The Human Highway Celebrates 50 Years Of Neil Young’s ‘Harvest’

February 1, 2023 Overheard Productions Fremantle and Perth, Interviews, Music general, Trad and Now australia, Canada, folk music, Fremantle, Freo.Social, live music, music, Neil Young, The Human Highway, WA, Western Australia

This article also appeared in Trad And Now magazine, issue no. 153, December 2022

2022 has been a big year for fans of Canadian folk-rocker Neil Young.

(Arguably it’s been a big year for Neil himself, but he wasn’t available for comment prior to press time.)

It’s been 50 years since Young’s seminal album ‘Harvest’ was released in February 1972. (The column author was in first grade at Rosary Demonstration School at the time and was sadly oblivious to this moment in musical history.) ‘Harvest’ was the best-selling album of 1972 in the USA and has remained Neil Young’s best-selling album to date.

‘Harvest’ was remastered and re-released on 2 December 2022, and not surprisingly in this digital, multi-platform age, it comes with a host of extras. The reissue comes in either vinyl or CD box set form, with both including two DVDs. Young’s much-bootlegged ‘BBC In Concert’ is included on CD and vinyl in the respective packages, and three ‘Harvest’ outtakes are also made available in physical form for the first time – on a third CD or a 7-inch record in the vinyl set.

And early December 2022 saw the debut limited release of the 1971 film ‘Harvest Time‘, a documentary covering the ‘Harvest Barn’ sessions at Young’s northern California farm, his performance with the London Symphony Orchestra in London, and in Nashville there are scenes of Young working on various album tracks.

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From The Vault: The Woodford Files 2014-2015: Paper Lions, David Cyrus MacDonald and Confederation Entertainment Inc., December 2014

February 11, 2020February 11, 2020 Overheard Productions Festivals, Interviews, Music general Canada, Confederation Entertainment Inc, David Cyrus MacDonald, live music, music, Overheard Productions, Paper Lions, pop music, Woodford Folk Festival

Article originally appeared on Timber and Steel: https://timberandsteel.wordpress.com/2014/12/31/the-woodford-files-paper-lions-david-cyrus-macdonald-and-confederation-entertainment-inc/

While sitting in the media centre, writing in the last post about how Overheard Productions got its name, Bill Quinn overheard David Cyrus MacDonald drop in to talk with the office staff.

About 3.6 minutes later, David and Bill were outside the donga by the Spirit of Woodford office, standing variously on the wooden palets or in the mud, dodging dangerous ants the size of small cats, and speaking over the sound spill creeping up the hill from Bluestown, chatting about Paper Lions, music advocacy, and the wondrous, wonderful Woodford.

And Confederation Entertainment Inc.

*** Audio file will be removed by end of March 2020 ***

PaperLions1 — Image courtesy of the Paper Lions

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Harry Manx – 2016 Australian Tour

September 23, 2016February 5, 2020 Overheard Productions Interviews, Music general, Trad and Now Acoustic, australia, Australian tour, Bill Quinn, blues, Canada, folk, folk music, Harry Manx, interview, Melbourne, Mohan Veena, music, Mystissippi, New South Wales, Overheard Productions, performance, singer-songwriter, Sydney, tour, trad and now, Vancouver Island

harrymanx-header — *Image courtesy of Harry Manx*

To tell the story of Harry Manx would take several lifetimes, and hopefully a progression of life-form hierarchies over those lives to tell the story, because the story is so mesmerising and complex that we would not be very present and in the moment of most of those lives, and that could put the telling of the tale at risk as we would not be making gradual and continuous improvement as…

Moving on…

Harry Manx performs at the 2012 National Folk Festival

Harry Manx has already begun his 2016 Australian tour which will take him from Sydney down to Victoria (where he is on stage tonight, Friday 23 September in Frankston) then around to Queensland, South Australia, Perth and up to Broome and Darwin, ending in the beautiful, lovely, gorgeous, I-may-be-a-little-hereditarily-biased New South Wales locales of Katoomba.

Ah, Katoomba. If there’s a more intimate, special venue than Clarendon Guest House, I want it stuffed, mounted, and hung above my fireplace – or I at least want an invite to your venue if it can go close to kicking the Clarendon into a cocked hat. Or any poultry millinery for that matter.

And finally wrapping it all up at Club Saffire in Merimbula.

So it’s a very eclectic path Harry treads, and look, I’d draw you a picture if I had a free hand, but imagine a much-twisted paper clip that’s been sitting on your desk all day on a slow Friday when you’ve been watching the clock since 9:36am – now you’re in the ballpark.

