DON’T SHAVE ME
The Beards are finally releasing a new album, right when we need a beard injection in our lives. Cam Findlay talks to Johann Beardraven about milestones, success and covering your album with beard hair.
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he first thing you have to do when commencing a conversation with The Beards, as any hirsute gentleman will tell you, is mention the state of your own beard. Johann Beardraven is satisfied with this scribe’s current level of facial growth. “Yeah, I assumed you did. I can hear it through the receiver,” he says, insinuating that our respective beards are somehow communicating telepathically. The Beards’ “beard-awareness” mission has been going on for almost ten years now, but it was 2012’s Having A Beard Is The New Not Having A Beard which really put
them on the map. Since then they’ve become an Aussie staple due to their dogmatic approach to their ideals. However, it’s slightly disconcerting to hear Beardraven in such a positive mood, given that recent news reports suggest bearded men are becoming less attractive as they become more common. “We don’t believe any of that,” Beardraven announces. “There’s so many interested parties out there who want to bring the bearded man down. That’s something we’ve had to constantly fight against. When we started performing songs about our amazing beards, it was
pretty uncommon for beards to be celebrated. But we really think that we’ve come a long way. Beards aren’t fashionable now; they’ll always be fashionable. And there’s always going to be some power group trying to say, ‘No, beards are unfashionable, they’re gross.’ We just don’t listen to them. We’ve spent this long fighting for beard equality, we’re not going to stop now.”
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With this in mind, The Beards are releasing their fourth album, The Beard Album, and yes, every track will have the word “beard” in the title. Like The White Album, it’s a culmination of the road taken to get to this point. “Beards are accepted [now], and we’ve been a big part of that, so this album’s going to be us celebrating, really. We love beards, and everyone else does now. So because of that, the music is much more positive, much more optimistic about the whole thing.” Of course, the question has to be raised: if one of the novelties of The White Album is the coloured sleeve, how exactly is The Beard Album going to packaged? The clearest way is to use beard hair. “Well, obviously,” Beardraven laughs, “but we’re willing to make that sacrifice. I mean, it won’t be all of anyone’s beard – we’ll just take small amounts from everyone or something.” It also adds an extra level of hairiness to their upcoming shows. “There’ll be a whole lot of hair all over the merch desk at every show. Well, more than usual, anyway.”
WHAT: The Beard Album (MGM) WHEN & WHERE: 2 Jul, The Spotted Cow, Toowoomba; 3 Jul, Soundlounge, Gold Coast; 4 Jul, The Tivoli; 5 Jul, Solbar, Maroochydore; 6 Jul, The Northern, Byron Bay
SENSE OF PLACE
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With Brisbane International Jazz Festival imminent, Tyler McLoughlan discovers what makes a quintessentially Queensland composition according to Louise Denson.
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risbane International Jazz Festival, in its second year since morphing from Valley Jazz, opens with the world premiere of four speciallycommissioned pieces from local composers Sean Foran, Rafael Karlen, Andrew Butt and Louise Denson. “Our brief was to write between 15-20 minutes of music for an ensemble of our choice, and for it to be inspired by Queensland,” Denson, a pianist, composer and educator, begins. “To a really large extent I think music is always connected to place. I was thinking about my experiences here in Queensland because I’ve now been here for 15 years although I’m originally Canadian. I don’t know if you ever stop thinking of yourself in terms of the country you came from, but I really am very used to my life here in Australia and there are so many things about Australia that I love and feel comfortable with. “I find the environment here very inspiring – the animals, the wonderful birds and so on – and I’ve been very lucky in that I’ve been able to spend quite a lot of time in the country, so I think that’s probably the primary inspiration for that music. Just walking in the bush and observing the water birds and having the wallabies hop across the lawn and so on – it makes me feel like writing and playing music. It’s not that I necessarily write a piece about a tree or an animal or whatever, it’s just that it makes me feel good and it inspires me to be creative.”
Over the course of a month, Denson channelled this creativity into the piece she’ll perform on piano within a quartet rounded out by bass, various wind instruments and the voice of Ingrid James. Titled Wine – Oath – Switchback, the inspiration came from an unlikely source. “We have a property near the Woodford festival site, and that’s been my main retreat for writing music for a number of years. [The piece is] about riding motorbikes, and/or bicycles because at the farm we are at the base of a road which goes up into a forest… with a lot of really steep hills and sharp corners, and it’s quite
a favourite with recreational motorbike riders; they go by and up the range on this really exciting road. I myself have just started riding my bike again – my pushbike – after a break of about 12 years. There’s this real excitement to being not in a car – out in the wind and the heat and the cool, and being a little bit closer to nature, and to be really feeling the sensation of moving through the air,” she says with childlike delight. “That’s sort of what this is about, the wind rushing by you as you ride the Switchback Road that the farm is near. Oath is more solemn – I guess it’s about a commitment that you make to yourself to live your life well, or to live your life the way you want to live somehow.”
WHEN & WHERE: 4 Jun, Brisbane International Jazz Festival, Queensland Multicultural Centre THE MUSIC • 28TH MAY 2014 • 15