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GREETINGS.

Watching the cricket, at the pub. The Victoria Hotel, Brunswick, to be exact. I play approximately one game of cricket a year for their cricket team, and I fancy myself a bit of a goer. Australia could be in trouble here, India have settled in and we’ve only taken one wicket. They’ll bat all day. I’m sat here loading up Hownowmer USBs for our upcoming shows. Played last night at Woody’s on Smith St in Collingwood, and we’re on again tonight (Sat 4th April) at The Reverence in Footscray. Tomorrow here at the Vic. Tuesday at the Old Bar. We’re going to Japan in April. True story. Oooo cheeky reverse sweep there from Rahul. Very cheeky indeed. Except he didn’t hit it. Came off his head.

My new album is progressing apace, and should be out in the winter time.

I’mdoing a bunch of shows in March and April, including a visit to Adelaide and Perth, where I haven’t played solo for some time. What is Clarke talking about? He keeps saying 45. 45 what?

Anyway here are the shows:

BEN SALTER’S MARCH & APRIL SHOWS 2017
THU 9th MARCH EDINGNBRUGH CASTLE, BRUNSWICK w/Tom Redwood who’s got a new album out
THU 16th MARCH EDINGBRUGHH CASTLE, BRUNSWICK w/Jack Spider who’s recently moved down from Brisbane
FRI 17th MARCH BEN SALTER ‘N HIS BAND AT B.EAST ON LYGON ST for Brunswick Festival
THU 23rd MARCH – ST JOHN CRAFT BEER LAUNCESTON w/Emma Anglesey $10+bf/$15 TIX HERE
FRI 24th MARCH – HOUSE SHOW HOBART w/Sime Nugent get in touch for details
THU 6th APRIL CROWN + ANCHOR ADELAIDE w/Cowboys of Love + Sasha Marsh $10+bf/$15 TIX HERE
SAT 8th APRIL- THE ODD FELLOW FREMANTLE w/Peter Bibby + Hayley Beth $10+bf/$15 –TIX HERE
WED 19th APRIL – THE JUNKYARD, MAITLAND – Two Sets – Frei
THU 20th APRIL – THE GOLDEN BARLEY, SYDNEY – Two Sets – Free
SAT 22nd APRIL – THE FRONT GALLERY, CANBERRA – Two Sets $16+bf/$20 TIX HERE
SUN 23rd APRIL – DICEY’S, WOLLONGONG w/Rhys Scoular then sleep.. on the plane to JAPAN FOR HOWNOWMER’S JAPANESE TOUR EEEEE

There’s a lot more to tell but you should sign up for my mailing list if you want the full lowdown.

Here are some pictures.

Me performing at the Theatre Royal in Castlemaine.

Me at Lake Pedder

Marlon and I singing at the Lyttelton Coffee Co. Pic by Justyn Rebecca.

Me at Savers

Woah, 2017. A year until now reserved for use in the title of speculative fiction novels and use-by dates but here we are. I think my credit card is going to expire. Doesn’t it feel a bit like when cartoons wander outside their squares, or when the Simpsons went 3D? There are no maps for these territories or something like that. I hesitate to say I’m enjoying it, but like any ride, at least we’re going somewhere. Is that better than staying still? I’m not sure. That escalated quickly #drivel … Bowling Shane!

…and I think we can all agree it’s pretty bloody good.

Look if only you knew, dear bleeders, what I go through making this stupid newsletter, the amount of time I waste reformatting.. up until this afternoon it was a simple one column affair. But then I decided I’d put the side bar over there on the left with all the dates which will probably just come up first on your mobile displays and so it will all have been in vain anyway. I hope some people are reading this on their DESKTOPS or LAPTOPS or even TABLET DEVICES. Cause that’s what it’s optimised for. Optimistically. Cause only about 20% of the people on my mailing list even open these. I know, cause they’re tracked. Sinister, that. Anyway over to you Shane. Areas Shane.

Enero is just chockers, we’re already nearly a third of the way through it and I still have another twelve shows to do this month. TWELVE MORE SHOWS. I need to stop shouting actually, I have realised recently that it’s not singing that wrecks my voice, it’s the endless shouting at people after gigs that does it. I don’t have an inside voice. Anyway check out this little lot, lovely jubbly, cor blimey. Once again I have just thrown all the bands into the mix, it seems somewhat pointless to separate them. If you’d like a much more eloquent examination of/enquiry into the partitioning of lives I suggest you read The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing. Read it years ago. Just thought of it then. In university. At university? Maybe in Townsville. James Cook. Magnetic Island. GBRMPA pronounced gah BRUM pah. Moreton Bay Figs. The big locomotive engine and the pool, North Ward. Tobruk Pool. The Seaview. The Bank. Shots of black Sambuca in test tubes. For free. Gravel Samwidge.

