A double-spud for one of Australia’s finest actors and one of Australia’s finest video directors.
After a few minutes an old guy in a grey suit and fedora hat is lugging his keyboard out of a club to a car and spies my banjo. Courtney Melba Barnett (born 3 November 1987) is an Australian singer, songwriter, and musician. I spend the day wandering around the seemingly deserted downtown. We drive through Memphis but forgo all it’s historic tourist attractions to go meet up with Steph’s mysterious drum seller. Or a dolphin. After the show I sit with the original song requester and his wife and new born baby girl (her first gig!). I look around the cafe and everyone has paper napkins and they drink out of disposable cups. I cut across some road works and head toward building spires of the town I recognise from today and then somehow end up in a field, fretting in circles until Shelley calls and comes to find me. After we clear our gear off the stage and are treated to apologetic (I think) tequila shots from the bar owner and regaled with stories of his time in prison I feel the need to get outside and walk…or something. I reassure Steph, “it’s cool, I used to have a copy of the Playboy Short Story Omnibus,” and then lead with the question, “So Hugh, your magazine is responsible for publishing early pieces by Jack Kerouac and Gabriel Garcia Marquez…” but he is completely disinterested and only wants to chat with Steph about a band she’s in called the Boom Gates, of which he’s a big fan. I assure him I’m not offended in the slightest but he looks as if this one slip-up has brought shame on him and his family.
I go back inside and just ask the guy if he knows it and he reels off each line no problem. This is the Official Darren Hanlon fan Page. It was a day of record heat, with Hanlon well-acquainted with the hot conditions gripping many parts of the country during his tour. He’s prepared questions of things I’ve long forgotten, and It’s all going well until he asks, “So what was it like growing up in Glimpie?” which gives me a fit of the giggles and makes him embarrassed. By daydreaming. You playin out here for tips?”. Keenan has forewarned us this will hurt our show. They was illegal back then, but the police turned a blind eye and let him get on with it.
I always wanted to learn myself,” he says in a non-committal manner, focusing on opening the car door, probably in case I might be seeking spare change. Here’s where it really gets weird: After the death of his mother, George dug up a decomposed body from their own cemetery and challenged Koresh to a resurrection-off to prove their leadership once and for all. Steph and I check out a scantily stocked music store where she buys a banana shaped shaker and when we tell the old man shop assistant where we’re heading he goes, “Nashville huh? It is not a game for daydreamers. One night I asks one of em why I ain’t ever met his wife and he just says to me ‘why take sand to the beach!? It’s strange but I feel the need to keep singing. Now this morning I open the blinds to check the world is still intact. The storm has at least left it’s mark on the street; branches and leaves scattered everywhere, drifts of sludge stick out diagonally from the gutter, the lawn is a quagmire.
That was a new benchmark of awkward.”. They would be run off the settlement by George to relocate in Palestine, Texas, their leader Koresh taking along his multiple ‘wives’ aged seventeen, fifteen, thirteen and twelve (two of them sisters). “I think I was either talking to a 12 year old boy or a 15 yr old girl,” she guessed, her forehead strained, “there was just way too much uncomfortable silence.”, “Maybe she’d never spoken to an Australian before and got nervous,” I wondered, “And you did sound very formal when you said ‘where should we rendezvous to make the transaction?’ That sentence could freak out a kid. Tonight we play in a place in Nashville where smoking is still allowed indoors so it feels like we’ve entered some mid-90s theme bar. He gives me a flier for his upcoming tractor showcase and when Shelley yawns behind me he says, a little creepily, “you better look out or I might pop a finger in there.”, Persuade the girls to stop again so I can buy fireworks at a roadside shop (called ‘Custer’s Last Firecracker Stand’) from a large emphysemic purple-suited lady with a deep southern accent. The jolly cafe owner and his pregnant wife prefer a burger from the fish shop down the road than their own fare.
I spoke to the camera girl and requested she kindly shoot me from the waist up. She’s wearing a lot of gold jewelry and a bright red sweater.
I also didn’t realise this performance was to be filmed; I was dressed for radio. The couple take photos of us with their adorable baby, who seems completely happy to be passed around to us strangers. She’d been denied love. The set list was plucked from throughout his career, with requests happily accepted. It’s all still a mystery. Although it has eased slightly, the rain continues to fall, and the crackers are getting wet in my hands. You could be anaemic?”.
I bet if I just gave them a chance they’ll tell me wild tales about the pioneering history of the area! She looked this time to her other friend sitting at the bar to see if she was listening. I thought yeah he’s right and packed it in and went for a walk round the corner. I borrow Liz’s bike from the house and ride it, following a detailed mud-map she drew me, along a meandering path at the bottom of the yard that runs beside a stream and leads into town and it’s supplies of coffee. The smallness of the room certainly compressed the energy. We’ve been sharing confined car space and lucky for us she certainly doesn’t smell bad. He’s home on holidays and I’m guessing prolifically bored by the way he’s been riding his BMX round and round my van for the past few days.
Walking back to track down the girls I pass a bar with a crowd of kids loitering outside. The only thing bigger than her bow is her smile! The librarian runs the projector at the film night in the Centerlink Hall. player 3: But she could have lived had she wanted to. If you stared into them long enough you’d see your future. I can’t pick a single person listening and most sit with their backs to us; where is everyone? The low ceiling was adorned with unseasonal Christmas decorations and there were old ads selling products that couldn’t possibly be still in production. He’s shocked when I tell him I’ve never read any of Will Eisner’s work. When I ask about the place she says it’s been a blues bar since the 1940s.