Tex Perkins bounces back with The Fat Rubber Band

“There is a certain maturity that we now possess where ideas can really take form and solidify pretty quickly because of our time together,” says Tex Perkins, pondering The Fat Rubber Band’s new album, Other World. Ahead of their WA shows this week at the Stirling Arms, Guildford, on Friday, March 3, Ravenswood Hotel on Saturday, March 4, and the Augusta River Festival on Sunday, March 5, BOB GORDON spoke to Tex Perkins about new life and other worlds.

Through the recent years of lockdowns and silence and having too much to think, Tex Perkins always found solace in the company of song.

Having revelled in the experience of his friend Matt Walker becoming a co-writer-conspirator, then forming and recording the first Fat Rubber Band album at Walker’s Stovepipe Studios with bassist Steve Hadley, drummer Roger Bergodaz and percussionist Evan Richards, Perkins was itching to commence work on what has become the band’s second album, Other World.

“Basically, this recording came about because we had been working on and off over the last three years,” Perkins says. “Well, a fair bit of off during Covid, but we had bonded as a unit, and everybody understood how the band works. When an idea was presented, it was so effortlessly realised because of our understanding of each other.”

“The first FRB album, even though you can hear now there’s gifted people involved that know what they’re doing – I’m not including myself in that equation – it was kind of deliberately a little bit ragged.”

“There is a certain maturity that we now possess where ideas can really take form and solidify pretty quickly because of our time together. We’ve become a real band. I think what you heard on the first album is the band being formed.”

Eager to get the back-and-forth of song ideas going between Walker and himself, Perkins presented Pretty Damn Close, a lyrically rueful blues number reminiscent of the late JJ Cale.

“That was the song I wrote just to kind of nudge him, going ‘okay I got a song, time for you to reciprocate’,” Perkins recalls. “That was how the first album happened; it was kind of a game of tennis.”

Walker offered the guitar bones of Brand New Man, the lyrics of which came to Perkins as he was driving to meet his grandson, Ernie, for the very first time.

“I’m listening to Matt’s demo while I’m driving and these words are appearing,” he recalls. “And they’re fitting fucking perfectly.”

Already a new live favourite, Brand New Man captures the wonderment of new life, but also speaks more broadly about wanting to be a brand new man for other people, and the willingness to change. “Everything changes,” Perkins notes. “Everything’s got to keep changing… if you don’t change, you die.”

With Pretty Damn Close and Brand New Man committed to tape the ball was well and truly rolling. Respected singer/songwriter Lucie Thorne gifted her newly written song, Around The World, after Perkins had complimented her on it at a gig.

“For Lucie Thorne to give you a song… it’s a bit of a big deal, really,” says Perkins. “She’s very particular and protective of her music.”

Working on the track the Fat Rubber Band went about fattening it up to make it big – something Thorne herself had expected – but Perkins wasn’t hearing it and suggested they ‘go smaller.’ Walker put down several takes with a miniature hybrid four-string guitar (‘not a ukulele!’) that was hanging on the studio wall. With a whole new tone, the song was almost there, but feeling that it needed something more sonorous, Perkins had an epiphany. ‘It’d be great if we could have a saw on this track.’

“Steve Hadley’s lying there on the couch and opened his eyes and said, ‘I know a girl who plays saw. I’ve got her number. I can get her here in 20 minutes.’ Charlie Barker came over and in an hour she put the saw track on it. I was like, ‘oh my God.’ It was like a bizarre fantasy where everything I wanted happened.”

While Around The World is indeed quite beautifully haunting, tracks such as Close To You have a rhythmic Sticky Fingers-era Stones quality, while This Monin’ induces a mood of swamp blues and The Devil Ain’t Buyin’ – which may or may not be a sequel to the first album’s opening track, Pay The Devil His Due –  provides a turn at the crossroads.

“Matt’s obsessed with bringing me the devil,” says Perkins. “He brings me the devil all the time and I just let him go. He had a few lyrics, and I caught on to the idea of the devil ain’t buying.”

“I kept saying to take some of this idea of the mythology of how the devil buys the soul,” Walker explains. “Like the classic example, Robert Johnson, the story that he sold his soul at the crossroads to the devil. I had this idea of what if the devil suddenly said, ‘I’m not buying souls anymore. I don’t care, you sort your own shit out. Don’t try coming here to make a deal.’”

“But his solo!” exclaims Perkins. “It’s like sitting next to Ry Cooder in ’65 with Captain Beefheart. It’s his solo that makes it a world-shaker!”

Walker’s guitar permeations offer sizzle and sauce throughout, leaning in, away and against Perkins’ dusky baritone. The Last Drop features some Middle Eastern (“not full Eastern,” says Walker, “we never go full Eastern”) guitar picking reminiscent of Leonard Cohen, but also inspired by a little ditty that Perkins’ son Louis was practicing at home (subsequently earning a writing credit on the song).

“The Last Drop could be seen as a bit of a downer,” Perkins notes. ‘My part is ending, it’s over to you.’  That line I personally see as a generational handing on of the baton. We fucked it, now you have a go. But yeah… I’ve been writing apologies to my children in my songs for years.”

“He’s gonna get up and play with us some time,” Walker says to Perkins. “You know that’s gonna happen.”

“I’d like him to take over my job,” says Perkins Snr. “He can be ‘Tex Perkins.’”

While Perkins’ work over the decades has suggested that danger, mishap and misfortune may well be our greatest teachers, there’s food for thought at play amongst any world-weariness.

“They’re certainly philosophical,” he says of the tracks on the album. “The song, Nobody Owes You Nothin’, that is just sheer advice to myself… or anybody. You gotta please yourself, just don’t hurt anybody else. Live your life. Do what you wanna do, but don’t fuck over other people in the process.”

While he’s played with many musicians, finding true collaborators is something that Perkins treasures. During the long lockdowns, he pondered whether he would ever have that day-to-day musician experience again. With The Fat Rubber Band it’s not just another grouping of musicians playing music together, but a gathering that is very much head and heart and soul and something he is clearly grateful for.

“I loved making this record so much,” Perkins says, “because fucking magic happened. But that magic comes from 40 years of dudes hanging around each other and knowing where they fit in the dynamic of the creative thing. They’re all really great people and they’re all really great at what they do.

“So shit yeah, I feel grateful and lucky. And I let them know.”