Cam from “Cameron Holmes and The Blues Dudes” was proud of what the band has achieved.He can be. The unique sound of the band has been described as “Blues with a Melbourne twist.”
And yes, I can hear that unique sound we sometimes tag special bands, that produce a blend that Melbournians see as their own.
I had been sent a copy of their new single “Warhorse,” which I might best describe as “hardcore blues.” I was not far off the mark.
“Our music is a total melting pot of styles,’ Cam explains.”Our drummer comes from Spook The Banshee (a metal band),the bass player has played a lot of stoner rock, Cam has done everything “from classical to heaqvier stuff which you could call Prog,” the Sax player can play everything and the harmonica player who has played blues and folk his whole life.”
Cam is taking a three prong approach to the music. The tracks will be individual enough to be placed on Spotify (or similar)and the Band will be producing an Ep.
“People consume music in a different way. People tend not to listen to an album from end to end now.
Cam likes to sit back, relax and hopefully the mood will come to write a song. “I like to ‘free write,’ which is a technique that a lot of spiritualists use. I don’t know where it comes from, but I write general themes and then I fill it out from there.”
I wanted to look at the “Melbourne Edge,” with the music of “Cameron Holmes and the Blues Dudes.”
“Warhorse” has a dark edge to it. “It’s not something we set out to create, it’s something that happened with the way that we write. You can’t put our music into any particular category and that’s something that I really like about it.By drawing from a lot of different genres and pulling a lot of different styles together, we think we have come up with something unique.”
Another track “Hell” is written for lap steel guitar. “It has the sax backing up the bottom end. It’s a different track. Very us.”
And “Fourteen?”
“Is as close to trad blues as we get. It’s about writing a song about your girl friend, but your girlfriend is Amphetamine.It’s because who we are and how we write that we can take it to darker places.”
“In my ideal world, we could do something like Pink Floyd could did in ‘The Wall”. Create a flow, from end to end and has a story. People don’t consume music like that any more, but we try and do that in our live shows.
Cameron Holmes and the Blues Dudes
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