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| Australian Tour Schedule
- so rudely interrupted |
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Quill
+ Tolhurst Tour Schedule
Subject to Change
[updated March 12, 2003]
March
7-9 Port Fairy Folk Festival
12 The Lounge Launceston CANCELLED
13 Republic Bar Hobart
14 Spurs Devonport
15 The Big House Melbourne
16 Mordialloc Festival Melbourne
also at 8 p.m.,
ABC Radio National,
live-to-air appearance on
Couldabeen Champions
show.
18 Armadillo's Mentone
19 Commercial Hotel Yarraville
20 Sturt St Blues Ballarat
21 Uncle Neil's Upwey
22 The Studio Geelong
26 Old Manly Boatshed Sydney
27 Milton Theatre Milton
28 The Bridge Hotel Balmain
April
3 Northern Star Newcastle
4 Clarendon Hotel Katoomba
5 Tilley's Canberra |
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BACK
THIS WAY…
It all seems like a dream now, those few weeks back in Australia
among long lost friends and fellow musical desperados, winding
our way up familiar trails we thought we'd never see again.
After nearly two years writing and recording the songs for so
rudely interrupted, and the months of planning a homecoming
tour after 25 years, in the wake of fears, expectations and
hopes that grew despite our best efforts to keep them in check,
after the negotiations with bookers, agents, venues and CD distributors,
after the hustle of getting the CD package and tour posters
together for the release of so rudely interrupted (on
MGM Distribution), after the rehearsals, the sound checks,
a dozen performances in 24 days, after all the reunions and
recollecting and reconnecting, after more than 6,000 km racked
up on a rattling rented minibus through the highways and back
roads of Victoria, N.S.W. and Tasmania, and after the high of
playing together again back home and discovering our music has
been so well tended and remembered in our absence… well, we
wish it had never had to end.
But the memories of our 2003 adventure in Australia will sustain
us till the next time. Great memories…
• The standing ovation at The Republic in Hobart…
hooking up there with Cedric Reid, Country Radio's roadie
in 1971 and 72, and with Malcolm Brooks, a musical mate
from Greg's university folk music days of the 1960s, who, as
fate would have it, worked that night as our sound engineer.
• The Central Club Bar in Melbourne, an unscheduled,
unheralded last-minute gig that brought Chris Stockley
back on stage to share the music with us, and with sterling
Melbourne friends and family, including Ozrock chronicler Ed
Nimmervoll, and Rebecca Tolhurst, Kerryn's daughter
(also a singer and songwriter), and his brothers Peter
and Michael.
• The daunting size of the audience (3,000!) and the
first wave of applause that rolled over the stage at the Port
Fairy Folk Festival, and the smiles of recognition that
greeted our debut performance after so many years… having Chris
Wilson sit in with us on harmonica at a couple of the shows…
catching up with old friends Margret RoadKnight and Joe
Camilleri, walking into one of the huge concert tents just
as Mike Rudd and Bill Putt ripped into "I'll
Be Gone"… sharing the songwriters' workshop stage with Eric
Bogle and Mick Thomas.
• The Big House show at the Brunswick Music
Festival in Melbourne… a beautiful, airy space for acoustic
music, a classy and attentive crowd, a brilliant job at the
sound board by Jeff Lang's wife, Alison, and a
couple of booming encores.
• Performing live in ABC Radio's studios with Derek
Guille in Melbourne and Trevor Jackson in Hobart…
hoping unseen engineers managed to get a passable blend of our
often temperamental acoustic guitars and Greg's vocals, without
so much as a rehearsal or a sound check! And reeling in the
years with Greg Champion and the Couldabeen Champions
crew on national ABC Radio.
• The otherworldly intimacy and power of Shane Howard
and Liam O'Maonlai's impromptu performances at a midnight
jam at the Killarney Hotel, on a stretch of deserted,
moonlit highway outside Warrnambool during the Port Fairy festival.
• Hooking up at The Bridge Hotel in Rozelle, Sydney,
with Country Radio's harp player, Chris Blanchflower,
for a set that proved the venerated sucker and blower has lost
none of his magic wind… while CR pianist John A. Bird
grinned approvingly nearby. As near to a band reunion as you
could get.
• The Old Manly Boatshed gig, less a concert than
an assembly of 1960s regulars from the now mythical northern
Sydney beaches folk club, The Shack, where Country Radio's
music began… they were there in force, drawn by old songs and
ancient musical bonds… a magic night.
• And so much more… the drive down The Great Ocean Road
to Port Fairy, the wild sea and sky, blue-on-blue horizons…
taking the Tolhurst Trail through The Grampians, and
standing on top of the world… a side trip to a little bush town,
Trentham, on the back road to Ballarat, and wandering
around the ancient Cosmopolitan Hotel, unchanged since
the Gold Rush days… making so many new friends on our travels,
including Duncan Kimball, architect of the marvelous
cultural archive, www.milesago.com;
Ian McFarlane, author of the brilliantly researched and
exhaustive Encyclopedia Of Australian Rock And Pop
(Allen & Unwin), the tireless folk and country music booster
Wendy Broome; and hooking up with so many mates from
back down the road.
REGRETS…
Not getting to play scheduled shows in Launceston, Milton, Katoomba,
Canberra, Newcastle, The Commercial Hotel in Yarraville, and
The Basement in Sydney. Important gigs, every one of them, but
due to circumstances over which we had no control and negotiations
to which we weren't party, they fell off the itinerary early
in the tour. Still a little shell shocked from the loss, we
apologize to those fans who had bought tickets or turned up
to these non-events.
We'll make it up to you next time. It won't happen again. |
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