Chris Wilson / King For A Day LP Black Vinyl ***PRE-ORDER***
Chris Wilson 'King For A Day' LP Black Vinyl
***PRE-ORDER: August 1st, 2025***
Cheersquad Records & Tapes are proud to present the first ever vinyl edition and long-awaited re-release on CD of legendary Australian singer-songwriter and bluesman Chris Wilson's acclaimed 2002 album King For A Day, which was produced by Kerryn Tollhurst of the Dingoes and Country Radio fame. The release is set for August 1, and the LP will released in black, and limited edtion yellow & black pizza pie (100 only) editions as well as on CD. Known for his work with Paul Kelly & the Messengers and with Diesel in Wilson Diesel, as well as involvement with the likes of Hunters & Collectors, Harem Scarem and punk legends X as well his own band the Crown of Thorns and his brilliant solo work, Wilson passed away on January 16 2019.
Cheersquad's 2021 reissue of Wilson's classic Live at the Continental album debuted at #19 on the ARIA album chart and came in at #20 on the Year End ARIA Blues & Roots chart. Ahead of the reissue, in December 2020, Wilson was induced to the Music Victoria Hall of Fame by his old friend Paul Kelly.
Arriving in 2002 off the back of the 2000's Rhythms Magazine "Best Blues Album" Award-winning Spiderman album, King For A Day was the first fully original Chris Wilson since the ARIA-nominated classic Long Weekend in 1998. The eagerly awaited album was the first release on Wilson's newly established Forge label (named after his two boys Fenn and George) and again featured long-time guitarist Shannon Bourne & drummer Dave Folley, along with Chris Rogers on bass, Kerryn Tollhurst, Cindy Boste, Sarah Carroll and Skip Sail.
Chris Wilson was a giant of Australian blues and roots music. A big man with a big voice and an even bigger heart, he followed in the footsteps of early pioneers like Dutch Tilders, Matt Taylor and Broderick Smith (and led the way for the likes of Jeff Lang, Ash Grunwald and the Teskey Brothers) and took his feeling for blues into the rock and punk worlds, eventually becoming the heart and soul of Melbourne’s legendary thriving live scene.
Wilson began his career with the pub R&B/soul rocking Sole Twisters before joining heavy hitting post-punk blues enthusiasts Harem Scarem in time for their revered Pilgrim’s Progress album - taking centre stage with his harp on their burning version of Iggy & The Stooges' “Open Up & Bleed” amongst other great tracks - in 1986. He was known initially as an instrumentalist; he was often seen with a sax hanging off his neck but it was his harp playing that quickly drew attention. In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, he was adding harp to the work of friends Hunters & Collectors (he played on 1987’s What's a Few Men), Crowded House on their album Woodface, punk-rock legends X, and most famously, Paul Kelly & The Coloured Girls (and most famously there on "Dumb Things”), with whom he undertook a 45-date North American tour.
Soon enough Chris found his voice upfront of his own group, Crown of Thorns. And what a voice it was; a rich, elastic baritone that fearlessly traversed areas that few since Tim Buckley had ventured through. At the same time Wilson also made his mark as a songwriter, and seemingly overnight he became the complete package.
Local success for records by Crown of Thorns and another project, The Pubdogs, featuring “Evil” Graham Lee of Triffids/Coloured Girls fame – all released on a label run by 3RRR’s revered blues DJ Max Crawdaddy - led to a deal with Mushroom's Aurora label, home also to Archie Roach. Debut solo album Landlocked followed and in 1993 he was nominated for best male artist and breakthrough artist at the ARIAs. That in turn was followed by Live at the Continental, which soon became his fans’ favourite, and which had a deep resonance with many.
In 1996, Mushroom paired him up with Diesel as Wilson Diesel for the hugely successful Short Cool Ones - a top 20 smash. The sprawling double CD The Long Weekend followed in 1998 and showed the huge potential of his appeal to an audience of pub-going rock fans who grew up on the Dingoes and Cold Chisel and the like. Along the way Chris opened for both Bob Dylan (who sought him out backstage to shake his hand) and Elvis Costello and earned himself a clutch more ARIA nominations.
Chris soon turned away from the spotlight, preferring to play local and hang with his young and also musical family; wife Sarah Carroll was a member of much-loved country trio Git amongst other projects. They moved down to the Bellarine Peninsula, and Chris continued life and work as a harmonica teacher, running programs for boys at local schools and phoning in music book reviews to 3RRR-FM's influential Off The Record program. And the music still flowed. New albums, new projects, and he was by now a scene elder - he had new artists who could use his helping hand. Late in his life, as sons Fenn Wilson and George Carroll Wilson (aka Pollyman) started making names for themselves on the scene, he recorded a final album featuring his new-found drumming skills and teamed up again with old mate Steve Lucas from X in the roaring pub blues rock band the Heinous Hounds, which featured one time Keith Richards & The X-Pensive Winos member Jerome Smith and another old pal, drummer Ash Davies.
In July 2018, Chris announced that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and was unlikely to perform again. His final album was released, eponymously titled. A fundraising concert at the Corner Hotel was organised and quickly sold out. Chris passed away on January 16 2019 to an outpouring of grief as great as any that Melbourne had experienced in a long time.
On October 8 2020, it was announced that Chris would be posthumously inducted into the Music Victoria Hall of Fame. Wilson’s family accepted his induction with wife Sarah Carroll and sons Fenn Wilson and George Carroll Wilson performing a version of Chris’s powerful ‘Hand Becomes Fist’. Wilson’s induction, by Paul Kelly, closed Music Victoria’s annual awards ceremony at the Recital Centre on December 9.
Kelly began his induction speech by quoting Bob Dylan’s recent take from Walt Whitman and describing Wilson as a “man of multitudes“. He went on to describe Wilson’s deep love of music from “it seemed... every country in the world” which he “absorbed” into and his own “mongrel music, a multitudinous music, a music of contradiction and tension”. He described a man who was a “teacher and a preacher” and “ferocious and tender and all the shades in between”; a “huge hearted man”, a “shy man who listened deeply and talked quietly”.
The award was accepted on Wilson’s behalf by his Sarah, Fenn and George – all three, bold and adventurous musicians in their own right.
Tracklisting:
Something That I Said
Jesus Took Possession Over Judgement Day
Embers Down The Mountain
Black Birding
You Got It Right The First Time
Look What Daddy Done
Skin That You Once Wore
Little Jasper
She Danced With the Spirits
Look Out Love
