NOBLE SAVAGE

He looks pretty much how you d expect; wolfish features, boozy, thin as a rake. Sipping stout in Whelan s of an afternoon, off-duty Bad Seed Conway Savage gives off the air of a 30-something Warren Zevon having just survived a tour of duty with The Popes. The ivory-tickling skills, slurred speech, spectacles and songwriterly sensibilities do little to dispel this impression.

Savage has a new solo album called Nothing Broken in the can and ready to go, but for his forthcoming Irish gigs he ll be joined by Suzie Higgie, and the bulk of the set will be drawn from their recent joint venture Soon Will Be Tomorrow, rumoured to be one of Michael Stipe s favourite records of the moment.
Miss Higgie certainly has the kind of voice that makes knees go weak, especially when deployed on a cover of Frangoise Hardy s Only You Can Do It , while Savage s own compositions lie somewhere between Lee Hazelwood, Leonard Cohen and a folksy Tindersticks. In terms of feel, much of Soon feels like a dialogue between lovers on diverging paths: Higgie s hearth-loving hymns drip with a plaintive pathos, while Conway s tunes are by turns wayward and broken hearted.
Suzie was really pop, and has come from Sydney s kind of 80s (scene), Savage explains. She s got a real pure pop feel about her, her singing is always on key and mine is hardly ever. I think it worked out well like that, where you get this ebb and flow. I didn t know much of her stuff to tell you the truth. We just connected because her husband is the Bad Seeds sound guy, Mick Crosby. I got invited up to their place in the Blue Mountains a couple of hours outside Sydney.
If Savage can be said to adhere to anything resembling a musical aesthetic, it s a feeling of ageless, placeless, stoned sorrow, the kind of aching absence evoked by Dylan s Girl From The North Country or The Waterboys When Ye Go Away . Like those artists, this piano player plied his craft from the sacred traditions of folk and country.
There s nothing so dead as being wrapped up in the latest sounds, he maintains, cos they ve got the lifespan of a fucking fly. Those traditional songs have always been re-interpreted and claimed as people s own namely by June Carter Cash but they ve travelled over fuckin centuries. They re not songs, they re more kind of eternal truths if you like. It s really special stuff.
For Savage, what tune best represents these values?
Fair And Tender Ladies , he decides. Any time I play a gig anywhere, I can play that and just close my eyes and know I m gonna feel really good and set the scene for myself. It s like breathing for me now to do that song, where you can let yourself stop thinking about being onstage.
One of the highlights of Soon Will Be Tomorrow, and a tune which fulfils all the aforementioned criteria, is Savage s own Never Going To See You Again , a mere eight lines long, but one of the saddest love-lost songs since Steve Earle s Goodbye .
Yeah, I m not the longest letter in the business, he smiles. I love that song too. I really try and entwine myself with the melody and really get into that. I hide behind my stuff a bit more.
Not to mention hiding behind his bandmates. Once their seedlings have been part-reared (Mick Harvey, Warren Ellis and Nick Cave all became new fathers over the summer) The Bad Seeds will reconvene at Abbey Road studios in late September for a new album.
Nick s done a lot of demos, Conway reports. We played on a few back in Melbourne and then Nick did about five more not long ago, and they re just fantastic. Actually I don t know whether I should say, but the McGarrigles are gonna help us do a bit of it. They were extraordinary at the Meltdown thing. And Nina Simone, for fuck s sake, now there s something. Extraordinary. I know she s getting on, but man, what a presence. I can die a bit happier now I finally got to see her.

Conway Savage and Suzie Higgie play Whelan s, Wexford Street on Tuesday September 5th, and The Spirit Store, Harbour Wall, Dundalk on Wednesday, September 6th. Soon Will Be Tomorrow is out now on Lionmilk.