Project Description

TEX PERKINS

The Man in Black

Johnny Cash Show

(16 May 2018) 

Live Review

by Benjamin Smith

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Johnny Cash is a giant of American music. Tex Perkins is a giant of Australian rock n’ roll. Combining the two seems inspired. 

It’s difficult to think of another artist who might bring the gravitas needed to make such a show work. Perkins‘ size, his baritone voice and his aura of mystique with a hint of menace mean  favourable comparisons between the two are almost inevitable. 

One of the most satisfying elements of this show is the way sections of the Cash myth are woven through between the songs by Perkins and his vocal partner, the extraordinary Rachael Tidd.  Tidd doubles as narrator and Cash’s beloved June Carter and has a set of pipes that could shatter a plate glass window. Further, the show is, as Perkins states from the start, a celebration of the life and work of Johnny Cash. In celebrating Cash the way it does the show becomes something much more interesting than would two hours of Tex Perkins playing Johnny Cash covers, although, again, if anyone could make such a show work it would be Tex.

What works well about the show is the examination of the dichotomy that was Johnny Cash, and the way that permeated so much of his work. From the gospel hymns, represented here with the mournful classic ‘Were You There When They Crucified my Lord?’, to the barely controlled violence and rage of ‘The Beast in Me’. From the social justice anthem that is ‘Man in Black’ and the exploration of his work in prisons to the almost vaudevillian comedy of ‘Boy Named Sue’. 

What works best about the show is the dynamic chemistry between Perkins and his co-star. The relationship between them and the tension that exists between the verging-on-obnoxious Perkins and the steadying hand of  Tidd mirrors the Johnny and June fable, which still stands as one of the all-time great love stories.  

As an artist Perkins’ work has always incorporated an element of the kind of country that Cash produced. Its the kind of thing that’s as rock n roll as it is country, but that at the same time is neither. The Perkins output where this sound and sensibility rips through the most is on the Dark Horses records, and of course the Band of Gold record, an album of Nashville classics. Even then, though, it is country with the kind of seething undercurrent very few have been able to express fully within the bounds of the genre. This is not to suggest that country music lacks its complicated and troubled figures. Its just that many of those artists struggled musically to express the outlaw experience in a way people connected with to the extent that Cash’s music did. This includes artists like Merle Haggard who’s experience of it was much more real. 

Somehow, Perkins understands the sentiment that informs the successful expression of the darker side of humanity, it gives his music and performance an authenticity that most artists would kill for. Whether it be in his work with Tex, Don and Charlie, the recently performed Easyfever shows, or the various formulations of Beasts of Bourbon with whom he has performed over the years there is a humour that only thinly masks something threatening about the way Tex does Tex. It’s exhilarating and it’s what makes being in the crowd at a Tex Perkins performance a unique experience. 

For this show he and Tidd are more than ably accompanied by the Tennessee Four, who recreate the trademark sound of the Tennessee Two, and later the Tennessee Three admirably. 

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