Once upon a time it felt like you were either a Fitzroy band or a St Kilda band. There’s a pretty damn vibrant thing happening in the City of Yarra, as personified by Leaps & Bounds festival, where over 17 days and nights from Friday July 1 to Sunday July 17 there will be gigs, workshops, bus tours and a huge array of quality special events – all designed to give punters a unique and close up experience with all things Melbourne music.
Now in its fourth year, the Leaps & Bounds Festival will celebrate its opening night with Brown River, a musical tribute to the local neighbourhood, at The Gasometer Hotel. “Leaps & Bounds approached me because I’ve done a few other shows like this,” says curator Jon von Goes. “I did one down at Caravan Music Club which was called Stopping All Stations Except East Richmond, where we got a whole bunch of people to do songs about the suburbs of Melbourne. It always concluded with Skyhooks songs from as many Skyhooks as we could muster. Toorak Cowboy, Balwyn Calling, Lygon Street Limbo. They were great shows and I always liked that idea of Australians singing about where they come from, however unromantic some of the places may sound.”
To an Australian, all those classic blues songs about the American South could feel alien and romantic, yet Paul Kelly singing about St. Kilda and King’s Cross are our own kind of regional stories. “When I see old Australian men singing the blues about Louisiana and stuff it sounds so inauthentic it makes me shudder. And y’know, I’ve been to Galveston and it’s a dump, and how romantic does that song sound?” says von Goes.
Like Leaps & Bounds itself, the night is a celebration of Melbourne, and a somewhat tongue-in-cheek one at that. “There has been a fair bit of stuff written about it being the artistic hub that it is, and as the years have gone on we’ve added other songs,” says von Goes. “For instance, we do a version of Moon River but call it Brown River. It just makes the whole event less earnest and in the end it’s just a big party, which is what you want if you’re going out.”
The lineup features a range of local legends, many of whom are no strangers to singing about the local points of interest. “Mick Thomas has been with me from the start of this just because he referenced in his Weddings, Parties, Anything songs – and still does – the neighbourhood a lot,” says von Goes.
“Also on the bill are Jemma Rowlands [Jemma & The Clifton Hillbillies] and Lucy Dwyer [Lucy & The Diamonds] with a backing band, the Little Brown River Band. That features Bruce Haines on keyboards, Matt Earl from The Band Who Knew Too Much on the drums and Ed Bates on pedal steel.”
BY PETER HODGSON
