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.
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 inTrad and Nowmagazine, 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.
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.
Billy Bragg — image courtesy of BillyBragg.com ♪♪♪ If you don’t tell me what not to say, I won’t tell you what not to do ♪♪♪
Billy Bragg interview
by Bill Quinn
I’ve been a little tardy on my interview transcriptions lately and have a few stacked and racked. All paid work is up to date; it’s the pro bono stuff I’m dragging my heels on a tad.
Thank you SO much to the truly wonderful Gareth Huw Evans of Timber and Steel — he’s a credit to Australian music and to effective business and being a good bloke.
Similarly, Heidi Braithwaite from Riot House Publicity has been a model of timely responses and good-humoured help.
And to everyone who’s given the interview a nudge, a like, a re-post or a share: you rock my world and you know who you are. (And I know where you live!)
To go back a ways regarding interviews: in 2008, I spoke in halting, nervous tones down the line with Jim Paterson of The Borderers on my very first solo radio show on Artsound FM, while I tried very hard to work out which buttons to press and which faders to slide.
Jim didn’t realise it at the time, but his simple query in an email created something of a monster (in every sense of the word), and my four years with Artsound were typified by studios over-flowing with guests, musos, family, friends, PR people, mums and dads, and some golden live moments. I think pets is the only….. no, we had some of those too, including my melon collie in later years.
I look forward to many more interviews and live moments elsewhere in the cosmos. I recorded one at this very dining table about 8.5 hours ago and that will be coming to you soon.
For now, Billy Bragg has been by far my biggest — and longest for a non-performance — interview to date. (Myf Warhurst had the gold for a good run, but she’s sitting so very pretty — sigh! — in silver medal place now. Why did I shave that beard off? What was I thinking?! Why am I saying this out loud?)
Transcribing the BB interview took the better part of a working day, albeit with lots and lots and too much of online-y distractions along the way.
I’m an un-ashamed Billy Bragg fan, and he’s my favourite performer of any genre in the world.
As much for his soul and his passion and his politics and his unrelenting drive as for his art. If you could bottle the resonances, you’d outsell coke. And coal. And natural gas.
I hesitated like you can’t know before going down the route of making that personal connection with him about my brother during the interview, but I was ultimately so glad I did. Like a song I partially inspired, written by my good friends Craig and Simone Dawson, I have a little personal dare with myself where I take a deep breath, count 1, 2, 3 and dive in.
I was sat there in the studios of 2XX, having effectively paid/donated a tick under $500 of my own money to a crowd-sourcing project for the privilege. That was a thing of pure socialism. At the time I had roughly five grand in the bank and thought, some of this cash could do more that just gather dust.
If I had known then that less than seven days later I would fall even further down the rabbit hole for two weeks, I might not have been as effusive and altruistic!
Meh. As I fully believe, and as I overheard a new colleague say in as many words today:
“It’s only money — you can always get more.”
So, there I was in Studio 2 or 3:
in a radio studio I’d never used before,
one arm across my body holding mic three which I’d dragged across the desk,
twisted half-way back towards the console to read a few scratchy notes I’d made for myself on screen,
one eye on my watch as we were going to be cut off at 20 minutes and I hadn’t been able to add nineteen to whatever time we’d started — there was too much going on.
And out of all that I had nothing but faith (because I do keep faith) in my ability to somehow make it all happen in an interview that in many ways had been two years or more in the making.
And when I hung up from the interview and had let out a gurgling scream of something to the universe, in the next heartbeat I was on the phone to my brother Greg’s widow to do a quick de-brief. I’d told a few choice and a few badly chosen people what was going on, but ultimately it was Ainslea’s secret.
Anyone who saw me later that night at the Canberra Musicians Club Old Timey gig might have mistaken me for a ten year old boy who’d just gotten the cream, to mix a human-feline metaphor.
Sadly, and this has been a pattern, some elements in the music world and the yarts have again inferred some sort of ego-stroke or self-aggrandisement for Billy Quinn out of all of this.
