(This one is going to be a work in progress while I’m progressing other works.)
Over roughly ten years mucking around with music, MC-ing, radio, print, a little light advocacy and jumping around selling merch for people I like, The BordererS have been a real constant.
They have a powerful gift of music and it just lights a little fire in my heart, soul, spleen and it spreads to the balls of my feet.
And in a short space of time, Jim Paterson and I have discussed some matters of no scant import.
(No scant importance? No Scant Imports are located in Glasgow and do wholesale homewares and fashions from the Netherlands and selected Scandinavian and Baltic countries.)
On Wednesday this week, we were chatting about religion in the context of our respective upbringings, the Phillips Hughes funeral and memorial services, and where we ourselves had gotten to, as middle-aged men o’ the world.
Bill: “Do you know which song of yours resonates with me the most right at this very moment right now, Jim?”
“Erm, is it, ‘Will You Love Me When I’m Fat, Bald and Ugly?‘”
Not quite, but well played. Bloody Scots! They’re ready with a zinger, as the PR man said to Colonel Sanders.
RSPCA NSW entered the 2014 Sydney Mardi Gras, and I gladly accepted an invite to come along for the ride (sometimes literally) and capture a little vision.
I’m not gay. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!
In terms of my personal interest and orientation, I’ll turn to the words of another in a picture I pinched off someone’s Facebook wall this morning.
I’ve never understood why humans would choose to exclude others because of the colour of their skin, their sexual orientation, body shape, or a host of other criteria.
Among many other things that confuse the stuffing out of me, the concept of ‘exclusion’ grinds my gears probably the worst.
Top ten, anyway.
Having only ever attended one Mardi Gras before (in 2000, standing in very similar conditions to last night, craning my neck to get a glimpse of the Dykes on Bikes over a sea of heads on Liverpool Street), I jumped at the chance to go behind the scenes this year.
I was the archetypical Johnny Come Lately, having had no hand in the weeks and months of preparation that a cast of many from RSPCA NSW had put in.
Put in. Putin. Ha! No, that was Amnesty International. More on them and Vlad the Impaler later.
And while the press today talks about the rain, and the rain, and a little more about the rain, I can tell you there was none of the wet stuff falling from a good two hours before the first float headed out. If it came, it came late, as the bishop said to the actress.
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage
#43 Overheard at the 2013 National Folk Festival
First published in Trad and Now magazine, April 2013
I usually stop short of epithets like ‘the best’, ‘the greatest’ or such like. But in a relatively short experience of the National Folk Festival (my ninth of a possible 47), this year’s was definitely the most anticipated Nash I’ve personally known of.
A number of variables made the lead up to this one a little tantalising.
The organisers made no bones about the fact that it’s been testing times for the National. Some may shudder at words they’ve used like ‘consolidation’, ‘challenge’ and ‘sustainable’, but I’m actually a bit of a fan.
If there are threats to a festival’s viability, you can either fix a smile and adopt a ‘Move on, nothing to see here, all is well’ approach. Or squat on your heels, furrow brows, chew bits of bark and declare we’ll all be rooned.
Or you can call a spade a spade (not a manual earth-moving device) and accept there are indeed challenges and forge ahead.
Disclaimer: I’m observing all of this from some distance, and am NOT privy to any of the National’s internal machinations. Continue reading →
It’s been an irregular destination for six years, but what a place to end up at?
Whether you’re coming from the north or the south, the approaches through gently rolling green hills and valleys are captivating. Despite having familial ties in the Eurobodalla Shire slightly to the north, it was only on way to my first Cobargo that I drove past Lake Corunna, and nearly ran off the road as I sucked all the oxygen from the surrounding atmosphere.
It’s a stunning part of the world.
And the festival site looks like it was placed there by an inspired land surveyor/geo-spatial technician/landscape art historian. I will never tire of simply drifting around the site from top to bottom, over the ridge and back again, finding some new perspective, some new aspect, some new way the light has hit the trees or crept through a cloud outside the venue, at just the right time and just the right angle.
Chris ‘Griff’ Griffiths is one third of the membership of Sydney band Grimick and one half of its name.
Confused? Never fear. (Small band member joke there; we move on.) Yes, never fear because Griff has a black belt in algebra, and is not afraid to use it.
