Ford, Adam, 1998, "Sherry Rich, Lifestyles of the Rich and Courteus", Inpress Magazine.
From the age of five, Sherry Rich has been performing. The daughter of one of the first country singer/songwriters in Australia. Rich grew up on stage alongside her mother and brothers. After her stint with the family, she and her brother formed a "country joke band" called Cactus Fever, playing around Queensland until 1987 when she moved to Melbourne and formed Girl Monstar, an all girl rock four-piece. Girl Monstar held itself together until 1991, by which time Rich decided that, while rock was fun, country was more fun, and went off to pursue a solo career, Sherry Rich and the Grievous Angels. Two EPs later, the release of her debut album is imminent and she sat down with Adam Ford to ruminate over the Sherry Rich story so far.
    What were the circumstances that led you back to a country flavour of music after your stint with Girl Monstar?
"It's just sort of what happened naturally to me. It wasn't like I went, 'Hey I wanna go country!' It was just all the music I came back to listening to, and my songwriting was influenced by that. I enjoy singing that style of music a lot more."
     What do you enjoy about it?
"It's easy to sing (laughs). Easier than screeching out rock music, anyway."
    With Girl Monstar folding up, was that a case of not wanting to screech anymore?
"Yeah. I also got tired of the all-girl freakshow thing. I just wanted to do my own thing, I was tired of being in a democratic band climate. I wanted to be 'the boss' (laughs)."
    With your new album, Courtesy Move, you worked with Chicago band Wilco rather than the Grievous Angels, right? What was the connection?
"I just asked my publisher. The Grievous Angels were in a bit of disarray over here, and I got it into my head that there was no reason I couldn't work with another band. Why not? My publisher was going on a business trip to the States, so I gave him some names: The Jayhawks, Son Volt and Wilco, saying 'give them a try'. As it turned out, he went to a showcase in Nashville where Wilco were playing backup for Alex Black. He approached them, sent them the demos from the album and they said that they were interested. It seemed like it was meant to happen, really. It was magically easy."
    Run me through this: you've decided you want to work with Wilco, they've said yes, what next?
"The bass player, John Stiratt, we started speaking on the phone once it was going to happen, so we got to know each other like that. I didn't meet the mother guys  until I got over to Nasville to record."
    What was it like relating to them?
"It was great. We had a lot in common. We seemed to be coming from the same places in our musical histories and what we loved about rock'n'roll. We had a lot of the same ideas and I let them run with it. The demos they had heard were just acoustic and I thought I could either go over to Nashville and treat them like session musicians and wield the axe, or I could give up the songs to them and see what they do."  Did they come up with anything that surprised you?
"They had some pretty different interpretations. There's a song called Who's that Girl on the album that I had in my mind as an acoustic number, but they started doing this snaky rock number with it, turned it into this big rock song."
    Was it always your intention to record in Nashville?
"No. Nashville was just the most convenient city for the guys. We could have recorded in Chicago or a couple of other studios. It wasn't the cliched thing where I say, "Let's go to Nashville!"
    Did you get to go out on stage with Wilco at all?
"Yeah. I did a show at the House of Blues in Chicago on St.Patricks Day, which was just awesome. That was with Bob Egan, it was great. We didn't have any rehearsal or anything, just got there twenty minutes before the set
and jumped into it."
    I want to touch on the preconceptions of country music, in Australia at least...
"In Australia, it carries a big stigma, but I see myself getting into the alternative country genre, which is quite big in the States at the moment. Well, not BIG,  but a definite classifiable area. There are such a wide range of people that are classified as country: from Emmylou Harris back to Hank Williams Sr; but also bands like Badfinger. There's this whole pile of influences that have generated this new young breed of Americana, Insurgent Country,  Twangcore, it's called all of these things. At the moment, the definitions of country are so blurred that it's crazy to try and talk about it. I think country is more of an attitude, really."

Gray, Denis, 'Sherry Rich', Vicious Kitten Magazine, Issue 1
It's been over two years now, since the demise of popular  Melbourne all-girl outfit, Girl Monstar.
Since that time, lead vocalist and chief song writer Sherry Rich has surged on in a new musical direction, yet at the same time gone back to her rock n roll roots. Her mother Noeline, was quite a star in the country music world back in the ’60’s, touring with the likes of Reg Lindsay and Slim Dusty. Thirty years down the track it is clear Sherry has inherited many of her mother’s musical talents. Even before her days in Girl Monstar, Sherry played in a Brisbane based country rock band called Cactus Fever, a raucous crowd pulling quartet. Earlier this year Sherry and her band, The Grievous Angels, released their debut EP, one which displays an impressive collection of songs.
