On Gardens Charlotte Wood reminds me I have a garden. A derelict patch down the back of the house where I stacked four planters along the top of the Astroturf and enthusiastically grew silverbeet one year, supplanted it with a half-hearted attempt at zucchinis the second year and finally succumbed to beds of mint and oregano on the third. It’s not that I’m not a good gardener, a large part of it is the environment. The house shields the planters from sun for most of the year, the olive trees shields them from rain for the rest. The plants that thrive are the ones that don’t need sun or water. The other part is of course a lack of care. The busier I get the easier it is to sequester myself inside the house where there’s warmth and light and coffee, and a distinct lack of the pollen that sets off my spring hayfever. When I’m busy the garden is left to its own devices, and it does a good job of growing, not in rigid straight lines of easily accessible zucchinis, ripe for the dinner table, but more in a higgledy-piggledy explosion of weeds and oregano, woody knots that find their way through cracks in the side of the planter box and then dig down through the Astroturf to find Mother Earth. Continue reading “On Gardens”
On Local Scenes I saw my friend Greta play a show a couple of weeks ago. It was an intimate jazz gig, a group of friends playing music together at Open Studio on a Saturday afternoon, and Greta had pulled together an eclectic mix of original songs and arrangements of other people’s tunes to fill in two sets. They covered a couple of classics – including a great version of a Joni Mitchell tune. They kicked the whole set off with a version of local saxophonist Julien Wilson’s tune Rebellious Bird. A big part of the jazz tradition is re-imagining older works, often using them as a vehicle for improvisation, and covering other people’s work is nothing new – its part and parcel of being a musician. We learn to play our instruments by learning to play other people’s songs. Many people never get to writing their own music, and that’s fine – music doesn’t have to be original to be good, and there’s a lot of enjoyment gained from playing a song you love. As a side note – the ’covers scene’ supports a lot of original musicians. Playing weddings and corporate events where we presented versions of songs that people know paid my rent for many years. Playing covers music is a living for many of Australia’s finest original musicians, but it often feels like the setlists are pretty US-centric. Other than a couple of classic Paul Kelly songs, the occasional John Farnham or INXS or Cold Chisel, most setlists draw heavily from music written and recorded elsewhere – there’s a bigger conversation to be had re supporting homegrown talent. Continue reading “On Local Scenes”
On Imposter Syndrome I’m releasing another new EP next Friday! This one is with Gusto Gusto, the raucous instrumental dance band I started exactly two years ago this month. In two years we’ve gone from not existing to two national tours, sold-out shows in three states, slots at festivals around the country (Woodford Folk Festival, Peak Festival, Questival – a full medieval festival in a castle with hundreds of punters in capes and wizard hats), and releasing our debut EP last year. It’s been a pretty wild rush, taking a couple years of COVID induced stasis and launching it full-bore into a seven-piece non-stop party band. It’s been exhausting at times, mainly co-ordinating seven peoples calendars, but also a lot of fun, and now we have a second EP (recorded, mixed and mastered by myself) ready to go. If you want to support us, please come to the launch next week! With the release of new music comes the return of imposter syndrome. Continue reading “On Imposter Syndrome”
On Japanuary After almost three years spent at home, drinking beers solo by the BBQ in the back park and thinking wistfully of busier times, this last month made up for the years of inaction. It kicked off on Boxing Day with a two week, twelve date Gusto tour, followed by a blessed two days at home (mainly spent invoicing venues, tracking spreadsheets, attempting to scramble together lesson plans and wash off two weeks of grime). Then we flew to Japan. Japan’s been on the cards for a while. Facebook memories informs I went there exactly ten years ago with my friend Steve, but time and I have done a pretty good job of wiping most of those experiences away. There were a couple of key Japanese phrases lodged in the old memory bank, arigato - ‘thank you’, konichiwa – ‘hello’ and watashi wa baka na gaikokujin – ‘I’m a stupid foreigner’, as well as memories of Fuji-Q – an amusement park at the base of Mt Fuji that sports horrifying rollercoasters (enter my fear of heights) and a terrifying haunted house (enter my fear of everything else). There was a vague recollection that the ticket inspector on the shinkansen – bullet train would bow everytime he entered and exited a carriage (still true), and a lot of memories of sitting stark naked in an outdoor onsen – hot spring as snow powdered down around us, toasty bodies holding up frosty heads. Continue reading “On Japanuary”
On How I Experience Life Welcome back to the blog, it’s been a big old year since I’ve updated it, and there’s been a fair few things going on. I’ve done a very small handful of solo gigs in the last year. Gigs are basically back to normal which is nice, but I haven’t felt any strong desire to play solo. I spent a ton of time during lockdown playing guitar on my own, and the thing I missed about music was sharing it with other people. I’ve still got an album to release, I just need to decide how it comes out, and carve myself out a couple of weeks of free time to promote it. If you’ve got any big bold ideas of where I should play and what format (solo? trio? full band with all nine people who played on the record?), feel free to message me. The main thing I’ve been doing this year is teaching full-time, which was a great way to fill in time while lockdown was on and weekends were empty, but now that gig life is back to normal and national tours are starting to peak over the horizon I’m feeling a little over-committed. The plan is to cut back on teaching at the end of this year, though I’m not sure how much to cut back and what to drop, because I love everything I’m doing right now. Continue reading “On How I Experience Life”
