Family Affair is the father-son partnership of former Body Electric and Harem Scarem Melbourne based singer-songwriter guitarist Charlie Marshall and jazz improvising multi-instrumentalist Louie Marshall. This new collaboration couples Charlie’s characteristic soulful vocals, astute lyrics and pure feel rhythm guitar with Louie’s instinctive musical touch and improvisation on keyboards, vocals and tenor sax. Family Affair perform songs from every album of Charlie’s extensive back catalogue with a free wheeling spirit, pulsing groove and intuitive connection between two like-minded musical souls. Forget predictable and playing by rote, expect innate understanding and musical symbiosis.
Charlie Marshall is a singer songwriter from Melbourne, Australia who has been an important part of the scene in that great music city since the 1980s. He’s been the guitar-slinging backbone for some of Melbourne’s finest bands from the legendary punk blues of Harem Scarem to the soulful intensity of The Body Electric whose stellar lineup included members of Dirty Three, Beasts Of Bourbon and the Avalanches. As a performer and songwriter he stands comparison with better known Australian exports like Nick Cave, Robert Forster, Ed Kuepper and Kim Salmon. Drawing inspiration from a range of genres - soul, blues, folk, punk, indie and jazz - Charlie creates a style that is unique and authentic. His music is born from passion, instinct and the state of high emotion, or ‘yearning of the soul’ known as duende. His songs are poetic, romantic meditations on life, love, politics, philosophy and the universe. They come from the heart.
In recent times, Charlie has been adding to his extensive back catalogue with self-produced home studio recordings and honing his solo live performance, melding voice, guitar and backing loops into a dynamic force ranging from gentle, intimate moments to raging, beguiling intensity.
“My musical adventures have taken me on many paths since the 90's but still some of my fondest musical memories are of playing with Charlie in The Body Electric and recording our first album, which I still regard as a great piece of work. A stone cold classic.”
Warren Ellis (Dirty Three, Nick Cave, Marianne Faithfull)
“Charlie Marshall’s sublime music is not well known outside of Australia but
this unfair circumstance does not detract from the quality of his work.”
Mick Harvey (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds)