Remembering Shiyan...and more, part 1

So this blog is about a band I was in from 1994-1998, Indigo Rush. But before that, from 1992-1994, I was in a little outfit called Shiyan.

First a bit of background. I had discovered music at a very young age - before my conscious memory, in fact - and other than piano lessons for a couple of years I had never really done anything with it. I had taught myself to sing listening to radio while being driven around in the family car.

Then gradually my musical horizons expanded. I was a radio addict, but in 1989 I discovered an album called Appetite for Destruction. I had been a fairly uptight Catholic schoolboy, half convinced that heavy metal was the devil's music. But when I listened to Appetite (ironically lent to me by a school classmate) my world was turned inside out. Somehow, these five guys from the mean streets of LA got inside my heart, mind and soul and showed me a new horizon.

Then in 1991 I finished high school and was just kicking around at home waiting for uni to start the following year. A friend turned me on to Led Zeppelin, which at first I just thought was a god-awful noise. Then one night, while giving their debut album one last try, somehow I suddenly got it. It was like a religious conversion - suddenly, Plant's wailing, Jimmy's emotive guitar, Bonham's powerhouse drums and Jones' throbbing bass suddenly all made sense. I wanted to learn it all - bass, drums, guitar and to sing like Plant. It was at this time that I taught myself guitar chords, started singing again and I started to write rudimentary songs.

At uni I met a very unlikely candidate to be in a band with, but nonetheless fired by idealism we started a band called Backslash. The guy's name was Alex Kelleher, and he claimed to be able to sing. He did show me a couple of squeaky falsetto notes - his way of imitating Vince Neil - but claimed he really could sing properly. I guess I sort of believed him, so it was arranged he would sing and I would play bass (which was becoming my main musical expression of choice). We christened our two-man group Backslash - in honour of the computer craze sweeping the world and the fact that Alex was doing an IT degree.

I had no idea how we were going to recruit other members. Alex was from Canberra and knew no-one in Bathurst, and I lived at Raglan and similarly knew hardly anyone. But a mate's sister, on hearing from me that I wanted to be in a band, recommended a guitarist she knew - Craig Heterick.

So a meeting was arranged. Craig soon recommended two other musicians that he knew - a wandering minstrel that hardly anyone knew how to find in the pre-Facebook, pre-mobile phone era, a guitarist by the name of Brett Stevens. The other was a drummer, Daniel Murphy.

And so with Alex on vocals, Brett and Craig on guitars, Dan our drummer and myself on bass, suddenly we were a five-piece group.

Our first rehearsal was in Dan's backyard, he lived on Russell Street if I recall correctly. Expectations were high, at least for me, since this was my first time playing properly in a group. It was somewhat ramshackle - I had a fairly crappy practice bass amp - but everyone made up for that with enthusiasm.

We started in on the first song - fuck knows what that was now - and we all watched as Alex stepped up to the mike to sing the first notes. He opened his mouth, took in a breath - and nothing happened. He shook his head in embarrassment and stepped away from the mike. We were all like, OK, first time nerves that's fine. He had a couple more goes at it - but each time with the same result.

So - eventually we all agreed that Alex had to go, and to my surprise I was asked to step in. I could certainly sing, but for some reason I just wanted to be in the background playing bass. That seemed cooler to me than being upfront. Nonetheless I took up the mantle.

Backslash didn't go very far, we played a birthday party in a shearing shed at Burraga - a farming community outside of Bathurst, with a ring-in drummer who was attending my uni and who hailed from Palm Beach, Sydney. Ha ha what a bit of culture shock for him! Nonetheless, Jeremy Allen did well to adapt but I think it did his head in a bit.

Eventually, Brett, Dan and I decided we could no longer continue to improve as a band with Craig on guitar. We all liked him but sadly we just felt he wasn't keeping up with the rest of us. So it was down to me to give him the news. It was one of the most difficult things I had ever done, telling this nice guy he no longer had a place in this up-and-coming group, and even though he was upset he accepted the decision.

So now we were a three-piece - but not for long. We found another guitarist, a guy even more elusive than Brett had been - Matt Lane. He was also heavily into Led Zeppelin, in fact it was Matty who turned me on to one of Zep's less accesible albums - Presence. (That album remains one of my very favourite albums of all time.)

