The night Stormcellar closed the Hawkesbury Hotel down
Ah that's bittersweet.
A good last hurrah; a last hurrah, still.
On the wall at the venue, I spotted a coming gig poster for the 18th of May. Yeah. Ouch.
I have 'the night they drove Dixie down' playing as I write :-)
My voice was not in tip top fashion thanks to a cold we all picked up recently. Thankfully Jo was there to help.
That was a hell of a show. Michael Hawke played some monumental sax. He's a gifted performer.
This rubs off. Rosie was on fire too.
So here's a pic of Paul.
From our end of the farm, the larger show format is awesome. It allows us to add the Walnuts, as Rosie puts it.
Without walnuts, no Waldorf, right? This does make sense, it takes a little time to unpack :-)
For some of the songs we've written where we feature guests, they sound better....with guests!
What Jo does for the vocals, Michael Hawke, as a multi instrumentalist, does for Mandolin, Acoustic, Vocals and Sax. Add flute and clarinet when we get the chance.
Now we need Fiddle, some more percussion, 1 more guitarist and some singing and then we're done.
Pretty much.
Except maybe for a few extra horns.
And a cello.
Also some Mongolian throat singing.
You can surmise the challenge posed by putting on all the extra trimmings.
With luck, a tailwind and some chutzpah, we'll get close. On the occasions when we can. And it'll sound beaut.
(sigh).
As for the Hawkesbury, its demise is caused somewhere between the generational and social change of Australia and...business factors.
In the 21st Century, alcohol does not play quite as big a role as it once did in Aussie life.
Less drinking, less money. Less money, fewer pubs.
On this blog, we've talked about the myriad of changes in how we interact with music, on a personal and societal level.
With new laws to suspend your license for 3 months for a low range drinking offence, we are enforcing Societies mandate to curb drink driving.
Cool.
But kind of like the ol' butterfly effect, a combination of factors have removed the coral reef that once supported musicians, and replaced it with.
and
(sigh).
As we find each time we play, music still has the power to lift you out of yourself. I don't think it's going away any time soon.
How we interact with it and access it, changes over time. That's to be expected.
So as we shift from Booze & Pies to Quinoa & Speed, where we meet may change.
Heh. Pic's relevant cos they found a Breaking Bad lab under it. Heh.
Thus we come to Bury the Hawkesbury, not to praise it.
It's a tough gig living in the margins.
Things will make more sense as we finally let the 20th century go and start living in the now (sort of) or more now-ish.
We're never going back to what we were before.
It is written in Stormcellar Lore, Mutate Early and Often.
Thus:
Farewell Hawkesbury, long live Live music
(yeah I know the Live/live thing, I know you're doing it in your head right now huh?...hmm...maybe we need a better slogan)
