Well, last night saw the Australian Songwriters Association – Tasmania‘s final gig at Irish Murphy’s in Salamanca Place. It was a raw night to be out and about – the weather here in Hobart has been typically Winter (with a capital W) since last month’s plunge into single digit temperatures. However, kudos to all the brave folks who came out on such a night to support and perform – you are all diamonds!
It bears noting that the opening act was emerging songwriter, Cassie O’Keefe, who has really improved as a performer – so much so that I let her use my Seagull guitar last night!
Cassie has really come into her own in the last year or so, thanks in part to the amazing support of her wonderful family and friends – and shows like the ASA, which provide a wonderful avenue for new writer/performers to share the stage with proven hands like Tony Brennan, myself and the consummate professional, Ian Paulin.
I’m therefore very pleased to tell you all that I’m taking Cassie down to Belfry Studio next month, where she’ll be recording with my favourite engineer in all the planet, Malcolm Battersby. It’s an incredibly gratifying experience to see someone grow from an uncertain child into a powerful young woman, who can turn a pub crowd on a Monday night into a listening audience, and hold them in the palm of her hand. It’s every teacher/mentor’s dream and inspires me to keep doing what I do 😀
Also, I must mention the fine work by the ASA Tasmania coordinator, Matt Sertori. His job has been so difficult over the last few months, with people pulling out at the last minute or turning up late for their set. Seriously, organising musicians is like herding cats, and not for the faint hearted – we are a difficult mob! Matt has kept his temper and his outrageous sense of humour well intact and I thank him for all his support and unwavering friendship over more than ten years of ASA shows.
I’m not sure where the ASA will be heading next, there isn’t a venue lined up at the time of writing – but that in itself is kind of exciting and makes me wonder what we can do next!
Watch this space and stay safe and well, wherever you are on this beautiful planet ❤
Sometimes, things fall in your lap that are wonderful. And throughout my life, I’ve been lucky enough to have a lot of these treasures come my way.
Meeting Kirsty, then Sara and playing in Straddlepuss with them has certainly been a treasure. Not only are these two great emerging musicians and songwriters but also amazing young women, who I’m really proud to call my friends. Saturday 21st March, we are incredibly pleased to be playing at GRRL Fest 2015 in Melbourne.
So, It’s more than a little bittersweet to announce that I’ve decided to leave Straddlepuss – but other exciting projects are starting to get very pressing!
I’m really pleased to announce that The Woman on the Edge of the World will be going ahead as a CD release later this year. Remastering is scheduled for mid-late April, artwork is in the final stages, and it will be limited to only 100 signed and numbered copies. Also, it will only be available through me. I’m happy to take pre-orders but holding off a little until I find out the retail price. Trying my best to keep this little collectable affordable! Plus, The Lucky Six covers EP which was first mooted as a recording project in 2013, looks like it will happen as (at least) a digital download later this year. At present, we’re considering mastering, release options and licensing, all the important – but often tedious – stuff that makes the music industry go round.
Meanwhile, the All At Sea project with documentary maker, Josh Troy and the inimitable Matt Sertori from Butterscotch Pony is still forging on. Lots of footage for me to look at now apparently! And we still have to look at recording options for this beastie too……. so much work to do!
And amongst all of this, my university studies continue. I’m doing second year Screen Studies units now through Griffith University and it’s really making me work. Nevertheless, I’m really enjoying the challenge. It’s so different to anything else in my life.
Honestly, I’ll really miss playing in Straddlepuss but I look forward to my other projects and new challenges. I’ll still be going to their gigs in the future and cheering on these truly fabulous women ❤
I feel like I’ve lost a couple of months somewhere, it’s been so hectic and now I realise that spring is here and I haven’t done half the things I meant to this calendar year. But I have managed a few that I wasn’t expecting!
The university experience has been wonderful so far although I won’t pretend I’ve enjoyed every unit. At the moment, I’m preparing papers on two of my favourite things – Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds and the personal still camera. And I’ve had to watch classic films such as Rear Window and Citizen Kane. Yes, I’m loving my units this semester!
