The very mello Bello
This weekend the streets and halls of Bellingen come alive with their second music festival. Often it’s the experiences you don’t expect that become your highlight memories at a music festival. Those ‘I can’t believe I just saw that’ moments. When your favourite act invites your other favourite out of the crowd to come up and jam with them. When you had no idea who was playing when you walked in but they’re all you can talk about by the time they’ve finished. When the dance floor is full of musicians from the lineup, loving the music just like you.
Some of the things you can look forward to are…
GRAM PARSONS PROJECT
Featuring Willie Watson, Josh Hedley, Claire Anne Taylor, Jo Jo Smith, The Green Mohair Suits, Sweet Jean, Sarah Carroll, Aine Tyrrell and Cath Cooper.
A very special showcase celebrating the music of Gram Parsons – 70 years after his birth. Gram Parsons’s influence on American roots music has been immense. His wide-ranging, heartfelt mix of country, rock, blues, gospel, and southern soul created a body of work that he called Cosmic American Music. His time was short, but the music he had in him so very few possess. During his brief 26 years, Gram’s name was known to discerning music lovers, including Keith Richard and The Rolling Stones, who allowed him to release Wild Horses before they did. Since his untimely death the legend has grown beyond anything he could have imagined.
Drawing from his work with The International Submarine Band, The Byrds, The Flying Burrito Brothers and Gram Parsons & The Fallen Angels with Emmylou Harris, The Gram Parsons Project is a true labour of love where the featured artists have all chosen the songs that speak to them personally.
Join MC Marty Jones (Rhythms magazine), bluegrass/Americana band Heartworn Highway and many of this year’s festival artists in collaboration on Sunday morning at the beautiful Bellingen Memorial Hall.
Bellingen Memorial Hall, 11.30am–1pm Sunday
Curated by Sista Mary
Cutloose Saloon
Located in the heart of Bellingen, Outpost Salon will become the Cutloose Saloon on Friday and Saturday nights at Bello Winter Music.
The popup venue will play host to a mystery selection of performers from the festival – from special acoustic performances, unique collaborations, to beatnik poetry and even an adults-only sexy science show. You never know who’ll pop up in the Cutloose!
Outpost Salon – located behind the Post Office, 7–9pm Friday and Saturday nights.
Bread & Butter
A highlight from last year’s festival is Bread and Butter.
Presented by the Sonic Lab, this show consists of a handpicked selection of artists from the festival in unlikely duets and promises more surprises than a Jack-in-the-Box convention.
Taking place at the Golf Club on Sunday this very special concert features Mojo Juju, William Crighton, Claire Anne Taylor, Roman MC (Bullhorn), Jo Jo Smith, Elana Stone, Merryn Jeann, Rhea Caldwell (Baby Blue), Leah Senior and Madeline Leman.
All these artists have great respect and admiration for each other’s work but most have never had the opportunity to perform together. You are bound to witness some magical musical moments.
Sunday 4.30pm, Golf Club
On the couch with Brian Nankervis
For the past 11 years, Brian Nankervis has been writing, producing and co hosting the SBS music quiz show RocKwiz. With a vast and varied career, including being a one-time member of TISM, Brian has performed, written and produced for television and radio as well as made regular appearances on Hey Hey it’s Saturday as tortured beat poet Raymond J Bartholomeuz.
For Bello Winter Music, Brian hosts two special performances where he’ll invite musicians to join him ‘on the couch’ for a chat and maybe a song or two. An absolute hit at last year’s Mullum Music Festival, where Brian got up close and personal with the likes of Ben Ottewell, Oh Pep! and JoJo Smith. Expect the chance to hear from musicians in a way you rarely get to.
Saturday and Sunday, 2pm – Diggers Tavern
Bello Winter Music this Thursday–Sunday, throughout the town of Bellingen, NSW
Orchestral Portraits
Renowned conductor John Curro AM MBE takes the orchestra to new heights with Brahms’s Symphony No 4 and Bruch’s Violin Concerto, featuring soloist Hugh Won. Mr Curro is the founder and director of the Queensland Youth Orchestra. He has inspired thousands of young musicians throughout his career as a conductor, teacher and performer and, under his leadership, the QYO is regarded as one of the world’s finest youth orchestras. Back in 1992, under the baton of Mr Curro, the then 17-year-old violinist Hugh Won performed the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with the QYO in the finals of the National Youth Concerto Competition and emerged as the winner. Hugh has since gone on to perform with the Australian Chamber Orchestra, tour internationally with the Australian Youth Orchestra, and appear as a soloist for the Gold Coast Chamber Orchestra. In this special reunion, Hugh and John will perform together again after 24 years. They will bring another favourite, the beautifully romantic Bruch Violin Concerto No 1.