So now we were a four-piece:

Dan Murphy - drums
Brett Stevens - guitar and vocals
Matt Lane - guitar
Anthony Tobin - bass and vocals

The name for this new band was given by someone in Dan Murphy's family (his brother? his brother's girlfriend?), and was taken from the Native American tribe, the Cheyenne.

Coming in part 2...Shiyan - influences, gigs and misadventures.

Band member profile - David Powter

Also in this blog I'm going to write a series of profiles of the four other band members, based on what I can remember about each of them. Bear in mind that this was fifteen years ago now! Also, I may not know everything about them as when we were in the band we were pretty focussed on the band; I don't remember too many conversations that I was involved in where we talked about what we did outside the band...

So to the subject of this post.

David Anthony Powter - or as we all called him, DAP - hailed from the small NSW country town of Condobolin. (Current population: approx. 2,800). There he attended high school, and qualified as a teacher. When I first met him, Dap was teaching in primary schools around the area (including my own Raglan Public School) and playing in bands at the same time.

Dap's influences were Stevie Ray Vaughan, Cold Chisel, Van Halen, and many others that I cannot recall. He could play just about anything you gave him, and was a consummate professional in the studio.

Dap was always one of the friendliest, nicest, and one of the most considerate blokes I'd ever met. (This was in stark contrast to my own behaviour at the time - more on that in a moment). I didn't drive, and Dap always had no problems in picking me up from my home at Raglan, 10 k's out of town, and taking me to band practice. In fact if I remember rightly, the guys had a system whereby they would take turns picking up their singer - what a bunch of guys eh!

Dap was a Scorpio if I recall, but unlike a lot of Scorpios Dap had a really pleasant disposition - most of the time. Certainly if crossed or mistreated then the dark side would emerge, although this happened only a couple of times during the time I knew him. And only once was it directed toward me (again - more on that in a moment).

As a school teacher Dap was possessed with a great sense of humour, always enlivening rehearsals with his sense of fun, and a great deal of patience (again - usually toward myself!). Indigo Rush would have been nowhere near as much fun as it was if it wasn't for Dap.

Also, Dap was a seasoned musician who had been performing for a number of years before Brett and I met him (more on this in a later post about the origins of I.R.) I think his band at the time was Out for The Weekend, in which Cameron Ashpole was also the drummer (we poached them both for our new band, tee hee!). Brett and I had ended our previous band and we were not really looking for new members, but when we met Dap and realised what a great guitar player he was, and well we knew it was the right time to start again.

Some of my greatest memories involve going over to Dap's share house, which at first consisted of the bass player with Out for the Weekend and two girls. This for me was my big discovery of girls and how they operated, since I'd had a rather sheltered life and gone to a Catholic private school and had basically no life experience. So knowing Dap enabled me to experience a whole new world, of laughter, friendship, togetherness, getting to know girls, making silly mistakes, and of course, music and performing.

I won't go into detail about the not-so-good-times, but let's just say that I was, I can easily admit, highly immature at the time. I was new to all this fun stuff, and I just wanted to suck the marrow of everything I could. I was therefore incredibly selfish, whereas Dap, Garry and Cameron who were a little older, wiser and more experienced than me, all knew more about giving and taking, sharing and being generous. I knew fuck all about those things, so usually I was a taker. I think I knew this deep down so I tried to give my role as the singer 150%, especially on stage. But in the end I made things hard for the guys, and when I later returned to Bathurst and bumped into Dap he didn't want to know me. Which hurt at the time, but looking back and seeing all the things I did, I can understand.

The last I heard of Dap was that he was no longer in Bathurst and was playing with a band called Razor Glass. I've tried googling Dap but nothing ever comes up. It's probably for the best. I wish Dap nothing but good fortune and a lot of happiness, he was a great mate and a great band member.

As mentioned in a previous post, Dap contributed the song Rushman and the original riff to Foreign Land to the band's catalogue. Dap could always make any song sound good. Good on you, mate, maybe we'll meet up again when the karma is cleared.

Edit, 18 Oct 2012: I have now found Dap, Brett and Razor Glass on Facebook. Also Garry Anderson's oldest boy, Chris, plays bass in Razor Glass.