Stormcellar Band Home Page

Howdy Folks.

Trying to make best use of a few weekends without shows, I went off to try and get some footage for a clip for Sweet Adeline.

The lovely Miss Hannah was volunteered by Ms Jacquie and we spent some time at the Cattai Homestead videoing stuff.

Before we went, I was showing the collection of Phone based video gear i'm using (thats what i got) and Miss Hannah Drew this.

AWWWWWWWWWWWWW

OMG that is so cute I almost dissolved into mush as a result of acute cuteness overload. 

We did an hours filming and had a spot of Quiche. How very civilised.

Also got a chance to see Nick's new horse. Its funny to realise how close this is to the City :-) (in relative terms)

I've got a few gigabytes of vid to sort through then time to start editing, then I'll know what additional footage we need to finish.

Stay tuned.

Our Man Monte built another gizmo, it's cool.

He keeps using our songs for his vids :-) We're cool with that.

Go Monte!

if a tree falls in a forest and there's no one there to blog...

Happy Long Weekend folks. 

We spent our weekend travelling from the beaches to the foot of the mountains, well, the other side of the mountains be more precise.

Cheers to Brother George for joining us on Bass.

We started on Saturday night  with our first show in Bondi and I was stoked to see so many familiar faces. Cheers to Miss Su, Claudette, Nick, Bill V , Henry & the Dutch Contingent and hello Natasha, Lindi and newcomers to the 'cellar. 

Dr Tom has a new light system, here's Mr Wizard doing Jedi Battle with an LED light strip.

Once again the Boys In Blue were present, as the word must have spread from Tamworth about the music.

The new songs (Low Low, QATO, 'Give me something I need' and Downward Bound) received the Miss Sue tick of approval (sweet). Each show is giving them a chance to be whittled into a more pleasing shape. Thankyou to all our test subjects. Be warned, there's more to come.

We'll be back there soon.

This weekend was Australia Day, which seems to cause some degree of local Facebook Postings Of Political Nature, which I will now assiduously avoid.

instead, I'll take another moment to marvel at the casual beauty of the country in which we live, highlighted under the stark skies as we made our way across the Blue Mountains to Oberon.

You can quickly see why the clouded sky is our Mojo.

Rosie kindly pulled to the side of the road to let me try and get some shots of the amazing view back up the floor of the valley from the hills around Oberon.

I don't think my little phone cam does it justice :-)

the Blue Mountain were once an impenetrable barrier for Colonial Settlers, and it took many attempts and quite a bit of British Explorers eating one another to penetrate into the NSW tablelands.

As we came out from Lithgow, the heavens cleared and it felt as if we were entering the Shire.

The area around the foot of the mountains near the Jenolan Caves seems to have been named by a Shakespeare aficionado; Titania; oberon etc. Or maybe they were keen on Fairies. 

Oberon is a close knit little community, not that far from the big smoke, but in an eddy of almost timelessness-ness..ness..thing.

We checked into our accom for the night and in a classic moment of multiculturalism, there, at the foot of the mountains, we pre ordered Chicken Tikka, Samosas and Naan for an after show supper :-) Good Aussie Tucker.

They had decorated the wall of the parking lot with some folk art. 

Outside the club, there is a broken street sign that  I've taken a few photos of, over the years. I continue to find it fascinating.

A street with no name.

Inside the Oberon RSL, they were doing a charity raffle with some significant prizes - holidays, signed rugby jerseys.

At each sale, the auctioneer could actually name each buyer. Now that's community :-)

As the auction closed, it was time to start the show and we offered the members the choice between the Electric Stuff and the 'Nice' Stuff.

The group consensus was to start with the gentle stuff, so it was mando frenzy for the first hour, winding up the set with some electric blues to cleanse the palette.

As we started the second set, it quickly became apparent that there would be no thunderous roars of applause. In fact, the locals seemed to designate one person to clap on their behalf.

At one point, three people clapped simultaneously and I asked two of them to stop, explaining that we didn't want to use up the claps for the next two songs.

That's not to say that they were unappreciative. I had it explained to me that this was just the locals way.

They don't clap.

They don't dance.....

We're the wrong band to say that to.

HA!! Victory!

It was reported to me this morning at the motel, that the word was around the whole town.

The town had danced.

HA! I say.

Ha!

Yep, we were just willing to put the energy in.

I even got an Aussie Aussie Aussie / Oi Oi Oi (yes, I went there)

Cathartic for Band & Town. Thank you Rebecca, Joel, Sean and all the Oberonites who did what they say can't be done.

What they do easily is band together, support one another and act as a community. If they don't like to clap easy, that's their business. It's ours to make it seem like the thing to do ;-) Thanks for having us guys.

Cheers to Steve and Jimena for awesome desk mixing last night. It was powerful stuff.

Today saw us taking a leisurely drive back to Sydney on the public holiday, enjoying the view, wandering through the mountains and visiting the fam on the way through.

A well spent weekend is it own reward

Great Southern Land...

We have a week fallow next weekend (thank heavens) and then we're back on deck. Looks like there are more shows to come and we're still in recording mode, so stay tuned for more stuff soon!

God Bless Mr Pete Doherty, Goose Studios and all who sail upon her.

After 14 years of producing some of the most eclectic and amazing music to ever come out of the back streets of Sydney, 

Goose is shedding it's old form and moving to a new premises.

Will it reemerge as Goose Mark 2 or is that Bird cooked?

Will it phoenix from the ashes or will it merely simmer beneath the surface, in  alight white wine sauce? Who knows!

But if you're gonna go, go big or go home and last night we gave Goose a fond farewell with Vittles and Tunes.

Here is the Mr Pete himself, on bass at the rear ;-)

Ah memories. 

Goose has been the local studio for locals for...well...fourteen years I guess would be the correct answer.

It's also been a big part of our history.

Like so many others, our first encounter with Goose was rehearsing in recording room (it was 'affordable' and close).

Our first recording session at Goose was during our Spacejunk Mission, helemd by the awesome Geedon Columbus/Donald Deep Jeffs.

We'd been recording up at Mangrove Mountain onto Analogue tapes and the tapes had been old stock, so they kind of fell apart and we decided to re-record two tracks for Spacejunk at Goose.

I made a mission patch for that but I didn't know how to spell Pete's last name at the time so he got listed as Pete.

Spacejunk came out before Nuevo Retro, which we were still working on at the same time as releasing Spacejunk.

Shortly thereafter we started on 'Carls' Chair', which we brought to Pete for mixing and Post production.

From Mixing engineer, Pete went on to become Recording Engineer and Producer on Hired Guns & Borrowed Glory, all the way to Bawley Point for recording but migrated back to goose for Mixing.

Goose has even appeared in a Videoclip :-)

Musician, Chef, Entrepreneur and Human of Excellence, Pete has been a valiant champion for those pilgrims brave enough to venture across the frozen tundra of Stereo Recording.

Many's the time we stood by the shores of Lake Doherty (or Goose lake, the water filled, permanently half finished building site next door) and talked nonsense, music or general vibes.

I know that Goose will be back in one form or another, but for now, we celebrate it's lifespan, raise a glass and give three cheers for Mr Pete Doherty and Goose Studios

Hip hip... 

Hurrah!

Hip hip... 

Hurrah!!

Greetings Peoples of the Internet, NSA reviewers and Fellow Cellar Dwellers.

Wow a brief Tamworth for us this year.

We recovered from Fridays heat melt down gig to rebound with added Zazziness by Saturday. 

About the only downside of this trip was that we didn't really get out very much to see other stuff ;-( Sad face.

But it's not really about the destination, it's about the journey, and who can complain when you pack your car and head off into the sunshine and the country?

yes sit back, relax and join us on our brief virtual tour :-)

Up through to Newcastle, NSW is green, as we turn inland it starts to brown

With the air conditioner blasting, music and the occasional road stop for coffee, we made it up in good order.

Poor Bill and Mr Wizard were in a vehicle with no Air Con. Yikes.

Bill shrugged it off 'puts hair on your chest'

Mr Wizard kind of melted. A little.

We arrived dropped our stuff off at the accommodation and made a bee line for the first show, where Den Hanrahan was doing his thing

I think Den is under represented in the Alt Country award category.

I didn't manage to get any footage but here he is in action via youtube:

We did our first gig at the Marquee and had some good moments but Mr Wizard needed some hydration and we wound up dropping a few Mandolin songs due to heat issues with the mandolins strings.

Oh Well.

The Police adopted a high visibility strategy this year, god bless'em.

They came though the pub so many times that i tried to give them a cd, figuring they must like the music, as they seemed to be coming back so often :-) Apparently that's not appropriate (my bad)  but I did get the crowd to give them three cheers for keeping us safe. Last year we saw a few punches being thrown, this year? all quiet on the central western front.

Women in uniform?

The heat was a factor this year. Safe places like the air conditioned mall were popular. While replenishing our supplies I spotted this.

mmm..crunchy cherry.

Saturday

The weekend before the festival, we held a set construction session and chose an experimental 2 set approach for Saturday night.

2 X 80 minute sets and a short break.

I think it works out ok.

Sunday

The act before us on Sunday was the two-golden-guitar-nominated Mustered Courage

They reminded me a lot of Larry and His Flask, the band we saw in Kansas City last year.

Good stuff.

Monday

The heat had been oppressive for the last few days, baking dry yellow heat. 

Our last show was to be at the Marquee at the back of the Albert.

Outside.

In the heat.

Yikes.

But don't forget, this is Stormcellar, and where we go, goes the Weather.

The clouds thickened over Tamworth...

And burst forth in bucketing intensity

The temperature almost instantly dropped by 10 degrees, from the dastardly 40c to a more comfortable...whatever it was.

The ground had held the heat so much that the water evaporated almost instantly, filling the air with a soft, ethereal quality

Much revived, we headed for our final gig of the run.

Steve Edmonds was playing on the big stage and we arrived early enough to be able to catch some of his set.

Go Steve!

I took a great pic of Alex and the Mescaleros after they'd finished doing the backing for Steve.

Power Fail

As we began the setup for our show, the power circuit failed.

Disaster loomed!

But we don't let small problems like a lack of stage power stop us, we went out into the crowd and played acoustic until the power came back on.

That was awesome.

When the electrickery returned, we got up and did the electric stuff and did another 2.5 hours worth of stuff. Yep. Unstoppable.

Jo used her In Ear Monitors this run of shows and they worked a treat, she sang out with gusto and really lifted the show. We're mighty lucky to have her come and sing with us.

And so we ended our Tamworth Sojourn with electricity, Gazpacho and a general feeling of happiness.

Tuesday

All the weekend, Theo had been reading Graham Nash's bio on his days with Crosby, Stills & Nash and regaling us with tales from it. (BTW Theo was totally absorbed in this thing)

On the return leg of the journey, Theo, who normally pays close attention to the navigation, said 'meh, let the gps do it'

As a result we didn't quite take the highway.

For some reason, the GPS seemed to think that Broke Road via the Hunter Valley (sort of) was the way to go.

It was pretty, but intensive driving. I can see why it's a favourite trail for Biker riders.

I'm including this for Tim G - Yo Tim, this is what you can ride through if you come down this way ;-)

Eventually the GPS relented and took me back to a freeway and back to the grey of Sydney, and (blessedly) lower temperatures.

Cheers to all the folks who spent some time with us up at Tamworth, especially the folks who came to see us Three nights in a row!

Despite that being out shortest festival up there it was action packed.

A big shout out to Stewart F for being a wonderful Husband and encouraging Jo to come out and do her thing.

We're back a it this weekend, so if you've been missing out on the action, come and join us!

MJEB