Cheynne Murphy & Mark Heazlett
Bangalow Markets | Sunday 26 May | 10am | FREE
Headlights and Goodbyes is the title single from the new album of north coast folk rocker Cheynne Murphy, and is due for release at the end of 2018. Headlights and Goodbyes explores the notion of moving forward with the simultaneous feelings of nostalgia and a yearning for what is being left behind.
Harry James Angus
Mullumbimby Civic Hall | Friday 1 June | 8pm
Harry James Angus, the explosive trumpet-playing singer from The Cat Empire, is known for his deeply original live performances, in which the highest standards of musical craftsmanship are thrown into chaos, uncertainty, and ultimately transcendence. Featuring some of Australia’s finest jazz soloists, complete with horns, vocal chorus and Angus’s soaring trumpet, Struggle with Glory is a new project that explores the archetypal stories of ancient Greek mythology – the savage and beautiful world of the Olympian gods, of Achilles and Odysseus, of sea nymphs and of the Minotaur, re-imagined through the swoop and holler of traditional gospel music.
The call-and-response, emotionally charged tropes of American gospel bring these ancient stories to life. Like a church for pagans, Struggle With Glory is by turns celebratory and mournful, completed by trad-jazz improvisations that will have even the strictest of pundits idol-worshipping in the aisles.
Walrus & Carpenter
Courthouse Hotel, Mullum | Saturday 26 May | 7.30pm | $10 on the door
To celebrate the release of their new single Walrus and the Carpenter will be performing at the Court House Hotel in Mullumbimby. Singer/songwriter Matthew Engerer will be accompanied by Dave Biggin on guitar, Vincent Bashford on drums and Ben Brennan on bass. The mood for the night will be set by up-and-coming local-grown talent Maisy Taylor. The night will also include the debut screening of the music video for the new single Home (Waiting for the News), filmed and edited by Sinem Saban.
Spiderbait
Tap House, Kingscliff Beach Hotel | June 29 | 7pm
The narrative of the Spiderbait story is so fantastical it could only be based in truth: three friends from a small Australian country town taking on the Australian music scene on their own terms and emerging triumphant 25 years later, the friendships unscathed but their band one of the biggest and best on the national scene.
As brash and confident as they are strange and uncompromising, the three founding members of Spiderbait – Janet, Whitt and Kram – started humbly in the rural NSW township of Finley, the fervent music lovers taking inspiration from everything from Slayer to The Bangles and meshing into one intoxicating and unique brew.
Spiderbait have racked up pretty much every accolade there is to achieve on the Australian scene, having taken home numerous ARIA awards, chalked up a number-one single (their 2004 cover of Leadbelly’s Black Betty) and even topped the prestigious Triple J Hottest 100 (for Buy Me a Pony, 1996).
They’ve also become one of the most reliable propositions and biggest drawcards in the live realms, having criss-crossed the country immeasurable times on headlining tours as well as playing show-stopping sets at every festival from Splendour in the Grass and Big Day Out to Meredith, Falls Festival and A Day on the Green (as well as countless others).
But there’s no resting on their laurels for the hard-working three-piece, and there are plenty more chapters to write in the Spiderbait story – it’s impossible to know what exactly will happen next, but you know it will be achieved by three great mates and soundtracked by music that’s catchy and uncompromising.
Munga Madness
Billinudgel Hotel | Saturday 26 May | 2pm | $10 entry or gold coin. Kids under 16 free.
Get along to Munga Madness this Saturday at the Billinudgel Hotel from 2pm and catch a stellar lineup of blues and rock acts banding together to help out their mate. There’ll also be be auctions and raffles with some great prizes so do yourselves a favour and feel good about it.
Dubarray
Hotel Brunswick | Sunday 3 June | 4pm | Free
Sunshine Coast world music outfit Dubarray are bringing their amazing high-energy show back to the Hotel Brunswick’s famous Sunday session and this time with their highly anticipated new album release Inner Sanctum. The album has been in the making for the past two years and the band are celebrating the release with an east coast run of shows. Uplifting, soulful and euphoric, Dubarray combine a fresh fusion of boundary-bending world music that infuses styles such as trip-hop, drum’n’bass, house, reggae, funk, dancehall and tribal grooves layered on a bed of electronic ambience and organic undertones. Dubarray’s latest album Inner Sanctum is an uplifting compilation of songs that has seen the band spring to new heights in their songwriting and production ability. The album takes you on a journey through the band’s eclectic style of music with a powerful message interwoven to the awakening of self-healing and taking the power back from the imposing external forces of our current world.
The Johnny Cash Story starring Tex Perkins
Twin Towns | Sun 27 May | 7pm | $79
After a sellout stint with The Man In Black in Melbourne’s Athenaeum Theatre at the end of 2017, Tex Perkins is once again reprising his Helpmann Award-winning role – this time for a massive Australian tour. Tex, along with the Tennessee Four and Rachael Tidd, will hit the road throughout May and June, taking The Man In Black – The Johnny Cash Story far and wide.