On The Return of Live Music I have a band called Casabella. A group of friends who get together seven or eight times a year to play a gig. It’s incredibly loose, to the point that the band has been around for over ten years and is literally on its hundredth iteration. It started as a background jazz band, playing a weekly gig at an Italian restaurant in a shopping centre. We got the gig via Myspace, when a chef at the restaurant found our nascent social media presence and called us up. A one-off gig turned into a Friday night residency that carried on for seven years. The deal was simple – $100 each and a pizza for three hours of low volume jazz. Over time the low volume component became the most important part of the gig. We were regularly asked to turn down, at least three or four times a night. I started leaving my sticks at home and just turning up with brushes. Then I started cutting my kit down – ditching the toms, ditching the cymbals, eventually buying a smaller kit – an 18” kick, snare and ride cymbal. One gig I forgot my kick drum at home and no-one noticed. If anything it probably made the gig better. Continue reading “On The Return of Live Music”
On Ongoing Priorities I can feel the first breaths of summer. It’s been a long monotonous winter, another one to tie into last year’s where we thought it could never get worse. Turns out it could get worse, we could do the exact same thing again but without the novelty that got us through the first one. To be fair, I’ve been pretty happy this lockdown. I’ve got enough on my plate to keep the weeks rolling past. I’ve been exercising and eating well and spending enough time catching up with friends on the internet that I feel connected. I’ve been reading and listening to new music and doing practice, although not as much as I’d have liked to in hindsight. But that’s how it always is. Steve told me the other day that this might be it. This might the last month of lockdown passivity we might ever live through. We might never be given this much free time in our adult lives again. Continue reading “On Ongoing Priorities”
On Writing (part 3) Write for the cool clear days of winter. Every day a crisp clear reminder of this year that has been. Brilliant blue skies and bold colours, washed down from the heavens with the brisk pull of rain. Illuminating morning beams thrown light across the back yard, every blade of grass a reservoir for a floating water droplet that kaleidoscopes across a microcosm of hidden worlds beyond the human gaze. We stamp our feet for warmth, tuck frozen fingers in to armpits, blow clouds of warmth out in to the cool. I turn my car heater to its highest setting, spend the first few moments in aching agony as it starts blasting colder air across the car and then slowly streams into warmth. I pump the space heater at my feet while I write in the shed, cocooned in scarf and beanie, slowly leaking warmth and words on to the page. Every activity is accompanied by a cup of boiling water, carried around the house, carried across the backyard, carried in to the shed, clasped in one cold hand while I write with the other, then hands clasped together to pass the warmth between them. Every conversation punctuated by the same refrain it’s a bit cold, the same knowing response just another couple months, the same shared experience of a cold that isn’t much on the mercury scale but seems to hit much harder than many other places on this planet. I’ve wintered in Canada, Scotland, Iceland, and each of these places holds a much stronger grasp to the miserable title of winter, but somehow Melbourne’s winter still hits me the worst. Continue reading “On Writing (part 3)”
On Belonging I’ve spent the last week watching Wild Wild Country, the Netflix documentary about Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. I got there via a fairly odd route, hearing this song from one of my favourite artists Sufjan Stevens. A little digging into the lyrics reveals line such as: I’m on a path of love, I’m on a parrot Possess me with prayer on the bluff I’m on a task for God Entheogen, you lift me within Upanishad Pretty par for the course when you consider Sufjan’s back catalogue, but intriguing enough that I felt I should dig a little deeper. Googling Rajneesh brought me to Wikipedia and then on to Wild Wild Country, although I’m still not entirely sure what the connection is and why Sufjan is borrowing imagery from a 1980s Indian guru to spur his 2020 pop music. Anything can be a jumping off point for creativity I guess. Continue reading “On Belonging”
On the Disposable Nature of Music I’ve talked before about how I read voraciously, deep-diving into all-consuming worlds that supplant my reality for days and weeks and months at a time. As a child I spent most of the years between eight and fourteen in bed, books wedged against pillows to hold them in a comfortable reading position. My parents supported my reading addiction by carting around boxes and boxes of books from house to house, country to country, every time we moved. Each summer I’d read through everything on my shelves, then immediately read through them again. I’d borrow a book from a friend and read through it that night, then call them the next day asking for something new. On camping trips our family would cart around bags of books, mainly for me and Mum and Dad. My brother would be out fishing. So from an early age reading has been an addiction of sorts, and I know that when I start a good book, everything else in my life will suffer until its finished. That’s how I read all seven Harry Potter books in one seven day spell, shuffling around various positions in a one bedroom apartment to find comfort. This is not meant as a point of bravado but merely a demonstration of how poor my ability is to multi-task when I have a book in hand. Continue reading “On the Disposable Nature of Music”