Rough Red – Seeing Red

Rough Red – Seeing Red
CD review by Ian Dearden

Rough Red are a Brisbane based band containing members with prestigious lineage going right back to the early 1970s.
After initial success, including many successful appearances at folk festivals and other venues in Europe, they went into hiatus for some years.
Now they’re back firing on all cylinders, with the back catalogue out there in the marketplace.
This album, recorded in 1999, primarily at Brian Cadd’s Gingerman Studios on the Gold Coast, contains all the elements that have sustained Rough Red touring extensively throughout Europe, as well as appearances at festivals throughout Australia.
What are those elements? The music itself – an original mix of folk, rock, a touch of country, and a couple of big anthemic numbers on this album , at least (Sons of the Southern Cross).
The playing – these guys are professionals who having been playing and recording, together and with others, for many years, and it shows.
A rock solid rhythm section of John Barr (bass) and Dave Parnell (drums) underpins the instrumental expertise of Peter Harvey (accordion and keyboards) and Steve Tyson (guitar, mandolin, dobro).
Then on lead vocals we have John Fegan – the consummate frontman, writer or co-writer of most of the material, muscular singer, and an outstanding communicator.
You can hear every word he sings, and on stage, he commands attention.

As an album, Seeing Red now has a few years of age on it, but it’s well worth checking out – great songs, superbly played and sung, bracing harmonies, and a reflection of an unashamedly Australian view of the world.
There’s a touch of tongue in cheek on Rusty Gutters, and a nod to the Grim Reaper in Spectre in the Trenches, written from the perspective of a soldier in the trench warfare of  World War I.
Rough Red are, above all, great story tellers, and we need as many of those as we can get.
Bit of a naff cover, but you can’t have everything!
Check out the band at www.roughred.com, catch them at a folk festival near you (I saw them at Illawarra Folk Festival January 2010, and they were on fire) and buy this or one of the three other albums currently available (including a recently released compilation album, Vintage Reds) You won’t regret it!!.