Extradition
Woz and After
or
Hence, since and the Now.
Extradition
Extradition was a phenomenon when the band first appeared on the Sydney folk-music scene in the late 1960s. They were 'indigenous' exponents of everything remarkable that was happening in the contemporary folk movement and they carried that standard with all the magic and originality of those exciting times. Yet comparisons with other bands of the era; Pentangle, the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and such miss the uniqueness of Extradition. They were impossible to label then and they don't fit into any established category today. Extradition happened by chance, explored music together for a few sweet months and then went their separate ways having gate-crashed a world in which they didn't belong . They left behind them a polarized Sydney folk scene which was invited to follow .
Founder-member Colin Campbell was an immigrant Pom, arriving in Perth in 1966 on an Assisted Passage with seventeen pounds , a pregnant wife and a John Bailey dreadnought guitar. A native of London's East End, Colan was a self-taught guitar player having played around a few London folk-clubs but centered on The Hampstead Folk Club, Chalk Farm, where he'd been influenced by live performances from Tom Paxton, Barry Beattie and Martin Carthy as well as the inimitable resident group, the North West Three. This was the heyday of the Sixties 'folk revival' featuring Carthy's first album, an acoustic Bob Dylan and many a young guitar player inspired by Davey Graham.
Don Wallace, Maureen Seaton and Dom Bonito- The NW3
Colan brought these influences with him to Perth and helped establish what was probably the city's first real ' dirty' folk club, as opposed to the established ' folk entertainment ' venues and their regulars , an abandoned cafe renamed ' The Poisson d'Or ' which featured anybody who could play anything at all. Regulars there included 'Jeff and Margaret' , an elderly West Australian cowboy named Con and a handle-bar moustached American anthropologist, Bill Grebble, who smote a 12-string guitar. Into this wild and open environment came Sydneysider Mike 'Evil' Eves, arriving by LandRover and complete with Winchester rifle and girlfriend Jenny Rickard on a round-Australia tour.
The importance of Mike Eves and Jenny Rickard to the formation of Extradition cannot be over-emphasised, not least because they ran the highly-successful Queen Elizabeth folk club in Sydney. Mike, an accomplished English 'squeeze-box' player and emotional singer of English and Australian folk-song, introduced Colan and his one-time partner, Erica, to the music of The Watersons and the three of them teamed up for a highly-rated mixed-folk concert at Perth University's Winthrop Hall. The success of this, along with the firm friendships struck, caused Mike to invite Colan and Erica to live in Sydney, using Jenny Rickard's Paddington house as a staging-post. This was duly accomplished and Colan found himself a resident player at one of Australia's top folk venues. It was just a matter of time before he met with Colin Dryden, another of Mike and Jenny's close friends and a regular at the Queen Elizabeth. Their instant rapport, based as much upon their differences as their similarities, caused them to play together frequently enough to become known as 'the Two Colins', not a name that either would have elected upon voluntarily but one used by 'Evil' Eves to introduce them at the ' Liz ' and also in his attempts to introduce them to Paul Hamlyn Records. Eves, an amateur recording engineer , produced an album's-worth of original material by the duo . Attending his appointment with the company, equipped with his full four-track recording gear and speakers, he swept the extraneous paperwork from the desk and gave the astonished executive an offer of headphones. Hamlyns however, rooted in supermarket volume sales, failed to recognise the gift horse and that particular ground-breaking and historic album-length recording has vanished into the realms of Woz., along with Mike Eves himself. *
* Mike Eves died circa 2009 and his recordings are now known to have been gifted to the Australian National Library by music historian Warren Fahey.
The two Colins then spent some months exploring the possibilities of dual steel-strung guitars, Dryden's sound characterized by the warmth of his Gibson J45 and Campbell's by the contrasting and penetrating trebles of his John Bailey, a guitar bought from Bailey himself and with Brazilian rosewood sides over five inches deep at the base. Both favoured syncopated thumb-picking rhythms and took turns to embellish their sound with simple lead lines. They ventured into many areas; instrumentals based upon sections of classical guitar pieces, songs written by them both, Dryden's arrangements featuring the words of well-know poets, even their own arrangements of classic Dave Brubeck, but each considered himself a part of the folk tradition and neither had any intentions of abandoning their acoustic sound. They practised in a basement flat in Rushcutter's Bay , rented by Campbell's new love, Sue Butcher, and recorded on a cheap cassette player prior to presenting their work to Mike Eves for appraisal and re-recording on his professional deck. They were aware, however, of the limitations of the two-guitar-one-voice format and resolved to expand upon it.