Grimick are Griff, Mick (join the naming dots there) and Dr Fear.
I first encountered Grimick at Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival several years ago and was quite mesmerised by their songs and music. Later, listening to their wonderful album ‘Dazzle’, I was even more enchanted. Firstly, for the stunning production values and warm, rich sound, and secondly for the fact that Grimick have this tendency to give their music away.
Griff explains more about this giving-away ethos in the interview, both giving away CDs at gigs and giving you the ability to download the whole shooting match at their website.
I interviewed Griff at Punchbowl Boys’ High School in Sydney’s south-west earlier this week and we spent a bit of time talking about the benefits to be had from inter-meshing music and education.
And by and by, we did discuss music, and Grimick’s first foray to the National Folk Festival this weekend.
Highly recommended. See them if you can.
*** Audio file will be removed at end of February 2020 ***
Image courtesy of Grimick
Bill Quinn: 2013 is a year for doing interviews in new and interesting places. Already I’ve done one in a harness racing kitchenette, and now we’re at the Punchbowl Boys High School. I’m talking to Griff from the wonderful band Grimick. Hello, Griff.
Chris Griffiths: How’re you going? Thanks for making your way out to sunny Punchbowl on this Monday morning.
Wheeze and Suck Band have since wound up, and a cut-down version of the band perform as Traditional Graffiti. Tony Pyrzakowski performs with Butch Hooper as Hooper and O’Toole.
As I’ve said many a time on stage and in print, I don’t even try to have a veneer of objectivity when it comes to some bands.
They’re just my favourites, and I adore their music and I’ll hunt them down at every festival and sing along, and sometimes dance along, and that’s just the way it is and ever shall be, Wheezer World without end, amen.
If you think age shall weary them, just click on the video link below and suspend disbelief. It says so much with music and dance in this shaky clip I took at St Albans Folk Festival from a couple of years ago (usually held on an Anzac Day weekend — put it in your calendar now; thank me later) is the range of ages the Wheezers appeal to.
What child could resist jumping around to a bunch of men in funny hats and cloaks? And that’s for the young at heart and the young in the head.
And the young in age.
It’s enough to even make you groan with empathy (and maybe a little sympathy) to John ‘Red Tips’ Milce’s jokes, trotted out at irregular intervals in pure Lancashire-ish.
Fiddler-player Tony Pyzarkowski is one third of a regular trio along with Butch Hooper and Kevin ‘Bodhranworld dot com‘ Kelly who form “Kelly’s Heroes” and bash out three hours of stuff you probably know, stuff you may know and stuff you may not have heard of in PJ O’Brien’s pub in Sydney every Sunday night from 6-9pm. (No chance on Easter Sunday — that’s National Folk Festival central.)
After last Sunday’s session, Tony had a bit of a chat about what’s going on with the Wheezers and looked forward to the National Folk Festival starting this Thursday 28 March 2013 in Canberra.
Andrew Winton, David Hyams and Bernard Carney at the bar, Illawarra Folk Festival, 2012. Photo by Bill Quinn.
Last night a song came on the Saturday Night Forever Classic Hits and Memories Relive Show on the radio. And the song is a brilliant soundtrack to my current never-ending task of cleaning, packing, clearing, selling, and carting stuff to op shops, charity stores and the tip.
Lyric cheat
The song (Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da by The Beatles) I learnt via ABC Sing books in primary school and ABC Radio 2CN and 2CY back in the 1970s.
And from listening to Beatles records in the Dickson Library in Canberra after school.
I took the song in my head to a ‘Songs We Sang In School’ themed concert at Illawarra Folk Festival a few years ago, in answer to a callout from the organisers.
I’d worked up a bit of vaudeville to go with it, but the setting for the concert was an intimate affair up the hill in the Chapel.
At that time, the venue was just the chapel itself, not the awesome little elevated tent show it’s now become.
The small, subdued crowd didn’t really seem to suit the energy of what I’d planned, so I did a Dylan song instead.
However, I *did* mention to Bernard Carney in passing that I was planning to do the song before I changed plans. Bernard Carney, apart from his decades-long anthology of original music, has made a regular feature of his festival appearances in putting on all-singing, all-dancing, multi-muso, multi-instramental, multi-styles and genres Beatles Singalongs at festivals and gigs around Australia.
