Hey Fellow Mog-Blues Fans!Caught Up with Dave Hole from Western Australia in the last week or so for a chat.Here is the interview and review of his latest CD below:Or read it here:http://www.fasterlouder.com.au/features/10628/The-Slide-of-Dave-Hole.htmWithin our midst, on the western shores of this great country, we have living amongst us one of the great blues slide players of the past century. You may not even know his name. You may never have heard his music. But, take a look on line, or in one of those archaic places called a CD shop, and you will find approximately 8 releases by a gentleman named Dave Hole. Dave has the ability to stun you the first time you hear him play and fortunately he has the ability to do it over and over again as he has proved with his albums through the years. Now in his fanciful fifties, Dave has only been recording for about 16 years. Note, I said recording, but he has been playing for a long time, and for many years was playing the pubs and the sheds of Western Australia before a serendipitous turn gave him his big break at the age of 42. Dave had self produced his classic first album Short Fuse Blues and had tried something out that well and truly changed his life. “I had only sent one copy away to Guitar Player magazine, and I was at that time a subscriber, and they had a little section at the back where they acknowledged amateur guys who sent in recordings and gave them a plug. I thought wouldn’t it be great to get a mention in there. So, I sent one off, not expecting much of it, and they got all excited and reviewed it and got actively involved in promoting me. The editor at the time Jas Obrecht sent one off to Bruce Iglauer at Alligator Records and it took off from there”, Dave said.“At the time that it happened I really did have to pinch myself because it did seem totally surreal that I could get picked up by Alligator Records and have the opportunity to go to the States and Europe and everywhere. After 20-25 years of being a local muso, I had had my starry eyes dimmed a long, long time ago, and never thought it would happen for me on that level,” said Dave.And from that point in the early 90s until now Dave has lit up Europe, the States and occasionally Australia with his very distinctive fiery and ballistic playing. You can feel the years spent in the pubs and almost smell the beer and sweat from dancing in the air. You can sense that the passion really comes out in the live playing for Dave and the years on the tiles may have been hard, but I believe they have been utterly satisfying. But don’t get me wrong, the playing on his releases through the years has been supberb and reflects what he does on the stage. His latest release Rough Diamond continues in the vein of the others, except for some slight differences in the songwriting credits.“I usually do a lot of the writing. But on Rough Diamond it is a bit unusual that I only have about 4 songs on there and the rest are covers. The last 6 or so albums have been mostly my compositions”, said Dave.“It was a conscious thing with this release because there were versions of songs that I had wanted to do for a long time and I kept putting it off and putting it off. But when I am writing you tend to give your songs first preference when you choose to record. This time I resolved to do some of the songs that I always wanted to record.I limited my writing to only a few. I found I had to not get too carried away because I can write all day when I get into that mode and when I am there I can go on and on”, remarked Dave.You can check out his slide happy cover of Can’t Stop Loving You, the ballsy White Trash Girl (penned by Willy Deville) and the Robert Johnson chestnut, Rambling On My Mind. Rambling is one song I never tire of hearing and I am sure I have heard a galaxy of versions. But Dave’s own compositions like Vintage Wine and Rough Diamond Child are also archetypal Dave Hole numbers that would have fit on his first release or any one in between. So how does he come up with his songs, I asked Dave?“My basic process of writing is that I accumulate little snippets of ideas for songs, or perhaps even more then that. I will get riffs or ideas for guitar things and lyrics and general stuff that I put on a little tape. Those moments of inspiration, that might happen on the road somewhere and I will make a musical note on the recorder. Then I will have all these bits and when I start to write I go through all of these and pick out some of them that are the most promising to me and work them into finished songs. I accumulate lyrics and riffs all the time like this”, said Dave“Very rarely, unless I am home or in that mode, do I finish writing the song. I sort of leave it there and leave it for exploration later. It is a technique I developed as I did not write for many years. Once I started making records it really inspired me to write more. When you are not making recordings and getting these things out of your system you tend to just stifle them because there is no outlet for them”, Dave replied..Dave is grateful for his breaks in the industry and we chatted a bit about the road and what you need to do to get by in the changing and difficult industry that is music today.“I am quite often struck when I am touring anywhere and we have a support act and some of the players are superb. You think, “Why?” It is always said that you need a lot of luck in this game and it is so true today even with mass communication and the speed of being able to get your video or music on You Tube or whatever. It really is being in the right place at the right time or having the right ears listen at the right time to your stuff”, said Dave.“Another thing that is overlooked is it really helps if you are fairly together in this industry. I know some wonderful players, and I am certainly not going to name names here (laughter), who are just not together enough and who I would not sign them even if they were that good because I know it will come to grief. They will be into drugs or whatever and cannot hold it together. There are a lot of folks who just don’t have the other things to make a career in music”, remarked Dave.Well as they say, youth is wasted on the young, and sometimes the head we have on our shoulders may take away from our talents during those silly years or artists may succumb to whatever temptation the road has to offer. Winding down with my talk to Dave I wanted to know what he was listening to these days and if he had any particular album that he would recommend or take with him on a long space journey.“There is so much good music in the world but you just don’t hear it on the radio. I still listen to a lot of the old blues, but I am fairly eclectic in what I listen to. I like a lot of the country guys like Blind Willie Johnson or Charlie Patton, those old scratchy things. I also listen to a lot of easy kind of stuff like Van Morrison and country stuff and some classical stuff and I am a bit sad that Pavarotti is gone as I enjoyed his singing”.And on one recording that he would need to have with him at all times? Elmore James? BB King? Peter Green? Albert King?“This is going to sound really bizarre. But another one which may sound weird for a blues guy is ‘Famous Blue Raincoat by Jennifer Warnes. It is just the greatest album to listen to for me. Everything is good about it: David Lindley, Stevie Ray Vaughan and all the Leonard Cohen songs, plus produced by Don Was still sounds brilliant today. If I was looking for the desert island sort of thing that would be hard to go past”, said Dave.Check out Rough Diamond on Black Cat Records (distributed through Shock) and go see Dave Hole and his band at the 12th Annual Great Souther Blues and Rockabilly Festival in Narooma the 28-30 Sep 2007. Also check out Dave’s website at www.davehole.com for all the information you will need.