Dryden had performed frequently with Shayna Karlin , in clubs around Sydney and Melbourne and Campbell quickly warmed to his idea that Shayna joined them . Not being a singer himself, Campbell welcomed the possibilities of writing for a female vocalist. Dryden's soft Yorkshire voice was enhanced by the powerful clarity of Shayna, a jewish gypsy , leaving Campbell free to concentrate on his acoustic guitar and song writing and the essential 'sound' of Extradition was established.
The trio were soon approached by a traveling theatre company who wanted some live acoustic music for a production called ' Spoon River ', which was intended to tour around New South Wales townships. How the producers came to know of the group is unknown, but an audition was held in Rickard's front room . The attending producer announced straightway that he'd love to have Colin Dryden and Shayna in the show but that he didn't want Campbell. He escaped alive but the event served to bring the three musicians even closer together. This bond was long-lived . It manifested itself again when Extradition were designing the cover to their ' Hush ' album, the artist, Russell Drysdale having been approached to provide the artwork. He indicated that he would receive two visitors at his house but no more. Much as they would have loved the eminent Mr.Drysdale to contribute they simply forgot about it and let Shayna's boyfriend, John, provide the artwork instead. The result might not have been so impressive but the ' group ethic ' was maintained and that ethic served them very well as a progressive musical entity.
The name itself, chosen by Dryden as he pored over a dictionary in a communal house in Short Street, Sydney, was intended to convey a new and exciting direction for his music . This new direction enabled an expression of his love for many different musical styles without the constraints of traditional genres. It was a simple parasol under which the three of them could experiment and improvise. He had arrived in Australia as a talented exponent of 'traditional' English folk song and quickly established a reputation as a solid performer with an excellent singing-voice and guitar style. Awash with socialist character, drawn from his native Yorkshire, his repertoire ranged from wistful unaccompanied traditional song to rousing indictments of the conditions in coalmines and upon factory floors. Whilst not claiming to be an actual working-class hero himself, he was, at the very least, a qualified and fully licensed messenger. As the trio progressed Dryden soon embarked upon a stormy personal relationship with Karlin which was to provide much of the subject material for his songwriting. His lyrics were enigmatic, somewhat pagan in content as could be expected from a writer steeped in folk-lore, and Campbell quickly caught the mood . Their repertoire , previously based upon familiar-sounding and engaging songs , began to move towards the mystical , a development enhanced by their acoustic style. It was at this point that the group caught the imaginations of listeners to the Sydney folk sphere . After the briefest of adventures around the city's folk clubs Extradition found themselves onstage at Sydney Town Hall and heading the bill for the Sydney Folk Festival.
The Short Street communal house had also played its part in the development of Extradition. Its occupants were many and varied but its mainstays were the Gillespie brothers, Gerry and Peter, with their older brother, Danny, living a few doors away and providing a stabilising influence over the many dramas which took place there. Musicians, poets and painters frequented the house and improvisation was the norm. One such visitor , Steve Dunstan, was a science teacher with a love of acoustic double-bass and electronic music. His claim that the Harbour Bridge was ' the world's largest musical instrument ' was received favourably by the Short Street community and thus he and his bass appeared onstage at the town hall Sydney Folk Festival finale, along with Gerry Gillespie who had loaned the group an antique foot-powered harmonium which Shayna was encouraged to play as an ' effect '. Arguably a fixed-pitch instrument the harmonium was sensitive to temperature - perhaps even mood, some claimed- and presented an added layer of difficulty for the band's performances but it soon became a feature . Campbell's song ' Ice ' was written around it and represented Extradition personnel's first use of an instrument other than guitars. Indeed, ' Ice ' was the ultimate song in Extradition's closing set at the town hall concert and the hushed audience, probably numbering more than a thousand, were fixated by the tension of the harmonium's eerie opening drone-..... as were the band who, aware of the instrument's idiosyncrasies , had no idea as to whether the entrance of the guitars would be in tune with it or not. As fate would have it, they were, and the applause for that brave and original finale was uproarious. The folk establishment had taken Extradition to its heart as a child of its own making .
A short-lived manifestation of some Short Street residents and visitors
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