Leroy’s Layabouts, CD Launch at Petersham Bowling Club, 17 May 2014

Leroy’s Layabouts are a rhythm and blues band with their roots in 50s swing.  They were originally based in Balmain in Sydney, though some of the members now live elsewhere.

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The band originally played from the mid 70s to the late 80s and the name was shortened to The Layabouts in 1977.  They reformed in 2011 and played at the Patonga one-day festival.  When it came to produce the new CD, they realised a British band had appropriated their name and so reverted to the original Leroy’s Layabouts.

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Not so much here, where there was no dance floor,  but they are a great dance band sure to get an audience on its feet.

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Later in the set they were joined by Charlie Mc Mahon, formerly of Gondwanaland.

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Charlie is here playing a didgibone, a cross between a didgeridoo and a trombone.

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The lighting was very uneven so there are some burnt-out areas in the images, particularly for images of the whole band.  Normally I can avoid this, here I could only minimise it.

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Dale Barlow also sat in for a while on sax, though not normally part of the band.

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Here is the promotional synopsis for the new album: Smokin’ :
“The album you’re holding in your hand is smokin’. Really smokin’. While bushfires singed the outskirts of the Big Smoke, the recording session got so hot the fire brigade had to be called or the whole joint would have gone up. Flames poured out of the bells of the saxophones, the rhythm section boiled over, sparks flew from the piano man’s fingers, the lead guitarist got blisters up to the elbow and the singer was jumping like a cat on a hot tin roof. Seriously, it’s rare to capture in a studio the full passion and spontaneity of a raging live gig but this was one of those magic moments. Hearing is believing.
And that’s not all. Along with nine freshly recorded songs, there are seven long-lost vintage Layabouts tracks from the vaults, unearthed and painstakingly restored – extraordinary tracks, never before released but well worth the trouble of getting them up to scratch. Overdubs have been added where the original recordings were incomplete, in some cases involving a current band member playing or singing along with himself of some decades ago – before the astonished recording engineer was even born! Time travel is possible, folks.”

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