Yearly Archive: 2016

The Summer Season is here!

Well the summer season is here down in the southern hemisphere and I’m getting ready for the festive season and beyond.  I’ve been very busy since Sydney organising gigs and applying to festivals and organising for my next NSW tour but this time I’m going to do a few performances in Sydney and then take a trek up to Newcastle. I’ve already got Humph Hall in Allambie booked for April 7th and Sappho Books and Cafe in Glebe for April 5th and a couple of other pencilled in venues yet to be confirmed in Gosford and Newcastle.

But let’s get back to the next few months, this Sunday I’ll be at The Earl of Spencer Historic Inn and Restaurant, Albany and on December 30th I’ll be doing a set at the South Coast Live Music Club in downtown Albany too.  Then in the new year I’ll be playing at the Denmark Arts Markets in the morning and at a House Concert at a Denmark location in the evening and it’s going to be all originals sets! Ok maybe a few of my favourite covers.  I’ve also got The Earl of Spencer Historic Inn and Restaurant booked for Feb 5th and 26th.


RECORDING
The most exciting news is that I am going to be recording my next album in February and it’s going to be all locally done here in Denmark WA with local musicians and recording engineer which is very exciting!  We will be using my music studio which my hubby Warren has done a great job of insulating to make it as sound proof as possible. A young man by the name of Toby Flockart-Walker will be producing it and Tony King will be adding his magical touch with instrumentation and I’ll also be asking some other local musicians to put down tracks too.  A local photographer will be doing the photos for the album cover too.

Well that’s all from me for now but I will definitely keep you updated on the recording progress early next year!

 

 

Sydney was awesome!!!

What an awesome time I had in Sydney!  It was so much fun and I soooooooo want to do it all again!!! I didn’t manage to get many pics but the few shots I have here are the evidence that I was there.  We arrived, it was warm, perfect…….Oh did I mention that my husband and son came too?  Yes they came and we made it into a family holiday which was fantastic.  We spent our first three nights at some very good friends Scott and Nicole Morris and they had this great apartment overlooking the Sydney Harbour Bridge, it was lovely to see them. Thanks Digger and Nicole we had a great time with you guys.

My first gig was at the Sutherland Acoustic Club in Gymea where I met some lovely people and got the tour off to a great start.  We hired a car and braved the Sydney gridlock of roads that go here and there and everywhere and rarely the way you want to go.  It took us an hour to get to Gymea from Drummoyne in peak traffic and two and a half hours to get back in the middle of the night………Oh how we got lost……we both were so tired that we just couldn’t get our heads around the map book.  Anyhow by 1.30pm we were home and I had a great story to tell at my next gig.

So that was Thursday night then on Sunday evening we went down to Campbeltown to visit Michael Hayes at http://www.2mcr.org.au where he does his Rare Trax and Eclectic show   I had an interview and played the first song I wrote “Voices” and it was wonderful to meet Michael after having online contact for the past few years.  He’s passionate about music and does a fantastic job of promoting new music.  He found my track “Voices” on the AMRAP/AIRIT register, which is where artists can apply to be listed to get air play on Australian radio. A big thanks to Michael for his ongoing support.  On Tuesday I had an interview with John Regan at North Side Sydney Radio 99.3 fm .  We had a lot of fun chatting about all our favourite music and he played some of my favourite tracks and we talked about who had influenced my song writing.

Then on Tuesday night I played at Mr Falcon’s in Glebe which was a lovely little intimate venue and a couple of friends living in Sydney showed up. Young Jason who is from my favourite band, thanks for being there Jason and Scott (one of our friends) who recorded part of one of my songs “Cross to Bear” which I posted on my Facebook page.https://www.facebook.com/dawnindenmark .  “Cross to Bear” is going on my next album which I will starting recording early next year in Denmark WA.

Now during my time in Sydney I did have a few problems with my neck and shoulder but it seemed to clear up in the nick of time which I was very grateful for.  Strangely I had no pain at all when I was playing …. So thank you ‘god of mending broken singer/guitar players!’ Wednesday night was also in central Sydney at the Old Fitzroy Hotel in Woolloomooloo where I got to play at the Australia Songwriters Society which was a real pleasure and honour.  You can have a good read about how that went in my previous post which Gavin Fitzgerald wrote so eloquently.  Thanks again to John Cheshner and Gavin Fitzgerald.Sydney tour

The next day we took off on the road south to Woollongong where I had a gig booked at the “Diggers Club” . Russell Hannah booked me and he organised for us to be billeted by Mairi Petersen. What a surprise I had when I walked into her house, here library walls were filled with posters from the past 50years or so….Mairi was a true activist and has been her whole life.  I have never been so excited to come across someone who is so passionate in what she believes in. She had CD’s of Margaret Roadnight, Janis Ian and Bob Dylan which were some of the great singer songwriters of the 60s and 70s who stood up for what they believed in, not only that but they are the artists that people often mention when they hear me sing my songs.  Mairi also had some of the most interesting books on her bookshelves including Karl Marx, Chomsky, Joan Baez and soooooo many more.  Mairi was such a lovely person and very calm and composed and did a huge amount of work for refugees.  Her late husband was George Petersen who was a very dedicated parliamentarian just before the Whitlam years.  Anyhow we had only just sat down and the phone rang and it was Russell checking with Mairi that we had arrived safely and he was keen to come round and meet us and have a cuppa.  This very chippa, tall unimposing bearded man arrived and what a great story teller he was, he very much reminded me of my own father who also has the knack for making every story interesting.  Russell took us out for dinner and the next evening was my gig.  Did I mention that Mairi lived in Shell Harbour?  It’s beautiful part of the South Eastern coast.

