Gig last night with Craig

I haven't kept too many people in the loop on my cajon playing. There's a tonne of stuff about them on my website. And I have been playing a lot of gigs lately with the cajon. But last night was something else.

Craig, the legend from St.George Shire (hahahah), has a bucket load of good old fashioned Australian folk songs he recorded just as good old vinyl was being phased out, and CD's were the latest fashion. Sadly, he spent $4,000 on the record when it would have cost $40,000 to produce the same thing on CD back then.

When he got all the copies to distribute, people were buying CD players and throwing out their old record players on the street.

He later put his songs on CD, but the spark had fizzled, and people were listening to other stuff by then.

If you were to ask me "What's Craig's music about?" It's Australian folk. Good, honest songs about Australia's past and present.

I'm not in this video, but here's a sample of Craig's stuff.



Last night we played a couple of songs at Allawah Pub, which holds an open mic night courtesy of a good friend of mine in a neighbouring music school, Village Guitar. Which you might remember I spoke about when looking for a new career about 8 month or so ago.

Well, Craig and I were up there and we played two songs. We played them well. We played them so well than we won People's Choice award. And we were called up for not just one encore, but we did two more songs, finished up, and we were encored again.

People couldn't get enough of us. I wish someone got a recording of the night, but no one did.

What they did do however was sing along to the songs during the encores. There are two things a performer loves to hear the most. Applause and the crowd singing along. Amazing stuff.

Ah well. The night was enjoyable, and that's an understatement. Everyone was pumped up.

I love it when a gig goes that well.

Newtown RSL gig

Craig emailed me just yesterday mentioning a gig he booked us in at the Newtown RSL. I was happy because it meant I got to try out my new cajon I bought.

When I got there it was empty. Then 5 minutes later Dennis rocked up and introduced himself. Dennis runs the show down there. It wasn't a regular gig, it was an open mic night. All the same to me. I still get up on stage and play music. So I'm happy.

Dennis asked me "What's in the bag?". "A cajon" I replied. He was confused. So I explained it to him, stopped talking and then said "Here, it's better if I just show you"

So I pulled it out of the carry case it came with. And he knew what it was then. Asked me to set it up on stage. We put a mic near it and I did a sound check. Then he said "stay there" as I got up to take a seat in the audience. All of a sudden I was playing some beats to his music.

I guess I can live up to the name my mates give me "band whore", especially as Craig and my wife walk in to see me up on stage playing music with yet another bunch of blokes.

Newtown RSL is one of the best venues we've played at and the guys who organise the event each week invited us back.

A friend finally broke his cherry....

A mate of mine who I have motioned towards regarding music in the past has finally broken his stage cherry and got up to perform live, in front of an audience for the first time in his life. I've been telling him it's something he needs to do to overcome his fear of public performance, and if he's serious about his band and his music, he'll have to expose himself to this kind of thing.

For years he's wanted to become a rock star and now his band can finally get out of the back room in his house, onto the serious side of things while hopefully keeping it fun.

He always seems to be amazed that I can just get up and play, impromptu, on-call. In truth, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just good at winging it. However, I've been performing since I was 6 in front of thousands of people, so a cosy open mic night is not only nice, and cosy. But also a better environment. I learnt to play bass guitar from no previous knowledge at open mic nights.

But either way, my mate has finally broken through the void and can now, or I should say should be able to get up on stage with less hesitation to play something he knows how to play like a rock star at home, but now on stage.

Well done mate. Good job!!!