Taliska On Tour To Eurobodalla, Jenolan Caves, ACT and Victoria, 2014
Taliska is bringing a taste of Scotland to a parts of New South Wales and the ACT this month. They’re then plying their Celtic trade closer to home in Ringwood and Portarlington (Victoria) and many places beyond.
Hopefully they’ll be near you, and if they’re not, that’s just all the more reason to start loving their music and get them to your town next time they’re back this way.
OR get yourself on a Greyhound or Murray’s bus to one of the three venues, stat.
Definitely like them on Facebook and follow the trails, talents and travails of Taliska.
Who are Taliska?
Claire Patti has a voice that has to be heard to be believed, and she plays the harp (the stringed one), french horn and piano accordion. Claire sings harmonies with the guitar-playing band leader Marcus de Rijk (note the strong Scottish influence in that name — mmm, maybe not so much), while Geoff Jones plays pipes, whistles and bodhran. Angus Downing makes the whole thing fly with his wonderful fiddle playing. Taliska’s traditional Ceilidh will have your feet pounding the tiles.
Kavisha Mazzella is an accomplished singer-songwriter from Melbourne with a substantial body of work behind her and a long career of touring solo and with bands of various composition (no pun intended).
Were that the end of the story, it would be laudable enough, but it literally crests just the tip of the iceberg of this remarkable woman. Leader of community choirs in Australia and Italy, flexible and adaptive musician who lends her talents to a litany of projects including providing backing to a silent film from the 1920s — live.
It’s any wonder that when Bill Quinn caught up with Kavisha earlier this week he kept the chat time down to under 20 minutes. There are just too many things to talk about.
Kavisha Mazzella launches her Riturnella album of centuries-old Italian songs on Sunday 4 May at the Django Bar, Marrickville.
Image courtesy of Kavisha Mazzella
*** Audio file will be removed at the end of February 2020 ***
Image courtesy of Humph Hall via NSW Folk Federation (www.jam.org.au)
### STOP PRESS. On Sunday 9 March 2014, I had a long chat with Wayne Richmond at Humph Hall about this epic saga.
There are two sides to every story, but this one’s more like a dodecahedron. Wayne was quick to acknowledge the positive input from Warringah councillors, mayor and even the personal attention of NSW planning portfolio.
Articles to come here and at Timber and Steel soon.
Humph Hall: An Open Letter to Warringah Council by Bill Quinn
Written on the E89 bus from Bilgola Plateau to Railway Square, Sydney NSW, Australia
Friday 7 March 2014
If a picture says a thousand words, here’s several million for you.
Go to Google Images — http://www.google.com/imghp — and search on ‘humph hall’ then scroll, view, scroll view, next page, etc. That will tell you the value of this venue more eloquently than I can. But do read on!
When it comes to angrily shaking my fists in a Peter Finch/Shaun Micallef ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore’ style of protest, I prefer direct contact.
I just don’t online petition. I’m glad for you to do so, but don’t ask me to sign one.
So having read in The Manly Daily about the latest in the legal wrangle over fire and safety at Humph Hall, and the fact that Warringah Council is now dragging Wayne Richmond and Gial Leslie into court over the matter, I took time out from my morning ritual of staring inquisitively out the bus window along Barrenjoey Road to Haymarket, and tapped out the below, patiently navigating council’s rather confusing and limiting web-site to submit my two cents’ worth.
Interviewing Andrew Cronshaw is a bit like watching Waragamba Dam in flood.
There’s a mighty capacity, but the volume contained therein and the urge for it to surge out means there’s a fair old splashing and cascading over the spillway.
(This is a musical knowledge thing, not early-onset incontinence — just did want to clarify that one.)
Andrew Cronshaw (and the relatively more calm, still waters of Ian Blake) have been comrades in music of the world for many a year, and delighted audiences at the National Folk Festival in 2010.
A very salient memory is a packed performance in the Coorong on the Saturday evening when the MC (me) had been directed erroneously to the Budawang and ended up sprinting twixt venues, doing a slide into home base staying upright to collect a microphone and bounce on to stage to give a slightly breathy but knowledgeable intro courtesy of having seen them both at the National Library of Australia mid-week.
Andrew Cronshaw and Ian Blake were performing at a fantastic afternoon on Aspen Island, literally in the shadows of Canberra’s Carillon, on a balmy Monday afternoon in mid-March as Canberra celebrated a day before turning 100 years young. I grabbed a few minutes with Andrew and Ian as the zephyrs zephyred and the dragon boats came in and the sound guys eventually started to test the drums on stage.
*** 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 ***
Andrew and Ian will be performing with the new collective badged SANS:
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 →
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!
Ainslea’s Secret found in Beyond Q bookstore, 2011
Time to Me by Greg Quinn
He* is calling you, but you’re probably not listening…
* Yes, that’s a reference to the Christian version of a deity – one of countless tens of thousands, but this is not a story about religion per se. Promise.
A colleague and I were mucking around and bantering on Facebook today, and the subject of our old alma mater came up. We share a similar sense of humour, and the mention of ‘bona fides’ led to ‘Fortes in Fide’ (from our old school motto: Strong in Faith).
