‘Footprints’ by Pete Akhurst (photograph by Somewhere Photography)
Pete Akhurst
Beyond Q bookstore and cafe
Support: Minh Ha
4pm, Saturday 12 May 2012
I recently had the pleasure of doing my first guerrilla interview with the very savvy, very switched-on and very talented Pete Akhurst.
So it was great to see that he’ll be doing a gig, up close and personal this Saturday in the very intimate surrounds of Beyond Q bookstore and cafe, downstairs in the Curtin Shops.
Pete will be playing songs off his EP ‘Footprints’ plus some new stuff, plus introducing his colleague in song and music, Minh Ha.
It’s free, but you can show your appreciation by throwing some money into the jar and maybe buy a copy of Pete’s very fine CD, ‘Footprints’.
Listen to my guerrilla interview with Pete here:
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
And see you on Saturday afternoon at Beyond Q in Curtin.
Paul Greene is making his way around Australia, and on the digital version of two cans with a bloody long string between them, Bill Quinn caught up with Paul on the road as he motored from Port Lincoln, South Australia towards Melbourne for a TV appearance.
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage
#32 Take one large shed, add art and music. Mix and serve.
First published in Trad and Now magazine, February 2012
At a time when venues are closing and festivals are either taking years off or simply disappearing off the calendar, it’s heartening to hear when a café/restaurant throws open its doors to live, original music or another venue opens.
A relative newcomer to the Canberra/Queanbeyan melange of venues is The Artists’ Shed, a large ramshackle and rustic barn of a place plonked in the middle of an industrial estate on the eastern side of Queanbeyan (or Quangers as it’s affectionately known in some circles).
It’s not exactly where you’d expect to find a home for music and the arts. Even the directions to get there raise an eyebrow or two: ‘Head up Yass Road, turn at Magnet Mart, go left, go right and look for the big shed with the Bogong moth on the side’.
Right.
Kicking off in April 2011, the Shed Sessions brought a trickle of local talent in which soon became a torrent and they’re pretty solidly booked into 2012. With the burgeoning numbers has come a rise in press coverage, and the profile of the artists performing, but always with a place for home-grown Queanbeyan and district talent. Continue reading →
I’ve been trying to sell my van via social media and allclassifieds for a few days, and the last time I did something like this, I got attention from a spammer.
But today as I was motoring down the Hume Highway, feeling good about the world and having a full-on sing, I pulled over to the side of the road in the Southern Highlands and read the text message that I thought might be a solution to off-loading my van.
What distracted me was the surname is the same as a very fine guitarist/vocalist friend, so sub-consciously I might have connected the two.
The text read:
I’m interested in d quick purchase of d car u advertised and i will like to know if the ad is still available. Please email me at (johnwoodhead3@gmail.com) John
Now, the savvy among you will already be rolling your eyes and looking to the heavens saying, ‘What was he thinking?’ Continue reading →
Ainslea’s Secret found in Beyond Q bookstore, 2011
Time to Me by Greg Quinn
He* is calling you, but you’re probably not listening…
* Yes, that’s a reference to the Christian version of a deity – one of countless tens of thousands, but this is not a story about religion per se. Promise.
A colleague and I were mucking around and bantering on Facebook today, and the subject of our old alma mater came up. We share a similar sense of humour, and the mention of ‘bona fides’ led to ‘Fortes in Fide’ (from our old school motto: Strong in Faith).
In the course of our online conversation, my colleague mentioned the school anthem, which I confused with the popular hit of a hymn, ‘Eagle’s Wings’.
And it prompted a bitter-sweet memory.
I spent the first 18+ years of my life in the Canberra suburb of Downer. My mum referred to where we lived as ‘Upper Downer’, which was beautifully ironic, as I’m fairly sure that our property was at the exact lowest point in the rather large suburb. Mum always said she was going to start up a movement called, “Downer Is A Beautiful Suburb”.
Our family started its time in Canberra at #20 Wheelbarrow Street, Downer. Elder sister M. was born in 1965 in Camperdown Hospital just as mum and dad were relocating from Harris Park, Sydney to Canberra, allegedly for one year for dad to move from the NSW TAFE system to the then new Commonwealth Teaching Service.