And to those people, I say two things:
1. It’s not me, it’s you. No, really, this time, it’s you.
3. Press ‘play’.
Me? I’m looking for that next big thing, “exploding over our heads”. ♪♪♪♪♪
So, as the bishop said to the actress, I’ll be brief.
No, seriously. I know we’ve met and all, and I know that you know that I know that I don’t do brief.
Or briefs. But hey I just got up from a nap.
Unclench and un-eeewwwww! I’m wearing trackie pants but only because me trewsers are drying and when they are, I get to go out the door and down the club to watch Norwich at home to West Ham United who are the new black because (tada) that’s Billy Bragg’s team.
See? Douglas Adams was on to something with Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency: the interconnectedness of all things. (Shows how much TV I watch; apparently it’s a TV series. Go go Google iView or whatever or I’ll have to go to Britain if it’s geo-blocked here. Mind you, I’m writing this from Australia, so we might get to see it here in 2014. This is the part where you dive in and say, ‘Oi, cloth ears; it was on in May!’)
Now, by curious coincidence, I mentioned ‘the interconnectedness’ of all things to Sir William Bloke in the interview, and just as I expected, he leapt on to the concept like a seagull onto a chip.
I once blew seven layers of merde through a group of teenagers throwing chips to seagulls on the south coast of New South Wales.
I’m going to have my patented two grabs at this interview.
Firstly, here’s an edited version of a radio interview I did not so long ago with Jenny M Thomas as the album ‘Bush Gothic’ was launching. I’ve just surgically removed a couple of references to the then gig at another venue:
*** 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 ***
So, on Friday 17 August, Jenny M Thomas and the System will be performing at the Merry Muse and you can find out all those gig details there now.
Tonight, after Jenny spends approximately an hour in hair, wardrobe and make-up, I’ll be talking with Jenny on the phone from Melbourne to get the latest on what’s going on with her and the System. Gotta keep it fresh, y’all.
And THEN the text of said interview will appear here or on a very fine folk blog — details will be posted here either way.
OK. I think we’re done for now. If you haven’t clicked on the link on the sound file yet, have a watch of this great video from ABC Radio.
STOP PRESS
In sharing the event information with the support act, I stumbled across this video on their Facebook page and, not for the first time this 24 hours, fell in instant metaphoric musical love. Click play and soak into this one like you would a warm tub. Wonderful:
But to hear more from the man himself…. no, I mean to read more from the man himself — I’m not on radio anymore — click here for my interview with Fred last week for the very fine Timber and Steel blog.
Harry Manx performs at the 2012 National Folk Festival
Harry Manx on tour in Australia
Interview the second, June 2012
As Harry Manx continues his way around Australia on an exhaustive (and possibly exhausting) tour, I caught up with Harry by phone one evening as he was taking a few days off in Darwin.
Rather than copy and paste the details here, I’ll direct your attention to the very fine Timber and Steel web-site where you can read all the details and hear the audio from my April interview as well.
Harry will be playing in Canberra on Wednesday 20 June, so I’ll see you there if I’m looking at you!
Pat Drummond tribute concert, Merry Muse, Canberra
Pat Drummond interviews
The day after the tribute night before
Pat Drummond has built up a formidable musical legacy. And he’s not done yet.
So while he could attend his own tribute concert, sit in the front row, and inevitably jump up and provide a fair slice of the entertainment himself, he did just that.
The brain-child of long-time friend Craig Dawson, the night was held at The Merry Muse, Turner Bowling Club on Friday 18 May 2012.
For more details on the actual night, see the ‘A Punter’s Perspective’ column in the May edition of ‘Trad and Now‘ magazine. $4.90 in newsagents and considerably less online.
And for the audio of the actual interviews, click below. My apologies for the quality of the audio; my MP3 recorder is taking a holiday somewhere without me and has resisted all entreaties to Saint Anthony to show itself. So the audio tracks are on a very average voice recorder on my soon-to-be ex-phone.