At my casual remark that I was minutely and momentarily stealing his thunder (i.e. not in the slightest), Bernard shot me one of his trademark sideways looks, twiddled his ‘tache, and said, “Why don’t you come along and sing it at The Beatles Singalong?”
😳😳😳😳
Me. Mr Amateur Warbler Plus, who occasionally slid off notes like a slippery dip.
Singing with electrified accompaniment in front of ~400 people.
Feel the fear and don’t think twice, it’s alright. (Gratuitous Bob Dylan references are my jam and cream.)
“Oh, yeah. Alright. No big.” Translation: OH MY GAAAAWD!
Always up for a challenge, me. “That a (hu)man’s grasp should exceed [their] reach, or what’s a heaven for?”
Possibly vice versa. I never can recall.
Come the appointed night, with the thought of going on stage and singing with a backing band, I had so much adrenaline pumping through the veins, you could stick a cord into any orifice and light up a small city.
Ask Craig Dawson — he was sat next to me and had to ask permission to say something before I went up there.
Singing at full belt is a service I do provide.
I’m glad he did because he said, “Give it everything. Don’t hold back. Leave it all out there on the stage.”
I can scarcely remember getting more timely, salient, or sage advice. Thanks, Campusoid.
I strode out, barefoot and in shorts, bandages around my legs where the gumboots had bitten into my calves, plonked a bag on the stage, nodded to no less than Liz Frencham on bass, David Hyams on geet, and Bernard himself wielding his axe. 🎸 There were others.
I fluffed the first line because I was – still am – crap at singing lead with accompaniment, rarely if ever know when to come in. But I made up for lost ground, and when we hit the first chorus, I had props.
“Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da, life goes on, bra…” ♪♪♪
And every time I hit the word ‘bra’, I threw a St Vincent de Paul shop-bought bra out into the audience.
If I missed a note, or got a half-tone off or slurred a word, who cared? Everyone was tossing bras around the crowd. 💄
An enduring memory of that night came as I sang, “🎼🎵🎶 Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face!” And on every syllable stabbing a finger at Billy Folkus, the late, great, flawed but fabulous Bill Arnett.
Picture, if you wish, an Australian twin of Billy Connolly in the fifth or sixth row. Billy had one of the bras tied around his head like some large, hairy, pseudo-effeminate character from a Jane Austen novel.
I walked off stage to shrieks of laughter and gales of applause, cheering and clapping, and the knowledge that noone — not one single person — needed to know my name. Just that they had had a fun time and laughed lots and maybe had a story to tell.
It chrystallised everything that’s core to my being about performance and writing and speaking and radio and singing and living:
“It’s not about me; it’s about us.”
It’s not about me. It’s about you.
It’s about them. It’s about us.
I don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy old world and never aim to. That people can tell me stories as if anew that prominently featured me – but they didn’t know nor realise it was me – is a cause for great personal joy and satisfaction.
It’s the song, not the singer. Play the game, not the ball/song carrier.
Another enduring memory out of all of that was the amused, bemused and c-mused look on Bernard’s face as I bounced off stage and over to the bar to collect the bottle of wine I’d won as a runner-up prize in the Yarn Spinning Contest earlier that day.
I necked it in about 15 minutes flat, which only partially damped down the raging flames of heat and adrenaline. That provides something of a ‘call-back’ to the Billy Connolly reference. I highly recommend the book ‘Billy’ by Pamela Stephenson. (Please check for possible triggers before reading.) Pamela talks about how Billy could drink a stonkering amount of alcohol after a gig but stay high-functioning because of the counter-balance of adrenaline.
I know what that looks like, though mercifully, I’ve never been a slave to the drink. Also, if Billy Connolly is premier league, I’m Sunday park football. Not even in the same postcode.
Bernard Carney watched my exit, stage right, and with another of his trademark looks, leaned into his mic and wryly observed to the audience:
“I think we’ve reached a seminal moment in Beatles Singalongs!”
The next morning, as we were setting up in the Slacky Flat Bar for the day’s shows, one of the cleaners walked up to me swinging one of the bras around her fingers, and with an incredulous look on her face asked:
Fun Machine at Canberra Centenary Celebrations. Photo courtesy of Martin Ollman.
