Born & raised on the windswept prairies of north-west coast Tasmania, Van first heard the music of Bob Dylan around adolescence & began picking guitar & writing songs. Some hundreds of songs later and a hell-bent pick, he moved to Melbourne to form bands such as The Swedish Magazines, Goatpiss Gasoline and The Livingstone Daisies, and sing his unique hillbilly stuff on the side.
The first collection of these beguilingly simple songs came out in 2008 entitled The Celestial Railroad, & in 2009 three separate sessions were released, The Last Record Store (Jan) Greetings from Penguin Tasmania (Aug) & Love Fate (Oct). Drawing on the grand storytelling tradition of artists such as Ray Davies, Townes Van Zandt, Leon Payne & John Prine and the acoustic finger-styles of John Fahey & Mississippi John Hurt, Van created a sound both old & new, with a laconic familiarity that speaks to the heart with an intimacy more effortless than contrived.
About this track...
The song is a haunted, mysterious composition, as straight-up vulnerable as it is mercurial, but someone is missing someone, and dabbling in the dark arts as a means to bring them back, dead or alive!
The song is stark and brutally honest, with just bass and fingerstyle acoustic guitar, and the added spark of guitar wizard Jeff Lang.