HOWNOWMER SUMMER SERIES TOTE HOTEL 2017

The band some people are talking about, Hownowmer, are taking up the Sunday Tote Front Bar January challenge. They have a sickening line up of stunning adventurers lined up for your kicks so think about not missing out, get involved, from 5pm every remaining Sunday in January. Taken straight from the Facebook event. Hey we’re also going to Japan in April! Know anyone in Japan? Get in touch at ben@bensalter.com.au and tell us what they’re into.
15th w/UTE ROOT n Deep Scene, 22nd w/ Local Coward, Leon & The Freedom Cage & Shit Narnia from WA, 29th w/ Thug Mills and Mod Vigil

poster by Jacqueline Dortmans

Poster by Harley McLeod please don’t sue us Blizzard

NO MORE SHANE

Look I have had so many emails, I’ve been inundated (which is the go to verb for receiving a lot of correspondence) –  dear readers, I’ve been inundated with letters that go something like this:

“Dear Salty,

your mastery of the breakfast ritual, as described in your breakout hit “No Security Blues”, is clearly 

unparalleled. For my sake, for our sake, FOR GOD’S SAKE – share your secrets. I have enclosed $XXXXX (amount redacted) in cash.

Thanks in advance (awfully),

Aaron Fan”

Step Zero: Introduction

So I’ve decided to lay it all out on the line for you. I realise that I am not the first and will hopefully not be the last to rhapsodise freely on the breakfasting ritual. Orwell wrote a nice piece. Ginger Baker in his brief tenure as drummer for Palm Springs based misfits The Masters of Reality delivered this stirring treatise on the 1992 Sunrise on the Suffer Bus album.  Neither of them have explored the world of toast, though. I haven’t done that much research. I’m casting my strained bag and cold crusts onto the compost pile of history. Grab your egg and fours and let’s get the bacon delivered.

Step One: The Seven Ps

Your tea and toast is won or lost before you even put on your dressing gown. Therefore, before embarking on any breakfast exercise, morning mission or dawn counter-terrorist operation, as my father has instilled in me, always follow the Seven Ps:

1.Poetry

2.Performance Art

3.Pornography

4.Pilates

5.Pin The Tail On The Donkey

6.Plutarch

and of course

7.Pirates

Now that you’ve clicked all those links, you’re ready to make a cup of freaking tea.

Step Two: The Right Stuff

After you’ve done all that, make sure you have all the things you think you’re going to need to make your tea and toast ready to go and laid out in front of you. There is no use getting all your timing right only to discover one of your housemates has used all the milk and failed to replace it. Again. Or, marginally less bad, there is no sugar. Or your tongue has disappeared in the night. So ensure you are fully able to handle any eventualities that might come your way over the next 5-10 minutes.  Get the sugar and bread and milk and teabags and butter onto the bench. Make sure you’ve been to the bathroom. You can’t relax unless you’ve been to the bathroom. (I usually shower and use the bathroom prior to my tea and toast but I understand that this is a matter of personal preference)

Step Three: Down To Business

The first thing you want to do is put the kettle on and pop your toast in the toaster. But don’t turn on the toaster yet. This is just so the bread can get to know the toaster. Let the dog see the rabbit, to use an extremely politically incorrect figure of speech. If you sensibly keep your bread in the freezer as I do then this also helps to ease the bread from the ‘frozen’ state to the ‘toasted’ state by way of a ‘thawed’ state.

Next up, take your favoured mug or cup and fill it with hot water from the sink. Leave it to sit a while, warming soulfully. Orwell maintains you should warm your pot/cup on the hob, rather than swishing or what have you, but I maintain that he was a communist and that no-one even knows what a hob is anymore.

Three Point Five

While the kettle is boiling I like to potter around the kitchen, or if no-one is home, I like to put some meditative jazz on.. perhaps some Oscar Peterson or John Coltrane. Miles Davis is also good. Pharoah Sanders.

(nb except where there is no other jazz available, Mingus is generally not appropriate first thing in the morning. He can be somewhat deceptive – many of his albums are relatively placid to start with, but ten minutes later an ungodly squall of trombones and alto saxophones has crept up out of the speakers and your knees are trembling and you’re clutching the bench. Save it for around 7pm – I’ll be covering that in a separate blog post. )

Why not think about doing a quick bit of washing up or wiping down the benches or sweeping the kitchen floor? Pay it forward. Treat yourself and those around you with respect.

Have a think about what you’d like on your toast. Is it going to be a standard sweet/savoury jam/vegemite double act? Or have you got a lot on and are contemplating double veg? Peanut butter? (it goes without saying I hope that if you’re contemplating peanut butter, you won’t be also buttering that piece of toast. This is the act of a vandal.) Anyway what you put on your toast is sadly none of my business, but it’s worth giving it some thought.

