This article also appeared in the April 2024 Edition No. 162 of Trad & Now magazine.

Greetings from Tarntanya on Kaurna Lands, home of the red kangaroo dreaming. I’m Bill Quinn, the artist formerly known as the author of A Punter’s Perspective and Folk On The Road.

I published my last Trad & Now article in February 2023, and I had intended it to be about crowds and noise.

I say ‘last’, but to quote the Billy Bragg song, “[It] should have been the [second] last, but [it] was just the latest.”

Here then is the start of that latest article. I’ve gone for a title using what we call in some brands of written English, parallel structures. It was called, Thank You And Goodnight Pt 1.5.

Although if you’re the type of person who has kept every copy of Trad & Now magazine, plus most issues of its predecessor, Tapestry, and they’re sitting in the top cupboard in the spare room, or shoved under the bed where your first wain Gwenevieve slept from ages two to 22 before she graduated from Kikatinalong University and then moved to Wealabarrabac for post grad (and also that internship with the medical research group) – take a deep breath; I’m puffin – then you can search out the February 2023 edition.

And maybe find that I’ve slightly amended that title. Maybe. Misschien. I honestly don’t know. I can’t recall, and I currently possess zero back issues of Trad & Now magazine on my person or in my cabana.

16 years four months down the tracks. Maybe I dunno maybe 80-100 articles by me, roughly something-hundred editions while I’ve been scribbling but mostly blathering. Hey, they don’t all fit in my backpack.

Even if I hold my teddy bear on my lap in the airplane, Jack Ryan in The Hunt For Red October (film version) style.

Where were we? Herewith, the latest edition, as threatened, but it’s the introduction only, for reasons that may become clear. With some updates for clarification.

See? It’s not only titles that can fall subject to historical revisionism. (Rewriting the past. I could get a job with the LNP at this rate. Nah Yeah Nah, not in this lifetime, the next existence, or any other parallel universe.) 531 words so far. Note to Cec: it might be a bit shorter than I usually am, as the bishop said to the actress.

———-

Thank You And Goodnight Pt 1.5 – My [Latest] Article for Trad & Now (2023)

As I type, it’s the last day of January 2023, and last night I sang my farewell in song to Walyalup.

Walyalup is the local Noongar word for the area known as Fremantle. The venue was Clancy’s Fish Pub in Cantonment Street, and the song was Rag and Bone by Ian Mackintosh of The Wheeze & Suck Band/Traditional Graffiti.

The crowd was glorious, and they joined in with great gusto, mostly because they were sharing pieces of paper with lyrics on which I’d hastily scribbled. So roughly 20 pieces of notepaper I’d had distributed in classroom fashion: “Take one and pass the rest on. Some of you will have to share.”

This article is running late because after 16 years of A Punter’s Perspective/Folk On The Road, you don’t [muck] with tradition*.

* Gratuitous Letterkenny pop culture reference. Stream all 12 seasons plus specials now on SBS On Demand.

To slide in to home base just in time (or after time), just before the short stop whistles the ball in back over the pitcher’s left lughole, with the catcher makes a despairing dive to tag my pindan-dusty britches as I take a minutely wider arc and stick a fingernail out to lightly touch the plate and inform Gaia that I’ve reached enlightenment… no, wrong allegory… as I reach a fingernail out to inform Mr Cecil B. De Cello Player that I’ve finally coughed up 1400 words…

Yeah, it’s kinda my thing.

Cec knows me well enough, and we have a curious, shallow/deep, common/disparate, intense/laconic kind of relationship as writer/publisher/editor/owner and writer/blatherer/gypsy.

This edition’s column was originally going to be about an unsavoury crowd/audience incident from late last year in Walyalup, and far too many similar occurrences.

I need another month to process all that, though the audio version [existed] in the on-demand section of 107.9FM Radio Fremantle – Folking Around, Monday 9-11pm. [It’s been 15 months, and that episode has now finally fallen off the edge of RF107.9FM’s archives. Which is ok and fully reasonable, especially as that’s well over a year I could have accessed and downloaded it. By curious comprison, my first radio station deleted my whole back catalog of sounds with prejudice not long after I departed on wobbly, discordant, clear air turbulent terms. And conditions.]

I had already resigned from that radio gig while waiting to raise my anchor and sail off from Fremantle.

[And then we kicked in to a previous article, so going back even further in time, much as one’s timeline on Google Maps announces if you want to see where you’ve been: “Going Back In Time”. Let’s not go down those two rabbit holes. Ok, briefly:

1. “Aw, Quinny. Don’t cha know if ya keep ya location tracking on ya Android on then theys can track ya.”

I know, Myrtle and Bazza. I need to know where I’ve been so I can retrace steps and recover my lost possessions. It’s the sub-title of a Bill Gates book.

“Yeah but yeah but yeah but, then the gubmint kin track yez.”

Thanks for the input, Kevin. Didn’t know you were on the guest list of this conversation, but ok. Kevvy, what’s that in your rear hot pants pocket? Bulging out like the biggest ad for your virility since an open-necked shirt with a medallion dangling twixt your chest hairs?” (Some of this is based on actual events; it’s Adelaide Fringe time.)

“Awwww, it’s me gnu eyeFoon. It’s perfect. It’s amaaaaazing. It’s awwwwsum.”

Right. And you don’t want to be tracked by the FBi** or CIA*** or ATO**** or SAPol*****? Gotcha. Good luck with that. Rolls eyes emoji.

