Month: October 2012

The BordererS — performing for the young, old and in between in Canberra, 2012

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The BordererS
The BordererS

My very first live to air radio interview was with The BordererS — an Adelaide band based around Jim Paterson and his wife, Alex. The BordererS play a blend of music that’s hard to defind — actually, it’s easy to find (see link above), it’s a tad difficult to define, but once you’ve found it, you won’t want to de-find it. Aren’t typos fun?

Where were we? If you put folk, Celtic, world and dance into a blender, it may come out sounding pretty much like this combo.

Ever since that first inexpert interview, stabbing at buttons and sliding of faders, I’ve had the great pleasure to interview Jim and Alex several times, both in and out of the studio. This weekend they’re heading to Canberra to do two quite different gigs, and when I asked Jim how he’d be placed on Wednesday night for an interview, he said he’d be placed in a comfy chair in his lounge room in Adelaide.

Which is where I caught up with him, telephonically.

Bill Quinn: Jim, I’ve spoken to you many times before, but for others who are just catching up, tell us a bit about The BordererS.

Jim Paterson: Well, I’m six foot five and look very similar to Brad Pitt.

BQ: That’s my recollection.

JP: Ehm, and my wife… she’s kind of like a midget.

No, we’ve been going for nearly 19 years now, and I was just talking with someone today — Gabi, she’s our backing vocalist — and I said that after 19 years, we should be doing the reunion tour now, rather than still going!

I’m Scottish and my wife [Alex] is Irish. And we play around the country and into Europe. And America next year; we’re going to go to America next September.

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2012 Folk in the Foothills at Jamberoo Lodge

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Entrance to Jamberoo Lodge. "Abandon all signal, ye who be with Optus and its subsidiaries." (Long John Silver, 1756.)
Entrance to Jamberoo Lodge. “Abandon all signal, ye who be with Optus and its subsidiaries.” (Long John Silver, 1756.)

Folk in the Foothills 2012

Some scribblings by Bill Quinn

Sunday 14 October 2012

I’ve written extensively, exhaustively and some might say nauseatingly in the past on what I deem to be the restorative power of folk festivals.

They’re good for what ails ya.

Your worst day at a festival beats your best day doing many other things. I mean, look, it IS possible to say, “Gee, I had a great day at work!” It is. I’ve had them meself. But I can’t remember too many times when I’ve said, “Well that was a crappy festival day”.

My first and latest Folk in the Foothills was in 2008 and I recall it vividly for two very specific reasons. Back in those days, I was singing with Ecopella, that wonderful, sustainably-good four-part singing mob from around NSW and the ACT.

And what made it doubly good for a small ‘g’ greenie such as meself that day was that when I arrived somewhere on the south coast to give a lift to the choir director, I was brandishing the front cover of The Canberra Times which was announcing that the Greens looked like winning the balance of power in the previous day’s Legislative Assembly elections in Canberra.

And the other reason I recall well was that at Jamberoo in the mid-afternoon, I spied two rather gorgeous women who did indeed look like they were having a pretty crappy festival day.

(See, it all came around to a point of some sort in the end. And that’s just the way I planned it. Yeah, right.)

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Los Chavos: new album out soon plus gigs

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Los Chavos Pozible crowd-sourcing fundraiser
Los Chavos Pozible crowd-sourcing fundraiser (photo taken a little before the interview below was recorded. The tape recorder was a little drunk, so text only).

Los Chavos

On building a new album from many cultures

I’m sure there’s a name for the syndrome whereby people who are prone to conducting interviews just cannot stop themselves from whipping out various recording devices at opportune and inopportune moments in order to capture pearls of wisdom from artists and performers.

So it was in late August when Los Chavos had just sweated, samba’d, grooved and funked a heaving crowd to a stand-still at the Polish White Eagle Club in Canberra for the Canberra Musicians Club’s regular Friday night gig.

At sometime between midnight and 1am, as the band was loading out the side door, I did indeed whip out the trusty Samsung and away we went, starting with some sort of four-way first bump with various band members. Which always works goodly on audio.

Speaking of which, thank me now that this written text. We’d all punished the Polish beer a tad by this stage.

Bill Quinn: I feel I should know this, but what does ‘Los Chavos’ actually mean?

Rafael Florez: Pretty much, “The Guys”. Or “The Dudes”. It’s based on a Mexican TV show called “El Chavo del Ocho”.