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
and
*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***
Thanks, Pat, for the last 35 years. Looking forward to the next 35.
Pat Drummond starts the evening as a mere spectatorPat Drummond, Fred Pilcher and Geoff Drummond — video to follow!
Last Sunday, about a week out from Sorry Day 2012, I had a not-so-chance interaction at the Aboriginal Tent Embassy on the lawns of Old Parliament House, Canberra, ACT, Australia.
It galvanised for me two of the things that are most core to my being:
1. My favourite word in the English language (and several others I either speak or have some capacity with) is ‘diversity’.
Diversité. Diversiteit.
We can identify, celebrate, and understand our differences.
The more we can resist saying, ‘I don’t understand’, and the more we can say, ‘Help me to understand’ when it comes to differences, the better off we can be.
In my very humble opinion.
2. Never assume. I offer this as a serving suggestion. You can do whatever the hell you like. I suggest that to assume anything is to cut off so many fruitful opportunities.
The older I get, the more I have grown to dislike the word ‘assume’ and all the connotations around it and others like it.
‘I assume, I presume, Obviously, As you are aware’: they’re all illegal in my book. It’s like aversion therapy just being on the planet some days, hearing these repeated ad nauseum. Keep some tally marks today as they’re trotted out around you.
I can hear the words of my late father ringing in my ears: ‘Don’t jump to conclusions, Billy; you’ll break your leg’.
Intruder
On Sunday evening 20 May 2012, I was walking back from Manuka qnd Forrest, after catching up with some friends. It was one of those wonderful, clear, crisp Canberra nights in late Autumn when the air is still; and so long as you have a warm jacket on (preferably in an outrageous 1950s pattern) and an over-sized beanie, you’re sound as a pound.
Sorry Day Bridge Walk poster. I tried to resurrect it but couldn’t find anything to hammer it into the ground with. Sorry.
As I walked through Parkes (the Parliamentary Triangle) and passed the statues of former Prime Minsiters Chifley and Curtin, I got to thinking about reconciliation, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy, and the coming Sorry Day.
Earlier, while walking from the city out to Manuka, I’d happened upon a sign advertising the Bridge Walk this Friday and had spent some time (ultimately unsuccessfully) trying to re-plant it by the side of the road.
So this was all buzzing around as I approached the tent embassy along King Georges Terrace at about 8pm. I could have stuck to the path and the streetlights and headed off towards Commonwealth Avenue, but something drew me towards the ceremonial fire and I’d just descended one or two steps when a resident called out from the shadows:
Speaking in Tongues finishes at Theatre 3 today (Saturday 19 May)
Speaking in Tongues
Last day today at Theatre 3, Acton (ACT)
Lots more to come in 2012 from the Canberra Rep
I love Canberra and its arts scene.
And I love the many examples of how we truly do have one degree of separation in this town.
I occasionally swap arts notes at my desk or in the corridors of democracy administration at the Australian Electoral Commission with my colleague Ben. When he mentioned his role at the Canberra Repertory Society, and how they were doing a play called ‘Speaking in Tongues’ (the fore-runner to the film Lantana), my interest was piqued and I contacted the Rep to ask about an interview.
About an hour later a message bobbed up on our in-house messaging system from a bloke I deal with sometimes in our Strategic Capability Branch. Sam is an actor in the play and as the director was out of town, what did I want to talk about?!
A few hours later, Sam Hannan-Morrow and I were sat in the foyer of Theatre 3 in Acton. Sadly my prayers to St Anthony were fruitless and rather than the crisp clear sound of MP3, we have this rather gritty, muddy Samsung phone as a medium. My apologies. There’s no normalisation, editing or sound balancing — it’s raw, baby. And it’s a downloading nightmare, which is why the late delivery.
So with mere hours to go before you get yourselves a last chance to see ‘Speaking in Tongues’, you can console yourself in the fact that Sam apprises you in the audio of all the good things coming up later this year with Canberra Rep.
*** 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 here’s where you can book tickets and find out more about Canberra Rep:
Overheard Productions 