 Recorded in mid 1994, this self titled debut effort also features the talents of ex-Coloured Girl Steve Connolly, Doug Lee Robertson from the Ice Cream Hands, Charlie Owen, Steve Morrison, and ex-Black Sorrow Jen Anderson on fiddle. The finished result is close to country pop perfection, or ‘New Country’, as some have descibed  Sherry’s style.
 ‘Get Your Kicks’ is the opening track, and with it’s inviting bass run and catchy rockin’ chorus, instantly sucks you in. Straight into county rock heaven that is ! A burst of banjo leads into ‘Wild Dogs’, that ’ol tale of a cheating husband who is destined for thegraveyard up on the ridge. Sherry’s strong vocals and cutting lyrics, mixed with banjo, fiddle and even dobro, make this my choice cut on the album. Seems it’s quite radio friendly also, as I’ve heard it on Sydney’s 2SER and 3RRR in Melbourne (Hello ? Triple J?).
 Equally at home performing in St Kilda, Sydney, Ballarat or the dusty stages of Tamworth, Sherry Rich is an accomplished and confident performer who gives 110 %, whether it be playing live or in the studio. The song writing on this release shows a more mature Sherry Rich than that of a couple of years back, and with a new album in the works, the future sure looks mighty bright. Her telling tale of an anxious love affair, seems to descibe ‘When Love Calls’, a song I can invisage blasting from a juke box in a sweaty pub somewhere, after a hard day’s muster.
 Rich’s songwriting prowess is none more evident on her Cobain tribute, ‘Beautiful, Talented and Dead’. Her lyrics to this song make you shiver, and for some I'm sure, create an instant lump in their throat. Tribute aside, the wonderful harmonies and great use of pedal and lap steel, make this song a definite highlight of a sparkling debut. An EP where every track is a winner.
 ‘You Can Have That Man’ indeed finishes it off on a winning note, blasting back into some white hot country rock. Sherry and her band of Grievous Angels formed in February 1994 are Steve Connolly on lead guitar, Doug Lee Robertson on bass, Steve Morrison on drums, Matt Heydon on keyboards, and of course Sherry on rhythm guitar and vocals.  Besides venturing into the studio soon to begin work on the new album, there’s talk of overseas distribution, and a spot at next years Country music festival in Tamworth to look forward to. With ‘New Country’ music not all that prominant in Australia, the talented Sherry Rich is determined to change this somewhat stale situation.
 Rest assured, if the new album(on Rubber Records) is anywhere near as good as her debut EP, she’ll go mighty close to doing just that!

Gray, Denis, 'Sherry Rich and Courtesy Move', Vicious Kitten Magazine, Issue 8, July 1998
A lot has happened to Melbourne's Sherry Rich since she last appeared in the pages of Vicious Kitten.
    For starters, she is now a resident of Nashville, Tennessee and has members of Wilco as her backing band - who go by the name of Courtesy Move. This debut album comes hot on the heels of two previous EP's recorded with the Grievous Angels - her Australian backing band, and it is indeed something special.
    Heartfelt songwriting, smooth vocals, fine players and tunes drenched in melody that combine to produce the best sounding album I've heard in a long while!
    First single 'Polite Kisses' kicks the album off in style - its   addictive jangly rockin' tones a delight. The darn catchy road tale 'Two White Dogs' won me over with it's simple up-beat formula that will no doubt have 'em dancing down Printers Alley ! 'Three Time Loser' ensures the party keeps kicking. This goes close to being my choice cut with those sharp, juicy lead breaks and BIG rockin' chorus which radio would easily digest. The type of tune you turn up loud when you're behind the wheel.
    Rich's songs tell of life on the road, burnt out relationships and tales from the heart containing just the right amount of fragility, which we can all relate to. The Garth Porter/Rich collaboration 'Is That All You Wanted' is astounding, the smooth vocals and catchy chorus the key on a song that makes it easy to see why she's killin' em in the States. 'Beautiful, Talented and Dead' - Rich's poetic masterpiece about the suicide of Kurt Cobain is magic, and creates a lump in your throat. Originally included on her debut EP, this version sounds a little heavier and has some cool sounding lap steel added. Her tasty interpretation of Badfinger's 'I'll Be The One' is another savouring moment - one that'll have Pete Ham and Tom Evans offering an approving smile from rock n roll heaven. I could rave on about all twelve tunes cause they are all uniquely special. Rather, I'll just say that this release easily eclipses the hollow shmap which the likes of Gina Jeffries, Leanne Rimes or Shania Twain put out. Someone like that old
radio reptile John Laws should peek over the walls of his fortess once in a while to search out hot local talent like Sherry Rich and give her regular airplay. It's country, it's pop, it's rock n roll, it's full of appealing musical delights that you definitely need to hear!
    My album of the issue.
    Stunning.

O' Shannassy, Tim, 1996, 'Sherry Rich', Beat Magazine (Melb.).
