Diesel Praises Duane McDonald For Powering Through Red Hot Summer and Into One Electric Day

Mark Lizotte (aka Diesel) has praised Australian promoter Duane McDonald for his persistence in keeping the Red Hot Summer tour on track by adjusting to the health challenges now essential to maintaining the safety of large crowds.

To keep Red Hot Summer punters safe at his events, Duane has liaised with government and health officials to make sure the shows meet all health standards.

Diesel, who has been part of the Red Hot Summer 2021 line-up, tells Noise11.com, “In maneuvering through in the most channeling of ways, the way he has navigated, he has done an incredible job of getting us across into different states safely. We haven’t spread anything or done anything untoward anybody. We have managed to play to thousands of people and make a lot of people happy. It’s done to the code. Hats off to him. At lot of people would just go “too hard” but Duane, it just shows you that country mentality of we’ll just sort this out”.

Diesel chose to highlight his 1989 debut ‘Johnny Diesel and the Injectors’ with his ‘Re-Injected 30th Anniversary’ setlist for the Red Hot Summer tour. “I haven’t really strayed much. I have different ways of playing on all my records and there are different formats I do,” Mark says.

The Injectors sound comes from the Sax. To replicate that sound again Mark invited orginal Injectors sax player Bernie Bremond back into his band. “Folding Bernie back into it, it just gives it this flavour straight away,” Mark says. “People come up and say “its so good to hear” but we don’t actually play it that much different. Just having that sound of the saxophone and my guitar together, that’s what clicks with people and I get it. Its such a beautiful thing”.

‘Diesel’s Re-Injected’ show is not a track by track live replica of the album. “Playing verbatim off that record I can’t imagine ever doing, I don’t think I ever did,” Diesel says. “Just that chemistry, that sound of the sax and my guitar together, it’s a thing that Bernie and I do. Whether its been a year, two years, 10 years, it doesn’t matter. Its always been there. Bernie and I have gone to play quite a bit over the years. We made ‘Project Blues’ together with my family, my brothers and my dad, they all joined together and made this amazing horn section. The sax is always that thing that is never that far from my sound. Its also so much fun to have on stage. My band that I’ve been with for 21 years, they just love having him on stage”.

Diesel has another anniversary coming up. His second album, the triple platinum number one record ‘Hep Fidelity’ was released in March 1992. “Next year, 2022, is 30 years since ‘Hep Fidelity’. I might do some shows around that. It’s a record I haven’t played in its entirety ever. It was definitely a good kick-off to a solo career for me and opened a lot of doors. I don’t think it’s a perfect record by any stretch. I remember coming back and sitting in Michael Gudinski’s back yard. He was the catalyst for bringing the whole thing finally to finish. It was pretty scattered at the start, two cities, two producers. But it really came together in the end. I wasn’t sure what I had. I was sitting listening to it thinking “wow this kind of makes sense. It sounds like a record”, even to me. Even a song like ‘Tip of my Tongue’. That came out at the 11th hour. The record was pretty much done. You could tell the pressure was starting to ease off a bit and we were spending more time at lunch. I got sent off to write with Danny Tate because we had a couple of days off and then it was ‘looks like we are recording one more song for this record’.