But today I’ve been distracted from study. Tomorrow night I’m playing at a House Concert in Hobart with wonderful Queensland singer/songwriter Francesca de Valence and Hobart duo Butterscotch Pony in one of their all-too-rare live shows. However, instead of doing a solo set or playing with the wonderful girls in Straddlepuss (more on that next time!) I’m doing a special set with dear friend (and half of Butterscotch Pony), Matt Sertori.
We’ve been friends for a long time and decided early in the year that we wanted to do a music project together that included a documentary about our personal process and the creative world that we inhabit. We’ve done some filming already but will be adding to it at this gig. Meanwhile, our trusty doco guru, Josh Troy put this little gem together to promote this event. I hope it makes you laugh as much as it did all of us!
Please note, there’s some bad language at the end 😉
And we really did decide to call it ‘All at Sea’. The moral of the story is Matt has the attention span of a flea………… ❤
It’s been way too long since I posted anything, but life habitually gets in the way of blogging!
Meanwhile, a quick post to hopefully make you all think about supporting something really worthwhile…….
A musician friend and fellow singing teacher, Rachel Taylor has put up a Pozible crowd funing campaign for her project, The Green Album
The incredibly talented Rachel Taylor
In itself, this is a pretty big deal, as Rachel is a performer and writer I’ve known and admired for many years and this is her first solo recording. But I think the really big deal here is that she wants to make a sustainable album. I’ve known Rachel since she was a young girl, I actually met her through her parents. Her father Alan is also a fabulous musician and gifted poet – in fact her whole family are pretty wonderful!
Rachel performing with her father Alan
Wherever you are on the planet have a look at her proposal and if you like the idea as much as I do, please get behind it. There’s a Facebook event page ‘Make “The Green” Album Pozible‘ with news and updates. Also, I highly recommend having a listen to her previous work on SoundCloud. She is a very talented performer worthy of notice – Tasmania has so many – and I’m so pleased she’s doing this!
After six months with just my trusty mobile phone, I’m extremely happy to announce that I’ve got a home broadband connection again. Despite having the WordPress app on my phone, it’s just not the same as this interface on my laptop.
It’s good to be back – but now the big job of catching up begins! So much has been happening this southern summer, and as always, some of it’s been good and some of it’s been really bad.
On the “utterly brilliant” end of the spectrum, I’ve finished my first fully online unit through Griffith University. Despite only having my mobile for connection, I managed a surprising high distinction and I have to thank some beautiful friends in Hobart for letting me leach their net regularly to stay on top of things. Thank you Lauren and Patsi ❤ you two are wonderful! I’m well into my second unit now and starting to really enjoy the challenge of study again.
In the next few weeks, I’ll be finalising digital stuff for my most recent recording and playing catch up with getting cd’s out and about. And for those of you in southern Tasmania, I’m playing at the next ASA show on Wednesday, 9th April. Once again, we’re at The Night Owl in Liverpool Street, Hobart.
I’ll also have details to reveal soon about a new songwriting/recording/documentary project, plus a live, all-girl punk band I’m playing with called Straddlepuss.
And finally, being back online with a fibre connection means I can at long last offer Skype music lessons to you all. I can’t believe it was October last year when I first wrote about this and it’s taken until now to get it off the ground! If you’re interested, fill out the contact form – and the first lesson is free 😉
There’s been sadness too but I’m not dwelling on that today.
Now that I’ve finished recording The Lucky Six, it’s time to spend a little attention on two live shows I’ve got in the immediate future.
Firstly, this Sunday 24th November, my partner in mayhem and music – Malcolm Battersby – is joining me for The Richmond Festival. We’re performing as The Fringe Dwellers at the Songwriters’ Concert and we’re both looking forward to it immensely! There’s some great Tasmanian songwriters on the bill with us, Marc Smith, Peter Hicks and the wonderful Wolf Arrow Rain.
If you’re in southern Tasmania, it’s worth the trip out to Richmond. It’s a lovely little hamlet and I have it on good authority that the weather should be fine after a damp morning…….
