A good f*ckup changes your life… At the time it’s excruciating. But sometimes it opens a door to something quite unexpected. It was a f*ckup that was the foundation of one of my most treasured friendships and unexpected collaborations.
About a decade ago, I was attending the glorious Bello Fest. A music festival where I hosted the opening night, and where I usually performed a solo stand-up show, with bodies pressed from floor to ceiling. Comedians are daggy. We’re never cool. Nothing makes you feel more like a rock star than being the only comedian at their festival. I was loving myself sick.
I was finished with my contractual engagements, so was just enjoying swanning around Bellingen, listening to bands and hearing new fans tell me I was amazing (what a wanker). Then I get a call from the festival boss. Brian Nankervis aka host of RockWiz was supposed to be arriving to chair the musician Q&A. His flight was grounded in Melbourne.
I had 20 minutes to prepare chats with two musicians. Yirrimal, I knew and had written about before, but Áine Tyrrell was a mystery. Unresearched subjects had gone very bad for me once before when I’d interviewed Lloyd Swanton from the Necks and asked him how he wrote his lyrics. When he told me, that in 20 years and 19 albums he hadn’t written a single lyric, I paused and said: ‘writer’s block?’ It still makes me blanche years on.
So I google the Tyrrell person. Looks a bit like a wild, gypsy Irish woman living in a bus with her three kids. Something about driving into the desert, something about swords, something about folk music. That will do. I gathered she wrote lyrics so I wasn’t about to get ‘Necked’ again.
The chat with Yirrimal went fabulously well. And next up was the beautiful Irish woman. I was instantly mesmerised by her. The Irish accent. Her warm personality. Her open laugh. I had an instant straight-girl crush. The kind you had when you were at school and you saw someone who was cool and you wanted to be friends with.
So I asked her the big questions everyone wants to know, from this rising star, on what was then described as the indie folk music scene. ‘So you live in a bus?’ Oh my god, did I even say that. What a middle-class twat. She says, ‘Yes. I live in a bus’. And then I continue with, ‘Do you write music on the bus?’ ‘Do the kids sleep on the bus too?’ And the big question every music lover wants to know… ‘is there a toilet on the bus?’
She started to laugh. That big, broad, full-bodied laugh that has become something I love most about her. I don’t think any music journalist had asked her this hard-hitting question before. Brian wouldn’t have asked it. That’s because he’s lightweight. I’m digging deep. It’s all well and good to be a cutting-edge musician, but where do you shit?
Áine regains her composure. ‘Yes, there’s a toilet on the bus’. The audience is relieved. Literally, not actually. The interview, kind of limps on from there. It’s hard to establish a robust conversation about music when you ask the musician where she takes a dump. And to make matters worse, I kept circling back to the bus. The freedom of having a toilet on wheels. It was a terrible interview.
It was so bad that Áine and I became friends. Our first meeting, on stage in front of a few hundred people. That f*ckup, of Nankervis not arriving, and me asking stupid questions lit the fire of what has become one of my most treasured friendships, and crazy feminist collaborations, that is The Country Witches Association. Is it a show? Maybe. Is it a group of women who have had enough? Definitely. Is it a celebration of badass women? F*ck yes.
No one laughs at my jokes like Áine. She finds me funnier than I actually am. And when she laughs her whole body laughs. She cries. Sometimes I even make her nose bleed.
Without the f*ckups we would have never connected. We wouldn’t have had a crazy first meeting story. And because of that, we have a crazy last meeting story. This Friday, before my friend flies home to Ireland for good, we have one last witches’ meeting – at the Mullum Ex-Services Club. Oh, and that old ‘60s Bedford bus with the toilet… it’s for sale.
That f*ckup led me to wearing gold lame hotpants, and shaking an egg, in a show that drives women into a feminist frenzy. It’s successful without ever trying. How have f*ckups transformed you and your business?
I’ll be hosting a F*ckup Night (for the Byron Bay Chamber and the Byron Community College) at the Hotel Great Northern on Wednesday, 25 June – it’s part of a global event series where business leaders, entrepreneurs and creatives share stories of failure and what they learned. Real people. Real failures. Really good stories. Although probably not as good as mine. Just sayin’.
- Mandy Nolan’s Soapbox column has appeared in The Echo for almost 23 years. The personal and the political often meet here; she’s also been the Greens federal candidate since before the last two federal elections. The Echo’s coverage of political issues will remain as comprehensive and fair as it has ever been, outside this opinion column which, as always, contains Mandy’s personal opinions only.
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. 
