Flesh and Wood is the seventh album by Australian rock singer Jimmy Barnes, which was issued in December 1993. It was recorded by Barnes and Don Gehman co-producing and used only acoustic instruments. On eight of its fifteen tracks, Barnes duets with various artists: Diesel, Archie Roach, Joe Cocker, Ross Wilson, Tommy Emmanuel, Don Walker, Deborah Conway, and the Badloves. It reached No. 2 on the ARIA Albums Chart.

Background

In 1993 Jimmy Barnes gathered a few colleagues including his guitar player Canadian Jeff Neill and Australian Country Music musician Lawrie Minson and performed an acoustic show in the studios of Channel 7 in Sydney to support the release of his Flesh and Wood album. The show featured a number of new songs along with a selection of Barnes' (and his former band, Cold Chisel's) tracks. It was released on VHS in 1994 and on DVD in 2005. Barnes later commented on Gehman's recording methods, "He wouldn't use any real drumkits. Every day we would put together various bits and pieces from the kitchen and hit them in front of microphones. Pots, pans, you name it, we hit it. Cardboard boxes instead of bass drums, jars filled with rice and used as shakers."

Reviews

Jonathan Lewis from AllMusic rated it as four-out-of-five stars and explained, "Flesh and Wood was Barnes' attempt at an unplugged album, and featured duets with other Australian rock luminaries. While it contains some of Barnes' own material and some covers (including Cold Chisel's superb 'Flame Trees'), few songs here manage to match the originals; fewer still eclipse them. A competent album that shows a more sophisticated side to Barnes that was hinted at with Soul Deep."

Track listing

Chart positions

Weekly Charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

Personnel

2015 Tour

During Barnes' 30:30 Hindsight tour in 2014, Barnes performed a number of songs from Flesh and Wood, inspiring a 2015 national tour of its own. "The band and I are looking forward to playing all these great songs again, with a bit of storytelling and strings thrown in, when we take the show around the country in July”, said Barnes.

Set list

This is the set list from Brisbane, on 3 July 2015: