Friday 11 March 2016

Kiama Campfire Sessions, 7.30 to 10.00, 3rd Thursday of the month

           To All lovers of Australian Music!
We are pleased to announce The Kiama Campfire Sessions are back
|in a new venue with a new day of the month, time and format.



We are now in the Kiama Scout Hall in Blowhole Point on the Third Thursday of the Month.  We will be starting at 7.30 and continuing till 10pm with a supper break half way through.  The cost is still only $5 and we are now able to include a concessional rate of $3


The format will be changed a little:

Starting with a “blackboard” concert giving everyone an opportunity to present a solo song, tune or poem and depending on the number of performers there may be time for a couple of “rounds”.

Then it will be time to learn a new song and after supper a session with us all singing in the round.
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Tuesday 8 March 2016

Duke's Place - Australian Songs in Concert & Session with Jason Roweth, Friday 13th May, 2016

Duke's Place - Australian songs in concert & session 
7.30 for 8pm start - evening ends 11.30

‘That’s Not How I Heard It!’ - Jason Roweth 
 
Some joker asked What is truth?, then buggered off… But Jason’s here with some bush poetry and yarns with a song or three thrown in. Lawson, Paterson, Dengate, Kevans, anon & etc… a show from the bush and beyond - with a grateful nod to the early days of the Bush Music Club.

 (Sharyn Mattern photo, 2013)
Jason's skills have been recognised with some prestigious awards, including ABPA Golden Damper Winner 2016, National Folk Festival Reciter of the Year in 2015, and National Folk Festival Yarnspinner of the Year in 2013. 


Bush Music Club
Tritton Hall Hut 44 Addison Road Centre 142 Addison Rd, Marrickville

Map of Addison Road Centre

Door opens 7.30 for 8pm start. Session 10.00-11.30pm
BYO songs
Cost - $10
Bring something to drink & a plate for supper
Enquiries - Sandra 9358 4886

Duke's place, named after our honoured early member Harold 'Duke' Tritton (1886-1965), is the place to go once a month for a great night of Australian songs in concert and session. Duke was a powerful singer who supplied BMC with many songs he had learnt in his younger days while working as a shearer and at other bush jobs. He was also a songwriter and poet giving us songs that have entered the tradition such as Sandy Hollow Line and Shearing in the Bar.


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Duke's Place - Australian Songs in Concert & Session with Pat Drummond, Friday 8th April, 2016

Duke's Place - Australian songs in concert & session 
7.30 for 8pm start - evening ends 11.30

Pat Drummond is an Australian Singer/Songwriter. His highly original music crosses the genres of country, folk and rock and roll and his musical career spans four decades. Based at Leura in the Blue Mountains, his style is a cross between songwriting and journalism. His well documented songs about real people and places are drawn from interviews gathered on his erratic tours across Australia and present a composite picture of that country and her people.



The Sao Song was probably the track which first brought Pat Drummond to national prominence. The song, which was catchy enough to make airplay lists all over the country, and thoughtful enough to impress critics of the ilk of Philip Adams and Bruce Elder, was, however, only a small glimpse of this truly remarkable Australian talent.
Perhaps it's this common touch, this sense of what it is to be an Australian which runs through all his work, that makes Pat's songs so accessible. He is, at the same time, a performer with an innate sense of fun and an astonishing capacity to entertain and involve an audience, and a songwriter, whose passionate commitment to this country and its people, has produced songs which are often more like one-act plays, concise and self contained; detailed social snapshots of ordinary Australians caught in the act of living.


Add all of that to lots of irresistible audience participation songs like 40 into 24, and Marilyn Monroe was a size 14 and If I Die Before Keith Richards I'll Be Pissed Off To The Max you have a show that leaves people humming for weeks after it's over. Neither a country or city performer in the traditional sense; Pat Drummond's appeal seems to cross these sorts of petty barriers fairly easily.
Bush Music Club
Tritton Hall
Hut 44 Addison Road Centre
142 Addison Rd, Marrickville 

Map of Addison Road Centre

Door opens 7.30 for 8pm start. Session 10.00-11.30pm
BYO songs
Cost - $10
Bring something to drink & a plate for supper
Enquiries - Sandra 9358 4886

Duke's place, named after our honoured early member Harold 'Duke' Tritton (1886-1965), is the place to go once a month for a great night of Australian songs in concert and session. Duke was a powerful singer who supplied BMC with many songs he had learnt in his younger days while working as a shearer and at other bush jobs. He was also a songwriter and poet giving us songs that have entered the tradition such as Sandy Hollow Line and Shearing in the Bar. 



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Monday 7 March 2016

Extracts from Singabout - The artists, 1956-1967

Click on pictures for full-screen image

Singabout was well illustrated by a number of talented artists from Sydney's left wing art world.

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Gil Small 

Gil was a friend of John Meredith, & might not have been a full-time artist as he had a career in the publishing field. He & his dancer wife Joan lived at Como. Jamie saw his death notice about 12 months ago.  (Source: Jamie Carlin)
Gil was a fiddler & appeared with John Meredith in a short-lived group Boomerang, 1952/53 (source: More Than a Life - John Meredith and the Fight for Australian Tradition by Keith McKenry)
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Rod Shaw (1915-1992)

In 1939 Shaw and Dick Edwards established The Barn on the Hill Press at Woolloomooloo. During the war he was a camoufleur with the R.A.A.F. The commercial operations of the two partners resumed in 1945 under the imprint of Edwards & Shaw.
Shaw was a member of the Communist Party of Australia from the war years until 1956. During the same period he taught and exhibited with the Studio of Realist Art (SORA), of which he was a founder. SORA published ten regular bulletins and held exhibitions at its studio in George Street, Sydney and at David Jones' Gallery. In the early 1950s Shaw had designed the spectacular mural depicting the history of the Australian working class and the labour movement located in the Sydney headquarters of the Waterside Workers' Federation. He also conducted classes for the Wharfies Art Group. He went on to teach drawing and painting in technical colleges, the University of N.S.W, and Arts Council Summer Schools. 

