A tour celebrating the music of late Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds keyboardist Conway Savage is heading to Sydney and Melbourne next month, and the artists performing have shared their most treasured memories of the musician.
‘These Are The Waves’ — a tribute show featuring family, friends, and collaborators of Savage — arrives off the back of sell-out performances in Ireland, with three Australian dates confirmed in Marrickville, Brunswick and St Kilda.
The lineup brings together original members of Savage’s bands and key collaborators from across his career, including Mick Harvey, Martyn P. Casey, Charlie Owen, Bruce Kane, and Robert Tickner, alongside Irish artists Mark Corcoran, Roisin Ward Morrow, and Sharon McArdle. Special guest singers include Cash Savage, Suzie Higgie, Peter Milton Walsh, Penny Ikinger, Amanda Acevedo, and Dave Graney.
Savage, who died in 2018, was a highly respected keyboard player, composer, and longtime member of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. In a tribute at the time of his passing, Nick Cave wrote: “He was much loved by everyone, band members and fans alike. Irascible, funny, terrifying, sentimental, warm-hearted, gentle, acerbic, honest, genuine – he was all of these things and quite literally ‘had the gift of a golden voice,’ high and sweet and drenched in soul.”
Ahead of the tour, we sat down with some of the performers to share their favourite memories.
Cash Savage
“He always had time for me and my cousins when he was in town. We’d hang out backstage when we came to see Nick Cave, and Conway often showed up at my gigs too, when I started doing shows big enough to have a backstage area. One family Christmas cricket match he was 6 and out, and he refused to go. He kept running while we were all searching for the ball in the swamp next to the house. I think he retired on 100 runs but they were almost exclusively from this one hit out into the swamp.”
Love Music?
Get your daily dose of metal, rock, indie, pop, and everything else in between.
Martyn P. Casey
“Conway and I walk into a bar in LA, sit down at a random table with Snowy Fleet from the Easybeats, Renee Geyer’s on stage. Conway nearly gets in a fight with Renee, exit to the Palomino Lounge to hopefully see Jerry Lee. While waiting to get in, Albert Collins walks up to us, he’s playing his guitar on the sidewalk for the first show. Typical night out with Conway.”
Penny Ikinger
“When Conway Savage’s fairy godmother waved her magic wand over his crib, she must have lingered there for quite some time. With uncommon generosity, she bestowed upon him a dazzling array of gifts: musical talent, good looks, effortless charisma, keen intelligence, razor-sharp wit, sophistication, and, as if these were not enough, sporting prowess as a cricketer. He was a true Renaissance man, carrying it all with a rock ‘n’ roll swagger that was uniquely his own. Even the name he was given — Conway Savage — seemed less a name than a prophecy itself, hinting from the very beginning at an extraordinary destiny.”
Suzie Higgie
Best memories recording ‘Soon Will Be Tomorrow’ in our home at Exeter House, Mt Victoria, Blue Mountains with Conway Savage, Suzie Higgie, and recorded by Matt Crosbie — September 1995.
“Hearing our vocals blend in the bathroom, watching his beautiful hands tinker on the piano, hearing him yelling at the tv when his beloved Sydney Swans were playing, finding out he didn’t like mashed potato then sitting at the end of the day in front of the fire, listening to the songs we’d recorded and why it was all worth it.”
Mark Corcoran
“Any time I play a gig anywhere, I can play that and just close my eyes and know I’m gonna feel really good and set the scene for myself. It’s like breathing for me now to do that song, where you can let yourself stop thinking about being onstage. His music came from a deep place, and it resonated here in Ireland, where he loved to play — small intimate venues, where the audiences hung on his every word. Maybe it was his Irish heritage, but it’s all there in the musical settings to poems by James Joyce and James Stephens from the album Wrong Man’s Hands. They fit so seamlessly, like they were meant to be, his timeless melodies and Irish poetry, 100 years apart, waiting for each other.”
Peter Milton Walsh
“First time I saw him playing piano and singing was, I think, in the amber afternoon light of the Prince of Wales, St Kilda. Early ’90s. Scraps of lyrics — my favourite way to take in a lyric — would float up and stick to your mind. And not let go. He had a kinda slow, country taciturn thing going on, felt like you’d have to get him into a Heimlich manoeuvre to get a word out of him. So it was a bit of a surprise when he once said to me, out of the blue, about one of the songs on Drift — ‘That line, ‘you know those days that blur, the stones of loving her’ — is a good line.’ I told Con I’d probably stolen the stones bit from him. Con said, ‘On the one hand, that may be true.’ I asked, ‘And on the other hand?’ He said, ‘There is no other hand.'”
Robert Tickner
“Conway was a man of few material possessions. As long as he had his keyboard, which he played every day, he was happy. Once, at the airport, when we were going on tour, Conway had only the suit he was standing in, and a brown paper bag clutched in his hand. I never did find out what was in that paper bag.”
Bruce Kane
“Not so much a memory but a piece of advice Conway shared regularly in childhood and repeated on occasion in later life — ‘Try not to be a dickhead, Bruce.’ Still trying. Still hear his voice when falling short.”
Charlie Owen
“I have great memories of recording Nothing Broken with Conway. It remains one of my favourite albums I played on from that period in Melbourne. It was also always great when Conway was part of the group, Maurice Frawley and the Working Class Ringos.”
Click here for tickets to the Australian shows.
These Are The Waves 2025 Australian Tour
Friday, July 10th
Camelot Lounge, Marrickville
Friday, July 17th
Brunswick Ballroom, Brunswick
Saturday, July 18th
Memo Music Hall, St Kilda
