Running With Cheese

At the Sydney launch of my book Freeing the song, choral chum Sue Wallace asked ‘Has writing the book changed the way you do things?’ I had to say ‘Yeah, it means I have to practise what I preach...erk.’  And many times on my recent tour through Australia, I woke up to myself after a workshop with the ghastly realisation that I’d just done everything I’d advised in the book against doing.
    I launched the new book at the Australian Music Centre. A rollicking evening of wine and song, thanks to all the friends who turned up — I was delighted to see some good chums I hadn’t seen in a long time, current and ex-members of the Honeybees and COTGOS and some participants from workshops. I gave a brief and largely coherent rant, and taught a couple of songs. Thanks to Judith Foster, Janet Piper and the AMC, and to Stephanie King and Marianne for doing the behind-the-scenes stuff. Thanks also to Marianne for the the back cover photo, something which I failed to acknowledge in the book. Again...erk.
    I had three weeks in Australia, where I also had the pleasure of running some spectacular workshops in Melbourne (thanks Babette), Apollo Bay (thanks Magaer), Port Augusta (thanks Yolande) and Adelaide (thanks as always to Briar). Spectacular, not because of anything I did, but because the level of energy, enthusiasm and vocal beauty the singers brought to bear on my particular collection of songs - like Rev. Cleophus Robinson’s All my help or My little cup runneth over.
    I also got to work with four choirs: Melbourne Mass Gospel Choir and the Apostles of Acappella (both under the leadership of Phil Heuzenroeder), the Melbourne Singers of Gospel (led by Darren Wicks), and the Café of the Gate of Salvation. A pleasure to work with them all, though as you’d expect returning the COTGOS to teach a new song is a rare treat for me, and they made a fair fist of learning Love have mercy, a rocking 12/8 number I’ve had in mind for the choir for a while now. COTGOS is sounding very lush these days; there are more members, a younger median age, and some very fine new singers have joined the ranks.

Currently I’ve scheduled some time off for myself, so I’m spending most of my time working on the Living Hamster recordings, editing and tweaking the vocal parts. It’s a wonderful thing to be in my studio with little to do but wonder why I sang the wrong words here and what was I thinking when I went for that bizarre note there.