OR picture a moose that somehow wandered into your yard, found your sippin’ liquor in the shed, and is now making a bedraggled, loquacious, and somewhat winding stagger back to the forest by a circuitous route, two-thirds of it sideways.

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Interview: Ann Vriend (Canada) 2015 Australian Tour, January 2015

January 19, 2015February 24, 2020 Overheard Productions Interviews, Music general Alberta, Ann Vriend, australia, Australian tour, Canada, Edmonton, folk, Jazz, soul

Image courtesy of Ann Vriend. Photo by Brad Gibbons.

Ann Vriend is always a popular visitor to Australia at about this time every year.

The contrasts between frozen Alberta, Canada and sizzling Australia are rarely more stark than in January/February. So Ann can hopefully leave the tissues and cough syrup behind, and look forward to sandy beaches, dazzling coral reefs, and the inside of a string of popular Australian venues on her ‘For The People In The Mean Time’ tour.

On an afternoon when frying eggs on the pavement in rural Queensland was definitely an option, Bill Quinn spoke with Ann from her sick bed in Edmonton, as she was putting the final touches on her tour, and readying to hop on a plane the following week.

It was a baking hot day in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland, and the only place to get a half-decent phone signal was from the front deck at Maleny Hotel, battling the sound spill from rumbling trucks and other traffic on the main road through town.

*** Audio file will be removed be the end of March 2020 ***

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Ann Vriend: A Series of (Un)Fortunate Events — On Tour In Europe

May 2, 2014October 18, 2015 Overheard Productions Miscellaneous, Music general Ann Vriend, australia, Canada, deutschland, Edmonton, frankfurt, passport, Sydney, tour, travel

Ann Vriend at The Basement in Sydney, March 2013 with Ted E. Quinn of Overheard Productions (chauffeur, cook, minder and police liaison)

Ann Vriend’s Tour Mishaps #3663 or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love BBC News In The Airport Hotel

Ann Vriend is at it again: touring relentlessly and sharing her sweet music, sumptuous lyrics and those wonderful ivories and keys in far flung locales. And she’s also up to her other signature move: having wonderfully Tati-like, British 70s comedy slapstick challenges, and farcical misadventures.

The ones that you can laugh about and blog about afterwards or during, but at the time they can be massively distressing and painful and expensive and inducing of tears of pain, tears of rage.

But with the crunchy comes the smooth. And Ann found that a rather stormy set of clouds did indeed have a silver lining.

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Interview: Ann Vriend (Canada), 2014 Australian tour

February 1, 2014February 14, 2014 Overheard Productions Interviews, Music general Alberta, Ann Vriend, Australian tour, Canada, Edmonton, folk, keyboard, piano, soul

Not too many summers go by in Australia these days without a tour by Canadian singer-songwriter-keyboardian Ann Vriend.

2014 continues that rich tradition.

Ann has already started this year’s tour on the Gold Coast and she’s heading south to Victoria, Tasmania and New South Wales before winding things up in Brisbane later this month.

In between dips in the pool on a Saturday afternoon (and no doubt a stack of photos on social media back home to envious and shivering Albertans), Ann talked to Bill Quinn about this year’s Australian tour.

Bill Quinn: Ann, from memory this is your ninth tour of Australia. Does it get easier, or harder or different?

Ann Vriend: I definitely think it’s getting easier. I have more and more people coming on board to help me out, and the fan base is slowly growing. And also different because I’m getting more and more used to being here!

Every tour I have different shows and different itineraries, so it doesn’t get boring.

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Ann Vriend (Canada) 2013 Australian Tour – Interview at The Basement, Sydney, 2013

March 22, 2013January 29, 2020 Overheard Productions Interviews, Music general Ann Vriend, Australian tour, Canada, keyboards, piano, Sydney, the basement

Ann Vriend (Canada) is a very regular and very welcome visitor to Australia and this week she’s touched down in Sydney to kick off a month of shows that will take her south to Tasmania and north to Queensland — with appropriate stops along the way.

Ann’s first shows are in Sydney at The Basement where she’s received some great support from David Hand and Newport Consulting; the tour opener was fairly bursting with staff thereof.

In between set-list writing, sound-checking and dress-up* for the show, Ann took some time out to talk with me about weather, Aus-stray-lee-an pronunciation, more weather and suburb names. And music.

* When Ann came back in for the show, I dead-set wondered who was this elegant woman who looked like she was off to the races. And why was she waving at me from across the room?

I’m blaming it on jet lag.