Conducted by John Curro, featuring violin soloist Hugh Won
Musical Portraits, Sunday at 2.30pm
Tweed Heads Civic Centre.
Tickets: General $45, Concession $40, Students $20, Children 15 years and under free.
Tickets can be purchased securely with Visa or Mastercard via the website: www.nrso.com.au, or by phone: 0466 819 154 or at Murwillumbah Music: 6672 5404.
Country music star at Ballina RSL
Highly acclaimed country music star Adam Harvey is excited to present his upcoming tour following the hugely successful release of Harvey’s Bar – The Backyard Sessions.
Multiple Aria Award nominee and eight-time CMAA Golden Guitar winner, Adam Harvey is one of Australia’s most popular and enduring country stars with a career spanning two decades plus. Encapsulating half a million sales, and gold and platinum albums, Adam’s new endeavour, has debuted at #1 on the ARIA Country Album Charts and remained in the top spot for an incredible seven weeks. Written and recorded in his bar at home, in a part of the world which Adam refers to as ‘The Peoples’ Republic of Bateau Bay’, Harvey was able to gather up friends and neighbours for an after-hours singalong with a few beers and his trademark one-liners. ‘Because I’ve written a few drinking songs in the past,’ explains Harvey, ‘and I talk about how this happened in the bar, or we wrote this in the bar, I have a lot of people who come up to me and say: God, I’d love to spend a night in that bar.
‘I started to think why don’t we try to take a bit of that bar atmosphere and bring the bar to those people. That was the whole idea of the album. Now the fun begins; I get to take this show on tour.’
When the show hits the road, audiences are in for a treat. Harvey will be bringing with him a huge backdrop and a living breathing replica of his own bar that will be rebuilt onstage.
‘I think that a lot of artists are frightened to allow their audience or listeners into their own personal lives,’ he explains. ‘That has never been something that’s worried me. Country music fans are like one big family and with this album and tour I want to try to let them inside my home, with my family and friends. The idea behind this show is to invite the audience into that personal space, so they can get a feel for a night with me, in my bar at home.’
Sunday 17 July at the Ballina RSL Club. 8pm. Tickets online at www.rsl.ballinarsl.com.au or call 6686 2544.
Kachel at the club
Guy Kachel had an idyllic entrée to the world of music. Born in Tamworth, he was raised on the banks of the Peel River. The landscape was a fertile ground for his imagination. Seeing this rustic world change, as Tamworth developed into an inland city and friends grew to sometimes troubled adulthoods, provided insights for the artistry that later powered his career as a performer.
His paternal grandfather, an itinerant harmonica duellist, gave him his first guitar at 15. However, bereft of musical guidance Guy progressed no further than the riff to Smoke on the Water until, as an apprentice electrician, he struck up a lifelong friendship with Lawrie Minson, who went on to become one of the country’s best-known journeyman musicians. Minson coaxed him through the rudiments of guitar and transplanted a love of hillbilly guitar picking and such southern-rock stalwarts as the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.
The strains of country, rock and blues mingled in Guy’s increasingly accomplished craft. Embellished by tours across the vast outback, it manifested in the style of country blues exemplified by greats such as John Hiatt, Rodney Crowell and Lowell George from Little Feat. The harmonica playing of his grandfather had also resurfaced and became a feature of his act as he gained a residency in Tamworth and formed the band Bloozenfunkenstuff with renowned guitar-slinger Alwyn Aurisch and the deadly rhythm section of Pete Maloney on bass and Michael Thompson on drums. This combination shifted Kachel’s repertoire into a higher gear again. The band swiftly became underground Tamworth Country Music Festival favourites.
But the muse is voracious and Guy found himself footloose, drifting east to the Byron Shire where the fertile tropics energised his creative talents. He started writing songs, cathartically, about his past, Tamworth, the fate of his peers – and ultimately, himself. The result is a startlingly confessional and strong, emotional album, Innocent Screams. It deals with his youth (Green Machines), the fraught transition to manhood (Face The Music) and the sometimes onerous obsessions of the country music wannabes infesting Tamworth (Around the Bend). Wry observations from a seasoned bard about people immersed in their dreams, dreams that some never escape. Sunday at Club Lennox at 4pm.
From New York to the Treehouse
Vincent Cross will be performing songs from Old Songs for Modern Folk along the north coast, stopping in at the Treehouse in Byron Bay. This will be his second full-length tour, having returned in 2014. With roots in Ireland and Australia, New York City-based rustic folk singer/songwriter Vincent Cross has been described as ‘impeccably gifted’ by Big City Rhythm and Blues and ‘… powerful and unique…’ by Red Line Roots.
At The Treehouse in Belongil on Thursday 21 July.
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