Sproutings Music - Celebrating Checkerboard Lounge: live music supremos
Checkerboard Lounge played the Lomond last night (Saturday 16 March 2024). Here's a story I wrote about them that first appeared at The Footy Almanac in January 2023.
My favourite ever pub band, Checkerboard Lounge, made an album at the legendary SUN studio and it is lightning-in-a-bottle stuff.
It is a wintry Friday night in Brunswick East. With the ding of a bell, trams spill waves of city commuters across darkened Nicholson Street. Tyres swish on wet bitumen.
Coats are buttoned. Scarves flap about.
PING!
It’s a WhatsApp group message.
‘What time are you getting there?’
‘They’re on from 8.’
‘After the kids are down.’
‘I’m here now. Can I get anyone a pint?’
‘Yeah 8. A bit after?’
‘I’ll have one.’
Checkerboard Lounge has been a part of the Melbourne local live music scene for as long as I can remember. I have no origin story. Instead, mine is a memory of creeping awareness that begins in the mid-90s. That awareness of a band that comes from repeated references – again and again – in disparate conversations.
‘Oh my God, have you seen Checkerboard Lounge?’
‘Mate – jeez they were good – Checkerboard or something. Do you know them?’
This keeps happening. They play St Kilda, Fitzroy, Richmond. A seven-year residency at the Great Brit. The Rainbow. The Edinburgh Castle. Rollicking, racing, smooth, chilled blues and soul, and everything in between.
It is 2015. Maybe 2016.
‘Oh, Checkerboard are playing next week! They are MY FAVOURITE BAND!’
And Checkerboard bob up at the Lomond Hotel in Brunswick East. Not just once – but several times. And the WhatsApp chat is alive.
‘Grab me a Guinness.’
‘There in a sec.’
“Sun Sessions” is the album from Checkerboard Lounge that I didn’t know I’ve been waiting for.
The front bar is completely full. Maybe this is a Sunday 5pm start – families sat at tables – wait staff carry plates of fish and chips from the kitchen – peer around – craned necks – ‘Where is number 46?’ – across heads and bodies that bob and weave – ‘there it is’ – plates and waiter (‘excuse me’) slide between punters who stand five-deep at the bar.
Or maybe this is a Friday 8pm start – back slaps and smiles – slow gatherings – idle solos – partially filled pints of settling Guinness lined up behind the bar – snatches of conversation rise and fall – where to stand? – howabout on the wall over there – nah, look, it’s taken.
And here’s Carl. He’s wearing a hat, chatting to someone at the bar. Carl Pannuzzo. Singer, drummer, master-of-ceremonies. And I cannot believe that I get to stand in audience to this musical genius tonight, here in a tiny corner bar in Melbourne/Naarm. Instruments are lined up. Shannon Bourne is fiddling with a guitar. And I know that soon – very soon – he will take flight midway through a song – and he will take temporary leave of the earth’s surface – fingers flying around the fretboard – notes waving and harmonising so that all are uplifted. In 2015 (or was it 2016?), Amos is here. Amos is on bass and on for a chat at the bar. He will set a groove and will do it with a head-bobbing smile. I think now of a set-break chat with Amos at the Lomond – about the vicissitudes of life – how there is simply no accounting for the paths that open and close in a life. (I note that Amos doesn’t feature on the album (UPDATE – yes, he does) – that’s life. Again).
Oh and the Hammond organ is set up. At the bar there are nudges and nods. ‘They’ve brought the organ tonight!’ I wonder who will join to play it. Maybe it will be Tim Neal? Maybe Steve Teakle? As the months and shows go by, is becomes more certain both that the organ will feature and that Tim will play it. And also more certain that there will be mid-song meandering ad-libbing, there will be improvisation. There will be songs that zig-zag and soar.
A rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb of bar ambience feels poised on a precipice. All here know it. We know we are among the lucky of the world – about to be transported by a Checkerboard Lounge show. It’s the kind of happiness that Winnie-the-Pooh thinks of when Christopher Robin asks him a thoughtful question:
‘What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?’
‘Well,’ said Pooh, ‘what I like best-‘ and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn’t know what it was called.
A A Milne “The House at Pooh corner”
‘Sun Sessions’ captures – somehow – a moment. I can’t think of many such recordings. To put on ‘Sun Sessions’ is to be transported to a time and place of joy.
Happiness courses through a Checkerboard Lounge show. These are like-minded musicians at the very tops of their individual games, together creating something incredible.
It’s the second set. Carl calls for requests.
So, filled with the energy of seeing the band perform it once before, I call out ‘Miss You!’
Carl smiles, Shannon smiles. ‘Nice.’ It’s all nods and smiles. And suddenly we’re away. And it is magnificent.
Throughout the song, band members call to one another, tilt their heads, they grin. Carl gestures with his head, leading Shannon to tear a new level in the stratosphere with a solo that goes on and on and on. He finally brings it back to earth to a crashing round of applause. Amos receives the nod from Carl and the whole room sways and smiles with fat fat bass thrums. All in the band are smiling. They’re laughing! More applause, and now Tim receives the nod from Carl and as we watch he takes flight. The Hammond organ as a vehicle of transport. Such clear expressions of joy light up the faces of all band members. This is a celebration. The Rolling Stones’ ‘Miss You’ has been going for 10 minutes now. Maybe 15. Who knows? Time enters that liquid zone. Against the side wall of the Lomond our glances to one another say things like ‘How lucky are we?’ and ‘Can you believe this?’
Bonhomie breaks across the room as Carl takes a drum solo. And you know, while every Checkerboard Lounge show is magnificent, every Checkerboard Lounge show is somehow unique. We have no way of knowing where this show, this set, this song will go. And probably neither does the band. It is a kind of high-wire act of daring and courage, of creativity and skill, that plays out before us lucky people.
‘Sun Sessions’ captures this.
With ‘Sun Sessions’ playing, driving along Punt Road never felt so free.
Do yourself a favour.
Thanks Checkerboard Lounge.