again, on tour in the US. “There is an addendum to that,” Wilson says.
Luscombe stayed behind at their hotel in Los Angeles the night singer-songwriter Joe Henry took them to a show by Dylan’s son, Jakob.
They were invited on the tour bus. “We were having a few drinks,” O’Mara says. “Joe Henry goes, ‘Oh my god, Jakob’s dad is here.”‘
The drummer — whose nickname is, ironically, Lucky — missed out yet again. “When we went back to the hotel, we said, ‘Guess who turned up?”‘ Wilson says.
“Third time lucky,” O’Mara says.
The Age, 15-Jul-2011
Larry Schwartz Writer 