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Billy Bragg interview: the sound file

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Billy Bragg -- on tour in Australia from 19 October 2012. Photo credit and copyright: Anthony Saint James.
Billy Bragg — on tour in Australia from 19 October 2012. Photo credit and copyright: Anthony Saint James.

Billy Bragg interview: the audio

On a mild Canberra evening, I interviewed Billy Bragg down the line from the UK. While I hammered the text out fairly quickly and it appeared in Timber and Steel a week or so later, and in Trad and Now not long after that, I dragged my heels a little to get the audio edited down.

Luckily, my new multi-channel recording device comes with a handy bit of sound-editing software, and while I’m hardly a master of it, it’s done. Even if Soundcloud is taking forever to load the audio file.

But that’s my problem not yours…… 36% uploaded……

Enjoy.

Full details of where Billy’s playing are in the Timber and Steel article — see above for link.

Bruce Watson: solo and Unsung Heroes project

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Bruce Watson. Picture courtesy of www.brucewatsonmusic.com
Bruce Watson. Picture courtesy of http://www.brucewatsonmusic.com

Bruce Watson

Talks mostly about Unsung Heroes

(But he’s about to do a week or so of solo stuff so make sure you read to the end!)

Tracking back even further through my backlog of recorded material, back a fair few weeks ago now, Bruce Watson was on the road with three of his Victorian compadres (I could have said Mexican, but didn’t) for the Unsung Heroes shows in a few venues. Sadly, this article didn’t get to see the light of day in time for those shows, but as you’ll read, the project has quite the life that will see it around for some time to come. Here Bruce talks about how the concept came about and what the future plans are for the project.

And then, you can start scribbling dates in your diary as Bruce prepares to have a mini-assault on ACT and the southern highlands/Illawarra hinterland/central coast and Hunter region over the next ten days.

Bill Quinn: Tell me about the Unsung Heroes project.

Bruce Watson: It’s a collection of four singer-songwriters – which is sort of unusual for singer-songwriters to all get together. But we all met at a thing called the Darebin Songwriters Guild which is based in our local area in the northern suburbs of Melbourne.

And we got together to do that, and the actual idea for the project came from Moira Tyers, and she was just basically talking to people about it. She formed a band with Wendy [Ealey] and Neil [Robertson]. And I heard about the project and said, ‘This is really good. I’ve got some songs that would fit into that idea, and I’d love to be involved in some way’.

So I was invited into the project.

We actually started with about ten people. And gave the initial concert with a whole lot of local songwriters that did songs on the theme of ‘Unsung Heroes’.

Then we gradually filed it down to a manageable number of people, and to more of a thematic approach, with the organising principle being: time. It’s chronological, going from settlement (and a little bit of a flash-back to pre-settlement Australia) and it goes right through to a few contemporary people – a few people who are still alive and doing amazing things.

So that’s how the show started, and it’s turned into a show that’s got a narrative and a set of songs and the visuals are really important. It’s got a slide show component that’s quite important. Continue reading →

Jenny Spear: Black is a Colour

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Jenny Spear
Jenny Spear

Jenny Spear

Black is a Colour

As Jenny Spear and I sat down to have lunch and a chat about her new album (‘Black is a Colour’) at Digress Restaurant and Lounge in Canberra City, I proved once again that while I do like my humour and observations laced with irony and straight-facing, I can be just as thick and literal as they come.

‘You know, this album will work well across a couple of genres because there’s an old traditional folk song called, “Black is THE Colour”.

To her credit, Jenny was very polite as she shot me a look that registered the comment, but she let me come to my own learning as sometime later a question revealed, “Yeah, well, that’ll be Track Three then”.

Jenny had contacted me many months ago out of the blue, at a rather crazy time as I was bouncing around New South Wales and ACT, and we made vague plans to catch up somewhere sometime somehow.

Then one night as I stopped off at the monthly music blackboard at the Royal Hotel in Bungendore, Canberra singer-songwriter-author Chris Johnson announced Jenny Spear as the woman sitting next to him, pumping out a fair slab of Neil Young’s back catalogue with him.

In late August, Jenny and I finally caught up over some wonderful Indian pizza at Digress. We didn’t realise it at the time, but Jenny was to soon perform there as the Merry Muse club took an unusual and welcome diversion to another venue for one night.

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Liz Frencham on touring with Gregory Page and Jimmy the Fish

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Liz Frencham talks about playing solo

and with Jimmy the Fish and Gregory Page

This is a slightly elongated and fuller version of the interview with Liz Frencham that first appeared in Timber and Steel on 28 September 2012.