You don’t have to go back too far ago to a time when Fun Machine were an energetic three-piece band making underground waves in Canberra’s lively, teeming independent music scene.
But in a couple of short years (as opposed to the long ones which sadly died out in the late 1800s), Fun Machine’s star has been rising, thanks in no small part to some solid support from the Canberra Musicians Club.
And the amazing advocacy provided by 666ABC (AM Radio) Canberra for all things Canberra indie, but specifically Fun Machine. I may be wrong, but I believe that breakfast announcer Ross Solly may want to adopt them all, which is no mean feat as over this time, the band has doubled in size.
At Canberra’s ‘One Very Big Day’ this week to celebrate the city’s centenary, Fun Machine played to a heaving, sweaty mess of young and old beautiful people, as the last of the fireworks fell away (some into the crowd, allegedly!) as they put a fairly massive stamp on their cross-genre and cross-market universal appeal.
Gigging around Canberra in various formats and bands, the members will rejoin as Fun Machine at this year’s National Folk Festival at EPIC in Canberra over the Easter Long Weekend.
If I were you, I’d… wonder whether those red pumps go with that skirt.
No, if I were giving you a serving suggestion for your Nash experience, I’d be taking a very brightly-coloured Spandex highlighter and putting a golden ring around Fun Machine in your programs.
On Tuesday last, as Canberra celebrated 100 years young with a mass of parties at the shops, I caught up with Bec Taylor and Chris Endrey from the band. Bec starts us off and that would be Chris you can hear crunching his way through the first of Canberra’s autumn leaves as we stood in salubrious surroundings outside the gents at O’Connor Shops. Bec and Chris had just done a stripped-back, rootsy, acoustic set under their duo moniker ‘Yes/No’.
*** Audio file will be removed by end February 2020. ***
I’m one who normally shies away from imported phrases and clichés — until that phrase or word or even that cliché is the most appropriate and resonant to unpack whatever notion or feeling or thing (a technical term, beg pardon) you want to get out there.
Case in point: I arrived at the Illawarra Folk Festival roughly 20 hours before I’d planned, on Thursday night. And when I surfaced on Friday morning, with one eye open, one eye closed, and a third eye tied behind my back for safe-keeping, about half a dozen people then independently proceeded to tell me, and of their own volition bailed me up, tied me down, roped me off, and press-ganged me on board the good ship Dom Flemons.
“Maaaaaate, you gots to see him!”
When I did indeed see him, I kid you not: I was spell-bound.
I was not alone by a long chalk.
The Miners Camp venue was full to over-flowing x 2, and everyone was spell-bound for the duration. When even many young children around the age of four or five even stopped their fidgeting and drawing with crayons for a song or two — well, that’s a fairly good barometer of the appeal of a performer.
Before that performance, and the packed out stage at Slacky Flat Bar the next day, I took just a few minutes of Dom’s time, high above the dog track in the grandstand on Friday morning, to have a chat.
I present that interview: live, uncut and un-fiddled with. No editing or anything.
The typed out wordification will be along later this week.
If you are only roughly within a quarter turn of the earth’s orbit away from anywhere Dom is playing on this tour, just get there.
Northern Beaches Music Festival at Berry Reserve, Narabeen
A Punter’s Perspective
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage
#33 Northern Beaches Music Festival First published inTrad and Nowmagazine, March 2012
It’s always a good sign when you get a good vibe from a festival merely by walking through the front gate.
And so it was on the opening night of the second Northern Beaches Music Festival in Narabeen on the northern beaches of Sydney in February.
My first impression was ‘compact’ — in a good way. Venues are situated so closely within the confines of the Berry Reserve at Narrabeen, all five performance spaces were easily within no more than 60 seconds apart.
Walk in the front past the free stage and you were immediately at the main marquee. A quick stroll further on and you were in the downstairs Berry venue, up one flight of stairs and it was the large Lakside venue, and the ‘Tramshed’ (home of The Shack folk club) was a pitching wedge away.
For all of that, sound spill did not seem to be a factor.
Still very much in its infancy, NBMF is the brain child of Paul Robertson, and his background in theatre, TV production and outside broadcasts is evident in some of the organisational nous that’s behind the festival. Continue reading →
Overheard Productions 