The format for my gig had changed and because Russell had inadvertently booked me on a night that coincided with a music festival in Yaas and a lot of the folk club members would be going to that.  So he asked if I minded  being the main act and the other act would be the Figgie group members.  the figgio members are a bunch of guys and gals who meet each month at a pub and take turns to share their stories, poems and songs.  Of course I was very happy to be a part of that and it was almost giving me memories of my days organising the “Play it by Ear” down my local pub the Denmark Hotel where we had a singalong and open mic.  Anyhow we had the best night and Mairi was there and to my surprise Michael Hayes turned up from 2MCR.  I did a few singalong songs for the record and to top things off I had the best sound ever, actually probably the best sound I have ever experienced so thanks to Phil for that.sydney-pics-for-blog

The next morning we had a coffee with Russell and Mairi and Russell gave me a copy of a book he had co written about Australian Railways.  He was such a humble man that I had no idea that he had received the Order of Australia.  So thank you so much to the lovely Mairi Peterson and Sir Russell Hannah for such a fantastic weekend.

 

 

Review from the Australia Songwriters Society – Sydney

Here’s a review from the Australian Songwriters Society where I played a few tunes at one of their show cases.  It was a lot of fun and a lovely old hotel called the Old Fitzroy Hotel in Woolloomoolloo  http://www.oldfitzroy.com.au. Thanks Gavin Fitzgerald for such  a great writeup.

Australia Songwriters Society

Australia Songwriters Society

Light at the end of the tunnel

I haven’t made a post for while so here’s one for the record. So what’s been happening lately? … well on the surface not much I’ve had a very sore right shoulder and have had to rest it for almost four weeks now which has been way too long. I’m someone who is on the move all the time so three weeks with no guitar playing and not even being able to use the computer or ride my bike has been a real test of my very small amounts of patience.  I had to cancel two gigs which was very disappointing because they were my first opportunities to perform at these particular venues but I had no choice I just couldn’t play my guitar, especially for a 3 hour set.  I’ll be setting off to Perth Airport on Wednesday (7th Sept) which is a 5 hour drive from little old Denmark town. Then of to Sydney we go for a couple of weeks of performances, sight seeing and a couple of radio shows.  People have asked “how did you get those gigs?” and basically I just made contact with as many venues as I could find by asking friends of friends who knew the music scene in the Sydney and I then just asked.  It’s probably the most difficult thing about being a musician and performer, that is, actually asking for gigs and not only that but for payment too.  It’s easy to promote others but promoting yourself is something to become skilled at and it takes time.  So all that said  I’ll be playing at the Sutherland Acoustic Club Sutherland Acoustic Club on Thursday evening September 8th and then on Sunday 11th I’m going down to Campbelltown to have a chat with Michael Hayes at 2MCR 100.3 fm Sounds of Macarthur.  Then on Tuesday morning I’ll be having a chat with John Regan at http://northsideradio.com.au to talk about my recent Album release “Break of the Day”.  Tuesday evening I’m skating over to Glebe to play at Live & Originals @ Mr Falcon’s https://www.facebook.com/MrFalconBar/ and on Wednesday evening I have a slot at Songwriters Live at the Old Manly Boatshed https://songwriterslive.com.au/the-old-manly-boatshed/. Then finally we drive down to Wollongong where I have a slot at the Illawarra folk club.  So it’s going to be a busy time but I’m really looking forward to it. I don’t have any pics yet so here’s one of me looking for the music. Bwah bwah wah!!!!!

Looking for the music

“Coffee my Dear”

This is a video I put together for a song I wrote in 2014.  The song is called Coffee my Dear but it isn’t actually anything to do with coffee really.  I was watching the news one day and there were reports of people starving in African countries and talk about climate change causing heavy rain in India which caused severe landslides.  I felt helpless as I always did when I used to watch TV and see these tragic stories and situations.   So I started writing a song and after writing the verses I put it away for 6 months or so and then one day I was at my local coffee shop Mrs Jones and I heard these two older ladies complaining about their coffee and it brought me to the thinking about the things that we take for granted.  It’s not that I have a problem with complaining about things, I mean I do it to but on this particular day I was feeling sensitive and frustrated with these two ladies and felt the need to express my concerns in a way that was not too confrontational.  So I put my thoughts into words and that’s where the chorus came from “How do you take your coffee my dear, would that be straight frothy or clear?”. So in essence the song expresses my concerns about climate change and the stark reality of how we can get caught up in the finer details of day to day living.

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