By Jo Roberts.
New York’s Daddy Long Legs have finally cast their web across Australia.
If you haven’t heard, there’s been a bit of a racket going on in Western Australia the past couple of days. A sweaty rockin’ racket described by Rolling Stone as “Chicago blues fired at the moon, played by the demented children of the Pretty Things” – a rather apt description of New York blues hellraisers Daddy Long Legs.
The raucous four have just begun their first Australian tour, and are about to make their way down the east coast for a flurry of dates including The Zoo in Brisbane, a free show at Sydney’s Enmore Hotel, and three club shows in Melbourne at The Curtin, Cherry Bar and Hotel Westwood. They finish off with a show on each of the three days of the sold-out Queenscliff Music Festival (25-27 November) before wreaking maniacal blues havoc in New Zealand.
Singer and harmonica/guitar player Brian Hurd hails from St Louis, Missouri, one of the early birthplaces of the blues. There he grew up surrounded by and absorbing classic rhythm and blues, but was also listening to late ‘70s punk birthed in CBGBs.
It was the idea to form a punk band that led him to move to New York, where he found “the scene was all pretty well saturated with that sort of thing.”
“But I had started to really dig into the old blues, delta blues, gospel, and that really started to become my main source of inspiration,” he says.
Hurd began meeting kindred spirits in New York bars late at night. A few drinks would lead to “whooping and hollering and stomping around”, which, soon enough, enticed guitarist Murat Akturk and drummer Josh Styles.
“Eventually Murat would get out his acoustic guitar and start playing along, and we would just be doing real stripped-down acoustic blues. And then Josh came in, and he was like, ‘this is a lot of fun. You guys need a big beat’. So he came in and put the beat behind it.”
From 2010, Daddy Long Legs began playing wherever they could and whenever they could; house parties, on the streets, spontaneous gigs at bars in the middle of the night.
“We were just off and running, and people just responded to it immediately,” says Hurd. “No one else in New York was doing that at the time. And that was basically how it all started out.”
The band has gone on to tour with the likes of the Damned, the Sonics, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Nikki Lane and Hurray for the Riff Raff. And artists to join them onstage have included heroes such as Wilko Johnson (Dr Feelgood, the Blockheads), Cyril Jordan and the late Roy Loney (Flamin’ Groovies), and Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group.
Although the blues eventually seduced Hurd, punk still left its mark, evidenced by the band’s explosive live shows that have seen them gain huge popularity in the UK and Europe.
Hurd has lost count of how many times his band has toured the UK. From the time they formed until March 2020, when COVID-19 ground the world to a halt, Daddy Long Legs would tour there every year, often twice.
It was there that Wilko Johnson’s fellow Stiff Records alumni, Nick Lowe, saw the band play. Lowe told Yep Roc label co-founder, Glenn Dicker, about the New York outfit that was putting their own seamy, steamy stamp on the blues.
“The next thing I knew is we were getting a phone call from Glenn Dicker,” says Hurd. “And he said, ‘hey, guys. I’d like to meet you. I’m going to be jumping on a plane and coming to New York if you guys would like to get together for some drinks.’ And I was like, ‘Wow!’ This doesn’t happen anymore, the head of a label just jumping on an airplane to go meet a band and take them on for dinner and drinks.
“It was very cool, very cool. And we got along famously. And after that meeting, I just went home and started writing ‘Lowdown Ways’.”
Released in 2019, ‘Lowdown Ways’ was the band’s first album with Yep Roc, following a few earlier releases with New York’s esteemed Norton Records. Songs such as ‘Pink Lemonade’ and ‘Morning’ Noon & Nite’ are highlights of what Hurd still refers to as their “latest album”; however, while Hurd won’t reveal its title, Daddy Long Legs’ second album for Yep Roc is already in the can, slated for release in January.
It was the sessions for this forthcoming album, recorded a year ago by old friend Oakley Munson of the Black Lips, that inspired a major change for the band.
“Oakley plays a lot of keys too,” says Hurd. “So when we started pre-production for the songs, he just would jump on the organ or jump on the piano and start banging along to them. And it just sounded so great and so immediate that we ended up using a lot of keys and organ on the record, but he wasn’t available to join the band full time. But another old friend of ours had been whispering in my ear for years, ‘hey, if you guys ever need keys or a piano, pick me up’.”
So, after 10 years as a trio, Daddy Long Legs finally became true to their name – becoming an eight-legged beast with the addition of keyboardist Dave Klein.
Of course, not every song in the Daddy Long Legs canon calls for boogie-woogie keyboard. So Klein has become “the utility guy of the band” says Hurd, contributing percussion, keys or backing vocals as needed.
‘Nightmare’ is the first song released from the new album, and features yet another of Hurd’s idols, Wreckless Eric, on backing vocals.
‘Nightmare’ has a Stonesy rock ‘n’ roll swagger to it, with Hurd confirming the new album will be “a straightforward rock ‘n’ roll record.”
“And at this point in our career, I was really ready to just let that happen and let Daddy Long Legs be whatever that is, whatever the hell that is,” he says.
In an interview a few years back, another journalist asked Hurd “what is Daddy Long Legs?” So, has that definition changed?
“No. Same answer.”
So, Australia, your chance has finally arrived to experience “rock and roll salvation through the spirit of roots and blues”. Get your dancing legs ready.
Daddy Long Legs are touring Australia now. Tour dates below:
November 11, 12, 13 – BLUES AT BRIDGETOWN, WA – TICKETS
November 15 – DUKE OF GEORGE, PERTH – TICKETS
November 16 – THE ZOO, BRISBANE – TICKETS
November 18 – ELTHAM HOTEL, NSW – TICKETS
November 19 – ENMORE HOTEL, SYDNEY – FREE SHOW
November 20 – THIRROUL MUSIC FESTIVAL, NSW – TICKETS
November 22 – THE CURTIN, MELBOURNE – TICKETS
November 23 – CHERRY BAR, MELBOURNE – TICKETS
November 24 – HOTEL WESTWOOD, MELBOURNE – TICKETS
November 25,26,27 – QUEENSCLIFF MUSIC FESTIVAL – TICKETS