CONWAY SAVAGE, the long serving pianist and backing vocalist for Nick Cave’s band The Bad Seeds, will play a solo show upstairs in the Róisín Dubh on Friday August 7 at 8pm.
Conway is currently promoting his new album Live In Ireland, which is released tomorrow. The album was recorded in The Glens Centre in Manorhamilton on October 18 2008. For his Róisín Dubh show, Conway will be joined by Amanda Fox (keyboard/vocal/accordion ) and Robert Tickner (guitar/vocal ).
Conway grew up in a small town called Fish Creek in the southern Australian province of Victoria. The family all loved music, played guitar, and regularly enjoyed sing-songs, but no one ever thought about making a living out of music.
However Conway “felt uncomfortable with the guitar” and took up the piano instead and his passion for the instrument convinced him he should dedicate his life to music. Conway eventually moved to the capital of Victoria - Melbourne - where he played in bands like Dust On The Bible and The Feral Dinosaurs.
Conway’s ‘big break’ came in 1990, when one of Australia’s greatest songwriters came looking for his services. Nick Cave wanted Conway to become a Bad Seed.
“I didn’t know the band very well,” Conway told me when I interviewed him last year, “but we had mutual friends. I got a phone call one day asking ‘Would you consider joining the Bad Seeds?’ and I said ‘Well I’ll have to think about it’, but it turned out I had played with Nick Cave once before at a wedding - that’s Australia, mutual friends everywhere - I had a country band at the time and Nick and ourselves played Elvis numbers.”
Conway has been a Bad Seed since and has performed on celebrated Cave albums like Murder Ballads, No More Shall We Part, and the recent Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!
However it is only in the last decade or so, that Conway has truly pursued a solo career alongside his Bad Seed duties. In 2000 he released Nothing Broken. This was followed by Wrong Man’s Hands (2003 ), Rare Songs & Performances (2005 ), Quicky For Ducky (2007 ), and now Live In Ireland.
“You have to work your way into it, slowly grow more confident in my abilities to write and perform,” he said, “especially to write in the way that I want.”
Conway’s solo work reveals a powerful songwriter and a first rate interpreter of song. His voice and piano playing imbue everything he does with a haunting majesty and moving power.
“When you want to say something you have to balance that with how to sing it and perform it and make it good,” he said of his songwriting method. “The melody will inform the lyrics. It’s about making it work and hitting that delicate balance.”
Tickets are available from the Róisín Dubh and Zhivago.
