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Rhythms – Australia’s Roots Music Monthly MALONE’S NEW TONE Bob Malone is at home in Hollywood, California when I put the call through to him. He sounds relaxed and happy, he’s keen to chat and why wouldn’t he be? He’s got a bit of time off from his hectic touring schedule, he's just released a new record, his seventh, which sees him broaching new territory and when he does jump back on the road in a couple of weeks, it'll be to head down our way, for the fourth time in as many years. You may not have heard of this R&B piano-man, but he's been there, and here, for quite some time, slowly but surely working his way into your musical consciousness. "Yeah, you’re right, this'll be my fourth time touring through Australia," Malone concurs. "The first time I was there I only played the one festival, but every tour since then has been for a while, around five weeks or so." This time around we'll see Malone over here for almost a month and a half, starting at Narooma early next month and wending his way all over the country, playing - interestingly enough - quite a few shows over in WA, obviously one of the most remote parts of the planet. “l know, I've never been over there before, but we got a couple of shows over there then built a bunch of stuff around it,” he enthuses. “Brand new territory it'll be great, and most people in Australia haven’t been over there... and Perth is the most remote city in the world, I look at the map, and I’m like, yeah, wow.” Malone has a penchant for travel, so crossing the Nullabour makes him no never mind, he's here to play, which is what he’s been doing solidly for the entirety of his career. What else he’s been doing for the entirety of his career, as musicians are indeed wont to do, is making records, and as we mentioned, his seventh, Ain't What You Know, has just been released, and it's interesting to note that the title of the record came from a comment Malone received whilst on tour here last time. “It was up in Airlie Beach at this really laid back place,” he laughs. “l got there and everyone is sorta sitting around drinking then the sound guys arrived with the PA an hour late then they kinda sat down with us and started drinking too, so a couple of hours went by and we eventually got everything set up and it was a great night. But the bar owner said, “Yeah, in this town it ain’t what you know, it ain’t who you know, it’s what you know about who you know. I thought: there’s gotta be a song in that.” There was indeed a song in that, and a whole record to boot, as it was after that night that Ain't What You Know began to take shape. From there, Malone hooked up with producer Bob DeMarco, whom he'd worked with before, composing music for television, and this is where Malone began to broach new territory, moving away from the more sedate pace he’d moved at in the past, and delving into a more rock n' roll sound. “He pretty much said, ‘I wanna make a record with you, I've heard all your records and I think there’s some stuff that's under-represented as far as what you can do’,” Malone explains. “He really wanted to make a better sounding record with me, move it up to the next level.” “And I was really open to that because maybe a year before I'd done my last record, and I was really happy with it, but it was similar to the others, I was ready to do something a little different. Not so different that people who liked the other records would be alienated, but different.” It seems then, that DeMarco’s aim was to get Malone to try something different without really altering his stylistic blueprint. “Yeah, that was the whole idea,” Malone concurs. “The energy that I bring to my live show, I never felt was a part of my records...as far as that energy goes, getting across that power, that hadn’t happened yet. So this record is different, but I think it really fits in with me, so it's worked out really well.” “I had no agenda this time, I was writing some new songs but I didn't really know what I was doing yet and had nothing specific in mind, but Bob did, which is why it was perfect…I was just really open for suggestions.” The result is the rock n' roll, New Orleans piano magic that Malone is becoming known for in Ain’t What You Know, and as it stands, if you don’t know, there’s no doubt you'll soon find out. - Samuel J. Fell
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