| LIVE MUSIC...P42 | CULTURE...P44 | CINEMA...P45| GIG GUIDE...P46
ALL YOUR NORTH COAST ENTERTAINMENT ISSUE# 33.41 MARCH 20 – 26, 2019 Editor : Mandy Nolan Editorial/gigs : gigs@echo.net.au Copy deadline: 5pm each Friday Advertising : adcopy@echo.net.au P : 02 6684 1777 W : echo.net.au/entertainment
LOOKING BACK TO MOVE FORWARD: TONI CHILDS RETROSPECTIVE FOR BEES
T HE L E G E NDAR Y T ONI CHILDS PRE S E NT S A SPECIAL TW O H O UR PE RF ORMANCE AS SH E CELEBR ATES TH E 3 0 T H ANNIVER SAR Y O F H ER CR ITICALLY ACCL AIME D ALBUM UN IO N . Toni will be performing hits and fan favourites from Union, House of Hope, The Woman’s Boat and Keep the Faith in the first hour of her show. The second hour will be an introduction to Toni’s new music, from two very special albums It’s All a Beautiful Noise and Citizens of the Planet. Next year she takes her remarkable new project to the world.
I love the term ‘Pollinator’ . What does it mean to you?
Tell me about It’s All a Beautiful Noise, it’s such an ambitious project, why did you want to create a show that has you working in so many other ways, as well as performing?
How have you been preparing for your upcoming world tour?
The music for All a Beautiful Noise is vast and epic and it has inspired me to stretch myself as an artist and to do things I never thought I’d ever do. It’s music that made me want to sing at the top of the world – and we did! A trek in the Himalayas took us to Poon Hill, where we gave a sunrise concert at 10,000ft. It’s music that made me want to give an underwater concert to whales and dolphins, and create a 360 degree museum installation with Film Graphics and BioQuest Studios – to shine a light on what can be done to repair the Great Barrier Reef. The music from All a Beautiful Noise inspired me to create a new kind of concert experience with lots of hi-tech audience engagement, like a pop-up set of the natural world, all to inspire people to protect our pollinators. The music inspired me to want to create a non-stop visual experience by working with an incredible creative hub called Tigrelab who are based in Barcelona, Spain. I’ve had a decade taken out of my life due to environmental impact: mercury and chlorine in my drinking water, and allergies to sulphates in toothpaste, shampoos and detergents. This toxic overload put a strain on my thyroid, as Graves’ Disease. This life experience has made me sensitive to what is happening to the bees, pollinators, birds and insects on the planet. I wanted to create a performance that, in a profound and playful way, would inspire rural audiences around the world to protect our pollinators.
We are all pollinators. What we buy we grow. We are actually corporate farmers – if we don’t buy it, it won’t grow. We are part of the ecosystem and we hold a tremendous amount of power in our ability to choose where we spend our money.
2021 is when we begin touring 17 countries. We plan to rehearse for 4 weeks in Barcelona in September and for 2 weeks in Melbourne, with audience previews later this year. This will give us the time we need to massage our production and to package all our sales materials for the show. Where are you wanting to go – what are you wanting to happen? Together, I would like us to make the honey bee a protected species. If we protect the honey bee, we protect all the pollinators – including us. What should people expect from your local retrospective? This is a celebration of the 30th anniversary of my album Union. I thought this would be a great time to do a Retrospective of my life’s work. The Toni Childs Retrospective is a two hour show and much like a retrospective in an art gallery. If you’re a Toni Childs fan you will hear the music in the first half of the show from 30 years ago, ending with an intermission. The second half is about present day music from It’s All a Beautiful Noise and Citizens of the Planet that will not released until 2025. The profit from my retrospective tour will fund remaining costs for All a Beautiful Noise: the animations, sets, hi-tech audience engagements and rehearsals. Pollinating my show by buying a ticket you help me grow an inspirational movement to protect our pollinators. Toni Childs at City Hall in Lismore on Wednesday 3 April. Tickets at lismorecityhall.com.au with show starting at 7.30pm | $63.80 – $68.20
KASEY IS THE CAPTAIN OF BLUES KASEY CHAMBERS IS BEYOND EXCITED ABOUT BEING ON THE LINE UP FOR THE 30TH BLUESFEST. ‘I am so excited. I first came there in ‘98 as Buddy Miller’s backup singer. That’s not actually a bad thing to be able to say! I also got to sing a duet with Steve Earl on his gig! I played with Dead Ringer Band, and I didn’t know at the time, but at that gig, Paul Kelly just happened to walk past the tent that I was playing in. ‘It was the first time Paul Kelly heard me sing. After that, I would go on to actually work with Paul, which was amazing. I was a big fan of his. I’d seen him play a bunch of times before that.’ Kasey was back again in ‘99 playing as a solo artist; playing all the songs from The Captain for the first time. ‘I’d never played these Captain songs before, although that album would come out later that year. But I was playing those songs to people for the first time, and that’s, obviously, exactly 20 years ago from this festival. So this is my 20 year anniversary of playing as a solo artist, and I have been to every single Bluesfest since!’ That’s a score of 21 out of 30 for Kasey Chambers! She hasn’t played at Bluesfest all of those years, but she has played most. In fact she has probably played more gigs there than any other woman at Bluesfest. ‘So most years, I’ve been there full-time. Every now and then I’ve been in the middle of a tour and just come in and played and then gone, but for most of them, I came and stayed for the whole time, for the whole four or five days.’ Kasey’s last album was Campfire. ‘On the tour we had a little campfire set up on stage every night, which obviously wasn’t real and looked quite lame when you think about an actual real fire. But, it was good enough to get us through, to set the mood.’ ‘For this 30th Anniversary Bluesfest I’ve actually managed to get the original Captain band together, the original band that played on Norfolk Island for the tracking of the Captain album. It was a four piece then (me and my dad and two other guys.)’ ‘It’s really exciting for me to have that original band for this special gig. We haven’t played together for quite a while, so it’s extra special.’ Kasey is not just enthusiastic about Bluesfest, she is equally enthusiastic about its director, Peter Noble. ‘He’s just so... he’s been so good to me over the years. Even on a personal level, not just gigs and that, but I feel really proud to have come to call Peter a friend over the years. He gave me a pretty bloody big gig back when no one had a clue who I was, and I wasn’t out there playing on all the cool festivals, so Peter Noble took a chance on me – based on no hype, no nothing.’ Kasey believes it’s ‘taking a chance on acts people may not have heard of yet’ that is what makes Bluesfest such an important event for musicians. ‘…it’s always been such an incredibly successful and amazing festival, but I come away from every single Bluesfest I go to being a fan of new artists that I wouldn’t have heard before if I hadn’t been at that festival. I was one of those artists once too. I feel so lucky, 20 years later, to still be playing the festival.’ Kasey Chambers plays Bluesfest, Thursday 18 April – Monday 22 April.
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