First thing to say about this gig tonight at The Ellington Jazz Club is that after my first visit to this established Perth musical institution, I just wanted to go around and shake every audient’s hand and thank them for being brilliant humans.

Then somehow bottle them and market them as the ideal audience for most every venue, festival, gig, house concert, happening I’ve been to in the last 20 years.

I’m not kidding and I’m not exaggerating. One song in and I had to re-focus on the music; I was fixated on what an attentive, respectful, beautiful crowd of people had gathered on a Wednesday night on Beaufort Street to attend a gig from something of the unknown: a meeting of two musical minds and prowesses (Jaron from Canada, Emily-Rose from Sydney) with the backline of the sublime and silky smooth percussive chops of Rose Callaghan from [insert where Rose is from when you find out].

Without dwelling on my attendance too much, I’ll just say I was there against not all odds but some odds. On the last night of a seven-night swing over to the west coast from Adelaide, I’d spent three nights in Perth but most of my activities were in Fremantle, then four nights in Fremantle and I was trying as much as I could to curtail my meanderings to just Walyalup and the port city.

However, on Sunday night at the main reason for my jaunt across the Nullarbor, I’d seen Shark & Fox perform at the Fairbridge Festival Showcase at Fremantle Arts Centre, hastily put together by Kaleidescope Multicultural Arts Management. as at least some way of marking what should have been the 2024 Fairbridge Festival, sadly cancelled in the great collapse of festivals of the 2020s.

Forza Fairbridge 2025.