C. W. Stoneking & Greta O’Leary – Tuning Fork: October 29, 2025
C. W. Stoneking sings us songs of spells, fraught love and odd occurrences. Deft finger work on a 1957 Gretsch guitar and vocals that hail from the Delta, not Australia’s Northern Territory of his birth.
Close your eyes and you could be in bar in Clarksdale or New Orleans’ French Quarter. Such is this man’s gift. A dweller deep in the groove of southern blues and jazz who dips into his long back catalogue with impish smile and no shame in slipping into the absurd.
Greta O’Leary
First on is Greta O’Leary. Long black dress. Dark hair. A pure voice and a slow-plucked acoustic guitar. Sparse ingredients for what’s been described as her ‘spook folk’ style.
I didn’t want to leave you/but I had to get out are the plaintive lines of the opening song. The tables seem turned in the next: I’m so lonely my baby left me/ Ain’t gonna be no ball and chain. Shades of Nadia Reid the way she drops the last word of a line. Delivery a little rigid on stage. Nerves perhaps? Or cultivated spectral appearance?
Recent album title track River Dark is atmospheric. Introduced as about doing what your mother didn’t want you to do. An ethereal style possibly influenced by Aldous Harding and Brooke Singer of French for Rabbits. But a clarity of her own.
Water and poetry keep me alive, she says and the next song is about being a good girl or lack thereof. Songs of slow strumming and therapeutic intrigue. Last song is about her childhood dog’s love of standing on the graves of horses. Dark and mysterious.
Never miss a support act. Invariably a portal through which to fleetingly catch a new talent.
Greta’s a local. We’ll be hearing more.
C. W. Stoneking
Intrigue follows C.W. Stoneking onto the stage at a welcome midweek early start time. To background Mississippi blues on the PA system, he fixes a string on his Gretsch, removes a blue jacket and saunters to the mic, now in white and a bow tie.
He channels tradition even in name, going by initials not first name. Like a line of bluesmen: R. L. Burnside, B. B. King.
How y’all doin’? Not much Aussie left here, at least while on stage.
And just like a barstool performance, he eschews a setlist. Forgets a lyric in the opening song. Goddam is the expletive. No one cares. The audience are on his side from the opening chord.
Sounds like he’s playing two guitars says the man next to me.
Between-song narratives of having eating too much cheese, married a kiwi and searching Auckland stores for a Groucho Marx mask.
Talking blues songs suggests doorstop conversations and segues into joyful calypso-styled songs and moments of New Orleans-influenced jazz. A rich brew dipping in and out of traditions punctuated by impish side glances.
C.W. acknowledges missing his band. Some songs will be stripped back versions; others will just be sorely lacking. Too much modesty. We love them all. From the ominous I Heard the Marching of the Drum to the voodoo-styled absurdity of Love Me or Die.
The audience’s knowledge of doldrums is tested ahead of On a Desert Isle. A song written for an ad but they only wanted 28 seconds of a six minute song.
He rails about new cars that keep their lights on after you lock them and leave. What happens if you get chased and are trying to hide?
We get a little yodelling on the absurdist Talkin’ Lion Blues. Two in the audience simultaneously request Jailhouse Blues with its hint of Tom Waits and then it’s the beautiful Jungle Lullaby to close.
A performance of more than the songs and virtuoso guitar playing; banter and audience engagement too. The mark of a man who’s as much an entertainer as a musician.
Robin Kearns
Click on any image to view a photo gallery by Chris Zwaagdyk:
C.W. Stoneking:
Greta O’Leary:
