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.
The Feldons will be back at The Pot Belly, Belconnen for Retro Rock with the Magic Rob Universe, Marji Curran and John Lollback on Friday 14 September.
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.
Fred Smith: Taking ‘Texas’ to Tasmania (and Tilley’s, Tempe, Turning Wave…) First published inTrad and Nowmagazine, June 2008
Two more weekends and I’ll be going home
My home’s a nowhere
But a nowhere where I’m known
Where the sheep are nervous
And the men are all good blokes
Take me back to where the people get my jokes
From ‘American Guitar’, Texas (2008) by Fred Smith
So saying the above (or rather, singing the above), Fred Smith did literally head home — to Australia.
Fred’s first chance to play ‘American Guitar’ to a live audience came on his last night in the USA, after three years, coincidentally in a town called Frederick. (His first gig three years earlier had been, just as coincidentally, in Fredericksburgh).
The next morning after its debut, Fred hopped on a plane and returned to Australia via a two week tour of Canada.
Avid Trad and Now readers may have followed some of Fred’s adventures in these pages as he tripped around the USA from house-husbanding to house concerts, from suburban conventionality to folk conventions, and to a string of gigs, festivals and song contests along the way.
Fred has now been back in Australia for about six months and he’s appreciating the return to his old neighbourhood. Launching his ‘Texas’ album at Tilley’s Devine Café in Canberra last month, Fred relates a quote on topic: ”Home is the place you go where they’ve got to let you in.”
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage
#35 Pat Drummond: A tribute while he’s still alive First published inTrad and Nowmagazine, May 2012
Don’t freak; Pat Drummond isn’t leaving the planet any time soon that we know of.
However, in this the year that Pat celebrates several major milestones, a raft of talented musicians and others threw together one hell of a tribute show in Canberra to honour the man.
Some milestones: 60 years on the planet, 45 years writing songs, 40 years married, 35 years in the music business, and 25 years since he was arrested for climbing the harbour bridge before it was legal.
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage
#34 This time, it’s personal First published inTrad and Nowmagazine, April 2012
Fun fact: this is ‘A Punter’s Perspective’ edition #34.
And I draw attention to the edition number here for only the second time, and for the first time since I wrote my first column in December 2006.
Is edition number 34 significant?
Absolutely not. And absolutely yes. And for sure and for certain. And not in the slightest.
It all depends on your perspective.
34 is the number of the house in north Canberra where I lived from ages 4 to 18.
So it has no actual relevance or significance here, except in the same way it’s strangely satisfying when you order your breakfast at the local caf, and you’re handed a table number that happens to be your lucky number.
(36, for the record. Scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and a long black. And water. ‘Et est-ce que vous avez des aspirins? I have a hangover you could photograph.’ Name that film.)
The preceding paragraphs may have struck a cord (or a chord) with you. Or, like so many versions of ‘A Punter’s Perspective’ in the last five and a half years, they’ve left you staring incredulously into the middle distance as you stir your soy chai latté with an index finger, mumbling, ‘What a load of self-indulgent toss’. Continue reading →