Sherry Rich and the Grievous Angels have 'countrified' much of Melbourne's indie scene.  A bold new attitude that is part family, part local and... often based on tales of murder, love and despair.
    Peculiar how the desire to do country in Australia happens. On Sherry Rich and the Grievous Angel's upcoming EP, Trying to Write a Love Song, is a picture of Sherry's mother in full country costume, playing a beautiful ol' Hoffner semi-acoustic guitar. She used to tour Australia in the '60s with Slim Dusty and Reg Lindsay. Sherry grew up in a home "where singing was the natural thing",  but turned a few circles before she followed her mother's  footsteps and did it for a living.
"She (Noeline Rich) was on tour before she started a family and got married, so I didn't really grow up around the country scene at all. But I grew up listening to her music."
    So it was very much an environment where country music was around, in your face, would you say?
"I would say so. I pretty much rebelled against that when I was a teenager. I didn't want to have anything to do with country music at all. I did fine art, everything from punk to industrial stuff - everything except country. And then myself and my brothers discovered my mum's record collection and just went, 'wow this is awesome', just heard some of her bluegrass records."
What sort of artists were they? "People like Charley Pride. But really old bluegrass - Lester Flat and Earl Scruggs. You know, even just her old Elvis records, her old rock-n-roll records. It was great."
    In Melbourne, Sherry has consciously attempted to seduce the cooler ears of the indie scene rather than  sticking to traditional country haunts. Her debut EP has gone into its fourth pressing and been plastered over community airwaves. Sherry explains.
"All songs are getting played on radio, which is good Triple J are playing Beautiful, Talented and Dead. Triple R are playing the others. I'm not scared of the country tag. I'm holding the flag proudly. I'm kind of in a weird position. A lot of bands play standard country venues that have been known to have country bands for a long time. Thankfully, from the moment we started playing live, we wanted to play the inner-city, rock venues - diverse crowds."
    How come? "Well, because I want to introduce people to country music like they have never seen or heard it before. I think it deserves to be bigger in this country than it is. A lot of people think it is 'old country and western yee-ha - truck stops and inbreeds kind of thing - it is not at. New Country artists play a wide variety of roots music."
    You're playing places like The Punter's and The Espy. Is that what you mean when you say rock venues? "Yeah, inner-city venues. A lot of the stuff in Tamworth and a lot of New Country artists, they are Sydney artists, but unfortunately, Sydney hasn't got any live venues anyway. However, they couldn't play at the indie venues like I could here. You know what I mean? I can play to a feral crowd at the Evelyn and they will quite like it. In Sydney, they wouldn't even dream of booking someone who is doing what I do."
    How come? Is it a community radio thing, is that aspect of it? "I think Melbourne is just better! The crowds are more open to stuff."
    Do you think the Melbourne psyche is more suited to the country and western thing - is it a bit more melancholy? "Well, I guess a lot of those artists from Melbourne, Paul Kelly, Maurice Frawley and Spencer Jones - that kind of vibe has existed in Melbourne for quite a while. Not that I am saying that I really do what they do, but I feel akin to what they do, their whole outlook. In Sydney, I don't know if they have got that long time, core group of musicians."
    So what then is country psyche, attitude, vibe, whatever you wanna call it? Like Sherry says, country has diverse roots, so it ain't easy to pin it down, so she gave the tantalising example of the bluegrass spirit.
"For me, when I listen to some country music and early bluegrass stuff and it just makes me so sad, nothing kind of cuts through all the image and ego stuff and talks about, you know, real things."
    Like, what sort of things do you mean? "I guess the old cliches like love and ... I like the old murder ballads that the bluegrass guys would write about - killing their girlfriends because they were pregnant and they couldn't afford to marry them."
    Really? "That where those things come from. All those songs about 'taking my darling down to the river and pushing her in'. A lot of it, I've heard of, was based on what they actually did, because if they got them  pregnant, they were too ashamed to admit it so they would kill them instead. All the fathers would."
    And they would write a song about it? "Someone described bluegrass music to me as murder, mayhem, lust and despair. That's what it about."
    Emotional. With the Trying to Write a Love Song launch at the Punters on Saturday, a trip (probably) to the South by SouthWest conference in Austin, Texas, and an album with Country guru producer, Garth Porter, mid-year, Sherry Rich and the Grievous Angels have plenty of opportunity to bleed all sorts of hearts with their 'countrified' state of mind.

Watt, Andrew, 1996, 'Sherry Rich - Cross the Borders', Inpress Magazine.
Sherry Rich has quite a job ahead of her. She has to convince indie rock fans that country flavoured music is cool. (Increasingly less difficult). She has to show country music purists that a rock background doesn't prevent the creation of acceptable country tinged music (not so easy). She has to convey to mainstream pop audiences (and radio programmers) that the hybrid of country and indie rock is accessible to them (now that's a tough one).