In December, it will be ten years since the Australian Songwriters Association (Tasmania) reignited at The Telegraph Hotel. Apart from making me feel really old, it’s fabulous to see how many performers from those days are still playing in venues here in Tasmania as well as interstate and overseas. In honour of the occasion, a very special ASA night is planned for Wednesday 11th December at The Night Owl Cafe in Liverpool Street, Hobart. The best part for me is that students of mine, Cassie O’Keefe, Kirsty Leaf and the fabulous Jax will all be performing, along with myself and Mal.
Seems like there’s no end to the things I discover through life. One of the major problems I have is never enough time to do everything. This is not just a day-to-day thing but has a much broader context. As I get older I discover there’s so much I don’t know that I want to know! And the other major issue I have is a short attention span. Call it a character flaw but if I’m not fully engaged with something, or don’t have a solid deadline, I tend to put it aside for a rainy day. On the upside, I seem to have developed a flair over the years for reinventing myself. It seems like I find a comfortable place to be in the grand scheme of things and then start rearranging the furniture. This is very true of my musical career as well as my personal life – and I like it! I find it inspires me creatively and musically, I am never bored, and (I sincerely hope) never boring!
So, I made the decision earlier this year to return to study. I’ve enrolled in a Bachelor of Communication at Griffith University, studying fully online via Open University Australia. This is going to be a bit hairy considering I have no Internet at home until January – all my recent blog posts have been done on my mobile phone (god bless the WordPress mobile app!) but I’ve got some contingencies in place to stay up to date.
I’m taking just one unit at a time so I can still fit in all the other things I want and need in my life
And today, my first unit arrived in the post. I’m feeling scared and excited all at once – a fabulous way to be! So, I’m off to a quiet spot in the garden to start my first week’s reading and discuss it with the bunnies.
Let the reinvention commence!
It’s so odd. I’m blogging from my greenhouse this morning. The door is shut, I’m rugged up and wondering where the southern spring has disappeared to.
There’s snow on Mt Wellington again and I’m wondering if we’re going to have any proper, Australian sunshine before the end of the year.
Plants are getting rain damaged and I’m going a bit mad from looking at all the weeds that I can’t get at yet. The beautiful lilac tree is testimony to the damage – but it’s still gorgeous♡
On the upside, I discovered tomatoes that have (so far) survived. I can hear one of the hens, telling the world she’s laid an egg. The basil in the greenhouse has noticeably grown, along with everything else in here And my water tanks (my only means of watering the backyard) are full.
Along with this, the garden keeps giving and giving – we have so much food! – and I am cheering 😀
After a little sojourn into urban farming and environmental concerns, today it’s back to the driving force in my life – music!
At the moment, I’m preparing to finish recording my next project, and it’s something completely foreign to me. After years of writing and playing my own songs, I’m recording an EP of other people’s songs. I started recording a couple of months ago and I now have five songs that I’m pretty pleased with as studio roughs. But I’d like to record one more and then start the mixing process.
Bertha & Blondie, ready for action
The concept is to record songs that have influenced my own songwriting and/or singing and believe me, the hardest thing has been narrowing it down to just six! In conversation with my musical partner-in-crime and studio whiz, Malcolm Battersby, “The Lucky Six” came up as a title. And I love it!
Also, it’s been my first opportunity to record in Mal’s new facility, The Belfry Studio, and what a delight that has been! The space is lovely and the equipment is excellent but I always love recording with Mal for a multitude of other reasons. We play together in The Fringe Dwellers so musically, we know each other very well. Everytime we get together, whether it’s for rehearsals, gigs or just a cuppa, we have a great time – we both have a similar mad sense of humour – but it’s his professionalism that shines through when I’m recording and he’s engineering.
We have a plan and generally, stick to it. He gives me space in the recording studio to get on with what I’m good at and doesn’t get in my way when I need time to consider my next move. He’ll make suggestions but not demands and knows exactly when to call a tea break. And his recording gear and microphones are good!
I anticipate “The Lucky Six” will be available as a digital download early in 2014. I’ll have links through this blog when we get it finished 😀
Some of the neighbours are a bit too cute but the view and the vibe is relaxed and lovely.
The Next Door Neighbour
Personally, I think the Daleks in the control room are what really drives it and makes it perfection 😉
Debra Manskey 