Steve Grieve and The Mourners inhabit an enigmatic virtual Neverland of hazy musical dreams, outback chicanery, and lumpy, urbane, hybrid rock, roots and blues edifices. Yes indeed. Since its inception some decades ago the band has been an on-again off-again vehicle for the songwriting of Steve Grieve and Dan Myles. Performing alongside such iconic acts as Dr Feelgood, Johnny Winter, and Lonnie Mack, and despite their best intentions, the band has acquired an improbable yet vaguely mythical cult status on an increasingly vast yet desultory Australian musical landscape. Since Dan’s recent return from a 14 year hiatus in the US many demons have been lain to rest, and the band’s most recent confrontations with crass commercialism, lazy stereotypes and alliteration have been ceremoniously captured and paraded on the new album Caterpillar Maze. Notwithstanding a busy career as chief mischief maker at home and sometime sideman to venerable artists the like of Jimmy Witherspoon, Elvin Bishop, Margaret Urlich, Christine Anu, Wendy Matthews and King Curly, Steve remains more or less unperturbed by the enduring gravity of the task before the band. Dan’s lengthy sojourn and travels across the US have delivered deep and rich musical insights, revealing fresh and compelling artistic battlegrounds to prosecute more or less forthwith. Miraculously, and against all the odds, Steve Grieve and The Mourners live to ride again another day – today mostly, occasionally yesterday, and periodically tomorrow instead.
