Overheard On The Road

A Tumblr Down An Old Rabbit Hole: Life’s Noisy — Use Earplugs

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The OG Ted E. Quinn, 1966 to hopefully still in the land of the living, but MIA since Boorloo (Perth) in Febraury 2023

Life’s Noisy — Use Earplugs (And Eat Dijonnaise Porridge)

I could say that at 1.11am on Monday 29 April 2014 at the Sydney Railway Square Youth Hostels Australia (YHA) was the moment when I stopped blaming others for my woes and troubles and accepted that I’m the master of my own disaster.

Except I made that realisation many years ago, and so it was at 1.11am this morning that I didn’t have an insight about my culpability in this world, but fervently wished that the wally in the bed underneath mine would have had such a personal breakthrough because he was acting like a twat.

Alors. I snore. Loudly. And had probably been doing so for a couple of hours from 9pm onwards, when I was probably inconveniencing few, until just prior to midnight when I awoke with one of those ‘I’m awake for a reason’ feelings.

Chummy in the bed below me had been rearranging his meagre belongings for an age while I’d been slipping in and out of sleep. But at 11.51pm he must have decided he now had an entitlement to free airwaves, and started violently shaking the bed every time I started drifting off.

Either that or he has a most concentrated and intermittent masturbation practice. Whatever gets you there.

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Overheard Productions Has Turned 21 Years Old Today (Twenty One Long – Very Long – Years) – Tuesday 3 December 2024

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Planning A Very Simple Marking Of The Very Meaningless Milestone That Is Twenty One (21) Years Of Overheard Productions

Overheard Productions Is Turning 21 Years Old (Twenty One Long – Very Long – Years)

At various intervals, I’ve planned launches and re-launches and meaningless milestones for Overheard Productions.

None of them have really worked, which is more of a reflection of either the effort or forethought that have gone in to each event.

21 Years seemed like a good way to mark not only a milestone, but also a seismic shift I’m planning from 2025 onwards.

And Canberra seemed like a good place because our major 1000 Voice singing event for the end of the first week of December (plus three weeks of rehearsals) got moved to 29 March 2025.

But folks, I’m exhausted. Spent. Pretty much out on my feet. Having been through the mill for the past few months, the last few days in Adelaide (Tuesday night to Saturday sparrow fart) nearly finished me right off.

So I have rebadged it: BFD MMS Day: Big [Ducking] Deal Meaningless Mile Stone Day.

I *will* be at Old Canberra Inn from 6pm to 9pm-ish on Tuesday 3 December 2024, only without the cake, streamers, merch, and party poppers. Nor the musicians. BUT I do have a table booked for trivia, so let me know if you want to join the team. Otherwise I shop my big brain services around to other teams with spare seats.

I’ll be sat in that regular spot near the big TVs and the piano with a copy of The Canberra Times and lots of sport and maybe some cheesy music on the tannoy. <== That was when the meetup was to be at Dickson Tradies.

Apart from that, I will be updating this article with a stack of touristy things I’m doing between now (Sunday 11am; you might have just heard me mentioned in dispatches on 666 ABC Canberra making plans to be a tourist in my own town all week).

My accommodation booking comes with it a stack of discounts to stuff I’ve either never done before OR adore and want to go back and do again.

If you’re around and available, I’ll see you if I’m looking at you.


Bill Quinn aka Bill The Gypsy
Staying near the Old Homesteads in Downer, ACT
Sunday 1 December 2024, 1120h AEDT

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FOLK ON THE ROAD – I’ll Take The Music To Go

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FOLK ON THE ROAD – I’LL TAKE THE MUSIC TO GO
By Bill Quinn

The first draft of this article appeared in edition 166 of Trad & Now magazine in October 2024.

In December 2024, it will have been 18 years in elapsed time that I’ve been writing for the national publication: Trad & Now magazine.

It feels like a lot longer.

Which is ironic in some ways, as those 18 years have included some extended breaks for various reasons.

Mostly because there’s a chunk of life from April 2014 to March 2019 when I barely had two brass razoos* to rub together, and I was wandering like a gypsy up and down the east coast of Australia. (Chris Bath from Channel 10 news but then from ABC Sydney and NSW radio dubbed me ‘Bill The Gypsy’ when I called in from the 366th different location and she threw her hands up and gave me the sobriquet.)

