Correspondent's Corner

Supabad, the James Brown-inspired funk band from Bangkok, likes it ‘loud, hard and dirty’. They will return to the FCC Phnom Penh later this year.

Phil Manning is bringing his unique blend of front-porch guitar blues to Phnom Penh.

Manning will play The FCC Phnom Penh on June 29 and 30.

Phnom Penh, once a sleepy outpost along the Mekong River, has in recent years began evolving into a robust Asian capital. Manning is the latest in a string of international acts to perform in the city over the last 12 months. Others include DJ Cash Money, Sean Kingston and The Backsliders.

“I never go anywhere far from home without a guitar,” says the 61-year-old Tasmanian bluesman, who will be traveling through the region with his wife. “It’s just terrific to have the opportunity to play while we are there.”

Manning has been a fixture on the Australian music scene since the late 1960s. In 1969, he co-founded the band Chain, arguably the greatest blues band Australia has ever produced.

Manning and Chain are often credited for exposing Australia to blues music, the roots of which come from America’s black communities in the country’s deep south.

Critics praise Manning for his sensational technical abilities, silky vocals and insightful songwriting. A finger-picker and slide guitar player, he points to the six-string style of the early delta masters as the foundation of his music.

With those powerful roots, Manning has blended a lifetime of further musical influence, and echoes of country, bluegrass and folk reverberate through his songs.

“Later on I discovered players like Doc Watson, Norman Blake, Tony Rice and the whole bluegrass thing,” he says. “All that (and a bit of Celtic) have rubbed off in the way I play, although I never sat down and learnt much of it note for note. I’d probably be a better player if I had, but I’ve sort of got my own way of going about things as a result.”

He has shared the stage with many of the genre’s greatest names, including Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee, Albert Collins, Freddie King and even Bo Diddley.

“We had about 10 minutes of rehearsal and that was it,” he says of playing with Diddley, the legendary Chicago bluesman. “From that we did an hour and a half show.”

Manning says that after 45 years of pickin’ and grinnin’, he has now matured into a complete guitarist.

“My influences are totally absorbed into my own playing, and there is sense of satisfaction that comes from that,” he says.

For the Phnom Penh shows, Manning will play much like the turn-of-the-century American blues travelers of a hundred years ago.

“I’ll have one of my acoustic guitars (with pickup of course) and a stomp box,” he says.

Rather than work from prepared material, Manning prefers to let the crowd set the direction.

“I usually have a few things I start with to settle in and relax. After that the set goes where it feels right,” he says. “I have a lot of songs in my head, mostly original and traditional blues or blues-based pieces.”

The smoky, soulful vocals of Filipino native Juram Gavero return to The FCC Phnom Penh this weekend. The singer-songwriter plays one show Saturday night, Dec 3.

Based in Saigon, Juram has in recent years become something of a regular on the Phnom Penh live music scene, where he has steadily built a loyal following.

At a previous solo show at Chow, the bar’s front doors were opened to let the music pour into the street. People walking past couldn’t help but stop and take note of Juram’s deep, powerful vocals.

Yet for a lead singer with an award-winning voice, the 32-year-old Juram remains remarkably humble. He refuses to skate on talent alone — although anyone who has heard him sing knows he could do just that. The foundation of his success, he says, comes from being an entertainer first, not a singer.

“When people tell you, oh, you sing so well, you have such a great voice, you can’t listen to that stuff,” he says. “You can’t let that go to your head.”

Soothing his vocal chords with a glass of red wine, Juram says the audience is the most important part of any gig and connecting with the crowd is his number one priority. He makes eye contact with everyone who walks through the door, and between sets, he likes to mingle with the crowd, shaking hands and making friends.

While many musicians often play from a prepared song list, Juram the entertainer lets serendipity and intuition lead the direction of his shows.

“I study the rhythm of the people,” he says.

He likes to play a few songs and see how people react, then let the energy of the crowd guide him.

Juram plays mostly rock ‘n’ roll classics, but like every good musician, he is well-versed in the standards of other genres as well, and he is comfortable playing everything from Johnny Cash to Metallica.

Raised in Mindanao, Juram first left the Philippines in 1998 at the age of 20. His band, named Juram, had just won a nation-wide battle of the bands contest, and the grand prize was guaranteed work on either a cruise ship or in Singapore.

He says life on a boat did not appeal to him, so he hopped the flight to Singapore. When the gig was up, he followed some friends to Vietnam, where he is now a fixture in Saigon’s live music scene.

“Music is my passion,” he says. “If the sound is right, and I am sitting with the right people, I can play until morning.”