    She's made a good beginning on her odyssey. Rich's five track EP is a beauty, containing a collection of well written, imppecably played songs that cross the borders of country, pop and rock. With her band The Grievous Angels (Steve Connelly, Doug Lee Robertson and
Steve Morrison) and musical guests such as Matt Heydon, Garrett Costigan, Charlie Owen, Jen Anderson, Rusty Berther, Bruce Haymes and Michael Barclay, Rich has created a modern country sound that avoids the less appealing cliches of 'country' and provides plenty of sass and attitude.
    The daughter of a country singer, Rich always had  an understanding of the music but in the last couple of years she's been able to evolve it into her own approach.
"It's been a challenge to me to try and convert people that weren't really country fans before to see that it can be cool and that 'new country' can be a groovy thing.
"I was born and raised on it and involved in the whole scene", she says of country music. "It was always with me even when I was doing more rock orientated stuff. It just seems that the circle has turned and I've come back to it. I love singing it so much.
"It wasn't a conscious thing that I decided to get back into country at a certain age or anything, it was just sort of happened. But I've always loved the rock bands that are country influenced. I'm influenced by a whole heap of different music."
    Part of the strength of the EP comes from the fantastic playing of the musicians, all of whom seem to instinctively understand the country sound, but all of whom equally can boast a real history of broad musical experience and hence realise that the songs are capable of withstanding a cross section of playing perspectives.
"The three main players in my band aren't huge traditional country fans really," explains Rich. "But that helps in a way because they haven't got preconceptions about the way they should be playing it. They can tale a fairly country sounding song and they'll change it enough to make it more interesting."
    The other interesting aspect of the EPs songs are Rich's lyrics which take themes traditionally associated with country music and give them a twist, breaking stereotypes and displaying some real attitude.
"That was really important to me," she states. "Those country cliche songs have got their place but it's not really a part of the new country in the '90s. That 'poor hard done by woman' isn't a part of that."
    One song that is certain to attract attention is Beautiful, Talented and Dead, an observation on Kurt Cobain's suicide. It's a topic that objectively has to be seen as risky, and could easily have gone terribly wrong but Rich has handled it skillfully so that her song is neither a tribute or an attack, but a really intelligent observation on his death and some of the reactions to it.
"When I first wrote about it I thought I wouldn't go around saying it's about Kurt Cobain, and just let people  get what they will from the lyrics. But I didn't think of it as risky. I knew it was important to be careful in the way I wrote it. I'm not really singing he's a dickhead or he's a legend, it's just looking at the reactions."
    So with the accolades that are being showered upon the EP where does Rich see herself - as a country singer with rock inclination or vice versa or possibly the more likely 'none of the above'?
"It's just think there good songs and there's bad songs, good music and bad music. There can be good techno songs and good rap songs. I'm not really traditional country but I'd like to do the whole Tamworth thing and be accepted in Australian country as well as being accepted in the rock scene. I really just want to be accepted as a songwriter in my own right, much the same as someone like Paul Kelly is."

Zumeris, Bronius, 1997, 'Sherry Rich and Courtesy Move', Beat Magazine (Melb.).
During late 1996, Sherry Rich took flight to her spiritual home, Nashville, to record this album. Putting the Grievous Angels on hold she worked with the Courtesy Move, a group more commonly known as Wilco, but for this project lacking their lead singer. And this is the result of their labours. Country music this is, replete with Keith Richards style riffing and smatterings of decadent intent it has enough grunt to inject a sense of debauchery into the usually austere nature of country rock.
 There is the campfire acoustic guitar but Jay Bennett pounding the keyboards a la Jerry Lee Lewis, the guitar licks and the sumptuous voice of Sherry Rich provide a delectable accoutrements to this prarie feast. 'Three Time Loser' is archetypal Rolling Stones with the swaggering guitar and Jaggeresque lyrics. Elsewhere, more serene moments can be found with 'When I See you Tonight', 'Is that all you Wanted' and 'Lonely Boy', 'Two White Dogs' roughs things up a little, with sentiments reminiscent of Susan Sarandon and Gina Davis movies.
 Near the end, things become slightly more literal and diverge from straight and narrow. During 'Things you Left Behind', Rich implores in a lovelorn voice; 'I don't
expect you to call or write / But (just?) remember that night.'
 The record reaches a plateau with 'Beautiful, Talented and Dead' with its look at suicide and indicts the reporting of such events. The question is posed 'Is it better (to) burn out than fade away?' It all ends with 'Little Miss Cool' with its distorted lyrics, trippy psyche out Sixties organ that is so cheesy that you get all your daily protein just listening to the song. Of course, there is the obligatory unlisted track, a Tom Waits style warble about quiche and fish which leaves you pondering the state of play in country music of 1997.
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