In the course of our online conversation, my colleague mentioned the school anthem, which I confused with the popular hit of a hymn, ‘Eagle’s Wings’.
And it prompted a bitter-sweet memory.
I spent the first 18+ years of my life in the Canberra suburb of Downer. My mum referred to where we lived as ‘Upper Downer’, which was beautifully ironic, as I’m fairly sure that our property was at the exact lowest point in the rather large suburb. Mum always said she was going to start up a movement called, “Downer Is A Beautiful Suburb”.
Our family started its time in Canberra at #20 Wheelbarrow Street, Downer. Elder sister M. was born in 1965 in Camperdown Hospital just as mum and dad were relocating from Harris Park, Sydney to Canberra, allegedly for one year for dad to move from the NSW TAFE system to the then new Commonwealth Teaching Service.
In 1970, when I was three years old and just about to start pre-school, we moved a whole seven doors down the road to #34 Wheelbarrow Street. We may have all carried some of our goods and chattels, and I have a dodgy memory of dad loading up his old box trailer with stuff and getting some neighbourhood friends to help push it the 130 metres (I’m reliably informed by Google Maps).
The next year, in November 1971, my little brother Greg burst forth into the world to complete the fivesome of we Quinn siblings. Yes. Five Quinns. NO, STOP. We have heard all the jokes about five quins, I mean, Quinns.
Greg was a Daramalan College, Dickson Class of 1989 graduate. He then returned to the school to be a teacher’s aide in computing. Greg was also heavily involved with the legendary annual Daramalan school musical/play productions. Any time I hear the strains of any part of the seminal recording of Evita with Julie Covington urging Peronistas to not cry for her, Argentina, I’m back in Downer, with Greg doing lighting, mentoring performers, and even sewing some costumes.
Greg died of brain cancer at 4am, Saturday 22 August 1998 in Clare Holland House hospice which was situated in the grounds of the then Royal Canberra Hospital. It’s now been supplanted by the admin building for the National Museum of Australia, after a Commonwealth/ACT land swap moved the hospice east along the shores of Lake Burley Griffin to 5 Menindee Drive Barton. Continue reading →
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage
#25 “Thanks! You’ve been a wonderful audience. Goodnight!”
First published in Trad and Now magazine, April 2011
Late last year, I witnessed a reasonably unsavoury moment in crowd behaviour at a folk gig. Countrified folk. Folkified country.
No, the genre labelling wasn’t the unsavoury bit. It was the mix of ‘crowd there for music’ vs ‘crowd there for tipping several vats of beer and/or pre-mixed drinks down their throats before collapsing somewhere outside the venue’.
Which got me to thinking about the whole performer/crowd interaction cocktail (no pun intended), and how that affects a performer’s mojo on stage.
Myriad questions sprang to mind, and I planned to pose them to those best-equipped to answer them.
Months later, and with deadline looming, I threw a vague question to the four winds (ok, Facebook) one Sunday night and got a whole heap of responses. So I’ll can the investigative essay for now and just give you some responses, because they’re many, varied and some quite entertaining. Continue reading →
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage
#24 Q&A (John Schumann fields questions from the floor)
First published in Trad and Now magazine, March 2011
How an artist builds a rapport (or not) with their audience on stage has always fascinated me. Especially if it’s an artist whose work has become very familiar, I find the gaze wandering from the stage to the crowd. Gauging others’ reactions becomes the main game.
Not everyone makes the audience the main game. I’ve never seen Van Morrison perform live, but his self-confessed lack of focus on, or regard for, those watching is legendary. Just plug ‘”van morrison” audience disdain’ into a web search and read for yourself.
On topic, I often recall a rock gig several years ago where two headline acts could only manage one complete, barely-coherent sentence between them that was roughly aimed in the direction of the paying punters. I left early and, passing one of the band cars, left a one-line critique in the dust on the rear windshield. Continue reading →
Random observations on the wide, weird world of folk from the side of the stage
#23 Sometimes You Can’t Make It (On Your Own) First published in Trad and Now magazine, November 2010
In the last edition, I was bemoaning my decision to lay off the festivals for the rest of the year.
Next thing I knew, I was packing bags (or rather, a bag) for Kangaroo Valley Folk Festival (KVFF) – see elsewhere in this edition of Trad and Now for the match report on the festival itself.
It was at KVFF that I was reminded, time and time again, of a very recurrent theme in folk, as indeed in countless other art forms: payment.
We might be in this game for the love, the passion, the good times, the friends, and the memories.
But some of us (not all) are actually in it for the money. To make a viable living.
There’s nothing mercenary about that. I personally am rather fond of my eating habit, and intend to continue with it.
Various suppliers, vendors and ex-wives of mine (well, just the one of that last of those) do applaud when my cheques and money transfers come rolling in.
But I currently have a day job. I get paid quite well.
Meanwhile, there are many other people in the scene who rely on getting paid for their art to keep them standing upright.
Overheard Productions 