Heres a little news and a journal of my recent music travels.
I had a blast playing at Folk Alliance International in Kansas City, USA a few weeks ago. It’s a hotel hootenany, a week of gigs performed mainly in hotel rooms (til 5am). I got to hang with me fav Robbie Fulks there. Infact we were assigned the same plane seat flying there from LAX.. 17A. We ended up in the seats with room for the tall mans pegs.
After FAI I drove down through the tired, wintry grey midwest towns of Missouri down into Tulsa Oklahoma. While bumping along those pot holed highways I flicked through the many radio stations. I heard mainly religous rightwingers justifying Trumps faith protectionism (or something), I also got mind zapped by stations of slick ‘bro country’ songs trumpeting quasi religious-cowboy-partying lifestyle infused with illogically constructed verses of rhyming modern US pop survival psychology (party, drink… and drive). There was no escaping the midwest radios mind moulding madness.
In quaint, cool Tulsa I had the inspiring pleasure to be invited into Woody Guthries archives, spending time with his onion skin paper typewritten letters, songs and various articles (no gloves worn). I got to sift through his handwritten notebooks, drawings, book blueprints and child paint covered song lyrics. Woody wrote all the time, the archivist Kate said Woody considered himself a writer more than a songwriter. As Billy Bragg told to me in Kansas City the night before I went to Tulsa to do this “the real Woody lies in those archives, we have to share that with the world.” Billy also said at the conference that “our greatest enemy in the world currently is ‘cynicism’. Woody was never cynical.”
NEW VIDEO – Huon Boathouse
Here is a new video filmed by the Huon River Tasmania, it’s one of the most tranquil places i’ve ever been, no wonder the song came out while i stayed in this very boat house.
FINALIST IN THE INTERNATIONAL SONGWRITING COMPETITION
Today my song my song ‘Hank and Tammy‘ became a finalist in the International Songwriting Competition. Please feel free to vote for the song if you like it HERE
