“A blood moon is a rare lunar eclipse, where the sun, the earth and the moon all briefly align before they return to their own orbits. It’s a lot like Cold Chisel,” says frontman Jimmy Barnes. “These days we all have our own careers and our own lives – so everything has to be right for us to get in a room and say, ‘we’re ready to do this’.”
And as rare as a blood moon is, Cold Chisel has found time to record three albums in the last 10 years – No Plans (2012), The Perfect Crime (2015) and now Blood Moon. It’s all the more special, given the creative purple patch that the members have been in over the last 18 months. Don Walker released his book Songs, an exhaustive collection of lyrics, from Khe Sanh through to today, and released a new solo album, Live at Camelot. Then he and his band crisscrossed the country playing gigs around Don’s commitments on the literary circuit. In early 2018, singer/guitarist Ian Moss released his first all-self-penned solo album in 22 years, entitled Ian Moss. He then toured the country promoting it. And in 2019, he celebrated the 30th anniversary of his ARIA award-winning album Matchbook with another national tour. Jimmy Barnes, meanwhile, has released two award-winning biographies, Working Class Boy and Working Class Man and in early 2019 he delivered his acclaimed album, My Criminal Record and then undertook the huge ‘Shutting Down Your Town’ tour.
Somehow and somewhere in the middle of all this, in June this year, Cold Chisel – completed by bass player Phil Small and drummer Charley Drayton – cleared their calendars and entered Jimmy’s Freight Train Studio to workshop the 25 songs all members of the band brought in. It was a joyous, creative time and it set the tone for what was to come. Reconvening in August/September at Studio 301 with the band’s long-time ally and producer Kevin Shirley, the band moved quickly to record 13 or 14 songs before whittling them down to the 10 tracks that make up Blood Moon.
In typical Cold Chisel style, there’s a potpourri of ideas, sounds and genres across Blood Moon – from the chooglin’ boogie of the first single Getting The Band Back Together, which celebrates the weekend warrior in all of us (including the band), to the angry, visceral epic Killing Time, the high-speed oblivion of Drive, the crazed-carnival sounds of Boundary Street to Ian Moss’ soulful closer You Are So Beautiful.
The songs also came together in different ways – some were straight from the pen of Don Walker; Buried Treasure was the first songwriting contribution between Charley Drayton and Walker; and some tumbled out unusually: “In between our demoing and the recording, a friend of mine was reading Songs and he asked me about a handful of songs that had never been recorded or released, but were included in the book,” says Don. Two of those songs, “Boundary Street” and “Accident Prone” found their way, at the eleventh hour, onto Blood Moon. “They were songs I’d written many years before but hadn’t thought to submit. Through being reawakened to them, I tossed them in the ring and both of them stuck.”
Don and Jimmy also found a new way to work together. “Working with Don has evolved over the years,” says Barnes. “It was very intimidating when I first started writing with Don, in the earliest days of Cold Chisel. Don was writing ‘Khe Sanh’ when I was sort of scratching my head, trying to put three lines together (he laughs). In the past, when we’d write I’ve written music and Don’s written lyrics. It’s only in the last two years that the process has turned around. I think particularly since writing the two autobiographies I’ve found my voice as a writer and I think I’ve had the confidence to write and then to say ‘Hey Don, I’ve sent you some lyrics.’ I would send lyrics to Don and he’d say ‘It’s so great to have lyrics that I don’t have to anguish over.’”
Killing Time, Someday, Drive and Land Of Hope all came from this new way of writing together – Don’s music and Jimmy’s lyrics.
“I’ve said in the past, that I felt like Don was reading my mail. I think that maybe Don thinks that I’m reading his mail now,” laughs Jimmy. “It shows you how close the bond is. I think it’s just become more intricate, more personal between us. Don and I, we’re like brothers. We have so much in common and we’re so different at the same time, but there’s a connection between us that nobody can break.”
It’s a sentiment that Ian echoes: “There’s a sense of family, a sense of unity and connection with Don, Jim and Phil. It’s been a long time. It’s good, grounding stuff.”
“All of our careers have been shaped by being in Cold Chisel, first and foremost” says Jimmy. “Everything I do has come from the moment I joined Cold Chisel when I was 16. In 1997 (The Last Wave of Summer) the only reason we came to play was because we had unfinished business between each other. We wanted to make more music; we wanted to make better music. Since 1997 we’ve made some of the best music in our careers. We’ve gone full circle. Now we get in the car and go to a show not because we’re trying to live up to anyone else’s expectations – we’re trying to live up to our own. We’re trying to fulfil our own dreams.”
Don sums it up economically: “It’s great to still be making new music and finding new ways to do it after all these years.”
