As always, there's a lot going on; but I want to start this week where I finished three weeks ago.

Yes, I realise it's possible a few of you are getting tired of reading about Graham Clark, frontman of rhythm and blues purveyors Brilleaux and, as of the beginning of this year, author of Tauranga's only comprehensive music history with the publication of his epic tome ‘The Right Note'.

Ritchie Pickett.

In defence, may I just say some things require space and some things deserve space, and the stuff Graham's been doing – the book and organising a third United Kingdom/European tour for Brilleaux – fill both of those criteria. This week, though, I wanted to explore what Graham's working on now.

What's next?

His initial foray into the land of literature has obviously ignited a passion since Graham is well into work on his next book, a biography of the man many called the ‘Wildman of New Zealand Country Music', the wicked piano pumping Ritchie Pickett.

This might interest a lot of people since Ritchie, for many years, lived in Tauranga. He was in more than a few bands here. In fact, given his often rapid turnover of musicians it was probably dozens of bands, playing with musicians such as Chris Gunn, his main collaborator over several years, Joe Puriri, Paul Higgins, Lewis Baker, Simon Elton and bucketloads more. It would take a historian simply to gather the names of those bands, often changing weekly: Horace Truck and the Frightening Kenworths, the Hole in the Wall Gang, and so many more...and Ritchie was a big influence on the music scene here. You could argue that without him there wouldn't have been either a Brilleaux or Kokomo or much else.

So Graham is writing a book, trying to take it all in: Graffiti, Think, That's Country, The Inlaws, Gone For Water, The Fat Band, The Jones Boys, The Disturbance, All Strung Out In a Bunch, the whole enchilada.

This weekend he's interviewing Alan Badger, legendary bass player and singer, and he even recently engineered a reunion of the fabled Inlaws, the band Ritchie travelled the world with and recorded his first album ‘Gone For Water'. Even back then there was a Tauranga connection with one of the two guitarists being a young Kevin Coleman, who later went on to play bass with Hard To Handle.

Musical tribute

As a sweetener to persuade the band to all come to town to be interviewed – bass player Jimmy Wallace is in Whangarei, guitarist Dave Maybee in Raglan, drummer Noel Lamberton in Rotorua – Graham arranged studio time at The Boatshed Studio
in Whakamarama.

They spent a day talking about Ritchie and day recording a ‘Ritchie tribute', a version of Ritchie's ‘Honky Tonk Heroes' rewritten by Jimmy to be about Ritchie and the band.
With all this in mind, I'd like to do a little unsolicited soliciting. There must be hundreds of you out there with Ritchie stuff – stories, photographs, memorabilia, demo tapes, whatever.

Can I suggest you contact Graham.

Just go to the Brilleaux website and email him.

After all, there's probably only going to be one book about Ritchie and this is it. So we might as well try and get as much in there as possible, the whole story for better or for worse...

Graham also played a couple of weeks ago at the annual Ritchie Pickett tribute show in Cambridge, organised by Larry Morris and other friends of Ritchie. Graham's and Chris Gunn's bands were there to represent Tauranga and Graham's the only one to play Ritchie songs. But, of the others on the bill, the most props, from the people I've spoken to, went to Jordan Luck and his new band who, apparently, sounded sensational.

That's not entirely surprising given his history and great new album ‘Not Only...But Also'.

Couple Jordan's songwriting chops and stagecraft with a band including Bryan Bell from the legendary Dead Flowers and something good was sure to happen.

But don't just take my word for it.

Remember, The Jordan Luck Band plays Totara St, the venue at MauaoPAC, on Friday, June 3.

Check for tickets at undertheradar.co.nz

watusi@thesun.co.nz