Wait Long By The River

A new episode

James Kenyon hails from the Australia's Other Other Great City, Adelaide. In the intervening years he's done a pretty thorough job of dismantling it through art and story, including an art exhibition at MARS gallery in which he tortured city maps, twisted local sounds, and did his best to pretend that a millennium of erosion had cleaned up the city. But before he destroyed his hometown with his art, he worked in a factory for a year, and bought a Bedford Van with two double beds in it and took to the highway. He travelled the country, got a degree in fine art, moved to Melbourne, and recorded an album. It was called The North Pole, and his next has to be out before September. Why? Listen to the show!

Tom McLean is a jokes guy. And a programmer. And a game designer. And a documentary videographer. It's not an easy life being so many things, but he makes it look easy with a charming smile and jokes about the Pope, among countless other things. He's form Melbourne, and he came in to the comforot of our podcasting library to talk about his many works. In this episode Tom and I discuss starting out as a comedian, how to structure a comedy night so as to avoid death lulls, Foxconn and the Fair Phone, his new podcast Two Wizards, thingsfittingperfectlyintootherthings.tumblr.com, his enormously successful board game Story War, ASMR, page names, becoming a Christian at a late age and then un-a Christian later even than that, visiting charities in Africa and India, the romance of phone metadata, and how he stole the title of his latest show from a work by Ai Wei Wei. Make sure you get tickets to his show, Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival!

Hailing from the south of Melbourne, Erik Parker is a genuinely unique performer. You couldn't pin his influences down if you tried. Lucky we had a chance to ask him! He has quite a palette - a variety of ukeleles and related instruments, guitar, versatile vocals, and an assortment of gadgets that would put the European space program to shame. In this show, in between great renditions of his and other people's tracks (keep an ear out for his Teardrop cover!) Erik talks growing up down south, making a full-time living as a musician, the vagaries of running open mic nights, and what makes Wide Open Spaces the greatest festival in Australia.

A new episode

"I came to the realisation a couple of years ago that everything I do for work is music related, plus everything I do socially is music related, plus I realised I was reading things that were music-related, and reading things that were music-related, and listening to music and watching documentaries... so I've been learning a little French?" Brooke Russell is a WA native who moved to Melbourne and fell in with the right crowd. Her sweet, deep, country style found a perfect habitat in the Inner North's Americana revival. Brooke casually reeled off quite a list of great musicians to listen to, so we're going to be posting tracks from them, and her, on our facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/waitlongbytheriver

Slam poet, artistic genius, Queanbeyanite, author, orator. "It's a short life. I'm always very aware of mortality. That's just the way I'm built - I don't have a minute to waste." Omar Musa is a Queanbeyan native ("2602, adds up to a perfect 10!") and proud of it. His latest book, which reached number 2 in Australia the week before we recorded the show, is called Here Come The Dogs, and it has been the focus of some very positive attention. We spent some time talking about the novel, but a lot of this podcast rolls out just how this kind of thing should - it's a flowing conversation, touching on slam poetry, mortality, Cicero, Malcolm X, Stanislawksi, making a life around a crazy workload, and the worst bookshop in Alice Springs. This was our first live show outside of Melbourne - thanks a million to Meg O'Connell for coming up with the idea, pulling strings, finding a venue, and making it happen.

Strong-willed, big-voiced alt-country singer Ruby Boots "I find it hard to relinquish any control of what I'm doing... I will do anything at all costs to get a job done if it has to do with my music." There's no question that Bex Chilcott - nom de guitare Ruby Boots - is driven. This episode was a fine opportunity to find out that that assertive attitude is central to her character. Her laugh is proud, her statements direct and her stories don't demur to self-aggrandisement or braggadocio. In short, she's an admirable type who talked circles around our humble host. As she puts it, "I don't think anything I do can be quiet. I don't know if quiet is part of my being." Our chat happened across some wonderful stories, including but not limited to self-managing a music career out of a suitcase, living the solitary life of a pearler off the coast of WA, and overcoming her addiction to red boots.

Al Parkinson - Uke-strumming badass on living your whole life in your passion, and the community at the heart of music "In my life I'm all about relationships and I think that's why I love music so much. It just builds this amazing community of people, and I get to surround myself with lovely and talented people, whether they're musicians or not." What a stellar show this was. Al Parkinson and I hit it off right from the intro and the audience was right there with us. It was a dream. Unfortunately, as with most lovely dreams, it was cut off early by an electronic device. In this case it wasn't an alarm, but the recording device, which carped out at 25 minutes of a 70 minute interview. Oh, the things we discussed! There was some really fantastic material in those last two thirds. Those of us who were lucky enough to be there on the night got to hear about premonitions, the act of creation, finding a thousand routes around writer's block, and how writer's block might not be a block at all. All the more reason to catch our live shows at Some Velvet Morning, huh? I console myself with the words of John Lennon: "Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted." As a bonus, it means we have an excuse to bring Alvis back on the show, asap! Until then, enjoy this short and swiggety interview.

Al Parkinson - uke-strumming badass "In my life I'm all about relationships and I think that's why I love music so much. It just builds this amazing community of people, and I get to surround myself with lovely and talented people, whether they're musicians or not." What a stellar show this was. Al Parkinson and I hit it off right from the intro and the audience was right there with us. It was a dream. Unfortunately, as with most lovely dreams, it was cut off early by an electronic device....

Darren Hanlon - Urban folk cornerstone, funny and hearfelt, on travelling the world and settling down at the same time Darren Hanlon had toured the world for a decade and he was looking at recording his next album. "I got disheartened with the whole music process where you record an album and you tour it for three years. It felt like the factory line model of music." In his pocket was a much-thumbed New Yorker article about an expert of field recording who recorded what he found as he travelled. The idea resonated. "I had a plan. The plan was to have no plan." The album's on its way, with a book reflecting on its creation. To tide you over until the release, tentatively announced for February 2015, we have a sterling interview for you. We talk about the Merri River Lungfish, his time living among the stacks at the Blue Guitar book shop, forcing (future guest) Mick Thomas to watch the Goonies, finding the original indigenous Slim Dusty, the success that was Slagfest, and the unexpected success of Elbows in Latvia. Check out the show at the bar below or on iTunes and be sure to hit us up on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/waitlongbytheriver and Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/longbytheriver!

Darren Hanlon had toured the world for a decade and he was looking at recording his next album. "I got disheartened with the whole music process where you record an album and you tour it for three years. It felt like the factory line model of music." In his pocket was a much-thumbed New Yorker article about an expert of field recording who recorded what he found as he travelled. The idea resonated. "I had a plan. The plan was to have no plan." The album's on its way, with a book reflecting...

Jess Kelly - Sculptor/painter/all-round-maker on finding harmonies in the natural world and bringing them out through painstaking work and red wine "With that work... I basically sat in my room and drank wine and ate chocolate and went through a lot of stanley knives." All unintended, a theme is forming in the show: it can be very hard to pin down in, say, 140 characters just what it is an artist does. Jess Kelly is a sculptor, an engraver, a painter, an arranger of fruit, an embroiderer… she engages with everything except limits in her quest to point out how humanity reflects and embodies nature, and vice versa. On the other hand, Jess puts it thusly: "I did very little in the last few weeks except go home and embroider and move pears around." She’s a lover of language as well as art, which made speaking with her a real treat, particularly in the construction of the secret section at the end of the show. Jess’s current exhibition is called Still, Life and is running at Brunswick Art Space until the 31st of August… then her artwork might start turning up in unexpected locations around Footscray! We’ll all be keeping our eyes out, and if we find any, we’ll put them up on the facebook page at www.facebook.com/waitlongbytheriver

"With that work... I basically sat in my room and drank wine and ate chocolate and went through a lot of stanley knives." All unintended, a theme is forming in the show: it can be very hard to pin down in, say, 140 characters just what it is an artist does. Jess Kelly is a sculptor, an engraver, a painter, an arranger of fruit, an embroiderer… she engages with everything except limits in her quest to point out how humanity reflects and embodies nature, and vice versa. On the other hand,...