** FBi 94.5FM in Sydney. One of my top five in the country. Doubt they’re tracking Dancing Kevvo.
***Commonwealth Institute of Acronyms.
**** ATO. Australian Taxation Office. Me? 1999-2009. We have so much unfinished business. Mostly my last two returns. Might put in three on my birthday in July for many happy… refunds.
***** How I have made it eight point five months in this state with some time away for nefarious behaviour and NOT engaged with SA Police is a minor miracle. No wait. Where did I get my fine? I got pinged somewhere on my overland trip in January. Brisbane to Perth in a campervan for eight days. I got some sort of fine and haven’t seen the paperwork yet. I’m glad we had this chat. What was that for? Not speeding. I don’t think. And was it in SA or after I crossed the border at Eucla and headed to Norseman?

This is why I talk and type so much. I must find out. I nearly lost my driver’s licence in 2019 because a fine for fare evasion and possible illegal transport of a live animal across council lines on NSW Transport only found me by snail mail after about a year. Snail mail. To a ‘home’ address. In this day and age. What were they thinking?

Better go to Services SA today and find out if they can shed light. Or light sheds. No, that’s Davo at Collards and Green next to Mitcham Station at the end of my road. He lights sheds until Mitcham City Council says he can’t.

Where was I? Replaying old articles.

I’ve used that tactic two or three times over my 16 years writing for Duck’s Crossing publications when illness, fatigue, day job, night job, apathy, procrastination, or one or other of my essential traits kicked in. Let’s jump forward 13 months to 2024.]

Thank You And G’day Pt 2.0 – My Next Article For Trad & Now

Ultimately, I hung around in the west of the west of Terra Australis a little longer, with time out for bad behaviour at festivals: Nannup Music, Port Fairy Folk, Majors Creek, Canberra Comedy, and Cresfest (Creswick, Vic), returning to Walyalup in time to catch two Billy Bragg gigs at Freo.Social.

Let’s talk about that unsavoury incident alluded to above. It was at a wonderful night of music, song, and communal singing at Fremantle Navy Club with Carla Geneve supporting Mick Thomas and the Roving Commission.

I had never seen Weddings, Parties, Anything or MTatRC or Mick Thomas in any configuration other than catching parts of his set at Illawarra Folk Festival, Slacky Flat, Bulli, New South Wales.

I must find out what country/nation that area is. I’ve known it, but it’s slipped my mind somewhere in 11 years since my last IFF with the mighty Illawarriors. See previous editions of Trad & Now magazine, and look for the fetching, atmospheric picture I took of Paul Greene, David Hyams, and Bernard Carney leaning against the famous Slacky Flat bar AND/OR another titled, Overheard At The Illawarra Folk Festival (or some such).

This had been my first chance to see the full deal live, and I was really looking forward to it because Fremantle Navy Club is a mighty, mighty venue filled with 99.9% germ-free…

No, I cannot back that claim up. Reverse. With 99.9% groovy, music-savvy, respectful people – or they are when they gigs are on in the band room. And singing sessions with Sing! Sing! Sing! (I believe that’s the title) were sensational.

Sadly, I say ‘were’ because Covid took them down like a shot from a blunderbuss, and though they managed to pick themselves up off the canvas, dust themselves up, relace the gloves, and clamber back aboard the horse, regrettably after a few more comeback sessions which I was privileged to be part of, they mournfully announced the regular second Tuesday (?) night Two Hour, One Song, Three Singing Parts events of glorious voxification and shared joy, they were packing away the card table, wiping off the menu board, and declaring to a grieving public that the slightly paunchy person who now identifies as an opera singer had warbled its last.

This month’s competition: how many mixed metaphors have I used up to this point? Currently 1172 words. Answers in a comment on the Overheard Productions Facebook page, on the video on Overheard Productions Instagram dated 15 March 2024 with a timestamp of early afternoon, and featuring a mashed-up meal of cornbread, bacon, vine tomatoes, jalapenos, eggs, hummus, and possibly yoghurt. Currently drenched in a lemon I brought from home, not for taste but to keep the flies away.

OR as a comment on the corresponding articles to this thing you’re now reading (with a stiff Jamesons, some smelling salts, and the Nurse Hotline on standby) on www.OverheardProductions.com – the blog.

And that, mijne heren en vrouwen, as Peter Cundle would say, is your lot.

Stay tuned for the next exciting episode where our intrepid band of four radio presenters from Radio Fremantle 107.9FM and www.radiofremantle.com.au – Listen Live or Listen Later – attempt to watch and hear Carla Geneve (not pronounced as you might expect) and Mick Thomas (pronounced as you would generally expect) and Squeezebox Wally (insert your own jokes at home) and Brooke Taylor (holy smokes; get her latest album because it is 27 types of wonderful) and I’ll add the others in on the web version but Cec has just sent me an email which I quote here in its entirety: Tic, tic, tic

Boom.

From the Adelaide Plains south of Tarndanya on Kaurna Country, the home of red kangaroo dreaming, this is Bill Quinn or the artist formerly known as the guy at Table 36 at Bond & Lane Canteen in Colonel Light Gardens wishing you a great festival season in wherever you are, especially the remnants of what’s left of festivalled-out Adelaide, the series of wonderfulness in New South e.g. St Albans Folk Festival there on the lovely bend in the MacDonald River and long may your Anzac Day trumpet sound from the escarpment and good luck to the new venue layout and all who sail in her.

Tot ziens. Tot vlede maand. Tot volgende keer. Dui!

ENDS