Audiences in Victoria, Tasmania, Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory will delight as these acclaimed musicians showcase why they won the Best Contemporary Australian Concert accolade.
The last time The Man In Black toured Australia, the band were on the road for a massive 18 months, racking up sellout shows and taking the music to some of the best venues in the country. It’s no surprise the show is embraced so much by music-loving audiences – there are few artists within Australia who can translate the work of The Man in Black and bring it to modern day like Tex Perkins. His reverence for Johnny Cash’s career is evident in the way he approaches every song.
Johnny Cash made an indelible impact on the international music scene. From his rise to fame in 1954 he had a string of Top 10 hits, including Ring of Fire, Folsom Prison Blues and Don’t Take Your Guns To Town to name a few. Tex Perkins needs no introduction to Australian audiences; he is a legend within the Aussie music industry and is revered as one of the country’s rock’n’roll outlaws. It is said his affinity with Johnny Cash started in his earliest band and is an enthusiasm he hasn’t relinquished. After fronting The Cruel Sea, Beasts of Bourbon and touring with Tex, Don and Charlie and The Dark Horses, Tex Perkins has had an incredible and varied music career.
Bronny and the Bishops
Jasper Corner, Federal | Saturday 26 May | 7.30pm | $15 at the door
Jasper Corner, Federal, is hosting a show by Bronny and the Bishops: Trust Me, I’m a Politician, this Saturday at 7.30pm.
The evening will be in support of and catered by Federal Loves Refugees. Finger food, plus supper.
Bronny and the Bishops is a local trio (Peter Lino, guitar; Wendy Simpson, keys; Carl Moore, uke, melodica, percussion and 3-part harmonies) who have been performing social and political satire for more than four years.
Enjoy a musical romp thru the Right Whinge, with songs like Plastic Pauline, I Don’t Know Much, Barnaby’s Choice, Model Of An Immigration Minister, I Love To Live In An Economy, My Sweet Coal… You can trust Bronny and the Bishops to digest the flood of fake news and regurgitate it in a torrent of truth that chucks the mock back in demockracy.
Uke Night
Club Mullum, Mullum Ex-Services | Thurs 31 May | 6.30pm | $2.50–12.50 at the door
Special guests for this month’s Outlaws and Cosmic Cowboys Uke Night include Sara Tindley as well as Ash Bell and Justin Bannister and for the first time local legends Phil Levy, Steve Gilbert and Diego Zaragoza, collectively know as Backwater Brethren.
Castlecomer
Byron Brewery | Friday 25 May | 7pm | Free
Australian five-piece Castlecomer are dropping their banging-new single Move – the first cut off their heavily anticipated debut album! With sonic hints of Daft Punk and Phoenix, frontman Bede says that the band ‘wanted a tune to lead our charge into America’ – alluding to their move to Nashville in 2018. The song encapsulates the raw energy, drive and enthusiasm the band are feeling towards their relocation. After they electrified the crowds at SXSW in Austin last year, the US industry was quick to pounce on the Sydney talent; within weeks the boys had inked deals with Concord Records, Paradigm Agency and Mushroom Music Publishing. Since then, they have been recording their debut album, as well as slotting in some US tours. They’re going to be massive.
Lior & Grabowsky
Lismore City Hall | Thursday 31 May | 7.30pm | $38–25
This performance is a collaboration of two of Australia’s most respected artists. Singer/songwriter Lior shot to the public’s attention following his 2005 debut album Autumn Flow, which became one of the most successful independent releases in Australian history. His collaboration with composer Nigel Westlake won best classical album at the 2014 ARIA awards. Paul Grabowsky is an acclaimed composer, pianist and polymath who has received numerous awards in his illustrious 40-year career. He has been a director of some of Australia’s most prominent arts festivals, the composer of nearly thirty feature-film scores, and several works of music theatre, the founder and leader for nineteen years of the Australian Art Orchestra, an executive at the ABC, and is currently at Monash University, where he heads up the Academy of Performing Arts. Whether as composer, teacher, television personality, mentor or advocate for the role of artistic expression as a defining attribute of contemporary life, for him this is all informed by his work as a pianist, and composer, particularly in the field of jazz, where, according to him, ‘the piano never lies’.
Tickets at lismorecityhall.com.au
Dan Sultan
Brunswick Picture House | Sunday 17 June (sold out) | Monday 18 June
After wowing audiences at WOMADelaide and Bluesfest, Dan Sultan has announced that The Brunswick Picture House will be the only northern rivers show on his intimate Killer Solo Tour. And guess what? He sold out the Sunday show so now he’s had to add a Monday and that’s almost gone too!
Stripping back to basics – just Dan Sultan, his piano and guitar – this is sure to be an incredible intimate acoustic performance.
Go to brunswickpicturehouse.com for tix!
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