*** Audio file will be removed at end February 2020 ***

Bill Quinn: When we have people who tour here from overseas, we have some who come here once and then we never see them again. And then we have others who tour here and they keep coming back, and back, and back again.

As a pundit and a punter, I’m totally OK with that. I’m sitting here with one who keeps doing that, and we’re very happy for that: Ann Vriend from Canada, hello and welcome?

Ann Vriend: Helloooo, and thanks for having me.

BQ: So, this would be something like trip number six, or something like that?

AV: No, it’s… well, I have to do math… but it would be eight, because my first was 2005 and I’ve come every year.

BQ: Every single year?

AV: Yeah. In your summer – that’s not by accident!

BQ: I tend to talk about weather, but what have you left behind you in Edmonton?

AV: Just before I left, we got about a foot of snow in one night. By the time it’s March, I’m a little bit over snow. So, if you go to my Facebook page, you can see the ‘before I left’ snow pictures, and the ‘after I left’ view of Sydney Harbour with palm trees.

BQ: So for the next few weeks, there’s going to be lots of pictures you’re sending back home in strapless numbers…

AV: Oh, I already posted a picture at the beach, like “Ha ha! I might not be rich, but there’s some perks to my job!”

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Kim Churchill — off to tour USA and Canada, 2013

March 10, 2013January 30, 2020 Overheard Productions Interviews, Music general Acoustic, australia, billy bragg, billy quinn, Canada, folk, Kim Churchill, Overheard Productions, roots, tour, USA

Kim Churchill has a few more shows to go in Australia before he heads off to USA to join the tour of one Stephen William Bragg (aka Billy Bragg).

At the Cobargo Folk Festival in February 2013, Kim Churchill was the recipient of my vicarious joy at this news, and we spontaneously had a chat, leaning on someone’s trailer, outside a venue, out in the open — which was a bit of a mistake because as I now know: don’t try to do these things in a flukey, swirling breeze.

I’m sure you’ll cope. Muggins here did the best he could with the sound balance. [Audio file will be removed by end February 2020.] Interview text:

Bill Quinn: I’m standing here with Kim Churchill. Hello, Kim.

Kim Churchill: Hello, Bill.

BQ: Kim, You’re about to go to America and tour with someone and I’m just a little bit excited about that. Tell me what you’re going to do in America.

KC: I’m going to do the opening slots for a guy named Billy Bragg.

BQ: OH MY GOD!

KC: Yes!

BQ: How the hell did you jag that one?

KC: Ah, bottle of scotch.

BQ: Elaborate!

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East Coast Canadian showcases with Andy Brown, Tim Chaisson, Dave Gunning, Vishten and local support Cole and Van Dijk

January 7, 2013September 22, 2014 Overheard Productions Interviews, Music general Andy Brown, Canada, Cole and Van Dijk, Dave Gunning, East Coast, folk music, New Brunswick, Tim Chaisson, Vishten

Interview: Andy Brown (Canada)

Missing audio file attachment. Hopefully rectified soon.

Without waxing too lyrical, I was rather taken by a little gig in Sydney last Friday night at The Basement featuring Folk Uke (Amy Nelson and Cathy Guthrie), supported by Jodi Martin.

That line-up would have been a worthy night out on its own, however, Folk Uke had met two Canadians at Woodford Folk Festival — Andy Brown and Dave Gunning, invited them to come and play at their gig on Friday night, and mercifully the word had gone out over the jungle drums (i.e. social media) alerting the punters to get there early.

We walked in a little ways into Andy Brown’s set, but what we saw was awesome. Then Dave Gunning came on and totally blew us away — and the main part of the night was still to come.

Ever the compulsive interviewer, I managed to catch a couple of minutes of Andy Brown’s time as he manned the merch desk for the others, and he spoke a little of the East Coast Canadian showcases coming up in Sydney and Melbourne. You’ll have to be like a seagull onto a chip with these, as the first one is Tuesday 8 January at Notes Live in Newtown, and the second and last is Friday 11 January at Caravan Music Club in Melbourne.

The text of the interview is up now on the Timber and Steel blog, but for now, the ever-so-slightly muddy audio is here:

APOLOGIES. The audio had to be cut from my Soundcloud account in May 2013. I hope to restore it to a YouTube audio file in the coming weeks.

*** THE AUDIO OF THIS INTERVIEW HAS BEEN DELETED FROM SOUNDCLOUD DUE TO SPACE LIMITATIONS ***

Harry Manx: interview the second, June 2012

June 8, 2012June 29, 2012 Overheard Productions Interviews Canada, Harry Manx, interview

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!