ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON AUG. 15, 2007
By Steve Newton
In the press clippings sent with news of Mia Dyson’s latest North American tour, the name of another bluesy, guitar-slinging woman, Bonnie Raitt, repeatedly crops up. The 26-year-old Aussie has no qualms about being compared to Raitt, however, because the stalwart American is her musical hero.
As Dyson explains from the back of a tour van cruising through Bakersfield, California, she opened for Raitt on several Down Under dates earlier this year.
“It was like a full-circle thing,” relates Dyson, ” ’cause my dad took me to see her at the Melbourne Concert Hall when I was 13, and I actually supported her in the same venue 13 years later. There weren’t a lot of female-guitarist role models around when I was growing up, so she was very inspiring, and a big part of the reason that I play guitar.”
The music on Dyson’s current disc, Parking Lots, exudes the same classy, restrained guitarwork and soulfulness Raitt is noted for. Whether it’s the riff-driven opener “Roll Me Out” (a cautionary tale inspired by inmates Dyson met while playing at a women’s prison) or the eloquent “No Other”, in which she depicts the last few years of her grandfather’s life, each song is carried along by her fervent vocals.
Dyson–who plays the Media Club on Friday (August 17)–also handles acoustic, electric, baritone, and lap-steel guitars, all of which were crafted by her father, Jim Dyson. One of his creations rests on her lap in Parking Lots‘ cover photo, a cream-coloured electric that blends elements of a Telecaster, Stratocaster, and Jaguar.
“He’s a self-taught luthier,” notes Dyson, “and everything’s handmade. He winds his own pickups, and he’s just got a real ear for tones. He spent years and years he’s nearly 60 now, and he was 20 when he started honing and perfecting this tone.
“I’m not a real guitar-head,” she adds, “so it’s not like I’ve gone out and tried every guitar and compared it, but I love playing his guitars, and I’ve never had any inclination to go anywhere else.”
The most compelling track on Parking Lots might be the closing instrumental, “Fire Creek”, which sees Dyson performing beautifully on one of her dad’s lap-steel guitars.
“I still don’t consider myself an accomplished lap-steel player,” she points out, “because all I’ve done with it is tune in Open A, the simplest kind of tuning. I mean, when I was a kid I liked practising, but now I’m much less disciplined, and rather than learn how to play it, I just used it to write some songs on.
“So I just learn as I go, and hopefully I keep writing on that instrument, ’cause it opens up quite different songwriting ideas, which is great. You need that sort of thing to switch your mindset away from just the guitar.”