Step Four: Action Stations

When your kettle is getting close to boiling, tip out the hot sink water and get your teabag/s ready. Now once again, I don’t want to tell you how to live your life, even though that’s what I’m actually doing right now, but if you don’t like your tea strong, just stop reading now. In fact, stop wasting everyone’s time and just drink water or go and be a wanker and drink coffee or something. Tea’s not for you.

A brief tea diversion – I realise at this point that some amongst you will be saying “Tea bags? But Salty if you’re serious about tea, use a pot!” – I have nothing but a deep and abiding respect for you people. However I am trying to simplify the breakfast ritual and for many people the whole loose leaf tea/pot operation is a step too far. It’s arguably what puts a lot of people off tea (the same people that will then go and buy some fucking cold drip machine or air filter or carburetor to make their coffee in. Please.) and I’ve just negated my argument in those brackets so anyway do whatever you please, as long as the tea is strong.. I’m just gonna carry on with the bag show.

Therefore pick a serious brand of tea. I am currently on Dilmah Extra Strength. An honest Ceylon blend. I know some serious aficionados that swear by your English brands – PG Tips et al. I have a lot of time for them also.  I’m not generally a fan of any of the Twining’s brands I am afraid, I find them all a bit insipid. I can handle Lipton yellow label.. I find the standard Lipton a bit weak. However the choice of brand is probably, and I say probably not the most important thing. It’s what you do with it that counts. More on that later.

Step Five: Herein Lies The Rub

This is it. This is the moment.

As soon as your kettle has come to boil, put your toast on.

Allow the bubbling kettle to subside momentarily. Then, with your teabag laying inside your chosen (now warmed) recepticle, draw it by the tag up to the inner lip of said recepticle.  Then, slowly, and carefully, pour the boiling water onto the teabag, into the teabag, through the teabag. This is the single most important step to producing a decent cup of tea. It’s perfectly acceptable to have the sugar in the cup already, or to add it at this point. But then, walk away from the cup. Leave that bag in. You want to leave that bag in for five minutes.

Step Five: Leave Your Bags Outside

Now, I used to be a ‘leave the bag in’ man – that is to say, at this point, as soon as I had added the hot water to the bag, I would stir in my milk straight away and then leave the teabag in the cup as a sort of lazy nod to how I was a serious tea drinker, and commence sipping it. In my haste to get a strong cup happening instantaneously I would also use two teabags, once again adding the milk straight away and ‘leaving the bags in’. I have realised this is wrong. The tea can’t brew properly once the milk is added. It wrecks it, somehow – probably something to do with the temperature. So don’t add your milk yet. And don’t ‘leave your bags in’ – you just end up with cups all over the house with milky sodden teabags at the bottom waiting to grow mouldy. It’s a heavy scene with no real winners.

Step Six: Ready Freddy

No, let that tea brew until the toast is ready. If you followed instructions and put the toast on as soon as the kettle boiled, the timing is usually perfect – around three or four minutes. Butter your toast as soon as the toast is ready, then apply your spreads, jams or conserves. This should take less than a minute. Now your tea should be ready. Really ready.  You don’t wanna leave the bag in for more than around five or six minutes as it will start to stew a bit, and the tea will get cold, and once again it’s a deep, mournful sort of vibe with few positive outcomes for anyone involved. Take your teaspoon, fish out the bag, and carefully wrapping the string around the back of the spoon, strain the bag. This is a highly satisfactory procedure that will take some getting used to, like reverse parking.

Now add your milk.

Step Seven: Transcendence

Now you’re in heaven.

*Ahem*

“Ben Salter – mystical, forthright, deep and charming; a modern folk hero – teams up with Dan Kelly, purveyor of emotional psychedelic dystopian comedy and social satire, for a double headline tour of New Zealand this July. For the ages.

Ben will play songs from last year’s magnificent, critically adulated and psychically attenuated ‘The Stars My Destination’ LP, plus his old stuff, plus popular classics from The Inkspots, Edward Elgar and Bobby Darin.

Dan will charm your all five senses (all of them) by singing tunes from his sensibly sought after Coastal Mind Epic™ ‘Leisure Panic’ plus anything else you request from his extensive back catalogue.

They may also play a few tracks together.

This will be an adventure akin to the great fantasy epics from Tolkein to Peake to Iain M Banks. If you come w̶e̶ they will sing and dance and play guitar for you and do drum machines too.

Here’s the dates for you.
July 2016
Wed 13 – Okarito Kayaks with Robert Scott (The Clean/The Bats)
Thu 14 – Wunderbar Lyttelton
Fri 15 – Wanaka Gin & Raspberry
Sat 16 – Hilltop Tavern, Little River
Tue 19 -Barrytown Hall
Wed 20 Nelson, East St Cafe
Thu 21 – Wellington,Meow
Fri 22 – Auckland,Golden Dawn
Sat 23 – Auckland, Whammy Bar with Tourettes”