Then, there was Goldfields…
Written at the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020.
There are all kinds of ways to “lose a gig”. Our current troubles leave me wistful for a gig that may ne’er come back. It’s always felt to me like the best I do, whatever that may be…
No matter the wild thrill of ten years playing psychedelic monster rock and roll; fierce as F* angry-kid punk… How did we survive? (Some didn’t xx) Solo Sydney indie attitude-folk; an uncountable, unmeasurable array of bush and city pub gigs at long length, - and the buzz of one sweet year playing blissbombastic buzz-pop with my then new, ever-fierce love Chloe.
Not the decades digging into the richest veins of Australian traditions… From little farm to farm kid, changing schools seventeen times, to a psychedelic other, lost and lively, to reaching back for my radical centre. Trying to tell the world what we were learning; how we felt about the songs, yarns, tunes, poetry, and agitprop - by creating, writing, and recording arrangements that set the work in ways we thought “worked”… Recordings that we could honestly tell ourselves were straight to the tradition, and most importantly, that we had never, ever heard before. And somewhere in there, learning to make those audio and video recordings ourselves, for us - and with others.
No - not even the exquisite joy of playing as two in one with C, and with the very best players, and people, we have known. And even bigger - the sessions. Oh the sessions! Wonderful (lack of) memories!! Not even them.
Not the thousands of gigs, small (tiny!), to the big stages and many thousands - sometimes running many more gigs than days for extended periods. Nineteen consecutive National Folk Festivals, busy as the one-armed proverbial - my busiest amounting to thirty-six gigs in five days. Our twentieth NFF was cancelled, but we’ll always treasure Good Folk as number twenty!
Gigs! Around Australia of course, and South Africa, China - Beijing, and then Nanning, England and Wales, Northern Europe and Scandinavia, and - rinse and repeat. Not the great poetry debates, nor the comedic buffoonery. Not the radio, not the electric television performances… My great good fortune - thousands and thousands of gigs. Life is a carnival.
But Goldfields will always be - something else. This is no sign-off, nor an assumed end… Just facing distinct possibilities, and reflecting.
Goldfields. It’s a small word. But it gets big on me… Twenty-five years, a round two thousand campfire performances - in the sweet and mystically magical bush atop Wahluu / Mount Panorama.
Groups from two to two hundred and fifty, school groups of our children from across Sydney, NSW, Australia and sometimes the world. A round TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND humans!
From little ones and the sweet-spot eleven to thirteen year olds; ornery high-school ages; a few bemused but beaut university tours. Indigenous kids, and all-the-world immigrants from 1788, and on. All the diversity you can imagine, and more… Goodness - the varieties of education now available, and how it has changed, and changed again! Public schools from one teacher, to a thousand kids; kids from south-western Sydney, and the leafy, beachy shores, the Hills, coastal hippie and backwater kids, the far far bush; all the posh and pretend-posh grammar and (so-called) “private” schools; the religious - Christian in all its shades; Islamic likewise; truly independent educative forms that all brought something entirely other, and often - nearly always - magical.
That gig is home. I’ve never tired of that magic - campfire yarns, poetry, songs and silliness, and dancing the night away… Especially the wind and the weather; the roos, rabbits, foxes, birds - oh man the singing birds, and (fast disappearing) bugs. The snakes! On a still night, the distant Indian Pacific, or a goods train rolling forever, from afar. All that, and more, at my beck and call - cameos (starring roles!) for every show. Just drop two-bob in the slot, and make show!
The children I first sang with on Wahluu are now forty years old.
My - what a rave. Thanks for sticking in, if you have. I’m not signing off… There’s always the possibility of a return. Just now, I’m not at all sure live work will come back, though we’ll be doing all we can to make it happen. Not really for us… I mean - don’t get me wrong - I’m greedy, glutinous for more gigs, despite feeding in paddocks of plenty for decades. But I feel horrible for younger artists, just kicking off - and I fear, and fear again, for a country living in a land without story.
Anyways - I'd best go practice for our new-fangled electric internet gig tonight. Time to light another fire!
- Jason Roweth