* WordPress is suggesting I change that to ‘brass kazoos’.

For four of those years, I was doing what our former LNP government said that we unemployed ne’erdowells must do: if you can’t find a job, move to a location where you can. So I took these clueless, gormless, careless, charmless, unempathetic cretins at their word, and started being a hobo, Boxcar Willie styles at times.

From April 2014, when I left the house and bed of a well-meaning but slightly broken** woman in Greater Sydney, until late March 2019 when I tumbled off a plane in Garramilla (Darwin), I hit the roads and for a time, music took either a backseat or went missing in action all together.

** spinal injury and resultant depression

(Interesting parallel with the experiences of one Myf Warhurst who, in her quirky, music-laden autobiography of sorts, talks about eschewing all music for months and months during Covid lockdowns.)

I bummed around the country living on fumes and in housesits, or backpacker hostels, or couch-surfing on a few isolated occasions when I had to.

I’ll go out on a limb, dear reader, and take an educated guess that if you’re reading this now, music is something you may also turn to in times of great challenges and calls on your emotional resources.

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Pub Choir Perth (Roe Street) – Monday 14 October 2024, 5.30pm – Free* Tix by Overheard Productions – * Ts&Cs Apply

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I didn’t seriously expect this to work, but it was a sort of good Samaritan act for a very nice bloke who had $400 worth of tickets he needed to shift with very little notice.

I did make some efforts via several platforms to offload them, and would have gladly stood outside the venue and tossed them around like confetti, a tactic I’ve used in the past. But I was settled quite nicely into the Irish pub around the corner and the Guinness was going down nicely.

I wrote it off as a donation to the pub choir people and a kindness to the very nice bloke which he did not need to know about.

Pub Choir Perth (Roe Street) – Monday 14 October 2024, 5.30pm – Free* Tix by Overheard Productions – * Ts&Cs Apply

http://www.OverheardProductions.com/Contact

  1. Fave colour
  2. Fave sporting person OR team
  3. A (NOT THE) but A fave (one (1) or three (3)**) musical recording artist who gets your motor running, picks you up when you’re done, gets you inspired when you’re flagging

Your time starts now.

NO HOLDS – TIX IN PERSON ONLY AT JOHNNY FOX’S FROM 5.30PM

NINE (9) TIX ONLY… EIGHT (8) NOW.

See you if I’m looking at you.

Overheard Productions dot com

Tarntanya, Eora, Ngambri, Meanjin, Garramilla, Walyalup, Boorloo, Naarm, Mparntwe etc.

Adelaide, Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Darwin, Fremantle, Perth, Melbourne, Alice Springs, etc.

Shark & Fox – But Which Is Which? The Answer May Be A 50/50 Proposition

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Image courtesy of Shark & Fox Music

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 that 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].

Image courtesy of The Ellington Jazz Club

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.

Gathering crowds for the Fairbridge Festival Showcase at Fremantle Arts Centre
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Overheard On The Road – March 2024 – North To Mparntwe

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I don’t know why I don’t do this more often. I go on this last minute, harem scarem, seat of the pants, make it up as I go trips, bust a gut and two to three download sources to update social media that rarely gets looked out or is ridiculously ephemeral when I have this dodgy but useful website.

Herewith then, a work in progress: my current trip of indeterminate length. Not even 24hrs elapsed yet. I left Casa del Cabana en la Piscina at about 9.30-ish from memory – Google Maps will tell me exactly when. Talk among yourselves for half a mini.

9.30am on the dot. Also, here’s a funny thing. Normally around town and city, I have to make about half a dozen edits to my timeline as recorded by Google Maps. Why? Big buildings. Lots of users. Confuses the satellites. In town, lots of big old buildings with thick concrete and glass. It’s why you can’t get reception and follow your influencer mates on Instachat or Snapgram at your office desk in Grote Street, Bradley.

Out in the country, not such a problem.

Speaking of 9.30am, that’s coming soon and I want to get on the road. So a couple of pretty pics then I have to shoot off. Off like a bride’s nightie. Fun fact about my wedding night and nighties…. Let’s maintain a modicum of decorum, shall we? We shall.

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