Tex Perkins has played a key role in Australian music.

It’s understandably difficult to pull together a coherent picture of a man whose career has taken in everything from the groundbreaking experimental punktonica of Sydney mid-80s noiseniks Thug to the lilting, dark country of his recent material with the Dark Horses.

From the hard-edged pub rock of the Beasts Of Bourbon’s, a snarling slice of filthy pub rock to the evocative soundscapes of The Cruel Sea, whose extraordinary 1991 single ‘This Is Not The Way Home’ placed Perkins’ world-weary growl in a new musical context and heralded the emergence of an entirely original yet archetypically Australian sound.

Then there’s the Tex, Don & Charlie albums, which saw Perkins joining forces with the legendary Don Walker, Cold Chisel’s pianist and master songwriter and son of the Clarence Valley, and Charlie Owen, previously Australia’s best kept musical secret.

Now is Tex’s exciting new (and long overdue) band with Matt Walker (The Fat Rubber Band). It’s a blues swamp-groove kinda thing that’s a little reminiscent of some of the things in Tex’s back catalogue. Many new originals inhabit the setlist, but see them now while they still have to flesh out the set with a few Cruel Sea covers!