If all politics is local, and all politics is personal, then all blues is local, and all blues is personal for Australian musician Phil Coyne and his band The Wayward Aces. “The blues has been an integral part of my life since I was given a mix tape by a friend with Little Walter, Howling Wolf, Muddy Waters, Sonny Boy Williamson II and Johnny Winter on it. I was into punk music in those days and the discovery opened my eyes to a similar energy and outsider world. I’ve learned that there’s a lot in common across cultures.
I find it astounding that I am halfway across the world, and I have a connection with this amazing and exotic world that stretches across the globe. When I’ve met other players and enthusiasts from other countries we’ve bonded over our mutual love of blues,” Coyne was quoted as saying, in an interview with music journalist Michael Limnios. “…I think blues just one of those things where if I didn’t have it, I would feel there was something missing. Somehow like a hole in the spirit somewhere, and I’d be a lot sadder.
Blues is such a part of me, and has been for such a long time and it’s given me so many experiences, so many friends, I’d be a shell of myself. It’s more than just music, it’s a way of being and it’s the way of looking at the world and it’s a complete honour to be involved, part of an ocean of human spirit. Music is animating and it brings us together and it helps it helps articulate things that we can feel, but we can’t say, or we don’t know how to put in words, and it means that we can commune and share and rise above whatever the shit that we’re dealing with is right now.”
This is reflected in the band’s upcoming album, with a polished new sound, excellent mixing, Coyne in top form, and the band cranking out tunes reestablishing Wayward Aces as one of the top Aussie blues bands to watch in 2024. There’s this lack of pretension or preachiness that can even be in some of the maestros’ songs. Like anyone who is truly a student of the musical collective, Coyne wants to tell a good story.
There’s something about each of the band’s new tracks, be it You Go First to Asking for a Friend, Free as Birds to Pretty Thing that has continuity, a distinct sound that remains consistent in all the right ways. That’s not to say Coyne and the band don’t experiment within the limits they’ve given themselves. But they’re interested in solely being one thing, in this case that kind of singular focus not being a detriment, but one of their biggest assets as a musical act.
The charts have bred a kind of capriciousness in modern iterations of popular music. Musical acts, and those perpetuating them are beholden to corporate oversight, greed, and interests antithetical to the genuine, musical experience. But with the democratization of the digital release, the internet is playing a key role in connecting talent across a wide spectrum and berth, and allowing musical acts not adherent to the corporatization of the music world their chance to shine. Coyne is one of these acts, someone who sticks to his guns, and for whom us listeners are all the better for it.
Mindy McCall