Tom Davis - Circus genius on relying on others as the foundation of his art, finding inspiration in tragedy, and the history of Australian circus "Circus people will not be famous. People will know the name Leotard, not for the fact that he did the first triple on a trapeze, but because he was principle in inventing the leotard." One sign of a true artist is that their character truly shines through in their work. Tom Davis performs circus with real talent and charm, in all sorts of ways*; most notably during a recent international tour with one of Australia's most prestigious circus troupes, Circus Oz. He's also an impresario, running his own troupe as Long Answers to Simple Questions. Their show Left, winner of the 2013 Gasworks Circus Showdown, opened our eyes to the thematic depth that can be brought to what Davis calls "a populist, low art medium like circus". In this show we discuss working through grief, choosing an independent career over the mainstream, and why one of Australia's greatest celebrities didn't even get an obituary on her home soil. You can download the podcast at the bottom of this post, or on iTunes, just search for Wait Long By The River Podcast. Check us out on Facebook or Twitter, and if you're in Melbourne, come check out our live shows, first Wednesday of every month at Some Velvet Morning. *His bio reads: "Deft in pass juggling, tumbling, and many manipulation and equilibristics skills, Tom can also base for banquine, pitching, push for teeterboard and knows basic adagio up to basing hand to hand." Deft is a real understatement when it comes to his juggling - he's a world quality performer in that specialty, having performed with some of the world's most respected jugglers from Europe and America.

"Circus people will not be famous. People will know the name Leotard, not for the fact that he did the first triple on a trapeze, but because he was principle in inventing the leotard." One sign of a true artist is that their character truly shines through in their work. Tom Davis performs circus with real talent and charm, in all sorts of ways*; most notably during a recent international tour with one of Australia's most prestigious circus troupes, Circus Oz. He's also an impresario,...

Mandy Connell - on being brought up folk and the trouble it causes in a country town, folk as an ethnic group, and reviving ancient works Mandy Connell is a folk festival favourite. She's quick, bright-hearted and liable to break into song mid-sentence. On stage she conjures up moods with an ease that comes from living her music. "I identify as folk," she says. "If there was an ethnic group you could call folk, that would be me. I'm there. I grew up in it, and I've always called myself folk... since before banjos were on t-shirts." With her band the Stray Hens she plays traditional folks songs, many of which are older than our country, and some of which are in languages she doesn't even speak. We cover all that in the podcast, as well as the minimum wage, the darkness underlying classic folk music, her life as a travelling singer, and growing up in country towns as the daughter of a troublesomely passionate and outspoken mother.

Mandy Connell is a folk festival favourite. She's quick, bright-hearted and liable to break into song mid-sentence. On stage she conjures up moods with an ease that comes from living her music. "I identify as folk," she says. "If there was an ethnic group you could call folk, that would be me. I'm there. I grew up in it, and I've always called myself folk... since before banjos were on t-shirts." With her band the Stray Hens she plays traditional folks songs, many of which are older than...

Max Barker - Punk theatre facilitator on finding creative work wherever you happen to be, the punk aesthetic as creative bravery, and making dramatic impro "I've travelled around the world making theatre with different groups of people... It's what gives my life direction and meaning so I can find ways to do that, I don't need to have any training, I don't need to have any money, I don't need any kind of validation, I'll just keep doing it. It's what I believed when I was 17 and I still believe it now." Max Barker found punk as a teenager and the ethos has never left him. It's in his work as a director, as a facilitator, and as a teacher, in community theatre and music and poetry slams. In this show Max runs us through what happens when you trust your desire to make art and you let your life follow along alongside. He has the time of his life down and out in a rundown sharehouse. He talks his way into teaching theatre to classes in Laos, Thailand and the Philippines - in between suspicious car trips with corrupt cops. He talks about the transition from breakfast beers to camomile tea, and how that still feels tuned in to his punk soul. Do let us know what you think of the episode on twitter @LongByTheRiver or by reviewing us on iTunes!

"I've travelled around the world making theatre with different groups of people... It's what gives my life direction and meaning so I can find ways to do that, I don't need to have any training, I don't need to have any money, I don't need any kind of validation, I'll just keep doing it. It's what I believed when I was 17 and I still believe it now." Max Barker found punk as a teenager and the ethos has never left him. It's in his work as a director, as a facilitator, and as a teacher, in...