In 1970, when I was three years old and just about to start pre-school, we moved a whole seven doors down the road to #34 Wheelbarrow Street. We may have all carried some of our goods and chattels, and I have a dodgy memory of dad loading up his old box trailer with stuff and getting some neighbourhood friends to help push it the 130 metres (I’m reliably informed by Google Maps).
The next year, in November 1971, my little brother Greg burst forth into the world to complete the fivesome of we Quinn siblings. Yes. Five Quinns. NO, STOP. We have heard all the jokes about five quins, I mean, Quinns.
Greg was a Daramalan College, Dickson Class of 1989 graduate. He then returned to the school to be a teacher’s aide in computing. Greg was also heavily involved with the legendary annual Daramalan school musical/play productions. Any time I hear the strains of any part of the seminal recording of Evita with Julie Covington urging Peronistas to not cry for her, Argentina, I’m back in Downer, with Greg doing lighting, mentoring performers, and even sewing some costumes.
Greg died of brain cancer at 4am, Saturday 22 August 1998 in Clare Holland House hospice which was situated in the grounds of the then Royal Canberra Hospital. It’s now been supplanted by the admin building for the National Museum of Australia, after a Commonwealth/ACT land swap moved the hospice east along the shores of Lake Burley Griffin to 5 Menindee Drive Barton. Continue reading →
Regular visitors to Australia, The Beez, will be having one last hurrah at the Mount Beauty Music Festival this weekend in Victoria then wending their way back for a fly out to home later this week.
So take one last chance in Victoria or join them in cyberspace and buy up all their albums:
* ‘Look What They’ve Done To My Song’ is a fresh take on other people’s stuff, and
* ‘Freishcwhimmer’ is all there own — that spelling may be dodgy — can’t find a reference right now and my battery’s about to go kaput!
Some days the universe gives you lemons, and you can either make lemonade or a whisky sour — then tip out the sour and chug down the whisky.
Tonight, necessity was the mother of invention, and later on tonight, I’ll post a picture that will explain why this otherwise lovely interview sounds like poor old Justin is at the end of a very long string, talking into a rather large tin can.
Resonance we don’t got; noise modulation we do; and a modicum of normalisation and balancing. But you can’t overdo these things.
Who cares? The Go Set are coming to Canberra on Friday 20 April:
The Merry Muse (Turner Bowlo, Canberra Southern Cross Club)
54 McCaughey Street
Turner ACT
Doors 7.15pm
Support: Chloe Hall and Silas Palmer
$17 full/$14 concessions/$12 Monaro Folk Society members
16yo and less are free if accompanied
And here be the interview:
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
The Go Set interview with Justin Keenan for Artsound FM and Overheard Productions
And if you listen to the interview here, or you heard it on Friday morning on Artsound FM, you may have detected two things:
1. Some pretty average sound quality, and
2. A camera click.
Due to some technical challenges and the fact that I really had to get the interview done there and then, I took the shortest distance between two points: a straight line.
Neccesity is the mother of invention — recording the interview with Justin in Studio Two at Artsound FM with a bog standard speaker phone and my iRiver
Waiting in a cold studio in Canberra, unable to make contact with my planned interviewee, feeling pretty low and de-energised, but still noodling on Facebook (mostly trying to find contact details for aforementioned interviewee), a concept was born: guerilla interviews.
In front of me were 450+ Facebook ‘friends’. Most of these are musicians or in some way related to the industry.
Surely someone out there must have something to plug and be yearning for some exposure.
I put the call out to two, and one put their hand up.
Pete Akhurst of Canberra.
He’s on at The Front on Thursday 18 April 2012 with Marshall Okell.
Click here and enjoy. Note: all the usual cutting, pasting and snipping and trimming and balancing and equalising are not to be had. This is interviewing in the raw:
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
Canberra, it’s your chance to see the unusual pairing of The Go Set headlining with Chloe Hall and Silas Palmer as support.
Hear the ‘Tax Office Love Song’ love and other tales of love, stuff, and love and then we’ll kick the chairs to one side and The Go Set will turn the dance floor into sawdust. For more details:
Overheard Productions 