Shaw, Roderick (1915-1992)  also known as Schweik (1915-1992), Shaw, Rod (1915-1992), Shaw, Roderick Malcolm Shaw (1915-1992)


Papers of Rod Shaw's daughter, Chrissie, are in the Rod Shaw collection in the State Library of NSW.
Early member Jamie Carlin has a painting by Ron Shaw that he had originally given to John Meredith who left it to Alan & Gay Scott. Gay later gave it to Jamie. According to early member Frank Maher, Edwards & Shaw also did bulk print runs of blank Singabout Night posters whenever BMC needed them!
 
Rod & Clem Millward worked on the MUA mural now in the Maritime Museum

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Clem Millward, 1929 - 

Born in Melbourne in 1929 Millward spent his childhood in Western Australia before undertaking studies at East Sydney Technical College and at the Julian Ashton School in Sydney. He won a student scholarship from the Romanian Government and studied in Bucharest. He has exhibited widely and is represented in several major collections. He was awarded the 1973 Wynne Prize.

Clem Millward received BMC's third Life Membership for his illustrations for Songs from Lawson. He is still painting and his paintings are found in many private and public collections.

(from Jamie Carlin - Clem never/rarely came to BMC, but was a friend of Rod Shaw a very famous artist who provided drawings for Singabout. )
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Herbert McClintock (1906-1985)

HerbertMcClintock, artist, was born on 20 November 1906 at Subiaco, Perth, eldest of six children of South Australian-born parents William McClintock, engraver, and his wife Ada Julia, née Cramond. The family settled at Heidelberg, Victoria, after a period in Adelaide. At the age of 13 Herbert was apprenticed to a process engraver. He later worked for a signwriter who encouraged his artistic talents. From 1922 he attended evening classes at the National Gallery of Victoria’s drawing school, where he was taught by Bernard Hall, George Bell and William McInnes. Fellow students included Eric Thake and James Flett.
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John Dengate - 1938-2013

Although John Dengate had been drawing, reciting and writing verse since he was a small lad, he started writing in a traditional style after his future wife, R. Dale Morgan took him to the Bush Music Club in 1961. Here John was influenced by John Meredith and Alan Scott, both Australian folklorists and collectors. John became an enthusiastic researcher of Australian folklore as a basis to his writing, storytelling and performances. But he was also a writer and sketcher of political satire and parodies. For over sixty years, John wrote about life in Australia and was well known for his performance at folk venues and sketches he freely gave people at festivals. (source - Dale Dengate)

Blog articles on The Art of John Dengate Part 1
Part 2

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Ads in Singabout for BMC's first 2 books 

Singabout 1(2), Autumn 1956

Singabout 2(2), September 1957
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Illustrated covers


volume 1, 1956

Volume 4, 1960-62

Singabout, vol 6, final issues
6(1) - unnamed artist, 6(2) - art by John Dengate
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 Singabout 1(2), January 1956 - artwork & layout by Gil Small

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A selection of illustrations, where the artist was credited
 

Singabout, 3(2), 1959 or 1960.  Frank Bennier, 1919 - 1998, also known as Frank Benier, Benier, Screen artist, painter & cartooonist  https://www.daao.org.au/bio/frank-bennier/

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Singabout 4(1), 1960, illustration by Unk White
(1900-1986), courtesy of The Bulletin

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 Singabout 4(4), 1962 - cover artist Keith Antill (no information available - so far)

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Signature RMS - Roderick Malcolm Shaw

Singabout 3(4) -
p16 - signed by RMS 
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Singabout 4(3), p.12 - signed RMS
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Singabout 4(3), p.16. signed RMS

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Uncredited artists
 
Singabout 3(3), Winter/Spring 1959, p.16 (squiggle between rug & leg of bed might be RMS)

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Singabout 3(4) p.6


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Singabout 3(4) p.11

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Singabout 4(1), p.3

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Singabout 4(1), p.5
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Singabout 4(2), p.10

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Singabout 4(2)

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Singabout 4(3)   (signed behind owner's boot?)
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Illustrations by known artists
Gil Small
- Singabout 2(4), p.10



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Rod Shaw

Singabout 4(4) p.7

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Singabout 4(4), p.12
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Rod Shaw & daughter Christine Shaw
 
Singabout 5(1), p.13
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Singabout 5(1), p.20

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Rod Shaw & Clem Millward
- Singabout 5(3) & (4)
 
Singabout 5(3), p. 8
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Singabout 5(3), p.3

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Singabout 5(3), p.6

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Singabout 5(4), p. 13

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Singabout 5(4), pp10-11
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John Dengate, credited in 6(2), but he also supplied all but one drawing for 6(1) according to Dale Dengate.

Singabout 6(1), p.15

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Singabout 6(1), p. 14

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Singabout 6(2), p. 20
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Singabout 6(2), p.17
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 John did not create this illustration

Singabout 6(1), p. 3


Thanks to Jamie Carlin, Frank Maher & Dale Dengate for information used in this article.


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