Wagons Hitting The Road

While the title Rumble, Shake & Tumble aptly describes Wagons' unruly yet easy-to-like roots-rock sound, all you really have to do is listen to the disc's opening lines.

The leadoff track "Downlow," a Tom Petty/Traveling Wilburys-ish jangly rocker, begins with a man proclaiming that his girl's mama "doesn't like me none/she's got every reason under the sun/Your daddy think I'm okay/But not for his little Pamela May." These words nicely encapsulate frontman Henry Wagons' charming but slightly dangerous way with music.

A popular act in their native Australia, Wagons (which also includes drummers/bassists Mark Dawson and Si Francis, guitarists Chad Mason and Richard Blaze, and keyboardist Matthew Hassett) draw upon rock 'n' roll, country, cabaret, psychedelia and soul, all tied together by Henry Wagons' delightfully twisted vision. Listen to Rumble, Shake & Tumble, out August 16, 2011 on Thirty Tigers, and it's easy to fall under the band's sway.

Mere weeks later, Wagons will appear in the States to close the deal. Beginning with Seattle's Bumbershoot festival, they then head up through Canada and back down via New York and the Eastern seaboard, through Atlanta into musical civilization cradles Nashville and Memphis, and eventually over to Los Angeles, where they'll raise the hackles of singer-songwriter fans who frequent Hotel Caf�.:

Henry Wagons is eager to come to the land that so inspired his music. "I'm chomping at the bit in anticipation, looking forward to getting my guitar-hands dirty on American soil. The opportunity to play music in and around the source of so much inspiration has me foaming at the mouth."

Rumble, Shake & Tumble is a lively musical adventure that is by turns rocking and twangy, tough and tender, but always engaging and exciting. Henry Wagons says he "wanted the album to reflect the washing machine turbine we have been put through. This musician's spin cycle has been an amazing and dizzy time. I wanted to capture it on record, complete with its highs and lows and touching on each extremity we have only hinted at on previous records."