Liz Frencham is one of the hardest working women in folk.

Liz’s collaborations, bands and projects are legendary. If you laid out her records end to end, including her solo, band, contribution and bit part playing thereon CDs… my, it would take a long time to pick them all up again.

Liz spent part of winter cocooned away in rural Victoria, but in recent times she’s been on the road with her bluegrass outfit Jimmy the Fish, and with the inspired pairing with Fred Smith as Frencham/Smith.

Sometime in the late 1980s, or so it seems, Liz had an interview with Bill Quinn which included one landline, one mobile phone as conduit, and another mobile phone as recording device. Liz was in picturesque southern Trentham, and Bill by the banks of the Moruya River on the beautiful Eurobodalla Nature Coast in rural, coastal New South Wales.

As Liz prepares to strike out on a tour with US singer-songwriter Gregory Page, I started by asking Liz where her preference for solo or band performing lay.

Liz Frencham: I wouldn’t call it a preference. It’s exactly the same, say, as playing playing with Jimmy the Fish and playing with Fred.

Playing solo is “different” and it requires different skills. Probably one thing it has in its favour at the moment is that it still completely terrifies me.

It’s not something that I’ve mastered. It’s exciting and I haven’t settled into a comfortable groove, which makes the possibilities seem more endless. I wouldn’t say it would be a preference, per se.

I am a bass player, and when you’re fitting into your role the most is when you’re accompanying somebody else.

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Salvation Jane — Salvaged and Reunited

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Salvation Jane at the Tantriic Turtle, 2012 National Folk Festival
Salvation Jane at the Tantriic Turtle, 2012 National Folk Festival

Salvation Jane

Salvaged and Reunited

At the National Folk Festival in 2012, I was gladdened of heart and soul for many reasons to see the wonderful Salvation Jane performing together in the Tantric Turtle.

Firstly, due to some rather dodgy priorities, I’d only come flying around the great hessian protuberance we named The Great Wall of China to be transported into the relaxing and mesmerising surrounds of the Tantric Turtle Cafe as they were into their first number, having plotted and planned to be in the middle of the oval well before kick-off time.

Secondly, it’s always a source of joy and uplifting-ness to see/be in a decent radius of the lovely Penny Larkins.

And thirdly, when I spied Penny and saw her unmistakable girth, rotundness and bump-ness, I did squeeze out a few little tears of vicarious, fecund joy.

That was April.

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A Punter’s Perspective #36 — The Paperback Sessions

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Paperback Sessions at Smiths Alternative Bookshop, Canberra City
Paperback Sessions at Smiths Alternative Bookshop, Canberra City

A Punter’s Perspective

Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage

#36 The Paperback Sessions
First published in Trad and Now magazine, August 2012

Regular readers of this column, apart from probably needing a little light therapy, can probably discern a few recurring themes.

Not the least of these is the little bubbles of childish joy the author gets when a new venue or opportunity for live, original music makes its way onto the scene.

I’ve spent most of my adult life railing against two eminently and easily explodable myths: 1. Canberra’s boring, and 2. There’s nothing to do in Canberra.

Both are, of course, big steaming piles of dynamic lifter.

Friday nights particularly are troublesome with the multiplicities of options if you haven’t been able to replicate yourself into about six or seven independent entities.

Without having to refer to a gig guide, I can tell you that you need to divide yourself between the Phoenix bar, Bucky’s Lone Wolf gigs at the Harmonie German Club, the always wonderful Front Café, the newly-launched Canberra Musicians Club gigs at the Polish White Eagle Club, folk gigs at the Merry Muse, the Transit Bar conveniently located under the youth hostel, the odd very fine line-ups at Alliance Francaise and the occasional gig at old stagers, Tilley Devine’s.

Not bad for a metropolis of only about 360 000. And that’s just the gigs riffed off the top of the head. I’m sure there are many others. (See www.culturazi.com for any missing bits and pieces.)

Still, it’s a thing of joy and beauty to welcome a new player onto the scene. Because if you want to get away from three-chord covers bashers, replete with drum machines, in the clubs, Canberra really does offer a feast of the good stuff. And we’re big and ugly enough to offer a smorgasbord and share the audiences and audients about.

Which is not to say the occasional gig doesn’t kick off with the sound rattling around in poorly-attended venues. That will happen. Some days are diamonds, some days are when you struggle to clear the venue costs and pay the sound guy.

So. One such venue made its way into Canberra’s mix recently with just the right amount of fanfare, immediate support and a growing profile.

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