Wednesday, December 7, 2011

House Concerts. What a brilliant concept.

I must write something about the weekend that has just been, because it was just too damn good not to give it a special mention.

As you may know already, after having a blast of a time experiencing the beauty of the house concert over in Canada on our travels recently, we decided to steal the idea from a place where it is hugely popular, bring it home with us to a place where it is not so popular, and try and share the love of it with all of our loyal Aussie audiences, because we simply can't contain our excitement for it.

Last weekend marked the beginning of what will be a long line of house concerts that we will be doing over the next few months, all around Australia, and gee, if the weekend is anything to go by then we have got a bucket load of good times ahead, and will have more stories and memories at the end of it than we can poke a stick at.

We played on a gorgeous tropical farm minutes out of Lismore, up North, to a wonderful and lively bunch of faces new and old, we played at what felt like a small outdoor festival in its early birthing years in Brisbane to again one of the most enthusiastic and supportive bunch of people we've ever come across, and played at the most spectacular forest residence (what I like to call the 'treehouse') on an outdoor fairy-lit stage, surrounded by National Park, to once again a terrific audience. All our hosts were super fantastic and provided the perfect settings.

We've said this before and we'll keep on saying it, but being able to put family friendly shows on really does mean so much to us as a group and to be able to do this in an intimate space, to an audience of people who are a small community for each other; whether they be family, friends, neighbours or friends of friends, really just puts the cherry on top for us. Watching this, reminds
me so much of the endless good times we had as kids growing up being exposed to live music in a home environment and making it with our parents and friends of the same age, double, and triple our age. It didn't matter what age anyone was, just as long as everyone was having fun, enjoying themselves, felt safe and supported.

I must stop before I get all too mushy and sensitive, because if I ever wanted to try for a hipster cool image while I live out my twenties, confessing how moved I was by the whole thing really won't help my cause. But seriously, we had a mega awesome few days and cannot wait for the rest of these concerts.

Beth